"Unsatisfactory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... retarded for a season the political career of the Honourable Alberic de Crecy. While the Liberal party at Darlford were suffering under the daily inflictions of Mr. Rigby's slashing style, and the post brought them very unsatisfactory prospects of a champion, one offered himself, and in an address which intimated that he was no man of straw, likely to recede from any contest in which he chose to embark. The town was suddenly placarded with a letter to ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... end a basket containing, in the words of the programme, "a little pig" was slung. About thirty men stood to the front, as would-be possessors of "porcus." Each of the thirty, as valiant heroes as ever trod a plank or fisted handspike, tried and failed—and tried again with a like unsatisfactory result. Piggy still lay nestled in his swinging stye. True, once or twice he had cocked out his head with an enquiring squeal as the pole now and then received an extra hard shake, making the foundations of his house rather insecure. The affair was at length decided in ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... thinking people are not willing to desert science for cults that ignore the existence of these physical bodies. If they have found it unsatisfactory to be treated as if they were all body, they have also been unwilling to be treated as if they were all mind. They have been in a dilemma between two half-truths, even if they have not realized the dilemma. It has remained for modern psychotherapy to strike the balance—to treat the whole man. Solidly ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... Serbia went on to suggest that if Austria was not entirely satisfied with the reply, the points still in dispute should be referred to the international tribunal at The Hague. This reply the Austrian government considered unsatisfactory. Forty-five minutes after the Serbian note had been placed in the hands of the Austrian minister to Serbia that official handed a notice to the Serbian government stating "that not having received a satisfactory answer within the time limit ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... held a near kinsman so much a part of himself, that he would have provided for the weal of the living nephew, as he endeavoured to do for that of his deceased sister and her husband. But whatever was the motive, the neglect was very unsatisfactory to young Durward, and he wished more than once he had taken service with the Duke of Burgundy before he quarrelled with his forester. "Whatever had then become of me," he thought to himself, "I should always have been able to keep up my spirits with the reflection that ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... presented on the screen became themselves more and more enthralling. The trivial acts played in less than a minute without any artistic setting and without any rehearsal or preparation soon became unsatisfactory. The grandmother who washes the baby and even the street boy who plays a prank had to be replaced by quick little comedies. Stages were set up; more and more elaborate scenes were created; the film grew and grew in length. Competing companies ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... amusing farce. One of them saw something and could not be laughed out of it by his fellows. But the general report was unsatisfactory. The mistake was the employment of Irishmen in a task ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... dream of being accused of being older than she is, denotes that she will fall into bad companionship, and her denial of stated things will be brought to scorn. To see herself looking aged, intimates possible sickness, or unsatisfactory ventures. If it is her lover she sees aged, she will be in danger of ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... economic statesmanship of King Leopold there still hangs a shroud of uncertainty as to regime and resource. Few people go there and its literature, save that which grew out of the atrocity campaign, is meager and unsatisfactory. To the vast majority of persons, therefore, the country is merely a name—a dab of colour on the globe. Its very distance lends enchantment and heightens the lure that always lurks in the unknown. What is it like? ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... the little path away from Biddy, and Biddy went into the house, and I went out at the garden gate and took a dejected stroll until supper-time; again feeling it very sorrowful and strange that this, the second night of my bright fortunes, should be as lonely and unsatisfactory as the first. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... and on the following day resumed his first position under the walls of Polotsk. There he found Saint-Cyr and the Bavarians, who increased the force of his corps to 35,000 men. As to Wittgenstein, he tranquilly took up his first position at Osweia. The result of these four days was very unsatisfactory to the emperor. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... the good of the city; and both parties jointly assisted his promotion, upon the following reasons. The change of government made by Sylla, which at first seemed a senseless one, by time and usage had now come to be considered by the people no unsatisfactory settlement. But there were some that endeavored to alter and subvert the whole present state of affairs not from any good motives, but for their own private gain; and Pompey being at this time employed in the wars ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... immigration laws are unsatisfactory. We need every honest and efficient immigrant fitted to become an American citizen, every immigrant who comes here to stay, who brings here a strong body, a stout heart, a good head, and a resolute purpose to do his duty well in every way and to bring ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... by some of his old adherents, determined to leave a country where his loyalty had received such unsatisfactory recognition, and to begin life again in some other part of the American continent. Not long after the war he sailed out upon the Gulf of Mexico,—for what destination it is not known, but probably for some Central American port,—and as nothing ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... guard surprised me exceedingly. Why was the affair mentioned in so partial and unsatisfactory a manner? Why was I, a murderer, suspected of being myself murdered? Why did not this lead to an investigation, which must have exposed the whole horrid mystery of the death of the individual up stairs? I could not understand it. My mind became the more perplexed, the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... very romantic,' Mabel pouted. Indeed, this Barstein, whose mere ideal could so interrupt the rhapsodies due to her admissions of affection, was distinctly unsatisfactory. She touched his hand ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... methods of mounting fish have proven so unsatisfactory that they have been almost entirely abandoned, and, until the method to be described was devised, it was necessary to place specimens in alcohol or other preserving liquids or to make plaster casts of them. The objections to the former process are that it is expensive, requiring ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... repressed all freedom of action and restricted the scope for individual initiative. To understand the full significance of the change which has come over the country one has to contrast what he sees at present, unsatisfactory as it may appear from some points of view, with the state of things described above.... Remembering that methods of progress calculated to evoke national feeling and religious enthusiasm are unavailable under the conditions of the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... there was something of the reaction that has taken place in some parts of our country; but that recently there has been a settling down to real, earnest life on the part of a large proportion of the race. After calling attention to certain weak and unsatisfactory phases in the life of the Jamaica ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... party had proved a most unsatisfactory affair. She had not made the sensation she expected to make. Harney had scarcely noticed her at all, having neither eyes nor ears for any one save Ellen Tiffton, who surely must have told that Hugh was not invited, for, in no ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... way. I gave you an education regardless of expense, which has put you in possession of a comfortable income, at an age when many young men are dependent. I have thus started you fairly in life, and may claim that you should cease to be a drag upon me further. Long engagements are proverbially unsatisfactory, and in the present case the prospect seems interminable. What interest, pray, do you suppose I have that I could get a living for you? Can I go up and down the country begging people to provide for my son because he has taken it into ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the tea. There was a small sliding trap at the top of the tin, and when Edgar poured out half a cup of the contents, these were examined with great curiosity. The men took a few grains in their fingers, smelt them, and then tasted them. The result was unsatisfactory, and they were content to watch Edgar's proceedings before they went further. When he had the water boiling, he put the tea into a tin pot and poured the water over it, and when it had stood a few minutes served it out. ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... In sensation, cognition, and intellection, in our instincts and volitions, as far as they are truly human, thought is a constant element. To insist upon thought in this connection with history may, however, appear unsatisfactory. In this science it would seem as if thought must be subordinate to what is given, to the realities of fact—that this is its basis and guide; while philosophy dwells in the region of self-produced ideas, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... been the purpose of giving him a brain that could not think soundly and a conscience that welcomed murder? That leads us inevitably to the question, Why are criminals created at all? Why are idiots created? The deeper we look into the facts of life the more unsatisfactory does the theory of special creation become because we find a thousand things that contradict it and show its inconsistency. If the purpose of God was to create a heaven to be enjoyed by those who reach it we cannot see why He should ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... this he had been blinded by the theories on the opposing side, notwithstanding the brilliant testimonies to the contrary of those whose lives were unimpeachable. Of course it was impossible to consecrate for and receive the experience under such circumstances, and consequently years of unsatisfactory experience passed by, until at last the indisputable symptoms of inborn depravity, and the deplorable weakness of the heart and will to cope with the mighty power of the enemy, brought the struggling soul into depths of despair at the feet of Jesus, crying, ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... discharged, and the unity of the battery is disturbed. Sometimes the number of cells is kept fixed for supply, but the P.D. they put on the mains is reduced during charge by employing regulating cells in opposition. Both these plans have proved unsatisfactory, and the battery is now preferably joined across the mains in parallel with the dynamo. The cells take the peaks of the load and thus relieve the dynamo and engine of sudden changes, as shown in fig. 21. Here the line current (shown by the erratic curve) varied ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Miss Sibyl; 'they seem so very white and sickly in appearance, that we were quite astonished at the way they scampered upstairs. I am thankful they were sent back in charge of an English nurse. Those ayahs are always so unsatisfactory.' ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre
... uneasiness? I was not able to decide, and, with this unanswered question added to the number already troubling me, I was forced to face the day which, for aught I knew, might be the precursor of many others equally trying and unsatisfactory. ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... think I agree with you," she said, giving a shove to her soft elastic hair which did not improve the indefiniteness of the parting. "Of course it's unsatisfactory in one way to feel one will never live to finish things, but in another way I think it's a great comfort to feel one can never use them up or outlive them if one lasts on to be a hundred. And though one gets very cross and miserable with ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... They therefore choose rather to renounce the principle itself, and to brand it with the name of pride and faction. This test with certainty discriminates the opinions of men. The other is a description vague and unsatisfactory. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... down street discussing some business matter with Crego, and this left her hours the more empty and unsatisfactory. As the dinner-hour drew near she drove to fetch her husband, hoping for a glimpse of the Fordyces on the way, but even this comfort was denied her, and she ached with dull pain which she could ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... were to take the votes on that subject," said the doctor, "I presume the verdict would be unanimous. But looks are proverbially—unsatisfactory! Do you know what damage you have done me by your exploit ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the Shah to Tehran, a horrid event occurred which plunged me in the greatest misery. I heard that Zeenab was ill, and unable to dance before the Shah; and, knowing the royal methods of treating unsatisfactory slaves, I feared greatly for the consequences. My fears were warranted. I was ordered, with others, to wait below the tower of the royal harem at midnight and bear away a corpse. We saw a woman struggling with two men at the top of the tower. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... he made ceaseless calculations, but they were all wondrously unsatisfactory. He found that he could establish nothing. He finally concluded that the only way to prove himself was to go into the blaze, and then figuratively to watch his legs to discover their merits and faults. He reluctantly admitted that he could not sit ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... been detained by the storm, but I would rather they had been here," observed the captain. "The state of the whole country is unsatisfactory, for the natives are often hostile, and it is dangerous for a small party to move far from the settlement, although it was understood that the Indians in this neighbourhood were friendly. However, we will not anticipate evil, but hope ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... others, have given elaborate accounts of it; yet why despair of presenting, in a homely way, some general idea of it, such as one might gather in the course of an afternoon's ramble? After reading all we find about it in books of travel, our conceptions are still vague and unsatisfactory. Probably the reason is, that minute details of history and architecture afford one but a very faint and inadequate idea of the appearance of any place. Like the pictures of old Dennen, they may give you every wrinkle with the accuracy of a ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... I inquired; then he gave me the general, convenient, unsatisfactory reason 'business.' In an hour we were off to New York. But now, papa, comes the singular part of the affair. When we reached the city, instead of driving to one of the best hotels, as had always been his custom, he drove to quite an inferior place, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... near Miss Noel, and, after some inquiries about Sir Robert, Ethel, and the Browns, told her what concern they had felt about her illness. "Husband telegraphed constantly to know how you were going on; but the replies were often most unsatisfactory; and it is so very nice to see you up again. You will soon be about, and the sea-voyage will set you up wonderfully. That puts me in mind of—Tell her, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... because they who labored for the government were beaten if their work proved unsatisfactory, and he thought "it is better for me to run the chance of being beaten than to allow my father to risk it." Therefore, he deserved the reward of the ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... many weeks, there came a letter from her, but it was short, and sad, and unsatisfactory in all respects. She had had a terrible disappointment she said, but her friends must have forbearance with her, and excuse her from detailing the events of the past few weeks. She was now at Springdale ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... she were assuming one of the characters in a mysterious romance, such as unfolded itself only in books or in Boston; but thrilling as it was, it was nevertheless extremely unsatisfactory. ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and the feathers weighed, after which the body was laid open longitudinally by cutting alongside the sternum and through the back bone. When all had been thus prepared, they were hung up in groups to be photographed, but the photographs were quite unsatisfactory so far as showing the relative proportions of fat and lean. The accompanying drawing made from the photograph shows the relative development of an average pair of chickens. Attention is particularly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... been regulated by anything but the most indefinite legal enactments and the most unsatisfactory rules. It was many years ago sanctioned apparently for a purpose regarded as temporary and related to a survey of our coast. Having gained a place in the appropriations made by Congress, it has gradually taken to itself powers ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... partly due to the non-existence of a rule in favor of evening dress (never again shall I gird against the rule in Europe!), but it is due also to the oddly inefficient illumination during the entr'actes, and to the unsatisfactory schemes of decoration. ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... he broke in, brusquely, "don't trouble! I should make a most unsatisfactory father confessor." He spoke quickly. His color was still high, but not of annoyance. His suspense was transformed into unpleasant certainty; but the exchange left him surer of himself. His perplexity had dropped to a quiet sense of ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... good judge. A few judges are better than many, but the few must be good. The matter in dispute should be clearly elicited; time and examination will find out the truth. Causes should first be tried before a court of neighbours: if the decision is unsatisfactory, let them be referred to a higher court; or, if necessary, to a higher still, of which ...
— Laws • Plato
... irritated me for about a year past; they have secretly armed during that time. The busier they believed me to be in Spain, the more energetically they continued their preparations; and whenever I had them questioned about their motives and objects, they made evasive and unsatisfactory replies. The natural consequence of all this was, that I moved my troops toward the German frontier; that Davoust, Lannes, and Massena, with three corps, had to approach Austria, and hold themselves in readiness to cross ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... at school and college he had inflicted on his father's ambition; certain lectures and gibes from that strong mouth, in his early manhood. Absurd! If his father had had to do with a really spendthrift and unsatisfactory son, there might have been some sense in it. But for these trifles—these suspicions—these foolish notions of a doctrinaire—to inflict this stigma and this yoke on ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... practices had fallen much into disuse or contempt, partly because of the gross impostures to which they had been made subservient, and partly because, even where the effects upon certain abnormal constitutions were genuinely produced, the effects when fairly examined and analysed, were very unsatisfactory—not to be relied upon for any systematic truthfulness or any practical purpose, and rendered very mischievous to credulous persons by the superstitions they tended to produce. Zee received my answers with much benignant attention, and said that similar instances of abuse and ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... An unsatisfactory equation between an exodus and return in time through reversible space and an exodus and return in space ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Philip took the title of King of Castille in order to forestall the intrigues of his father-in-law, Ferdinand. With a view of securing the support of England, which had been somewhat estranged owing to the new policy followed by Philip, the latter concluded in 1506 a new treaty of commerce, very unsatisfactory from the Belgian point of view, and which was therefore called by the people the "Intercursus Malus." The new King of Spain died the same year, in Burgos, having lost a great deal of the popularity which he had so largely ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... unsatisfactory accounts which for many days afterwards we received.... I cannot help being anxious and fearful. You know he is all left to us—and that without him we should indeed be orphans and desolate. Therefore you may well know what feelings those ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... has come nearest to catching the spirit of the moorlands and the breeze that sometimes drifts up over Hindhead from the great glen which local myth has named the Devil's Punch Bowl. The Broom Squire is strangely unsatisfactory as a novel, or I find it so, with its entire needlessness and inconsequence of plot. But it has something in it of the heather and the wind, of the sand of Thursley and the steam of the Punch Bowl on a wet day; ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... boy," said his father, "we shall not be brought to the—er—scaffold by any mistake of that kind. If that occurred, it would be most un—" he caught his wife's eye and substituted "unsatisfactory. I'm not sure," he added, "but I fancy I hear shouting. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov and reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at Krasnoe, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... that the general conviction of the parliament is dominated by the absolute necessity, to pull back and to strive for peace as soon as possible. The financial aspect given by Dr. Helfferich is disastrous, the military situation, taken in the whole, unsatisfactory and the confidential information, given by Herr von Jagow in the committee with regard to the Egyptian expedition, discouraging if not hopeless. The Government and particularly Herr von Bethmann wish for peace, but believe themselves ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... contemplated, a full "Abstract" of his "Title" was laid by Mr. Parkinson before his conveyancer, in order to advise, and to prepare the necessary instruments. Owing to inquiries suggested by the conveyancer, additional statements were laid before him; and produced an opinion of a somewhat unsatisfactory description, from which I shall lay before the reader ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of a Christian parent towards her. This, and other recollections, pressed upon Mm, and his heart was once or twice upon the point of falling back into the fresh impulses of its early humanity, when the trial of tomorrow threw him once more into a gloom, that settled him down into a resentful but unsatisfactory determination to discharge the duty he had ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... Sir Charles Lyell made inquiries among the ancient creole inhabitants of the faubourg. That the old priest, in his last days, became very much emaciated, that he walked about the streets like a mummy, that he gradually dried up, and finally blew away, was the meagre and unsatisfactory result of the tourist's investigations. This is all that is generally told of Pere Antoine. In the summer of 1861, while New Orleans was yet occupied by the Confederate forces, I met at Alexandria, in Virginia, a lady from Louisiana—Miss ...
— Pere Antoine's Date-Palm • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... while the government during the two earlier thirds of this period executed splendid and magnificent buildings, it neglected to make other outlays at least as necessary. We have already indicated how unsatisfactory were its military provisions; the frontier countries and even the valley of the Po(21) were pillaged by barbarians, and bands of robbers made havoc in the interior even of Asia Minor, Sicily, and Italy. The fleet even was totally neglected; there ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... is a much more difficult problem. The present unsatisfactory condition of affairs was admirably expressed in the following editorial in the "Evening Post" of June 12, 1876, from the pen of the late William ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... "Unsatisfactory results," she said. "They could not adjust psychologically to changed conditions. They usually became unbalanced. Some suicides and a number of cases of extreme schizophrenia resulted. It was decided that it was no kindness to the older space-struck ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... seemed to be drawing the comparison now between this France so variable, changing even as you study her, with the manners and aspects of that other land known to him as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel, for the most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical cast, albeit hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed his brain, in response to some longing of which, perhaps, he himself was hardly conscious, a desire in the depths of a heart fastidious rather than jaded, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... minds me o' the laird there," he would say. "He has some of Hob's grand, whunstane sense, and the same way with him of steiking his mouth when he's no very pleased." And Hob, all unconscious, would draw down his upper lip and produce, as if for comparison, the formidable grimace referred to. The unsatisfactory incumbent of St. Enoch's Kirk was thus briefly dismissed: "If he had but twa fingers o' Gib's, he would waken them up." And Gib, honest man! would look down and secretly smile. Clem was a spy whom they ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... INVALIDS.—The practice of boiling arrow-root in milk is at once wasteful and unsatisfactory; the best mode of preparing enough for an invalid's supper is as follows: Put a dessertspoonful of powder, two lumps of sugar, into a chocolate cup, with a few drops of Malaga, or any other sweet wine; mix these well together, and add, in small quantities, ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... you Rose, dear, about that night, and all that Janet said to me? I told her how I wished to get out of my useless, unsatisfactory life, just as you have been telling me. Did I ever tell you all she said to me? I don't think I ever did. I felt then, just as you do now. I think I can understand your feeling, better than you suppose; and I opened my heart to Janet—I mean, I ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... of porridge had been boiled, was set before a Newfoundland puppy of three or four months old. At first, he contented himself by licking off portions of the oatmeal which adhered to the interior, but finding this unsatisfactory, he scraped the morsels with his fore-paws into a heap, and then ate the whole at once. I had a dog, who, having once scalded his tongue, always afterwards, when I gave him his milk and water at breakfast, put his paw very cautiously into the saucer, to see if the liquid was too hot, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... mill was unsatisfactory. The elder Gaspard was away, and young Pierre was curt and surly. The sight of Victorine riding familiarly, and with an evident joyous pride, by the side of one of the richest men in the country, and a young man at that,—and a young man, moreover, who looked and behaved as if ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... as the reliability of the anatomical work which has been discussed is in question, it would seem that Rawitz's results are rendered somewhat unsatisfactory by the carelessness of Cyon in fixing the materials; that Panse's descriptions and comparisons are neither careful nor detailed enough to be convincing; that the work of Alexander and Kreidl, as well as that of Kishi, ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... legitimate to compare races of men than with wild kinds), e.g. of different dogs or pigeons, tell precisely in the opposite direction. Regardless also of the fact that perhaps no genus of monkeys is in a more unsatisfactory state as to the determination of its different kinds than the genus chosen by him for illustration. This is so much the case that J. A. Wagner (in his supplement to Schreber's great work on Beasts) at first included all the ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... in the roof of the Pantheon. The Pantheon stands at one corner of the Region of Pigna, and a connection between the Region, the Pantheon and the Pine-cone seems vaguely possible, though altogether unsatisfactory. The truth about the Pine-cone is perfectly well known; it was part of a fountain in Agrippa's artificial lake in the Campus Martius, of which Pigna was a part, and it was set up in the cloistered garden of Saint Peter's by Pope Symmachus about fourteen hundred years ago. The lake may ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... defective as to be ordered into dock. I had received letters from my sister, who was overjoyed at the intelligence of my safe return, and the anticipation of seeing me. The accounts of my father were, however, very unsatisfactory. My sister wrote, that disappointment and anxiety had had such an effect upon him, that he was deranged in his intellects. Our new captain came down to join us. He was a very young man, and had never before commanded ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... The trunk was perfectly solid and showed no signs of decay. Many bushels of nuts were gathered from this one tree yearly and I can remember the long winter evenings when we sat in the kitchen cracking the nuts from this old tree. Some have said the butternut is unsatisfactory as an ornamental tree but let me add—do not neglect it in the planting plan for it will give you much pleasure, and, too, the meats are well worth the trouble in cracking the nuts even though a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... affairs of the world, and its predecessors, the Treaties of Utrecht and Paris, which ushered in peace early in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were miniature in comparison. The German terms were an unsatisfactory and comparatively unimportant part of the Treaty except in so far as they bound Germany to accept the principles for which the Allies had fought the war and upon which they were determined that the future government ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... mandarin (upon a requisition from our side) explained to the mob who crowded about the barriers why the men were punished, and warned them that similar chastisement for similar offences awaited themselves. In one point only the example made was unsatisfactory: the men punished were not identified as the same who had assaulted Colonel Chesney. They might be criminals awaiting punishment for some other offence. With so shuffling a government as the Chinese, always moving through darkness, and on the principles of a crooked policy, no perfect ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... had to sustain nature was the leather soup Alick spoke of, with the addition of some tripe de roche. Next morning we breakfasted on the same unsatisfactory materials. ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... for the sake of his beloved nieces—and they would never know what humiliation this unsatisfactory interview had cost him. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... and benevolent, there was just enough worldliness in Cleveland's nature to make his views sensible as far as they went, but to bound their scope. Everything he said was so rational; and yet, to an imaginative person, his conversation was unsatisfactory, and his philosophy ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... no help for it. 'My chaplain, Dr Gwynne,' said he; 'my present chaplain, Mr Slope.' he certainly made the introduction as unsatisfactory to the chaplain as possible, and by the use of the word present, seemed to indicate that Mr Slope might probably not long enjoy the honour which he now held. But Mr Slope cared nothing for this. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... critics in the whole range of modern scholarship. If Daille must be placed in the second rank, surely Pearson may well be relegated to the same position; for there is most respectable proof that his Vindiciae, in reply to the treatise of the French divine, was pronounced by Porson to be a "very unsatisfactory" performance. [8:2] "The most elaborate and ingenious portion of the work" is, as Bishop Lightfoot himself confesses, "the least satisfactory." [8:3] Dr. Lightfoot, we believe, will hardly pretend to say that Vossius, Bull, ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... property and education, there are some plausible arguments in favor of such qualifications, but they are all alike unsatisfactory, illogical and unjust. A limited suffrage creates a privileged class, and is based on the false idea that government is the natural arbiter of its citizens, while in fact it is the creature of their will. In ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... It was an unsatisfactory interview that Danny had with the Chief. "You're crazy!" was the verdict of that A. F. F. official when Danny had finished. "You're crazy, or else—or else—" His voice trailed off; his eyes were on the moving letters that flashed their message of disaster ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... furnished the rooms made almost the same report, quite as meagre and unsatisfactory. Mr. Berwin—so the deceased had given his name—had ordered the furniture, and had paid for it in gold. Altogether, in spite of every effort, the police were obliged to declare themselves beaten. They could not find ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... that the association with things bright and beautiful may help to set the keynote of our own lives in cheerful accord. A dark, gloomy, ill-ventilated room brings depression of spirits, and will make the most elaborate meal unsatisfactory; while the plainest meal may seem almost a feast when served amid attractive surroundings. Neatness is an important essential; any home, however humble, may possess cleanliness and order, and without these, all charms of wealth and art ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... the consequence of his being a man without intellectual needs. The great affliction of all philistines is that they have no interest in ideas, and that, to escape being bored, they are in constant need of realities. But realities are either unsatisfactory or dangerous; when they lose their interest, they become fatiguing. But the ideal ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... turn from these unsatisfactory violin makers to violin players: I know nothing of the great Corelli's personal history; his pupil Geminiani is said to have led a life full of romance. Philidor spent his years chiefly in the intrigues of chess-playing. The great Tartini, whom the devil visited in the dream he immortalised ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... Lalugwumps are cannibals they would say "beyond the stomach." In testimony to the consolatory value of the doctrine of another life, I may say that this one true believer had in this life a comparatively unsatisfactory lot, for in early youth he had been struck by a flying stone from a volcano and had lost a considerable ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... a patron of Wren's, and he disliked Billy Silver, partly for his own sake and partly because he hated his brother, with whom he had come into contact once or twice during his career at Eckleton, always with unsatisfactory results. ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... moment in patching up an unsatisfactory peace, but it was becoming every day more and more obvious that the Aberdeen Government was doomed. The memorandum which Lord John drew up, at the suggestion of Lord Lansdowne, describes in pithy and direct terms the privations of the soldiers, and the mortality amongst men and horses, which was ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Hawthorne to the heretic Hilda, but not to the child of its own bosom. Hawthorne, if he indicates through Kenyon his ideas, seems to advise, as elsewhere, letting the dead past bury its dead while Donatello and Miriam should go on to what self-sacrificing life they can find. Unsatisfactory as the story is, merely as a tale, it is less vague than the central truth, the moral theme which it embodies. The truth is that after all, in the ethical sphere of the story, Hawthorne has given no more than his meditations, very ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... have yourself towed a skiff on the Thames, when the current was so strong that the progress made with the oars was unsatisfactory. Well, if you have, you don't know one bit what this was like. In the first place, the Thames, even by Monkey Island, is still water compared to the Nile between Surras and Dal, a sixty-mile stretch. Then your skiff ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... but the wife's profession was practised by a maid and a nurse. Therefore she had no occupation. The want of occupation encouraged brooding, and she brooded a great deal over her position. She found it unsatisfactory. Was it right that an intellectual woman like her should spend her days in idleness? Once her husband had ventured to remark that no one compelled her to live in idleness. He never did ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... which was growing more and more unsatisfactory, was abruptly terminated by the entrance of one of the other ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... (March and September). In Chait they also worship their hooks and nets. At their marriages when a father has selected a bride for his son he consults an astrologer to compare their horoscopes. If the conjunction is unsatisfactory he will change the boy's name to suit the astrological calculations. The wedding is celebrated in the common fashion of the Uriya castes. If a bachelor marries a widow he first goes through the form of wedlock with a bunch of flowers. Among their ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... wife and Libby Anne had saved for their trip to Ontario, there were those who said that he went through six hundred dollars that one night, making a rough guess at the amount. Mrs. Crocks did not use any such amateur and unsatisfactory way of arriving at conclusions. She did not need to—there was a way of finding out! To the elevator she went, and looked at the books under cover of looking up a wheat ticket which her husband had cashed and found that Bill Cavers had marketed seventeen hundred and ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... they contained, but no fresh information could be got from them. For six days the King remained in this uncertainty as to the real losses that had been sustained. Everybody was afraid to write bad news; all the letters which from time to time arrived, gave, therefore, but an unsatisfactory account of what had taken place. The King used every means in his power to obtain some news. Every post that came in was examined by him, but there was little found to satisfy him. Neither the King nor anybody else could understand, from what ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... would not stop at knowledge, which is, of course, unsatisfactory,—but dive beyond, as I have done, into the essence of things," said Fred to himself. "If he could pierce through the veil that covers all things, he would find amusement enough to last a lifetime. In vegetable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... we made it convenient to take our dinner in town, on the veranda of a restaurant which overlooked the busy Volga, with its mobile moods of sunset and thunderstorm, where we compensated ourselves for our unsatisfactory breakfast by a characteristically Russian dinner, of which I will omit details, except as regards the soup. This soup was botvinya. A Russian once obligingly furnished me with a description of a foreigner's probable views on this national ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Treatment is unsatisfactory. Preventive measures consist in avoiding conditions favorable to the production of the disease. This should be practised so far as possible. At the time the attack occurs, the animal should be given a cathartic. One pound ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... Alas! how unsatisfactory are even the choicest blessings of life! Wealth brings only care, and the millionnaire toils all his life for—his food and clothes and lodging; dies unregretted, and is soon forgotten. Honor brings not content, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in China are all engaged by their parents without their knowledge or consent. This was very unsatisfactory to the young people of the old regime, and it is being modified in the new. One day one of my students in discussing ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... anxiety as to how they will deport themselves when absent. And children who practise good behavior in the home when no company is present, do not need to be called aside for a hasty lesson in this line when some one is about to call. Such lessons are very unsatisfactory, and are seldom remembered, being much like music lessons taken without ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... cheerful. He was half annoyed to see the artist and Miss Lamont drifting along in such laughing good-humor with the world, as if a summer holiday was just a holiday without any consequences or responsibilities. It was to him a serious affair ever since that unsatisfactory note from Miss Benson; somehow the summer had lost its sparkle. And yet was it not preposterous that a girl, just a single girl, should have the power to change for a man the aspect of a whole coast-by her presence to make it iridescent with beauty, and by her absence to take ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... loyal mind is already an established truth—of the ultimate success and complete triumph of the North in the present contest. For in any other event all these facts are dumb, and the inferences to be drawn from them vague and unsatisfactory, absolutely no better than mere random conjecture. And as the war has now become the great fact in our history, and its effects must modify our whole social life for many years to come, its results must not be neglected ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... ease and rapidity, after which everybody did the best he could for himself within the hollow of the crater. The bed was hard, the shelter unsatisfactory, the situation painful—lying in the open air, five thousand feet above the level of ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... kept very busy, for the regulation as to carrying papers is being rigorously enforced, and the belated pedestrian is invariably challenged by a cavalry patrol or by the ordinary police. If his answers are unsatisfactory, he undergoes a more searching examination at ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... a most unsatisfactory person," she went on, not heeding my annoyance. "Most abnormally modest people are. If I were to stick you with this hat-pin, for instance, you would accept the matter as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... father came in again, leading his wife and children with an old-world gallantry that was apparent even in these unsatisfactory circumstances. He had a slow impressive way of speaking that made even his unimportant words appear important. In the present case, as soon as he began to speak most of the people in the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... dressing to the wound, from which he first extracted some bits of the leather of the boot. The worthy doctor was wrought up to a high pitch of excitement; he exclaimed, as he went downstairs, that he would rather cut off one of his own legs than continue working in that unsatisfactory, slovenly way, without a tithe of either the assistants or the appliances that he ought to have. Below in the ambulance, indeed, they no longer knew where to bestow the cases that were brought them, and had been obliged to have recourse to the lawn, where they ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... chums already established was Roscoe, a dark, well-set up man of five or six and thirty, with a clean-shaven, eager face, artistic hands, and a pair of clever eyes. Roscoe had been in turn a junior master, a journalist and actor. Dissatisfied and unsatisfactory in these situations, his friends had found him an opening where he would be at too great a distance to trouble them—in short, a billet in a Burma oil company in Rangoon. Amazing to relate, the post suited him and the ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... very unsatisfactory. I supposed you went to find out whether Tom was in love with the girl. Was she as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... last night and asparagus tips—did you ever notice what a lot of skin a boarding house chicken has? And the tips just missed by one, being tip. The meals are an unsatisfactory substitute for something to eat, and I find myself filling up on bread to keep my ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... every corner. Every place seemed unsatisfactory, but worst of all was his customary couch in the study. That couch was dreadful to him, probably because of the oppressive thoughts he had had when lying there. It was unsatisfactory everywhere, but the corner behind ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... knows to how great an extent—on the will of the recipients, and therefore in exact proportion to their lowness in the human scale, on the circumstances which environ them. So my characters are now—very much what the reader might expect them to be. I confess them to be unsatisfactory; so are most things: but how can I solve problems which fact has not yet solved for me? How am I to extricate my antitypal characters, when their living types have not yet extricated themselves? When the age moves on, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... that he interrupted himself in the act of cutting a slice of bread, and left the knife sticking in the loaf, 'what a queer fellow our landlord is! I don't believe he has been home once since he got me into that unsatisfactory scrape. I begin to think he will never come home again. What a mysterious life that man does lead, to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... scenes and circumstances, and to some extent its dramatis personae, from the writer's own surroundings in the town and corporation of Bedford, and his brief but stirring experience as a soldier in the great Parliamentary War. The catastrophe also is eminently unsatisfactory. When Christian and Hopeful enter the Golden Gates we feel that the story has come to its proper end, which we have been looking for all along. But the conclusion of "The Holy War" is too much like the closing chapter of "Rasselas"—"a conclusion in which nothing is concluded." ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... the plant, or from stumps from which the heads have already been cut, or by tying the leaves together above the head. The latter is the usual method, rye straw or bast matting being generally used for the purpose. Merely breaking down the inner leaves upon the head is unsatisfactory, as the growth, both of the leaves and the head, soon causes ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier |
