"Impertinence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Alexandria—this was too much for her philosophy; and, as she had never in her life restrained the expression of her sentiments, though she gave him a friendly hand and the usual greeting, she very soon showed him, by her irony and impertinence, that she was as hostile to his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this you are to expect from your correspondent. I cannot do better than I can; and it may appear such a mixture of self-praise, vanity, and impertinence, that I expect you will tell me freely, as soon as this comes to your hand, whether it be tolerable to you. Yet I must write on, for my dear father and mother's sake, who require it of me, and are prepared to approve of every thing that comes from me, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Admiral gently, "you are an excellent officer of police, but even you have a few things yet to learn. I had in my mind to give you a lesson, especially as I owed you some punishment for your impertinence in opening my friend Copplestone's private letters. You have had the lesson; ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... but was loth to be near about her, when I knew my affection so much thrown down, and such a wretch as Ralegh highly esteemed of her.' When he called Ralegh a wretch the Queen expressed her disgust at the impertinence by turning away to Lady Warwick, and closed ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... once came forward from the rear of the hall, where he had been sitting, and mounting the platform, said: I only came forward in obedience to a call which it would be impertinence to refuse here to-night. I came to be a listener and with no sort of intention of making any speech at all, and the only right I should have upon this platform is, that for the last twenty-five years of my ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... at it a moment in some astonishment, not unmixed with irritation. What could this fellow know concerning the succession? It was most probably simply an impertinence. The Paris police ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... may lead a horse to water, but it is another affair to make him drink. And no one who can recall the prompt resolve not to use English goods, and the beginning of leagues to that effect, of which we lately heard so much, can doubt that in case we hear much more of this impertinence of intervention, the American market would immediately be lost to the insolent meddlers. It is only of late that the free States have shaken off their Democratic, pro-slavery, anti-tariff tyrants, and learned to be free. England has groaned ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... in the countenance of the young man I have just spoken of an indefinable but unpleasant impertinence, smoothness, and affectation, which is repulsive to a plain man, and in the countenance of my own pupil a simple and interesting expression which indicates the real contentment and the calm of his mind; an ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... certain circumstances, attacking powerfully his personal interest, while threatening slight danger of failure or detection. This style of thought, set off by a fair share of witty expression and ever-ready impertinence, gave Felix a kind of ascendancy in his circle of intimates—but naturally it gained him no friends. Common reputation grows out of words rather than actions, and Felix suffered the just penalty of his sceptical fancies. They cost him more ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... was, Horace, believe me it must have been only after great provocation, and her acknowledgment of it is no proof at all, to my mind; for Elsie is so humble, she would think she must have been guilty of impertinence if Miss Day ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... (fixing her eyes on Saint-Charles) And who has had the impertinence to send you to ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... keenest. Time passed away, and on one savage night I read Thomas Hardy's unparalleled description of the majestic waste in "The Return of the Native." That superb piece of English is above praise—indeed praise, as applied to it, is half an impertinence; it is great as Shakespeare, great almost as Nature—one of the finest poems in our language. As I read with awe the quiet inevitable sentences, the vision of my own heath rose, and the memory filled me ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Barbara. You know perfectly well that you have talked to Gardner and that idiot Valentine by the hour, and I've not said a word. But there are some things I can't stand, and the impertinence of Grimes is one of them. Jove! he looked at you, out of those fishy eyes, sometimes as though he owned you. If you knew how many times I've fairly ached to ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... style of platitudes and claptrap at his college debating society, and at the Union, to the committee of which he was elected after prolonged and assiduous canvassing. Having managed to be proctorised in company with the eldest son of a peer, whom he delighted by the studied impertinence of his answers to the Proctor, he eventually went down with a pass degree and a mixed reputation, and, after the orthodox number of dinners, and the regulation examination, had the satisfaction of seeing his name published in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... with the Earl of Ellenborough, and he has made the circuit of the House, everywhere received with a welcoming smile and a kindly grasp of the hand, and everywhere finding willing and gratified listeners. Possibly that is pardoned to his age and eminence which would be resented as impertinence in a younger man, but certainly he enjoys a license accorded to no one else ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... rats that had died in his teeth were an ever increasing score in the canteen. He was fairly aquiver with the mere excitement and curiosity of living. There was no spot in the camp too secure or too sacred for Scrap to penetrate. His invasions were without impertinence; but the regiment was his, and he deposited dead rats in the lieutenant's shoes as casually as he concealed bones in the French horn; and slumbered in the major's hat-box with the same equanimity with which he ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Lexington. When Harris was undergoing his examination, Austin was standing outside of the bar, exhibiting great anxiety in his countenance; and when his young protege was sworn in, he burst into a flood of tears. He understood his situation very well, and never was guilty of impertinence. He was one of the best chroniclers of the events of the Revolutionary War, in Georgia. Judge Dooly thought much of him, for he had served under his father, Colonel Dooly. It was Dabney's custom to be at the public house in Madison, where the judge stopped during court, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... it, that I talked of it in my sleep; in short, nothing could remove it out of my mind; it even broke so violently into all my discourses, that it made my conversation tiresome; for I could talk of nothing else, all my discourse ran into it, even to impertinence, and I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... two other slaves looked at one another, stupefied: they had recognised Vaninka's voice. As for Ivan, he flung himself back in his chair, balancing himself with marvellous impertinence. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Augustines." A hundred is a small number: Luther "reckons nothing of having against him a thousand Augustines, a thousand Cyprians, a thousand Churches." I think I need not carry the matter further. For when men rage against the above-mentioned Fathers, who can wonder at the impertinence of their language against Optatus, Hilary, the two Cyrils, Epiphanius, Basil, Vincent, Fulgentius, Leo, and the Roman Gregory. However, if we grant any just defence of an unjust cause, I do not deny that the Fathers wherever you light upon them, afford the party ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... fan to and fro and drove away the buzzing flies whenever they had the impertinence to come near the baby's face. When they had all flown out of the window or into distant parts of the room, he bent over the cradle and delighted himself with gazing at the sleeping infant. It was, indeed, a very pretty sight. The little personage in the cradle slumbered peacefully, with ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I have translated and printed at the end of the second volume some sonnets of Petrarch as a kind of palinode for this impertinence.] ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... obscure and mean birth, and presently subjoining, But 'tis true, I sprung from the same seed, caused much mirth and laughter. And the harper very facetiously put a cheek to Philip's ignorance and impertinence; for when Philip pretended to correct him, he cried out, God forbid, sir, that ever you should be brought so low as to understand these things better than I. For by this seeming joke he instructed him without giving any offence. And therefore some of the comedians seem ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the parentage of his great-great-grandchildren His wife he will treat as his equal; he will not be "kind" to her, but fair and frank and loving, as one equal should be with another; he will no more have the impertinence to pet and pamper her, to keep painful and laborious things out of her knowledge to "shield" her from the responsibility of political and social work, than he will to make a Chinese toy of her and bind her feet. ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... matters, it was one of the last words befitting the lips of the reverend Catholic; and that, when Ippolito of Este (as Ginguene observes) made that speech to the great poet, "he uttered—prince, cardinal, and mathematician as he was—an impertinence."[15] ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... out, promising himself that his first post-nuptial act would be to shake this small sister-in-law well for her impertinence. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... know Sister Euphrosyne is thinking of the christening suppers, and the whipped creams, and the syllabubs!" and away she tripped to the other end of the bay, lest the older Fairies should scold her for impertinence. ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... banisters, saying, 'No, no, no, say I am out.' And then I said, 'It is no use, Robinson, I must see you, and I will not leave this place until I have seen you.' I went upstairs to her room. At first she was rather haughty, rather inclined to impertinence. She said, 'Mum, you have no right to come after me—you sent me away; I am looking out for a place in Brighton—I don't want to go back to my people.' I said, 'Robinson, it is no use trying to deceive me, I know very well why you are in Brighton; no good can come ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... had a foreign accent. There was something, also, in their bland impertinence which put Miss Redmond on her guard. He was a good-sized, blond person, carefully dressed, and at least appeared like ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... day-scholars; and when Miss Wackles smiled, and Mrs Wackles smiled, the two little girls on the stools sought to curry favour by smiling likewise, in gracious acknowledgement of which attention the old lady frowned them down instantly, and said that if they dared to be guilty of such an impertinence again, they should be sent under convoy to their respective homes. This threat caused one of the young ladies, she being of a weak and trembling temperament, to shed tears, and for this offense they were both filed off immediately, with a dreadful promptitude that struck terror ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... indeed, indispensable for overcoming friction. His teachers were asked to state their respective charges against him, which they did with such a rancour and aggrievedness as evinced that this was not a usual case. Disorder and impertinence were among the offences named, yet each of his instructors felt that it was scarcely possible to put into words the real cause of the trouble, which lay in a sort of hysterically defiant manner of the boy's; in the contempt which they all knew he felt for them, and which he seemingly ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... the opinion of my venerable friend, concerning Jesus of Nazareth. He will not impute this to impertinence; or improper curiosity in one, who, for so many years, has continued to love, esteem and reverence his abilities and literary character, with an ardor and affection ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... little octoroon girl of three, the illegitimate daughter of a quadroon in our neighborhood, with the intention of bringing her up as a servant. The child was quick-witted and irrepressible, and disputes began between us as soon as she felt at home. I suppose she must have been inclined to impertinence, for she had to be whipped, and as at her age no difference of condition was evident to her, she became a severe trial to my equanimity. Every outbreak of temper induced by her conduct toward me became occasion of a period of penitence, for I was taught that such outbreaks were sinful, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... a great stir throughout the Lower School. Excited girls crowded round the notices discussing the question, and for that day the talk was of nothing else. Gipsy had rather taken the popular fancy; and though a few considered it impertinence on the part of a new girl to offer any criticisms on existing institutions, all were anxious to hear what she had to say on so absorbing a topic. At 2 p.m. on the Wednesday, therefore, the play-room was crowded. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... these cruel words would be reported—as they were—to her stepmother, and, of course, they did not mitigate the Baroness's uneasiness. Madame de Nailles revenged herself for this insult by dismissing the innocent echo of the impertinence—of course, under some plausible pretext. She felt it necessary also to be very cautious how she treated the enemy whom she was forced to shelter under her own roof. Her policy—a policy imposed on her by force of circumstances—was one of great indulgence and consideration, so ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... the devil do you mean by that piece of impertinence, Mr Kenwigs?' said the collector. 'Morleena, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... once more inspected, without reserve—for a child has no complaint to make in such cases—and with rising wonder, which, in the end, caused Tom Bull to gape and gasp; but I was now less concerned with the scrutiny, being, after all, long used to the impertinence of the curious, than with the phenomena it occasioned. My uncle's friend had tipped the bottle, and was now become so deeply engaged with my appearance that the yellow whiskey tumbled into his glass by fits and starts, until the allowance was far beyond that which, upon information ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... without being troubled with the answers. Since the election, he had been eager to hear whatever could be said against Hope, whose vote, given contrary to Sir William's example and influence, was regarded by the baronet as an unpardonable impertinence. ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... thing, a dead thing, and an incubus upon the spirits of her pupils. To such a teacher mathematics is a lifeless thing, without hope or potency, the school is a mere convenience for the earning of a livelihood, the work is the drudgery of bondage, and the children are little less than an impertinence. The vitalized teacher is different. To her the multiplication table pulsates with life. It stretches forth its beneficent hand to give employment to a million workers, and food to a million homes. It pervades every mart of trade; it loads trains and ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... said, "is worth very little. I had no right whatever to express it, having such slight evidence to go upon. It was double impertinence. If you can't be trusted to choose a wife, who could? I see that—now that I have made ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye maketh, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... that these three things are in fact one; that the architect is listening, like the stone Abraham, for orders from the Virgin, while he caresses and sacrifices his child; that Mary and not her architects built this facade; if the divine intention seems to you a needless impertinence, you can soon get free from it by going to any of the later churches, where you will not be forced to see any work but that of the architect's compasses. According to Viollet-le-Duc, the inspiration ceased about 1250, or, as the Virgin would have dated it, on ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... seemed out of place and almost vulgar. Girls about to marry curates or sucking barristers should be told to do their duty in that station of life to which God might be calling them; but it seemed to be almost an impertinence in a father to give such an ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the house. Here most of the familiar Brady photographs of him were taken. Brady sent a young photographer to Richmond to get the photographs. Lee was at first disposed to refuse to be taken, but his family persuaded him to submit, on the ground that if there were any impertinence in the request it was not the fault of the young man, and that the latter might lose his position if he failed to obtain the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... impertinence of my frequent visits to him was amply rewarded; forasmuch as, I can truly say, he never received me but with agreeable open complacency; and I never left him but with profitable pleasure and improvement. He was one or other, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... shall have to let the lady decide for herself,—whether I shall ruin her life or not. And I beg to point out that this topic is of your own choosing. I regard it as an impertinence. Let us drop it. And if you will point out the direction, I think I will hurry on by ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Turning my head, I perceived that the shadow had reached the place where I was sitting. It was growing chilly, and I thought to myself what a fool I was to have remained sitting there, at the risk of getting rheumatism, just to listen to the impertinence of those ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... From most men she would have considered the question impertinent, and would have resented it, but this frank faced boy meant no impertinence; he loved her in his honest way, and only wanted to ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... private views on any subject and I never shall, because I conceive it to be part of the whole process of government that I shall be spokesman for somebody, not for myself. To speak for myself would be an impertinence. When I speak for myself I am an individual; when I am spokesman of an organic body, I am a representative. For that reason, you see, I am by my own principles shut out, in the language of the street, from "starting anything." I have to confine myself to those things ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... force one into such an unnatural creature is abominable. You can polish every bit of the modesty and innocence of childhood out of a little girl; but all that you can get for it is affectation and self-sufficient impertinence, becoming neither to the child nor the woman. Why, cousin, the little creature I saw in your parlor—sent there, as she said, to entertain a gentleman—was just an absurdity to him, and to me something dreadful. I asked myself what a child like that would become at forty years of age. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... the humour of "Don Quixote" by an infusion of cockney flippancy and facetiousness, as Motteux's operators did, is not merely an impertinence like larding a sirloin of prize beef, but an absolute falsification of the spirit of the book, and it is a proof of the uncritical way in which "Don Quixote" is generally read that this worse than worthless translation—worthless as failing to represent, worse than worthless as misrepresenting—should ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... state of stupefaction. How on earth should he deal with this purse-proud egotist, who took the liberty of paying his hotel bill, giving up his apartments and ordering his servants? and doing all this without the faintest idea that he was committing an unpardonable impertinence. ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Presbyterians attributed the calamities to the wickedness of Jacobites, Prelatists, Sabbath-breakers and Atheists, as they denominated some of their fellow-sufferers. The accused parties, on the other hand, complained bitterly of the impertinence of meddling fanatics and hypocrites. Paterson was cruelly reviled, and was unable to defend himself. He sunk into a stupor, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Fleetwood's business. It was none of the servants' business. It was nobody's business except his own. Who the devil were all these people, to pry into his affairs and doctor him and dose him and form secret leagues to disobey him, and hide decanters from him? Why should anybody have the impertinence to meddle with him? Of what concern to them were his vices ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the other was trying to mimic his pronunciation of the word, and he felt resentful until a look at the boy's face showed that he intended no impertinence. ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... filled my head with Election matters, and will not allow me a moment's time for anything else. I have no comfort, but that it will be concluded on Thursday, or Friday, but till then, what I shall suffer from folly and impertinence, and from everything that ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... short. "I see no profit in discussing matters which do not concern us," said he, and only his ministerial estate saved him from the charge of impertinence. ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... feeling good, for election had given them the men that they wanted. The man who had us in charge joined with those we met in the hurrahing. We were afraid to ask them the reason for their yelling, as that would have been regarded as an impertinence, and probably would have caused us ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... confession to everybody. I never intended to bother with party politics, at least not for a good many years, but some people want me to stand, so I have agreed. You will have a very weak opponent, Stocks, so I hope you will pardon my impertinence in trying the thing." ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... altogether, for a new clergyman was in the desk. Still he called himself stupid now for not foreseeing that it would be impossible for him to look towards Dorothea—nay, that she might feel his coming an impertinence. There was no delivering himself from his cage, however; and Will found his places and looked at his book as if he had been a school-mistress, feeling that the morning service had never been so immeasurably long before, that he was utterly ridiculous, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... this impertinence on the part of Monsieur was going too far. "He settles with me, that's all!—and the Whim stays in Big Cove till I ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... He had never before seen her so smiling, to begin with, and never at all at himself. He longed to kick Arthur Elterton! Confounded impertinence!—And what tommyrot—dancing like this, in the afternoon with boots on! And when they all stopped and greeted the shooters, and crowded round the fire, he said, in a tone of rasping sarcasm—in reply to Jimmy Danvers' announcement that they were ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... is indeed a 'caution.' With all the worst qualities of the English boy, he has but few of his redeeming points. His impudence verges on impertinence, and his total want of respect for everybody and everything passes all European understanding. His father and mother he considers good sort of folk, whom he will not go out of his way to displease; his schoolmaster often ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... itself just as certainly by its icy indifference as by its own proper traits. Just as passions transmute into their opposites, so they carry a significant company of subordinate characteristics. Thus, dread or fear is accompanied by disorderly impertinence, sensuality by cruelty. The latter connection is of great importance to us, for it frequently eliminates difficulties in the explanation of crime. That cruelty and lasciviousness have the same root has long been known. The very ecstasy of adventurous and passionate love is frequently connected ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the world. An idea had struck their addled brains that by some means they could manage to secure a drink. Yet in some way he still held himself above these creatures, and once or twice I heard of him being under arrest for resenting what he deemed an impertinence from them. ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... doubt, many charming invitations to wonderful private views, this fashionable assemblage seemed somewhat aghast, and not a little amused, at being told that the slightest appearance among a civilised people of any joy in beautiful things is a grave impertinence to all painters; but Mr. Whistler was relentless, and, with charming ease and much grace of manner, explained to the public that the only thing they should cultivate was ugliness, and that on their permanent stupidity rested all the hopes of ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... their distinction and success must be its distinction and success; and that there can be but one heart beating between them and it. In particular, I would most especially entreat them to observe that nothing will ever be further from this Association's mind than the impertinence of patronage. The prizes that it gives, and the certificates that it gives, are mere admiring assurances of sympathy with so many striving brothers and sisters, and are only valuable for the spirit in ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... improbabilities; but I am much mistaken if you will enjoy it the less for that. A quaint personal touch, which (to anyone who does not recall the cast of Pinkie and the Fairies on its revival) might well seem an impertinence, produced in me the comfortable glow of superiority that rewards the well-informed. But I can assure Baroness VON HUTTEN that she is all wrong about the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... in the face o' Providence in any such way. I shall sleep as usual, an' as for your rhoobarb,' ses the cap'n, working hisself up into a passion—'damme, sir, I'll—I'll dose the whole crew with it, from first mate to cabin-boy, if I have any impertinence.' ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... nonsense," returned the ghost, throwing a quart of indignation into the face of the master of Harrowby. "It may rank high as repartee, but as a comment upon my statement that you do not know what you are talking about, it savors of irrelevant impertinence. You do not know that I am compelled to haunt this place year after year by inexorable fate. It is no pleasure to me to enter this house, and ruin and mildew everything I touch. I never aspired to be a shower-bath, but it is my doom. Do you ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... of which last assertion Miss Alice Audley treated her stepmother with such very palpable impertinence that Sir Michael felt himself called upon to remonstrate with his ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... lay for two whole days. On the third day there came two Wild Geese, or rather Ganders, who had not been long out of their egg-shells, which accounts for their impertinence. ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... in the general laugh, she did not feel quite satisfied; she feared that if not checked in time, Jane would proceed to actual impertinence, and that Marianne would be tempted to follow her example, but she did not like to interfere, and only advised Marianne to be on her guard, hoping that Emily would also ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you full permission, and acquit you of all sins, whether of disrespect, meanness, impertinence, ungentle-manlike practices, or any other vice that may be thought to attend and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the owner gather it with discretion, and manage his little stock with husbandry; but, of all things, let him beware of bringing it under the lash of his betters, because that will make it all bubble up into impertinence, and he will find no new supply. Wit without knowledge being a sort of cream, which gathers in a night to the top, and by a skilful hand may be soon whipped into froth; but once scummed away, what appears underneath will be fit for nothing ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... field, a copyright on the book. It is like the particular flavors of fruits,—of no account but in relation to their saccharine, acid, and other staple elements. It must therefore keep its place, or become an impertinence. If it grow forward, officious, and begin to push in between the pure nature and its divine ends, at once it is a meddling Peter, for whom there is no due greeting but "Get thee behind me, Satan." If the fruit have a special flavor of such ambitious pungency ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... of your impertinence, you vulgar, low people!" says Betsinda, walking off with her pan of coals. She heard the young gentlemen playing at billiards as she went upstairs: first to Prince Giglio's bed, which she warmed, and then ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... found that Sidonia could not do without her, said, "But, gracious Lady Prioress, you yourself accused the dairy-mother of witchcraft when you came back from Stettin, and found the poor priest in his coffin!" which impertinence, however, my hag so resented, that she hit Anna a blow on the mouth, and exclaimed in great wrath, "Take that for thy impudence, thou daring peasant wench!" But, calming herself in a moment, added, "Ah, good Anna, is it not human to err?—have you ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... might have been taken for obstinacy, that her nice discrimination might at the same period have been taken for adolescent caprice, and that the positive expression of her quick intellect might have been thought youthful impertinence before her years had ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... interview, I should like to see her." Some man, signing himself "A Reader," having criticised him in a perfectly respectful manner for making the above distinction, the reverend gentleman replied to him through the Star: "His impertinence is quite characteristic. He probably knows as much about the Bible as a wild ass' colt, and is requested at this time to keep a proper distance. When a body is trying to find out and pay attention to a lady, it is not good manners for 'A Reader' to be thrust in between us." ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... rights and duties as well as the House of Representatives, and the maxim that the rights of one person or body are to be so exercised as not to impair those of others is applicable in its fullest extent to this question. Impertinence or malignity may seek to make the Executive Departments the means of incalculable and irremediable injury to innocent parties by throwing into them libels most foul and atrocious. Shall there be no discretionary authority permitted ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... of the impertinence of whose presence many of us have had painful proof, is the third or last molar, so absurdly misnamed the wisdom tooth. If there be any wisdom involved in its appearance it is of the sort characterized by William Allen White's delicious definition: "That type ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... scoundrel!" cried Montague, who was as much nettled by a feeling of uncertainty how to act as by the impertinence of the man. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... pilgrimage, as he had been at the beginning,—in that immortal company. We are indebted, with the reader, to the kindness of our friend for permission to print the whole of what was written. It would be impertinence to offer a remark on it. Once read, its noble and affectionate ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... I should think; so none of your impertinence," cried Philip, with a raised colour; and lifting his hand, in which he held his ramrod, he shook it menacingly over the gardener's head,—"I've a ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... no unsatisfactory rooms," was the answer, followed by: "Front 625 and 6," and fresh pages and bellboys fell upon the yellow baggage, and Marjorie, in a hot confusion of counting her property and wondering how to resent the young man's impertinence, ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... people, I began to think myself in Lilliput. I was afraid of trampling on every traveler I met, and often called aloud to have them stand out of the way, so that I had like to have gotten one or two broken heads for my impertinence. ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... pity the whipping-post has been abolished," he said, harshly. "Your impertinence makes you a fit subject for it, mistress! Take care we don't commit you to prison as a public vagrant, and teach that tongue of yours a little ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... Serjeant Dunning was repeatedly asked if he did not live close to the Court. On admitting that he did, the further question was put, "And pray, sir, for what reason did you take up your residence in that place?"—"To avoid the rascally impertinence of dunning," came the ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... one? I might assure you that when maidens play against Fame they risk all these treasures and more, without hope of leniency from their opponent, who (you will note) is the same sex. But you will answer by return of post, that this is no business of mine, and that I exhibit the usual impertinence of man when asked to consider woman's serious aspiration. You will protest that you are ready to stake all this. Very well, then: listen, if you have patience, to a little story that I came upon, a week since, about a man who spent ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... afraid he did not take in her information as fully as appeared. For when, after they had sat waiting for him for some minutes, the worthy farmer drove up with a cheery "Good morning, Mrs. Twiss," Toby had the impertinence to bark furiously at him and his most respectable old mare, as if they had not quite as good a right as ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... recompensed you adequately," the former college official replied. "And you have no right to use the word 'stolen.' I shall report you for impertinence." ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Judy. "Either I'm so good I'm safe; or I'm so bad it's no use trying to take care of me. You poor boys, she will try to take care of you. What impertinence!" ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... quickly, as if about to return an indignant answer to such impertinence, but she only said, "Well, what of Col. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... 'It is great impertinence to send up at our dinner hour with such a request. I cannot agree to your running down to the village as late as this. The ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... as loudly as he could, putting, as is usual in such cases, his mouth near the ground, to make the sound reverberate. The river was too broad for a ball to reach him, so we let him enjoy himself, certain that he durst not have been guilty of the impertinence in the Bushman country. Wherever the game abounds, these animals exist in proportionate numbers. Here they were very frequently seen, and two of the largest I ever saw seemed about as tall as common donkeys; but the mane made their bodies appear ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... handle." Certainly Wogan needed Misset if he was to succeed in his endeavour. He was sunk in humiliation; his very promise to rescue the Princess shrank from its grandeur and became a mere piece of impertinence. But he still had his letter in his pocket, and in time that served to enhearten him. Only two more days, he thought. On the third night he ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... tell 'ee when the time comes," rejoined the coxswain, in a soothing tone that took off the impertinence of his thus speaking to his officer. "You leave it to me, sir, and I'll find a way, if man can do it, to get alongside our old hooker; 'sides them aboard 'll be on the lookout, too, and between the pair on us we ought fur ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... inference would lead us to suppose that this mutual inclination had commenced before the opening of the play. The very first words uttered by Beatrice are an inquiry after Benedick, though expressed with her usual arch impertinence:— ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... minds more delicate and tender, easily offended by every deviation from rectitude, soon disgusted by ignorance or impertinence, and always expecting from the conversation of mankind more elegance, purity and truth, than the mingled mass of life will easily afford. Such men are in haste to retire from grossness, falsehood and brutality; and hope to find in private ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... I, looking sternly at the boy, "and I'll say right here, that I'm one of her friends, and I won't stand for any impertinence or any remarks of any sort about that lady. If she is suspected of this crime, let the law take its course, but until there is some direct evidence, don't you dare to connect her name ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... lying?" said Sir Francis, propounding a great doctrine in sociology. "If I feel cut up what's the use of saying I don't,—unless I want to deceive the man I'm talking to? If I feel that I'd like a girl to be punished for her impertinence, what's the use of my pretending to myself that I don't want it? If I wish a person to be injured, what's the use of saying I wish them all the good in the world,—unless there's something to be gained by my saying it? Now I don't care to tell ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... of his remarkable exhibitions of youthfulness. Flinging aside his decrepitude, as though it had been no more than an affectation, he shot bolt upright, gripping the arms of his chair. "Last night, within a handful of hours of my forbidding him the house, he had the impertinence to call here to inform me that he was in love with Terry. Not content with that, he added insult to his impertinence by telling me that he had been your valet. How is it, Taborley, that on that evening when you dined here as his fellow-guest, you never once hinted by look ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... he quoted as his excuse for what would otherwise be an inexcusable impertinence. The master was aware that politics in Japan were in an unsettled state, and that the new Cabinet was scarcely established; that a storm would overthrow it, and that the Opposition were already looking ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... up again in her hammock, with impatience, "Pereo is becoming intolerable. The man is as mad as Don Quixote; it is impossible to conceal his eccentric impertinence and interference from strangers, who can not understand his confidential position in our house or his long service. There are no more mayordomos, child. The Vallejos, the Briones, the Castros, do without them now. Dr. West says, wisely, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... the greatest credit for not having made an onslaught on Brewster for his foolish impertinence about your views in "Good Words," but declined to stir nationality, which you know (in him) is rather more ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... pages of that painful, and yet pleasant, book—"East and West,"— which I have just quoted; and to read, also, an appendix to it—a Paper originally read at the Church Congress, Manchester, by the present Lord Chancellor—a document which it would be an impertinence in me ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... cannot be impertinence to pray for a soul in danger, as yours is, my darling. I cannot tell how he knew it, but it is so. It is my sin which has kept you blind and hidden the truth from you, and how can I be angry if another man joins his prayers to mine for your ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... but, in my humble opinion, the title of the English Rabelais which is given the dean is highly derogatory to his genius. The former has interspersed his unaccountably- fantastic and unintelligible book with the most gay strokes of humour; but which, at the same time, has a greater proportion of impertinence. He has been vastly lavish of erudition, of smut, and insipid raillery. An agreeable tale of two pages is purchased at the expense of whole volumes of nonsense. There are but few persons, and those ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... as strong a sense of democratic equality as any one could wish. But the soft ingenuousness of their manners and their tact disarm wrath at the rare little liberties which they take. Even their way of addressing their former masters by the familiar "thou" betokens respectful affection, not impertinence. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... nothing better to do than to ask the 'Master' why he took his inspiration for those two faces from the same model. No doubt she was proud of her discerning eye. It was really clever of her. Allegre, however, looked on it as a colossal impertinence; but he answered ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... United States." He accordingly cautioned the United States "to bear in mind probabilities and possibilities as to the future conduct of Germany, and therefore increase gradually our naval strength." Bismarck pronounced the Monroe Doctrine "an international impertinence," and this has been the German view ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... God whom all spiritual workers should serve, counting it a greater achievement to inspire their fellow men with a true adoration of our Lord than to win the acclaim of the world." But like Mynster the highly feted poet accepted this frank questioning of his inner motive as an unwarranted impertinence, the stupid intrusion of an intolerable fanatic with whom no friend of true enlightenment could have anything to do. Grundtvig was fast finding out what it means to be counted a fool for Christ's sake—or for what he thought ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... him as he spoke that such a possibility had been always in his mind. And during the past week there had been much bad blood between aunt and niece. Twice had the child gone to bed supperless, and yesterday, for some impertinence, Hannah had given her a blow, the marks of which on her cheek Reuben had watched guiltily all day. At night he had dreamed of Sandy. Since Mr. Ancrum had set him thinking, and so stirred his conscience in various indirect and unforeseen ways, Sandy had been a terror to him; the dead ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... think if you had any affection for me, Louis," said Mittie, turning pale, as his praises of Helen fell on Clinton's ear, "you would resent the rudeness and impertinence to which you have just exposed me. What must your friend think of me? Was it to lower me in his opinion that you carried him to her hovel, and drew forth her spiteful ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... that no one is ever willingly shy, and that it is a misery which all would avoid if they could. It is even better to allow children considerable freedom of speech with strangers, than to repress and silence them. Of course impertinence and unpleasant comments, such as children will sometimes make on the appearance or manners of strangers, must be checked, but it should be on the grounds of the unpleasantness of such remarks, and not on the ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... course I do," he answered, without the least sense of impertinence. "Do you think if I didn't I'd have taken so much trouble to try and educate you?" For he had talked to her much in their walks on ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... pedants by nature and by grace, who remind me of that man who, purposing to console a father whose son has suddenly died in the flower of his years, says to him, "Patience, my friend, we all must die!" Would you think it strange if this father were offended at such an impertinence? For it is an impertinence. There are times when even an axiom can become an impertinence. How many times may it not ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... then at last he put into two words—"Do YOU?"—more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain. Before I had time to deal with that, however, he continued as if with the sense that this was an impertinence to be softened. "Nothing could be more charming than the way you take it, for of course if we're alone together now it's you that are alone most. But I hope," he threw in, "you ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... think that all arguments are good when on the right side, and that it is a gratuitous impertinence to quarrel with the proofs of a conclusion which it is so desirable that all should receive. As yet, however, we are but inadequately acquainted with the idea attached by Spinoza to the word perfection; and if we commit ourselves to his logic, it may lead us out to ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... must be smoothed and made even. This is a very pretty process, and used to be performed by machines which bore the very pretty names of valseuses. That paviour's rammers should be called demoiselles has always seemed to me an outrage and an impertinence, though I may suppose it finds its excuse in the short-waisted costumes of our grandmothers. But the movement of the glass-smoothing valseuses was really a sort of waltz movement. The plates of glass ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... took all sorts of undesirables under her protection, helped those whom everybody else wanted to punish, threw good discretion to the winds, and sometimes mixed in undertakings which no "lady" ought to touch. To all this she added the impertinence of regular attendance at church, where she recited the Creeds in a rich voice that almost drowned her husband's, turning punctually to the East and bowing at the Sacred Name. That she was a hypocrite trying to save ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... poetic quality enough to be worth translating, must be made to lose by the process as little as may be of its worth; and its worth every poem owes entirely to its poetic quality and the degree of that. A prose translation of a poem is an aesthetic impertinence, Shakespeare was at first opened to the people of the Continent in prose, because there was not then culture enough to reproduce him in verse. And in Shakespeare there is so much practical sense, so much telling comment on life, so much wit, such animal ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... spoke hesitantly, "you look very fit and seem absolutely on edge, but I'm afraid you're rather overdoing things. I don't mean any impertinence of suggestion, but the trout are jumping in the mountain brooks just now. Can't you drop things for a few days and climb into a flannel shirt—and rest? You could go somewhere where the leaves are rustling in the woods and things are as God made them, ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... want-to-knows had the impertinence to inquire of Mr. Lincoln his opinion of General Sheridan, not yet known, who had come out of the West early in 1864, to take command of the cavalry under ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... She actually had the impertinence to look indignant. 'It's shame I cry on you, miss, for tryin' to break the pore man's 'eart. Then I s'pose I can't give 'im that ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... "What impertinence!" said one of the ladies to Miss Blake. "What can she know about it? Is she not the young person ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... verily believe, to avoid publishing my book. In short, of all the seventeen booksellers, only one has vouchsafed even to read my tales; and he—a literary dabbler himself, I should judge—has the impertinence to criticise them, proposing what he calls vast improvements, and concluding, after a general sentence of condemnation, with the definitive assurance that he will not be concerned on any terms.... But there does seem ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... Gallegher, with that calm impertinence that made him dear to us. "He'll dress just like a gentleman. Toughs don't wear gloves, and you see he's got to wear 'em. The first thing he thought of after doing for Burrbank was of that gone finger, and how he was to hide it. He stuffed the finger of that ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... uncomfortable child. The character and appearance of this infant, so utterly unlike all its companions, had already excited my curiosity, but I had found no opportunity of asking a question without risking an impertinence. On this occasion, however, I ventured to make some remark on the extreme gentleness and forbearance with which not only Eveena but the children treated ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... asking, hither hurried whence? And, without asking, whither hurried hence! Another and another Cup to drown The Memory of this Impertinence! ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... had a drink in God knows how long. I—but never mind! If that's the way you feel about it, I withdraw my request. Keep your darned old brandy. But let me tell you one thing, Murray; I don't like your impertinence. ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... I'll do nothing of the kind, for it is an impertinence to want to change the counsels of the Lord. And what has happened here is, indeed, not the work ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... an impertinence," he said; "I wish it were in my power to show how much it costs me to offend you. This is the first time you ever had occasion to be offended. If I were to yield to the fear of your anger and were to hold my tongue now, and by any chance you were to ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Stangrave, "if I asked for her portrait, as I shall do some day, and the artist sat down and painted the said 'wastes of time,' on pretence of their being there, I should consider it an impertinence on his part. What business has he to spy out what nature has taken ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... learn," aid he, "that you yourself ever were able to make good soldiers out of country clowns in less than a month's time. When you have done so, then you may speak to me on the subject without impertinence." ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... right, Augustus, to come like a man, and tell me all these things; and now I must tell you, that some of them I had heard of before. I wish I had that Jew, that Mr. Carat of yours, here! and that stage-coachman, who had the impertinence to take you out with him at night. But it's all Mr. Supine's fault—and mine, for not choosing a better tutor for you. As to Lord Rawson, I can't blame you either much for that, for I encouraged the connexion, I must own. I'm glad you ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... or regarding it as an impertinence, the temper of the rabble grew threatening. They shouted vulgar insults; and there was talk of battering in the doors and setting the house on fire. This might have happened, had not Ludwig himself, who never lacked personal courage, plunged into ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... impertinence!" murmured my uncle Jervas, his aesthetically pallid cheek tinged with unusual colour. "Your aunt knows her own mind and has grieved, raged, wept, languished and advertised for you in her ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... thoughts spoil all: that the mischief began there; but that we ought to reject them, as soon as we perceived their impertinence to the matter in hand, or our salvation; and return to ...
— The Practice of the Presence of God the Best Rule of a Holy Life • Herman Nicholas
... of Baulm, Rosemary, Wormwood, Scurvy-grass, &c. Affirming that without the gross Plant, we might have healing, cooling, generous, and refreshing Cordials, and all the Materia Medica out of the Salt-Cellar only: But to say no more of this Impertinence, as to Salts of Vegetables; many indeed there be, who reckon them not much unlike in Operation, however different in Taste, Crystals, and Figure: It being a question, whether they at all retain the Vertues and Faculties of their ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... it is certain from the books, the names whereof head this article, that some who desire their fulfilment are no mere fanatics or dreamers. They evince, without exception, that moderation which is a proof of true earnestness. Mr. Mill's book it is almost an impertinence in me to praise. I shall not review it in detail. It is known, I presume, to every reader of this Magazine, either by itself or reviews: but let me remind those who only know the book through reviews, that those reviews (however able or fair) are most probably written by men of inferior intellect ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... not grafted upon Nature; it proclaims her affinity with man, and links her spontaneous benefits with his invention and his needs; it seems to celebrate the stream over which it rises, and to wed the wayward waters to the order and the mystery of life. There is no hint of superfluity or impertinence in a bridge; it blends with the wildest and the most cultivated scene with singular aptitude, and is a feature of both rural and metropolitan landscape that strikes the mind as essential. The most usual form has its counterpart in those rocky arches which flood and fire have excavated or penned up ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... persons; I would 'av brought you quaite safe—the lady she seem so nice and quaite, and we should 'av been safe with her—there would 'av been nothing absolutely; but instead you would scream and pooshe, and so they grow quite wild, and all the impertinence and violence follow of course; and that a poor Bill—all his beating and danger to his life it is cause entairely ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... have been a touch of impertinence in the last words; on the other hand, it might have been but the native grace of Mr Fledgeby's manner. Mr Fledgeby sat on a stool with a foot on the rail of another stool, and his hat on. Mr Twemlow had uncovered on looking in at the door, and remained so. Now the conscientious Twemlow, knowing what ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... does that evoke? What other than that of a young gallant in a lace collar, with lovelocks over his shoulders, pointed Vandyke fingers, possibly a peaked chin-beard? There is accomplishment enough, beauty enough, God knows; but there is impertinence too; it is ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... he was not a teacher, and had no more authority over me than I over him, I declined to obey, but sent word that if he wished to see me he could come where I was. I then walked down to the brook in Carver's field. He followed me, as soon as he had received my message, and, charging me with impertinence, challenged me to a fight. Well, we had a fight; but he attacked ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... afternoon: she might, perchance, run danger from some Cuban emissary, when the presence of a friend might turn the balance in her favour: how, then, if he should follow her? To offer his company would seem like an intrusion; to dog her openly were a manifest impertinence; he saw himself reduced to a more stealthy part, which, though in some ways distasteful to his mind, he did not doubt that he could practise with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... maundering on in this way I was, fortunately for my own self-respect, returning to my senses. When I spoke again I was composed enough to treat his impertinence with the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... a child is born or conceived that the community has any right to interest itself in the sexual acts of its members. The sexual act is of no more concern to the community than any other private physiological act. It is an impertinence, if not an outrage, to seek to inquire into it. But the birth of a child is a social act. Not what goes into the womb but what comes out of it concerns society. The community is invited to receive a new citizen. It is entitled to demand that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... with its trace of mischievousness. Becoming conscious of his consciousness of her, he cast her deliberately out of his mind and concentrated upon Mr. Stevens. The two men gazed quite steadily at each other, not to the point of impertinence at all, but nevertheless rather absorbedly. Really it was only for a fleeting moment, but in that moment they had each penetrated the husk of the other, had cleaved straight down to the soul, had estimated ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... th' self, old ir'n, and other baggage, With which thy steed of bones and leather Has broke his wind in halting hither; 695 How durst th', I say, adventure thus T' oppose thy lumber against us? Could thine impertinence find out To work t' employ itself about, Where thou, secure from wooden blow, 700 Thy busy vanity might'st show? Was no dispute a-foot between The caterwauling Brethren? No subtle question rais'd among 705 Those out-o-their wits, and those i' th' wrong; No prize between those combatants O' ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... after-life. His lordship had sense enough to conclude that, as the nobility do not talk Greek, he had no occasion to learn it; and as hereditary legislators have nothing to do with the exact sciences, it would be a piece of idle impertinence in him to study mathematics. But his lordship had heard that hereditary legislators did occasionally indulge in other pursuits, and for those pursuits he took especial care to qualify himself. In his lordship's cranium, the organ ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... more amazed or more angry than I, when I first read this letter. "What!" cried I to myself, "does this man seriously recommend me to lash my own shoulders? Just Heaven, what impertinence! And yet, is it not my duty to put up with it? Does not this apparent insolence proceed from the pen of a holy man? If he tells me to flog my wickedness out of me, is it not my bounden duty to lay on the scourge with all my might immediately? Sinner that I am! I am thinking remorsefully of ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... full armour to a crossroad, and challenging every one to single combat who declined to acknowledge his particular fair to be queen of love and beauty, and that no one else should hold a candle to her! Now we should think it great impertinence in a fellow to offer his ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... a fairy princess; for Eve was quite sumptuous in her dinner gown of white and shining satin, with a fur-trimmed wrap of white and silver. She wore, also, a princess air of graciousness, quite different from the half appealing impertinence of her morning mood when she ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey |
