"Uncongenial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... numbers. None but a very few of the richest planters lived in the profusion described on page four. As for the enrolment in colleges between 1859 and 1860, and the incomes of the higher institutions, that is all bosh. Francis Lieber was a German by birth, found his service in South Carolina very uncongenial, and stood by the union. To compare slavery to apprenticeship is an affront. The day's work set down by Murat (whose history of the United States is a very obscure work) is contrary to evidence North ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... that I should not be quite accustomed to the loss of my darling yet. Three or four hours were not a long time after years. But my mind dwelt so much upon the uncongenial scene in which I had left her, and I pictured it as such an overshadowed stony-hearted one, and I so longed to be near her and taking some sort of care of her, that I determined to go back in the evening only to look up ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... slain, incensed will rise, And pour their vengeance on my enemies." Then thus aloud—"Can idle words avail? Why still of Rustem urge the frequent tale? Why for the elephant-bodied hero ask? Thee, he will find—no uncongenial task. Why seek pretences to destroy my life? Strike, for no Rustem views ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the opposite wall—the portrait of an elderly gentleman stiffened over a corresponding volume, which he held in invincible mortmain in his rigid hand, and apparently defied posterity to take from him—seemed to offer a not uncongenial companionship. Yet the greenish light of the shade fell upon a young and pretty face, despite the color it extracted from it, and the hand that supported her low white forehead over which her full hair was simply parted, ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... of Truesdale's intended departure for the Orient. "He finds Chicago uncongenial, ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... now, but I was in much the same fix that you were in to-night, and it was my only way out. I never meant it for anything more; but I'd tasted blood, and it was all over with me. Why should I work when I could steal? Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, when excitement, romance, danger and a decent living were all going begging together? Of course it's very wrong, but we can't all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is very wrong to begin ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... well knew, was much given to the entertainment and encouragement of serious young evangelical clergymen. He was again, he said, "upon the world, having found the air of a cathedral town, and the very nature of cathedral services, uncongenial to his spirit;" and then he sat awhile, making firm resolves as to his manner of parting from the bishop, and also as ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... been born and reared in rude settlements. They never indulged the delusion that this region was a land flowing with milk and honey. Before they came they knew that they were to wrest their living from an uncongenial soil, to struggle with penury and to conquer only by constant toil and self-denying thrift. The forest would supply them with the materials for shelter and fuel and to some extent with food and clothing. All the rest must depend upon their own exertions. There was a pleasure in facing ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... strong sense of relief and freedom that he at last escaped from what had seemed to him an interminable period of captivity to the uncongenial moods and manners of other people. He opened the door of his rooms with a sense of having returned to a place where he could be himself—his new self—that strange new self who singularly failed to enjoy the companionship ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... the little time since Francis had carried her off than in all her life before. The Marjorie of a year ago would not have answered the challenge of her husband to prove herself an honorable woman by taking over a long, hard, uncongenial task. She would have picked up her skirts and fled back to New ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... however, has not seemingly regretted the inability of Byron to trammel his muse with the uncongenial fetters of Pope's metre, and has certainly never quarrelled with Tom Moore for not assuming the manners and diction of the revered Samuel ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... from indigence to opulence by business capabilities must have brains worthy of admiration, but the man who makes a fortune as M'Swat of Barney's Gap was making his must he dirt mean, grasping, narrow-minded, and soulless—to me the most uncongenial of my fellows. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... individual soul. The woman who refused to abandon all for love's sake, was not only a coward but a criminal, guilty of the deadly sin of sacrificing her soul, committing it to a prison where it would languish and never blossom to its full perfection. The man who was bound to uncongenial drudgery by the chains of an early marriage or aged parents dependent on him, was the victim of a tragedy which drew tears from our eyes. The woman who neglected her home because she needed a "wider sphere" in which to develop her personality was a champion of women's ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... Sunday afternoon, and the reading in Saint Paul's was over for that day. But it was too soon to go back to the bosom of that uncongenial household which Agnes called home; for Mistress Winter was generally extra cross—and the ordinary exhibition was enough without the extra—if Agnes presented herself before she was expected. The now deserted steps ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... answered, "you'll find me very glum and uncongenial. You'll probably be only too glad ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... outspoken praise, a somewhat unusual circumstance. But now he was called back to the work that more properly belonged to an officer of Her Majesty's North West Mounted Police and his soul glowed with the satisfaction of those who, having been found faithful in uncongenial duty, are rewarded with an opportunity to do a bit of work which ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... herself to be so sensitive. An elderly woman in fussy black silk stood there, waiting for a streetcar; she was all of a globular modelling, with a face patterned like a frost-bitten peach; and that the approaching gracefulness was uncongenial she naively made too evident. Her round, wan eyes seemed roused to bitter life as they rose from the curved high heels of the buckled slippers to the tight little skirt, and thence with startled ferocity to the Malacca cane, which plainly appeared to her as a decoration ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... as if weary at last of seeing me between her paws, suddenly let me escape. Before I had been working a month at my uncongenial trade Big Rapids was favored by a visit from a Universalist woman minister, the Reverend Marianna Thompson, who came there to preach. Her sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, and I was, I think, almost the earliest arrival of the great congregation which filled the church. It ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... we sat and chatted as only the bush-folk can (the bush-folk are only silent when in uncongenial society), "putting in" a fair amount of time writing our names on one page of an autograph album; and as strong brown hands tried their utmost to honour Christmas day with something decent in the way of writing, each man declared that he had never written so badly ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... interruption. As Charleston was the first to throw off the yoke of Great Britain and draw up a constitution which she thought adapted to independent government, so did she first express the determination of South Carolina to break the bonds that held her turbulent political soul in uncongenial association. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... either from inherited passion or evil education, have deliberately and of free choice entered upon a life of shame; but the great majority do so under the stress of temptation; sometimes because of poverty or chafing against uncongenial employment, with meager wages. They are told that in the profession of prostitution, they can, if they are lucky, make more in a single night than they could ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... a more minute attention to his wants, and have an assistant in the task of ministering to his infirmities; that assistant too the lord of her affections, to whom she was ha longer compelled to wear the air of cold reserve so uncongenial ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... of the falls; the cities of the "Old National Road," Columbus, Indianapolis; the cities of the Blue Grass lands, which made Kentucky the goal of the pioneers; and the cities of that young commonwealth, whom the Ohio river by force of its attraction tore away from an uncongenial control by the Old Dominion, and joined to the social section where ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... however, of any attempt to form an opinion of his own upon Arnold's life and character, while achieving a result that not only assured his own position at Oxford, but brought him well into the front rank of contemporary writers. The religious animosity at Oxford was uncongenial to Stanley, and it was only the prospect of Dr. Arnold occupying the Chair of Modern History that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... of reasoned courage is visible in the hasty adaptation of the Frenchwoman to all kinds of uncongenial jobs. Almost every kind of service she has been called to render since the war began has been fundamentally uncongenial. A French doctor once remarked to me that Frenchwomen never make really good sick-nurses except when they are nursing their ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... had entirely left us, for Bennett and I had before us one of the most uncongenial tasks that an officer can have. The news has to be broken by someone when a wife is suddenly made a widow, and the task is generally taken on by the dead man's platoon commander, who sends back home his letters and papers. There were many men who had died that afternoon, ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... two hundred pounds—a life-insurance for five hundred had been sacrificed to exigencies not very long before. He had no difficulty in deciding how to use this money. His mother's desire to live in London had in him the force of an inherited motive; as soon as possible he released himself from his uncongenial occupations, converted into money all the possessions of which he had not immediate need, and betook himself ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Carroll walked toward Horsfield's residence in a thoughtful mood, because he felt it incumbent upon him to play a part he was not particularly fitted for in a somewhat delicate matter. Uncongenial as his task was, it was one that could not be left to Vane, who was even less to be trusted with the handling of such affairs; and Carroll had resolved, as he would have described it, to ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... guest of a City Company may be seen fighting his way, like a minnow against stream, in a hansom to his dinner at the hall of the Guild. Still, he goes "where glory waits him," so what recks he that the hour is altogether uncongenial and inconvenient? ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... dressed. Since she had left Mme. Regina's she had spent her days in the streets, partly to escape from the uncongenial promiscuities of the boarding-house, and partly in the hope that physical fatigue would help her to sleep. But once out of the house, she could not decide where to go; for she had avoided Gerty since her dismissal from the milliner's, and she ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... and coldness make uncongenial neighbors. The man, all passion, and the woman, who has no answering spark, grope toward each other through devious and ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Eton and Harrow match my recollection of the weather is of dull, sultry heat and oppression of spirits. Cricket never seemed the same game as I knew and loved at Harrow, or in my own home in Surrey; there was an unreality about it, and a black coat and top hat were insufferably uncongenial. ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... previous sketch it may readily be gathered that the state of Chinese law, both civil[*] and criminal, is a very important item in the sum of those obstacles which bar so effectually the admission of China—not into the cold and uncongenial atmosphere euphuistically known as the "comity of nations"—but into closer ties of international intercourse and friendship on a free and equal footing. For as long as we have ex-territorial rights, and are compelled to avail ourselves thereof, we can regard the Chinese nation ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... of common-place minds," of which the "obscured head will often shed forth ascending beams that can only be lost in eternity;" and of which the "mighty struggles to upheave its own weight, and that of the superincumbent mass of prejudice, envy, ignorance, folly, or uncongenial force, must ever ensure the deepest sympathy of all those who can appreciate the spirit of its qualities;" let the initiative skyward struggles towards the zenith-abysses of the inane impalpable ——, &c. &c. &c. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... by such bold, fearless conduct that Jackson won admiration,—not by his law, of which he knew but little, and never could have learned much. The law, moreover, was uncongenial to this man of action, and he resigned his judgeship and went for a short time into business,—trading land, selling horses, groceries, and dry-goods,—when he was appointed major-general of militia. This was just what he wanted. He had ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... as we can judge without a close and uncongenial scrutiny of statistics, that daily journey, that has governed and still to a very considerable extent governs the growth of cities, has had, and probably always will have, a maximum limit of two hours, one hour each way from sleeping ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the smoking hole and went back for more. Even old Mangivik did that as fast as his rheumatic limbs would let him. Raventik, reckless as usual, sprang down with a mighty lump, but finding the atmosphere below uncongenial, hurled it towards his predecessors, and sprang up again for a fresh supply, watering at the eyes and choking. The poor invalid Ondikik walked as hard as his fast-failing strength would permit. The women even, led by the thoroughly roused Cowlik, bore ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... hobgoblins at their house in the forest, without their thunderous low growlings of the alarming discovery, 'Somebody's been drinking MY milk!' It was a delicious repast; by far the most delicious that Bella, or John Rokesmith, or even R. Wilfer had ever made. The uncongenial oddity of its surroundings, with the two brass knobs of the iron safe of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles staring from a corner, like the eyes of some dull dragon, only ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... otherwise than agreeable. Was this tacit acquiescence of hers an encouragement? Was she willing to afficher herself, as a married woman, with a cavalier? Her married life was intolerable, he was sure of that; her husband uncongenial. He told himself that ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... farm, it would at least have the advantage of convenience, or if you thought it better to divide and sell your farm it would answer for one of the divisions. I am clear for your marrying, if you select a good wife; otherwise you had better remain as you are for a time. An imprudent or uncongenial woman is worse than THE MINKS [I had written to him that they had destroyed all my hens]. I think, upon the whole, you are progressing very well and have accomplished the worst part. A failure in crops will occur occasionally to every ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... the stars. What real significance has the tropical radiance of the lotus flower, the sacred symbol of Buddhism, for the Mongolian lama in the cold and arid borders of Gobi or the wind-swept highlands of sterile Tibet? And yet these exotic ideas live on, even if they no longer bloom in the uncongenial soil. But to explain them in terms of their present environment would ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... son, after five years' uncongenial work in a London office, emigrated to Australia in 1860. His quality was quickly recognised by the Provincial Government, which, in 1862, appointed him to command an expedition to examine the rivers in the province of Canterbury, with a ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... shawl did duty as a tablecloth, the fireplace, hidden by a screen, served as a pantry, and the meals were cooked in modest retirement on a stove no larger than a foot-warmer. A tranquil life—that was the dream of the poor woman, who was continually tormented by the whims of an uncongenial companion. ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... specimens and their surroundings there was an incongruity which proved them to be aliens and strangers on the scene, and was fatal to all reverence; an incongruity which the modern Romans have only intensified by raising them on pedestals of most uncongenial forms, and crowning them with hideous masses of metal, representing the insignia of popes or other objects equally unsuitable. We see in the oldest obelisks a wonderful ease and an exquisite finish of execution, a maturity ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... about her extravagance. She had her arrested, condemned and ducked as we have seen. There was no open rupture between Dorothe and her husband's relatives. She still greeted them with half-smiles; but those half-smiles were cold and uncongenial, and there seemed to be a settled purpose on her part as well as theirs to dislike each other. To no one did Dorothe express this dislike save to her husband, and to him she never lost ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... people had nothing in common and their king, William of Orange (the descendant of an uncle of William the Silent), while a hard worker and a good business man, was too much lacking in tact and pliability to keep the peace among his uncongenial subjects. Besides, the horde of priests which had descended upon France, had at once found its way into Belgium and whatever Protestant William tried to do was howled down by large crowds of excited citizens as a fresh attempt upon the "freedom of the Catholic church." On the ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... late acquisition of Eulalie's made observation, compassionately, one evening, seeing Elvira nod over her uncongenial Battenberg-ing by ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... for her aunt, and would naturally be inclined to gratify any wishes that she might express, even had they involved tasks uncongenial and unattractive. But the proposal that she should become an ally in the effort to lure young Haldane from his evil associations, and awaken within him pure and refined tastes, was decidedly attractive. She was peculiarly romantic in her disposition, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... analogy between the positive and the moral law is treacherous. The exclusion of motive justifiable in law may take all meaning out of morality. The Utilitarians, as we shall see, were too much disposed to overlook the difference, and attempt to apply purely legal doctrine in the totally uncongenial sphere of ethical speculation. To accept the legal classification of actions by their external characteristics is, in fact, to beg the question in advance. Any outward criterion must group together actions springing from different 'motives' and therefore, as ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... confess, gave me a rather gloomy impression of Russia, and accounted in some measure for the grave and uncongenial aspect of the people. One always likes to find some bond of sympathy between himself and the inhabitants of the country through which he travels. I remember reading somewhere of a Scotchman who had occasion to visit the United States on business connected ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... For ten years she had inhabited her nook, becoming as much of a fixture among us as the Campanile below. She came, like so many, for the cheapness and dignity of it primarily. Here her little patrimony meant independence, safety from perfunctory and uncongenial contacts at home, and more positively all those purtenances of the gentlewoman that she required. But, unlike the merely thrifty Italianates, she never became blunted by our incessant tea giving and receiving. With familiarity, ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... petitions, I make out the public accounts; I write hosts of letters, but what illiterary productions they are! Sometimes—but how seldom I get the opportunity—I complain to Euphrates about these uncongenial duties. He consoles me and even assures me that there is no more noble part in the whole of philosophy than to be a public official, to hear cases, pass judgment, explain the laws and administer justice, and so practise in short ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... and the period of the visit extended over four or five months. After this long recess De Quincey was placed in the grammar school at Manchester, his guardians expecting that a three years' course in this school would bring him a scholarship at Oxford. However, the new environment proved wholly uncongenial, and the sensitive boy who, in spite of his shyness and his slender frame, possessed grit in abundance, and who was through life more or less a law to himself, made up his mind to run away. His flight ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... On October 7, 1756, the first number of "The New Hampshire Gazette and Historical Chronicle" was issued in Portsmouth from the press of Daniel Fowle, who in the previous July had removed from Boston, where he had undergone a brief but uncongenial imprisonment on suspicion of having printed a pamphlet entitled "The Monster of Monsters, by Tom Thumb, Esq.," an essay that contained some uncomplimentary reflections on several official personages. The "Gazette" was the pioneer journal of the province. It was followed at the close ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... attached to the Swans' during her brief stay with them. She regretted to leave them for the uncongenial society ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... if it were for your father and mother's good,' she said. 'And after all, where we live is not of the importance that I daresay it seems to you. Some of the truly happiest people I have ever known have been so in spite of the most uncongenial surroundings you can imagine.' ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... was material wholly, or pertained to this world alone;—there was another side to it, connected with the unseen and the gods. There were Great Gods in the Pantheon; but your early Roman had no wide-traveling imagination; and they seemed to him remote and uncongenial rather,—and quickly took on Greekishness when the Greek influence began. Minerva, vaguely imagined, assumed soon the attributes of the very concretely imagined Pallas; and so on. But he had nearer and Numaish divinities much ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... estimate of her. We expected too much—we expected more than she was able to give—more than a woman of her character was able to give. She simply acted as she had acted all her life—doing what she liked best—refraining from doing what was uncongenial—what did not amuse her. Poor, beautiful butterfly! she was broken sadly at the finish. By all accounts her married life was very unhappy. She did ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... I am perfectly satisfied, but there are other points which require further elucidation. Among these I may particularly refer to the contracted stigmatic chamber, and the slight viscidity of its disk. The latter, however, may be a consequence of uncongenial conditions—as you do not mention particularly its examination by any author in its natural habitat. If such be the case, the contracted stigmatic chamber will offer no real difficulty, should the viscous exudations be only sufficient to render the mouth adhesive. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... ordinary course, would not be guilty of such behaviour, should be attributed to his influence, so that justice might be effected without persons of assured respectability being put to any inconvenience. Apart from the feeling which resulted from this just decision, the uncongenial person in question had become exceedingly unpopular on account of certain definite actions of his own, as that of causing the greater part of Si-chow to be burned down by secretly breathing upon the seven sacred water-jugs to which the ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... establishment consisting of an old housekeeper, a cat, a dog, a goose, a tame lamb, one hen,—for which he thanked God in poetry because she laid an egg every day,—and a pet pig that drank beer with Herrick out of a tankard. With admirable good nature, Herrick made the best of these uncongenial surroundings. He watched with sympathy the country life about him and caught its spirit in many lyrics, a few of which, like "Corinna's Maying," "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," and "To Daffodils," are among the best known in our language. His poems cover a wide range, from ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... became wiser, partly because he became a little blind, and, especially, because he himself became changed at last. By and by his life was too busy to permit him to watch those about him, or to pronounce judgment on their aims or character. Uncongenial as he had at first found the employment which his uncle had provided for him, he pursued it with a patient steadiness, which made it first endurable, then pleasant to him. At first his duties were merely mechanical; so much writing, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... of a struggle, that the varied, supple, and splendid powers of Lessing were exercised from first to last in an atmosphere of controversy. Instead of delicately nursing the theoretic life in the luxury of the academic cloister, he was forced to work like a slave upon the most uncongenial tasks for a very modest share of daily bread. 'I only wished to have things like other men,' he said in a phrase of pathetic simplicity, at the end of his few short months of wedded happiness; 'I have had but sorry success.' Harassed by small persecutions, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... to see him again. To this young and attractive woman, full of the joy of living, hardly more than a girl, yet married to a much older man, sober-minded, stolid and uncongenial to her, and buried in this dull and lonely station, Wargrave had appealed instantly. Youth calls to youth, and she hailed his advent into her monotonous life as a child greets the coming of a playfellow. With the other two ladies in Rohar ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... is little in them of that mildly dramatic, stirring quality which might perhaps make their recital deserving of being heard beyond my own frugal fireside. Strange to say, only one of the seven is a return trip. I am afraid that the prospect of going back to rather uncongenial work must have dulled my senses. Or maybe, since I was returning over the same road after an interval of only two days, I had exhausted on the way north whatever there was of noticeable impressions to be garnered. Or again, since I was coming from "home," from the company of ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... of the ash-grey birds in their flights. And when I turned my eyes nearer home, and compared the distant beauty of the forests and their radiant clouds with the nakedness and desolation here, I gave up looking from the window with a determination to be gone as soon as possible from a country so uncongenial. ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... expression and a sort of divine simplicity is unmistakable; he is alternately indignant and remorseful; he soars to themes transcendent, and sinks anon to the humble details of his errors and embarrassments. Uncongenial society plunged him into such dark depression that he is not ashamed to confess that he found ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... this being a near athlete," he grumbled. "Sitting at a table with a lot of uncongenial pups like you fellows.—Mr. Upton, Blake's kicking me; make him quit, sir.—Not allowed to eat half the things the rest of you do, and not allowed either to get any of the training-table grub. Well, I never did think of self, so I can ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now—nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air—and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of the eyes under ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... jollification—Jack, at any rate, does not take his pleasures sadly. The gallant bands that have from time to time gone forth to a bloodless campaign in the icy north, have always managed to keep their Christmas right joyously. Certainly they could not complain of uncongenial skies or unseasonable temperatures; while, so far as snow and ice are necessary to thorough enjoyment, the supply in the Arctic regions is on a scale sufficient to satisfy the most ardent admirer of an old-fashioned Christmas. The frozen-in Investigators ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... of the court by his accomplishments.[12] It was of course understood that the Gerusalemme, when completed, should be dedicated to the Duke and shed its splendor on the House of Este. Who was happier than Torquato now? Having recently experienced the discomforts of uncongenial service, he took his place again upon a firmer footing in the city of his dreams. The courtiers welcomed him with smiles. He was once more close to Leonora, basking like Rinaldo in Armida's garden, with golden prospects of the fame his epic would achieve to lift ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... found themselves confronted with the necessity of earning their living, and then their choice had to be made in a hurry; they pushed the nearest door open and went in; and then habit began to forge chains about them; and soon, however uncongenial their life might be, they were incapable of abandoning it. There were some melancholy instances at Cambridge of men of high intellectual power, who had drifted thus into the academical life without any aptitude for ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... well known to him and by no means uncongenial; but Saltash the saint, not only beloved, but reverenced and enshrined as such, as something beyond his comprehension! How on earth had he ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... too assured was civil enough verbally, Somerset proceeded with the young photographer to sundry corners of the outer ward, and thence across the moat to the field, suggesting advantageous points of view. The office, being a shadow of his own pursuits, was not uncongenial to Somerset, and he forgot other things in attending ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the temptation of remarking here that to an unregenerate man the celestial country might turn out a somewhat uncongenial place for a residence. He replied airily that he had considered the point and had no fear about the future; that he was old, and from all he had observed of the methods of government followed by those who ruled over earthly affairs from the sky, he had formed a clear idea of that ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... brothers soon absorbed all Washington's time and attention. Peter was an invalid, and the whole weight of the perplexing affairs of the failing firm fell upon the one who detested business, and counted every hour lost that he gave to it. His letters for two years are burdened with harassments in uncongenial details and unsuccessful struggles. Liverpool, where he was compelled to pass most of his time, had few attractions for him, and his low spirits did not permit him to avail himself of such social advantages as were offered. It seems that ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... applying the same loyalty to conscience in the establishment of peace. We could not live together half slave and half free; shall we succeed better in trying a second left-handed marriage between democracy and another form of aristocracy, less gross, but not less uncongenial? They who before misled the country into a policy false and deadly to the very truth which was its life and strength, by the fear of abolitionism, are making ready to misrule it again by the meaner prejudice of color. We can have ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... brother still lies in a very critical state, and she will not leave him at present. His motherless children, too, she thinks require her care. It seemed very lonesome at first without her. I did not think I could have missed an uncongenial person, one with whom I had so little sympathy, so much. I think I must belong to the tribe of creeping plants, which cling to whatever is nearest to them. Ashcroft grows daily more beautiful, and Thornton comes often to see me. We read together books that I like, (not Dante,) walk and sketch. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... his hand upraised, denounced the mockery of such a couple coming to God's altar. Quiet waters in landscapes, with the sun reflected in their depths, asked, if better means of escape were not at hand, was there no drowning left? Ruins cried, 'Look here, and see what We are, wedded to uncongenial Time!' Animals, opposed by nature, worried one another, as a moral to them. Loves and Cupids took to flight afraid, and Martyrdom had no such torment in its painted ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... attack of fever, determined to call upon his captain, Woodbury Kane, when he got out, and procuring a horse rode until he found Kane's house, when he hitched the horse to a lamp-post and strolled in; how Cherokee Bill married a wife in Hoboken, and as that pleasant city ultimately proved an uncongenial field for his activities, how I had to send both himself and his wife out to the Territory; how Happy Jack, haunted by visions of the social methods obtaining in the best saloons of Arizona, applied for the position of ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... men had been recognized; for from this time on he held important public positions. He was often sent to the Continent—to France, Flanders, and Italy—on diplomatic missions; and for eleven years he was in charge of the London customs, where the uncongenial drudgery occupied almost all his time until through the intercession of the queen he was allowed to perform it by deputy. In 1386 he was a member of Parliament, knight of the shire for Kent; but ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... drew him ever closer to Mr. Gladstone, while it made the House of Commons and the daily doings of politicians uncongenial. There is no doubt that he had learned too well "the secret of intellectual detachment." Early in his life his shrewd and kindly stepfather had pointed out to him the danger of losing influence by a too unrestrained desire ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... name of life. For while we are shut up in this prison of the body, we are fulfilling, as it were, the function and painful task of destiny; for the heaven-born soul has been degraded from its dwelling-place above, and, as it were, buried in the earth, a situation uncongenial to its divine and immortal nature. But I believe that the immortal gods have shed souls into human bodies, that beings might exist who might tend the earth, and by contemplating the order of the heavenly bodies might imitate ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... less gifted than herself might have done so; she merely raised her hands and eyes and gave one deep sigh. Will you believe me that that sigh meant more than any other woman could have put into words? It meant "Pity me! see how I am wasted on this boor of a man! think how uncongenial he is, how ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... hard! You have my unbounded sympathy. I should hate to live in uncongenial surroundings. Isn't there any room in the house you could have for your own, and furnish just ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... who got into the stock market by mistake," observed Adams. "I believe he would have been perfectly happy if he could have owned a single farm, a cow or two and a pair of horses to his plough, but he's condemned to bear the uncongenial weight of millions, and I hear that he has even to give his charities in secret. I never look at him that I don't think of Marcus Aurelius oppressed by the burden of the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... have been of a high reputation among his contemporaries, he could not think that he stood in need of any University distinctions. The Editor became by degrees almost equally indifferent to what he perceived to be so uncongenial to Arthur's mind. It was however to be regretted, that he never paid the least attention to mathematical studies. That he should not prosecute them with the diligence usual at Cambridge, was of course to be expected; yet his clearness and acumen would certainly have enabled him to master the principles ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... diverge, whether we wish it or not), and broke short off to make sudden inquiries after old friends; how this naturally led them to talk of new friends and new scenes, until they began to forecast their eyes a little into the future; and how, on feeling that this was an uncongenial theme under present circumstances, they reverted again to the past, and by a peculiar train of conversation—to retrace which were utterly impossible—they invariably arrived at old times again. Having ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Selection, of which the last sentence is enclosed in pencil in inverted commas, as though Mr. Darwin had intended to quote it: "In other parts of Africa the xanthous variety [of man] often appears, but does not multiply. Individuals thus characterised are like seeds which perish in an uncongenial soil.") ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... great, I should think, will he ever produce. Yet he merits just such successes as the one you describe—triumphs public, brief, and noisy. Notoriety suits Lewes. Fame—were it possible that he could achieve her—would be a thing uncongenial to him: he could not wait for the solemn blast of her trumpet, sounding long, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... condition of survival that they should ignore such cravings. All the distinctive qualities of my uncle can be thought of as dictated by his conditions; his success and harshness, the extravagances that expressed his pride in making money, the uncongenial luxury that sprang from rivalry, and his self-reliance, his contempt for broad views, his contempt for everything that ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... more luxuriant growth. Those of us who have ardent feelings towards our friends know that we are often worse than cold towards those we do not fancy. We sometimes, alas, take a certain pride in our sensitiveness in this particular. We justify our hatred for uncongenial people till we have fairly faced the truth that love is the law of our being, and that we must love our neighbor. Then, though we cannot change our temperament, yet by the doing of prosaic duties, the germ of love may be made to bud and blossom. At least do not ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... architecture the Chinese genius has found but limited and uncongenial expression. A nation of painters has built picturesquely, but this picturesqueness has fought against the attainment of the finest architectural qualities. There has been little development; the arch, for instance, though known to the Chinese from ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Anzac—unless, indeed, with true Oriental passivity, they were content to see us leave their land in peace and had no mind to seek a triumph of destruction which would inure to the benefit of their uncongenial allies. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... thing to confess it, I must candidly admit there is an eastwardly wind sometimes to my place to home), why you would just up wings and off to the sky like wink, and say you didn't like the land of the puritans, it was just like themselves, cold, hard, uncongenial, and repulsive; and what should I do? Why most likely remain behind, for there is no marrying or giving ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... language, this stanza pictures the passage of Urania from 'her secret paradise' to the death-chamber of Adonais in Rome, as if the spiritual essence and external form of the goddess were wounded by the uncongenial atmosphere of human malice and detraction through which she has to pass. The whole description is spiritualized from ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... quickly, in fact, over the thin ice. But his disappointment was none the less keen; there was no splendid peroration to write; there would be no eyes gazing up at him through a mist of tears. His sensations were those of an actor with an altogether uncongenial and stupid part. ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... delivered from the shadow of unreality that had begun to darken the world. For it was as if some power had pronounced against him—as if, by some heedless action, he had offended an Olympian god. Like many another, he wondered whether the god might be appeased by work—hard uncongenial work. Perhaps he had not worked hard enough, or had enjoyed his work too much, and for that reason the ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... parliaments, but had been negatived from six to twelve times during the same session of the existing parliament. Nor would the British nation ever submit to any public measure (much less to loss of the control of one-seventh of their lands, and the infliction upon them of an uncongenial ecclesiastical system) which ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... undecidedly, and it occurred to Esther that the task she was contemplating was an uncongenial one, though why it should be so was not apparent. She ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... warn the young, lest they mistake for heroism and self-sacrifice what is merely pride and self-will, discontent with the relations by which God has bound them, and the circumstances which God has appointed for them. I have known girls think they were doing a fine thing by leaving uncongenial parents or disagreeable sisters, and cutting out for themselves, as they fancied, a more useful and elevated line of life than that of mere home duties; while, after all, poor things, they were only saying, with the Pharisees of old, "Corban, it is a gift, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... forms quite a striking contrast to the almost childlike harmlessness and universal respect toward me observed in the disposition of the villagers. It requires no penetrating scrutiny of these fellows' countenances to ascertain that nothing could be more uncongenial to them than the state of affairs that prevents them stopping ine and looting me of everything I possess; a couple of them order me quite imperatively to make a detour from my road to avoid approaching too near their flock of sheep, and their general behavior is pretty much as though ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... of you, his weakness, his indecision; but it was not for me to warn you, how could I? Then, Marie, changes came to all of us. McAllister came into his inheritance; you went to seek your fortune; I to work hard in a merchant's office in Montreal. For four years, I labored there at most uncongenial work, but I managed to scrape enough together to pay for my course of study at the school of one of the best masters in Paris. These years of drudgery in Montreal and Paris were only brightened by one hope—a hope I scarcely dared acknowledge to myself, ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... death, nor had she Bessie's engrossing preoccupations with herself, her looks, her fancies, her love affairs. Bernard at George Boult's little branch shop in the country town of Ingleby, chained body and soul to the heavy drudgery of uncongenial occupation, thought of his father only with rage and resentment. Franky, childlike, ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... much life in South Africa as well as in Western Australia, but at last he was to see more in Europe as a gentleman of means. A wife had no place in his European scheme; a husband was the last thing Rachel wanted; but a long sea voyage, an uncongenial employ, and the persistent chivalry of a handsome, entertaining, self-confident man of the world, formed a combination as fatal to her inexperience as that of so much poverty, pride, and beauty proved to Alexander Minchin. They were married without ceremony ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... happy change in my daughter's life (let me say nothing of the change in my life) has come: they were married yesterday. The manse is a desert; and sister Judith was never so uncongenial a companion to me as I feel her to be now. Her last words to the married pair, when they drove away, were: "Lord help you both; you have all your ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... from those experiences a wandering and unsettled spirit, which he is thought to have communicated to one at least of his pupils. After an attack of confluent small-pox, which scarred him for life, Oliver was transferred from the care of this not-uncongenial preceptor to a school at Elphin. From Elphin he passed to Athlone; from Athlone to Edgeworthstown, where he remained until he was thirteen or fourteen years of age. The accounts of these early days are contradictory. By his schoolfellows ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... before being drafted into the army at war time. When he lay down at night in the company of men whom in ordinary times he would never think of associating with, he was so tired that he forgot the uncomfortable surroundings and uncongenial society. Never in his life had he slept as he slept now. Never did he imagine he would have to put ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... Ron," Dennis replied. "That may account for the heresy of my profound disbelief in science. I wouldn't cross the road to see a 'miracle.' The twentieth century is uncongenial to anything of that sort. Take it from me, old chap, there's a man at the back of this—not a nice man, I admit, but an ordinary human being to all outward appearances—and when we catch a glimpse of his outward appearances we shall know what ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... his word and wrote by the next post to the French cousin. He wrote a pathetic and powerful appeal to this man, describing the destitute children in terms that might well move his heart. But whether it so happened that the French relation had no heart to be moved, whether he was weary of an uncongenial subject, or was ill, and so unable to reply—whatever the reason, good Mr. Danvers never got any ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... men came into possession of a fine pig, so that we all had pork for our Christmas dinner, a great change from eternal 'trek ox,' but unfortunately nothing stronger to drink than tea. I'm sure it was the first Christmas any of us had spent in such an uncongenial way. ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... by economic pressure to do hard labour. The rough and menial work of the world has always been done through some sort of compulsion, either slavery or some kind of economic coaction, for it is not in human nature, white or black, to work hard at uncongenial tasks unless superior force in some shape or other supplies the driving power. The manual workers of Europe are forced by the economic conditions under which they live to do the heavy and rough work that has to be done—there are very few, even among white men, who like rough work for its own sake—and ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... attraction is quite misunderstood if it is regarded as a peculiarly sexual attraction. Indeed, the whole point of the attraction is that the inverted boy vaguely feels his own feminine disposition and so shuns the uncongenial amusements and society of his own sex for the sympathy and community of tastes which he finds concentrated in his mother. So far from such association being evidence of sexual attraction it might more reasonably be regarded as evidence ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... things were taken and sold. The company into which she was here thrown, was far from being agreeable; but this would have been no source of unhappiness in itself. Cheerfully would she have breathed the uncongenial atmosphere, if there had been nothing in the conduct of her husband to awaken feelings of anxiety. But, alas! there was much to create unhappiness here. Idle days were more frequent; and the consequences of idle ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... great emotion such as Hector and Theodora had been experiencing, to have this uncongenial and hateful pair as ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... and Croesus. A charming bungalow by the sea; capital bathing, shooting, fishing; nice quiet time generally; back Monday morning in season for biz!" This was certainly satisfactory as far as it went, but I added, by way of parenthesis, "and who else will be present?" knowing well enough that one uncongenial spirit might be the undoing of us all. To this Bartholomew responded, "No one but ourselves, old fellow; now don't be queer." He knew well enough my aversion to certain elements unavoidable even in the best society, and how I kept very much to myself, except on ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... unwholesome world,' reflected Karenin. 'I seem to remember everybody about my childhood as if they were ill. They were ill. They were sick with confusion. Everybody was anxious about money and everybody was doing uncongenial things. They ate a queer mixture of foods, either too much or too little, and at odd hours. One sees how ill they were by their advertisements. All this new region of London they are opening up now is plastered with advertisements of pills. Everybody must have been taking pills. In one of the hotel ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... teacher in the free-school there, had died before his birth, and he was sent to be educated at a charity-school. He first learned to read from a black- letter Bible. At the age of fourteen, he was put apprentice to an attorney; a situation which, however uncongenial, left him ample leisure for pursuing his private studies. In an unlucky hour, some evil genius seemed to have whispered to this extra-ordinary youth,—'Do not find or force, but forge thy way to renown; the other paths to the summit of the hill are worn and common-place; try a new and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan |
