"Uninviting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... most of the scientific records of the year, in which we began to perceive that the reduction of all subjects of importance was not compatible within a few pages, and sooner than allow many papers of value to every member of society to be locked under the uninviting denomination of philosophy, we undertook the abridgement and arrangement of such papers, upon the plan of an "Annual Register," intending our volume specially to represent the progress of discovery just as the general "Register" is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... in wet, not damp, blankets for days at a time; and to return from your guard about two in the morning and get into such an uninviting couch was trying to one's temper, of course. Even one's "goose haar piller," as the boys called their feather pillow, might be sodden. To make your bed in snow or be snowed over is not ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... Therein unlawful combinations and unnatural restrictions are essential if those engaged would show a gross profit of even fifteen per cent. on their gross output. If more than fair or going returns are earned, then new capital flows into competition and the surplus again shrinks to an uninviting point. The same is true in wheat, corn, and cotton—big prices invite fresh investments and the planting of broader acreage. Hence the sorry spectacle of the cotton planter who, in 1905, will receive no more for his twenty per cent. increased crop, coming from over two millions ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... led off from the street, thinking each might be a thoroughfare to take us back to the ramparts. They ended abruptly in a cul-de-sac or court. The culs-de-sac, uninviting to eye and nose, were as Italian as the church. The houses in the courts were stables downstairs. Man and beast lived together. Flowers and wee bushes grew up around the wells in the center of the courts. Everything was ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... throughout the world, some apology could be found for most offences. Not that the offences would thus be wiped away, and black become white; but much that is now very black would be reduced to that sombre, uninviting shade of ordinary brown which ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... side of the range are composed of brown rocks and earth, having little or no vegetation upon them, and are just as uninviting in appearance as the light-brown hills which fringe the coast of Arabia, as seen by voyagers on the Red Sea. Further up the hill, in the central folds of the range, this great sterility changes for a warm rich clothing of bush-jungle and a little grass. Gum-trees, myrrh, and ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... walked on. Soon the brick walls of the academy rose grim and uninviting, and taking her place at the desk she applied herself to her books. When school was dismissed in the afternoon, instead of returning home as usual, she walked down the principal street, entered Mr. Watson's store, and ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... money; let me tell you now that I always bitterly repented the bargain; and if you were still marriageable, and had a diamond bigger than your head, I should counsel even my maid against a union so uninviting and disastrous. As for you, Mr. Hartley," she continued, turning on the secretary, "you have sufficiently exhibited your valuable qualities in this house; we are now persuaded that you equally lack manhood, sense and self-respect; and I can see only one course open for you—to withdraw ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... Grammar School played Cato in the teeth of an explicit presbyterial anathema, and again in the same year—in the month of August—the boys of the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy, which Smith was at the time attending, enacted the piece their master had written. It bore the rather unromantic and uninviting title of "A Royal Council for Advice, or the Regular Education of Boys the Foundation of all other Improvements." The dramatis personae were first the master and twelve ordinary members of the council, who sat gravely round a table like senators, and next a crowd ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... Padang-batuas we were exceedingly thirsty; but we looked about for it in vain. At last we turned to the pitcher-plants, but the water contained in the pitchers (about half a pint in each) was full of insects, and otherwise uninviting. On tasting it, however, we found it very palatable though rather warm, and we all quenched our thirst from these natural jugs. Farther on we came to forest again, but of a more dwarf and stunted character than below; and alternately passing along ridges and descending ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... they all reined up in front of the village tavern, which now looked dark and uninviting; "those three spies, if spies they are, can go to Guinea for all I care. I shall hunt them ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... to convey an idea of the dreary scene on which we entered after leaving this spot: the only vegetation was a low scrub in deep sand; not a bird or insect enlivened the landscape. It was, without exception, the most uninviting prospect I ever beheld; and, to make matters worse, our guide Shobo wandered on the second day. We coaxed him on at night, but he went to all points of the compass on the trails of elephants which had been here in the rainy season, and then would sit down in the path, and in ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the door behind him. The room was chilly and uninviting, with a lofty ceiling and a hideous wallpaper. There was a gas stove at the far end of the room, turned very low, and hissing softly as if ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... friendship for her son; he was to say he was the gainer by it; Julia, silent at first, was to hazard a timid observation, and he to answer gracefully, and draw her out and find how he stood in her opinion. The sprightly affair should end by his inviting Edward to dinner. That should lead to their uninviting him in turn, and then he should have a word with Julia, and find out what houses she visited, and get introduced to their proprietors. Arrived at this point, his mind went over hedge and ditch faster than my poor ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... state had established itself. The discovery of Australia and New Zealand came much later than that of America; but within one century from the first European settlement in Australia (A.D. 1787) the whole continent, though its interior is uninviting, had been traversed along many lines, and five prosperous European colonies had grown to importance. The slow progress of exploration and settlement in South Africa during so long a period is therefore a noteworthy phenomenon which ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... and, perfectly at home, entered a small room. I paused motionless upon the threshold, and glanced feelingly around. The room contained nothing but a table covered with books and dust, a stiff oak arm-chair, a hard and uninviting-looking lounge, and on the mantel-piece, in two earthen vases, designed by Ziegler, the only ornaments of this poor retreat, a few dry, withered asters. No one expected me, I expected no one. There ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... place herself in a hansom, and direct the driver to take her to Park Lane. Hannah had not an idea what a hansom meant; she had never visited London since her early days. She stared with horror at the proposed vehicle, and finally selecting the creakiest and most uninviting of the four-wheelers, drove ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... more is meant than the little town or city; by Cintra must be understood the entire region, town, palace, quintas, forests, crags, Moorish ruin, which suddenly burst on the view on rounding the side of a bleak, savage, and sterile-looking mountain. Nothing is more sullen and uninviting than the south- western aspect of the stony wall which, on the side of Lisbon, seems to shield Cintra from the eye of the world, but the other side is a mingled scene of fairy beauty, artificial elegance, savage grandeur, domes, turrets, enormous ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... times desirable. But they do not of themselves generate earnest thought. The vacant mind, that has not yet learned to think, is when thus left to solitude and stillness, quite as likely to go a wool-gathering, or to fall asleep, as to wrestle with some hard uninviting train of thought. The appliances and the invitations to mental application, if we have really learned to study, must be mainly in ourselves, not in our surroundings. Besides, the greater part of the actual thinking and study, that has to be done by those ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... to the improbable tales which now form the bulk of their reading, but because the books are "dry." Those which are interesting are apt to be lengthy, and the mind consequently becomes confused by the multitude of details, while the brief ones often contain merely the dry bones of fact, uninviting and unreal. An attractive book which can be mastered in a single term, is the necessity of our schools. The present work is an attempt to meet this want in American histories. In its preparation there has been an endeavor to develop the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... his usual leisurely breakfast. At, say, nine o'clock, he settles back behind the steering-wheel of his motor-car. Crossing the Hudson by the Forty-second Street Ferry, he climbs the Weehawken slope, and swings westward over one of the uninviting turnpikes that disfigure the marshy land between the Passaic and the Hackensack. Then he finds the real Jersey, the Jerseyman's Jersey, of rolling hills, and historic memories of Washington's Continental troops in ragged blue and buff.—Morristown, with its superb estates, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... de garcons"—one must have been blind indeed not to see the mischief that was being done on those East End pavements; done more thoroughly perhaps, certainly on a vastly larger scale, than in the purlieus of the forest. It is an uninviting subject to dwell upon; but one could understand all about baby farms, and Lock Hospitals, and Contagious Diseases Acts, out there that July night, in the crowded streets of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... in mud and muck from the walls of the tunnel. Here, too, the timbers were rotting; one after another, they had cracked and caved beneath the weight of the earth above, giving the tunnel an eerie aspect, uninviting, dangerous. Harry ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... dining-room, drawing-room, study, boudoir, kitchen, bedroom, and—from sheer force of habit, I was about to add bathroom; but as I have already hinted cold water on half-empty stomachs and chilly livers is uninviting; besides, soap costs something. Their furniture was antique but not massive; nor could any of it be fairly reckoned superfluous. All told, it consisted of a bedstead (three six-foot planks on four sugar cubes; the bedclothes—a pair of discarded ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... the housemaid up two flights of steps, and into a small but beautifully furnished apartment, where a fire was not really necessary, as the house was heated by a furnace, still the absence of the cheerful red light she had left below made this room seem chill and uninviting. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Englishman as he guided his friend through the narrow doorway, then up a flight of rickety stairs, to a small room on the floor above. "He leaves all doors open for anyone to walk in, but, la! the interior of the house looks so uninviting that no ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... troops, as these and subsequent events proved, there had been a slight miscalculation in the landing, and the men had actually gone ashore a mile and a half northeast of Gaba Tepe, instead of at that point. Gaba Tepe is so rugged and uninviting that it was believed that the Turks would not trouble to intrench it. Actually the Turks appeared to have intrenched and prepared every inch of the coast. But at Sari Bair, where the Australian and New Zealand troops actually landed, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... young members of the family had all gone away now, and lonely old Mrs. Cox, a shrivelled little shell of a woman at sixty-five, always had a warm welcome for her oldest daughter and her beautiful grandchild. She would limp about her bare, uninviting little rooms, complaining of her husband's increasing meanness and of her own physical ills, while with gnarled, twisted old hands she filled a "Rebecca" teapot of cheap brown glaze, or cut into a fresh loaf of ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... fish and fishermen, sloops and schooners, mud-scows and skiffs in front, lives the world-renowned author, Hans Christian Andersen. I say he lives there, but, properly speaking, he only lodges. It seems to be a peculiarity of his nature to move about from time to time into all the queer and uninviting places possible to be discovered within the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... view there are few towns more uninviting than Birmingham; for the houses are built of brick toned down to a grimy red by smoke, in long streets crossing each other at right angles,—and the few modern stone buildings and blocks of houses seem as pert and as much out of place as the few idle dandies who are occasionally met ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... the eleventh century. There is certainly no visible portion of it older than the beginning of the fifteenth century. The library itself is on the first floor, and fills two rooms, running parallel with each other; both of them sufficiently dismal and uninviting. It is said to contain 45,000 volumes; but I much question whether there be half that number. There are some precious MSS. of which M. Ranner has published a catalogue in two octavo volumes, in the Latin language, in a manner extremely creditable to himself, and such as to render De Murr's ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the latter continued, after a few moments' pause, "must not, during these days, pass beyond the four walls of this singularly uninviting-looking apartment. I have nothing to add or to take from what I have said. The subject is closed. If you have more questions on any other subject, I ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for them. Into these rooms no book is ever brought, no needle-work is introduced; from them no clatter of many tongues is ever heard. On a marble table in the middle of the room always stands a large pitcher of iced water; and from this a cold, damp, uninviting air is spread through the atmosphere of the ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... waves. The chiseled doorways to those caves are rare specimens of Nature's mysterious work; some large, some small and of queer, fantastic shapes; that black-mouthed gape at chance passers, while towering high above, a roof of table land—arid, scorching pampas, is just as uninviting as the water way below. So desolate is that part of the coast that it is but little known. Don Nicholas and a group of Peruvian officers to whom Paul described the caves, expressed the utmost astonishment, though born and ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... confidence of former letters this person may already have alluded to certain maidens with words of courteous esteem, but it is now necessary to admit finally that in the presence of this same Helena they would all appear as an uninviting growth of stunted and deformed poppies surrounding a luxuriant chrysanthemum. At the presumptuous thought of describing her illimitable excellences my fingers become claw-like in their confessed inadequacy ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... during life and at all moments of life. These duties are exterior, and are required as often as a contrary bearing would betoken a lack of charity in the heart. Just as we are not called upon to embrace and hug an uninviting person as a neighbor, neither are we obliged to continue our civilities when we find that they are offensive and calculated to cause trouble. But naturally there must be ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... inducements to enter upon an industrial career were much more limited than they are at the present day. The industries of the West of Scotland were then few and comparatively uninviting. The iron trade was in its infancy, and those engaged in it lacked the resources for the acquisition of wealth that were evolved from the discovery of blackband mineral deposits by Mushet, the application of the hot blast by Neilson, and the ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... laid for Royal Sound, where we supposed the whaling-station to be situated. We were going well in the fresh morning breeze, and were just about to round the last headland, when all at once a gale sprang up again, the bare and uninviting coast was hidden in heavy rain, and we had the choice of waiting for an indefinite time or continuing our voyage. Without much hesitation we chose the latter alternative. It might be tempting enough to come in contact with other men, especially as they were fellow-countrymen, but ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... little band of faithful churchmen had gathered to worship God in the forms of the liturgy and according to the dictates of their conscience. That building stood until a few years ago. A friend in Edinburgh gave me a photograph of it, which is valuable as showing the uninviting quarters to which the poor Episcopalians were driven in those days to find freedom in their religious services. The upper room where they met was acquired by purchase in 1741, and the tradition is that ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... to reef main-sail and jib, the wind blew so hard and in gusts, and the adverse tide met me as it rushed out of Spithead with a heavy swell. Rain poured down slanting with the wind, and the rocks, uncovered at low water, looked very uninviting to leeward. ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... to give capital and credit to take the place of the European supply which has failed. One need not fear that the returns will be uninviting, for Europe would hardly have been supplying credit and capital to Latin America as a mere matter of amiability. Thus our capital must regenerate Latin-American prosperity, while our bankers, merchants, and manufacturers are engaged in making ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... swept bare by the storms of winter, and nothing had been done to repair the destruction which they had accomplished. Uprooted shrubs lay dead and dying upon the long dank grass, and the creepers torn from the walls hung down in pitiful confusion. Every window reflected back the same blank uninviting gloom. There was no light, no single sign of habitation. Mr. Thurwell had evidently respected his tenant's wish to the letter. The place had not been touched ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to a woman accustomed to the luxurious tables of the rich, but which were a new revelation to a person like myself, who had led a simple country life in the house of a clergyman with small means. When I saw my host carefully lay out these occult substances of uninviting appearance on a clean napkin, and then plunge once more into profound reflection at the sight of them, my curiosity could be no longer restrained. I ventured to say, "What are those things, Mr. Dexter, and are we ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... taken from the water just as soon as tender, while yet firm in appearance. If boiled soft, it loses its flavor and is uninviting. It is a good plan when it is to be divided before cooking, if the stalks are not perfectly tender, to boil the hardest portions first. Asparagus cooked in bunches is well done, if, when held by the thick end in a horizontal ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... useful to my design are they that treat of manners and rules of our life. But boldly to confess the truth (for since one has passed the barriers of impudence, there is no bridle), his way of writing appears to me negligent and uninviting: for his prefaces, definitions, divisions, and etymologies take up the greatest part of his work: whatever there is of life and marrow is smothered and lost in the long preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him, which is a great ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... brief survey of the flying landscape, which looked uniformly cold and uninviting under a leaden sky, and of her fellow-travelers, none of whom promised any possibilities of amusement, Betty remembered that she had intended to study all the way to New York, and accordingly extracted Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... cloud or rain. There were discomfort and dust, but there was a rare pleasure in the arrival at a quaint inn whose exterior front, boldly asserting itself in the bolder row of house-fronts in a long village street, was uninviting enough, but the interior of which was charming. In such a hostelry I always found the wharfmaster, in green coat and cap, asleep in an arm-chair, with the burgomaster and one or two idle landed proprietors sitting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... settled round me as I approached that dismal terminus. Then, when too late, I began to regret my folly. I seemed to wake as if from a dream, from a state of helpless infatuation, in which my acts were scarcely the effect of my own volition. The general out-look became decidedly uninviting. ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... spluttering wick, glimmering in a dirty little oil-lamp. With this feeble light he turned his back upon the lovely moonlight, and stumbled down into a low-ceilinged cabin, darksome and dirty, with berths which were as black and dingy, and altogether as uninviting as the shelves made to hold coffins ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of a sudden it was alive, responding to the cheerful mood of its inhabitants. The rooms had a new appearance; sunlight seemed to penetrate to every shadowed comer; colours were brighter, too familiar objects became interesting. The dining-room table, commonly so uninviting, gleamed as for a festival. Irene's eyes fell on everything and diffused her own happy spirit. Irene had an excellent appetite; everyone enjoyed the meal. This girl could not but bestow something of herself on all with whom ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... any description, but only some large corrales, or enclosures, for the cattle, of which there were six or seven thousand head on the land. The absence of shade and greenery gave the place a desolate, uninviting aspect, but if I was ever to have any authority here this would soon be changed. The Mayordomo, or manager, Don Policarpo Santierra de Penalosa, which, roughly done into English, means Polycarp of the Holy Land abounding in Slippery Rocks, proved ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... CHURCHMAN, with the combined authority of print and clerical commendation. It was the most evil thing that ever came into the house, a very devil, a thin little pamphlet with one woodcut illustration on the front page of each number; now the uninviting visage of some exponent of the real and only doctrine and attitudes, now some coral strand in act of welcoming the missionaries of God's mysterious preferences, now a new church in the Victorian Gothic. The vile rag it was! A score of vices that shun the policeman have nothing of its subtle ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... follow Nan's advice to make the governess' room look "as awful as she could." She swept and dusted it thoroughly, and set all the furniture in place, as she had been accustomed to do for the last fourteen years, and when she had finished the place was as uninviting as even Nan could have desired. In fact, there was nothing attractive in the whole house. The furniture was all good and substantial, but Delia had a way of ranging it against the walls in a manner that made it seem stiff ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... motor-bus. The night, as I have already stated, was exceptionally dark. There was no moon, and heavy clouds were spread over the sky; so that the deserted East End streets presented a sufficiently uninviting aspect, but one with which I was by no means unfamiliar and which certainly ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... branches of the trees, just as if anybody cared what nature was doing when human nature held the stage! And yet so marvellous is the fascination of Greece, so captivating the scenes which meet the eye from the uninviting window of a plain little foreign railroad train, that I cannot forbear to risk similar maledictions by saying that it is too heavenly for common words ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... modern craze for health resorts. It is now a fashionable collection of comfortable villas, profusely disposed over the W. and N. slopes of a range of hills which run with the channel on its way to Bristol. Though approached on the E. by miles of uninviting marshes, the situation of the town is pleasant and picturesque. Clevedon offers several points of contrast with its enterprising rival and neighbour. Besides other things it retains some remnants of ruder days. A humble row of ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... eight years later. The barrel hoop of the first New York theater gave way to "three chandeliers and patent oil lamps, the chandeliers having thirty-five lights each." Mr. White's description of this house after it had seen about a quarter of a century's service is certainly uninviting. Its boxes were like pens for beasts. "Across them were stretched benches consisting of a mere board covered with faded red moreen, a narrower board, shoulder high, being stretched behind to serve for a back. But one seat on each of the three or four benches was without even this luxury, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... stature above the middle size, and "more fat than bard beseems," of a dull countenance, and a gross, unanimated, uninviting appearance; silent in mingled company, but cheerful among select friends, and by his friends very tenderly ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... yours is nicer, little baby's mother," she said graciously, having first bitten a piece of her own rather uninviting bread. "It was only packened up last night—but perhaps it was the taking it to bed. I took it to bed acos I didn't want nobody to see. But the bicsits is nice. Mayn't baby have a bicsit, little baby's mother? If I had got to ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... houses, including shops and stores, would not exceed one hundred. I walked to the tavern, and delivered my satchel to the custody of a rough-looking animal, whom I subsequently found to be landlord, hostler, bar-tender, table-waiter, and general manager-at-all-work. He was a very uninviting subject; but, being myself courteously inclined, and having also a brisk eye to business, I inquired if there was a public hall or lecture-room ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... circle of men on a sort of throne, with his ceremonial spear leaning against a tree beside him. His subjects approached him crouching, but he shook hands with us and smiled kindly at us. A noble gesture of the hand gave us leave to taste a meal prepared to welcome us, which looked most uninviting, but turned out to be beautifully cooked sago and cocoa-nut cream. We could not finish the generous portions, and presently signed that we were satisfied; the chief seemed to regret that we did not ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... was setting by the time he found his villa and recognized it. The old servant told him that her mistress was not at home, but that most likely she would soon be in. The villa, very uninviting in appearance, with low ceilings papered with writing-paper and with uneven floors full of crevices, consisted only of three rooms. In one there was a bed, in the second there were canvases, brushes, greasy papers, and men's overcoats and hats lying about on the chairs and in the windows, while ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... face, of her perfect mouth, her 'dazzling' complexion, and the extraordinary youth by which 'she kept to the last the . . . freshness of a young girl.' Many of the 'famous writers' seem to have been very ugly. Thomson, the poet, was of a dull countenance, and a gross, unanimated, uninviting appearance; Richardson looked 'like a plump white mouse in a wig.' Pope is described in the Guardian, in 1713, as 'a lively little creature, with long arms and legs: a spider is no ill emblem of him. He has been taken at a distance for a small ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... hot blasts leaves its ineffaceable blight. To me, the thought of marriage comes no more than to one who knows death sits waiting only for the setting of the sun, to claim his own. That phase of life is as inaccessible and uninviting to me, as Antartic circumpolar lands; and even in thought, I have no temptation to explore it. My future and my past are so interblended, that I could as easily tear out my heart and continue to breathe, as attempt to separate them. I have a certain work to do, and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... waste brought us to the shore again, to a tiny Esquimau village and a tumble-down, half-buried shack of a road-house where we should spend the night, a little schooner lying beached in front of it. If its exterior were uninviting, the scene as we entered was sinister. By the light of a single candle—though it was not yet dark outside—amidst unwashed dishes and general grime, sat an evil-eyed Portuguese or Spaniard, in a red toque, playing poker with three skin-clad Esquimaux. So absorbed were they in the game that they ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... vigorous intellect, varied talents, and accurate scholarship, Lockhart was impatient of contradiction, and was prone to censure keenly those who had offended him. To strangers his manners were somewhat uninviting, and in society he was liable to periods of taciturnity. He loved the ironical and facetious; and did not scruple to indulge in ridicule even at the expense of his intimate associates. With many peculiarities ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the way out of the big Immigrant Station. As we reached the park outside we were pounced down upon by two evil-looking men, representatives of boarding-houses for immigrants. They pulled us so roughly and their general appearance and manner were so uninviting that we struggled and protested until they let us go—not without some parting curses. Then I led the way across Battery Park and under the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... them looked even worse fed and more degraded than the women. In the poor quarters of Pesth, and more especially those inhabited by the Jews, the tenements are exceedingly filthy, and the aroma is so uninviting that one hastens away from the streets where these rookeries abound. The utmost civility, not to say servility, may always be expected of the lower classes: some of them seize one's hand and kiss it as the Austrian ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... essay (Works, vi. 129) Johnson describes Canada as a 'region of desolate sterility,' 'a cold, uncomfortable, uninviting region, from which nothing but furs and fish were to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... are, in a modern point of view, narrow and uninviting, yet if the visitor have a liking for the picturesque he will find much to interest him. There are plenty of streets crammed with old-time houses, thrusting out their upper stories beyond the lower, and with their many-gabled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... doubt,' Dr. Pennell observes, 'the Government desires not to make any further annexation of this barren, mountainous, and uninviting region, but it is not always easy to avoid doing so; and it is an universal experience of history that when there are a number of disorganised and ill-governed units on the borders of a great power, they become inevitably, though it may be gradually and piece by piece, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... outer world things had changed very much. The sun had disappeared, and the sky was heavy and overcast with threatenings of the storm that had been brewing all the day; the old wall looked gray, and sad, and uninviting. ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the Thames water whispered eerily; and Kerry and Seton disembarked, mounting a short flight of slimy wooden steps and crossing a roughly planked place on to a shingly slope. Climbing this, they were on damp waste ground, pathless and uninviting. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... thick and twisted roots in the upper part of the cleft, flung its branches almost straight outward from the cliff, concealing it effectually from all observation. It might indeed have escaped the attention even of those who had stood at its very opening, so uninviting was the portal at which the beggar entered. But within, the cavern was higher and more roomy, cut into two separate branches, which, intersecting each other at right angles, formed an emblem of the cross, and indicated the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to the study of political economy. Instead, she had always imagined any question relating to the government of her country to be inherently dry-as-dust and uninviting. But had John Hammond devoted his days to the study of Coptic manuscripts, or the arrow headed inscriptions upon Assyrian tablets, she would have toiled her hardest in the endeavour to make herself ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... whole of this portion of the coast as far as St. Ives, the great exception being Gurnards' Head. The inland country is bleak and barren, with a number of mining shafts capping the hillocks, with the result that the uninviting hinterland has inspired few people with the desire to explore a really grand and rocky piece ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... was troubled with strange dreams, peopled by phantoms from the neighboring churchyard; but a bona fide ghost I cannot say I saw. In the morning I rose very early, and took a look from the window, but the prospect was very uninviting. The churchyard was a bleak, desolate place, overgrown with weeds, and studded with slate stones, bounded by a ruinous brick wall, and having an entrance through a dilapidated gateway. One or two melancholy-looking cows were feeding on the rank herbage that sprang from the ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... gantlet of the bush-hook. Here and there the stones of the higher and more abrupt walls crop out, while the board and rail fences appear strangely dwarfed by the snow that has fallen and drifted around them. The groves and wood-crowned hills still further away look as drearily uninviting as roofless dwellings with icy hearthstones and smokeless chimneys. Towering above all, on the right, is Storm King mountain, its granite rocks and precipices showing darkly here and there, as if its huge white mantle were old and ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the city was so filthy and uninviting that we preferred pitching our tent; but it was impossible to find a place without going back upon the plain; so we turned into the bazaar, and asked the way to a khan. There was a tolerable crowd in the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... warm September sun poured fiercely down upon her, she finally concluded to follow Maggie's advice, and gathering up her box and parasol started for the house, which, with its tansy patch on the right, and its single poplar tree in front, presented rather an uninviting appearance. ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... sorcerer, who inspired fear, and whom the people wished to get rid of.[3] We will admit, then, without hesitation, that acts which would now be considered as acts of illusion or folly, held a large place in the life of Jesus. Must we sacrifice to these uninviting features the sublimer aspect of such a life? God forbid. A mere sorcerer, after the manner of Simon the magician, would not have brought about a moral revolution like that effected by Jesus. If the thaumaturgus had effaced in Jesus the moralist and the religious reformer, there ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... which he does not clearly conceive. The artist must first see the picture on the white canvas, before he can paint it, and the sculptor must be able to see in the rough and uninviting stone, the outlines of the beautiful image which he is to carve. In writing, a clear idea of the formation of the different letters, and their various proportions, must become familiar by proper study, examination and analysis. Study precedes ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... through with sunshine, was wine to him. Unconsciously he drank it in deep breaths. The prospect of the brickyard was uninviting. He was jaded with all things business, and the wooded knolls were calling to him. A horse was between his legs—a good horse, he decided; one that sent him back to the cayuses he had ridden during his eastern Oregon boyhood. He had been somewhat of a rider in those early days, and the champ of ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... society became easy victims to the industrial organizer. The great mass of unskilled workers in the factory towns proved quite as tempting to the propagandist. Among laborers of this class, wages are the lowest and living conditions the most uninviting. Moreover, this group forms the industrial reservoir which receives the settlings of the most recent European and Asiatic immigration. These people have a standard of living and conceptions of political and individual freedom which are at variance with American ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... were doing down there, their ranch was clean and attractive, which was more than could be said of the place where we stopped the next night, a place called Tyson's Wells. We slept in our tent that night, for of all places on the earth a poorly kept ranch in Arizona is the most melancholy and uninviting. It reeks of everything unclean, morally and physically. Owen Wister has described such a place in his delightful story, where the young tenderfoot dances for the amusement ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... a few days he pulls himself together and plunges into work, but the effort exhausts him and he falls back further than before. He is unhappy and despondent, his viewpoint changes and the future looks uninviting and he loses his courage and his faith in himself. He hides all this from his family, he does not want wife and children to know that he is losing his hold. He even makes desperate efforts to keep fit while at home, and for ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... indications of the form of buildings,... but simply large quantities of large bricks, which for a long time have been carried away and used for modern buildings.... After rain coins are found on the surface.... There can be no doubt of a very large extent of ground, of very irregular and uninviting character, having been covered at some time with buildings. The position on the Jelam would answer well for the Dilawar which the Mongol invaders took and held.... The strange thing is that the name should not be mentioned (I believe it is not) by any of the well-known Mahomedan ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... are many things to be observed and appraised but fireplaces come first. A country home without facilities for open fires is as uninviting as one without trees and flowers. Expect to find the fireplaces disused and closed with fireboards or bricks. Sometimes the mantels have been removed and new flooring laid over the hearthstones. Some detective work around the logical locations will ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... It so, it is probable "the Mouse-trap"—for this was the designation by which George Reader's classical domain was familiarly styled—has disappeared. Let us hope so, for a more miserable, uncomfortable, and uninviting couple of rooms I ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... accurate, the broad firm sands leading to Acre. We were all mighty pleased to be on the move again, partly because Haifa was not a deliriously exciting place to be in, but chiefly because the neighbourhood of the famous river Kishon was singularly uninviting, and when the rains came, would be a veritable plague-spot of malaria ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... found that no food was forthcoming, and that the boats were not to be found. Just then their hunger was most pressing, and they left the subject of what had become of the boats for after consideration. The brown bread by itself was very uninviting. Jack looked at a fat pig in the sty with ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... he and my taste are concerned. Yet I always leave my work, George, when that begins, and walk about the room. I try to persuade myself that I need fresh air, but the autumnal day, the damp shiny street, has all the uninviting harshness of truth—I admit I do not. Tito flops about, is riddled with dropped notes and racked with hesitations, and presently becomes still. ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... day it was the same thing. Tessa looked tired out before the day's work began, and well she might, for she had sat up nearly all night to dispose of Sir Reginald, and now "The Fair Barmaid" had taken his place. Again the girl went without the uninviting lunch she had brought from her boarding-house, and again, as before, the fascinating novel divided her attention with her work. This afternoon she was detected by the overseer, who spoke a few words of reprimand and ordered her to ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... is the same color when cut, but the hardest stocks are of a dark, dirty purple or brown, or sometimes nearly black inside. A stock brick is rarely quite square or quite true; its surface is often disfigured by black specks and small pits, and a stack of them often looks uninviting; yet a skillful bricklayer, by throwing out the worst, by placing those of bad colors or much out of shape in the heart of the wall, and by bringing to the front the best end or side of those bricks which form part of the face, can always make the bricks in his ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... but though the blaze flew high, the smoke did not rise; but driven here and there by the squalls of wind, swirled about close to the ground in little clouds, like a flock of scattered sheep. It seemed as though it feared to rise in the grey, damp, uninviting atmosphere. The largest of the tents, in front of which Roman sentinels paced up and down, two and two, on guard, was wide open on the side towards the sea. The slaves who came out of the broad door-way with trays on their cropped heads-loaded with gold and silver vessels, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... repletion through all the long drive, and finally the jangling bells which had so recalled that last joyous day at home—at home—had brought her to a point where this meeting between mother and son—these two stony, unpleasant creatures exchanging a reluctant rub of uninviting cheeks—as two savages might have rubbed noses—proved the finishing impetus to hysteria. They were so hideous, these two, and so ghastly comic and fantastic in their unresponsive glumness, that the poor girl lost all hold upon herself and broke ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... exploration. The freshening wind rolled in such a surf that there was great danger that their boat would be swamped. They were compelled hastily to reembark, and return to the ship. Slowly the vessels coasted along the uninviting shore, looking in vain for any inlet or any ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... them, patiently reading to them or playing at cards with them. I have a great weakness for the American girl, she always puts her heart in what she is about. When she flirts she does it conscientiously, and when she nurses a most uninviting-looking Zouave, or Franc-tireur, she does it equally conscientiously; besides, as a rule, she is pretty, a gift of nature which I ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... to accommodate a student's lamp, several account books and a blotting-pad, completed this uninviting galaxy. ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... into the adjacent fields. There was nothing for a considerable distance to repay me for this detour, except that I thus was rid of the sand. The country was barren and uninteresting, the cottages little better than hovels, and the whole scene uninviting. But I pushed on, not a whit discouraged; indeed my spirits rose as the prospect darkened, and like a valiant general invading a country for the purpose of conquering a peace, I resolved in some way to force an adventure before I reached Calais. I trudged along for ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... in, jolly and comfortable apartments open suddenly upon you; and as you come to examine them more carefully, you discover all sorts of snug, little, out-of-the-way closets and recesses, full of old books and old wine, and all things rich and curious. But the entrance is uninviting to a casual acquaintance. Now, when you find an American of the right stamp (here Benson's hands were accidentally employed in adjusting his cravat), he hits the proper medium, and is accessible as a Frenchman and as true ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... was a little taken by surprise, when, on being summoned to tea, he took his place at the usually uninviting table, and saw before him a dish of well made toast, and a plate of nicely boiled ham. He said nothing; but a sensation of pleasure, so warm that it made his heart beat quicker, pervaded his bosom; and this was increased, when he ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... Kenny tried to keep his feet unswervingly in the path of truth, colorless and uninviting as it seemed; but the strategy of his practice hour in Adam's room he was forced to abandon, heartsick for Joan and the future. His battle for her he knew had been in vain. Useless further to bombard with truth that silent, inscrutable Caliban upstairs, whose fiendish ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... time they two seemed the only pedestrians that had ventured forth that night in a locality so uninviting. On either side the houses pressed closer upon them. Touching a wall here and there, John Steele experienced the vague sensation that he had walked that way on other occasions, long, long ago. Or was it only a bad dream that again stirred ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... shadows on the wall, 'till aroused by mother's morning kiss, and cheery call to breakfast, which banished all disturbing dreams, and waked us to the realities of a bright sunshiny morning, and the morning meal which our grand hostess had prepared for us to eat before we left this most uninviting caravansary. This repast consisted of potatoes boiled "au natural," and some kind of drink which she announced as coffee, and which she served with the grace of a queen, dispensing the ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... uninviting as the place looked, it was one of the very few harbors on that rugged coast in which the logs of which Peveril was in search could be rafted and held in safety until called for. So the stores and supplies ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... that they were all together in Marion's den, as Eurie called her stuffed and uninviting little room. Never was mortal more glad to be interrupted than she, as she unceremoniously tossed aside school-books and papers, and made room for them ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... from the University, and admirably adapted to an encounter such as this. The trees in the background sheltered the combatants from observation in one direction, but for the rest the common lay open and uninviting, and the chill morning air blowing across it made the onlookers think longingly of ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... their daily shelter, their work-shop, their place of social influence. The human interest which our author sheds about the mill, the carpenter's shop, the dairy, the village church, and even the stiff, uninviting conventicle, shows that she looks on these as having a living continuity with the people whom she sets among them. Their artistic value is but a reflection of all that they mean to those for whom they have ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... youngest children of the cottagers kept company with the sow and her grunting pigs. Before the slovenly entrances of the huts here and there sat dirty, unseemly old men and women, who stared at the three strangers as they surveyed the uninviting ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... its cloud-topped head emerges, the chance is, that he feels disappointed, for, from the point of view in which he sees it, the neighbouring mountains lessen its effect very considerably. Excepting the Peak, the eye receives little pleasure from the general face of the country, which is sterile and uninviting to the last degree. The town, however, from its cheerful white appearance, contrasted with the dreary brownness of the back ground, makes not an unpleasing coup d'oeil. It is neither irregular in its ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... was courting ME for Sarah Walker! Yet it was impossible to actually connect her with these mute attentions. "You want me to give them to Sarah Walker," I said cheerfully one afternoon, as he laid upon my desk some peculiarly uninviting crustacea which looked not unlike a few detached excrescences from his own hands. He shook his head decidedly. "I understand," I continued, confidently; "you want me to keep them for her." "No," said ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... statesmanship than five City Clubs full of people who want low taxes and orderly bookkeeping. He does things which have to be done. He humanizes a strange country; he is a friend at court; he represents the legitimate kindliness of government, standing between the poor and the impersonal, uninviting majesty of the law. Let no man wonder that Lorimer's people do not prefer an efficiency expert, that a Tim Sullivan has power, or that men are loyal to Hinky Dink. The cry raised against these men by the average reformer is a piece of cold, unreal, preposterous idealism compared to the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... were greasy—napkins and table-cloths were not to be mentioned, else would the brethren suspect the presence of an aristocrat. At the upper end, beyond the little black bar, there was a platform, upon it a table, a pianoforte, and a stool. Still he managed to conceal his repugnance to all these uninviting things and he sipped his diluted Rhine wine, ate his sandwich—an unpalatable one—under the watchful eyes of his companion. By eight o'clock the room was jammed with working-people, all talking and in a half dozen tongues. Occasionally Yetta ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... garden plant in a deep exquisitely worked soil with never a weed in an acre. But children were kept from school because their parents could not get along without their help. Many of the school teachers seemed as poor as the farmers. As I passed the farm-houses in the evening they seemed bleak and uninviting. In the fire hole[214] of every house, however, there was a generous blaze and the bath tub out-of-doors was steaming for the customary evening hot dip in ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... prepared them for the dismal, ill-cared-for, altogether repulsive doorway before which they halted next. No attendant waited here; not even an elevator boy; the latter for the good reason that there was no elevator. An uninviting flight of stairs was before them; and on the few doors within sight a simple card showed ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... competition of the street, they so tried my patience with their pranks that I often wondered what strange attraction induced them to come at all. The school and church were the property of a society known by the uninviting title of the "Episcopal Society for the promotion of Christianity among the Jews." It owned a large court, shut off from the road by high gates, around which stood about a dozen houses—with the church facing the gates at one end of a pretty avenue of trees. It was an oasis in the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... weeks without failing once to eat at a proper table or to sleep in a comfortable bed. Sometimes we put up at the stark-looking hotels that loomed, raw and uninviting, in the larger towns; sometimes we had the pleasure of being welcomed at a little inn, where the host showed us a personal hospitality; but oftener we were forced to make ourselves "paying guests" at some house. We cared nothing whether we slept in the spare rooms ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... thought came across me, the man who had conducted the horse to the stable entered the apartment, and discovered to me a countenance yet more uninviting than that of the old crone who was performing with such dexterity the office of cook to the party. He was perhaps sixty years old; yet his brow was not much furrowed, and his jet-black hair was only grizzled, not whitened, by the advance of age. All his motions spoke strength unabated; ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the south, near to Eucla, and thus map that important locality; but on reaching there I was prevented by the following causes: The weather was excessively warm; the country to the south seemed most uninviting —sand-hills as far as could be seen, covered with spinifex; our horses were very poor; our rations were running short, the meat and tea and sugar being nearly gone; water was very scarce, and I could clearly see that, although Mr. ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... and William down for a nice quiet morning in the library. William, looking round for escape, found none. The outside world was wholly uninviting. The rain came down in torrents. Moreover, the five preceding weeks had broken William's spirits. He realised the impossibility of evading Uncle George. His own family were not sympathetic. They suffered ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... speak of the artisans and the peasants. The artisans of Skotoprigonyevsk are almost peasants, and even work on the land. Two of them also wore European dress, and, perhaps for that reason, were dirtier and more uninviting-looking than the others. So that one might well wonder, as I did as soon as I had looked at them, "what men like that could possibly make of such a case?" Yet their faces made a strangely imposing, almost menacing, impression; they were ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the day's annoyances, and as the streets were very uninviting, we sat smoking segars in the coffee-room of the establishment. As one person after another dropped in, we heard of the increase of the fog outside, and, indeed, it had long since entered and filled the apartment till the outline ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... goes down the scenery, as we steam on, changes each moment. In the twilight the granite cliffs stand out black and uninviting, and the country looks cold and grey. It may be that we are tired of the long journey, for with the growing darkness comes the feeling that something to eat and bed would be pleasant things. Then ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... ground by farther acquaintance. She was faded, but not passe, and was still handsome, and of a most graceful carriage, though distant and uninviting. Her loftiness had in it something so pensive mixed with its haughtiness, that though it could not inspire confidence, it did not create displeasure. She possessed also a claim to sympathy and respect in being the niece of M. de Malesherbes, that wise, tender, generous, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... woman's heart? Are there any remains of that clear, pure light which once looked out innocently from those bloodshot eyes? All this was so once. What does he think of now? Is he acting over the dark deed which brought him into this uninviting sleeping-place? Does he see that silent chamber into which a guilty man is stealing, with crime in his heart,—no, not in his heart; for he has none!—but in his thoughts, and remorseless ferocity to execute it? Does he see the gigantic shadows cast on the walls around by the miserable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... less pleasantly, because he was mortified by the awareness of himself as an uninviting sight, with his old dressing-gown, neglected beard, and the ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... finding a little out-of-the-way restaurant kept by a foreigner, he "supped full with"—what were to him emphatically—"horrors"; the dinner and supper combined, which he had ordered, growing cold, in the meantime, and as uninviting as the place in ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... or obelisks. No doubt, remains of this remarkable "circus" would be found now, if the forest should be removed. What else could be found there by means of careful and thorough exploration may never be known, for the region is uninviting, the forest very difficult, and such an exploration would require much more than the means and efforts of one ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... in a street near Chelsea Hospital, a poor-looking place, much inferior to those in which Rolfe had formerly seen him. His two rooms were at the top, and he had converted a garret into a dark chamber for his photographic amusement. Dirt and disorder made the sitting-room very uninviting; Rolfe looked about him, and wondered what principle of corruption was at work in the young ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... she spoke of the settlement about the Works as a desolate, unpicturesque, uninviting spot, and Camille had skirted the truth, at least, when she referred to the inherited acres as "marsh lands." Had she named them a desert instead, though, she would have been nearer correct, for is not a desert a "great sandy plain?" So was the site of the great factories ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... part company with an old companion and friend. As Paul puts it in 2nd Corinthians, 'Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon.' All thoughts of the future which do not give prominence to the idea of a bodily life open up but a ghastly and uninviting mode of existence, which cannot but repel those who are accustomed to the fellowship of their bodies, and they feel that they cannot think of themselves as deprived of that which was their servant and instrument, through all the years ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... and more uninviting, and it was almost impossible to avoid many discomforts. Simeon remembered the comfort of his palace in Jerusalem, and contemplated turning back. And yet the thought of the wise man who could help him to immortality proved ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... she calls order? She is so good a woman, so untiring, so unselfish, so conscientious, so irritating. Her rooms are so clean, her servants so well managed, her children so well dressed, her dinners so well cooked; the whole house so uninviting. Everything about her is in ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... have told me often enough that I married you for your money; let me tell you now that I always bitterly repented the bargain; and if you were still marriageable, and had a diamond bigger than your head, I should counsel even my maid against a union so uninviting and disastrous.—As for you, Mr. Hartley," she continued, turning on the secretary, "you have sufficiently exhibited your valuable qualities in this house; we are now persuaded that you equally lack manhood, sense, and self-respect; and I can see ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he was less fortunate than the Judge's mastiff. He had no dry straw, not even a kennel to crouch in. And the fields were uninviting; and to die was not so pleasant. The veriest wretch alive feels a yearning for life, and few are so foolish as not to prefer a dry skin to a wet one. Even Fessenden's knew enough to go in when it rained,—if he only could. So, with the dismallest ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... There is something wrong when this is the case. "I beseech you," said one addressing youth, "not to turn home into a restaurant and a sleeping bunk, spending all your leisure somewhere else, and going home only when all other places are shut up." A young man, it is admitted, may find his home uninviting through causes for which he has not himself to blame. Still, even then he may do much to change its character, and by his pleasant and cheerful bearing may bring into it sunshine brighter than ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... or Paumanack, the Indian name of Long Island,) over a hundred miles long; shaped like a fish—plenty of sea shore, sandy, stormy, uninviting, the horizon boundless, the air too strong for invalids, the bays a wonderful resort for aquatic birds, the south-side meadows cover'd with salt hay, the soil of the island generally tough, but good for the locust-tree, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... there is one part of the river where the hills which lie on its western side are entirely barren, and the reddish-yellow rocks appear very hot and uninviting by comparison. Yet this forbidding district is one of the busiest and richest of all Burma, for this is the great oil-field of the country, and the chimneys of pumping stations which stretch for miles along the ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... door at the uninviting interior. The floor was a litter of rubbish, old clothes in a state of decomposition, leaves, bones, and rusty cans and pans. Young McCrae wrinkled an ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... the lodge into a large forecourt strewn with small river pebbles, in front of a vast building of the seventeenth century. There were no flowers of stone-work, no sculpture, no decorative doorways—nothing but a frontage of shabby brick and stone, a bare, uninviting structure evidently neglected, with tall windows, behind which the shutters could be seen, painted grey. The entrance was on the level of the first floor; double outside steps led up to the door, and under the landing, in the arch below, there was ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... of human occupants, and otherwise presented a bare and uninviting aspect, the only furniture in it consisting of a table and two chairs. It was imperfectly lighted by a small window looking out upon the cloisters which surrounded the courtyard that the prisoners had crossed a quarter of an hour earlier, and a bell suspended ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... dread about you that you are going to fail! Pushing yourself boldly into men's offices a dozen times a day, yet always nervously dreading the reception they may give you. Catching late trains and early trains; missing meals or sitting down to tables where things are so uninviting you cannot eat. And all the time, day and night, wondering if your employers are satisfied with your sales and if they recognize the necessity of your cutting prices. A good time! If there is any business in the world that is so little of a "good time" I would like to know what ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... city was revealed to the eyes of the weary soldiers with the suddenness of a mirage in the desert. Throughout that day an interminable outreach of level country had seemed to spread before them, dreary, uninviting, disheartening. Now, from the summit of a hill, their triumphant eyes gazed suddenly upon the roofs and spires of a mighty city, splendid, far-reaching, stretching far across the plain that lay revealed before their eyes. It seemed to them ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... occasion, Mrs. Pratt now fairly "tired out," escorted herself to the adjoining room and laid her weary bones on the uninviting "settee," that was the hallowed source of all the pleasant dreams, that haunted her daily siestas for ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera |
