"Unpretending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the same shade. It is, of course, an undoubted fact that women dress for their own satisfaction only, and in accordance with their instincts of "the true and the beautiful;" so it would be mere hypercritical carping to suspect coquetry of lurking in the deft folds of that unpretending blue ribbon, or that, in the face of her grande passion for Du Meresq, she could for a moment occupy herself with the foolish ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... and 7 minutes to cross the bridge, over two miles long, which connects Venice with the land. The water is not deep, and most of this bridge is a mere bank of earth running into the sea. It was on account of my being disgusted at the general unpretending appearance of Venice, that I left her so soon. Among the objects of interest that I saw between Venice and Bologna, was a herd of a hundred deer on a hill-side, and the merry bells of stage-teams jingling like our sleigh-bells, but which may be heard in Italy ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... drawings in which Eastern life is 'taken in the fact' with a truth and liveliness of touch rarely found in an amateur pencil. The letter-press is a secondary part of the work,—merely to render the drawings intelligible; and we are convinced that if the author could have imagined a more unpretending title for his book than the one given, he would have selected it. Indeed, the word book is scarcely an appropriate one to use on this occasion; and we may compare the pleasure which we have derived in perusing Prince Soltykoff's travels both in Persia and in India to that afforded ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... those hotels are brick dust. They're flat on the ground. There isn't a room left. He means "demolished." He doesn't use our language easily. I can see that. It is true they are unpretending, but that isn't the first word you would use about them, not if ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... and over the same hills and valleys and nestling farm-houses. But the woods have receded in some places, and up from the right comes the sound of clashing machinery, telling that the Merle river is performing its mission at last, setting in motion saws and hammers and spindles, but in so unpretending a manner that no miniature city has sprung up on its banks as yet; and long may that ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... holiday, appointed a deputy, or slept out of the borough. His official dignity sat heavily upon him, his temper of late years often led him into conflict with jurors and medical witnesses, but he was well respected by all who knew the quiet unpretending benevolence of his character, never better exhibited than at the time of the cholera panic in 1832. The doctor had established a Fever Hospital in Bath Row, and here he received and treated, by himself, the only cases of Asiatic cholera imported ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... acquainted, through some of my brother entomologists,[3] with Professor Henslow, for all who cared for any branch of natural history were equally encouraged by him. Nothing could be more simple, cordial, and unpretending than the encouragement which he afforded to all young naturalists. I soon became intimate with him, for he had a remarkable power of making the young feel completely at ease with him; though we were ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... she had clung to him in the darkest hours, until death had broken his hold in life, and he was laid away the wreck of his former self in a drunkard's grave. Gathering up the remains of what had been an ample fortune, she installed herself in an humble and unpretending home in the suburbs of the city of B., and there with loving solicitude she had watched over and superintended the education of her only son. He was a promising boy, full [of?] life and vivacity, having inherited much of the careless joyousness of his father's temperament; and ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... indescribable as human features, with a certain boyish awkwardness of manner, but with the most urban-like courtesy and affability. From noon till dark, the time is spent in conversation, continued, various, and eloquent. What a presence is there in this humble, unpretending cottage! And as the stream of Olympian sweetness moves on, now in laughing ripples, and again in a solemn majestic flood, what a past do we bring before ourselves! what a present! For this is he that talked with Coleridge, that was the friend of Wilson,—and—what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... she had borne to the prince, and the joy that filled his heart as he became a father, although his lawful wife had also borne him children. She looked around her small, quiet dwelling, arranged in a modest manner, not as the favorite of the Prince of Prussia, but as an unpretending citizen's wife; she thought how oft with privations, with want even, she had had to combat; how oft the ornaments which the prince had sent her in the rare days of abundance had been taken to the pawnbrokers to provide the necessary wants of herself and children. ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... came not, she lighted the lamp. Night after night, and month after month, that bright light streamed forth from the solitary cottage on the beach; and many a storm-tossed vessel owed its safety to that unpretending beacon. At length the Scottish Commissioners of Lighthouses heard of this volunteer lighthouse. An annual sum of money was voted for its support, and the widow received a lamp with reflectors, with ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... courage, and fancied she could hear the voice of Ethiopian troops hailing the Regent as king—could see Ani decorated with the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, seated on Rameses' throne, and herself by his side in rich though unpretending splendor. She pictured herself with her son and daughter as enjoying Mena's estate, freed from debt and increased by Ani's generosity, and then a new, intoxicating hope came into her mind. Perhaps already at this moment her daughter was a widow, and why should she not ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... leader. Thirty-nine years after his death, lord Brougham wrote of Washington that he was "the greatest man of our own or of any age. * * * This eminent person is presented to our observation clothed in attributes as modest, as unpretending, as little calculated to strike or to astonish, as if he had passed unknown through some secluded region of private life. But he had a judgment sure and sound; a steadiness of mind which never suffered any passion or even any feeling to ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... more habitual and so to speak chronic sense of God's presence the following sample from Professor Starbuck's manuscript collection may serve to give an idea. It is from a man aged forty-nine—probably thousands of unpretending Christians would write an ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... and low, more like an unpretending farmhouse than an institution, forms two sides of an oblong. The back windows look out on a flat garden about seventy yards across. Part of the house was originally a cottage; the longer part a disused bobbin-mill, once turned by the stream which runs at the side of the damp, small garden. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... two whose names are given above are the best that can be obtained. Mr. Gosse's is expensive, costing between four and five dollars. "The Common Objects of the Seashore," to be got for a quarter of a dollar, contains much accurate, unpretending, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... least simple manner. Not Osric nor Iachimo detests the mot propre more than Sidney. Yet again, he is one of the arch offenders in the matter of spoiling the syntax of the sentence and the paragraph. As has been observed already, the unpretending writers noticed above, if they have little harmony or balance of phrase, are seldom confused or breathless. Sidney was one of the first writers of great popularity and influence (for the Arcadia was very widely read) to introduce what may be called the sentence-and-paragraph-heap, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... of this group was Mr. Sidney Webb, and as I think of him thus coming after Marx to develop the third phase of Socialism, I am struck by the contrast with the big-bearded Socialist leaders of the earlier school and this small, active, unpretending figure with the finely-shaped head, the little imperial under the lip, the glasses, the slightly lisping, insinuating voice. He emerged as a Colonial Office clerk of conspicuous energy and capacity, and ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... harsher than that of bashfulness. It was printed at the obscure market-town press of Newark, was altogether a very homely, rustic work, and no attempt was made to bespeak for it a good name from the critics. It was truly an innocent affair and an unpretending performance. But notwithstanding these, at least seeming, qualities of young doubtfulness and timidity, they did not soften the austere nature of the bleak and blighting criticism which was ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... already so well known to Mr. Edwards by report, that it was most gladly that he received him into his house and family. There the impression Brainerd made was of a singularly social, entertaining person, meek and unpretending, but manly and independent. Probably rest and brightness had come when the terrible struggle of his early years had ceased, and morbid despondency had given way to Christian hope, for he became at once a bright and pleasant member of any society ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... after leaving the Waterport, passed through the Casemate Barrack Square and entered Waterport Street, the chief thoroughfare of the town. It was a narrow, unpretending street, very foreign in aspect; the houses tall and overhanging with balconies filled with flowers; the lattice-shutters gaily painted, having outside blinds ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... pursuing a layman's course of study at the college of Navarre, under the name of the Marquis de Chillon, when his elder brother, Alphonse Louis du Plessis de Richelieu, became disgusted yith ecclesiastical life, turned Carthusian, and resigned the unpretending bishopric of Lucon in favor of his brother Armand, whom Henry IV. nominated to it in 1605, instructing Cardinal du Perron, at that time his charge d'affaires at Rome, to recommend to Pope Paul V. that election which he had very much at heart. The young ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... hear an unpretending street organ than such abominations; and, indeed, some of the itinerant music is, to our unsophisticated ears, sweet beyond expression, especially when accompanied, as it is sometimes, by a rich Italian or reedy German voice; for whose sake ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... had become much brighter, for Mrs. Turner's work had greatly increased, her quiet, unpretending manner having won for her many kind friends, who kept her fully employed—indeed so much that Lizzie Stevens had given up her hard labour of working for the slopshops, and now helped the widow in her lighter and more remunerative toil. It is ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... the country as it was when the colonists found it, Edward Shortland's account of the whalers and Maoris of the South Island, Jerningham Wakefield's of the founding of the New Zealand Company's settlements, Dieffenbach's travels, and Bidwill's unpretending little pamphlet telling of his tramp to the volcanoes and hot lakes in 1842, seem to me at once to tell most and be easiest ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... artist's selecting from his environment just those things his own genius needed, and rejecting just what would have hampered or distracted him. He is as sane, as unsentimental, as truthful and unpretending as the most literal and unimaginative Dutchman of his time or before it; but he has also that feeling for style, and that instinct for avoiding the common and unclean which always seem to prevent French ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... exquisite relation between function and beauty, organization and use,—tracing therein a profound law and an illimitable truth. No more genial spectacle greeted us in Rome than Thorwaldsen at his Sunday-noon receptions;—his white hair, kindly smile, urbane manners, and unpretending simplicity gave an added charm to the wise and liberal sentiments he expressed on Art,— reminding us, in his frank eclecticism, of the spirit in which Humboldt cultivates science, and Sismondi history. Nor less indicative of this clear apprehension was the thorough solution we have heard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... gamblers in China to repentance and permanent reform. It is imprudent to predict a permanent place for even the best of Alice Carey's gentle songs; but Phoebe's utterance may very possibly be quoted, from her unpretending station as adviser and alleviator of every-day life, after her name shall be forgotten and her religion shall ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... of as a quiet, unpretending person—occupied with domestic duties, who hated society and never went anywhere—in fact, no one ever heard her name mentioned. A great many people didn't know that Grevy had a wife. When her husband became President of the ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... people standing in their door-ways, old women popping their heads from the chamber-windows, and stalwart men—idle on Saturday at e'en, after their week's hard labor—clustering at the street-corners, merely to stare at our unpretending selves. Except in some remote little town of Italy, (where, besides, the inhabitants had the intelligible stimulus of beggary,) I have never been honored with nearly such an amount ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... mildness and sweetness of her disposition, made her friends of all who knew her. Many a saint, of the present day, holds his character for sanctity by as slight a tenure, as Anastasio did his as an orthodox Catholic; and many a modest, unpretending female, has been, like Madame de Luna, regarded as an infidel, and a vessel of wrath, for not sounding a trumpet before her, in the ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... sense of humour, though in other respects he was simple and unpretending. He was a great reader of old-fashioned novels, which indeed in those days were the only works of the kind to be met with. The Arabian Nights, Robinson crusoe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and such like, were his favourites, and gave a healthy filip to his imagination. He had also ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... had unexpected difficulty, since for some reason or other—possibly the fine weather—many of the nearest at hand were full of tourists and commercial travellers. He led her on till he reached a tavern which, though comparatively unpretending, stood in as attractive a spot as any in the town; and this, somewhat to their surprise after their previous experience, they found apparently empty. The considerate old man, thinking that Baptista was educated to artistic notions, though he ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... say precipitous, but we made it in safety; and so shall you, if you will be agile. New York is a pleasant little Dutch city, on a dot of island a few miles southwest of Massachusetts. For a city entirely unobtrusive and unpretending, it has really great attractions and solid merit; but the superior importance of other places will not permit me to tarry long within its hospitable walls. In fact, we only arrived late at night, and departed early the next morning; but even a six-hours' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... acquire a singular and living force when we perceive them carried out and realised in the actual affairs of life in a degree to which our personal experience is a stranger. Influenced as human nature is by example, these unpretending narratives, whose whole strength lies in the facts which they record, and not in the art of the biographer, undeniably strike the mind with an almost supernatural force. They enchain the attention; they ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... stood in his neat, serviceable undress uniform, with a cigar between his lips. He had abandoned the swagger frogged coat and silk sash for the unpretending patrol jacket of his brethren in the Line. He had been hard at work all day in barracks, inspecting meals, visiting the hospital, attending parades. He had paid his company personally, had seen every man, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... counterbalanced by immigration into Germany from Austria, Russia, and Italy. It is true that the population of Germany is increasing with immense rapidity, and that the question of expansion is becoming a burning one; but it is a question quite outside the strictly home politics of this unpretending chronicle. We are only concerned with the obvious fact that Germans settle in far countries in much smaller numbers than we do, and that those who go abroad mostly choose the British flag and avoid their own. It does not occur as easily to a German as to an Englishman that he may better his fortunes ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... estimated means and resources. These and her general preparations had perhaps a certain disproportion. She had a gold watch, a very good gold watch that had been her mother's, a pearl necklace that was also pretty good, some unpretending rings, some silver bangles and a few other such inferior trinkets, three pounds thirteen shillings unspent of her dress and book allowance and a few good salable books. So equipped, she proposed to set up a separate establishment in ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Mary Safford is a resident of this town, whose life since the beginning of the war, has been devoted to the amelioration of the soldier's lot, and his comfort in the hospitals. She is a young lady, petite in figure, unpretending, but highly cultivated, by no means officious, and so wholly unconscious of her excellencies, and the great work she is achieving, that I fear this public allusion to her may pain her modest nature. Her sweet, young face, full of ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... by what I saw while going from the adjutant's office to barracks was certainly not very encouraging. The rear windows were crowded with cadets watching my unpretending passage of the area of barracks with apparently as much astonishment and interest as they would, perhaps, have watched Hannibal crossing the Alps. Their words, ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... Earl of Dartmouth (1672-1750), was St. John's fellow Secretary of State. Lord Dartmouth seems to have been a plain, unpretending man, whose ignorance of French helped to throw important matters into St. ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... to General Grant, "You are now Washington's legitimate successor, and occupy a position of almost dangerous elevation; but if you continue, as heretofore, to be yourself,— simple, honest, and unpretending,—you will enjoy through life the respect and love of friends, and the homage ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... "the centre of busy interests," he had great liking for unpretending men, who would come and gossip with him in a friendly, companionable way, or who liked to talk about old authors or old books. In his love of books he was very catholic. "Shaftesbury is not too genteel, nor Jonathan Wild ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... the eyes of the law rendered them almost a negative factor in the later life of New England. No great movement can be traced to their initiation, no great leader to birth within their borders, and no great work of art, literature, or scholarship to those who belonged to this unpretending company. The Pilgrim Fathers stand rather as an emblem of virtue than a moulding force in ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... the question was, Who could have done a thing of this kind so delightfully, with such reserve? All at once the author's name occurred. "Surely," he said, "it is Brahms"; and it was. It is the beauty of an unpretending work of this character by so great a master that the hearer is able to follow it with so much enjoyment and from purely musical motives, without making himself unhappy in the effort to realize a story or some great and mysterious ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... display, our observations are meant to be quite absolute; and we aver, without fear of contradiction, that the pieces contained in the humble volume before us bear the stamp and impress of no ordinary genius; that they are bespangled with gems of genuine poetry; and that their unpretending author well deserves—what he will doubtless obtain—the countenance and support of a discerning public. Nature is not an aristocrat To the plough-boy following his team a-field—to the shepherd tending his flocks in the wilderness—or to the rude cutter of stone, cramped over his rough ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... I conclude the last page of a work, which though its form be light and unpretending, would yet aspire to suggest to its readers some considerations of a very opposite character. A year ago. I presumed to offer to the public some volumes that aimed to call their attention to the state ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... of his own Thalaba. A "chevelure" like this, with black eyes, aquiline features, and figure tall and slender, without attenuation, assisted in presenting such an image as is seldom viewed in reality; while the effect of the whole was enhanced by easy, unpretending ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... were stopped and questioned; but the priest, who seemed to be known, easily satisfied his examiners, and they were allowed to go on. They went along a wide street, which, however, was unpaved, and lined on each side with houses of unpretending appearance. Most of them were built of wood, some of logs, one or two of stone. All were of small size, with small doors and windows, and huge, stumpy chimneys. The street was straight, and led to the citadel, ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... figure. A large and notable company is present, among them many high civil functionaries, but the charge d'affaires is not there. In the billiard-room the honorable minister of finance plays a game with the honorable minister of the interior. They are both of unpretending manners, polite and affable, and during the pauses of the game they call for and drink their beer in true democratic fashion. M. Forgues learns that his charge lives two leagues out of town, and, hugging his exasperating valise—which, we may here remark, was delivered safely to the charge ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... a most stately drama: any paraphrase would spoil its dignity, its quiet truth, its unpretending, yet gigantic lineaments. Note: in allusion to our views of evil, that Satan also comes among the sons of God: note, the generous dependence placed by a generous Master on his servant well-upheld by that Master's own free grace: note, Satan's constant imputation ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the famous romance the 'Exiles of Siberia,' of Madame Cottin, we have had no account of these desolate lands more attractive than the present work, from the pen of the Lady Eve Felinska, which, in its unpretending style and truthful simplicity, will win its way to the reader's heart, and compel him to sympathise with the fair sufferer. The series of hardships endured in traversing these frozen solitudes is affectingly ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... spite of the comical atmosphere which your Sexton spread over it, I was really touched and the feeling never once left me. Somehow I saw on the one hand, in your acceptance of these most simple and material gifts, and, on the other, in the reverence with which they were bestowed, the most pious and unpretending symbol of the church, which must have its daily bread in order to exist, and of the faithful who supply her earthly needs in the humble conviction that by so doing they will gain something of high and eternal value. Hence on neither the one side nor the other does a sense of servitude arise, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... without any thought of striving, achieve "positions" which everybody recognizes. Susan had a "position." She knew and was liked by all sorts and conditions of important people, had been about, had stayed in houses with Royalties, and had always remained just herself, perfectly natural, quite unpretending, and wholly free from every grain of nonsense. "There's no nonsense about Susan Fleet!" many said approvingly, especially those who themselves were full of it. She possessed one shining advantage, a constitutional inability to be a snob, and she was completely ignorant ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Aramis, turning in the carriage towards his companion, "weak creature as I am, so unpretending in genius, so low in the scale of intelligent beings, it has never yet happened to me to converse with a man without penetrating his thoughts through that living mask which has been thrown over our mind, in order to retain its expression. But to-night, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... person, whose experience has hitherto been confined to the more calm and unpretending scenery of these islands, whether here or in England, go for the first time into parts where physical nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms, whether at home or abroad, as into mountainous districts; or let one, who has ever lived in a quiet village, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Coblenz, and past the island of Nonnenwerth, is the old tenth-century castle of Sayn, which stood until the Thirty Years' War, and below it, quiet, comfortable, large, but unpretending, lies the new house of the family of Sayn-Wittgenstein, built in the year 1848. As we push our way down the Rhine we soon come to the little peaceful town of Neuwied, a sanctuary for persecuted Flemings and others of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... was raised a few inches, and the chair standing on this elevation differed from the others in having arms at the sides, and in being of ampler proportions, as if by its appearance to vindicate a claim to superior position. But unpretending as was the room, it was a place of no little importance, being no less than the Court Hall and Council Chamber of the "Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England." At the moment of which we are speaking, it was appropriated to a meeting ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... moors begin, lying widely under the expanse of the sky, with the perpetual running of waters, and the lonely farms, from which the smoke curls up, blue against the brown hillside. There are the sombre and unpretending small villages, Parracombe, Brendon, Bratton-Fleming, each with its history and its little church, and the homesteads from which the young men have gone, in their humble twos and threes, to take their part in this war of millions. There is the grand solitude ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... the noisiest places of the crowded streets, to solace myself with sounds, which I was not obliged to follow, and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention! I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage of honest common-life sounds;—and the purgatory of the Enraged ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... shape, and had a thoughtful and intelligent expression. The face and features were good in form, but the complexion was highly coloured, and looked as though affected by some kind of inflammation. They were a quiet, unpretending, well-meaning, and moral couple. They purified the tainted precincts of the Court, and thus rendered it fit for the abode of the youthful and gracious lady who ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... a generic difference between Doctor Bataille and Miss Vaughan. He is an ordinary human being, and if we may trust the many pictures which represent him in his narrative, exceedingly unpretending at that. We have also some portraits of Miss Vaughan, who is aggressive and good to look at; but this is not the generic distinction. Doctor Bataille, poor man, is the scion of an ordinary ancestry within the ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... an Englishman. When an Englishman is a gentleman, to be sure, it is as deep in him as the marrow of his bones, and the deeper you know him, the more you are aware of it, and that generation after generation has contributed to develop and perfect these unpretending manners, which, at first, may have failed to impress you, under his plain, almost homely exterior. An American often gets as good a surface of manners, in his own progress from youth, through the wear and attrition of a ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and forwards, as adroitly as any practised thief eluding the hot pursuit of the police. At last she paused and looked back, and thinking she had shaken me off (for knowing the game well I had hastily effaced myself in a doorway) plunged into the entrance of a small unpretending hotel in a quiet, retired square—the Hotel Pierre Fatio, certainly not ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... unpretending building, with the letters and numerals G. IV. R. over its portals, is also on Strand-street, ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... th' Booth—for so the little hostel at Goldshaw was called, after its mistress Bess Whitaker—was far more comfortable and commodious than its unpretending exterior seemed to warrant. Stouter and brighter ale was not to be drunk in Lancashire than Bess brewed; nor was better sherris or clary to be found, go where you would, than in her cellars. The traveller crossing those dreary wastes, and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Campagne," "Souvenirs du Peuple," "La Deesse de la Liberte," "La Convoi de David," a melancholy pathos breathes, which touches the heart the more that it is so unpretending. "Ce n'est plus Lisette," "Mon Habit," "L'Independant," "Vous vieillirez, O ma belle Maitresse," a gentle graceful sadness wins us. In "Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens," "Les Etoiles qui filent," "Les Conseils de Lise," ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... pleasure the book, "Life in an Indian Village," as it deals with an interesting and not at all unimportant subject in a plain and unpretending way. Simplicity has a powerful charm of its own; and we recommend the book to all whose heart can still be touched by inartificial descriptions of idyllic, gently flowing, country life. He who does not ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... to stand up, upon which account particularly he got the love of the people, who looked upon him as a diligent and careful man, ready to help and succor his fellow-citizens. Besides, the people were pleased with his courteous and unpretending salutations and greetings; for he never met any citizen however humble and low, but he returned him his salute by name. He was looked upon as a man well-read in history, and pretty well versed in Aristotle's philosophy, in which one Alexander instructed him, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of these varied with their texture. The silk ones terminated in a sort of coaching fold, and were secured by a golden fox-head pin, while the striped starchers, with the aid of a pin on each side, just made a neat, unpretending tie in the middle, a sort of miniature of the flagrant, flyaway, Mile-End ones of aspiring youth of the present day. His coats were of the single-breasted cut-away order, with pockets outside, and ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... exploring its southern suburbs along the Fontainebleau road, comes upon an ancient pile, extended and renovated by modern hands, whose simple, unpretending architecture would scarcely claim a second look. Yet it was once the scene of an experiment of such momentous consequences that it will ever possess a peculiar interest both to the philanthropist and the philosopher. It was there, in that receptacle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... how? not like Goldsmith, by the force of unpretending but congenial merit, but by a course of the most pushing, contriving, and spaniel-like subserviency. Really, the ambition of the man to illustrate his mental insignificance, by continually placing himself in juxtaposition with the great lexicographer, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... will protect that flower will also guard and protect the hand that planted it." He knew that I had drank deep of the cup of slavery, was aware of what I meant, and merely nodded his head in reply. I never experienced hospitality more genuine, and yet more unpretending, than was meted out to me while at Hartwell. And the favourable impression made on my own mind, of the distinguished proprietor of Hartwell Park, was nearly as indelible as my humble name that the Doctor had engraven in a brick, in the ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... BEAUCHAMP, an unpretending residence in the simple cottage style, on the right-hand side of the road, proceeding to Niton: we catch a glimpse of it through ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... direction. And yet, notwithstanding the illustrious position which Antipater thus occupied, and the great influence and control which he exercised in the public affairs of Macedon, he was simple and unpretending in his manners, and kind and considerate to all around him, as if he were entirely devoid of all feelings of personal ambition, and were actuated only by an honest and sincere devotedness to the cause of those whom he served. Various anecdotes were related of him in the Macedonian ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Reynolds's most pleasing portraits is his likeness of himself in spectacles. It has suffered from the fading of colors and the cracking of the paint, as so many of Sir Joshua's best pictures have done; but it still presents him amiable, cultivated, and unpretending, the accomplished artist and the kindly friend, and affords the best possible illustration of the character which Goldsmith drew of him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... working out of my original plan, I have added more questions and answers in the text of each new English edition of the Catechism, leaving it to its translators to render them into whichever of the other vernaculars they may be working in. The unpretending aim in view is to give so succinct and yet comprehensive a digest of Buddhistic history, ethics and philosophy as to enable beginners to understand and appreciate the noble ideal taught by the Buddha, and thus ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... tenor of one's way, do good by stealth and blush to find it fame [Pope], hide one's light under a bushel, cast a sheep's eye. Adj. modest, diffident; humble &c 879; timid, timorous, bashful; shy, nervous, skittish, coy, sheepish, shamefaced, blushing, overmodest. unpretending^, unpretentious; unobtrusive, unassuming, unostentatious, unboastful^, unaspiring; poor in spirit. out of countenance &c (humbled) 879. reserved, constrained, demure. Adv. humbly &c adj.; quietly, privately; without ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... could catch a glimpse through the trees of the principal thoroughfare of Bosekop—a small, primitive street enough, of little low houses, which, though unpretending from without, were roomy and comfortable within. The distant, cool sparkle of the waters of the Fjord, the refreshing breeze, the perfume of the flowers, and the satisfied impression left on his mind by recent tea and toast—all these things combined had a soothing effect ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... levy of an army, and set George Washington at its head. No nobler figure ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life. Washington was grave and courteous in address; his manners were simple and unpretending; his silence and the serene calmness of his temper spoke of a perfect self-mastery. But there was little in his outer bearing to reveal the grandeur of soul which lifts his figure with all the simple majesty of an ancient statue out of the smaller passions, the meaner impulses, of the world around ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... law of dramatic art. In the case of great plays, the dramatic representation is most successful from the genuinely artistic point of view—which is the only point of view worthy of discussion—when the just dramatic illusion is produced by simple and unpretending scenic appliances, in which the inevitable "imperfections" are frankly left to be supplied by the "thoughts" or imagination ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... into Canada. They are sure to make to themselves wings and flee away, while wealth is no less certain to adhere to the poor and industrious settler. The great fault of the Canadian character is an unwillingness to admit the just claims of education and talent, however unpretending, to some share of consideration. In this respect the Americans of the United States are greatly superior to the Canadians, because they are better educated and their country longer settled. These genuine Republicans, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Heinrich; "but thus much I know, that she is still in Funen. Yes, she must take one of us, an unpretending husband! You can choose a genteel young lady for yourself. That's the way when people are lucky. You will become a landed proprietor. Old Heinrich will then no doubt obtain permission to exhibit his tricks on your estate? But none ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... many of them, who frequently came to see me at the hospital, I must mention the kind and tactful musician Niels Ravnkilde, whom I had known when I was a child. He had been living in Rome now for some twenty years. He was gentle and quiet, good- looking, short of stature, modest and unpretending, too weak of character not to be friends with everyone, but equipped with a natural dignity. When a young music master in Copenhagen, he had fallen in love with a young, wealthy girl, whose affections he succeeded in winning in return, but he was turned out of the house by her harsh, purse-proud ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... in a simple, unpretending style, and the dialogue is natural and easy. It is destined to great popularity among all classes of readers. Parents who object placing 'love tales' in the hands of their children, may purchase this volume without fear. The oldest and the youngest will become interested ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... 10, the house opposite. There had already been some discussion in Holloway about Lord Hampstead, but nothing had as yet been discovered. He might have been at the house on various previous occasions, but had come in so unpretending a manner as hardly to have done more than to cause himself to be regarded as a stranger in Holloway. He was known to be George's friend, because he had been first seen coming with George on a Saturday afternoon. He had also called on a Sunday and walked away, down the Row, ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... to shake the confidence of the Scottish public in the stability of their national bankers. It was no use drawing invidious comparisons between a weighty glittering guinea, fresh started from the mint of Mammon, and the homely unpretending well-thumbed issue of the North; it was no use hinting that a system which professed to dispense with bullion must of necessity be a mere illusion, which would go down with the first blast of misfortune, as easily as its fragile notes could be dispersed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... entertainments, All the tragic and the comic, All the festivals and music, All the city's merry-making. 'Round and 'round the gorgeous structure, (Gorgeous in that generation,) Stood in rows the public houses, Primitive and unpretending; But their tenants knew no others, They were simple, frugal tenants, They were happy in ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... with so much negligence; many of the pieces are of so light and frivolous a character; there is so much childish and mawkish sentimentality in numbers of the effusions poured forth; and there is so great a destitution of solid, original, and striking thought, that, in my unpretending, yet honest estimation, the majority of albums are worth comparatively nothing. A good album should contain pieces of genuine talent; should be marked by no frivolity or childishness; should be concise, pointed, and powerful in its contributions; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... have we cared to inquire. His love-songs, however, are exquisitely touching, and among the purest compositions in the language. Certain it is that the poetical power was early manifested; for we find that, in 1836, he gave his first poems to the public. The unpretending volume attracted the attention of John Black, who was then the distinguished editor of the Morning Chronicle. Ever ready to recognise genius wherever it could be found, and always prepared to lend a hand to lift into light the unobtrusive author who laboured in the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Some years ago there stood at the foot of the Parade a grand old stone bowl, hewn out of a solid block of granite, and filled by a pipe leading from a copious spring. This was a good, sensible, substantial drinking-trough, perfectly adapted to its use, unpretending and handsome. Later, a public-spirited gentleman, desiring to leave a monument of his regard for the city, gave a considerable sum to be used in providing a suitable drinking-fountain at this point. Those who had the control of the fund lacked ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... in which John Brown, the Queen's trusty Scotch servant, faithful as a squire of old, sleeps, lies down in the low land near the Dee. John Brown's house, solid and unpretending like the man himself, which he only occupied once, when his coffin lay for a night in the dining-room, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... Compare this unpretending youth to one of Bulwer's heroes, or Disraeli's, or even Thackeray's! And his simple old duke of a father and his dowdy old duchess of a mother are almost as devoid of swagger as himself; they seem to apologise for their very existence, if we may trust these American chroniclers who ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... the radical merits of prose thought; and it is more than merely legitimate that they should form the criterion of prose style, because within the scope of those qualities, according to Mr. Saintsbury, there is more than just the quiet, unpretending usefulness of the bare sermo pedestris. Acting on language, those qualities generate a specific and unique beauty—"that other beauty of prose"—fitly illustrated by these specimens, which the reader needs hardly be told, after what has been ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... writing letters,—letters that Carr Vipont had entreated her to write,—correspondence useful to the House of Vipont. Before long, however, a servant entered, to say that Lady Montfort would be very happy to see Mr. Morley. George followed the servant into that unpretending sitting-room, with its simple chintzes and quiet bookshelves,—room that would not have been too fine for ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... disinterested than the other, it was found that neither rank nor wealth had influenced her heart in its election; and Halhed, who, like others, had estimated the strength of his rivals by their rent-rolls, discovered at last that his unpretending friend, Sheridan, (whose advances in courtship and in knowledge seem to have been equally noiseless and triumphant,) was the chosen favorite of her, at whose feet so many fortunes lay. Like that Saint, Cecilia, by whose name she was always called, she had long welcomed ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... part of the stereotyped ceremony of receiving the guests, and exchanging with them the salutations and commonplaces of the evening. Mrs. Elwood, though not beautiful, nor even handsome, was yet every way a comely woman; and the quiet dignity and the unpretending simplicity of her manner, together with a certain intelligent and appreciating cast of countenance, which always rested on her placid, features, seldom failed to impress those who approached her with feelings of kindness and respect. ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... but dead, and the man was still unconvinced of the folly he had been guilty of. I could hardly bear the sight of his composure. I shall hate the name of Science till the day I die. Give me nothing but commonplace unpretending people! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... inserts his tiny head in the flesh and burrows until he causes a throbbing fester. For instance, I have never forgotten a speech which was addressed to me over twenty years ago. It was just after we had built an unpretending, but thoroughly cozy summer cottage, nestled in a grove of trees that threw long shadows into a silvery lake. The man in question told me he never saw our light at night from the other side of the pretty sheet of water that it did not "remind him of a charcoal-burner's hut ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... to be born surrounded by a natural horizon. The Old Gambrel-roofed House could not boast an unbroken ring of natural objects encircling it. Northerly it looked upon its own outbuildings and some unpretending two-story houses which had been its neighbors for a century and more. To the south of it the square brick dormitories and the bellfried hall of the university helped to shut out the distant view. But the west windows gave a broad outlook across the common, beyond which the historical ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... time they were rattling through the main street of the little village, and presently stopped before an unpretending little shop, in the window of which were displayed some ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... accompany me. We shall go forth to-night by the heavy coach—like the dove of old, my dear Martin—and it will be a week before we again deposit, our olive-branches in the passage. When I say olive branches," observed Mr. Pecksniff, in explanation, "I mean our unpretending luggage." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the service of the Czar, and the success which attended all his plans and proposals gave him, in the end, great influence, and was the means of acquiring for him great credit and renown. And yet he was so discreet and unpretending in his manners and demeanor, if the accounts which have come down to us respecting him are correct, that the high favor in which he was held by the emperor did not awaken in the hearts of the native nobles of the land any considerable ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... was one of the best in the town of Shorncliffe. It was a queer old house, with a sloping roof, and gable-ends of solid oak, adorned here and there by grim devices, carved by a skilful hand. It was a large house; but low and straggling; and unpretending in its exterior. The red light of a fire was shining in a wainscoted chamber, half sitting-room, half library. The crimson curtains were not yet drawn across the diamond-paned window. Arthur Lovell looked into the room as he passed, and ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... air which, though differing in each, was in all alike remarkable for a sort of "dashing" assurance, made their entree. One was of uncommon height, and possessed of an exceedingly fine head of hair; another was of a more quiet and unpretending aspect, but nevertheless he wore upon his face a supercilious yet not ill-humoured expression; the third was many years younger than his companions, strikingly handsome in face and figure, altogether of a better taste in ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... porte-cochre forming the entrance to the Clicquot-Werl establishment, and conducting to a spacious trim-kept courtyard, set off with a few trees, with some extensive stabling and cart-sheds on the left, and on the right hand the entrance to the cellars. Facing us is an unpretending-looking edifice, where the firm has its counting-houses, with a little corner tower surmounted by a characteristic weathercock consisting of a figure of Bacchus seated astride a cask beneath a vine-branch, and holding up a bottle ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... quarrelled about the MSS., and, as the writer understood, the entire concern broke up in a row in consequence. And, in fact, when we reflect on the amount of fierce attack and recrimination we reflect this unpretending and peaceful little volume elicited after the appearance of the fifth English edition, and the injury which it sustained from garbled and falsified editions, in not less than three unauthorised reprints, it would really seem as if this first edition, which "died a borning," had been typical ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... institution; but had he foreseen its durability he would have been a greater wonder than he was from having his eyes more fully opened than were the eyes of any man at that period to the rare qualities possessed by Englishmen; their unpretending magnanimity; their fine talents for business; their keen views in policy; the great things they had done in the arts of peace and war, as well as their capability of continuing to accomplish still greater achievements in both; the solidity of their ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... become so serious a business from its labours and accompaniments, that the result often seems to fall short of what was expected, and the means seem to overpower the end. On the other hand, a visit to unpretending places in an unpretending way often produces unexpected entertainment for the contemplative man. Some such experiment was the following, where everything was a surprise because little was expected. The epicurean tourist ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... the new squire of Lexley were winning golden opinions on all sides. "The boys were brave—the girls were fair," the mother virtuous, pious, and unpretending. It would have been scandalous, indeed, to sneer to shame the modest cheerfulness of such people, because their ancestors had not fought at the Crusades. By degrees, they assumed an honourable and even eminent position in the county; and the first time Sir Laurence Altham ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... and yet it is a lovely burial-ground. There are but few trees; but the whole inclosure is a conservatory of beautiful flowers. Every grave is covered with them, every monument is surrounded with them. The monuments are unpretending in size, but there are many fine designs, and many finely executed busts and statues and allegorical figures, in both marble and bronze. The place is full of sunlight and color. I noticed that it was much frequented. In front of every place of sepulcher ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... occupied the site of the present one, on Fifth Street. It was an unpretending structure, rudely built of boards, and of moderate proportions, but sufficient, nevertheless, to satisfy the taste and secure the comfort of the few who dared to face consequences and lend patronage to an establishment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... very humblest description; namely, the beer-house of a small hamlet, and could furnish only brown bread, cheese, butter, and beer. These, in the existing state of our appetites, went down famously; and a pipe of good tobacco to wind up withal, was not out of place. Neither was even this unpretending house of call destitute to us of subjects of interest. We found when we entered the tap-room two young men asleep on the benches, and a couple of large packs lying beside them. They awoke shortly afterwards, and proved to ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... ranks and descriptions of persons, were such as would have turned any head but his own. He retained the same simplicity of manners and appearance which had struck me so forcibly when I first saw him in the country: his dress was suited to his station; plain and unpretending, with sufficient attention to neatness: he always wore boots, and, when on more than usual ceremony, buckskin breeches. His manners were manly, simple, and independent; strongly expressive of conscious genius and worth, but without any indication of forwardness, arrogance, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... The student of these unpretending volumes will be repaid for his labour. He will find in them something very like the beginnings of a national school of Australian poetry. In historic Europe, where every rood of ground is hallowed in legend and in song, the least imaginative can find food for sad ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... in a very unpretending way. But that is useless. Who would trust their children to a woman without a character? There is no hope for me in this direction. And yet I am so fond of children! I think I could be, not happy again, perhaps, but content with my lot, if I could ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... hero, now in the zenith of distinguished dissipations! Courteous, attentive, and animated, the women did not esteem him the less for admiring them rather than himself; while, by the gravity of his demeanour to men,—the eloquent, yet unpretending flow of his conversation, whenever topics of intellectual interest were discussed, the plain and solid sense which he threw into his remarks, and the avidity with which he courted the society of all distinguished for literary ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... arrival of the De Mousas—for they have but lately come from abroad—the Tortoshells lived in the most unpretending way; but within the last twelve months they have started a brougham, and a livery-servant with a gold-laced collar, much to the surprise of their neighbours, who wondered what sudden good fortune had befallen them. ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... architecture, simple and unpretending as it is, there is a recognition of the fact that girls are not boys. With one exception, there are no recitation rooms on the second floor; and, while the dormitories for boys are four stories high, Ladies' Hall has ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... lookers-on that Mr. Jefferson was the principal object of regard both to the members and spectators; that he seemed to be the chief mover of the body—the soul that animated it; and some who were present, struck by their manifestations of deference, conceived a more exalted idea of him on this simple and unpretending occasion than they had ever ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... performers, who were stationed in a small gallery extending across the church at the lower end, over the door: and the voices were led by the clerk, who, it was evident, derived no slight pride and gratification from this portion of the service. The discourse was plain, unpretending, and well adapted to the comprehension of the hearers. At the conclusion of the service, the villagers waited in the churchyard, to salute the clergyman as he passed; and two or three, I observed, stepped aside, as if communicating some little difficulty, and asking his advice. This, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... unassuming, shy, unpretentious, unpretending, unobtrusive, retiring, demure, coy, reserved, unostentatious. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... balcony; so our seats were probably as fashionable as those in the first and only circle; but behind us, stretching out to the doors and in under the gallery, was a dense mass unrelieved by opera-cloaks of any description; and that was the region of the unpretending—-of those who came simply to enjoy, to see and not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... all your opinions with hers, which I take to have been acquired in the country where she lives, and in the domination of a small circle. A singularly ordinary woman in appearance and manner. The dinner was very good and remarkably unpretending. Ourselves, Madame and her son, the Scheffers, the Sartorises, and some Lady somebody (from the Crimea last) who wore a species of paletot, and smoked. The Viardots have a house away in the new part of Paris, which looks exactly as if they had moved into it last ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... act in a body or individually, such is the infirmity and selfishness of human nature, that we often surrender to importunity that which we refuse to the dictates of gratitude,—yielding for our own comfort, to the demands of turbulence, while quiet unpretending merit is overlooked and oppressed, until, roused by neglect, it demands, as a right, what policy alone should have ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Vernon; some of his early companions in arms were his occasional guests, and his friendships and connections linked him with some of the most prominent and worthy people of the country, who were sure to be received with cordial, but simple and unpretending hospitality. His marriage was unblessed with children; but those of Mrs. Washington experienced from him parental care and affection, and the formation of their minds and manners was one of the dearest objects of his attention. His domestic concerns and social enjoyments, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... he turned to greet the man, upon whose hospitality his daughter had been so literally and unexpectedly thrown, he was scarcely his frank, genial, outspoken self. There was a secret root of prejudice against this unpretending farmer, whose son's political views were as far from his own as the east is from the west, and whose social position was decidedly inferior. Not that the kindly Commodore was gifted with that microscopic ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... them. Every house, nevertheless, was a shop, and every shop had its window. These windows, however, were for the most part of that kind before which the passer-by rarely cares to linger; for the commerce of the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis was of that steady, unpretending, money-making sort that despises mere shop-front attractions. Grocers, stationers, corn-chandlers, printers, cutlers, leather-sellers, and such other inelegant trades, here most did congregate; and to the wearied wayfarer toiling along the dead level ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... slack—that is, in the summer season—the pair get on together pretty amicably. 'This book,' says the critic, 'may be taken down to the seaside, and lounged over not unprofitably;' or, 'Readers may do worse than peruse this unpretending little volume of fugitive verse;' or even, 'We hail this new aspirant to the laurels of Apollo.' But in the thick of the publishing season, and when books pour into the reviewer by the cartful, nothing ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... if not to his own opinion, to that which Margery, at all events, entertained, and got two young shipmates, midshipmen, to join him in it. Hugh Owen, an enthusiastic Welshman, and Edward Elton, a quiet and unpretending English lad who had been three years at sea. He was pale-faced and small of his age, his eyes were blue and his features regular, and in a crowd he would have been the last selected to do a daring deed; and yet no bolder or braver ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... In the unpretending volume entitled "Honor Edgeworth," or "Ottawa's Present Tense," the writer has not proposed to make any display of the learning she has acquired by a few years' study, and she would therefore seek to remove, in anticipation, any impression the reader may be inclined to harbor, of her ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... under the charge of Carl Jansen, in which he trained some of our young men in metal-working, and they proceeded to make a large supply of magazine rifles, so that every man in the settlement might be well armed. Carl is one of those quiet, unpretending men whose performance is always better than their promise; and he is a skillful worker in the metals. The iron and coal we found in abundance in our mountains. We also cast a number of powerful cannon, placed on very high wheels, and which could ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... in office relations which enabled him to do almost anything he liked at the Royal Garden." His manner to public men, as Condorcet said, was conciliatory and tactful, and to his subordinates he was modest and unpretending. (Professor G. T. Hamy, Les Derniers Jours du Jardin du Roi, etc., p. 3.) Buffon, after nearly fifty years of service as Intendant, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... posthumous son. He was called Maxwell, after the physician who attended his father, but he died in infancy. The spot where the poet was laid was in a comer of St. Michael's churchyard, and the grave remained for a time unmarked by any monument. After some years his wife placed over it a plain, unpretending stone, inscribed with his name and age, and with the names of his two boys, who were buried in the same place. Well had it been, if he had been allowed to rest undisturbed in this grave where his family ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... 'I was bored to extinction by everything and every person.' And then followed compliments to me upon my little unpretending entertainment, which I felt were sincere, for everything was good of its kind, and I presented nothing that Rose could not cook perfectly under Madame Miau's directions, except the soup and pates, which the pastry-cook supplied—all ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... the especial characteristic of true love of the works of God. I intended to have insisted on this sympathy at greater length, but I found, only two or three days ago, much of what I had to say to you anticipated in a little book, unpretending, but full of interest, "The Lamp and the Lantern," by Dr. James Hamilton; and I will therefore only ask you to consider such expressions as that tender and glorious verse in Isaiah, speaking of the cedars on the mountains as rejoicing ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... unpretending memoir may its subject live again, and not in vain. May teachers gather from her example fresh inspiration, and the benevolent Christian fresh impulses in doing good. May they who enjoy advantages superior to those of her proscribed race, take heed lest the latter, by the better improvement of ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood
... said Lady Mabel, "at so unpretending a funeral, in the case of a member of the great ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... Harold Bell Wright are quite pronounced. He is unpretending, cares not for the lime-light and avoids interviews for the public press. Loud, boisterous conversation is but little less offensive to him than vulgarity in speech or action. His friends are strong, clean-minded men who are doing things in the world and are as necessary to his being ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... an object of ridicule when a man sets up for being handsome; and so must dulness when he sets up for a wit. They are not ridiculed because ridicule in itself is, or ought to be, a pleasure, but because it is just to undeceive and vindicate the honest and unpretending part of mankind from imposition, because particular interest ought to yield to general, and a great number who are not naturally fools ought never to be made so, in complaisance to a few who are. Accordingly we find ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... even through the spectacles with which she reads the Bible. But the dahlia itself—what was that in its first estate, in the country in which it was first found in its aboriginal structure and complexion? As plain and unpretending as the hollyhock; as thinly dressed as the short-kirtled daisy in a Connecticut meadow. It is wonderful, and passing wonder, how teachable and quick of perception and prehension is Nature in the studio of Art. She, the oldest of painters, that hung the earth, sea, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... Monsieur Mangin, the great charlatan of France! Yes, gentlemen, I am a charlatan—a mountebank; it is my profession, not from choice, but from necessity. You, gentlemen, created that necessity! You would not patronize true, unpretending, honest merit, but you are attracted by my glittering casque, my sweeping crest, my waving plumes. You are captivated by din and glitter, and therein lies my strength. Years ago, I hired a modest shop in the Rue Rivoli, but I could not sell pencils enough to pay my rent, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... humour, and almost without vivacity, neither ingenious in invention, nor possessed of a deep insight into the human mind and human affairs, he has in some of his productions, Le Glorieux, Le Philosophe Mari, and especially L'Indcis, shewn with great credit to himself what true and unpretending diligence is by itself capable of effecting. Other pieces, for instance, L'Ingrat and L'Homme Singulier, are complete failures, and enable us to see that a poet who considers Tartuffe and The Misanthrope as the highest objects of imitation, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... John Murray the elder, in 1876, "and the one man quite dissimilar from the other. To see him in company I should not have recognised him for the friend with whom I was intimate in private. Then he was quiet, natural, unpretending, and most agreeable, and in the warmth and generosity of his friendship he had no superior. Sensitive as he was in some ways, there was no man to whom it was easier so speak with perfect frankness. He always bore it with gentle ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... go down; den I go home. I wish I could speak English better; but you understand me, sir." We rowed off with many vivas, and this poor mason's "hopes" that we "might find all square at home." At home! Oh, that we had a home!!—an unassuming wife—placens et tacens uxor; an unpretending house, with a comfortable guest-chamber; and no noiseless nursery, unfendered and uncared for! But the bells of Messina, all let loose together, interrupt our pleasing reverie, and our friends, who have been hovering round us in a boat, are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... different complexion, though scarcely less effective. Upon the meeting of the Houses the numerical strength of the respective parties was fairly tested by the vote on the Speakership. The Reformers nominated as their candidate John Willson, one of the members for Wentworth. Mr. Willson was an unpretending farmer, of strong political convictions, but of good sense and calm judgment, who had allied himself with the Reformers, and who might safely be depended upon to discharge the duties incidental to the Speakership with judicial impartiality. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... between that date and October 1851, a book appeared, written by one of the B[a^]b's earliest and most enthusiastic disciples—a merchant of Kashan—and giving in quite simple and unpretending form a record of the above events. There is in it no account of miracles or of great pretensions to godhood and the like. It is just a plain history of the life and death of a beloved teacher. It was cordially received and circulated far ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... gown and hood, with a silk petticoat, all black, as became the day, sat on the small seat at one side of the door. But Rhoda sat with her face to the horses, while the yet lower place opposite was reserved for Phoebe, in her unpretending mourning. The great coach rumbled off, out of the grand gates, always opened when Madam was present, past the ruins of the Abbey Church, and drew up before a row of six little houses, fronted by six little gardens. They ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... thermometer at 85 deg. in the shade, as it was to-day, was doubtless duly appreciated by him, he having just arrived from Turin. We found him waiting for us, and he accompanied us to the President's residence, called the White House. It is a handsome but unpretending building, not like its neighbours, of marble, but painted to look like stone; the public reception-rooms are alone shown, but a good-natured servant let us see the private rooms, and took us out on a sort of terrace behind, where we had a lovely view of the Potomac. The ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... consideration is enforced by the unpretending tone of the volume, which bears internal evidence, for the most part, of not having been written to meet the eye of the world. It is in vain to say that this claim on the critic's favour is nullified ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... bow window, modest enough in dimensions and make, had been thrown out on to another close-shaven piece of lawn, and by its suggestion of a distant sophisticated order of things disturbed the homely impression left by the untouched ivy-grown walls, the unpretending porch, and wide slate window-sills of the front. And evidently the line of sheds standing level with the dwelling-house no longer sheltered the animals, the carts, or the tools which make the small capital of a Westmoreland farmer. The windows ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but he will leave it as an historical treatise—brief, complete, perfect, sound, impartial truth—which will serve the time and the occasion that called it forth, and which will be esteemed hereafter no less for its unpretending modesty than ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... in a state of blissful excitement; she could not analyze her own joy. But her conversation was chiefly with Leonard; and the most silent of all was Harley. He sat listening to Leonard's warm yet unpretending eloquence,—that eloquence which flows so naturally from genius, when thoroughly at its ease, and not chilled back on itself by hard, unsympathizing hearers; listened, yet more charmed, to the sentiments ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his knees almost up to his chin and his trousers wrinkled up ever so far above his stout Oxford shoes, leaving a considerable interval of gray stocking. He was a man of about thirty, pale, and unpretending of aspect, who fortified his native modesty with a pair of large binoculars, which interposed a kind of barrier between himself and ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... address was very short and unpretending. He dwelt on the sacredness of the past, and all its memories, and closed by saying that, while we need not shrink from signs of progress, we should guard against tampering with those ancient landmarks which serve as beacon lights, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... away before me, and we soon reached the churchyard. She pointed out an unpretending white little slab of stone in a quiet corner, with a number of wild-flowers growing round it, and then, looking up into my face with an earnest, commiserating look, she nodded and ran off. I walked up to the stone and ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... undertaking a pilgrimage to London to obtain her pardon, are both represented as true by my fair and obliging correspondent; and they led me to consider the possibility of rendering a fictitious personage interesting by mere dignity of mind and rectitude of principle, assisted by unpretending good sense and temper, without any of the beauty, grace, talent, accomplishment, and wit, to which a heroine of romance is supposed to have a prescriptive right. If the portrait was received with interest by the public, I am conscious how much it was owing to the truth and force of the original ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... This is a sort of argument it is not easy to overcome; and her companion was content to admire the scene before her, in silence, after urging one or two reasons, in support of her opinion, in her own quiet, unpretending manner. ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... tall dark man, with fiery eyes under thick brows; Mortier, still taller, with a stupid sentinel look; Lefebvre, an old Alsatian camp-boy, with his wife, former washerwoman to the regiment; and Davoust, a little smooth-pated, unpretending man, who was never ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... amidships, by a cask or two; and, knowing that the whole Eight hundred emigrants must come face to face with them, I took my station behind the two. They knew nothing whatever of me, I believe, and my testimony to the unpretending gentleness and good nature with which they discharged their duty, may be of the greater worth. There was not the slightest flavour of the Circumlocution Office about ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... quiet spot, fit place for musing meditation, in a poet’s wanderings. Just a cottage or two to remind one that there is a population, but not obtrusive. The rectory is the second, and larger, of two houses on the right, though now occupied as a farmhouse. It is a quaint, unpretending, old-time residence, uniting manor house and rectory in one. At its eastern end is a semi-ecclesiastical addition, with pointed windows having coloured glass of no particular merit. In the ground-floor apartment in this is a carved mantlepiece, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... dialect anything but agreeable; and would probably have struck me by nothing else, if I had not discovered that I was sitting next to ——, the Great Unknown! It was not long ere many a sally of dry, poignant wit fell from his lips, and many an anecdote told in the most unpretending manner. His eye, too, glanced whenever he was animated, with such a clear, good-natured lustre, and such an expression of true-hearted kindness, that it was impossible not to conceive a sort of affection for him. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... tables, or a perch in Quadri's window, though the former supply dainty food, and the latter command a bird's-eye view of the Piazza. Rather would I lead them to a certain humble tavern on the Zattere. It is a quaint, low-built, unpretending little place, near a bridge, with a garden hard by which sends a cataract of honeysuckles sunward over a too-jealous wall. In front lies a Mediterranean steamer, which all day long has been discharging cargo. Gazing westward ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... modern districts of Morlaix and Brest. The Pays de Leon is remarkable for the number of its religious monuments, its fine churches, its bone-houses, calvaries, way-side crosses, and shrines. Crosses are set up in every direction, and of every description, from the plain unpretending simple cross of wood or stone, to the huge crosses flaunting in green paint, with tears of gold—specimens of the taste of the maire or priest of the district. No Breton passes the sacred symbol without kneeling to salute ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... truth, the amiable and unpretending behaviour of Cadurcis this day was entirely attributable to the unexpected meeting with this old friend. In the hurry of society he could scarcely dwell upon the associations which it was calculated to call up; yet more than once ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... single instance of a Siberian exile making good his escape. In our day, M. Rufin Piotrowski, also a Polish patriot, has had the marvelous good-fortune to succeed in the all but impossible attempt; and he has given his story to his countrymen in a simple, unpretending narrative, which, even in an abridged form, will, we think, be found ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... like her sister Agnes,—with a charming countenance, full of placid serenity, almost Quakerish, beautiful eyes, and gray hair, nearly white indeed, combed smoothly away from her forehead. We talked freely together, avoiding the shop, and the impression she left on my mind was that of a modest, unpretending gentlewoman, full of quiet strength and shrewd pleasantry, with a Scottish flavor, but altogether above being brilliant or showy, even in conversation with a stranger and an author. She questioned me closely about my country and about the people, and appeared to take much interest in our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... leave her fascinating brown hat with its brown velvet trimmings, and in the course of the next half hour the trio were on their way down Park Street, intent on a call on Miss Marion Wilbur. Park Street was a simple, quiet, unpretending street, narrow and short; the houses were two-storied and severely plain. In one of the plainest of these, wearing an unmistakable boarding-house look, in a back room on the second floor, the object of their search, in a dark calico dress, with her sleeves rolled above her elbows, had her hands ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy |
