"Unsympathetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is attributed. Science, they say, is good as a help to industry, and philosophy is good for correcting whatever in science might disturb religious faith, which in turn is helpful in living. What industry or life are good for it would be unsympathetic to inquire: the stream is mighty, and we must swim with the stream. Concern for survival, however, which seems to be the pragmatic principle in morals, does not afford a remedy for moral anarchy. To take firm hold on life, according to Nietzsche, we should be imperious, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... in existence—an accomplished fact—it's rather futile to talk of guarding against it," he said, in his brief, unsympathetic voice. "You've been extraordinarily generous to the imp, and it isn't surprising that she should be extraordinarily grateful. She wouldn't be human if she weren't. But when it comes to handing her on to another ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... direct bearing in various ways upon the qualifications of whoever undertakes to edit the works of Shakespeare will, I think, be apparent to those who consider the matter. The hold which Shakespeare has acquired and maintained upon minds so many and so various, in so many vital respects utterly unsympathetic and even incapable of sympathy with his own, is one of the most noteworthy phenomena in the history of literature. That he has had the most inadequate of editors, that, as his own Falstaff was the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... extremely unhappy as soon as ever the excitement of the miracle had worn off. In the other play Mme. Ranevsky can be saved from ruin if she will only consent to a perfectly simple step—the sale of an estate. She cannot do this, is ruined, and thrown out into the unsympathetic world. Chekhov is the dramatist, not of action, but of inaction. The tragedy of inaction is as overwhelming, when we understand it, as the tragedy of an Othello, or a Lear, crushed by the wickedness of others. The former is being ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... the matter to the Parisian police. They were most unsympathetic. "It is no doubt Colonel Clay," said the official whom we saw; "but you seem to have little just ground of complaint against him. As far as I can see, messieurs, there is not much to choose between you. You, Monsieur le Chevalier, desired to buy diamonds at the price of paste. You, madame, feared ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... suppressed. No more petting and spoiling for the little girl. Instead, a regime of porridge and prayers and unending lessons. As a result the child was so wretched that, convinced her mother would prove unsympathetic, she wrote to her step-father, begging to be sent back to him. This, of course, was impossible. Still, when the letter, blotted with tears, reached him in Calcutta, Captain Craigie's heart was touched. If she was unhappy among ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... The piano below jingled more vivaciously than ever, and a sound of shrill laughter pierced through the notes. Afraid to sit silent, lest he should seem unsympathetic and sceptical, Rolfe murmured a few harmless ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... 19 Infantry Base Depot had made their morning inspections of the lines. They had seen that blankets were folded and tent flies rolled up, had glanced at rifles, and had inspected the men's kits with the pensive air of an intending purchaser. Having done which, they proceeded to take an unsympathetic farewell of the orderly officer whom they found in the orderly room engaged in reading character by handwriting with the aid of the ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... becoming an absorbing subject. "The boys," however little you may think it, are seldom far from her thoughts. Intimate friendship with another adolescent girl perhaps affords an outlet, beneficial or otherwise, for the crowding life which is too precious to bear the unsympathetic touch of the world of her elders. Or perhaps the girl becomes solitary in her habits, living in a world of romance found in books or in her own dreams, impatient with the world about her, ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... at least she called one day with her air of saintly patience, and a miserable story of her loneliness and unhappiness, and how she couldn't bear to be dependent on Arabella—Arabella was so unsympathetic!—and that misguided Emma invited her to ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Pont—Mousson. The strategic purpose was to free the American flank and communications in view of a bigger offensive northwards, and on the 15th Austria and Germany began their overtures for peace, to which President Wilson at once returned an unsympathetic reply. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... men are all alike. You're selfish and unsympathetic. You want all the interesting things for yourselves, and—some of you—don't even know why ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... "Do not project an unsympathetic thought wave across our wires. I am just getting little Methy into a receptive mood. He is having ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... really expelled the Mongol from her country, and continued to protest against the presence of the Mongol in her continent. Knowing what he had been in Russia, she knew what he would be in Europe. In this she pursued a logical line of thought which was, if anything, too unsympathetic with the energies and religions of the East. Every other country, one may say, has been an ally of the Turk; that is, of the Mongol and the Moslem. The French played them as pieces against Austria; the English warmly supported ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... my dear Fannius and Scaevola, we may look upon this as an established fact, that between good men there is, as it were of necessity, a kindly feeling, which is the source of friendship ordained by nature. But this same kindliness affects the many also. For that is no unsympathetic or selfish or exclusive virtue, which protects even whole nations and consults their best interests. And that certainly it would not have done had it disdained all ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... tired, for I found the world moved me out of all proportion to my capacity. Even at an early age, I found that I had not the heart for the fray. Stamped on my narrow forehead, on my whole being, perhaps, so clearly that every unsympathetic boss could understand at once, was the mark of the visionary. My pitiable willingness to ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... an end to this conversation." To say this with a deep courtesy, and then to withdraw to a considerable distance, is the work of a moment. Ask your lady-killers if it is easy to continue to babble to such, an unsympathetic ear. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... been in society, but who have allowed themselves to remain away from all sorts of gatherings, for a number of years. In every case, the result has been openly noticeable. They have become boorish in manners, unsympathetic in nature, and suspicious in spirit. Thus they have grown out of harmony with the ideas and ways of those about them, have come to take distorted and erroneous views of affairs and of men. Man is a ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... states, at least, we have seldom been cruel to them. I hope there has been little of cruelty, too, in my own South Carolina. They are used to our ways, and they turn to us for the help that is seldom refused. The Northerner will always be a stranger to them, and an unsympathetic stranger, because there is no personal contact, none of that 'give and take' ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to each other in the last ten years. There is a certain kind of mutual respect, not untempered by substantial mutual obligation, which very nearly approaches to friendship when the parties concerned have common tastes and are not unsympathetic. John Carvel is a man fifty years of age: he is short, well built, and active, delighting in the chase; slender rather than stout, but not thin; red in the face from constant exposure, scrupulous in the shaving of his smooth chin and in the scrubbing processes, dressed with untarnishing neatness; ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... future they were of a life removed from the chaos and fret and toil and moil and disappointments and humbug of politics. He thought of returning once more to his profession; but he resolved that it would be neither amid the incessant decay of Ireland, nor surrounded by hostile faces and unsympathetic hearts in England. His thoughts were of the mighty country which had extended its hospitality and generosity to so many of his race, and had bestowed upon them liberty, prosperity, and eminence. In all these visions ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... reputable pawnbroker, let us remember the advisability of sometimes doing the manly thing! It was into this cave that Lisa went. So into this cave go I, for the second time, rather than home to my unsympathetic relatives-in-law. Or at least, I ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... he said in an expostulatory tone, "what is the matter with you? You are most confoundedly unsympathetic. Any one would think you did not want me ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... find that Norman wrote to Flora an expression of his resolution, that, if he found he could be spared from assisting his father as a physician, he would give himself up to the mission in New Zealand. Why should he tell any one so unsympathetic as Flora, who would think him ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... stood barely upon the threshold of the subject, held back by material prejudice and the conservatism of little faith; yet his enthusiasm grew daily. He weighed the evidence of phenomena with an impartiality that other people pronounced belief. The attitude of those about him was for the most part unsympathetic. Some to whom he had made furtive confidences called him "spooky," a spiritualist; but he was merely an investigator, trying to be fair. It was an alluring study; perhaps he ran the risk of over-enthusiasm—he had known people who had spiritualized the palpably ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... half-destroyed—so denationalized and demoralized—so despoiled and naked, would be in the position they are now? In spite of the proud, supercilious, and dictatorial bearing of their teachers, in spite of the hampering of unsympathetic, alien oversight, in spite of the spirit of dependence and servility engendered by slavery, not only have individual members of the race entered into all the offices of dignity in [257] Church and State, as subalterns—as hewers of wood and ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... the law-abiding traditions of the king's ancient inheritance. He laboured strenuously for the rebuilding of churches, the preservation and extension of ecclesiastical property, the education of the clergy, and the extirpation of clerical matrimony and simony. Despite his unsympathetic attitude, he did good work for the Welsh Church by his manful resistance to all attempts of Edward and his subordinates to encroach upon her liberties. He quaintly thought it would promote the civilisation of Wales if the people were forced to "learn civility" by living in towns and sending their ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... command over the instrument, will try to turn the accompaniment into a pianoforte solo, and the nice notes of the struggling singer will be entirely drowned by noise. He is like the heavy-handed, unsympathetic rider. ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... near the palace of the Cardinal." S. Giorgio compelled Messer Baldassare to refund the 200 ducats, and to take the Cupid back. But Michelangelo got nothing beyond his original price; and both Condivi and Vasari blame the Cardinal for having been a dull and unsympathetic patron to the young artist of genius he had brought from Florence. Still the whole transaction was of vast importance, because it launched him for the first time upon Rome, where he was destined to spend the larger part of his long life, and to serve a succession of Pontiffs ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... cheerfully installed himself in Sofia with his mother in July 1886, and took care to make the peace with his suzerain, the Sultan Abdul Hamid. He wisely left all power in the hands of the unattractive and to him, unsympathetic prime minister, Stambulov, till he himself felt secure in his position, and till the dictator should have made himself thoroughly hated. Ferdinand's clever and wealthy mother cast a beneficent and civilizing glow around him, smoothing away many difficulties ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... bit hard and unsympathetic," agreed Warren softly. "I did not mean to be so. You and I came into each other's lives in a wild unreal way which an outsider would hardly believe possible. The truest thing in real life is its melodramatic, unbelievable unrealism. ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... the frailties of Captain Costigan, and F. B., and the Chevalier Strong? In any case, Tennyson took his own time, he was (1858) only beginning Elaine. There is no doubt that Tennyson was easily pricked by unsympathetic criticism, even from the most insignificant source, and, as he confessed, he received little pleasure from praise. All authors, without exception, are sensitive. A sturdier author wrote that he would sometimes have been glad to meet his assailant "where the muir-cock was bailie." ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... composition. In theme and spirit it was pseudo-heroic, the incidents of Greek and Roman history forming the chief subjects, and in method it rather despised color, light-and-shade, and natural surroundings. It was elevated, lofty, ideal in aspiration, but coldly unsympathetic because lacking in contemporary interest; and, though correct enough in classic form, was lacking in the classic spirit. Like all reanimated art, it was derivative as regards its forms and lacking in spontaneity. The reason for the existence of Greek art ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... prosaic and unsympathetic you are to-day," says Dora reproachfully; "and I came to you so sure of offers of love and friendship! I want you to tell me if you think I ought to meet ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... and liked by his intimates, Jenkin was never popular with associates. His manner was hard, rasping, and unsympathetic. 'Whatever virtues he possessed,' says Mr. Stevenson, 'he could never count on being civil.' He showed so much courtesy to his wife, however, that a Styrian peasant who observed it spread a report in the village that ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... not die when Springtime lifts The white world to her maiden mouth, And heaps its cradle with gay gifts, Breeze-blown from out the singing South: Too full of life and loves that cling; Too heedless of all mortal woe, The young, unsympathetic Spring, That Death should ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... I am committing suicide, rather I am being murdered by men who have none of the nobler feelings, ungenerous, unsympathetic and cruelly unkind. The fact of my death will not affect one of those who ruined my reputation here, who deprived me of obtaining food, and a room to sleep in. They have no more conscience so cannot ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... afternoon, famishing and almost knocked up, at the village, he went in despair to the inn door, and began to tell his sorrowful tale. He told it to unsympathetic ears. Among his auditors were the three ploughmen who had been so roughly handled by Jim and Bill. These only heard the first two or three sentences when they rushed upon the sailor, calling on their ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... despising her. She suspected Agatha in particular, and treated her with disdainful curtness in such intercourse as they had—it was fortunately little. Agatha was not hurt by this, for Mrs. Miller was an unsympathetic woman, who made no friends among the girls, and satisfied her affectionate impulses by petting a large cat named Gracchus, but generally called Bacchus by an endearing modification ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... recognitions of utility as preceding and causing the moral sentiment, I regard the moral sentiment as preceding such recognitions of utility, and making them possible. The pleasures and pains directly resulting in experience from sympathetic and unsympathetic actions, had first to be slowly associated with such actions, and the resulting incentives and deterrents frequently obeyed, before there could arise the perceptions that sympathetic and unsympathetic actions are remotely beneficial or detrimental to the actor; and they had to be ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the play of a giant's limbs, or, with the slow slimy poison of envy and malice, to spot and deform his beauty and his symmetry. To such, to the half-eyed and the half-souled, to the prosaic and the unsympathetic, be left all harsh condemnation ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... my love to mamma," said Lesley. She would dearly have liked to add, "Don't tell her that I cried;" but with that circle of unsympathetic faces round her, she did not dare. She pressed her lips together, dashed the tears from her eyes, and managed to smile, however, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... inhumanity, his sinister delight in every manifestation of cruelty, baseness, and pain. In their most candid moods they confessed that they were all brain and no heart, that they were without real affections; and their writings naturally suffer from this unsympathetic attitude. But when every deduction is made, it is impossible to deny their importance and significance. For they represent a distinct stage in an organized movement—the reaction against romanticism in the novel and lyrism in the theatre. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... she could give me an answer, I opened the door and walked out in my dressing-gown, so suddenly that she almost pitched forward into the bath. Phyllis, heard from behind a cold, unsympathetic door, and Phyllis seen in all her virginal Burne-Jones attractiveness, might as well be two different girls. If you carried on a conversation with Miss Rivers on ethics and conventionalities and curates, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... the surviving passengers by train from Helston back to London. They were not enthusiastic about him, neither did they subscribe to present him with a service of plate. They thought him stern and unsympathetic. But before they had realized quite what had happened they were back at their homes or with their friends. Many of the dead were recovered, and went to swell the heavy crop of God's seed sown in St. Keverne churchyard. ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... stretching it with a blanket corner for him. So he sat down beside her and drew the corner over his shoulder; and because his right arm was very much in his way, and it would have been very disagreeable if Linda had slipped from the rock and fallen into the cold, salt, unsympathetic Pacific at nine o'clock at night—merely to dispose of the arm comfortably and to ensure her security, Peter put it around Linda and drew her up beside him very close. Linda did not seem to notice. She sat quietly looking at the Pacific and thinking her own thoughts. When the fog became ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... has just been stated, it will be seen that the cause of Anti-Slaveryism had, at the formation of the Republican party, reached a most perilous crisis. It was in danger of being submerged and suffocated by unsympathetic, if not positively unfriendly, associations. It ran the risk, after so many years of toil and conflict, of being undone by those in whose support it was forced to confide. Such would undoubtedly have been its fate if, owing to circumstances over which no political ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... murmured the smouldering Penrod to his small, unsympathetic partner. "Can't let me alone ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... deplored Tommy, withdrawing her face with a most unsympathetic grin. All those on deck were watching the black smudge on the horizon, and as they gazed it grew into a great, dark cloud. Out of the cloud, after a time, they saw white foam flashing in the sunlight, caused by the displacement of the great ship as she forged ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... song, full of difficult runs and trills, and it may be set down here to her credit that she sang it well. As her clear, but somewhat unsympathetic voice rang out, a faint murmur of approbation swept the listeners. Her long training now stood her in good stead. Professor Harmon allowed her to go on with her song, instead of halting her in the middle of it, as he had in the case of the previous aspirants. When she had finished ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... men in those days, receiving regularly the poet's sunny recognition and the statesman's rather unsympathetic stare. Both men were overwhelmingly famous, but, touched simultaneously by warmth and frost, I, a shy youngster, could keep my balance in their presence. Sumner in those years was the especial bete noire of the South and the conservative North, ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... above thirty-five were spoil-sports, prevented him. After all, he supposed he would have to go through with College, and she would have to 'come out,' before they could be married; so why complicate things, so long as he could see her? Sisters were teasing and unsympathetic beings, a brother worse, so there was no one to confide in. Ah! And this beastly divorce business! What a misfortune to have a name which other people hadn't! If only he had been called Gordon or Scott or Howard or something fairly common! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... first great shock of surprise, when the word murderer dropped from his lips, and he reproached his sister so harshly and unreasonably, Burton Jerrold stood with folded arms, and a gloomy, unsympathetic face, as immovable at first as if he had been a stone, and listened to the tale as repeated by his father. But when the tragic part was reached, and he saw the dead man on the floor, his sister crouching in the corner of the room, with Rover at her side, the rude coffin, the open grave, and ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... personally attaching a single young man, in all the excitement of that exciting time, to the leaders of the party. It was quite a delight to me, as I listened, to recall my own dislike of his style of speaking, his fishy coldness, his uncongenial and unsympathetic politeness, and his insufferable though most gentlemanly artificiality. The shape of his head (I see it now) was misery to me, and weighed down ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... annoyance at the suddenly cocksure and unsympathetic girl, but he stood fully erect and flexed his muscles. There wasn't even a trace of bedsoreness, though he had been flat on his back long enough to grow callouses. And as he examined himself, he could find no scars or signs of injuries from the ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... the boys as unsympathetic, cold, and stiff in his manner—perhaps he was somewhat so—and as he seldom spoke of himself they knew little of his affairs or of his family relations; and he was also considered to have a rather elderly style of talking, unbefitting ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... shadows fell across this sunshine. In those dark moments she frequently reverted to the unhappy couple of whom she had told Leighton when he first spoke to her of marriage. She was possessed to describe the man—his dull, filmy, unsympathetic black eyes, his methodical life and hard rationality, his want ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... ideas are common, with a difference, around a well-spread table and there will be no lack of good, earnest, instructive conversation. Most men and women can talk well if they have the right sort of listeners. If the hearer is unsympathetic the best talker becomes dumb. Hosts who remember ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... to a stop at a switch before a rustic gate, and they got off together. It occurred to Leigh that possibly he had been a little short with Emmet, somewhat unsympathetic with his practical and industrial interests. If this were so, it was merely because he realised the uselessness of explaining the peculiar intoxication of his mood, for he suspected that the other would regard such emotions as fit only for women and poets. "You might come for a walk ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... illustrate the contrast between them. In the first, the figure is perhaps robust, but often otherwise,—inelegant, partly from careless attitudes, partly from ill-dressing,—the face is uncouth in feature, or at least common,—the mouth coarse and unformed,—the eye unsympathetic, even if bright,—the movements of the face are clumsy, like those of the limbs,—the voice is unmusical,—and the enunciation as if the words were coarse castings, instead of fine carvings. The youth of the other aspect is commonly slender, his face is smooth, and apt to be pallid,—his ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to answer? Has not enough been said during the trial of the past four months, and in vain? The young fellow stands there, courteously inquisitive, not unsympathetic perhaps, his pencil suspended. Have I any last words for the world which I am leaving? Shall I declaim of injustice, outrage, perjury? Shall I threaten revenge, or entreat mercy? Shall I "break down," or shall I "maintain an appearance of bravado"—he ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... interview was over, Bindon gave way to rage. He settled that the medical man was not only an unsympathetic brute and wanting in the first beginnings of a gentleman, but also highly incompetent; and he went off to four other practitioners in succession, with a view to the establishment of this intuition. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... written exactly the letter I should have written, but, then, we're quite different. I should have written a cold and more business-like letter.' His face changed expression, and she added: 'I'm sorry if I'm unsympathetic, Oliver.' ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... through Burns; long, dry, unsympathetic, but sound and, I think, in its dry way, interesting. Next I shall finish the story, and then perhaps Thoreau. Meredith has been staying with Morley, who is about, it is believed, to write to me on a literary ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prison always strikes a sympathetic chord in the gentle breast of Mr. EDMUND HARVEY. His latest discovery is that they are allowed the use of writing-paper not more than once a month; and for the rest of the time have to entrust their literary compositions to the unsympathetic surface of a slate, with the aid of a probably squeaky slate-pencil. Could JOHN BUNYAN have written The Pilgrim's Progress under such conditions? The question opens up a vista of speculation as to the influence of environment ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... my ears? The stony, unsympathetic Nora O'Malley agrees with me at last. She likes my voice; she wishes to hear me sing, 'Ah, I Have Sighed to Rest Me.' 'Tis true, I have sighed to rest me a great many times, particularly in the morning when the alarm clock put an end ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... never goes beyond conventional limits, nor produces other than conventional beauty. The "inner need" knows no such limits, and often produces results conventionally considered "ugly." But "ugly" itself is a conventional term, and only means "spiritually unsympathetic," being applied to some expression of an inner need, either outgrown or not yet attained. But everything which adequately expresses the ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... pendent earrings—a woman who rather resembled Anna Zanidov—was playing a sea-piece by MacDowell in the light of a tall lamp. The hall door swung open; the unsympathetic face and square shoulders of David Verne's attendant appeared above the back of the wheel chair. The invalid, looking up at ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... could endure a clever wife," Borrow once confided to the unsympathetic ear of Frances Power Cobbe; but he had married one nevertheless. No woman whose cleverness had not reached the point of inspiration could have lived in intimate association with so capricious and masterful a man as George Borrow. John Hasfeldt, in sending his congratulations, had seemed ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... if you were unsympathetic to me," said Lilly. "As it is, it's happened so, and so ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... substance of international relations hitherto. To these able and interested people, for the most part highly seasoned by the present conditions, finished and elaborated players at the old game, this is to propose a new, crude, difficult, and unsympathetic game. They may all of them, or most of them, hate war, but they will cling to the belief that their method of operating may now, after a new settlement, be able to prevent ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Someways it seemed like piling it up so, and you take such a cold-blooded, unsympathetic ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... you are back again,' exclaimed the widow, as she shook hands with Miss Barfoot, speaking in a hard, unsympathetic voice. 'I do so want to ask your advice about an interesting girl who has applied to me. I'm afraid her past won't bear looking into, but most certainly she is a reformed character. Winifred is most ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... There she had seen the keen acid of implacable justice separating, with undeviating precision, the dross from the gold. She had beheld the naked fact of adultery—stripped of all the silk of glamour, all the velvet of romance which once it had worn—held in its cringing shame before the unsympathetic eyes of twelve men in a public court of law. And he who had done it, he who had wrenched away the silken garments, torn off the folds of velvet and flung the naked deed before their eyes, was the man into whose keeping she had given ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... Then: poor thing, she's probably terribly upset. Home and family lost perhaps. Money gone. Destitute. Going East, swallowing pride, make a new start with the help of unsympathetic relatives. She has only me to depend on—I must not fail her. Break the ice, whatever attitude her natural pride ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... this heat Even he grows crazy; and we, Satan, turn Unsympathetic creatures. Whew, this blaze Is getting ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... made the miserable fiasco of Strasbourg; saw his poor, shabby eagle, forgetful of its lesson, refuse to perch upon his shoulder; delivered his carefully prepared, sententious burst of eloquence upon unsympathetic ears; found himself a prisoner, the butt of small wits, a mark for the pitiless ridicule of all the world —yet went on dreaming of coronations and splendid pageants as before; who lay a forgotten captive in the dungeons of Ham—and still schemed and planned and pondered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you will find that Mordecai obtrudes any preaching," said Deronda. "He is not what I should call fanatical. I call a man fanatical when his enthusiasm is narrow and hoodwinked, so that he has no sense of proportions, and becomes unjust and unsympathetic to men who are out of his own track. Mordecai is an enthusiast; I should like to keep that word for the highest order of minds—those who care supremely for grand and general benefits to mankind. He is not a strictly orthodox ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... directly to American economic and sociological writers in the hope that, recognising that it comes from one who is not unsympathetic, some of them may be influenced to speak less heedlessly on the subject than is their wont. I may add that these remarks are suggested by certain passages in the recently published book of an American ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... 1878, is by no means the least valuable of his books. His short stories in the magazines were collected into a volume in 1875, with the title, A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Stories. One or two of these, as the Last of the Valerii and the Madonna of the Future, suggest Hawthorne, a very unsympathetic study of whom James afterward contributed to the "English Men of Letters" series. But in the name-story of the collection he was already in the line of his future development. This is the story of a middle-aged invalid American who comes to England in search of health, and finds, too ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... deadlock between doctor and patient. Henrietta acted promptly, foreseeing danger of jaundice or worse; and bade Marshall Wace telegraph to Cannes for an English physician. As a nurse she was capable if somewhat unsympathetic—illness and death being foreign to her personal programme. She attended upon her small sick warrior assiduously; thereby earning the admiration of the outsiders, and abject apologies for "being such a confounded nuisance to you, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... locks were strained, brushed, tightened back, and I was left high and dry with my exposed brow revealing four furrows to an unsympathetic world. C'est navrant. We're not to be allowed even the soupcon of a wave or the lightest bouffee, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... happy than Bright in his schooling. His father's misfortune led to his spending five years at a Yorkshire school of the worst type, and seven more as clerk in the warehouse of an unsympathetic uncle. Like Bright, he had early to take the lead in his own family; also, like Bright, he had to educate himself; but he had a far harder struggle, and the enterprise which he showed in commerce ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Jane, you are crude beyond words, and most unsympathetic. You should have heard how tactfully the doctor broke it to me, and how kindly ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... you'd be thinking, all right," retorted Dade unemotionally. "Sounds perfectly natural." The tone of him, being unsympathetic, precipitated an argument which flung crisp English sentences back and forth across the cabin. Manuel, when the words grew strange and took on a harsh tang which to his ear meant anger, diplomatically sought his blankets and merged into the shadow of the corner farthest ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... that conductor and accompanist not only understand one another thoroughly, but that the relationship between them be so sympathetic, so cordial, that there may never be even a hint of non-unity in the ensemble. The unskilful or unsympathetic accompanist may utterly ruin the effect of the most capable conducting; and the worst of it is that if the accompanist is lacking in cordiality toward the conductor, he can work his mischief so subtly ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... months she wrote to him, and these letters were read with horror and burnt in trembling haste; for Mr. Joseph Silk was now meditating for matrimonial and legal purposes one of the daughters of one of the solicitors he had met in Paper Buildings, and being an exceedingly nervous, ignorant, and unsympathetic man in all that did not concern his profession, was vastly disturbed at every ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... Daniele da Volterra, had endeavoured to add the charm of oil-colouring to his designs; and long before his death, the seduction of his mighty mannerism had begun to exercise a fatal charm for all the schools of Italy. Painters incapable of fathoming his intention, unsympathetic to his rare type of intellect, and gifted with less than a tithe of his native force, set themselves to reproduce whatever may be justly censured in his works. To heighten and enlarge their style was reckoned a chief duty of aspiring craftsmen; and it was thought that recipes for attaining ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... flapped prettily as a flapper; bit cleanly and cruelly in her biting mood; surrendered most engagingly. This is less than justice. She used her queer caressing voice and her reserves of emotional power to fine effect. Miss LILIAN BRAITHWAITE made her Lady Broughton nearly credible and less "unsympathetic" than was just. Mr. DANIELL is new to me. He played one of those difficult foil parts ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... Surgeon was easily convinced to the Margaret MacLean side of any argument; but this time, for reasons of his own, he turned an unsympathetic and stubborn ear. He was coming to believe very strongly that all this fanciful optimism was so much laughing-gas, with only a passing power, and when the effect wore off there would be the Dickens ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... little sister with caressing ways whom she could send upstairs for her work-basket or could reprimand for a flirtation. Emmy knew that Zora loved her dearly; but she was the least bit in the world afraid of her, and felt that in affairs of the heart she would be unsympathetic. So Emmy withheld her confidence from Zora, and gave it to Septimus. Besides, it always pleases a woman more to tell her secrets to a man than to another woman. There is more excitement in it, even though the man be ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... an alabaster box of precious ointment, and, breaking the box, she poured the ointment on the head and feet of Jesus, thus performing a graceful act of womanly ministration. It was uncommon in some respects, and this of itself was sufficient to draw down upon her the scathing rebuke of the unsympathetic on-lookers. "Why was this waste of the ointment made? It might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her." But He, who is always woman's best friend, took Mary's part against ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... the ministry of light to ripen and sweeten the dispositions. "The fruit of the light is in all goodness." It is the ministry of the darkness to make men sour and unsympathetic, and revengeful, and to so pervert the heart as to make it a minister of ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... forgetful of the many means of happiness which lie within our reach, we indulge this spoilt child of ours until it masters us. We shut the door against cheerfulness, and surround ourselves with gloom. The habit gives a colouring to our life. We grow querulous, moody, and unsympathetic. Our conversation becomes full of regrets. We are harsh in our judgment of others. We are unsociable, and think everybody else is so. We make our breast a storehouse of pain, which we inflict upon ourselves as ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... bodies that swayed and writhed as if stricken with convulsions or rent by seven devils. She remembered how strange had seemed to her the vast calm, the vast silence, that encompassed this noisy outburst of humanity, how inflexible had looked the enormous moon, how unsympathetic the brightly shining stars, how feverish and irritable the flickering illumination of the flames that spurted up and fainted away like things still living but in the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... 'im sleep, Rosy-Lilly says," decreed Johnson, with an emphasis which penetrated McWha's unsympathetic consciousness, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Viaud had begged Count Pierre to release him from the tax, the count, who was hard and unsympathetic, had become angry, and given orders that the greater part of their little farm should be taken from them, and he had seized also their little flock of sheep. This was a grievous loss, for out of the wool that grew on the sheeps' backs, Gabriel's ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein
... was born, his father became once more the prey of gloomy doubt. The guardianship of a soul which he was responsible for bringing into the world was a ceaseless care, and in his anxiety to dedicate his son to God he became a harsh and unsympathetic parent. Out of that desire to justify himself for having been so inconsistent as to take a wife and beget a son Lidderdale redoubled his efforts to put the Lima Street Mission on a permanent basis. The civilization ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... authority. He gave out from his swallow's nest the Twenty-third Psalm, and led it off himself in a powerful and expressive voice, which sounded strangely in the empty church. The tune was taken up from the manse pew, in the dusk under the little gallery, by a quavering, uncertain pipe—as dry and unsympathetic as, contrariwise, the singer was warm-hearted and full of the very sap of human kindness. The minister was so absorbed in his own full-hearted praise that he was scarce conscious that he was almost alone in the chill emptiness ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... would be inconvenient; so she takes advantage of an excursion to Paris to open her heart to another confessor who does not know her. As a general rule, when a woman speaks ill of her Cure, and begins the tale of her confession by explaining that he is dull, uneducated, unsympathetic in understanding and guiding souls, you may be certain that a confession is coming of sin against the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... efforts were ineffectual. The case was at a later date brought under the notice of William IV, who said that he saw no reason why the widow of Captain Flinders should not receive the same treatment as the widow of Captain Cook. The King mentioned the subject to Lord Melbourne; he, however, was unsympathetic, and nothing whatever was done. Mrs. Flinders was paid only the meagre pension of a post-captain's widow until she died in 1852. No official reward of any kind was granted by the British Government for the truly great services and discoveries of Flinders. The stinginess ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Charlie, with dignity and gratitude, "for we can't think of borrowing money to get home with. It would be better to wait until we can write home for more. We might earn enough to pay our board." And Charlie, with a sigh, looked around at the unsympathetic and hurrying throng. ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... more a long martyrdom was the necessity for bearing his cross in utter loneliness. He could not tell his griefs. He could not talk of them even with those who knew their secret spring. His minister had the unsympathetic nature which is common in the meaner sort of devotees,—persons who mistake spiritual selfishness for sanctity, and grab at the infinite prize of the great Future and Elsewhere with the egotism they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... way slowly up the coverlet, touched tenderly the face of the sleeper, kissed the lips curved into a soft, dreaming smile. Missy went to the picnic next day, for her mother was unsympathetic toward the suggestion of contriving a "report." "Now, Missy, don't begin that again! You're always starting out to ride some enthusiasm hard, and then letting it die down. You must learn to see things through. Now, go and get your ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... this, and some other hitches, Salvini's Macbeth had an emphatic success. The creation is worthy of a place beside the same artist's Othello and Hamlet. It is the simplest and most unsympathetic of the three; but the absence of the finer lineaments of Hamlet is redeemed by gusto, breadth, and a headlong unity. Salvini sees nothing great in Macbeth beyond the royalty of muscle, and that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Your Anglo-Indian may be unsympathetic about one's political views; but he has reduced ship life ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... sure that no story-teller, though he were a Timon of Athens double distilled, can ever be so unsympathetic and unnatural as destiny, who tells the only story that never winds up. We cannot understand destiny; we never know to what lengths she may go: but the story-teller we know inside and out; he is only a possible ourself, ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... seem hard-hearted to appear to be unsympathetic with invalids, and those who are slightly or even seriously sick; not to take interest in their complaints; not to say commiserating things to them; but really it is the part of true friendship to help sick people fight the battle ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... who were Cambridge men recovered their courage after a little, and said, "I told you so! That was a boy who ought to have gone to Cambridge, where individual characteristics are taken into consideration." Warrender's tutor took to his bed, and was not visible for a week, after which only the most unsympathetic, not to say brutal, of his colleagues would have mentioned before him Warrender's name. However, time reconciles all things, and after a while the catastrophe was forgotten and everything ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant |
