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More "Unobtrusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of criminals) see to that; and shabby people are very infrequent. People who want to save money for other purposes, or who do not want much bother with their clothing, seem to wear costumes of rough woven cloth, dyed an unobtrusive brown or green, over fine woollen underclothing, and so achieve a decent comfort in its simplest form. Others outside the Rule of the samurai range the spectrum for colour, and have every variety of texture; the colours attained by ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... of its spirit. So dull and uninviting is calm and practical religion, that religious persons are ever exposed to the temptation of looking out for excitements of one sort or other, to make it pleasurable to them. The spirit of the Gospel is a meek, humble, gentle, unobtrusive spirit. It doth not cry nor lift up its voice in the streets, unless called upon by duty so to do, and then it does it with pain. Display, pretension, conflict, are unpleasant to it. What then is to be thought of persons who are ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... children, with Helen's help; preparing herself, in the quiet of her "House of Gods"—a tiny room above the studio—in much the same spirit as she had prepared for the great consecration of marriage, with vigil and meditation and unobtrusive fasting—noted by Nevil, though ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... learn to take small gains that offer, and to watch unmoved while splendid chances come to naught. We learn to live life and to waste no energy in vain wishing that we had shuffled differently. We learn even to marvel admiringly at the unobtrusive cunning which thwarts us of our dream's own—to wonder that cards ever should come right for any player in that maze of chances and faulty judgments. And we learn, above all, to brush the things together without loss of time and to play a new hand ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... the younger Cicero and of Horace. Few characters in history are more pathetically interesting than his. High born, yet disdainful of ambitious aims, irreproachable in an age of almost universal profligacy, the one pure member of a grossly licentious family, modest and unobtrusive although steeped in all the learning of old Greece, strong of will yet tolerant and gentle, his austerity so tempered by humanism that he won not only respect but love; he had been adored by the gay young patricians, who paid homage to the virtue which they did not ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... that if a person had done wrong, he would be conscious of it; and that if he were found out he would at least try to appear penitent. But in this case my theory did not seem to be working; for my former chum, whom I remembered as a quiet, unobtrusive fellow, met my startled glance with a twinkle of suppressed humor. I confess that such a blow to my theory ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... benefactor and friend to his last home in their arms. Their sorrowing hearts were the truest mourning, the only pomp and circumstance worthy of the occasion; and their streaming eyes were the modest and unobtrusive, but most deeply affecting, pageant of that day. All the inhabitants followed him, with mourning in their hearts. Remembering Henry's love for flowers, his fellow-citizens made arches of flowers in three places for his mortal remains ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... own individuality, any one in search of that very unobtrusive quality would have found it more in the expression of her eyes and in the childlike lines of her lips than in her toilets. It is possible that Mrs. Hubert might have regarded it as an unkind visitation of Providence that the results of her lifetime of effort in an ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... inferiors,—it was no marvel that one part of the world forgave to a man rich and young the irregularities of dissipation, that another forgot real immorality in favour of affected religion, or that the remainder allowed the most unexceptionable excellence of words to atone for the unobtrusive errors of a conduct which did not ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... us nearly a month, and won our regard by his quiet, intelligent, and unobtrusive manners. Although dressed in skins, he was perfectly the gentleman, moreover an enlightened and sincere Christian, for he had thrown aside all heathen customs and superstitions. His great object appeared ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... scheme of decoration, the work is much simplified; but if one has to live in the average nondescript house and wishes to use French furniture, the problem will take time and thought to solve. In this kind of house, if one cannot change it at all, it is better to keep as simple and unobtrusive a background as possible, to have the color scheme and hangings and furniture so beautiful that they are a convincing reason themselves of the need of their being there, but one should not try to turn the room ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... almost always addressed his friends by their Christian names, more especially when those friends were of higher standing than himself. There was a depth of pride, which few understood, lurking beneath his quiet and unobtrusive manner; and he had a way of his own by which he let people know that he considered himself in every respect their equal, and in some ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of modern St. Dunstan's is that unobtrusive figure of Queen Elizabeth at the east end. This figure from the old church came from Ludgate when the City gates were destroyed in 1786. It was bought for L16 10s. when the old church came to the ground, and was re-erected over the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... sentimental soliloquy. It is, then, merely sufficient to say that I took the earliest steamer for kinder shores, spurred on to haste by a venomous cable-gram from the Smithsonian, repudiating me, and by another from Bronx Park, ordering me to spend the winter in some inexpensive, poisonous, and unobtrusive spot, and make a collection of isopods. The island of Java appeared to me to be as poisonously unobtrusive and inexpensive a region as I had ever heard of; a steamer sailed from Antwerp for Batavia in twenty-four hours. Therefore, as I say, I took the night-train ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... and good sense that characterized her unobtrusive conduct, Miss Dexter had prepared from Muriel's wardrobe an entire suit of mourning, which she prevailed upon Salome to accept and wear; and, on the morning of the funeral, the latter went down early into the draped and darkened parlor, where the coffin and its cold tenant awaited the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... reach of great intellectual gift or conscious effort. Joseph Worcester was a modest, shrinking Swedenborgian minister. His congregation was a handful of refined mystics who took no prominent part in public affairs and were quiet and unobtrusive citizens. He was not attractive as a preacher, his voice trembled with emotion and bashfulness, and he read with difficulty. He was painfully shy, and he was oppressed and suffered in a crowd. He was unmarried and lived by ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... he had that jaunty walk and general trimness of attire which are the traditional attributes of the academical denizens of Cambridge. He swung his arms rather more than was needed to assist locomotion, and betrayed in an unobtrusive manner a consciousness of being well dressed. His face, which was not without fine possibilities, had an air of well-bred neutrality; you could see that he assumed a defensive attitude against aesthetic impressions,—that even the Sistine Madonna ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... present site of the Baths of Caracalla, and that from time to time she gave him directions as to what rites would be acceptable to the gods. Another nymph, whom Numa commended to the special veneration of the Romans, was named Tacita, or the silent. This was appropriate for one of such quiet and unobtrusive manners as this good ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... chose the eldest son of his eldest cousin, a quiet, unobtrusive boy, to be educated as heir ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... its bereavement | |in the deaths of the Empress Dowager and | |the Emperor of China. Chinatown mourns, | |but it does so in such an unobtrusive | |Oriental way that the casual visitor on | |sympathy bent may feel that his words of | |condolence would be misplaced. | | | | A reporter from this paper was assigned | |yesterday to go up to Chinatown ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... make a parade of their affection before indifferent acquaintance, Miriam's love, like that of all proud, reserved natures, was intense. Ackermann's attentions to her were graceful and delicate, and he ever manifested toward her in his whole manner that silent devotion, unobtrusive and indescribable, which is so gratifying to woman. It was evident that he understood her thoroughly: whether he appreciated her as thoroughly was another matter, about which I had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... men. They recommend those whom they have found most active and intelligent, and believe to be the best; but their opportunities of learning the characters of the men have been few. They have seen and observed the young, active, and forward; but they often know nothing of the steady, unobtrusive old soldier, who has done his duty ably in all situations, without placing himself prominently forward in any. The commanding officers seldom remain long with the same regiment, and, consequently, seldom know enough of the men to be able to judge ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... building upon the spectator, that each successive architect carried on faithfully the ideas of his predecessors. The whole work has been continued, as it were, in the spirit of one design; and the differences in details, while quite observable when once pointed out, are yet so unobtrusive that they seldom attract notice. To mention one such instance, Mr Paley calls attention to the different ornamentation on the windows of the south transept when compared with those in the north transept, as well as to the fact that on the south ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... Andy Donovan went to dinner at his Second Avenue boarding-house, Mrs. Scott introduced him to a new boarder, a young lady, Miss Conway. Miss Conway was small and unobtrusive. She wore a plain, snuffy-brown dress, and bestowed her interest, which seemed languid, upon her plate. She lifted her diffident eyelids and shot one perspicuous, judicial glance at Mr. Donovan, politely murmured ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... rest, Nellie?' asked the father at last. He was an unobtrusive, obscure man, whose sympathy was very delicate, whose ordinary attitude ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... religious feeling, he opened to the German thought the widest possibilities of victory.... A specially Germanic way of feeling, a Germanic modesty and distinction of thought, was here powerfully promoted by means of the Gospel. True distinction is always modest, in the sense of being unobtrusive and not bragging of deserts!—K. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... were not united as a body, and consequently there was no test of character nor rules of discipline for those who assumed that name. They were very dissimilar men to their quiet and unobtrusive descendants. The markets, fairs, and every public concourse were attended by them, denouncing false weights and measures, drunkenness and villany, with the curses of the Almighty, calling upon the people, frequently with ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the usual thing for him to drop into the house and encounter such a nondescript company. He looked across at the druggist and postmaster, and bowed with flourishing politeness. He said to Carroll, endeavoring to make his voice so unobtrusive that it would be unheard by the company, but with the non-success usual to a nervous and self-conscious man, that he had a word to say to him later on when he was at liberty, some matter of business which he wished to talk ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... well. But when it went to the conference committee of the two houses of Congress, the railroad representatives artfully slipped in the four unobtrusive words, "or any other claimant." This quartet of words allowed the railway magnates to exchange millions of acres of desert and of denuded timber lands, arid hills and mountain tops covered with perpetual snow, for millions of the richest lands still remaining in the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... of love is flowing through our Fatherland and is uniting all hearts. The unobtrusive mother "duty" gave birth to the genial child "feeling." She bestowed on it her strong vitality so that it can defy a world of ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... to him now that the reason he had recognised Pierrepont was because that man had maintained vigilant, yet unobtrusive, observation upon him during several of the preceding days, keeping near him in all sorts of ingenious guises and making inquiries concerning him—inquiries instituted for some unexplained cause by the ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... they should accept an inferior hospitality, other than with the idea of not inflicting themselves upon a strange host more than is necessary. The redman in the aggregate is an example of the peaceable and unobtrusive citizen; we would not presume to interfere with the play of children in the sunlight. They are among the beautiful children of the world in their harmlessness. They are among the aristocracy of the world in the matters of ethics, morals, and etiquette. We forget they ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... possession when I appeared on the scene, and though I did my best to be unobtrusive, my presence was not so welcome as I could have wished. Every morning when I came slowly and quietly up the little path from the gate, bird-notes suddenly ceased; the grosbeak, pouring out his soul from the top of a pine-tree, dived down the other side; the towhee, picking up his breakfast on ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... known and appreciated her services, and from whom she held her commission, passed a series of resolutions, as a tribute to her worth, and her blessed memory, in which she was described as one who was "gentle and unobtrusive, with a heart warm with sympathy, and unshrinking in the discharge of duty, energetic, untiring, ready to answer every call, and unwilling to spare herself where she could alleviate suffering, or minister to the comfort of others," as "not a whit behind the bravest hero on the battle-field;" ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... been a clergyman or he might have been Dr. Knapp, but he would not have been George Borrow. "What is truth?" he asked. "Would that I had never been born!" he said to himself. And it was an open air ranter, not a clergyman or unobtrusive godly man, that made him exclaim: "Would that my life had been like his—even like that man's." Then the Gypsy reminded him of "the wind on the heath" and the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... after school, Jerry," she counseled. This quiet, unobtrusive girl was a keen observer. She had noted Marjorie's half-troubled expression as she entered the room. The suspicion that Marjorie knew and was not pleased had already come ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... the reply upon himself. "Well, you needn't make 'em so bad as the old-style cuts; but you can make them unobtrusive, modestly retiring. We've got hold of a process something like that those French fellows gave Daudet thirty-five thousand dollars to write a novel to use with; kind of thing that begins at one side; ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with the Captain to several of the largest and most sumptuous establishments on State Street. And Lucius, who accompanied them, ostensibly to be of service to his master, was of the greatest service to his mistress, he was so quiet, so unobtrusive, so thoroughly the footman in appearance, so helpful, and so masterful, in fact; a faint shake of his head, a nod, a gesture ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... throbbed in the background of every interview with responsible persons. It was the unobtrusive note of a soft clarinet played in a great symphony, all the more telling because it was never played loudly or insistently, but it was there all the same. Whenever the question of the Nipe's actual whereabouts came up, the note seemed to ring a trifle ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... an adorable house," she pronounced; "I wish I could have it near the studio." She waved Peyton away unceremoniously, "Come, everybody has had enough drinks, and show it to me." They passed through the hall, and into the quiet of the space beyond, lighted by a single unobtrusive lamp. "What a satisfactory fireplace!" she exclaimed in her faint key, as though, Lee thought, her silent acting were depriving her of voice. She sank onto the cushioned bench against the partition. "How did they feel, do you suppose—the people, the men and women, who ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... people of five-feet-nine-and-a-half. But he has one advantage over the small man. He does not have to ask for notice. The result is that while the little man often seems vain and pushful, the giant usually is very tame, and modest, and unobtrusive. The little man wants to be seen: the giant wants not ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the palate, but fiery in quality. This particular beverage was so seductive in flavor that every one partook of it freely, with the result that the most discreet among the party now became the most uproarious. Antonio Biscardi, the quiet and unobtrusive painter, together with his fellow-student, Crispiano Dulci, usually the shyest of young men, suddenly grew excited, and uttered blatant nothings concerning their art. Captain Freccia argued the niceties ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Agellius—the Lord's Prayer, and portions of the Psalms. Afterwards, when he was well enough to converse, Agellius was struck with the inexpressible peculiarity of his manner. It was self-collected, serene, gentle, tender, unobtrusive, unstudied. It enabled him to say things severe and even stern, without startling, offending, or repelling the hearer. He spoke very little about himself, though from time to time points of detail were elicited of his history in the course ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... you in that way, did he? There are the horses, there is the smithy. Yes, it is an interesting place, this Fighting Cock. I think we shall have another look at it in an unobtrusive way." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cleared, and the platform became a scene of bustle and animation. But he had no difficulty in distinguishing Gabriel's stiffly erect figure as it made its way towards the hall of the station, and his sharp eyes were quick to notice a quietly dressed, unobtrusive sort of man who sauntered along, caught sight of the banker, and swung round to follow him. Starmidge watched both pass along towards the waiting lines of vehicles—then he turned on his heel and went to the refreshment ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... some time that Dare loved her; but to-night that simple, unobtrusive fact suddenly took larger proportions, came boldly out of the shadow and ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... in the House of Representatives four years. If, at this period of his life, he rendered unobtrusive, though not unimportant, services to the public, it must also have been a time of vast intellectual advantage to himself. Amidst great national affairs, he was acquiring the best of all educations for future eminence ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the bellowing may be; and if we were to transport and set loose herds of long-necked camelopards, trumpeting elephants, and rhinoceroses of horrible aspect, the little birds would soon fear them as little as they do the familiar cow. But they greatly fear the small-sized, quiet, unobtrusive, and meek-looking cat. Sparrows and starlings that fly wildly at the shout of a small boy or the bark of a fox-terrier, build their nests under every railway arch; and the incubating bird sits unalarmed amid the iron plates and girders when the express train rushes overhead, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... The Suitable.—Dark, unobtrusive colors, relieved by white lace at throat and wrists, hats modest in size and coloring, set off gray hair and matronly figure far better than showy and more youthful garb. No elderly woman should attempt to wear brown; somehow it kills her complexion ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... more than a century, and yet it is only during this summer that I have heard from Mr. A. M. Hocart, who is working there at present, that there is the clearest evidence of what is known as the dual organization of society as a working social institution at the present time. How unobtrusive such a fundamental fact of social structure may be comes home to me in this case very strongly, for it wholly eluded my own observation during a visit ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... in kittenhood from the manner in which she purred—a measured, oscillating sound, shifting from high to low, as comfortable and often as continuous as the unobtrusive pulse of an old clock. It was the first time, Telzey realized now, that she'd heard the sound since their arrival on Jontarou. It went on for a dozen seconds or so, then stopped. Tick-Tock continued ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... by the stammering speech; for in society he was the shyest and most undemonstrative of men. To a single friend whom he trusted, he would pour out his inmost heart; but let two or three be gathered together, above all, introduce a stranger, and he instantly became a quiet, unobtrusive listener, though never a moody or ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... with water. A fine, impalpable, yet very dense mist formed the ground mass. But in it there floated myriads of droplets, like the droplets of oil in water. These droplets would sometimes sparkle in a mild, unobtrusive way as they were nearing the light; and then they would dash against the pane and keep ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... vivacity and playfulness of his character has vanished; and although it flashes out with pleasant mirth when he is alone with his few closest friends, such as Walter and Power, his manner is, for the most part, very quiet and reserved. Yet Eden has a position of his own in the school; and unobtrusive as he is, his opinion is always listened to with kindness and respect. When he came into school again after his recovery he was received, as I have said already, with almost brotherly affection by all the boys, who felt how much he had been wronged. He became the child and protege ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... agreed in the propriety of the Grant, and if Government had anything to answer for on this point, it was for having so long delayed bringing it before the House. There could not be a greater compliment to Her Royal Highness than to state the quiet unobtrusive tenor of her life, and that she had never made herself the object of public gaze, but had devoted herself to the education of her child, whom the House was now ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... follow. If they did follow, the aesthetic experience would be fundamentally different from every other type; it would be totally atomic and discrete, instead of fluid and continuous like the rest. But its apparent discreteness is due to a failure to distinguish between the silent, unobtrusive working of comparison and the more obvious and self-conscious working. When rapt in the contemplation of a work of art, I may seemingly have no thought for other works; relative isolation and circle-like self-completeness are characteristic of the aesthetic experience; yet, as ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... clothing, but adopted no other disguise than a traveling-cap pulled well down over his eyes. He took it for granted that Fenley, like every other intelligent person going abroad, was aware that all persons leaving the country are subjected to close if unobtrusive scrutiny as they step from pier to ship. Fenley, therefore, would have a sharp eye for the quietly dressed men who stand close to the steamer officials at the head of the gangway, but would hardly expect to find Nemesis hidden in the purser's cabin. Through a porthole Furneaux ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... watched Sally with close and what he fancied was unobtrusive attention while she ate, and though he was sensible of the indelicacy of this, he was once more relieved to find that she did nothing that was actually repugnant to him. After all, there was a certain daintiness ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... very curious, as we drove up through the stately entrance of the Hathi Paon, or Elephant Gate of the fort, to be saluted with a "present arms" by British Tommies clad in unobtrusive khaki, and to reflect that we are the inheritors of the fallen grandeur of the Mogul Emperors; that we in our turn, on many a hard-fought field, asserted our power to conquer; and that since then we have (I trust) so far followed the sound principles ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... with strong picks were knocking diamonds from the walls, diamonds so large that he became despondent at the comparative smallness of his own. Then he awoke suddenly and sat up with a start, rubbing his eyes. The din was infernal to a man who liked to do a quiet business in an unobtrusive way. It was a knocking which he usually associated with the police, and it came from his side door. With a sense of evil strong upon him, the Jew sprang from his bed, and, slipping the catch, noiselessly opened the window and thrust his head out. In the ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... Texas might do for her faded slowly; and even when their fire had died under cooling ashes, his silent, unobtrusive ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Horridge to stay with you?" she asked. "You know you cannot stay here quite alone. She is a gentle creature, and very unobtrusive. I shall feel happy about you if she ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... confusion. The excellence of this sort of work lies in a clear but soft relief of the form, in colours each beautiful in itself, and harmonious one with the other on ground whose colour is also beautiful, though unobtrusive. Hardness ruins the work, confusion of form caused by timidity of colour annoys the eye, and makes it restless, and lack of colour is felt as destroying the raison d'etre of it. So you see it taxes the designer heavily ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... of early breakfasters, who fondly hoped for a repetition of his performance. I think that Johnnyboy for the time enjoyed this companionship, yet without the least affectation or self-consciousness—so long as it was unobtrusive. It so chanced, however, that the Rev. Mr. Belcher, a gentleman with bovine lightness of touch, and a singular misunderstanding of childhood, chose to presume upon his paternal functions. Approaching the high chair in which Johnnyboy was dyspeptically ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... also, at the moment the story begins, a mass of crystal, worked into the shape of an egg and brilliantly polished. And at that two people, who stood outside the window, were looking, one of them a tall, thin clergyman, the other a black-bearded young man of dusky complexion and unobtrusive costume. The dusky young man spoke with eager gesticulation, and seemed anxious for his companion to ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... for himself, and be forced to depend upon his own resources, will often act differently than when one of a great number. The "loss of a head" is contageous. One will commit a foolish act, and others will follow, but cannot tell why. Otherwise quiet and unobtrusive men, when influenced by the frenzy of an excited mob, will commit violence which in their better moments their hearts would revolt and their consciences rebel against. A soldier in battle will leave his ranks and fly to ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... wait to see the smoke coming through the roof of a house and the flames breaking out of the windows to know that the building is on fire. Hark! There is a quiet, steady, unobtrusive, crisp, not loud, but very knowing little creeping crackle that is tolerably intelligible. There is a whiff of something floating about, suggestive of toasting shingles. Also a sharp pyroligneous-acid pungency in the air that ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the various camps one orderly company. Two men he chose from his outfit and sent to the captain, as the Picardo contribution to the detail told off to herd the horses, but beyond that he confined himself chiefly to making himself as unobtrusive ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... the appearance of the man was not very interesting. He watched him in mere idleness while waiting for the girl to bring the supper Donald had ordered. If there had been anyone else in the room Neal would not have wasted a second glance on the unobtrusive stranger. Yet, as he watched the man he became aware of something about him which was attractive. There was a dignity in his movements quite different from Donald Ward's habitual self-assertion, different, too, from the stately confidence of ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... the three sisters of Dr Brown, published "Lays of Affection." Edinburgh, 1819, 12mo. She was a woman of gentle and unobtrusive manners and of pious disposition. Her poems constitute a respectable memorial ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... possessed a higher estimation of myself, a more complete reliance upon my own powers, and some of that universal commodity known as "cheek," I should at this present moment have been far better off in fame and fortune. But I have been unobtrusive, unambitious, retiring—and my friends have blamed me for this a thousand times. I have seen writers of no talent at all—petty scribblers, wasters of ink and spoilers of paper, who could not write six consecutive lines of English grammar, and whose short ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... crime even though they were some one else's prints on the dagger. At any rate Fairfield was suppressing something. It could do no harm to continue the watch that had been set upon him. So Foyle left Green and his companion to continue their unobtrusive vigil. ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... were dreadful contingencies that wrung the mother's soul with agony. But as habits of endurance give to the body stronger powers of resistance, so does time by degrees strengthen the mind against the influence of sorrow. A blameless life, therefore, varied only by its unobtrusive charities, together with a firm trust in the goodness of God, took much of the sting from affliction, but could not wholly eradicate it. Had her child died in her arms—had she closed its innocent eyes with her own hands, and given the mother's last kiss to those pale ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Patmore and poetry to New York is somewhat abrupt, not to say precipitous, but we made it in safety; and so shall you, if you will be agile. New York is a pleasant little Dutch city, on a dot of island a few miles southwest of Massachusetts. For a city entirely unobtrusive and unpretending, it has really great attractions and solid merit; but the superior importance of other places will not permit me to tarry long within its hospitable walls. In fact, we only arrived late at night, and departed early the next morning; but even a six-hours' sojourn gave me ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... however, had been touched by what Marie had just said. He was reflecting upon her words. There was truth in them. Taken singly, those slender flames, those mere specks of light, were modest and unobtrusive, like the lowly; it was only their great number that supplied the effulgence, the sun-like resplendency. Fresh ones were continually appearing, farther and farther away, like waifs and strays. "Ah!" murmured the young priest, "do you see that one which has just begun to flicker, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the Bell's, Miss Hart, proved herself a most unobtrusive and retiring person. She was strangely reserved, no doubt, and would reveal none of the secret which she had dimly alluded to on the night of her arrival to Mrs. Bell, but she was chatty and pleasant enough ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... confidence in his physical strength, for although his countenance was grave and his expression dignified, he stooped a good deal, as though to avoid knocking his head against ceilings and beams, and was singularly humble and unobtrusive in his manners. There was a winning softness, too, in his voice and in his smile, which went far to disarm that distrust of, and antipathy to, his race which prevailed in days of old, and unfortunately prevails still, to ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... and saw that the rich colour carpeted the landscape as far as his eye could reach, so that it seemed as though he could ride on and on through them to the distant Chiricahuas. Only, close under the hills, lay, unobtrusive, a narrow streak of grey. And in a few hours he had reached the streak of grey, and ridden out into it to find himself the centre of a limitless alkali plain, so that again it seemed the valley could contain nothing ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... these attributes which he decided his shop should possess, and by means of which he succeeded. To enter Brunt's, with its silently swinging doors, its broad, easy staircases, its long floors covered with warm, red linoleum, its partitioned walls, its smooth mahogany counters, its unobtrusive mirrors, its rows of youths and virgins in black, and its pervading atmosphere of quietude and discretion, was like entering a temple before the act of oblation has commenced. You were conscious of some supreme administrative influence everywhere imposing itself. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... passion all the more because of its hopeless impracticability, were things to dream of, not to tell. Picotee was quite an unreasoning animal. Her sister arranged situations for her, told her how to conduct herself in them, how to make up anew, in unobtrusive shapes, the valuable wearing apparel she sent from time to time—so as to provoke neither exasperation in the little gentry, nor superciliousness in the great. Ethelberta did everything for her, in short; and Picotee obeyed ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... docile, tractable, tame, subdued; mild, quiet, peaceable, meek, unobtrusive; bland, soothing, pacific, clement, tender, humane; courteous, cultivated, deferential. Antonyms: drastic, refractory, vicious, brusque, harsh, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... marked it also, and was furious. Nothing could be urged against them; they were unexceptionable. The doctor, a chatty, straightforward, energetic man, of great intellect and learning, and emphatically a gentleman; his wife attracting by her unobtrusive gentleness; his daughter by her grace and modest self-possession. Whatever Maude Kirton might do, she could never, for very shame, again attempt to disparage them. Surely there was no just reason for the hatred which took possession of Maude's heart; ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in the girl herself and partly from the perception that it pleased her master to have the Italian remain with her, she had retained Ninitta, although the bas-relief was so far advanced that the model was hardly needed. She had even set herself, by those unobtrusive ways at the command of gracious women, to win the girl's confidence, not so much for the sake of hearing her story as to give the waif so strangely cast in her path the feeling that the friendship she so sorely needed was within her reach. It had resulted, however, in her hearing Ninitta's history. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... home festivities the day passed quietly, and this was also true of the entire holiday season. Cheerfulness, happiness abounded, and there was an unobtrusive effort on the part of every one to surround the orphan girl with a genial, sunny atmosphere. And yet she was ever made to feel that her sorrow was remembered and respected. She saw that Mr. Clifford's mind was often busy with the memory of his ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... interest; in its way it provided the one really important and dramatic moment of the evening. One or two uniforms and evening toilettes had already made their appearance in the Imperial box; now there was observable in that quarter a slight commotion, an unobtrusive reshuffling and reseating, and then every eye in the suddenly quiet semi- darkened house focussed itself on one figure. There was no public demonstration from the newly-loyal, it had been particularly wished that there should be none, but a ripple ...
— When William Came • Saki
... iron posts that spaced off the opening for foot-passengers into the Park. She was looking up at the house in the way Edith had noticed before—not with the scrutiny of one who wishes to see, but with the forlorn patience of the unobtrusive creature ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... high-born characters claim sympathy for their dignified sorrows and refined delights, or whose story is illuminated by the light of artistic culture and adorned with gems of rhetoric and fine fancy; but it is sometimes surprising to observe the favor which attends a simple tale of humble, unobtrusive, we might almost say insignificant people, whose plane of life appears nowhere to coincide with our own, and to whom romance and passion seem entirely foreign. Such a tale was "Adam Bede," whose great success as a literary venture hardly yet belongs to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... time she was three-and-twenty, had her unalterable little code, and had formed every one of her habits in strict accordance with that code. She carried these decided judgments within her in the most unobtrusive way: they rooted themselves in her mind, and grew there as quietly as grass. Years ago, we know, she insisted on dressing like Priscilla, because "it was right for sisters to dress alike", and because "she would do what was right if she wore a gown dyed with cheese-colouring". That ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... I shrink once more within my shell, Where unobtrusive pleasures dwell; True, I shall here by Fortune be forgot Her favors with my verse agree not well; To importune ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... one of those silent, unobtrusive beings who want little from others in the way of favor or condescension, and perhaps on that very account scrutinize those others' behavior too closely. He was not versatile, but one in whom a hope or belief which had once had its rise, meridian, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... this, but he could not help it. In business resorts, in society, and in the clubs he met great capitalists, millionaires, and men of wealth of all degrees, who were gentlemen, scholars, kind and deferential in manner, and unobtrusive in dress, and not to be distinguished, so far as conversation or appearance could serve as guides, from those high types of gentlemen which are recognized all over the world. Rounders longed to be like one of these, ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... opinion; too studious, rather, to efface herself; in household management economical without being penurious; a notable cook and needlewoman; in person by no means uncomely, and in mind as well as person so scrupulously neat that her unobtrusive presence, her noiseless circumspect flittings from room to room, exhaled an atmosphere of daintiness in which it was good to dwell. No, he had no anxiety about Miss Marty. But could he be sure of himself? Had he really and truly and for ever put the ambitions of public life ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... when our prospects were most disheartening, we held a brief conversation respecting the line he was then taking up for the purpose of helping me. At other times, in periods of inactivity, I saw but little of him. He impressed me, now as he did in the cedars, his quiet, unobtrusive: demeanor communicating a gloomy rather than a hopeful view of the situation. This apparent depression was due no doubt to the severe trial through which he had gone in the last forty-eight hours, which, strain had exhausted him very much both physically and mentally. His success ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... almost ignored by writers on political subjects, whose example can in reality be of the utmost use to us, for its general organization more nearly resembles our own in miniature than any other. This country is Switzerland. In her quiet fashion the unobtrusive little Confederation is working out some of the great modern problems, and her citizens, with their natural aptitude for self-government, are presenting object lessons which we especially in America cannot afford to overlook. It is true that political analogies are sometimes a little ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... real wedding at Bowstead. So their banns were put up at St. Clement Danes, and one quiet morning they slipped out, with no witnesses but the Major, Aurelia, and Eugene, and were wedded there in the most unobtrusive manner. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the animal made his way with unobtrusive swiftness the length of the room and stood between the dog and a man who fingered the butt of his ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... wild creatures and pitfalls it has never heard of," she said in discussing the point with Dowson. She had learned that Lord Coombe agreed with her. He, as well as she, chose the books and his taste was admirable. Its inclusion of an unobtrusive care for girlhood did not preclude the exercise of the intellect. An early developed passion for reading led the child far and wide. Fiction, history, poetry, biography, opened up vistas to a naturally quick ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... think, wisely, discarded in her remaining efforts the cheap attraction of an alliterative title. Emma and Persuasion, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park, are names far more in consonance with the quiet tone of her easy and unobtrusive art. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... remained some weeks; and the church was very much revived, and there was a large ingathering. This was originally the home of Bro. Archie Glenn, now conspicuous in building up the University at Wichita. From the first Bro. Glenn, though modest and unobtrusive, was known as a solid and helpful member of the church. He always had the confidence of the people of Brown County, and was by them elected to various public offices, at last becoming Lieutenant-Governor ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... There are hundreds of thousands of men and women in our land who are happy and prosperous to-day because of what this society has done in the last twelve years to create a sentiment adverse to the traffic and to the drinking usages of society. Its work is so silent and unobtrusive in comparison, with that of many other efficient, but more limited instrumentalities, that we are apt to lose sight of its claims, and to fail in giving an adequate support to the very power, which is, in a large measure, the source of power to all ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... woods, which serves also as a riding-stick (with which he hits the horse "between the ears," say authors);—and for royal robes, a mere soldier's blue coat with red facings, coat likely to be old, and sure to have a good deal of Spanish snuff on the breast of it; rest of the apparel dim, unobtrusive in color or out, ending in high over-knee military boots, which may be brushed (and, I hope, kept soft with an underhand suspicion of oil), but are not permitted to be blackened or varnished; Day and Martin with their soot-pots forbidden ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... subdued despair, "Are we so soon forgot when we are gone?" it is no wonder that sobs are heard throughout the house. His pleading with his child Meenie is not less affecting, and nothing could be more genuine in feeling. Yet all this emotion is attained in the most quiet and unobtrusive manner. Jefferson's sly humor crops out at all times, and sparkles through the veil of sadness that overhangs the later life of Rip Van Winkle. His wonder that his wife's "clapper" could ever be stopped is expressed in the same breath with his real sorrow ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... there a healthful and happy appearance as we pass briskly along: and we naturally think that there must be great exaggeration in what we have heard about the distressed condition of the people. But we forget that Misery is a most shrinking unobtrusive creature. It cowers out of sight. We may walk along the great thoroughfares of life without seeing more than the distorted shadow of it which mendicancy indicates. A little thought, however, will soon bring the matter home to us. It has been remarked of some great ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... along as well as could be expected. Elinor's manners in the first place and her genuine liking for him in the second had come to his help as he knew they would—she was too concerned now with trying to comfort him in small unobtrusive ways to be on her guard herself about her own troubles. All he had to do, he knew, was to sit there and look ostentatiously brokenhearted to have the conversation move in just the directions he wished and that, though it made him feel shameless was not exactly difficult—all he ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... music, but as compared with that which preceded it. Still, there existed nothing but melody: harmony was unknown. It was not until Christian church-music had reached some development, that music in parts was evolved; and then it came into existence through a very unobtrusive differentiation. Difficult as it may be to conceive a priori how the advance from melody to harmony could take place without a sudden leap, it is none the less true that it did so. The circumstance which prepared the way for it was the employment of two choirs singing alternately the same ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... driven to tell us the story of his evil life? Were the police of Europe and America even now scouring the surface of the globe for him? That brother, that dare-devil gentleman of the painter-cousin's letter, was a fitting accomplice for him, the quiet, unobtrusive, impeccable "seaman." He had a number, what was it? Three-nine-(fool not to write it down!) three-nine-something. Was that his number during his last imprisonment? Had he spoken in terrific hyperbole when he admitted that no doubt it was "a picturesque ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... obstacles created by contemporary envy; but how seldom, especially in a refined age, can genius effect such a prodigy? how often is it crushed in the outset of its career, or turned aside into the humble and unobtrusive path of imitation, to shun the danger with which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... captain ceases his care of things, the chief mate is the great man. With a voice like a young lion, he was hallooing in all directions, making everything fly, and, at the same time, doing everything well. He was quite a contrast to the worthy, quiet, unobtrusive mate of the Pilgrim, not a more estimable man, perhaps, but a far better mate of a vessel; and the entire change in Captain Thompson's conduct, since he took command of the ship, was owing, no doubt, in a great measure, to this fact. If the chief officer wants force, discipline slackens, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... or less absolute and consummate—that it is no easy task to select from among them. But two figures stand out before us, each portrayed with such finished yet unlaboured art—living, moving, talking before us—contrasted with such exquisite yet unobtrusive delicacy, and so subtilely illustrating the two great phases of human inspiration and life—that which centres in self, and that which yearns and seeks to lose itself in the infinite of truth, purity, and love—that instinctively and irresistibly the ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... few other departments of minor consequence, but all are carried on so noiselessly, and quietly that the evidence of a government seems to vanish altogether, and social order to be as regular and unobtrusive as if it were a law of nature. Machinery is employed to an inconceivable extent in all the operations of labour within and without doors, and it is the unceasing object of the department charged with its administration to extend its efficiency. There is no class of labourers ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... his wife. Mrs. Page certainly embodied the traits most desirable in the Ambassadress of a great Republic. A woman of cultivation, a tireless reader, a close observer of people and events and a shrewd commentator upon them, she also had an unobtrusive dignity, a penetrating sympathy, and a capacity for human association, which, while more restrained and more placid than that of her husband, made her a helpful companion for a sorely burdened man. The American Embassy ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... no such setting of caps. For a long time Ida treated Mr. Wendover of the Abbey with the perfect frankness of friendship. Then, as his love grew, showing itself by every delicate and unobtrusive token, there came a change, and a subtle one, in her conduct; and the lover told himself with triumphant heart that he was beloved. Her sweet shyness, her careful avoidance of every possible tete-a-tete, her evident embarrassment on those rare occasions when ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... fine-looking young lady, achieved a like success in all her numbers and in fine presence on the stage, and in her simple, unobtrusive manner, winning the sympathies of ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... parties in the Church of Scotland, he never identified himself with any of them, and had learned to call no man master but Christ. He knew his own mind, and could give forcible expression to his convictions when occasion required. Naturally of an unassuming disposition and unobtrusive manners, he never courted popularity nor sought to thrust his opinions upon others; and it was for this reason, perhaps, that he was deferred to even by those whose views were in some respects widely divergent from his. It was doubtless for this reason also, as well ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... obedience was no less remarkable than servile deliberation. The gang had here mustered by the note of a deadly weapon; the man who looked on was the unquestioned master of their lives; and except for civility, they bestirred themselves like so many American hotel clerks. The spectator was aware of an unobtrusive yet invincible inertia, at which the skipper of a trading dandy might ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... freshness and originality about it quite charming, and there is a certain nobleness in the treatment, both of sentiment and incident, which is not often found. We imagine that few can read it without deriving some comfort or profit from the quiet good sense and unobtrusive words of counsel ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... is attained, the sexual development is orderly and unobtrusive. In the case of girls certain recurring phenomena make the essential fact of sex much more impressive to the primitive mind, with far-reaching sociological consequences. "Ignorance of the nature of female periodicity," says A. E. Crawley, "leads man ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... so conspicuous are thus frequent, how very general must be the smaller, and inconspicuous injuries! To one case where positive illness is traceable to over-application, there are probably at least half-a-dozen cases where the evil is unobtrusive and slowly accumulating—cases where there is frequent derangement of the functions, attributed to this or that special cause, or to constitutional delicacy; cases where there is retardation and premature arrest of bodily growth; cases where a latent tendency to consumption ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... and demands close reading. But, notwithstanding its complex structure and the freight of thought conveyed, the passage has a remarkable LIGHTSOMENESS of movement, and is a fine specimen of blank verse. The unobtrusive, but distinctly felt, alliteration which runs through it, contributes something toward this lightsomeness. The first two verses have a ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... other disguise than a traveling-cap pulled well down over his eyes. He took it for granted that Fenley, like every other intelligent person going abroad, was aware that all persons leaving the country are subjected to close if unobtrusive scrutiny as they step from pier to ship. Fenley, therefore, would have a sharp eye for the quietly dressed men who stand close to the steamer officials at the head of the gangway, but would hardly expect to find Nemesis hidden in the purser's cabin. Through a porthole Furneaux saw every ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... died at his home in this city Dec. 6, 1867, at the age of 67. A long and eminently useful although unobtrusive life entitles his memory to respect. He commenced his career as a mechanic in the steam engine establishment of James P. Allaire, soon after the application of steam for the propulsion of boats and long before its application to ships for the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... we found a little old man, gentle, grave, and unobtrusive, varnishing the ugly portrait of some Signor of the cinquecento. Round the walls hung pictures, of mediocre value, in dingy frames; but all of them bore sounding titles. Titians, Lionardos, Guido Renis, and Luinis, looked down and waited for a purchaser. In truth this museum was a bric-a-brac ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... an unobtrusive appearance through a door just behind Professor Thorpe, and manifested her presence by ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... likely to incur disgrace by wild and incompetent riding, for, having been accustomed to keep her mount under thorough control, she will carefully avoid spoiling the sport of others, while seeing as much of it as she can in a quiet, unobtrusive manner. A lady should remember that strangers are not hailed with delight in any English hunting field; but when they are found to be competent to take care of themselves and their horses, they are far more kindly received, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... No chaperon was thought of in the freedom of the frontier, and, indeed, none was needed among the innately chivalrous Westerners. This little world of Macleod revolved around her—all but the silent, unobtrusive Danvers, whose acquaintance seemed the more desirable in direct ratio to his aloofness. Eva resolved to win him, and Arthur Latimer was artfully sounded for the cause of his friend's indifference. The Southerner, already playing at love with ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... industries, but also for the pleasure of its quaint turns of phrase, the ponderous classic authorities which he marshals to support a simple fact—and there are indeed some strange wild-fowl among his authorities—and above all for a gentle and unobtrusive humour which seasons all the narrative. Westcote gives a list of the fish afforded by the Devon seas (a very imperfect list by ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... education, often surprising his teachers with the patience and care he exhibited in keeping in advance of his fellow-students—for he was almost always at the head of his class. He was noted for his quiet, unobtrusive disposition, underlying which was an internal force, which made him prompt in action, and to the point in word, when the display of such characteristics was sometimes necessary to establish his individual superiority with more than usual power ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... more disturbing influence is the presence of other persons. Generally speaking, if accurate results are to be secured it is not permissible to have any auditor, besides possibly an assistant to record the responses. Even the assistant, however quiet and unobtrusive, is sometimes a disturbing element. Though something of a convenience, the assistant is by no means necessary, after the examiner has thoroughly mastered the procedure of the tests and has acquired some skill in the use of abbreviations in recording the answers. ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... meaning, and supposing that Elisha sent his servant quickly, 'if peradventure' the touch of his staff might suffice, and followed in person, because he did not know whether it would. There is nothing unworthy of a prophet who had just confessed his ignorance in the supposition. His unobtrusive spirit delighted to hide its power behind material vehicles, as is seen in most of his miracles; and, if he remembered how he himself, in his early days, had parted the waters with his master's cloak, he ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... head and shoulders higher than ordinary men, yet he evidently placed no confidence in his physical strength, for although his countenance was grave and his expression dignified, he stooped a good deal, as though to avoid knocking his head against ceilings and beams, and was singularly humble and unobtrusive in his manners. There was a winning softness, too, in his voice and in his smile, which went far to disarm that distrust of, and antipathy to, his race which prevailed in days of old, and unfortunately prevails still, to some extent, ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... until lately almost ignored by writers on political subjects, whose example can in reality be of the utmost use to us, for its general organization more nearly resembles our own in miniature than any other. This country is Switzerland. In her quiet fashion the unobtrusive little Confederation is working out some of the great modern problems, and her citizens, with their natural aptitude for self-government, are presenting object lessons which we especially in America cannot afford to overlook. It ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... the building and traversed the vast foyer to a niche which housed a private elevator. He entered the lift, deserting it on the ninth floor, where he entered an unobtrusive door and joined a group which consisted of the New State's well guarded ...
— The Clean and Wholesome Land • Ralph Sholto
... spend their time gossiping or asleep in the innermost recesses of the cabin. We never once catch them admiring the scenery or taking any interest in the wonders we pass. Then there is a Swiss, a gentle-mannered bronzed man with a brown beard; he speaks only French, and in an unobtrusive way seems to have seen a great deal of the world; we discover, for one thing, that he has lived out in the desert near Tunis for many years. There are three Russians, mother, father, and daughter, who speak practically nothing but Russian, with a few words of French; they ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... and wayward whirls, 130 Or poises on its tremulous stalk A flower of frailest revery, So winds and loiters, idly free, The current of unguided talk, Now laughter-rippled, and now caught In smooth, dark pools of deeper thought. Meanwhile thou mellowest every word, A sweetly unobtrusive third; For thou hast magic beyond wine, To unlock natures each to each; 140 The unspoken thought thou canst divine; Thou fill'st the pauses of the speech With whispers that to dream-land reach And frozen fancy-springs unchain In Arctic outskirts of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Lapse of time (for Lord Massey had now been married three or four years), and deep seclusion from general society, had done nothing, apparently, to lower the tone of his happiness. The expression of this happiness was noiseless and unobtrusive; no marks were there of vulgar uxoriousness—nothing that could provoke the sneer of the worldling; but not the less so entirely had the society of his young wife created a new principle of life within him, and evoked some nature hitherto slumbering, and which, no doubt, would else have continued ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... posed, motionless as a wind that has died. Only the dogs, lolling, stretching, sending the warm steam of their breathing into the dead air, seemed to stand for the world of life, and the world of sentient creatures. And yet their very presence, unobtrusive in the forest shadows, by contrast thrust farther these others into the land of phantoms and ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... apprehension, remembering that chance alone had prevented her from appealing to him to save her from this marriage. But Mr. Wyvern, with whose philosophy we have some acquaintance, exerted himself to make the best of the irremediable, and Adela already owed him much for his unobtrusive moral support. Even Mutimer was putting aside his suspicions and beginning to believe that the clergyman would have openly encouraged Socialism had his position allowed him to do so. He was glad to see his wife immersed in grave historical ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... him! The thought that this might be so made him very uneasy. Poor Holroyd, he thought, was a very good fellow—an excellent fellow, but not exactly the man to write a book of extraordinary merit—clever, perhaps, but clever in an unobtrusive way—and Mark's tendency was to judge, as he expected to be judged himself, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... butterfly and this callous husband, who never intended, but for the War, to come back from his big-game shooting, and who took no pains to arrange suitable guidance (there was a lawyer vaguely mentioned but he seems to have been singularly unobtrusive) for the obviously incompetent spouse whom he professes still to love? I am afraid it will not do. The one real point of weakness in the presentation was that Mr. EADIE could not modulate from the key of agreeable flippancy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... setting out for College. As I looked upon the walls of these buildings, I thought as the rough stone is taken from the quarry to the finisher, there to be made into an ornament, so was the young mind brought here to be cultivated and developed. Many a poor unobtrusive young man, with the appearance of little or no ability, is here moulded into a hero, a scholar, a tyrant, or a friend of humanity. I never look upon these monuments of education, without a feeling of regret, that so few of our own race can find a place ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... perfect. Course smoothly followed course; there was no hesitating, no hitch; the service was swift, noiseless, unobtrusive. The head of the house was obviously delighted, and ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... that there are two men above all others for whom our respect is heightened by these letters,—the elder John Winthrop and Roger Williams. Winthrop appears throughout as a truly magnanimous and noble man in an unobtrusive way,—a kind of greatness that makes less noise in the world, but is on the whole more solidly satisfying than most others,—a man who has been dipped in the river of God (a surer baptism than Styx or dragon's blood) till his character is of perfect proof, and who appears plainly as the very ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... charming than the exterior of any Gothic apse ever built. Many of these Romanesque apses of the eleventh and twelfth centuries still remain in France, showing themselves in unsuspected parish churches, here and there, but always a surprise for their quiet, unobtrusive grace, making a harmony with the Romanesque tower, if there is one, into which they rise, as at Saint Sernin; but all these churches had only one aisle, and, in the interior, there came invariable trouble when the ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... entreaties had reached me privately from three distinct quarters, urging me to efface myself on this occasion, and keep in the background. I complied with these suggestions, and there were no tumultuous rejoicings over the returning prodigal. Mabel and Jane greeted him with unobtrusive warmth: Clarice was rather stately and very calm; to look at her, you would have thought this was an ordinary call. When they talk about my duplicity, they mean that they want a monopoly of the article themselves. The visitor flushed and trembled ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... in her appearance; quiet and unobtrusive, she seemed to the outward observer like most other children; but "the Lord seeth not as man seeth." The Great Shepherd of the sheep had his eye on this little lamb of the fold, and marked her for his own. At home she was gentle and ...
— Jesus Says So • Unknown
... The unobtrusive funeral cortege had turned the corner of Bank Street and disappeared from view almost an hour ago. In the front room of the house in which had lived the man just carried to his grave, the gentle old woman who had been his mother sat and looked with pathetic patience at Miss Amory Starkweather ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... melancholy wisdom. In the company of either Penrod or Sam, alone, affection often caused him to linger, albeit with a little pessimism, but when he saw them together, he invariably withdrew in as unobtrusive a manner ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... a very nice young man,' Uta Schurz said, looking up from the microscope slides she had begun to mount at the moment her regular translating work was interrupted by their sudden entry. She had been taking quiet glances at Harry all the while, in her unobtrusive fashion; for Uta had learned always to be personally unobtrusive—'the prophet's donkey,' those irreverent French exiles used to call her—and she had come to the conclusion that he was a decidedly handsome ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... his profession, and when he informed me one day that he could no longer conscientiously accept the sum I was paying him, I begged him to stay on. He was a big and wholesome young man, companionable, yet quiet and unobtrusive, watchful without appearing to be so, with the innate as well as the cultivated knowledge of psychology characteristic of the best modern physicians. When I grew better I came to feel that he had given his whole ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... me!" said the count. "I should be such anozzer in his place. Proud, silent, unobtrusive, who gives dignity to what otherwise would be ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... without jealousy but with delight the household companionship through life of the sister who formed so large an element in his being. Admiring the poet's genius to the full, and following the workings of his mind with a sympathy that never tired, she nevertheless was able to discern, and with unobtrusive care to hide or avert, those errors of manner into which retirement and sell-absorption will betray even the gentlest spirit. It speaks, perhaps, equally well for Wordsworth's character that this tendency to a lengthy insistence, in general conversation, on his own feelings and ideas ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... emphasise the soft silky hair, and the beautiful grey eyes which in moments of excitement seemed to glisten with remarkable brilliancy. But she had a sallow complexion, and a large nose slightly on one side. She was small in stature, and, in fact, the casual observer would have thought her a quaint, unobtrusive little body. Mr. Grundy's memory was very defective when he wrote about the Brontes; but, with the exception of the reference to red hair—and all the girls had brown hair—it would seem that he was not very wide of the mark when he wrote of ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... result of her labors and decided that it was good. Bud was observing her in his unobtrusive way. They were together in the new parlor of the home which Jeff had had reconstructed under Nan's most ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... the rostrum. He noted who were running away. The deserters were the back-district voters—the opposition among whom his enemies had prevailed. The villagers remained. Here and there among them walked Talleyrand Sylvester. He was unobtrusive and he spoke low, but he ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... life, fighting bravely with regret, and feeling with sensitive sorrow the turning of the sweet page. He tried, too, to serve and help his simple country neighbours, as indeed he had desired to do even at Eton, by showing them many small, thoughtful, and unobtrusive kindnesses, just as his father had done. But he lived much, like all poetical natures, in tender retrospect; and the ending of the bright days brought with it a heartache that even nature, which ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... long time as that of the first celebrity in the art of painting. Some call him the Apelles of our time. But I think that did Apelles live now, he, as an honourable man, would give the palm to Duerer. Apelles, it is true, made use of few and unobtrusive colours, but still he used colours; while Duerer,—admirable as he is, too, in other respects,—what can he not express with a single colour—that is to say, with black lines? He can give the effect of light and shade, brightness, foreground and background. ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... chance. Just as a nation is happy whose records are barren, so is a society fortunate that has no history—and its president unfortunate. I can only assure you that this society continues its plain, unobtrusive, useful career. I can only assure you that it does a great deal of good at a very small cost, and that the objects of its care and the bulk of its members are faithful working servants of the public—sole ministers of their ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... that this handsome but rude woodsman had never before found himself so awkwardly placed, though the inclination which Hetty felt for him (a sort of secret yielding to the instincts of nature, rather than any unbecoming impulse of an ill-regulated imagination), was too pure and unobtrusive to have created the slightest suspicion of the circumstance in his mind. He allowed Judith to put his hard colossal hand between those of Hetty, and stood waiting the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... said the marquis courteously, pleased with the calm, self-possessed, unobtrusive bearing of the man. "They tell me I'm dying, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... records exist, and one from the pen of a personal friend, Mr. Joseph Cottle, of Bristol, yet the main substance of the biography is derived from the fundus of this one sermon.[17] And it is of some importance to cases of fugitive or unobtrusive merit that this more quiet and sequestered current of biography should be kept open. For the local motives to an honorary biographical notice, in the shape of a Funeral Sermon, will often exist, when neither the materials are ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... half-grown cattle. The new acquisition brought the count up to twenty-six cows and twenty young animals. The vanquished bull was very meek from that time forward, and the surprising thing was that Apollo was thereafter the same quiet, unobtrusive animal ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... and the man she loved was gone, hurriedly, without a word to her. There remained the Margerisons; Peter, with his friendly smile and gentle companionableness; Hilary, worried and weary and hardly noticing her unobtrusive presence; Silvio, Caterina, and Illuminato sucking gingerbread and tumbling off the rack, and Peggy, on whose broad shoulder Rhoda suddenly laid her head and wept, all through the ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... admiration of her countrywomen. Few of her sex have been placed in such a conspicuous situation, but fewer, after behaving with unexampled fortitude and dignity, have shrunk from public notice, and in the sight of God only have led unobtrusive, quiet lives in the daily performance of domestic duties as a careful and conscientious mother ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... been a tonic in a certain attitude of Cater's mind toward Justin—an unspoken kindliness and admiration and tenderness such as an older man who has been along a hard road may feel toward another who has come along the same way. Cater's kind, unobtrusive comradeship, the fair-dealing friendliness of his rivalry, had seemed to be one of the factors of support, of honesty, of commercial righteousness. Justin could smile proudly at Leverich, but he couldn't smile when he thought of Cater—it weighed upon and humiliated him for the man who had ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... began, she took her station in the wings—silent, unobtrusive, eager to keep out of everybody's way, eager not to miss a word of the play. The man over her head, busy with his lights; the one or two shirt-sleeved, elderly men who invariably stood dispassionately watching the performance; the stage-hands; ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... narrative which distinguishes him from some of his more distant cousins. And the stories which are current among the Russian peasantry are for the most part exceedingly well narrated. Their language is simple and pleasantly quaint, their humor is natural and unobtrusive, and their descriptions, whether of persons or of events, are often excellent.[13] A taste for acting is widely spread in Russia, and the Russian folk-tales are full of dramatic positions which offer a wide scope ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... be explicable on the supposition that Plattner has undertaken an elaborate mystification, on the strength of his heart's displacement. Photographs may be faked, and left-handedness imitated. But the character of the man does not lend itself to any such theory. He is quiet, practical, unobtrusive, and thoroughly sane, from the Nordau standpoint. He likes beer, and smokes moderately, takes walking exercise daily, and has a healthily high estimate of the value of his teaching. He has a good but untrained tenor voice, and takes a pleasure in singing ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... those seconds, and while the men were engrossed in the agreeable task of ejecting The Sidney Duck, The Polka harboured another guest, no less unwelcome, who made his way unobserved through the saloon to become an unobtrusive spectator of the ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... would have acted wonderfully; Ben Jonson's Volpone, in "The Fox," he would surely have understood, and powerfully rendered. In the devoted father of "The Porter's Knot" he was likewise most excellent: quiet, unaffected, unobtrusive, never forcing sentiment upon you, never obtaining tears by false pretences, but throughout solid, sterling, natural, admirable. I came at last, however, to the conviction, that, marked as was the distinction gained by this good actor in parts such as these, and as the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... a habit of bending forward slightly from the waist, begotten, no doubt, of short-sightedness, and the need to peer into things. He moved very slowly and noiselessly, with his hands behind his back—an unobtrusive personality, which would have been insignificant had the head been strictly proportionate to the rest of the frame. But there was nothing insignificant about the high and massive forehead, crowned with a mane of (then) iron-gray hair, the small and pale but ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... to remorse, the sad and poignant echo that sin, traversing life, leaves everywhere upon its passage. Shut your ear to no sound, however unobtrusive, however sad, it may be. There are voices that issue from the tombs, others that call to you from out the abyss of past ages; repel them not, listen! One and all, they have ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... love—yes, love it was, for I recollect I went through at that time all the tortures of that passion, jealousy, for instance. Kolosov liked us all equally, but was particularly friendly with a silent, flaxen-haired, and unobtrusive youth, called Gavrilov. From Gavrilov he was almost inseparable; he would often speak to him in a whisper, and used to disappear with him out of Moscow, no one knew where, for two or three days at a time.... Kolosov did not care to be questioned, and I was ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... talk of. But since it is not to be expected that they will pursue virtue, piety, good sense, and good breeding for their own sakes, and as these attributes, when they exist in fashionable life—and they do exist among the most fashionable of fashionable people—are in their nature retiring and unobtrusive, while all that is bad in good society is pushed into notoriety, for the example of the mob, we must take pains to point out at some length the difference between really "good society" and what is vulgarly called good society; that is, in fact, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... unobtrusive, pleasant, quiet man of the type that would usually be patronized as rural and pettifogging by men high in commercial affairs. He was none the less well fitted to his task, a capable and diligent beneficiary and agent. He was well dressed, middle-aged,—only forty-five—cool, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... further thought about it, might occur a recognition of some wider application: new instances being aggregated with those already noted. Again, after an interval," etc., etc. "And thus, little by little, in unobtrusive ways, without conscious intention or appreciable effort, there would grow up a coherent and organized ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... bold and push their way Upon our thought and feeling; They hang about us all the day, Our time from pleasure stealing. So unobtrusive many a joy We pass by and forget it, But worry strives to own our lives, And conquers if we ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... incident that carried no especial meaning. But now they seemed to carry a new significance,—if only he could get at the key. For three years he had gone along quietly, working and saving all he could, and looking after Jean in an unobtrusive way, believing that Aleck was guilty,—and being careful to give no hint of that belief to any one. And now Jean herself seemed to be leading him unconsciously face to face with doubt and mystery. It tantalized him. He knew the prowler, and for that ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... of his art is refinement. Quiet and dignified he carried taste through all branches of his art. In subject he was rather elevated, in color subdued with broken tones, in composition simple, in brush-work sure, vivacious, and yet unobtrusive. Selection in his characters was followed by reserve in using them. Detail was not very apparent. A few people with some accessory objects were all that he required to make a picture. Perhaps his best qualities appear in a number of small portraits ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... demanded to be simple and one which, with slight modifications in doors and windows, remained before the audience for the whole action of the play. It was, therefore, to be a scene of which people did not easily tire and that remained interesting, unobtrusive and formally neat. To find such a scene it is necessary to refer back to days when the Comic and the Tragic scenes were architectural and permanent. This I did and, taking Palladio's magnificent scene at Vicenza, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... perceive promptly whatever was valuable or defective in the productions of others; and this faculty being conjoined with solid learning, extensive reading, a retentive memory, a vast |tore of diversified knowledge, together with a creative fancy and a logical mind, gave him at all times, an unobtrusive reliance on himself; with an inexhaustible mental treasury that qualified him alike to shine in the friendly circle, or to charm, and astonish, and edify, in the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Rickie was now fifteen, and got off a whole week's school for the funeral. His mother was rather strange. She was much happier, she looked younger, and her mourning was as unobtrusive as convention permitted. All this he had expected. But she seemed to be watching him, and to be extremely anxious for his opinion on any, subject—more especially on his father. Why? At last he saw that she ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... Administration Building, and, having paused a moment in the rotunda, he entered the Secretary's office of the Executive suite, and asked for an interview with the Governor. The Secretary, whose duties were in part playing Cerberus at that threshold, made his customary swift, though unobtrusive, survey of the applicant for audience, and saw nothing to ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... possible power for good was as yet hardly divined, when the young Queen entered into that marriage which we may well deem the happiest action of her life, and the most fruitful of good to her people, looking to the extraordinary character of the husband of her choice, and to the unobtrusive but always advantageous influence which his great and wise spirit exercised on ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... Dawn Hill, was chief lieutenant, if not principal, in my conspiracy to drift Anita day by day further and further into the routine of the new life. Yet neither of us had shown by word or look that a thorough understanding existed between us. My part was to be unobtrusive, friendly, neither indifferent nor eager, and I held to it by taking care never to be left alone with Anita; Alva's part was to be herself—simple and natural and sensible, full of life and laughter, ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... in the field as a result of the tragedies of the early days of the campaign had won him instantly the interest and good will of officers and men throughout the entire command. He started well, so to speak, and his quiet, reticent, observant, but unobtrusive ways favorably impressed his regimental comrades and led to many a commendatory remark from veteran officers. But there was universal comment, half humorous, half commiserating, upon his assignment to Devers's troop, and Devers knew it. He treated the young man with ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... south-west from the village of Chalfont St. Peter, and after a sharp curve brings the visitor to the Meeting House, a very plain and unobtrusive structure, dating from about the end of the seventeenth century. In the secluded burying-ground surrounded and overhung by great trees lies William Penn. Five of his children also rest among these quiet surroundings; and here are ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... their isolated position involved all the unpleasantness of a voluntary banishment. This had ever been to her a source of regret, and she had on several occasions, although in the most delicate and unobtrusive manner, hinted at the fact; but the man who doated upon her, and to whom, in all other respects, her desire was law, evinced so much inflexibility in all that appertained to military etiquette, that ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... upper part of his dress, thrown open from the heat, partly disclosed the fine statuesque formation of his neck and chest. His ears, hands, and feet were of that smallness and delicacy which is held to denote the aristocracy of birth; and there was in his manner that indescribable combination of unobtrusive dignity and unaffected elegance, which in all ages and countries, and through all changes of manners and customs, has rendered the demeanour of its few favoured possessors the instantaneous interpreter ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... of the three sisters of Dr Brown, published "Lays of Affection." Edinburgh, 1819, 12mo. She was a woman of gentle and unobtrusive manners and of pious disposition. Her poems constitute a respectable memorial ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... gloom sat the silent, impassive, inscrutable Yaqui. His dark face, his dark eyes were plain in the light of the stars. Always he was near Gale, unobtrusive, shadowy, but there. Why? Gale absolutely could not doubt that the Indian had heart as well as mind. Yaqui had from the very first stood between Gale and accident, toil, peril. It was his own choosing. Gale could not change him or thwart him. He understood ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... was visible at a glance. Both were pretty, almost beautiful—and there was an air of simplicity about their dress, a quiet and unobtrusive dignity in their manners, which at once announced them to be real ladies. Even the tones of their voices were polished, a circumstance that I think one is a little apt to notice in New York. I discovered, in the course of the conversation, that they ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... the essence of humanity, with an abundance of sensible and sensitive, casual and unobtrusive commentary upon life and man, and especially upon woman."—Boston ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... world.'—'Ye are the salt of the earth.' The light guides and gladdens; the salt preserves and purifies; the dew freshens and fertilises; the light, conspicuous; the salt, working concealed; and the dew, visible like the former, but yet unobtrusive and operating silently like the latter. Some of us had rather be light than salt; prefer to be conspicuous rather than to diffuse a wholesome silent influence around us. But these three types must all be blended, both in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Laodice, sensing something climacteric in his atmosphere, kept aloof from him, and regarded him from the dusk of her corner with wonder and a pity that she could not explain. The Christian on the other hand seemed always in an unobtrusive way to be at the Maccabee's elbow. The apparition with the long white hair, however, ran away and was found on the streets by the Christian and brought back to the cavern, where he hid in a dark shadow in the remote end of the crypt ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... searching through the hall, and knocking at the door of my room, next Peggy's, to announce Lorraine. The kind-hearted girl was with us constantly, and of the greatest unobtrusive solace to Peggy in those three days after our travellers had all gone, one after the other, like the fairy-tale family, at the ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... were we, who are strangers to the strife, to affect a deeper resentment than those concerned more closely. Those who can recollect the former residence of this unhappy prince in our Northern capital cannot but remember the unobtrusive, quiet manner in which his little court was then conducted, and now, still further restricted and diminished, he may naturally expect to be received with civility and respect by a nation whose good will he has done nothing to forfeit. Whatever may have been his errors towards ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... hurt her," said Clovis, with the air of one who has taken everything into consideration; "one of your men could bring her over from Pabham Park after dusk, and with a little help he ought to be able to smuggle her into the conservatory at the same moment that Mary Hampton makes an unobtrusive exit." ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... you; and Nasmyth wouldn't count. He's an unobtrusive person, only to the front when he is wanted, which is a good deal to say for him; he doesn't expect anything. No doubt, the ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... themselves on the surface. The sublime beauty of the landscape, in which, as often elsewhere, the golden radiance of the setting sun is seen battling with masses of azure cloud, has not been exceeded by Titian himself. With all the daring yet perfectly unobtrusive and unconscious realism of certain details, the conception is one of the loftiest, one of the most penetrating in its very simplicity, of Venetian art at its apogee. The divine mansuetude, the human and brotherly sympathy of the Christ, have not been equalled since ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... day peacefully enough, without feeling any particular illness, save a great weakness in his limbs. He was in himself particularly happy, for Mary was always with him, and Angus passed every evening with them both. Another great pleasure, too, he found in the occasional and entirely unobtrusive visits of the parson of the little parish—a weak and ailing man physically, but in soul and intellect exceptionally strong. As different from the Reverend Mr. Arbroath as an old-time Crusader would be from a modern jockey, he recognised ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... when Andy Donovan went to dinner at his Second Avenue boarding-house, Mrs. Scott introduced him to a new boarder, a young lady, Miss Conway. Miss Conway was small and unobtrusive. She wore a plain, snuffy-brown dress, and bestowed her interest, which seemed languid, upon her plate. She lifted her diffident eyelids and shot one perspicuous, judicial glance at Mr. Donovan, politely murmured his name, and returned to her mutton. Mr. Donovan ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... uneventfully away, and Graham's armor was almost proof against even the penetration of Grace. He did not assume any mask of gayety. He seemed to be merely his old self, with a subtle difference, and a very unobtrusive air of decision in all his movements. He was with his friend a great deal; and she heard them talking over their old life with much apparent zest. He was as good company for the major as ever, and when ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... arises over there in the brush a soft persuasive cooing, a sound so subtle and wild and unobtrusive that it requires the most alert and watchful ear to hear it. How gentle and solicitous and full of yearning love! It is the voice of the mother hen. Presently a faint timid "Yeap!" which almost eludes the ear, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... with it, Ralph," cried my volatile friend, jumping up and looking hastily round for the bell-rope. Not being able to find it, my bell-pull being an unobtrusive knob and not a rope, he rushed to the door, unlocked it, darted out, and uttered a tremendous roar, which was followed by a clatter and a scream from old Agnes, whom he ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... Phillips stayed. Nothing could answer better, everybody approved of it, and the man behaved as if his whole life had been spent in Courts, perfectly at his ease without rudeness or forwardness, quiet, unobtrusive, but with complete self-possession, and a nil admirari manner which had something distinguished in it. The Queen was very civil to him, and he was delighted. The next morning he went to Normanby, and expressed his apprehension ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... her flowers and her vegetables, but refused to have anything to do with her chickens, remarking shortly that hens were such fools he couldn't help hating them. Madame said she liked to have him around, for he was more like some unobtrusive jinnee than a mere mortal. She declared that John Flint had what the negroes call a "growing hand"—he had only to stick a bit of green in the ground and it grew like ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the city where Harriet has so long lived her quiet and unobtrusive life, it is not an uncommon thing to meet a young person who has never even ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
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