"Unvarnished" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his capacity. It is not my intention to anticipate the story, as he himself tells it, either of the "Hawarden Kite" or the Home Rule split, much less to disclose his opinions—they are emphatic and deliberate—of the men who made mischief at that crisis. I leave also untouched the plain, unvarnished account he gives, on unimpeachable authority, of a subsequent and not less discreditable phase in the annals of the Liberal party. There are reasons, obvious to everyone who gives the matter a moment's thought, that render it inadvisable ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... are those Cossacks who drag the steamer off the sand-banks, and are often entertaining companions. Many of them can relate from their own experience, in plain, unvarnished style, stirring episodes of irregular warfare, and if they happen to be in a communicative mood they may divulge a few secrets regarding their simple, primitive commissariat system. Whether they are confidential or not, the traveller who knows the language will spend his time more profitably ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the hot imperious words that crowded to his lips. These were plain unvarnished facts, and he must bow to the inevitable, however distasteful it might be. For the present then, Ramabai should be permitted to go unharmed. But Ramabai might die suddenly and accidentally in the recapture of the Colonel ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... other kinds of knowledge. As the streets of Hannibal in those early days, and the printing-offices of several cities, had taught him human nature in various unvarnished aspects, so the river furnished an added course to that vigorous education. Morally, its atmosphere could not be said to be an improvement on the others. Navigation in the West had begun with crafts of the flat-boat type—their navigators ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... as a plain, unvarnished truth that this accomplished and semi-historical personage raced a horse of his own, which turns out now to have been the famous Rainbow, an animal of such marvellous speed, courage, and endurance that as many legends are current about him as ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... twenty-four hours since I sat here in the same place (at your desk in the front window, of course), trying my best to put the situation before you, as a plain, unvarnished tale. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... ashore. He has already began to busy himself with the condition of 'our roadside arabs,' as he calls them. We fear Mr. Smith in prosecuting this good work of his is doomed to perform a serious act of disenchantment. The ideal Gipsy is destined to be scattered to the winds by the unvarnished picture which Mr. Smith will cause to be presented to our vision. He does not pretend to show us the romantic, fantastically-dressed creature whose prototypes have long been in the imaginations of many of us as types of the Gipsy species. Those ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... to them likewise the wisdom of an all-merciful Providence revealed the fact of a northern sea of open water, that they might be additional witnesses in the hour of need. We cannot do better than read the plain unvarnished tale of the gallant American—a tale of calm heroism under no ordinary trials, which stamps the document as the truthful narration of a gentleman and a sailor. He says, after describing the being beset by young ice ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... this plain, unvarnished account of an Oriental battle might feel inclined to criticise Santa Coloma's tactics; for his men were, like the Arabs, horsemen and little else; they were, moreover, armed with lance and broadsword, weapons requiring a great deal of space to be used effectively. Yet, considering all the circumstances, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... divined behind the quiet front of her favourite. But with the doctor himself she had no reserves, it being one of her many maxims that "what you up and say to a person's face doesn't hurt them any." The doctor was made well aware that her unvarnished opinion of his prospective marriage was at ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... better teach you your new trade now. You've got to learn to cane chairs, so the warden says. If you want, we can begin right away." But without waiting for Cowperwood to acquiesce, he went off, returning after a time with three unvarnished frames of chairs and a bundle of cane strips or withes, which he deposited on the floor. Having so done—and with a flourish—he now continued: "Now I'll show you if you'll watch me," and he began showing Cowperwood how the strips were to be laced ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... beginning to turn, so I was beginning to be slightly insane, and was haunted with a desire to say some horribly improper or wicked thing which should start them all out of their chairs. Though never given to profane expressions, I perfectly hankered to let out a certain round, unvarnished, wicked word, which I knew would create a tremendous commotion on the surface of this enchanted mill pond,—in fact, I was so afraid that I should make some such mad demonstration, that I rose at an early hour and begged leave to retire. Emmy sprang up with apparent relief, and offered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... when I left off my plain unvarnished tale and took to maundering, that precise point in it which exhibits Roger in the act of replacing his hat upon his even then slightly greyish head and striding on. It seems to me that he would not have checked in his stride ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... an electro-plater, and should be applied to by his companions in the shop in all emergencies under the name of the "Encyclopaedia." Suppose a long procession of such cases, and then consider that these are not suppositions at all, but are plain, unvarnished facts, culminating in the one special and significant fact that, with a single solitary exception, every one of the institution's industrial students who have taken its prizes within ten years, have since climbed to higher situations in ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... as most people imagine, consists in telling one truth—unvarnished, unadorned truth—he is indeed a friend: yet, hang it, I must be candid, and say I have had many other, and more agreeable, proofs of Hobhouse's friendship than the truths he always told me; but the fact is, I wanted him to sugar them ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... home, and before Clarges Street was reached Percy had told his friend an unvarnished story of the follies of the last few days, and enlisted his support in his ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... face turned rosier. He was not used among his docile Canadians to any such speech as this. The unvarnished fashions of New England honesty ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... broadly gifted masculine mind, devoting its unstinted energies to depicting certain aspects of society and civilization, which are powerfully representative of the tendencies of the day. "Here is the unvarnished fact—give heed to it!" is the unwritten motto. The author avoids betraying, either explicitly or implicitly, the tendency of his own sympathies; not because he fears to have them known, but because he holds it to be his office simply to portray, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... nonsense, but unvarnished truth. I might have been saved easily enough, and Mr. Ferrars need have suffered no inconvenience save a wetting, but for my own fault; for he was there long before the water reached the place where I ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... kindly and tactful in setting forth the Protestant emphasis in the Catholic-Protestant fabric of his church. He argued that the word "Protestant" in the title is there to protect the right of every sort of churchman. His candor was disarming, and he could get away with such unvarnished statements as this: "As you know I am a Protestant of the Protestants. I do not belong to the Catholic party in the Episcopal Church. I belong to the Protestant party. I believe in Protestantism; I do not believe in Catholicism, I never have, and please God, I never will. I believe ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... every English child, no general reader is aware of the valuables it contains, nor indeed will the door open to any but Arabists. Before parting we agreed to "collaborate" and produce a full, complete, unvarnished, uncastrated copy of the great original, my friend taking the prose and I the metrical part; and we corresponded upon the subject for years. But whilst I was in the Brazil, Steinhaeuser died suddenly of apoplexy at Berne in Switzerland ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... apparently, only for professional purposes, and merely to get the curtain down decently. It is a point, which it takes the key of the play—Lord Bacon's key, of 'Times,' to put in. It wants but a comma, but then it must be a comma in the right place, to make English of it. Plain English, unvarnished English, but poetic in its fact, as any prophecy that Merlin was ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... yet not much, to talk the colonel over. He did not go to see the house, and Esther did not press that he should; he took her report of it, which was an unvarnished one, and submitted himself to what seemed the inevitable. But his daughter knew that her task would have been harder if the colonel's imagination had had the assistance of his eyesight. She was sure that the move must be made, and if it were once effected she was almost ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... it is no fairy tale, but the unvarnished truth. The page of the princess listened, and immediately repeated all ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... made the primitive Christians victorious alike over inward sinful affection and outward persecution. To every one who reads the gospel narratives in the exercise of his sober judgment, it is manifest that they are intended to be plain unvarnished statements of facts. The question is, Are these statements reliable? Here new arguments can hardly be expected; the old are abundantly sufficient. Reserving for another place those general arguments which apply to the gospel ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... explain what I mean," said the Chief. "There is a type of man who is quite incapable of telling the plain, unvarnished truth. That type of fellow might have the most extraordinary adventure happen to him and yet be unable to let it stand on its merits. When he narrates it, he trims it up with all kinds of embroidery. Is Strangwise ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... prerogatives of age? Off goes the child, corporally smarting, but morally rebellious. Were there ever such unthinkable deities as parents? I would give a great deal to know what, in nine cases out of ten, is the child's unvarnished feeling. A sense of past cajolery; a sense of personal attraction, at best very feeble; above all, I should imagine, a sense of terror for the untried residue of mankind; go to make up the attraction that he feels. No wonder, poor little heart, with such a weltering world ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the junior who has a facility for thinking an idea through and then expressing it comprehensively in clear, unvarnished phrases. Moreover, even when they are stilted in their own manner of expression, they will warm to the man whose style achieves strength through its ease and naturalness. They will quickly make note of any young officer ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... Miss Killigrew, but I have no suitable clothes." Which was plain unvarnished truth. "And I do not possess an opera-hat." ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... Swithin's emancipation from a trammelling body had been effected by the telescope, and he was well away in space, she felt her influence over him diminishing to nothing. He was quite unconscious of his terrestrial neighbourings, and of herself as one of them. It still further reduced her towards unvarnished simplicity in ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... the Witches."] We could have dispensed with many of the flowers of rhetoric with which the pages of this discovery are strewed, if Master Potts would have favoured us with a plain, unvarnished account of what occurred at this execution. It is here, in the most interesting point of all, that his narrative, in other respects so full and abundant, stops short, and seems curtailed of its just proportions. The "learned ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... face, the wanness of his features, and the slightly wearied look he bore, were all imparting intelligence to me—the knowledge I craved for so much ever since I heard the words, 'Take what you want, but find Livingstone,' What I saw was deeply interesting intelligence to me and unvarnished truth. I was listening and reading at the same time. What did these dumb ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... The unvarnished and unbowspritted and unjib-boomed tale was pretty much as follows: Mr. Langenau had found himself in the middle of the river, when the storm came on. I am afraid he could not have been thinking very much about the clouds, not to have noticed that a storm was rising; though every one agreed ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... and I am their chief," was the remark made by the Dey of Algiers to the English Consul in 1641, and the man spoke the plain unvarnished truth. Yet at this time the Algerines had no more than sixty-five ships, and no organisation which could have held out for twenty-four hours against such attacks as had been successfully resisted on many occasions in ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... must not ape ornaments and indulge in bombast or rhodomontade which stamp a writer as not only superficial but silly. There is no room for such in the everyday newspaper. It wants facts stated in plain, unvarnished, unadorned language. True, you should read the best authors and, as far as possible, imitate their style, but don't try to literally copy them. Be yourself on ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... looking down upon my bleeding knuckles, "I am not Sir Maurice Vibart. It seems my fate to be mistaken for him wherever I go. My name is Peter, plain and unvarnished, and I am very humbly your servant." Now as I spoke, it seemed that the Daemon, no longer the jovial companion, was himself again, horns, hoof, and tail—nay, indeed, he seemed a thousand times more foul and hideous than before, as he mouthed and jibed at ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... day, discovered that she was on the very brink of meeting with the persons she most dreaded to see; but, however temptingly romantic such an incident would have been, we must, according to our duty as faithful historians, deliver a plain unvarnished tale. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... short journey to the landlord's, commenced, in her own way, a lecture upon agricultural economy, which, though plain and unvarnished, contained excellent and practical sense. She also pointed out to him when to speak and when to be silent; told him what rent to offer, and in what manner he should offer it; but she did all this so dexterously and sweetly, that honest Peter thought the new and corrected views which she furnished ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... plain unvarnished account of the late transactions in Servia, in which the true character of Russian policy, and the means by which it is carried out, have been unveiled before the eyes of Europe in a manner sufficient to enlighten those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... (regularity) 80; conformity to rule; nicety. orthology^; ipsissima verba [Lat.]; realism. plain truth, honest truth, sober truth, naked truth, unalloyed truth, unqualified truth, stern truth, exact truth, intrinsic truth; nuda veritas [Lat.]; the very thing; not an illusion &c 495; real Simon Pure; unvarnished tale, unvarnished truth; the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth; just the thing. V. be true &c adj., be the case; sand the test; have the true ring; hold good, hold true, hold water. render true, prove true &c adj.; substantiate &c (evidence) 467. get at the truth &c (discover) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in the proceeding," observed the old gentleman, after Rolf had given him a true, unvarnished account of the affair. "He's a handsome gallant, and she's a very fine lassie, there's no denying that; but at the same time, God's blessing does not alight on marriages contracted without the parent's consent; and it's my opinion that Miss Wardhill should have ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... co-exist with attainments of an exceptional order, there was a revulsion in her sentiments from all that she had formerly clung to in this kind: honesty, goodness, manliness, tenderness, devotion, for her only existed in their purity now in the breasts of unvarnished men; and here was one who had manifested them towards her from his ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... at least one man spoke out the whole truth and nothing but the truth about it in the last century: Francis, the great Social Reformer—Francis Newman, who was no time-server, no prophesier of smooth things; but, as much as in him lay, desired more than anything else to lay the whole unvarnished truth before his fellow men, things that concerned the weaker members of the community. In lecture after lecture he turned things to the "rightabout-face" which had hitherto been done sub rosa in India. He did ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... the human soul, with its awful shadow, makes all things sacred." So in writing a biography it is impossible for us to tell what did and what did not powerfully influence the character. It is safer simply to tell the unvarnished truth. The lily builds up its texture of delicate beauty from mould and decay. So how do we know from what humble material a soul grows in strength ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... of promise is the burden of my song. Perhaps you’ve heard him lecture, and blow about it strong; To hear him talk you’d think it was a heaven upon earth, But listen and I’ll tell you now the plain unvarnished truth. ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... before us in the natural order of their ascertainment, and narrates instead of enumerating. The story to be told leaves the marvels of imagination far behind, and requires no embellishment from literary art or high-flown phrases. Its best ornament is unvarnished truthfulness, and this, at least, may confidently be claimed to be bestowed upon ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... to us to be perhaps the best contribution to the literature of the war that has yet been written. It is a plain soldierly narrative of what the writer actually did and saw, set down in unvarnished language, yet in English which it is a pleasure to read for its straightforward fluency.'—St. ...
— Mr. Edward Arnold's New and Popular Books, December, 1901 • Edward Arnold
... pure and classical poets of his mother tongue. It is quite ridiculous to see how the vanity of these Cockneys makes them overrate their own importance, even in the eyes of us, that have always expressed such plain unvarnished contempt for them, and who do feel for them all, a contempt too calm and profound, to admit of any admixture of any thing like anger or personal spleen. We should just as soon think of being wroth with vermin, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... true. Duty to the brave dead, to the heroic living, who have endured the pangs of a hundred deaths for their country's sake; duty to the government which depends on the wisdom and constancy of its good citizens for its support and perpetuity, calls for this "round, unvarnished tale" of suffering endured ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... come to an end somewhere, let it be here. To quote Lord Bacon again, take my "round, unvarnished tale," and perhaps the world will yet acknowledge that some good ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... was a new side of Monsieur de St. Gre, and I reflected rather ruefully upon the unvarnished truth of what Mr. Wharton had told me,—ay, and what Colonel Clark had emphasized long before. It was my fate never to be treated as a young man. It struck me that Monsieur de St. Gre had never even considered me in the light of a possible ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the varnishes of modern times. It is said that many instruments having the name of Pique in them are the work of Lupot, and this misnomer is accounted for by the story that Pique purchased them in an unvarnished state, and varnished them with his preparation. Be this as it may, it is certain that the varnish of Pique could not serve to benefit such instruments; on the contrary, it would reduce their value. The tone of ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... considered by his friends to be a cynic; and a French cynic is not without cruelty. He once told Wanda that he had seen men and women do much worse than throw their lives away, which was probably the unvarnished truth. But there must have been a weak spot in his cynicism. There always is a weak spot in the vice of the most vicious. For he sat alone in his room at the Hotel de l'Europe, at Warsaw, long into the night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and thinking thoughts which ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... can't promise that, Ken. Just think of the fascinating Frenchmen I shall probably meet, with their waxed moustaches and their dandified manners. How can I help liking them better than a plain, unvarnished American boy?" ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... healthy from inflamed tissues, and run down, grab, and give one dexterous fatal shake to a tissue of lies. One of Dr. Brown's terriers is not more swift, exact, and uncompromising after vermin. This excellent sense for unvarnished realities has been attributed by some to their habit of visiting so many interiors—of men and of their houses—whose swell-fronts are pervious to the sincerity of pain. We never see a doctor's chaise anchored at a door but we imagine the doctor taking in freight up-stairs. In these days he is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... This is the unvarnished truth. A mysterious power dealt the cards for me with unfailing instinct; a fortunate combination of events placing in my hands, precisely at the moment of their greatest value, clear opportunities that none but a hopeless blunderer ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... that will have to happen some day, be the disintegration of the existing organisations in order to build up a more perfect habitation of God through the Spirit? I do not wish to exaggerate. God knows there is no need for exaggerating. The plain, unvarnished story, without any pessimistic picking out of the black bits and forgetting ail the light ones, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... obliged to know better. I love you as my cousin, love you somewhat as I love Uncle Eric, love you as the sole young relative left to me, as the only companion of my lonely childhood; but other love than this I never had, never can have for you. Hugh, my cousin, look fearlessly at the unvarnished truth; neither you nor I have one spark of that affection which alone can ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... in which we are led to discern very primitive witness behind Acts, do not indeed give to such witness the value of shorthand notes or even of abstracts based thereon. But they do support the theory that our author meant to give an unvarnished account of such words and deeds as had come to his knowledge. The perspective of the whole is no doubt his own; and as his witnesses probably furnished but few hints for a continuous narrative, this perspective, especially in things chronological, may sometimes be faulty. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... he would lose not an instant in broaching the important subject. He was happy to think he had a friend in the old lady. Perhaps she might bring about the desired interview. But although this thought was encouraging, he could not but tremble when he remembered the very plain and unvarnished way she ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... therefore, the Parnassian lyre, Or winged war-horse shod with heavenly fire; Harsh numbers flow from throats whose thirst has been A whole life long unslaked of Hippocrene; But I will e'en go on as best I can And let the story end as it began,— A plain, straightforward man's unvarnished word, Part sad, part ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... It is a plain unvarnished tale and entirely innocent of those arts by the practice of which authors please their public. There is no eloquence, no rhetoric, no fine writing of any sort. The two or three really dramatic events in Priestley's career are not handled with a view to producing dramatic effect. There ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... old days he would have said for effect; but it carried conviction now. Absinthe, erst but a point in the 'personality' he had striven so hard to build up, was solace and necessity now. He no longer called it 'la sorciere glauque.' He had shed away all his French phrases. He had become a plain, unvarnished, Preston man. ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... them with a cynicism from which the conscience of the veriest Philistine of our industrial middle-class would recoil in affright. And when, with the natural sympathy of aristocracies for firm dealing with the multitude, and his uneasiness at our feeble dealing with it at home, an unvarnished young Englishman of our aristocratic class applauds the absolute rulers on the Continent, he in general manages completely to miss the grounds of reason and intelligence which alone can give any colour of justification, any possibility of existence, to those rulers, and applauds them on grounds ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... his customary attention to details, he saw that the nail was one of several which had fastened a narrow strip of molding around the cabinet. About two feet of this molding had been torn away, leaving the nails protruding from the cabinet and Tom noticed not only that the unvarnished strip which the molding had covered was clean and white, but that the exposed parts of the nails ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... account—bald, simple, unvarnished. Then came mysterious messages from the Central Press about the absence of any clue to identify the stranger. He hadn't entered the house by any regular way, it seemed; unless, indeed, Mr. Callingham had brought him home himself and let him in with the latchkey. None of the servants had ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... sympathetic feeling for that savage. For several reasons: in the first place he liked audacious, pushing fellows, lucky adventurers. Was he not one himself? And then the Nabob amused him; his accent, his unvarnished manners, his flattery, a trifle unblushing and impudent, gave him a respite from the everlasting conventionality of his surroundings, from that scourge of administrative and court ceremonial which ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Professor, are my unvarnished sentiments: I was a little surprised to find them so extreme, and therefore ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... good conscience, yes. The motto with which I began states the truth somewhat strongly, perhaps (it must be remembered where I got it), but aside from that one bit of harmless borrowed hyperbole, I have delivered a plain, unvarnished tale. For all that, however, I do not expect my industrious fellow-citizens to fall in at once with my opinion that winter is a pleasant season at the seashore (it would be too bad they should, as far as my own enjoyment ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... hands with crime, but I honestly believe that the extraordinary features of my own life-romance are as strange as, if not stranger than, any hitherto recorded. Even my worst enemy could not dub me egotistical, I think; and surely the facts I have set down here are plain and unvarnished, without any attempt at misleading the reader into believing that which is untrue. Mine is a plain chronicle of a chain of extraordinary circumstances which led to an ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... also of our friends to whom we tell the plain, unvarnished truth, if they come here will be disappointed, as they will not see with our eyes. One cannot expect the luxuries of palatial hotels at five dollars per day; such would be out of ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... be those who will object that the plain, unvarnished tale of my friend "Hy" Smith, which follows, is lacking in the robust qualities that truth alone can bring; to them I recommend the attitude of the Injun. But I must add this: Heaven forbid that I should have to stand good for any of Hy's stories! Still, some of what I considered ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... impossible relative in the person of an aunt came to spend the month of August with Sara—her father's sister. She was a true, unvarnished Gooch. Booth shuddered at times when she emerged flat-foot from the background and revelled in the Goochiness that would not stay put, no matter how hard she tried to subdue it. She was a good soul,—much ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... unvarnished tale of the travel in Midian, undertaken by the second Expedition, which, like the first, owes all to the liberality and the foresight of his Highness Ismail I., Khediv of Egypt, forms the subject of these volumes. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... any joke here it seems to lie in the contrast with Wilson's actual habits, which were very simple. For instance, he gives us a gorgeous description of the apparatus of North's solitary confinement when writing for Blackwood; his daughter's unvarnished account of the same process agrees exactly as to time, rate of production, and so forth, but substitutes water for the old hock and "Scots pint" (magnum) of claret, a dirty little terra-cotta inkstand for the silver utensil of the Noctes, and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... her own unconsidered act, she was forcing upon him, at the least, a public recognition of their marriage; an acknowledgment that might make further separation difficult, if not impossible, for the present. All her pride and independence of spirit revolted against this unvarnished statement of fact; and the memory of Michael's random remark heightened her nervous apprehension. Yet, on the other hand, Love—who is a born peace-maker—argued that, after all, he might not be sorry to have his hand forced by so clear a proof ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... woodwork was concerned, in smoked or dark-stained oak to represent an old English interior, its walls covered with long-stemmed pipes and pictures of English hunting and drinking scenes, its black-stained but unvarnished tables littered with riding, driving and country-life society papers, to give it that air of sans ceremonie with an upper world of which its habitues probably possessed no least inkling but most eagerly craved. Here, along with a goodly group of his latter-day friends, far different ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... wand'ring to and fro, Like restless spirits; scaling mountain heights; Dwelling among the countless, rare delights Of lands historic; turning dusty pages, Stamped with the tragedies of mighty ages; Gazing upon the scenes of bloody acts, Of kings long buried—bare, unvarnished facts, Surpassing wildest fictions of the brain; Rubbing against all people, high and low, And by this contact feeling Self to grow Smaller and less important, and the vein Of human kindness deeper, seeing God, Unto the humble delver of the sod, And to the ruling monarch on the throne, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... is probably much to be said on the other side. The unhappiest feature of drifting into a habit of positive and continuous talk is that one has few friends faithful enough to criticise such a habit and tell one the unvarnished truth; if the habit is once confirmed, it becomes almost impossible to break it off. I know of a family conclave that was once summoned, in order, if possible, to communicate the fact to one of the circle that he was in danger of becoming a bore; the head of the family was finally ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in the pulpit, he simply led you captive by his earnestness and evident thorough belief in all that he uttered; so that "those who came to scoff, remained to pray." No hard, metallic repetition by rote was his; but the plain, unvarnished story of the gospel which he felt and of whose truth he was assured, animated by a broad spirit of Protestantism that led him to extend a raising hand to every erring brother, and see religion in other creeds besides ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... is Sir Victor Catheron of Catheron Royals, with a rent-roll of twenty thousand a year, and more, and a name that is older than Magna Charta. If there be any virtue in truth, there—you have it, plain, unvarnished. I like him—who could help it; but love him—no!" She clasped her hands above her head, and gazed dreamily out at the sparkling sunlit scene. "I shall be very fond of him, very proud of him, when I am his wife—that I know. He will enter Parliament, and make speeches, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... believe that the bare truth, unvarnished by flattery, will be acceptable to the majority, amongst whom may be counted all those educated Americans whose impartiality is superior to their personal interest in the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... of Christian missions arises from the vices and sins of Christendom; fifthly, an acknowledgment of the indirect influences of Christianity through legislation and civilization; sixthly, the newly awakened perception of the duty of making exact, unvarnished, impartial statements on this subject; seventhly, the testimony borne by missionary experience to the common elements and essential principles of ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... victory. Such men are always dangerous in delicate cases. He should not wait for his accuser to get in all his case if the substantial part of it is already before the court, because his answer ought not, as in a court of law, to cover the complaint simply and no more. It ought to contain a plain unvarnished tale of the whole transaction, and not those parts only which the accusation may have touched, because his object is not only to wrest a verdict of "not proven" from his judges, but to satisfy even the timid and sensitive souls whose faith in their idols is so large ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... morning, and avoid lying in bed half awake. Take plenty of fresh air and exercise every day. And finally, and at all costs, keep absolutely sober. Probably the last of these pieces of advice is by far the most important. It is the unvarnished truth that the vast majority of men who have gone wrong did so for the first time, not when they were drunk, but when liquor had made them reckless and forgetful. The plain truth about alcohol is that it has a twofold effect upon the human constitution. ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... had of distinguishing myself in the active service of my country in this way as a soldier, and as a volunteer yeomanry cavalry man too, I must entreat the indulgence and particular attention of the gentle reader, while I give a faithful narrative, an unvarnished tale, of the whole affair. This being the solitary instance in which I was called into the field of battle while I was in the service, I must entreat those who do me the honour to read my Memoirs, to extend their forgiveness ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... competent and truthful reporters are employed by you to write an exact and unvarnished report of some single transaction which has occurred, and which each of them has witnessed. Each is required to do his work without any conference with the others. When these reports are brought to you, if they are very faithful and accurate ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... the men crowded round, listening greedily, just as everybody devours certain public prints without ceasing to impeach their veracity. Lacking newspapers at which to pish! and pshaw! they listened to Windy Jim, disbelieving the only unvarnished tale that gentleman had ever told. For Windy, with the story-teller's instinct, knew marvellous enough would sound the bare recital of those awful Dawson days when the unprecedented early winter stopped the provision boats ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... knowledge that is in you, then he who builds his house and lays up his treasure on the edge of a crater of molten lava is a sane, sensible person in comparison with yourselves. I say this as no figure of speech or bugbear with which to frighten you, but as an unvarnished unexaggerated statement which will be no more disputed by yourselves than ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... realism, it cannot be called crude as a work of poetic art. In rhyme and rhythm it is quite regular, and the impression which it leaves upon the mind is that it was the work of an educated man, keenly interested in the unvarnished life of a Yorkshire farm, keenly interested in the vocabulary and idioms of his district, and determined to produce a poem which should bid defiance to all the proprieties of ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... the oil-shops for keeping back-kitchen sinks clean), using with them a composition mainly consisting of exactly the same materials with which a housemaid polishes the fender and fire-irons. That is a plain, simple, unvarnished statement of facts. You may find it difficult of belief, but this is what actually happens. This is what you are having done everywhere, guardians of our ancient buildings. You'll soon have all your old windows ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... praise she received, since she really earned it. She sowed the seeds, and it was only right that she should reap the fruit. And of all the praises that were heaped upon her none equalled the simple unvarnished story of her own deed. To describe her exploit, with no word of comment, was to load her with commendation of the highest kind. And it is well indeed when that can be said of any woman—which is always the case when her life is right. On the whole, even now people get pretty much what they deserve. ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... to remember, Garth, that every word I write, is the simple unvarnished truth. If you look back over your remembrance of me, you will admit that I am not naturally an untruthful person, nor did I ever take easily to prevarication. But, Garth, I told you one lie; and that fatal exception proves the rule of perfect truthfulness, ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... he said, without lookup, "your epigrams are lost on me. I know most of them. I have heard them before. If you have anything to tell me about Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, for Heaven's sake tell it to me quite plainly. I like plain dishes and unvarnished stories. I am a German, you know; that is to say, a person with a dull palate ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... suffice to paper every scrap of bedroom wall in all the Astor houses in the world, and invested in Amalgamated Copper they would turn the system green with envy—and yet I am not happy. My well-beloved Henriette's last adventure has turned my fortune into bitterest gall, and plain unvarnished wormwood forms the finish of my interior, for she is gone! I, amid the splendor of my new-found possessions, able to keep not one but a hundred motor-cars, and to pay the chauffeur's fines, to endow ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... mountaineer's face was contorted into a spasm of pain and his labored breathing demanded a respite of silence. Then slowly he declared with the unvarnished candor of the backwoods: "Joe's ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... their confident bawlings. For all that I could see, they were no better than humbugs, and I was none too pleased at their copying my beard. If there were any use in their noise, if the talking did any good to the public, I should not have a word to say against them: but, to tell you the plain unvarnished truth, I have more than once looked out from my peep-hole yonder and ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... The two unvarnished braggarts followed the valorous Dona Gorja with their eyes; and then with a despicable gesture drew their knives across their sleeve as though wiping off the blood there might have been, sheathed them at one and the same time, ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... I say," concluded the lecturer, "just come out to New South Wales and see for yourselves if I have not told you the plain, unvarnished truth; and I repeat what I have said before, that although it is no place for the idle rich, for the man or the woman who wants to work it is not ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... that the chauffeur had not the slightest notion that he had conveyed a murderer to London when he began to tell his tale to his employer and the detectives. They wanted a plain, unvarnished story, and got it. On leaving the offices in Bishopsgate Street, Fenley asked to be driven to Gloucester Mansions, Shaftesbury Avenue. Tom had seen the last of him standing on the pavement, with a suitcase on the ground at his feet. He was ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy |
