"Uninviting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ragged clouds, or how the wind sighed through the naked branches of the trees, just as if anybody cared what nature was doing when human nature held the stage! And yet so marvellous is the fascination of Greece, so captivating the scenes which meet the eye from the uninviting window of a plain little foreign railroad train, that I cannot forbear to risk similar maledictions by saying that it is too heavenly for common words ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... to examine them more carefully, you discover all sorts of snug, little, out-of-the-way closets and recesses, full of old books and old wine, and all things rich and curious. But the entrance is uninviting to a casual acquaintance. Now, when you find an American of the right stamp (here Benson's hands were accidentally employed in adjusting his cravat), he hits the proper medium, and is accessible as a Frenchman and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... find in 175 leagues of coast,—this loftiest hill did not much exceed the height of the ship's masthead! And where the shores are not of this exceedingly level character, they are usually sterile, sandy, and broken, so as to offer rather an uninviting aspect to the stranger. It is obvious that, in either case, whether the coast be flat or barren, there may be many beautiful and lovely districts within a day's journey inland; and nothing is more absurd than to take exception against the whole ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... than this in words, but his tone was so decidedly uninviting of further conversation that I almost concluded to say nothing more. But the drive promised to be a fairly long one, so ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... hollow-eyed appearance. The whole quartier in which they now are, presents a dilapidated front. But when they enter the old, mouldy apartment, lit up with so much of the beautiful, they forgot the gloomy, damp street; the uninviting exterior of the building; the weird old man in charge; everything but the gems by which they are surrounded. Here were some rare bits of Sevres and Dresden china, there some modern tile painting, here some old Roman jugs, ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... trout stream, which at other seasons of the year is a never failing attraction, running as it does for the most part through the woods, in mid winter seldom reflects the light of the sun, and looks cold and uninviting. One may learn much, it is true, of the wonders of nature in the dead time of the year by watching the great trout on the spawn beds as they pile up the gravel day by day, and store up beautiful, transparent ova, of which but a ten-thousandth part ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... of stature above the middle size, and "more fat than bard beseems," of a dull countenance, and a gross, unanimated, uninviting appearance; silent in mingled company, but cheerful among select friends, and by his friends very ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... So-and-So believe so-and-so or something quite different?' and then a discussion of the 'grounds' of this belief. He made 'rejoinders,' 'defenses,' 'animadversions,' and printed the details of his Experiments on Different Kinds of Air. This is distinctly uninviting. Let me propose an off-hand test by which to determine whether or no a given book is literature. Can you imagine Charles Lamb in the act of reading that book? If you can; it's literature; if you can't, it isn't. I find it difficult to conceive of Charles Lamb as mentally immersed ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... she had at hand, thinking gratefully of her sister Mary who in addition to her work as superintendent of the neighborhood public school, supervised the household at 7 Madison Street. Hotel rooms were cold and drab, the food was uninviting, and only occasionally did she find to her delight "a Christian cup of coffee."[316] She often felt that the Lyceum Bureau drove her unnecessarily hard, routed her inefficiently, and profited too generously from her labors. Now and then she dispensed with their services, sent out her own circulars ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... inmates float on ether, or are mysteriously suspended upon nothing; where all the warm and felt accompaniments which give such an expression of strength, and life, and colour to our present habitation, are attenuated into a sort of spiritual element, that is meagre, and imperceptible, and wholly uninviting to the eye of mortals here below; where every vestige of materialism is done away with, and nothing left but certain unearthly scenes that have no power of allurement, and certain unearthly ecstasies with which it is impossible to sympathise," The sensitiveness with which many thus ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... the abstract are each and all so uninviting, not to say alarming, but, associated with certain eyes and hair and tender little gowns, it is curious how they lose their terrors; and, as with vice in the poet's image, we end by embracing what we began by dreading. You see the ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... so, till sundown, when they approached a little nearer and could be seen astern of us, through the middle watch, by the aid of the night-glass; but they sheered off again at the breaking of this third day, by which time we could see Pulo Sapata right ahead, a most uninviting spot apparently, consisting of nothing but one ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... him. His subjects approached him crouching, but he shook hands with us and smiled kindly at us. A noble gesture of the hand gave us leave to taste a meal prepared to welcome us, which looked most uninviting, but turned out to be beautifully cooked sago and cocoa-nut cream. We could not finish the generous portions, and presently signed that we were satisfied; the chief seemed to regret that we did not do more honour to his hospitality, but he gave us permission ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... subordinate kind, which he had not studied from the life with minute care, and whenever he did for a moment wander out of his limits, he made an egregious failure. But this task of his, to cast the sunshine of pathos and of genial mirth over the humblest, dullest, and most uninviting of our fellow-creatures, was a great social mission to which his whole genius was devoted. No waif and stray was so repulsive, no drudge was so mean, no criminal was so atrocious, but what Charles Dickens could feel for him some ray of sympathy, or extract ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Miss North's school was not elaborate. It had none of the attractiveness of Miss North's own living-room. It looked cold, business-like, and uninviting—at least so Blue Bonnet thought as she sat waiting to say her last good-bys to ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... two of the staff, and one of the Trustees (whose services on this occasion, and many others arising out of it, we find it easier to remember than to acknowledge as they deserve)—stayed a night at the inland watering-place of Llandrindod, one of the suggested sites. The bleak moors round it were uninviting enough that squally March day. But the question of settling here was dismissed at once; there was not sufficient house-room in the place. So next morning we bore ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... pleasant quarters with Fraulein Dahlweiner, and journeyed across Europe, arriving at the French capital February 28, 1879. Here they met another discouraging prospect, for the weather was cold and damp, the cabmen seemed brutally ill-mannered, their first hotel was chilly, dingy, uninviting. Clemens, in his note-book, set down his impressions of their rooms. A ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... supposed to deal in justice here, are you not, Miss Tescheron?" I continued, not heeding her frigid, uninviting air. I had planned to deal tenderly with her wound, but soon realized that my sympathetic beginning had proved more irritating than bluntness; accordingly I introduced the spice of severity in tone in equivalent degree as an experiment, and as I proceeded I noted the interest ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... (or Paumanake, or Paumanack, the Indian name of Long Island,) over a hundred miles long; shaped like a fish—plenty of sea shore, sandy, stormy, uninviting, the horizon boundless, the air too strong for invalids, the bays a wonderful resort for aquatic birds, the south-side meadows cover'd with salt hay, the soil of the island generally tough, but good for the locust-tree, the apple orchard, and the blackberry, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the well he sloshed himself thoroughly in the horse-trough and went to the house. He found breakfast ready but his wife was not in sight. The older children were clamoring around the uninviting breakfast table, spread with cheap plates and with boiled potatoes and fried salt ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... might pass the night, with a most ungracious air she pointed to a door which opened into a mere closet, in which was a bed divested of curtains, one chair, and an apology for a wash-stand. Seeing me in some dismay at the sight of this uninviting domicile, she laconically observed there was that or none, unless I chose to sleep in a four-bedded room, which had three tenants in it,—and those gentlemen. This alternative I somewhat indignantly declined, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... came across me, the man who had conducted the horse to the stable entered the apartment, and discovered to me a countenance yet more uninviting than that of the old crone who was performing with such dexterity the office of cook to the party. He was perhaps sixty years old; yet his brow was not much furrowed, and his jet-black hair was only grizzled, not whitened, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the corral, Larkin paid his respects to the pump and refreshed himself for supper. Then he strolled around the long, rambling ranch house. Across the front, which faced southwest, had been built a low apology for a veranda on which a couple of uninviting chairs stood. He appropriated one of these and settled back ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... and, making a light, washed up at the tap, then foraged for breakfast. Persistence turned up a spirit-stove, a half-bottle of methylated, a packet of tea, a tin or two of biscuit, as many more of potted meats: left-overs from the artist's stock, dismally scant and uninviting in array. With these he made the discovery that he was half-famished, and found no reason to believe that the girl would be in any better case. An expedition to the nearest charcuterie was indicated; but after he had searched for and found an old raincoat of Solon's, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... extraordinary youth by which 'she kept to the last the . . . freshness of a young girl.' Many of the 'famous writers' seem to have been very ugly. Thomson, the poet, was of a dull countenance, and a gross, unanimated, uninviting appearance; Richardson looked 'like a plump white mouse in a wig.' Pope is described in the Guardian, in 1713, as 'a lively little creature, with long arms and legs: a spider is no ill emblem of him. He has been taken at a distance for a small windmill.' Charles Kingsley appears as 'rather ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... narrow, sluggish stream, and it did not look to me worthy of its famous name. But often, that spring, its slow-moving waters had been flecked by a bloody froth, and the bodies of brave men had been hidden by them, and washed clean of the trench mud. Now, uninviting as its aspect was, and sinister as were the memories it must have evoked in other hearts beside my own, it was water. And on so hot a day water was a precious thing to men who had been working as the laddies ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... to be hardly a village in the plain; and the only buildings we see for miles are the herdsmen's houses of stone, flat-roofed, dark inside, and uninviting in their appearance, and the great cattle-pens, the corrals, which seem absurdly too large for the herds that we have yet seen; but in two or three months there will be rain, the ground will be covered with rank grass, the corrals will be crowded with ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... mud and muck from the walls of the tunnel. Here, too, the timbers were rotting; one after another, they had cracked and caved beneath the weight of the earth above, giving the tunnel an eerie aspect, uninviting, ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... except on rare occasions, and then was obtained under protest from her husband, who parted with a dollar as he would with a refractory tooth. His strong and persistent will had impressed itself on his family, and their home life had been meagre and uninviting; the freedom and ease that he and Roger were so loath to lose, consisting chiefly in careless dress and a disregard of the little ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... pleasant domain on the banks of the Mersey almost opposite to Rock Ferry. Walking home, we looked into Mr. Thorn's Unitarian Chapel, Mr. B——'s family's place of worship. There is a little graveyard connected with the chapel, a most uninviting and unpicturesque square of ground, perhaps thirty or forty yards across, in the midst of back fronts of city buildings. About half the space was occupied by flat tombstones, level with the ground, the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was exalted above its station by being called The Day Nursery and another room equally dingy and uninviting was known as The Night Nursery. The slice of a house was inhabited by the very pretty Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, its inordinate rent being reluctantly paid by her—apparently with the assistance of those "ravens" who are expected to supply the truly deserving. The rent was inordinate only from ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... friends. He heaved a great sigh of content and relief. The very atmosphere here seemed to be different. As far as the lodging itself was concerned, it was as bare, as devoid of comfort as those sort of places—so-called chambres garnies—usually were in these days. The chairs looked rickety and uninviting, the sofa was of black horsehair, the carpet was threadbare, and in places in actual holes; but there was a certain something in the air which revealed, in the midst of all this squalor, the presence of a man of ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... have been a time when mountain-scenery, instead of being sought, was shunned,—when princes possessing the most beautiful lands among the Rhine hills should, with great trouble and expense, have transported their seats to some flat, uninviting locality,—when, for instance, the dull, flat, prosy, wearisome gardens of Schwetzingen should have been deemed more beautiful than the immediate environs of Heidelberg. Yet such were the sentiments that prevailed in Switzerland until a comparatively ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... of Rome may, from time to time, catch sight, on blank walls and dead corners, of long white strips of paper, covered with close-printed lines of most uninviting looking type, and headed with the Papal arms—the cross-keys and tiara. If, being like myself afflicted with an inquisitive turn of mind, he takes the trouble of deciphering these hieroglyphic documents, his labour would not be altogether thrown away. Those straggling strips, stuck up in ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... smoke did not rise; but driven here and there by the squalls of wind, swirled about close to the ground in little clouds, like a flock of scattered sheep. It seemed as though it feared to rise in the grey, damp, uninviting atmosphere. The largest of the tents, in front of which Roman sentinels paced up and down, two and two, on guard, was wide open on the side towards the sea. The slaves who came out of the broad door-way with trays on their cropped ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... when for a short time they were in pursuit, towards Ljuria, of certain invaders. Not only were they legally entitled to take up their position on the mountains to the west of the Black Drin, but the Moslem tribes, the Malizi and the Ljuri, who dwell in that uninviting district, were most anxious that the Serbs should come and should remain. For this the tribes had two principal reasons: in the first place, they recognized that their compatriots in Djakovica and Prizren were immeasurably better off than ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... in the age of the Covenant hence the extraordinary life and brilliance of this, his first essay in fiction dealing with a remote time and obsolete manners. His opening, though it may seem long and uninviting to modern readers, is interesting for the sympathetic sketch of the gentle consumptive dominie. If there was any class of men whom Sir Walter could not away with, it was the race of schoolmasters, "black cattle" whom he neither trusted nor respected. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of Bristol are, in a modern point of view, narrow and uninviting, yet if the visitor have a liking for the picturesque he will find much to interest him. There are plenty of streets crammed with old-time houses, thrusting out their upper stories beyond the lower, and with their many-gabled roofs seeming to heave and rock against the sky. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... peculiar and by no means inviting. I could remember the appearance of the cotton farms in slavery days; but how changed were things I now saw! They did not look at all like those which I had been accustomed to see. Everything was dismal and uninviting. The entire country passed through in Mississippi looked like a wilderness. This deterioration was the natural result of the devastating war which had swept the country, and to the industrial revolution which followed and to which affairs had ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... bad job. I had my own department of work to attend to, and very little communication with any one else in the doing of it, except with Doubleday, who, as the reader knows, usually favoured me when anything specially uninviting wanted doing. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... century ago, the inducements to enter upon an industrial career were much more limited than they are at the present day. The industries of the West of Scotland were then few and comparatively uninviting. The iron trade was in its infancy, and those engaged in it lacked the resources for the acquisition of wealth that were evolved from the discovery of blackband mineral deposits by Mushet, the application of the hot blast by Neilson, and the introduction ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... offices in the Crow's Nest, that of the trainmaster was bare and uninviting. Lidgerwood, passing beyond the door of communication, found himself in a dingy room, with cobwebs festooning the ceiling and a pair of unwashed windows looking out upon the open square called, in the past and gone day of the Angelic promoters, the "railroad plaza." Two chairs, a ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... by another spit of sand with a like area called North Beach, which forms, with Point Loma, the entrance to the harbor. The North Beach, covered partly with chaparral and broad fields of barley, is alive with quail, and is a favorite coursing-ground for rabbits. The soil, which appears uninviting, is with water uncommonly fertile, being a mixture of loam, disintegrated granite, and decomposed shells, and especially adapted to flowers, rare tropical trees, fruits, and flowering shrubs ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... and finally reached the last Dayak kampong, Bayumbong, consisting of the balei and a small house. The balei was of limited proportions, dark, and uninviting, so I put up my tent, which was easily done as the pumbakal and men were friendly and helpful. All the carriers were, of course, anxious to return, but as they were engaged to go to Kandangan I told ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... which he sees it, the neighbouring mountains lessen its effect very considerably. Excepting the Peak, the eye receives little pleasure from the general face of the country, which is sterile and uninviting to the last degree. The town, however, from its cheerful white appearance, contrasted with the dreary brownness of the back ground, makes not an unpleasing coup d'oeil. It is neither irregular in its plan, nor despicable in its style of building; and the churches and ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... sorry in the gladness Of the joys that crown my days, For the souls that sit in sadness Or walk uninviting ways. ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... would eat the provisions I had brought in a small basket. Somehow the slices of bread and jam, prepared by my sisters, looked different; they had seemed so tempting, and now they looked stale and uninviting. Even such a trifle as this made the earth seem sadder, and I realised that only in Heaven will ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... college itself, as it had its origin in the 'Indian Charity School,' and existed as a handful of books before the granting of the college Charter. These books are found principally among the theological works, in folio volumes, with Latin texts or notes, and uninviting type. Received as they were more than a hundred years ago, they were then publications of the preceding century; and they would hardly find their way into the library to-day, if admitted upon the demand of readers, yet in their bindings and worn leaves they show that by some one ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... commerce than that occasioned by the payment of a few cents. Such payment, no doubt, is a stoppage; and therefore it is that Jersey City, Brooklyn, and Williamsburg are, at any rate in appearance, very dull and uninviting. They are, however, very populous. Many of the quieter citizens prefer to live there; and I am told that the Brooklyn tea parties consider themselves to be, in esthetic feeling, very much ahead of anything of the kind in the more opulent centers of the city. In beauty ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... personage, scouted the idea, and thought the matter settled, by pointing to two or three young camels and asking the editor if he thought any man, Turk or Christian, would think of eating one so lank, meagre, and uninviting, as himself, when they had so much capital food of another sort at their elbow. "Take your share of the liquor while it is passing, man, and set your heart at ease as to the dinner, which I make no doubt ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... become accustomed, if he is still sound, than one unbroken and new. Nor has habit this power merely as to the movements of an animal, it prevails no less as to inanimate objects. We are charmed with the places though mountainous and woody, [Footnote: Therefore uninviting, for mountain and forest had not in early time the charm which we find in them. Indeed the love of nature uncultivated and unadorned is for the most part, of modern growth.] where we have made a long sojourn. But what is most remarkable in friendship is that it puts a man ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... me for a moment. The room was outwardly comfortless and uninviting: the walls out of repair; the sloping roof somewhat shattered; the floor broken and uneven; no furniture but two tottering bedsteads, a three-legged stool, and an old oak chest; the window broken in many places, and mended ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... though roughly fashioned, and furnished in the most simple manner, was not uninviting, for there was that atmosphere of cleanliness and neatness about it, which renders the rudest spot more attractive than luxurious habitations, where it is found wanting. Through the centre ran a narrow hall, out of which opened the different rooms. On the right hand, just as ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... often and so recently touched upon the ancient and modern state of Constantinople, that we fear a recapitulation of its splendour would be uninviting to our readers.[1] Nevertheless, as its mention is so frequently coupled with the seat of war, and the "expulsion of the Turks from Europe," our illustration will at this period be interesting, as well as in some measure, explanatory of the position of the city, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... uninviting person, with an attempt at jocularity. "'Ave you anythink to give a poor man ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... England; and with care he is sure to grow rich. The luxuries of life are in abundance, and very little dearer than in England, and most articles of food are cheaper. The climate is splendid, and perfectly healthy; but to my mind its charms are lost by the uninviting aspect of the country. Settlers possess a great advantage in finding their sons of service when very young. At the age of from sixteen to twenty, they frequently take charge of distant farming stations. This, however, must happen at the expense of their boys associating ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... exceeding, in the contemplation of the knowing, the lavish abundance of Mexico and of Peru, in their palmiest and most prosperous condition. Nor, though only the frontier and threshold as it were to these swollen treasures, was the portion of country now under survey, though bleak, sterile, and uninviting, wanting in attractions of its own. It contained indications which denoted the fertile regions, nor wanted entirely in the precious mineral itself. Much gold had been already gathered, with little labor, and almost upon its surface; and it was perhaps only because of the limited knowledge ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... is charmingly situated and has several very nice buildings, and is therefore an exception, but even in the case of Wiborg the shop windows are small and uninviting, the streets are shockingly laid with enormous boulder stones and sometimes even bits of rock, while pavements, according to ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... hollow, out of sight of the village church, almost out of hearing of its little bell, stood the house of La Corriveau, a square, heavy structure of stone, inconvenient and gloomy, with narrow windows and an uninviting door. The pine forest touched it on one side, a brawling stream twisted itself like a live snake half round it on the other. A plot of green grass, ill kept and deformed, with noxious weeds, dock, fennel, thistle, and foul stramonium, was surrounded by a rough wall of loose stones, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the day before, picked the sloop up and flung her seaward with a vengeance, anchor and all, as before. This fierce wind, usual to the Magellan country, continued on through the day, and swept the sloop by several miles of steep bluffs and precipices overhanging a bold shore of wild and uninviting appearance. I was not sorry to get away from it, though in doing so it was no Elysian shore to which I shaped my course. I kept on sailing in hope, since I had no choice but to go on, heading across for St. Nicholas Bay, where I had cast anchor February 19. It was now the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... uninviting," I declared; "but beyond that, I do not know of any especial claim it has upon ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... anything not strictly for use, consequently his house, both outside and in, was destitute of every kind of ornament; and the bride, as she followed him through the empty hall into the silent parlor, whose bare walls, faded carpet, and uncurtained windows seemed so uninviting, felt a chill creeping over her spirits, and sinking into the first hard chair she came to, she might, perhaps, have cried had not John, who followed close behind her, satchel on arm, whispered encouragingly in her ear, "Never you mind, missus, your ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... turgid and overgrown swamp. While, from the direction in which the gambler approached, a low, dense, thorny bush grew, made up of branches almost skeleton in their lack of leaves. It was a forlorn and uninviting spot, calculated to dishearten anybody with a heart less big and an ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... varied talents, and accurate scholarship, Lockhart was impatient of contradiction, and was prone to censure keenly those who had offended him. To strangers his manners were somewhat uninviting, and in society he was liable to periods of taciturnity. He loved the ironical and facetious; and did not scruple to indulge in ridicule even at the expense of his intimate associates. With many peculiarities ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to have examined with some care the works of James I.; but that uninviting task has been now postponed till it is too late. As a writer, his works may not be valuable, and are infected with the pedantry and the superstition of the age; yet I suspect that James was not that degraded and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... who are beginning the work of life, the mastery of technique may seem a comparatively unimportant matter. You recognize its necessity, of course, but you think of it as something of a mechanical nature,—an integral part of the day's work, but uninviting in itself,—something to be reduced as rapidly as possible to the plane of automatism and dismissed from the mind. I believe that you will outgrow this notion. As you go on with your work, as you increase in skill, ever and ever ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... Him, He will direct my paths. Life shall always be moving on to its purposed end and glory. The path chosen will not always be the most alluring one, but it will be the right one, and therefore the safe one, and there will be wonderful discoveries on the uninviting track. ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... was the same thing. Tessa looked tired out before the day's work began, and well she might, for she had sat up nearly all night to dispose of Sir Reginald, and now "The Fair Barmaid" had taken his place. Again the girl went without the uninviting lunch she had brought from her boarding-house, and again, as before, the fascinating novel divided her attention with her work. This afternoon she was detected by the overseer, who spoke a few words of reprimand and ordered her to put the ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... we slept we called Mussel Bend, from our finding several there: they appeared similar to those found by Oxley in the Macquarie. The country over which we travelled the first part of the day was exceedingly stony, and wore a most uninviting appearance. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... as it fell, all the air was full of music, sad and sweet, so that she wondered greatly. The next day she looked out of the window, and saw, between the moat and the castle wall, a new plant growing. It looked black and uninviting, but it had come up so fast that it had already laid hold on the rough gray stones. At the falling of the night it reached far up towards the turret, a great sharp-pointed vine, with only here and there a miserable leaf on it. 'I am sorry I threw it out,' said the maiden. 'It is the ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... the time he found his villa and recognized it. The old servant told him that her mistress was not at home, but that most likely she would soon be in. The villa, very uninviting in appearance, with low ceilings papered with writing-paper and with uneven floors full of crevices, consisted only of three rooms. In one there was a bed, in the second there were canvases, brushes, greasy ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... ushered in with the same unerring ease, just as the staff-officers conduct detachments to their assigned positions: no break, no confusion; and the good people of the peace-loving metropolis, to whom army matters have long been a dark and uninviting mystery, begin to admit that there are some points worth noting in a military wedding. And then "society" begins to recognize each other with nods and smiles and fluttering fans, and to look about and take mental inventory of the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... one day in debate, "that financial measures are dull and uninviting in comparison with those heroic themes which have absorbed the attention of Congress for the last five years. To turn from the consideration of armies and navies, victories and defeats, to the array of figures which exhibits the debt, expenditure, taxation, and ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... that are most useful to my design are they that treat of manners and rules of our life. But boldly to confess the truth (for since one has passed the barriers of impudence, there is no bridle), his way of writing appears to me negligent and uninviting: for his prefaces, definitions, divisions, and etymologies take up the greatest part of his work: whatever there is of life and marrow is smothered and lost in the long preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him, which is a great deal for me, and try to recollect what I have ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... stairs into the gallery I thought for a moment that it was empty, as it lay before me dark and uninviting. Then from the far end came the sound of voices, laughter, and laughing expostulation—this last in a woman's voice that I knew too well. While I stood staring, not understanding, and bewildered by a sudden and wholly meaningless alarm, one of the doors at ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... tea. It was three o'clock. This was the matron. The matron soon deposited her in a bedroom, not very small, but bare and hard and dusty-seeming, and there left her. Alvina sat down on her chair, looked at her box opposite her, looked round the uninviting room, and smiled to herself. Then she rose and went to the window: a very dirty window, looking down into a sort of well of an area, with other wells ranging along, and straight opposite like a reflection another solid range of back-premises, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... painted and gilded, sometimes carved with scrolls and figures; the cabinet designed with architectural outline, and fitted up inside with steps and pillars like a temple; chairs which are wonderful to look upon as guardians of a stately doorway, but uninviting as seats; tables inlaid, gilded, and carved, with slabs of marble or of Florentine Mosaic work, but which from their height are as a rule impossible to use for any domestic purpose; mirrors with richly carved and gilded frames are so many evidences ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... Slabbert's Nek was merely a huge gash in the face of a cliff. It was the Boers' causeway towards the north, their highway to safety. Retief's Nek lay to the westward, and formed a grinning death trap for any general who might try the foolish hazard of a single-handed attack Naauwpoort Nek, ugly and uninviting, faced south-east towards Harrismith. Golden Gate, named by a satirist—or a satyr—was merely a narrow chasm worn by wind and weather through the girdle of mountains. It looked towards the east, and was a mere pathway, which none but desperate soldiers, driven to ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... breathing-spaces, St. Mark's is, perhaps, a little greener in the early spring, less dusty in the summer heat, less bare and uninviting in the winter snow. It is more restful, too, than the others, a place in which to sit and muse—even to read. Out from its shade and sunshine run queer side streets, with still queerer houses, rising two stories and an attic, each with a dormer and huge chimney. Dried-up ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the forms of the liturgy and according to the dictates of their conscience. That building stood until a few years ago. A friend in Edinburgh gave me a photograph of it, which is valuable as showing the uninviting quarters to which the poor Episcopalians were driven in those days to find freedom in their religious services. The upper room where they met was acquired by purchase in 1741, and the tradition is that the person who sold it, being an invalid churchman, reserved to ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... permanent water. At Kokriega there is a well which may be relied on for a small supply, but would be of no use in watering cattle in large numbers. The ranges are composed of ferruginous sandstone and quartz conglomerate, and as to vegetation are of a very uninviting aspect. The plain to the south is covered with quartz and sandstone pebbles. About five miles to the north-east of the Kokriega is a spot where the schist rock crops out from under the sandstone, and the rises here have somewhat ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... was not uninviting, seen under the charitable cloak of February's snow, sun-touched by the freshly risen luminary, the white expanses glinting; all the rocks and ledges and the barren shapes were covered. But under summer's frank sunlight Egypt ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... John A. Sutter The Donner Party's Benefactor The Least and Most that Earth Can Bestow The Survivors' Request His Birth and Parentage Efforts to Reach California New Helvetia A Puny Army Uninviting Isolation Ross and Bodega Unbounded Generosity Sutter's Wealth Effect of the Gold Fever Wholesale Robbery The Sobrante Decision A "Genuine and Meritorious" Grant Utter Ruin Hock Farm Gen. Sutter's Death Mrs. ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... this side of the range are composed of brown rocks and earth, having little or no vegetation upon them, and are just as uninviting in appearance as the light-brown hills which fringe the coast of Arabia, as seen by voyagers on the Red Sea. Further up the hill, in the central folds of the range, this great sterility changes for a warm rich clothing of bush-jungle and a little grass. Gum-trees, myrrh, and ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... From the desolate, uninviting hall, Oliver passed into the large meeting-room of the club fronting the street, now filled with members, many of whom had dropped in for half an hour on their way back to their offices. Of these some of the older and more sedate men, like Judge Bowman and Mr. Pancoast, were playing ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... happiest of all the various sensations one had "out there." There were just a few hours of irritating expectancy to live through—followed sometimes, as at Givenchy in 1918, by some boring experience such as a "stand to" in some particular, and generally uninviting, positions—and then one would be free, safe and in a position and condition to enjoy a delightful sleep: free and safe for a few days, until the all too soon moment for ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... now grew scattering, and the quarter of the town more neglected. Warwick felt himself wondering where the girl might be going in a neighborhood so uninviting. When she stopped to pull a half-naked negro child out of a mudhole and set him upon his feet, he thought she might be some young lady from the upper part of the town, bound on some errand of mercy, or going, perhaps, to visit an old servant or look ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... woman accustomed to the luxurious tables of the rich, but which were a new revelation to a person like myself, who had led a simple country life in the house of a clergyman with small means. When I saw my host carefully lay out these occult substances of uninviting appearance on a clean napkin, and then plunge once more into profound reflection at the sight of them, my curiosity could be no longer restrained. I ventured to say, "What are those things, Mr. Dexter, and are we really going ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... be, it is fitting that I should first attend to one whose manners and accomplishments betray him to be of the Royal House," replied Lin Yi, with extreme affability. "Precede me, therefore, to my mean and uninviting hovel, while I gain more honour than I can reasonably bear by following closely in your elegant footsteps, and guarding your Imperial person with this inadequate ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... to Montreal is a long day's journey, and the forepart is uninviting. In three voyages out of five, the North Pacific, too big to lie altogether idle, too idle to get hands about the business of a storm, sulks and smokes like a chimney; the passengers fresh from Japan heat wither in the chill, and a ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... was when Napoleon got his training here, but the peace of the picturesque little fortress-town is less troubled by them than by the politicians. A little local newspaper published here, which I bought of an urchin at the uninviting but thriving station of Tergnier, was full of paragraphs deriding and denouncing the clergy, which might have been inspired by that model patriot and philanthropist Curtius, who proposed in the year one of the Republic that the Government should make a bargain ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... previous day, and, finding a little out-of-the-way restaurant kept by a foreigner, he "supped full with"—what were to him emphatically—"horrors"; the dinner and supper combined, which he had ordered, growing cold, in the meantime, and as uninviting as the place ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... condescend. Monsieur would condescend to a loft and a truss of straw, in default of the neat little chilly chamber that is allotted him, so sick are his very limbs with long tramping, and so uninviting figures the further stretch in the moonlight to Chatelard, with its burnt-out carcase ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... development and extension of certain well-known local firms. In fact the present appearance of the town is that of an industrial centre of the smaller and pleasanter sort, but with the inevitable accompaniment of mean houses and uninviting suburbs. The main streets of the newer parts are spacious and clean, but are reminiscent of an ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... a few days he pulls himself together and plunges into work, but the effort exhausts him and he falls back further than before. He is unhappy and despondent, his viewpoint changes and the future looks uninviting and he loses his courage and his faith in himself. He hides all this from his family, he does not want wife and children to know that he is losing his hold. He even makes desperate efforts to keep fit while at home, and for a ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... prince seated, in his beauty, looked with thought on all the waiting women; before, they had appeared exceeding lovely, their laughing words, their hearts so light and gay, their forms so plump and young, their looks so bright; but now, how changed! so uninviting and repulsive. And such is woman's disposition! how can they, then, be ever dear, or closely trusted; such false appearances! and unreal pretences; they only madden and delude the minds ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... a half-mile beyond, they fared no better. The woman's voice was curter, and the uninviting muzzle of a bull-terrier was thrust out between the door and the woman's skirts. As they turned away Patsy's teeth were chattering; the chill and wet had crept into her bones and blood, turning her lips blue and her cheeks ashen; even the cutting ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... an ugly uninviting place to look at, with but few visible signs of wealth. The earth, which had been burrowed out by these human rabbits in their search after tin, lay around in huge ungainly heaps; the overground buildings of the establishment ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... also gained ground by farther acquaintance. She was faded, but not passe, and was still handsome, and of a most graceful carriage, though distant and uninviting. Her loftiness had in it something so pensive mixed with its haughtiness, that though it could not inspire confidence, it did not create displeasure. She possessed also a claim to sympathy and respect in being the niece of M. de Malesherbes, that wise, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... forbidding, but uninviting, turned the scale; and the Klosking, who was not a forward woman, did not yield to her inclination and speak to Zoe. She took Ashmead's arm ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... fish and fishermen, sloops and schooners, mud-scows and skiffs in front, lives the world-renowned author, Hans Christian Andersen. I say he lives there, but, properly speaking, he only lodges. It seems to be a peculiarity of his nature to move about from time to time into all the queer and uninviting places possible to be discovered within the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... dividing it from Affghanist[a]n. Should the traveller form his opinion of the country beyond by the specimen now before us, he would be loth indeed to proceed, for a more dismal corner can hardly be conceived. The outline of the adjacent mountains was dreary and uninviting, with very little cultivation in the valley, which also bore a most desolate aspect—it was barren and unpromising, without participating in the wild and grand features which generally characterize these regions. Fuel was ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... used to be boys and girls—for, as the Parisians say, "Il n'y a plus de garcons"—one must have been blind indeed not to see the mischief that was being done on those East End pavements; done more thoroughly perhaps, certainly on a vastly larger scale, than in the purlieus of the forest. It is an uninviting subject to dwell upon; but one could understand all about baby farms, and Lock Hospitals, and Contagious Diseases Acts, out there that July night, in the crowded streets of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... the Kennebec, on approaching it from the sea, presents to the stranger a barren and uninviting picture. Hemmed in on either side by low, rocky isles, studded with scraggy pines that have long defied old Atlantic's blasts, it must have been a dreary and disappointing sight, indeed, to the little band of voyagers who were seeking ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... the black-lettered door, she walked into the anteroom, and apparently her entrance sent a communication to the inner office; for while she stood for a moment looking dubiously at the uninviting chairs, a tall young man entered the room. Miss Lacey viewed him ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... of a dark, dirty purple or brown, or sometimes nearly black inside. A stock brick is rarely quite square or quite true; its surface is often disfigured by black specks and small pits, and a stack of them often looks uninviting; yet a skillful bricklayer, by throwing out the worst, by placing those of bad colors or much out of shape in the heart of the wall, and by bringing to the front the best end or side of those bricks which form part of the face, can always make the bricks in his ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... comes in this volume, is, "Like a Blossoming Lilac My Love Is Fair," here written in the fearfully uninviting key of D-sharp minor. It is poetic and lyric in the extreme, and a more charming selection can ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... the entire region, town, palace, quintas, forests, crags, Moorish ruin, which suddenly burst on the view on rounding the side of a bleak, savage, and sterile-looking mountain. Nothing is more sullen and uninviting than the south- western aspect of the stony wall which, on the side of Lisbon, seems to shield Cintra from the eye of the world, but the other side is a mingled scene of fairy beauty, artificial elegance, savage grandeur, domes, turrets, enormous trees, flowers ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... asked you to dance?' she murmured. 'There—she is appropriated.' A young gentleman had at that moment approached the uninviting Miss Deverell, claimed her ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... level-topped, wooded range exactly like it. Ilium itself, seen at a glance, was old enough to be dilapidated, and if it had gained anything by being made a wood and water station of the new railroad, it was only a new sort of grime and rawness. P. Dusenheimer, standing in the door of his uninviting groggery, when the trains stopped for water; never received from the traveling public any patronage except facetious remarks upon his personal appearance. Perhaps a thousand times he had heard the remark, "Ilium fuit," ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Loevestein and Gorcum for the use of the prisoner. At first the trunk had been carefully opened and its contents examined every time it entered or left the castle. As nothing had ever been found in it save Hebrew, Greek, and Latin folios, uninviting enough to the Commandant, that warrior had gradually ceased to inspect the chest very closely, and had at ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... deep exquisitely worked soil with never a weed in an acre. But children were kept from school because their parents could not get along without their help. Many of the school teachers seemed as poor as the farmers. As I passed the farm-houses in the evening they seemed bleak and uninviting. In the fire hole[214] of every house, however, there was a generous blaze and the bath tub out-of-doors was steaming for the customary evening hot ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... nigh three hundred years? He saw the huge form of the sheriff loom like an evil spirit a moment on the rise of the road and sink into the night. He turned slowly to his cheerless house shuddering as he entered the uninviting portals. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... admirably adapted for the arduous and uninviting task of planting a negro colony. His very deficiencies stood him in good stead; for, in presence of the elements with which he had to deal, it was well for him that nature had denied him any sense of the ridiculous. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... such that the merest strip of sky could be seen when Mavis looked up. She then came to an open door. Above this was a fanlight, which fitfully lighted a passage terminating in a flight of uncarpeted stone steps. It was all very uninviting. The girl looked about for someone of whom to make further inquiries. No one came in or went out; all that Mavis could see was one or two over-dressed men, who were prowling about on the further side of the way. A little distance up the turning was another open door lit in ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... gone Stepan Trofimovitch instantly sat down on the sofa and made Sofya Matveyevna sit down beside him. There were several arm-chairs as well as a sofa in the room, but they were of a most uninviting appearance. The room was rather a large one, with a corner, in which there was a bed, partitioned off. It was covered with old and tattered yellow paper, and had horrible lithographs of mythological subjects on the walls; in the corner facing the door there was a long row of ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... rickety wooden structure, beneath which the Thames water whispered eerily; and Kerry and Seton disembarked, mounting a short flight of slimy wooden steps and crossing a roughly planked place on to a shingly slope. Climbing this, they were on damp waste ground, pathless and uninviting. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... off this imposing list of titles La Pommeraye's sense of humour got the better of him. The rugged, uninviting land which he knew so well rose vividly before him; and the high-sounding terms which were heaped upon it in no way lessened its ruggedness. He turned to Roberval, and with a merry twinkle in his blue eye exclaimed: "King Francis is truly generous, most ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... daylight, so necessary to our well-being, that even its partial exclusion, or its insufficient admission to our apartments, soon tells its tale in the feeble health, the liability to the attacks of disease, and the pallid features (vacant and sunken, or flabby, pendent and uninviting) of their inmates. Even the aspect of the rooms in which we pass most of our time, and the number and extent of their windows, is perceptible, by the trained eye, in the complexion and features of those that occupy them. So in the vegetable ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... carried home the herring, and laid it on the bed before his sick mother. His own little heart was full, for he could not mistake the manner of Mrs.—for kindness. Mrs. Warburton looked at the uninviting food, and turned her head away. After awhile, it did seem to her as if the fish would taste good to her, and she raised herself up with an effort, and breaking off a small piece, put it languidly to her lips. The morsel thrilled upon the nerve of taste, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... the pretty village and old church of Taximaroa; and riding up to the mesn, or inn, found two empty dark rooms with mud floors—without windows, in fact without anything but their four walls—neither bench, chair, nor table. Although we travel with our own beds, this looked rather uninviting, especially after the pleasant quarters we had just left; and we turned our eyes wistfully towards a pretty small house upon a hill, with a painted portico, thinking how agreeably situated we should be there! Colonel Y—— thereupon rode up the hill, and presenting ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... to Acre. We were all mighty pleased to be on the move again, partly because Haifa was not a deliriously exciting place to be in, but chiefly because the neighbourhood of the famous river Kishon was singularly uninviting, and when the rains came, would be a veritable plague-spot ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... sun that feeds its pulses,—the curled petals are never smoothed, the hot blasts leaves its ineffaceable blight. To me, the thought of marriage comes no more than to one who knows death sits waiting only for the setting of the sun, to claim his own. That phase of life is as inaccessible and uninviting to me, as Antartic circumpolar lands; and even in thought, I have no temptation to explore it. My future and my past are so interblended, that I could as easily tear out my heart and continue to breathe, as attempt to separate them. I have a certain work to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... rubesco, to become red. It is so called because of the dingy reddish color of the entire plant, and also because when the plant is handled or bruised it quickly changes to a reddish color. It is often a large bulky plant and rather uninviting. ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... a personal experience, but is told in spite of that fact and because it illustrates a side of war that is unfamiliar. It is unfamiliar for the reason that it is seamy and uninviting. With bayonet charges, bugle-calls, and aviators ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... shutting the door behind him. The room was chilly and uninviting, with a lofty ceiling and a hideous wallpaper. There was a gas stove at the far end of the room, turned very low, and hissing softly ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... looked very uninviting. It threatened rain, sleet and snow. For a moment it brightened up and then we were ordered to parade with overcoats in packs, but by the time the troops got to the ground it was raining heavily and we were reviewed ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... his cigar, and had as leisurely glanced through all the three-day-old London papers. He had even puzzled, for another half-hour, over the pages of a Tribuna. Then, after gazing in an idle and listless manner about the empty and uninviting hotel reading-room, he decided that it was time for him to go up to his room. He made his leisurely way to the lift, ascended to the fourth floor, stepped out, and drew his room-key from his pocket, as he walked down the hall, in the same idle ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... heart in my mouth. One point in my favour was the desolate nature of the country, exactly fitted for such a stratagem as was in hand. On the right the gloomy sky was blotted out by jagged masses of gloomier hills. On the left the country varied between flat and upland, but was hardly less uninviting. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... chosen that site for it; therefore it was a modern church,—modern Gothic; handsome to an eye not versed in the attributes of ecclesiastical architecture, very barbarous to an eye that was. Somehow or other the church looked cold and raw and uninviting. It looked a church for show,—much too big for the scattered hamlet, and void of all the venerable associations which give their peculiar and unspeakable atmosphere of piety to the churches in which succeeding generations have knelt and worshipped. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... same day, now dreary enough, with the dreariness naturally belonging to the dreariest month of the year, Mary arrived in the city preferred to all cities by those who live in it, but the most uninviting, I should imagine, to a stranger, of all cities on the face of the earth. Cold seemed to have taken to itself a visible form in the thin, gray fog that filled the huge station from the platform to the glass roof. The latter had ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... It is impossible to convey an idea of the dreary scene on which we entered after leaving this spot: the only vegetation was a low scrub in deep sand; not a bird or insect enlivened the landscape. It was, without exception, the most uninviting prospect I ever beheld; and, to make matters worse, our guide Shobo wandered on the second day. We coaxed him on at night, but he went to all points of the compass on the trails of elephants which had been here in the rainy season, and then would sit down in the path, and in ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... reeking with plaster and false decorations—set him shivering. He turned into his own street and his heart sank. Something had indeed touched his eyes and he saw new and terrible things. The row of houses looked as though they had come out of a child's playbox. They were all untrue, shoddy, uninviting. The waste space on the other side of the unmade street, a repository for all the rubbish of the neighborhood, brought a groan to his lips. He stopped before the gate of his own little dwelling. There were yellow curtains in the window, tied back with ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... able to avoid them, I impatiently galloped my horse into one and the carts followed, thanks to my impatience for once, for I do not think that I should otherwise have discovered that a swamp so uninviting could possibly have borne my horse, and still less the carts. After this I ventured to pursue a less ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... we would go over in the boat instead of through the fields, but that old tub is rather uninviting for ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... to look at a rather uninviting room, appealing to them far less than to Win, already on the trail for local history. The attendant proved obliging and after supplying Win with several books brought ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... Medina in barren and uninviting Arabia. When it started on that expansion, whereby it overspread half of the known world, Syria, from its situation, was naturally the first country to tempt its restless and devoted Arab warriors. Within ten years of the Hegira, or commencement of the Mahomedan era, we find the ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... is well laid out, the streets are broad and straight, and Lord Sligo's splendid range of lake and woodland, free to all, adjoins the very centre. And yet the shops are small and mean, the houses are dirty and uninviting, and dunghills front the cottages first seen by the visitor. A breezy street leads upward to the heights, and all along it are dustheaps, with cocks and hens galore, scratching for buried treasure. At the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Western. I have often thought of my feelings of doubt and fear to go with Mr. Douglass, as an epoch in my life's history. The parting of the ways, the embarkation to a wider field of action, the close connection between obedience to an impulse of duty (however uninviting or uncertain the outcome), and the ever moral and ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... by one our men slipped into the communication trench. What a sense of well-being and of rest we all had! The little passage in the earth, so uninviting as a rule, seemed to us as desirable as the most sumptuous palace. We drew breath at last. We felt almost safe. But still, there was no ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... by some superb scoundrels they were hustled off to Milt Dale's home in the forest, and there they had for a long time to remain. Milt was one of nature's gentlemen, but as his boon companion was a cougar (whose uninviting picture is to be seen upon the paper cover), this forest home had its slight inconveniences. Mr. GREY, however, writes of it so admirably that he almost persuades me to be a camper-out, provided always that I may live in a cavern and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... of human occupants, and otherwise presented a bare and uninviting aspect, the only furniture in it consisting of a table and two chairs. It was imperfectly lighted by a small window looking out upon the cloisters which surrounded the courtyard that the prisoners had crossed a quarter of an hour earlier, and a bell suspended near ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... us felt, that the mystery of the domain between things that are universally visible, and are only occasionally so to some persons,—no less than the myths or words in which those who had entered that kingdom related what they had seen, had become, the one uninviting, and the other useless, to men dealing with the immediate business of our day; so that the historian of the last of European kings might most reasonably mourn that "the Berlin Galleries, which are made up, like other galleries, of goat-footed ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... a slice from the uninviting joint, and then artlessly pushed the dish along one place, opposite the first of the empty chairs, and proceeded to ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... when chopping; and preaching acceptably as a local preacher in his own cabin, or in some neighboring cabin, on Sundays. Did it require any great heroism to exchange all these for the less laborious but more conspicuous calling of a traveling preacher, uninviting as that calling was at that period, yet furnishing opportunities for mental improvement such as his soul longed for? Nay, rather, was not he the greater hero who remained among the untitled and comparatively unknown laymen, and faithfully discharged the duties of ...
— The Heroic Women of Early Indiana Methodism: An Address Delivered Before the Indiana Methodist Historical Society • Thomas Aiken Goodwin
... unselfish devotion are witnessed within their dingy walls! Jewish observances are sometimes cumbersome and sometimes incompatible with modern life, but what beauty of holiness, what irresistible influences emanate and radiate from most of them! Under an uninviting exterior and beneath the accumulated drift of countless generations he discerned the precious jewel of self-sacrifice for an ideal. It was this sympathy and broad-mindedness, expressed in his Ha-Toeh, his Simhat Hanef, Keburat ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... was one picture in it that appeared peculiarly applicable to myself. It represented a gaudily costumed young man, standing on the topmost of three steep steps, smoking a large cigar. Behind him was a very small church, and below, a bright and not altogether uninviting looking hell. The picture was headed "The Three Steps to Ruin," and the three stairs were labelled respectively "Smoking," "Drinking," "Gambling." I had already travelled two-thirds of the road! ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... strongest terms, going even the length of shaking her fist at the occupant of the post of honour. She was, however, bundled out most unceremoniously, neck and crop, as the phrase is. After further delays, and declining a most uninviting dormitory, a boat was got ready; four warriors were in her, and we departed amid the cheers of the population and a promiscuous discharge of fire-arms. This was warmly responded to by our party; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... that Jesus had bred for the continuance of the flock. We owe the loss of him, he said, to a ewe that no shepherd would look twice at, one of the ugliest in the flock, she seemed to me to be and to everybody that laid his eyes on her, and she ought to have been put out of the flock, but though uninviting to our eyes she was longed for by another ram, and so ardently that he could not abide his own ewes and became as a wild sheep on the hills, always on the prowl about my flock, seeking his favourite, and she casting her head back ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... invitation to which they quickly responded. They ascended, and found the sun hidden, and the sea about them calm. Glancing across the broad expanse of water, not a sail was in sight. It was a cold, gray morning, ordinarily uninviting weather, but after the house of confinement it was ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... was a part of his make-up. He was merely seeking the best place to unpack and a convenient spot to tether Buck. They were going to make camp either right here or nearer the cave, perhaps in it. She looked at the uninviting hole and shivered. She would know his decision when King saw fit ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... equipment. The average rural schoolhouse consists of one room, with perhaps a small hallway. The building is constructed without reference to architectural effect, resembling nothing so much as a large box with a roof on it. It is barren and uninviting as to its interior. The walls are often of lumber painted some dull color, and dingy through years of use. The windows are frequently dirty, and covered only by worn and tattered shades. There is usually no attempt to decorate the room ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... had left the opposite bank and fallen back from Chattanooga. The crossing was made, and the brigade struck out into the country toward Ringgold and the Georgia line. We belonged to Palmer's division of Crittenden's corps, but we had no idea where our comrades were. Passing over the uninviting country, and by the cornfields wasted by Bragg's men that we might not gather the grain, the brigade fell in with the rest of its division near a lonely grist-mill at a junction of cross-roads, where a battalion of Southern cavalry had just galloped in upon an infantry regiment lying ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... general patching together of limbs in the wrong place scarcely matters so far as he and my taste are concerned. Yet I always leave my work, George, when that begins, and walk about the room. I try to persuade myself that I need fresh air, but the autumnal day, the damp shiny street, has all the uninviting harshness of truth—I admit I do not. Tito flops about, is riddled with dropped notes and racked with hesitations, and presently becomes still. The murder ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... listen to science than to spunk." And I resolved to heed the impartial needle. I was a little weary of the rough tramping: but it was necessary to be moving; for, with wet clothes and the night air, I was decidedly chilly. I turned towards the north, and slipped and stumbled along. A more uninviting forest to pass the night in I never saw. Every-thing was soaked. If I became exhausted, it would be necessary to build a fire; and, as I walked on, I couldn't find a dry bit of wood. Even if a little punk were discovered in a rotten log I had no hatchet to cut fuel. I thought it all ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and eats his usual leisurely breakfast. At, say, nine o'clock, he settles back behind the steering-wheel of his motor-car. Crossing the Hudson by the Forty-second Street Ferry, he climbs the Weehawken slope, and swings westward over one of the uninviting turnpikes that disfigure the marshy land between the Passaic and the Hackensack. Then he finds the real Jersey, the Jerseyman's Jersey, of rolling hills, and historic memories of Washington's Continental troops ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... affection, they are not squeamish about its source or orthodoxy; if the sentiment be sincere and hearty, that is enough. In the present case, moreover, Cornelia, as a last resort, was by no means so uninviting an object ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... people wished to get rid of.[3] We will admit, then, without hesitation, that acts which would now be considered as acts of illusion or folly, held a large place in the life of Jesus. Must we sacrifice to these uninviting features the sublimer aspect of such a life? God forbid. A mere sorcerer, after the manner of Simon the magician, would not have brought about a moral revolution like that effected by Jesus. If the thaumaturgus had effaced in Jesus the moralist ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan |
