"Unattractive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... catkins stand well above the foliage, but are unattractive, being of a dusky brown colour; the leaves are dark green, downy, of much substance, 11/2in. long, and nearly 1in. broad, but the size of foliage varies according to the conditions under which the specimens are grown; the sizes now referred ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... told Mrs. Beaudesart, and so the latter told me. For myself, I often felt an impulse to marry the poor mortal; partly from compassion; partly from the idea that such an action would redound largely to my honour; and partly from the impression that such an unattractive woman would idolise ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... in stature, and usually are rather corpulent. In their movements on foot they are heavy and ungraceful, and they are, on the whole, a slovenly and unattractive race of men. But the instant they mount their horses they seem to be entirely changed, and surprise the spectator with the ease and elegance of their movements. Their great and distinctive peculiarity as horsemen is the ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... equally stern, if not equally composed, cast one of his inscrutable glances round the apartment and without a word stepped before the picture that was as I have said, the only ornamentation of the otherwise bare and unattractive room. ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... went to present my letters of introduction to the French Resident. The offices of the British Residence were still on the small island of Iariki, which I could not reach without a boat. The French Residence is a long, flat, unattractive building; the lawn around the house was fairly well kept, but perfectly bare, in accordance with the French idea of salubrity, except for a few straggling bushes near by. Fowls and horses promenaded about. But the view is one of the most charming to be found ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... they wear it, though it kills them,—there is no depth of tenderness in my nature that Pity has not sounded. Somewhere,—somewhere,—love is in store for them,—the universe must not be allowed to fool them so cruelly. What infinite pathos in the small, half-unconscious artifices by which unattractive young persons seek to recommend themselves to the favor of those towards whom our dear sisters, the unloved, like the rest, are impelled by their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... who are constantly being unkind to one another, and in particular, except for his owner, to the rather horrible dog. But no matter what is put in hand to do the dog in, he always somehow seems to survive, and to re-appear just as unattractive and nasty as ever. ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... business in the fifties, with a considerable fortune for the time, this Mr. Ashley had purchased Heneage from the impoverished representatives of the Umfravilles. As luck would have it, the new owners found a not unattractive Miss Umfraville almost going with the place, since she lived in select but inexpensive lodgings in the village. Her manners being as gentle as her blood, and her face even gentler than either, if such a thing could be, it was in keeping with ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... Dissent, to the real injury of the people all around. I write this advisedly. I dare say the preaching in the meeting-house was often very miserably poor. The service, I must own, seemed to me often peculiarly long and unattractive. There was always that long prayer which was, I fear, to all boys a time of utter weariness; but, nevertheless, there was a moral and intellectual life in our Dissenting circle that did not exist elsewhere. It was true we never attended dinners at the village public-house, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... I can see her cold, grey-green eyes to this hour, her white starched shirt and her sharp steel belt buckle—ugh! It should be illegal, in a Republic where there are so many less sensible laws, for any woman to be so ostentatiously unattractive.... ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... her horse's neck; she did not see him smile. He had felt quite sure that she sought relief for the silences of her life in literary composition. When an unattractive woman has not talent she finds a double revenge in the torture of words, he thought. What shall I say to her? That she is whittling thorns for her own soul? Bah! Did I not find enjoyment once in the very imaginings of all that has scourged me since? ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... at the tattered crest of the tree. But the immensity of its height, looking so directly up, turned him dizzy, and he was glad to bring his gaze back to the unattractive ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... godowns which line Makassar's water-front form an unattractive screen to a picturesque and charming town. Though, owing to its commercial importance as a half-way station on the road from Asia to Australia, Makassar promises to become a second Singapore, it has as yet neither an ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... events, whate'er his race, The pretty girl who owned him Caressed his unattractive face And petted and cologned him, While, watching her with mournful eye, A patient ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... inclined to make sorry mysteries or unattractive secrets of the methods and supplies of the fresh and perennial means of life. A very dull secret is made of water, for example, and the plumber sets his seal upon the floods whereby we live. They are covered, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Gibberne, and we halted for a moment before a magnificent person in white faint-striped flannels, white shoes, and a Panama hat, who turned back to wink at two gaily dressed ladies he had passed. A wink, studied with such leisurely deliberation as we could afford, is an unattractive thing. It loses any quality of alert gaiety, and one remarks that the winking eye does not completely close, that under its drooping lid appears the lower edge of an eyeball and a little line of white. "Heaven give me ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... have seemed quite unattractive in the light of some modern standards have been found on touch to be charged with a life current of tremendous power. And some others, outwardly more attractive, have been found to be as powerless as a dead wire. And ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... has been thus dwelt upon, because it was, as has been said, the feature of his technic which immediately surprised and captivated his hearers. Less noticeable was his wrist and octave work. But his chord playing, though also relatively unattractive, was even in those early days almost as uncommon in its way as was his velocity. And in this field of technic, during his later years, when in composition his mind turned almost wholly to this mode of expression, he reached a plane of tonal ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... is, in almost every respect, a total contrast to "Vanity Fair." The characters and events, though some of them masterly in conception, are coined expressly for the purpose of bringing out great effects. The hero and heroine are beings both so singularly unattractive that the reader feels they can have no vocation in the novel but to be brought together; and they do things which, though not impossible, lie utterly beyond the bounds of probability. On this account a short sketch of the plan seems requisite; ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... agonizing desire to break down into unbridled mirth and confess. Pride restrained her; pride mingled with foreboding as to what this exceedingly progressive and by no means unattractive young suitor—for he could be relegated to no lesser category—might do next. She said coolly ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... little world they lived in, that had long since declared them both born to single blessedness; affirming it impossible that the pale, retiring bookworm should ever summon courage to seek a wife, or be able to obtain one if he did, and equally impossible that the plain-looking, plain-dealing, unattractive, unconciliating Miss Millward ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... little Kingfisher (Alcedo ispida), the most gay in colour of all our birds, may still sometimes be seen, darting about the only rivulet which we can boast of at Woodhall, and which rejoices in the unattractive name of “The Sewer,” {46b} although its water, welling up at its source near Well Syke Wood, is beautifully clear and pure. The occurrence, however, of the bird here is rare. An old inhabitant of Kirkby assures me that it is not uncommon on the river Bain, in that ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... as his sole garment an old dress coat: another had tied a pair of trousers around his waist; a third had piled a half dozen hats atop, one over the other; and many had on two or more coats. They were, to a man, well drunken. Their squaws, fat and unattractive, squatted outside the single store of the place. We saw also a dozen or so white men dressed very plainly and shabbily, tall, lank, and spindly, rather weakly in general appearance, their faces sallow, their eyes rather childish but crafty and treacherous, ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... up of lines as enchantingly beautiful, as seriously satisfying, as those which surrounded the Tuscans in their landscape. And it is in the extracting of such beauty of lines out of the bewildering confusion of huge frescoes, it is in the seeing as arrangements of such lines the sometimes unattractive men and women and children painted (and for that matter, often also sculptured) by the great Florentines of the fifteenth century, that consists the true appreciation and habitual enjoyment of Tuscan Renaissance painting. The outline of an ear and muscle of the neck by Lippi; the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... have asked than the answers I have given, but it is no answer to ask me how the law can be administered without barristers. I do not know; nor do I know how the roads can be swept without getting somebody to sweep them. But that would not disqualify me from saying that road- sweeping was an unattractive profession. So also I am entitled to my opinion about the Bar, which is this. That because it offers material victories only and never spiritual ones, that because there can be no standard by which its disciples ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... and vice will have their reward, that in a sense "men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves." It does not leave hard cases of heathen or of reprobates to the discernment and mercy of God; it offers them, instead, other chances in subsequent lives. A not unattractive doctrine it is, even although the attractive analogy of the evolution of a plant breaks down. For in the scientific doctrine of evolution, individuals have no immortality at all; it is only the species that lives and moves on. But in Hinduism, as in ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... dying in a house of religion was dreadfully unattractive; but an orphan boy's resistance was easily overcome. He was bullied into yielding, and, when about twenty, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... town and county had changelessly voted the good old Democratic ticket. Here at least the rights of property would be respected, and there would be no lawless city mobs to make the restoration of a slave difficult. The brick house and ill-kept garden before which he paused looked unattractive. Beside the house a one-storey wooden office bore the name "Henry W. Swallow, Attorney-at-law." There was neither bell nor knocker. Mr. Grey rapped on the office door with his cane, and after waiting a moment without hearing any one, he entered ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Again, the public in general require that they shall be able to understand without difficulty, and at first thought, the characters the author seeks to present, making it necessary that these characters be depicted from their most salient sides—which are too often vulgar and unattractive. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... when Mr. Polly came down to breakfast, and Mrs. Johnson looked up brightly. Mr. Polly had never felt breakfast so unattractive before. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... anxieties, the younger Henry being now his only son. Marriage schemes had always been prominent features in his policy, and the marriage schemes for himself which he evolved one after the other in the closing years of his reign show him in a singularly unattractive light, at the same time that his financial methods were growing increasingly mean, and his evasions ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... rule, make little impression upon me. Guide-books are a bore, and histories are unattractive, they are so dry and accurate. My father's grief at my lack of essential knowledge is perennial and deep-seated. But, somehow, facts are the most elusive things I have to contend with. I can only seem to get a firm grasp on the imaginary. ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... of a life time to make one's true self known and honoured. Therefore I have come to thy door, thou world-vanquishing Love, and thou, Vasanta, youthful Lord of the Seasons, take from my young body this primal injustice, an unattractive plainness. For a single day make me superbly beautiful, even as beautiful as was the sudden blooming of love in my heart. Give me but one brief day of perfect beauty, and I will answer for the ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore
... "master builders" do not confine themselves to towers and palaces, but give infinite thought and loving care to "homes for human beings." The average old-fashioned New York house, so far as I have seen it, is externally unattractive (the characteristic material, a sort of coffee-coloured stone, being truly hideous), and internally dark, cramped, and stuffy. But modern houses, even of no special pretensions, are generally delightful, with their polished wood floors and fittings, and ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... land-claim. Mulinuu, for which Becker had intrigued so long and so often, for which he had overthrown the municipality, for which he had abrogated and refused and invented successive schemes of neutral territory, was now no more to the Germans than a very unattractive, barren peninsula and a very much disputed land-claim of Mr. Weber's. It will scarcely be believed that the tale of the Scanlon outrages was not yet finished. Leary had gained his point, but Scanlon had lost his compensation. And it was months later, and this time in the shape of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have life and action. Pictures of inanimate objects in which neither persons nor animals appear, seem "dead" and unattractive to the average reader. It is necessary, therefore, to have at least one person in every photograph. Informal, unconventional pictures in which the subjects seem to have been "caught" unawares, are far better than those that appear to have ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... may throw in hanging—I felt proof against, and as for drowning, I had no fear of that. Nevertheless, I had been very near five months in coming out from Boston under the blundering seamanship of Captain Coffin (ominous cognomen!), and salt water, hard junk and weevilly biscuit were as unattractive to me in possible prospect as they were in retrospect. The sea I had weighed in the balance and had found it much wanting. I would, then, go ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... roots which extended far into the water. So dense and tall were these trees that the view beyond them was completely shut out, while not a spot of dry ground appeared which would have afforded us a landing-place had we wished to get on shore. The scenery, indeed, was altogether unattractive and gloomy,—very different from that which I had expected ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... responses. They called it 'a tossing of tennis balls,'[1127] and set it down as one of the points of formalism.[1128] Partly, perhaps, from a little of this sort of feeling, but far more often for no other reason than a lack of devotional spirit, that cold and most unattractive custom, which prevailed throughout the Georgian age, of making the clerk the mouthpiece of the congregation, fast gained ground. This, however, was much less general in the earlier part of the period than at its close. In Queen Anne's time there were many zealous Churchmen ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... blame her, for a better match could not have been desired for her daughter. She made him see his welcome, and he doubtless thought the road to Dorothy's heart a fair and easy one. I certainly thought so, and I spent my days in moping about the place, cutting a most melancholy and unattractive figure. ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... which was at one time universal, of women blackening their teeth, has largely diminished, and will no doubt in due course become obsolete. The idea which underlay it was that the woman should render herself unattractive to other men. There was no object in having such an adventitious attraction as pearly teeth for her husband, who might be presumed to know what her attractions really were. The Japanese woman in her education has inculcated three obediences, viz., obedience to parents, obedience to husband, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... latest studio jargon its carpentry, valued the tones and toned the values, motive or theme must affect your appreciation of a picture, your desire, or the contrary, to possess it. That the artist is able to endow the unattractive, and woo you to surrender, I admit. Unless, however, you are a pro-Boer in art matters, and hold that Rembrandt and the Boer school (the greatest technicians who ever lived) are finer artists than Titian, you will find yourself preferring Gainsborough ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... friend we entered a house on one of the strange streets. Like most of the old houses its front was plain and unattractive. We went through a court and on to a balcony overlooking an enclosed garden. Such a garden I had never seen! It seemed a picture transported from the 'Thousand and One Nights.' In the center was a fountain of extraordinary workmanship, so inlaid with gems that after the water had gushed ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... reverence in which he held Wordsworth, wrote to his brother in 1818: "I am sorry that Wordsworth has left a bad impression wherever he visited in town by his egotism, vanity, and bigotry." There was something frigidly unsympathetic in his judgment of others, which was as unattractive as his complacency in regard to his own work. When Trelawny, seeing him at Lausanne and, learning who he was, went up to him as he was about to step into his carriage and asked him what he thought of Shelley as a poet, he replied: "Nothing." Again, Wordsworth spoke with solemn reprobation of certain ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... which are adapted to be dispersed in any of these ways are of dull protective tints, so that when they fall on the ground they are almost indistinguishable; besides which, they are usually small, hard, and altogether unattractive, never having any soft, juicy pulp; while the edible seeds often bear such a small proportion to the hard, dry envelopes or appendages, that few animals ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... perhaps for that very reason, it was dreamland, unreality, which would one day elude me and vanish; reality was the Round Tower in Copenhagen and all that lay about it. It was ugly, and altogether unattractive, but it was reality. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... volume, which is emblazoned with the title of Physique Social. And here we will at once extract a passage, which, if our own remarks have been hitherto of an unattractive character, shall reward the reader for his patience. It is taken from that portion of the work—perhaps the most lucid and powerful of the whole—where, in order to demonstrate the necessity of his new science of Sociology, M. Comte enters into a review of the two great political ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... sipped a dreary, faded reminiscence of former joys and sparkling brilliancy long dead, in cups of Congress-water, brought by unattractive Ganymedes and sold in the train,—draughts flat, flabby, and utterly bubbleless, lukewarm heel-taps with a flavor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... time since, in one of my botanical rambles in the town of Beverly, which is, for the most part, too densely populated to suit the habits of these solitary birds. On one of these excursions, after walking several hours over a rather unattractive region, I arrived at a very romantic spot, known by the unpoetical name of Black Swamp. Nature uses her most ordinary materials to form her most delightful landscapes, and often keeps in reserve ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... moderate amounts of methaqualone, small amounts of heroin, and cocaine bound for southern Africa and possibly Europe; a poorly developed financial infrastructure coupled with a government commitment to combating money laundering make it an unattractive venue for money launderers; major ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... useless, ineffective or worthless, e.g., a "dud" egg; a "dud of a girl" is one who is unattractive; and ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... same day we arrived at the Sacred Lake of Teri Noor, a sheet of water eight kilometres across, muddy and yellow, with low unattractive shores studded with large holes. In the middle of the lake lay what was left of a disappearing island. On this were a few trees and some old ruins. Our guide explained to us that two centuries ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... young man thoughtfully, "there are other things worth living for—duty. An unattractive nose would not interfere with that. Some people think it is rather more important than love. I admit ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... struck by men, who knew them from long experience, telling me how fully they appreciated the good points of the burghers—for instance, their bravery, their love of their country, and their simple, unquestioning, if unattractive faith, which savoured of that of the old Puritans. Against these attributes their pig-headedness, narrow-mindedness, laziness, and slovenliness had to be admitted. All these defects militated against their living in harmony ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... exception was made for the entrance front, which was sometimes covered with plates of marble mosaics or painted stucco (Old St Peter's, S. Lorenzo). But in spite of any decorations the external effect of a basilica must always have been heavy and unattractive. S. Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna (fig. 8) affords a typical [v.03 p.0474] example. The campanile is a later addition. Within, apart from the beautiful mosaic decoration, a fine effect was produced by the arch of triumph and the apse, which terminated the nave and dominated the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... of paste, with a coating of the flour on the outside. These sweetmeats were nicely packed in straw baskets, of a different manufacture from those before-mentioned, and were very superior to the common sort which is brought from the coast in small coarse earthenware basins, exceedingly unattractive in their appearance. ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... avowedly French. 'Solidarity', a word which we owe to the French Communists, and which signifies a fellowship in gain and loss, in honour and dishonour, in victory and defeat, a being, so to speak, all in the same bottom, is so convenient, that unattractive as confessedly it is, it will be in vain to struggle against its reception. The newspapers already have it, and books will not long exclude it; not to say that it has established itself in German, and probably in other European languages ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... abandoned person. She glories in her shame. I have never before met with such an example of complete and unconscious depravity. Yet she is not unattractive. There is a wonderfully clever refinement even in her coarseness which goes far to account for her ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... passengers were dirty-looking, handed by dirtier hands, coming out of filthy receptacles and weighed in equally unattractive scales. These were previously sampled by millions of flies. I asked some of the passengers who went in for these dainties to give their opinion. Many of them used choice expressions as to the quality but were satisfied to state ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... Wade, and, finding her at home, proceeded there at once, to "fix" matters; a thing by no means hard to accomplish, for Kitty Wade found the prospect of a lonesome vacation very unattractive, ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... the many-acred farm which was to be his when "grandmother" should relinquish her claim to all earthly possessions. So he was really able to live in comfort; but, instead of that, the old red farmhouse, which was his father's before him, was a model of angularity, unadorned and unattractive, both inside and out, only preserving a decent aspect through ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... and passed to the higher ground where stood the city proper. It was like most other American municipalities—dirty, dingy, and unattractive, a hotchpotch of buildings with no architectural unity. But it had one feature possessed by few cities—an outlook on a great ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... and fidelity to trusts. His very faults grew out of virtues pushed to extremes. In our times such a man would not be selected as a travelling companion, or a man at whose house we would wish to keep the Christmas holidays. His unattractive austerity perhaps has been made too much of by his enemies, and grew out of his unimpulsive temperament,—call it cold if we must,—and also out of his stern theology, which marked the ascetics of the Middle Ages. Few would now approve of his severity ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... airs upon himself. Even then the penalty consists only in a few outbreaks of superficial jealousy, and the substantial respect for any real acquirements remains the same. So there was a time when the faintest aroma of West Point lent a charm to the most unattractive candidate for a commission. Any Governor felt a certain relief in intrusting a regiment to any man who had ever eaten clandestine oysters at Benny Haven's, or had once heard the whiz of an Indian arrow on the frontier, however mediocre might have been all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... enshrined in literature: probably no one will ever know the parting objurgation of Narcisse. I will endeavour, however, to give you some notion as to what occurred, from the budget I have just read. I fear the tragedy was a squalid one. Madame, the victim, was elderly, unattractive in person, exacting in temper, and the owner of considerable wealth—at least, this is what came out at the trial. It was one of those tangles in which a fatal denouement is inevitable; and, if this ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... clear morning when a rather rough-looking, yet not unattractive person, entered a large jewelry establishment located on one of the principal streets ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... evening when at length Meriwether Lewis reined up in front of the somewhat unattractive Grinder homestead cabin, squatted down alongside the Natchez Trace; a place where sometimes hospitality of a sort was dispensed. It was an ordinary double cabin that he saw, two cob-house apartments with a covered space between such as might have been found anywhere for hundreds of miles on either ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... Delia found Mrs Winn quite alone. She was sitting at a table drawn up into the bow-window, busily engaged in covering books with whitey-brown paper. On her right was a pile of gaily bound volumes, blue, red, and purple, which were quickly reduced to a pale brown, unattractive appearance in her practised hands, and placed in a pile on her left. Delia thought Mrs Winn looked whitey-brown as well as the books, for there was no decided colour about her: her eyes were pale, as well as the narrow line of hair which showed beneath the border of her white cap; and ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... influenza, as interfering in less degree with my comfort,—I have, of course, neglected no opportunity of finding out what we may reasonably look forward to. I fear the worst, Agatha. For I repeat, the girl's face is, to me, absolutely unattractive!" ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... artificially stained, so that stones naturally unattractive by their dull grey tints come to be valuable for ornamental purposes. The art of staining the stone is believed to be very ancient. Possibly referred to by Pliny (bk. xxxvii. cap. 75), it was certainly practised at an early date by the Italian cameo-workers, and from Italy a knowledge ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... I claim to have made, and in the fullest detail; but, either from the public's lack of interest in an unrecommended and unattractive pamphlet, or—which is more probable—from the weakness of exposition and want of genius which characterize the work, the First Memoir on Property passed unnoticed; scarcely would a few communists, having turned its leaves, deign to brand it with their disapprobation. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... history I have set down happened I have lived a very quiet life at a small house which I have taken in the country. The ordinary ambitions and aims of men in my position seem to me dull and unattractive. I have little fancy for the whirl of society, and none for the jostle of politics. Lady Burlesdon utterly despairs of me; my neighbours think me an indolent, dreamy, unsociable fellow. Yet I am a young man; and ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... became aware of a certain weight of apprehension, which took from him the power to enjoy these material comforts; unattractive possibilities seemed to hover in the silent darkness, and his more subtile senses were roused, and brought to a state of quivering tension, which was almost insupportable. His wife moved, and he felt that she had ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... a superb craftsman, was not always inspired. In the next room to the "View of Delft" and the girl's head is his "New Testament Allegory," a picture which I think I dislike more than any other, so false seems to me its sentiment and so unattractive its character. Yet the sheer painting of it ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... possible unpleasantness, he did not protest against his secretary's arrest; and to congratulate my friend Etienne de Vaudreix, because he is revenging the outraged morality of the public by keeping the hundred thousand francs which he was paid on account by that singularly unattractive person, Cooley. ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... would like to go on being acquainted with you, Betty, and have the chances of other men. You're not an unattractive girl, you know—or maybe you don't know. And he's human. I have a sort of idea he'll try and make some change in his way of life, so that it may be possible to meet ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... particularly odd or unattractive about the house in those little-girl days, and it seemed a perfectly normal establishment to her now. It was home, and it was good to get home after the long day. She ran up the flight of stairs that the gas- bead dimly ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... theory of a descent from the apes is clearly due in most men to feeling rather than to reason. They shrink from the notion of such an origin just because they see in the ape organism a caricature of man, a distorted and unattractive image of themselves, because it hurts man's aesthetic complacency and self-ennoblement. It is more flattering to think we have descended from some lofty and god-like being; and so, from the earliest times, human vanity has been pleased to believe in our origin from gods ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... hoarding, on every bare piece of wall, were spread large, flamboyant posters showing a garish but not unattractive landscape. There was the sun sparkling on a wide stretch of water edged with high trees, and gay with little sailing boats, each boat with its human freight of two lovers. Jutting out into the blue lake was a great white building, which Sylvia realised must be the Casino. ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... checked at the entrance to the theatre by the appearance of Appleton. He was coming from within the building, and with him were two women, one elderly and unattractive, the other a plump young person with bright blue eyes in a saucy face that had more claim to piquant effrontery than to beauty. She was simply dressed and was ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the extreme badness of the printing may have been partly owing to this cause; that the Poet may have left the manuscript in a more unfinished and illegible state, from a sense of something ungenial and unattractive in the subject-matter ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... accomplish in this direction, however, is nullified to the lovers of the beautiful, by the war he constantly wages upon our song birds, destroying their young, and substituting his unattractive looks and inharmonious chirps for their beautiful plumage and ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... frantic people. He grew older in a moment; he was forty again now; an instant ago, just on the further side of those blue woods, he had been fifteen. Life shrank and dwindled in him to a little, ugly, unattractive thing. He was returning to a flat in the dolorous edifice of civilisation. A great practical Scheme, rising in sombre bricks and mortar through a disfiguring fog, blocked all the avenues ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... the last degree unattractive, except to a misanthropic disposition; or to that, perhaps, of a stern theological polemic, when tempted to be pleased with every superfluity of evidence for overwhelming the opposers of the doctrine which asserts the radical ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... makes a genuine effort to develop competence. No sane man, seeking a woman for a post requiring laborious training and unremitting diligence, would select a woman still definitely young and marriageable. To the contrary, he would choose either a woman so unattractive sexually as to be palpably incapable of snaring a man, or one so embittered by some catastrophe of amour as to be pathologically emptied of the normal ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... our unattractive suite our first proceeding was to elect a Captain of our barrack. Selection fell upon Mr. K——, as he was an ideal intermediary, being fluent in the language. We turned in, the majority being too tired to growl at their lot, but there was precious little sleep. During the day, ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... thought of it, he was piqued as well. A country girl, poor enough, that was evident; living with her family in a cheap and most unattractive frame house, such as carpenters build in America, scantily furnished and unadorned; without the adventitious aids of dress or jewels or the fine manners of society—Harry couldn't understand it. But ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... and burnt for the sake of the ironwork. On account of the damage to the salt pork caused by the sinking of this boat, the strictest economy of diet had to be exercised, and though an abundance of fish was caught, they had become unattractive to their palates. The continuation of the voyage down the course of the Murray was henceforth a monotonous repetition of severe daily toil at the oar. The natives whom they encountered, though friendly, ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... reached home that evening, the little Kensington house, with half its carpets up and all but two of its rooms under dust-sheets, looked particularly lonely and unattractive. Arthur's study was unrecognisable. No cheerful litter anywhere. No smell of tobacco, no sign of a male presence! Doris, walking restlessly from room to room, had never felt so forsaken, so dismally certain that the best of life was done. ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... street, dirty, and ill-paved. Dingy tenement blocks and a few unattractive stores were on either side. All about were jabbering men and chattering women—though not one word of what they said could Pollyanna understand. Moreover, she could not help seeing that the people looked at her very curiously, as if they knew she ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... vivacity of movement, and at the same time an aristocratic precision and subtlety one fails to find in the English. When a pretty English girl of the people opens her mouth the charm is often gone. On the contrary, I have often noticed in Normandy that a seemingly commonplace unattractive girl only becomes charming when she does open her mouth, to reveal her softness of speech, the delicately-inflexed and expressive tones, while her face lights up in harmony with her speech. Now—to say nothing of the women of ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... blazed up, giving an intense light in that awful darkness. By this light, for one moment only, we saw a strange, and not unattractive spectacle. I think I forgot to say that in the centre of this vault stood a kind of altar, which until that moment, indeed, I had not seen. This altar, which, doubtless, had been used for ceremonial purposes at the funerals of the ancient Kings, consisted of a plain block ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... the stuff indoors and they have a ghastly job keeping everything sterile. Here's a place where they can sow chlorella in the oceans! They can grow yeast in lakes, out-of-doors! Suppose they use this world to grow monstrous quantities of unattractive but useful foodstuff—in a way—wild? It will be good return-cargo material for ships taking colonists out to our other planets.—I suppose," he added meditatively, "they'll ship it ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... agreeable everything could become—as if there were no Revolution, no Bolsheviki, no Emperor.... But no; Fate has to put a drop of tar in a barrel of honey. However, perhaps I would have hated to see a cook around here: as soon as a woman gets too domestic—she infallibly becomes unattractive. As for Lucie—enclosed in a cage as we are—I never saw her unwashed, uncombed, frivolous or unladylike. So let her be a plotter. I must be grateful as we never quarrel.... She sends me ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... but, nevertheless, he was not altogether contented. He by no means wished to marry Griselda; he had declared to himself a dozen times since he had first suspected his mother's manoeuvres that no consideration on earth should induce him to do so; he had pronounced her to be cold, insipid, and unattractive in spite of her beauty: and yet he felt almost angry that Lord Dumbello should have been successful. And this, too, was the more inexcusable, seeing that he had never forgotten Lucy Robarts, had never ceased to love her, and that, in holding those various conversations within ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... now inspecting them with more or less curiosity; Siward found his "hand-painting" so unattractive that he had just tipped it over to avoid seeing it, when a burst of laughter from Lord Alderdene made everybody turn. Mrs. Vendenning was laughing; so was Rena Bonnesdel looking over Quarrier's shoulder at a card he was holding—not one of the "hand"-decorated, but a sheet of note-paper containing ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... what must some children think of a God who robs his day of all pleasure? If this is the kind of day he makes, then how unattractive would be his years and eternity! It is the day when we have our best opportunity to show them what God is like, to interpret his world and his works in terms of beauty, kindness, riches of thought, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... conclude that this kind of Attention is a common faculty among men. On the contrary it is quite rare, and is seen only among those of "strong" mentality. Anyone may fasten his Attention upon some passing, pleasing thing, but it takes a trained will to fasten it upon some unattractive thing, and hold it there. Of course the trained occultist is able to throw interest into the most unattractive thing upon which it becomes advisable to focus his Attention, but this, in itself, comes with the trained Will, and is not the possession of the average man. Voluntary ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... when men and women have morally advanced out of all recognition. When people are all faithful, constant, pure-minded, and utterly unselfish, free marriage may be worth considering. Even then, there would be no chance for the ill-favoured and unattractive. ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... been for her extreme thinness and the size of her head, which was too large for her medium height. But she was not likely to be attractive to men. She was like a fine flower, already past its bloom and without fragrance, though the petals were still unwithered. Moreover, she would have been unattractive to men also from the lack of just what Kitty had too much of—of the suppressed fire of vitality, and the ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the spring of 1812 was not an unattractive one. A new party, controlled by a remarkable coterie of brilliant young men from the South, whose shibboleth was war with England, had sprung up in Congress, and, by sheer force of will and intellect, had dragged to the support ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the king with curious expectation. The husband knew how unattractive a toilet his wife could make if she would; Edgar was impatient to test for himself the various reports he had received concerning this ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and refuse cluttered inside the round railings of each tree. She went up some dirty-yellowish steps, and rang the "Patients'" bell, because she knew she ought not to ring the "Tradesmen's." A servant, not exactly dirty, but unattractive, let her into a hall painted a dull drab, and floored with cocoa-matting, otherwise bare. Then up bare stairs to a room where a stout, pale, common woman with two warts on her face, was drinking tea. It was three o'clock. This was the matron. The matron soon deposited her in a bedroom, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... creed of their subjects. The simple Zoroastrian belief and worship, overlaid by Magism in the now luxurious Media, found a refuge in the rugged Persian uplands, among the hardy shepherds and cultivators of that unattractive region, was professed by the early Achaemenian princes, and generally acquiesced in by ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... her heart was on her boy, and until she could see that it was best for him she would take no second partner. Downey's proposal was a puzzle to her; he was a big, strong, dull, moderately successful, unattractive man. But he had a good business, no bad habits, and was ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... would be left of the stone after the sculptor had completed his work would go to adorn some fine building and to be looked upon and admired by many people. No one had admired it in its former state. It was only a block of stone, unattractive and of little value. But it would now be a thing of beauty to be treasured. Yet that change could take place only when the sharp steel had bitten ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... speaking, but not uniting with each other into a second whole. I am not denying of course the civilization of the Chinese, for instance, though it be not our civilization; but it is a huge, stationary, unattractive, morose civilization. Nor do I deny a civilization to the Hindoos, nor to the ancient Mexicans, nor to the Saracens, nor (in a certain sense) to the Turks; but each of these races has its own civilization, as separate from one another as from ours. I do not see how they can be all brought under ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... atmosphere, the sunshine, and singing birds—the tout ensemble was inexpressibly beautiful. On my way back to the hotel I passed a Christian church and felt ashamed of the wretched architecture, in the usual conventional style, made of stone with white-plastered walls, hard and unattractive. Never have I been among a people so close to nature, strikingly intelligent, friendly, and the most aesthetic of all nations on ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... sheer necessity. Carelessness in the points of association connected with sentiment (and all personal civilities and attention have this root) grows upon one like carelessness in dress, until an entire community may get to be as ungracious in deportment, as it is unattractive ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... by gentlemen who look on ladies' windows with telescopes. There are Casinos and Casinos, and that of Biarritz is, in the summary French phrase, "impossible." Except for its view, it is moreover very unattractive. Perched on the top of a cliff which has just space enough to hold its immense brick foundations, it has no garden, no promenade, no shade, no place of out-of-door reunion—the most indispensable feature of a Casino. It turns its back to the Pyrenees and to Spain, and looks ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... looking-glass would flatly contradict it. Come, in spite of the somewhat greenish hue of our surroundings, look at that soft, gentle, and still youthful countenance, those brilliant eyes, that flowing hair, and tell me if it be all in harmony with the unattractive aspect ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... wrote few letters these years seem to have been more cheerful, except at the time of his wife's death. He is seen at "The Star and Garter" in 1861 entertaining Murray and two others at dinner, in a heavy and expensive style. He is still an uncomfortable, unattractive figure in a drawing- room, especially with accurate and intelligent ladies, like Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who would not humour his inaccurate dictatorship. Miss Cobbe was his neighbour in Hereford Square. She says that if he was not a Gypsy by blood he ought to ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas |
