"Disconcerting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mendoza had preserved that tone of elaborate irony which, it will be remembered, was so disconcerting to English audiences, and stood so much in the way of his popularity. But now his manner changed. Becoming more serious, and I fear I must add, more dull than I had ever heard him before, he gave us what I suppose to be ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... color—has nothing significant to say: to him grass is green, snow is white, the sky blue; and to have his attention drawn to the fact that sometimes grass is yellow, snow blue, and the sky green, is disconcerting rather than illuminating. It is only when his retina is assaulted by some splendid sunset or sky-encircling rainbow that he is able to disassociate the idea of color from that of form and substance. Even the artist is at ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... him the bread. "You're a cowboy, aren't you?" was the disconcerting question that ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... toward them. Strutted would perhaps be the better word, since she stepped like a person for whom stepping means a calculation. She was about Letty's height, and about Letty's figure. Moreover, she was pretty, with that haughtiness of mien which turns prettiness to beauty. What was most disconcerting was her coming straight toward Letty, and standing in front of her ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... the first week he was taken down with a disconcerting suspicion that the Baron had made a fool of him. He was filled with a wrath that had to be cooled. One morning, just as he was leaving his apartment, he saw two milk cans filled with milk standing in the outer hall. One was for the first floor, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... a moment. Her great, dark eyes were fixed upon the threadbare carpet. What he told her was disconcerting, yet, knowing instinctively, as she did, how passionately Walter loved her, she could not bring herself to believe that he was really ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... instructions, in the event of my being able to satisfy myself that his death is the work of his Nihilist friends," said Gimblet, who thought it unnecessary to mention his disconcerting experience with the veiled lady, "And contrariwise, if I can make sure that they have no hand in it, it was his wish that I should then leave the whole thing alone. So I had better see what I can make of it before I go into this any ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... man. Mr. Bonner found him a terrible object in a terrible rage. In his late years, be it remembered, Lord Kitchener was not good to look upon. He appeared a coarse, a top-heavy person; and in anger, his cross-eyes could be painfully disconcerting. ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... fear to give us equal suffrage in love. Our honesty will not be disconcerting. (I would even address a private query, at just this point, to the women, begging that the men will skip it, asking women where in the world we would find ourselves if we were unflinchingly honest with the men ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... seconds after Mr. Gladstone had concluded, had vanished from the House. This was immediately followed by the stampede of the rest of the House—for by half-past eight everybody was famished with hunger—and the Chamber was left empty, silent, and dim, with a suddenness that was startling, disconcerting, and a little disillusioning. And then it was that the strongest proof was given of the effect ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... wonderful capacity for making a simple matter appear complex. He had been, by turns, a civil engineer and an actor, and had a fine singing voice. As an officer he was infinitely laborious and conscientious, but with a queer disconcerting streak of Irish unaccountability. One never quite knew what he would do, if left ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... a little giggle. There was a queer mixture of girlish coquetry and masculine strength about her that was disconcerting. Elizabeth paused, afraid ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... take a chair, and talk and eat with us like an old family friend. Gilbertine etiquette appears defective on the point of leave-taking. It may be remembered we had trouble in the matter with Karaiti; and there was something childish and disconcerting in Tembinok's abrupt 'I want go home now,' accompanied by a kind of ducking rise, and followed by an unadorned retreat. It was the only blot upon his manners, which were otherwise plain, decent, sensible, and dignified. He never ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... may be borne when it is not monotonous; but he remembers that there is no limit to the time during which one human being may impel him along an open road, and he also remembers some very pretty friskings, delightful to himself, but disconcerting to his rider, and he may ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... have children and love them passionately before one realizes the deep indignity of accident in life. It is not that I mind so much when unexpected and disconcerting things happen to you or your sisters, but that I mind before they happen. My dreams and anticipations of your lives are all marred by my sense of the huge importance mere chance encounters and incalculable necessities will play in them. And in friendship ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... sight disconcerting to find Pepys no less impatient of The Merry Wives of Windsor. He expresses a mild interest in the humours of "the country gentleman and the French doctor." But he condemns the play as a whole. It is in his favour that his bitterest reproaches ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... William's congratulations on his triumph at Austerlitz, to which the Emperor replied by a sarcastic query whether, if the result of that battle had been different, he would have spoken at all about the friendship of his master.[47] After thus disconcerting the envoy and upbraiding him with the Treaty of Potsdam, Napoleon unmasked his battery by offering Prussia the Electorate of Hanover in return for the comparatively petty sacrifices of Ansbach to Bavaria, and Cleves and Neufchatel to France. For the loss of these outlying districts ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... bomb-throwing tube until the whole equipment was cut adrift and fell clear of the vessel. Almost instantly there was a terrific explosion in mid-air. The blast of air caused the vessel to roll and pitch in a disconcerting manner, but as the airman permitted the craft to continue its upward course unchecked, she soon steadied herself and was ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... Wadsworths had a great wolf-hound whom Roosevelt himself described as "a most ill-favored hybrid, whose mother was a Newfoundland and whose father was a large wolf," and which looked, it seemed, more like a hyena than like either of its parents. The dog both barked and howled, but it had a disconcerting habit of doing neither when it was on business bent. The first intimation Roosevelt had of its existence one day, as he was knocking at the door of the Wadsworth cabin, was a rush that the animal made ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... most disconcerting question. Not knowing what he proposed to do, Roddy, to gain time, slipped to the ground and, hat in hand, moved close to the pommel of her saddle. As he did not answer, the girl spoke again, this time in ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... lapping a second supply, the Kansas shifted again with a disconcerting suddenness. The water in the cabin swirled across the floor as the ship was restored to an even keel. The movement dislodged the packet of letters. It fell, and Elsie rescued it a second time. Christobal ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... But business has detained him. Will you not walk in, Mr. Willet?" The earnestness with which he was looking into her face was disconcerting Fanny. So she stepped toward the door, and led the way ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... of his ignorance was that he never tried to conceal it. He looked at it with surprise and discussed it with disconcerting frankness. He was no more abashed in learning new and better ways of conducting himself than he would have been in learning a new language. He laughed good-humoredly at his mistakes and seldom committed the same one a second time. His limitations were to him like the frontier to a pioneer—a ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... North China, is waiting—waiting more patiently than impatient Westerners, but waiting just as anxiously; waiting with ear wide open to every rumour; waiting with an eye on every shadow—to know whether the storm is going to break or blow away. There is something disconcerting, startling, unseemly in being waited on by those who you know are in turn waiting on battle, murder, and sudden death. You feel that something may come suddenly at any moment, and though you do not dare to speak your ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... and had a disconcerting way of inviting guests to luncheon or dinner, and then forgetting that he had done so. One morning a stranger entered, and after a brief conference with Iorson, was conducted to the commercial man's table to await his arrival. ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... Sardou's gifts as a raconteur, the supper passed off pleasantly enough. This great man could unfold the varied pages of his mind with disconcerting ease. He knew everything, and could talk and act with inimitable vivacity. His anecdotes were always instructive, drawn from his manifold sources of knowledge in art or science. Mlle. Frahender was stupified by so much eclecticism, the philosopher forgot his grief, Madame Darbois realized for ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... was at the same time pleased with the ready, or at least the unrepugnant acquiescence of Hayraddin in their change of route, for he needed his assistance as a guide, and yet had feared that the disconcerting of his intended act of treachery would have driven him to extremity. Besides, to expel the Bohemian from their society would have been the ready mode to bring down William de la Marck, with whom he was in correspondence, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... descending lift. Fifteen quiet years had elapsed since the death of her husband's partner William Twemlow, and a quarter of a century since William's wild son, Arthur, had run away to America. Yet Uncle Meshach's letter seemed to invest these far-off things with a mysterious and disconcerting actuality. The misgivings about her husband which long practice and continual effort had taught her how to keep at bay, suddenly overleapt their artificial ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... snapped the Terror with a disconcerting suddenness; and his eyes shone very bright and threatening in a steady ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... on account of the shawl—a strange article of dress, difficult to associate with a romantic singer. All the same, Evelyn was very probable in this picture; her past and her future were in this disconcerting compound of the commonplace and the rare; and the confusion which this picture created in the minds of Owen's friends was aggravated by the strange elliptical execution. Owen admitted the drawing to be not altogether ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... laugh with which this observation was greeted might have been disconcerting to anybody but Anthony Robeson, but he ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... critical readers: and for a long time the general public turned an obstinately deaf ear. He followed The Ordeal itself—a study of very freely and deeply drawn character; of incident sometimes unusual and always unusually told; of elaborate and disconcerting epigram or rather of style saturated with epigrammatic quality; and of a strange ironic persiflage permeating thought, picture, and expression in the same way—unhastingly but unrestingly with others. Evan Harrington (1861) is generally lighter ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... back, slapping a hand to his face, believing that he had been hit. Then there followed a series of disconcerting snaps all around his head as the long lash began to work, but so skillfully was it wielded that the end of it did ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... funny and very disconcerting. Keith watched with bulging eyes and trembling heart, until at last a whole big man came out of the chimney. As he crouched for a moment on the fire-place before getting down on the floor, he turned on Keith a pair of eyes ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... no doubt, that I snuffed—it was at Claypots steading—but there was no wind that I should turn. This is very remarkable, John, and . . . disconcerting. ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Smollett set out in mid-November by way of Orgon [Aix], Brignolles and le Muy, striking the Mediterranean at Frejus. En route he was inveigled into a controversy of unwonted bitterness with an innkeeper at le Muy. The scene is conjured up for us with an almost disconcerting actuality; no single detail of the author's discomfiture is omitted. The episode is post-Flaubertian in its impersonal detachment, or, as Coleridge first said, "aloofness." On crossing the Var, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Renovales from the very first. He was well dressed but the lapels of his coat were dirty with ashes, and its collar was strewn with dandruff. The painter observed that he smelt of wine. At first he pompously styled him master, but after a few words he called him by name with disconcerting familiarity. He moved about the studio as if it were his own, as if he had spent his whole life in it, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of these lectures will confirm us in this supposition. As regards the psychopathic origin of so many religious phenomena, that would not be in the least surprising or disconcerting, even were such phenomena certified from on high to be the most precious of human experiences. No one organism can possibly yield to its owner the whole body of truth. Few of us are not in some way infirm, or even diseased; and ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... this in the preface of the author to the reader with which the Mare au Diable begins. This preface would be disconcerting to any one who does not remember the intellectual atmosphere in which ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... was, to Genevieve, certainly, most disconcerting. Miss Hart gave one look into Genevieve's eyes, then dropped her face into her hands and burst into tears. At Genevieve's aghast exclamation, however, she raised her head determinedly and ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... meeting and disconcerting his pleasantly questioning look with one of swift resolve. "Dr. Kemp, I wish to tell you that my father has confided to me ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... spirit of our people is rather disconcerting. One of Mr. Punch's young men, happening to meet a music-hall acquaintance, asked him how he thought the war was going, and met with the answer: "Oh, I think the managers will have to give in." And the proposal to change ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... must have been disconcerting, Messire Merlin. Still, as you got your shadow back again, there was no great harm done. But why is it that such attendants follow some men while other men are permitted to live in decent solitude? It does not ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... poker mask was off. In that land of polygamy and deportations it is frequent enough that one brother does not know the other by sight; but it must be disconcerting, all the same, to have a supposititious brother sprung on you. He gave a perceptible start, as he had not done when first addressed as Ali Higg ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... and of any sound betokening their activity was disconcerting. However, my wife thought it best to lay siege to Whiteley's rather than ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... the corner below the doctor's house until he saw him drive away; then he went up and rang the bell. This time it was the "blonde" that answered—small and sweet, pink and white, with tawny hair. This was disconcerting. "I couldn't get here earlier," he explained. "I saw the doctor just driving away. But, as these bandages feel uncomfortable, I thought perhaps his daughter—your sister, is she ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... of superb scorn. This time I hesitated. The mental picture I saw of myself—a vague young woman, seated in an automobile stranded by the roadside, trying to lure away the dog of a strange man—was disconcerting. While I debated whether to break my promise or behave like a wild school girl, the animal paused in his listless trot. He stopped, as if he'd been struck by an unseen bullet, quivered all over, and shot past ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... you are doing so well in your new business, father!" Vona's straightforward gaze was disconcerting. ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... on the side verandah. The black-haired girl still sat in the window. She was frankly staring, and so, every time Dolly caught her eye, the straightforward gaze was so disconcerting that Dolly looked away quickly and pretended to ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... author, then at once the play begins to assume new shapes—contours undreamt of by the author till that startling moment. And even if the author has the temerity to conduct his own rehearsals, similar disconcerting phenomena will occur; for the author as a producer is a different fellow from the author as author. The producer is up against realities. He, first, renders the play concrete, gradually condenses its filmy vapours into a solid element.... He suggests the casting. "What do you think of X. for the ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... Crudely disconcerting, these scientific discoveries. Or is it not rather hard to be dragged to earth in this callous fashion, while soaring heavenward on the wings of our edifying reflections? For the rest—the old, old story; a simple, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... catcher and snapped to second, a game may be won or lost just on this play alone. If the opposing team finds that it can make second in safety by going down with the pitcher's arm, it will surely take full advantage of the knowledge. To have a man on second is disconcerting to the pitcher as well as a difficult man to handle. It therefore follows that a catcher who cannot throw accurately to the bases becomes a serious disadvantage to his team. In the old days a catcher had to be able to catch either with bare ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... had started with the idea that this was to be a surprise attack, and it was disconcerting to find the garrison armed at all points. Gradually they edged to the door, and a ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... snobbishness in New York or from her youth and inexperience, she received him as if he had been one of the neighbors dropping in after supper. And it was Norman who was ill at ease. Nothing is more disconcerting to a man accustomed to be received with due respect to his importance than to find himself put upon the common human level and compelled to "make good" all over again from the beginning. He felt—he knew—that he was an humble candidate for her favor—a ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... beautiful eyes on him with a gaze that was almost disconcerting while searching her mind for ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... was. But active and aggressive Anglophobia is, I think, a less important factor in the situation than the sheer indifference to England, with a latent bias towards hostility, which is so widespread in America. To the English observer, this indifference is far more disconcerting than hatred. The average Briton, one may say with confidence, is not indifferent towards America. He may be very ignorant about it, very much prejudiced against certain American habits and institutions, very thoughtless and tactless in expressing his prejudices; ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... interview with his nephew was a typical example of the unexpectedness of events, for instead of the indignant opposition which he had feared, his proposition was listened to in silence, and accepted with an alacrity, which was almost more disconcerting than revolt. ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... There is something almost disconcerting in the ardour and devotion of Mrs. Eddy's followers. Truly, in the success of Christian Science we see one more proof of the ease with which a new religion can be started if, in addition to faith, it concerns itself ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... had not forgotten, which was disconcerting. To cover up my own doubts I asked him with affected confidence and cheerfulness whether he was not afraid to risk this journey "down below," that is, to the Realm ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... reveals the disconcerting fact that the editor has been influenced by and has followed the example of Schuch by the adoption of his system of numbering the recipes. We do not approve of his inclusion of the excerpts of ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... had been strutting in all the pride of a proprietor, she held the stage. More. Neither our discomfited host nor his sisters could divine what was toward, and the fact that their guests crowded eagerly about Adele, encouraging her to "let them have it," was more disconcerting ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... and constructive air, it deals with impressively enormous amounts of tangible property, it rests with a comforting effect of solidity upon assumptions that are at once doubtful and desirable. It seems free from metaphysical considerations, and it has none of those disconcerting personal applications, those penetrations towards intimate qualities, that makes eugenics, for example, faintly but persistently uncomfortable. It is indeed an ideal problem for a healthy, hopeful, and progressive middle-aged public ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... the girls pooh-poohed Hannah's. Who was Hannah Johnson that she dared to speak so rudely to one so charming and beautiful as Kathleen O'Hara? There was a disconcerting pause, ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... paid the president of Princeton University an unsolicited call to suggest that he be candidate for the Democratic nomination for the governorship of New Jersey, Mr. Wilson, after thanking them for the compliment, with disconcerting directness asked, "Gentlemen, why do you want me as the candidate?" They replied, because they believed he could be elected and they wanted a Democratic governor. He asked why they believed he could be elected, ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... day of the storm, all hands and the cook were summoned to Anzac Cove for salvage work. On arrival it was found that the piers had been washed away. Big baulks of timber were being thrown about by the sea, in a most disconcerting manner, amongst all sorts of stores. The first duty assigned the party by the Beach Commandant was to restore some semblance of order amongst the members of a certain Labour Corps who had run wild. This was achieved in an expeditious though ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... on the morning of January 25, 1893. Now came a characteristic example of Frohman's resource. At noon it was discovered that the new electric-light installation was not yet complete. Added to this was the disconcerting fact that the paint on the chairs was scarcely dry. Sanger, Harris, and Rich urged Frohman to postpone the opening. "It will be useless to open under these ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... him whisper, hoarsely. He recognized him as Shope. The light coming up through the scuttle illuminated the foremast above Trask's head in a manner disconcerting. Trask ducked ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... it was all right baffled Mamie. Anything less all right she had never come across in a lifetime of disconcerting experiences. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... sinister quality in the night noises of this old Karoo farm that weighed on her courage and paralyzed her senses. So, instead of stirring, she lay very still in the darkness, the loud, uncertain beats of her heart adding themselves to all the other disconcerting sounds. ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... it seemly for a dog to be living in the churchyard, Mr. Brown?" The minister's voice was merely kind and inquiring, but the caretaker was in fault, and this good English was disconcerting. However, his conscience acquitted him of moral wrong, and his sturdy Scotch independence came ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... that the Germans just now are beginning to realise that I always told them the truth and treated them fairly, a procedure, I admit, far more disconcerting and disturbing to them than the most subtle wiles and moves of ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... all the more disconcerting for Charles, because of the speedy abatement of the enthusiasm that had hailed his first appearance. What had happened to him was what generally happens to a conqueror who has more good luck than talent; instead of making himself a party among the great ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... mortal hours I paced the streets feverishly awaiting the reply, and at two-thirty it came, disconcerting enough ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... of the Magyar is disconcerting. By crossing the Danube, Serbia has become genuinely part of Europe; she has turned her back on the Balkans and the eternal strife on barren empty hills. The new Serbia can afford to forget and forgive Bulgaria, now a remote sort of country. She can retort ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... fact that you don't feel it is a proof that it isn't there! The only thing about it that isn't beautiful to me is the fact that life can't live except by taking life—that there is no right to live; and that, I admit, is disconcerting. You may say to me, 'You old bully, crammed with the corpses of sheep and potatoes, which you haven't even had the honesty to kill for yourself, you dare to come here, and talk this stuff about the beauty of it all, and the joy of living. If all the bodies of the things you have consumed in your ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... moods when the Sisters believed they had overcome her inheritance of reticence and aloofness. She would laugh and chat gaily and appear charmingly young and happy, but without warning she would lapse back to the almost sullen, suspicious attitude that was so disconcerting. Sister Angela demanded justice for Mary and received, in return, a kind of loyalty that was the best ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... to his room. Doubtless he was relieved at seeing them; but his feelings may have been somewhat mixed when Lady Elizabeth "thrust in with them." He was on very friendly terms with her; but it was disconcerting to receive a lady from his bed when he was half awake and wholly frightened, especially when, as the correspondent describes it, the condition of that lady was like that of "a cow that had ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... occupy the berth he had paid for. Their examination of his effects was more thorough than usual. It may have entered their heads that he was standing guard over the repose of a fair accomplice. They asked so many embarrassing and disconcerting questions that he was devoutly relieved when they ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... dea!" I burst out as loud as I could, with a boy's pleasure in disconcerting the inquisitive passer-by. She turned suddenly round to go away, waving her hand at me; at that moment Sora Lodovica swung the shrine-lamp back into its place. A stream of light fell across the street. I felt myself grow quite cold; the face of the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... With a disconcerting chuckle Radicofani suited his action to the word, and busied himself with preparations for the journey, taking care, however, as he strode from ante-room to bed-chamber to keep his prisoner constantly in sight. The latter's hope of escape had ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... The best caviare in Russia, the worst actor on Broadway, the most virtuous angel in Heaven! Such superlatives are transcendental. And yet,—so rare is perfection in this world!—the news swiftly follows, unexpected, disconcerting, that the best Pilsner in Vienna is far short of the ideal. For some undetermined reason—the influence of the American tourist? the decay of the Austrian national character?—the Vienna Bierwirte freeze and paralyze it with too much ice, so that it chills the nerves ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Everybody who saw her marveled at the dazzling radiance of her countenance; they stood spellbound before the glorious light that shone in her eyes and the wondrous clearness of her complexion. This greatly troubled Abraham when he fled from Canaan to Egypt. It was disconcerting to have crowds of travelers gazing at his wife as if she were something more than human. Besides, he feared that the Egyptians would seize ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... that halt at Ecloo the figures and the behaviour of Mrs. E. and her husband and their children are beautiful to remember—their courtesy, their serenity, their gentle and absolving wonder that anybody should see anything in the least frightful or distressing, or even disconcerting and unusual, in the situation; the little girl who sat beside me, showing me her picture-book of animals, accepting gravely and earnestly all that you had to tell her about the ways of squirrels, of kangaroos and opossums, while we waited for ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... 24th General Sherman made an attack for the purpose of carrying the north end of Missionary Ridge. His success was not complete, although at the time it was reported throughout the army to be so. It had the effect of disconcerting Bragg, however, and caused him to strengthen his right by withdrawing troops from his left, which circumstance led Hooker to advance on the northerly face of Lookout Mountain. At first, with good glasses, we could plainly see Hooker's troops driving the Confederates up the face of ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... altogether at his ease. The brilliancy of his surroundings, the easy charm of the woman, were a little disconcerting. And she was Rochester's wife, the wife of the man whom he hated! That in itself was a thing to be always kept in mind. Never before ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hurdy-gurdy and the informal contribution to the sudden stranger's store of experience. Beyond this dishonourable fringe upon the old town's jowl rose a dense mass of trees, surmounting and filling a little hollow. Through this bickered a small stream that perished down the sheer and disconcerting side of the great canon of the ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... disconcerting things, he is brutally frank; but I like to argue with him because I find him stimulating, and he does know a lot ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... for himself. Probably Jackson, when elected, fully expected Calhoun to be his successor. Before long, however, the South Carolinian was given ground for apprehension. Men began to talk about a second term for Jackson, and the White House gave no indication of disapproval. Even more disconcerting was the large place taken in the new regime by Van Buren. The "little magician" held the chief post in the Cabinet; he was in the confidence of the President as Calhoun was not; there were multiplying indications that he was aiming at the ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... a man who had himself so much to cover up would dare his blow; so that these vessels of rancour were in a manner afraid of each other. I judged that on the day the Pudneys should cease for some reason or other to be afraid they would treat us to some revelation more disconcerting than any of its predecessors. As I held Mrs. Saltram's letter in my hand it was distinctly communicated to me that the day had come—they had ceased to be afraid. "I don't want to know the worst," I ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... do next? What sort of a man was this? The rough fellows in the circle around him insensibly drew back a little, and looked in each other's faces with surprise, as they tried to read the riddle of this disconcerting behaviour. The Quaker would not show fight! He was actually giving them leave to set upon him and beat him again! All in a minute, what had hitherto seemed like rare sport began to be rather ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... a trifle excited, to be sure, now that she was fairly launched on her philanthropic expedition; also the fact that the two women in the room were absolutely silent and gave no hint of how they were going to take this tide of insults was somewhat disconcerting. However, Gila was not easily disconcerted. She was very angry, and her anger had been growing in force all night. The greatest insult that man could offer her had been heaped upon her by Courtland, and there was no punishment too great to be meted out to the unfortunate innocent ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... sort of panic from the old "picture-poster situation" to the other extreme of always dropping their curtain when the audience least expects it. This is not a practice to be commended. One has often seen an audience quite unnecessarily chilled by a disconcerting "curtain." There should be moderation even ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... was demanded; in a clear, disconcerting flash, the situation was laid bare. Here was woman desiring the love of man; woman determined to reap her spoil. It was one issue in the deathless, relentless struggle—the struggle wherein the little Jacqueline clung ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... new discovery, however, was more than disconcerting, and it is not surprising that he lost his balance. Its attack and rush were overwhelming. Thus, it was a kind of exalted speculative wonder lying behind his inner joy that caused his mistakes. He had imagined, for instance, that the first sight of ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... "It was disconcerting assuredly, and it might have served if Linda hadn't written. That patched it up," I gaily professed. But my gaiety was thin, for I was still amazed at her violence of a moment before. "Do you really mean that she won't do?" ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... to him in hope,—in the glimmering chance that perhaps there was something in the train of circumstances that would have prevented the actuality of guilt. But the answer, while it cheered him, was rather disconcerting. ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... Fancourt. He certainly looked better behind than any foreign man of letters—showed for beautifully correct in his tall black hat and his superior frock coat. Somehow, all the same, these very garments—he wouldn't have minded them so much on a weekday—were disconcerting to Paul Overt, who forgot for the moment that the head of the profession was not a bit better dressed than himself. He had caught a glimpse of a regular face, a fresh colour, a brown moustache and a pair ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... resented Mr. Carstyle's unperturbed observation more than his wife's zealous self-effacement. To a man who is trying to please a pretty girl there are moments when the proximity of an impartial spectator is more disconcerting than the most obvious connivance; and something about Mr. Carstyle's expression conveyed his good-humored indifference ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... upon the small table, I noticed Pasquale look with some curiosity at my man's impassive face. But he said nothing more about the slipper. I poured out his whisky and soda. He drank a deep draught, curled up his swaggering moustache and suddenly broke into one of his disconcerting ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... in Paris to have a salon if one knows how to give dinners. Some squares of Bristol board engraved by Stern and posted to good addresses, will attract with an almost disconcerting facility, a crowd of visitors who will swarm around a festive board like bees ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... caterpillars, and has not the slightest difficulty at all in distinguishing them with the naked eye from the leaves and plants among which they are lurking. But observe how promptly we crush and demolish this very inconvenient and disconcerting critic. The caterpillars he finds are almost all hairy ones, very conspicuous and easy to discover—'woolly bears,' and such like common and unclean creatures—and the reason they take no pains to conceal themselves from his unobservant ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... reach development, mental and physical, in disconcerting phases while he was away on his voyages. Each time he met her he was obliged to get acquainted all over again, it appeared ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... birthday-party their coming was of the utmost interest, and, though the tables were much too far apart for Roddy to hear what was said, he could see that many glances were cast in his direction, that the others were talking of him, and that, for some reason, his presence was most disconcerting. ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... to trudge at the tail of the column. She dared to cast one shy, disconcerting little glance at Dave—and he suddenly felt he would burst into flame and consume ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... made rather extensive rounds, closely questioning the surgeons as to the wounds and treatment of each man, and as he was a doctor as well, he knew how to judge of the replies. Whereas the big General was a soldier and not a doctor, and was thus unable to ask any disconcerting questions, so that his visits, while tedious, were never embarrassing. When a General came on the place, it was a signal to down tools. The surgeons would hurriedly finish their operations, or postpone them if possible, and the dressings in the wards were ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... thereof, as I say, is not external, but internal. It lies in the same disconcerting apprehension of the larger realities, the same impatience with the paltry and meretricious, the same disqualification for mechanical routine and empty technic which one finds in the higher varieties ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... something about him and does not barricade himself against you. But a man who puts up the shutters in front of his virtues and faults bothers me most terribly, and I always seem to be bumping my head against something invisible whenever I see him, which is a most disconcerting performance. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... was renewed every now and then under the Captain's own supervision. He asserted them to be beautiful, and his acquaintances were content with the qualification that to an unwarned visitor, in an uncertain light, they might be disconcerting. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... though he were insulting the visitor by his request, and with the detective's disconcerting eyes fixed upon his face was more than half ashamed ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... stick and changed the trend of Antoine's aggressive thoughts. The big brute slunk to the far end of the room, sat upon his haunches, and blinked at the party in a disconcerting fashion. Then Pepin again turned upon Bastien with such a quick, fierce movement that the latter ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... is, the gossip-shop. It is true, from off the basis of the Guild, the women could look at their homes, at the conditions of their own lives, and find fault. So the colliers found their women had a new standard of their own, rather disconcerting. And also, Mrs. Morel always had a lot of news on Monday nights, so that the children liked William to be in when their mother came home, because she told ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... for in his state of health the inclement weather would be harmful. Before I could answer her we were startled to hear quite close to us a faint cry. I got up and looked around, and so did Devaka, for she is brave, my wife. But we could not find anything to account for the disconcerting sound. ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... of sentiment on questions which occupy the public mind, such as voluntaryism, Free Trade, etc., etc. Responsible Government is the one subject on which this coincidence is alleged to exist."[7] The French problem he found peculiarly difficult. Metcalfe's policy had had results disconcerting to the British authorities. Banishing, as he thought, sectarianism or racial views, he had yet practically shut out French statesmen from office so successfully, that, when Elgin, acting through Colonel Tache, {196} attempted to approach ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... A smile of patience and resignation, which soon was like a pained expression of weariness, crept across his handsome face. Yes, he was really handsome, though a little disconcerting, with his large eyes, which women must have adored, his drooping moustache, his tender, distant air. He seemed to be one of those gentle people who think too much and do evil. You would have said that he was above everything ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... more fully towards them, and for a moment Geoffrey stood still in blank astonishment. The average man would find it disconcerting to be brought, without warning, suddenly face to face in a strange country with a woman who had discarded him, and ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... that hat! What kind of clothes is that sailor boy's suit you're wearing? You've got to dress like a decent white girl that's had some bringing-up, and you've got to—you've got—" Amzi coughed as though afraid of the intended conclusion of his sentence. Phil's eyes were bent upon him with disconcerting gravity. He hoped that Phil would interrupt with one of her usual impertinences; but with the suspicion of laughter in her eyes she waited, so that he perforce blurted it out. "You've got to go into society; that's ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... see the root, perhaps, of that distaste for correct physics that prevails among many who call themselves idealists. If physics were for some reason to be adored, it would be disconcerting to find in physics nothing but atoms and a void. It is hard to understand, however, why a fanciful formula expressing the evolution of this perturbed universe, and painting it no better than it is, should be ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... her eagerness into a more detailed account of his differences with the rest of the board than he had ever given to any one, a fuller narrative than was perhaps consistent with entire prudence. Whenever he paused, she would insist with a woman's disconcerting directness: ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... victory-flushed Huns to whom this unconventional kind of fierce onset came as a complete and disconcerting surprise. They fought like demons, with utterly reckless bravery. They paid the price, alas! in heavy losses, but for what they paid they took compensation ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... up spouts of black slimy mud. The doctor and I scurried back to the shelter of the cottage wall. Another shell and another. A lieutenant-colonel of Infantry, on horseback, swung violently round the corner and joined us. Three more shells fell. Then silence. "These sudden bursts of fire are very disconcerting, aren't they?" remarked the colonel as ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... was a convincing man in his way, whether upon the subject of reciprocity or apostolic succession, but John was plainly bored from the beginning, and though he offered no resistance, his repeated "I know that!" "That's what I said!" were more disconcerting than the most vigorous opposition. At daylight the editor left John, and he really had the headache that he had feigned ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... Stuck in a room 800 feet from the ground with walls of glass that allowed observation of the whole island of Daem, which I assumed to be the only civilization in the world, while great events unfolded around me, of which I was supposed to be the primary actor, was very disconcerting, though I find in retrospect that fate worked so mysteriously in my situation that it is quite puzzling to think about, meaning, of course, my relationship with the doom of humanity as preventer and ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... water from encroaching on the low-lying farms, and came upon a most disheartening sight. Beyond several hundred yards of dangerous marsh flowed the river, looking very white in the deceptive light of early morning. The wavelets formed by the steady wind and the current were making a faint, but disconcerting, noise. Though it was only just possible to discern the opposite bank, there seemed to be a similar line of marshy ground between it and the water's edge. I determined to see if it was possible to get through the marsh with any degree of safety, but ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... disconcerting. There was a distinct note of disapproval in her voice as she answered, "I do not know much about Italy." She seemed to think it not quite a seemly subject, yet she pursued it. "I should have thought it was better for a young ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... most other poets, he was not without his peculiarities of temperament, as might have been seen by his manner and movements even in this staid assembly; for, as if disgusted with a tedious and profitless debate, and determined also not long to be troubled by the disconcerting news just announced, he had now evidently cast these cares from his mind, to indulge in the more congenial employment of gazing out upon the landscape, over which his kindling eye might have been seen to wander, till it rested, in rapture, on the broad empurpled side and bright summit of ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... doubted the genuineness of my excuse, it was easy matter to keep them convinced for almost two-thirds of my college course. My inability to recite was not due usually to any lack of preparation. However well prepared I might be, the moment I was called upon, a mingling of a thousand disconcerting sensations, and the distinct thought that at last the dread attack was at hand, would suddenly intervene and deprive me of all but the power to say, "Not prepared." Weeks would pass without any other record being placed opposite my name than a zero, ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... you wish to see me," she said the merest conventionality to break the disconcerting, ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... treated like a slave. At first they tried to pump Freda concerning Mrs. Wilson's treatment of her, but Freda was not to be pumped. She was a quiet little mite, with big, wistful dark eyes that had a disconcerting fashion of looking the gossips out of countenance. But if Freda had been disposed to complain, the North Point people would have found out that they had been only ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with a curious buzzing in his ears and a certain dimness of sight which was quite disconcerting; and when a cab was summoned he was glad enough to let a respectfully sympathetic porter lend him a ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... marrying and giving in marriage, buying, selling, cursing and laughing, carrying out rebellions and little plots as though the centuries that stretch ahead were still her willing slaves, has in the end become to onlookers a veritable nightmare. Puzzled by a phenomenon which is so disconcerting as to be incapable of any clear definition, they have ended by declaring that an empty Treasury is an empty rule, adding that as it is solely from this monetary viewpoint that the New China ought to be judged, their opinion is ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... hundred years earlier than Esarhaddon, he was obviously in a better position to ascertain the periods at which the events recorded took place, but the discrepancy between the figures he gives and those of Esarhaddon is disconcerting. It shows that Assyrian scribes could make bad mistakes in their reckoning, and it serves to cast discredit on the absolute accuracy of the chronological notices contained in other late Assyrian inscriptions. So far from helping to settle the unsolved problems of Assyrian ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... that it was a lie. But Mrs. Lascelles sat looking up at me with her fine and candid eyes, as though she knew as well as I which was the real coincidence, and knew that I knew into the bargain. It gave me the disconcerting sensation of being detected and convicted at one blow. Bob Evers failed me as a topic, and I stood like the ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... nose delicately shaped. He had big teeth, but they were white and even. His mouth was large, with heavy moist lips. He had the neck of a bullock. His dark, curling hair had retreated from the forehead and temples in such a way as to give his clean-shaven face a disconcerting nudity. The baldness of his crown was vaguely like a tonsure. He had the look of a very wicked, sensual priest. Margaret, stealing a glance at him as he ate, on a sudden violently shuddered; he affected her with an uncontrollable dislike. ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... hear me? He nodded his head and sat grimly down by the table, at which of late he had so happily reclined. He covered his mouth and nose with his hand, but kept his piercing eyes upon me. Disconcerting! but even so, had he listened in silence I might have ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... warm time if it came under the fire of a British ship. The Spaniards kept the Hermione for just two years, but kept her principally in port, as the moment she showed her nose in the open sea some British ship or other, sleeplessly on the watch for her, bore down with disconcerting eagerness. ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... was becoming more disconcerting day by day. And yet she had acted for the best. That fact did not insure to her immunity from blame on the part of that awful personage, her sister Mary. Good intentions had never yet received their due as extenuating circumstances in ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... the exchange that had taken place, applied to the new Grand-Duchy. It is necessary here to explain what took place in some detail, for this arbitrary wrenching of Luxemburg from its historical position as an integral part of the Netherlands was to have serious and disconcerting consequences ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... the resolution before the Senate." This opening sentence was a piece of consummate art. The simple and appropriate image, the low voice, the calm manner, relieved the strained excitement of the audience, which might have ended by disconcerting the speaker if it had been maintained. Every one was now at his ease; and when the monotonous reading of the resolution ceased Mr. Webster was master of the situation, and had his listeners in complete control. With breathless attention they followed him as he proceeded. The strong masculine ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... however, to human endurance, even where liberty is at stake. We trod air one time, in that disconcerting way which jarred one more than many a mile of travel, and landed heavily in the slime below, and Le Marchant lay and made no attempt to rise. I groped till I found him, and hauled him to solider ground, and he lay there coughing and choking, and at last sobbing angrily, not with ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... de farce, je ne m'en fiche pas mal, moi," it said in an accent curiously compounded of the foreign and the coulisse. A muttered male remonstrance ensued, and then, with disconcerting clearness: ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... table and motioned to the two men to sit down, though she remained standing. Sylvester Paine stared at her uncomprehendingly. The girl's composure was disconcerting. Her voice had a vibrant passion in it that made Peter's heart begin to beat. It was like watching a play that approaches ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... light step sounded inside and the door was opened by Kathleen herself. Her usually pale face became flooded with color as she met the steady light of Grace's scornful eyes. Rallying all her forces, she returned the disconcerting gaze with one of defiant bravado. "Oh, good afternoon," she said, setting her lips in a straight line, a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... view, so disconcerting to the prophet-people, Gordon held to the very end. And seeing that the Law had killed the nation, and a cruel fatality dogged the footsteps of the people of the Book, would it not be best to free the individuals from the chains of the faith and liberate ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... answered cheerfully. "Not that I've starved in that respect. I got my men up at the Fort into splendid form. We made our net and racquets ourselves, and rolled out some sort of a court. It was immense fun, though the racquets weren't all you might have wished, and the court had a most disconcerting surface." He laughed heartily at his recollections, and ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... for the wind to take it off the line, for it must be remembered that even when the wind comes dead from the front, if there is the slightest slice or pull on the ball to start with, it will be increased to a disconcerting extent before the breeze ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... mouth with thin lips primly set. Her dark eyes might be magnificent if wide open: but through the narrow slits of their lids, half hidden by long curling lashes, the eyes peer at you with a cold, watchful, intent gaze that carries a certain uncanny and disconcerting fascination. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... plants, causing them to mature earlier, and to attain a greater size than ever happened in its absence. In recent years this creature had rarely been seen in the neighbourhood of Yun, and, in consequence, the earth-tillers throughout that country had been brought into a most disconcerting state of poverty, and would, inevitably, be prepared to exchange whatever they still possessed for even a few of the insects, in order that they might liberate them to increase, and so entirely reverse the objectionable state of things. ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... next day to set his snares, the Harn was prepared to test his snakeproof pants. They held, which was disconcerting to the Harn, but it was a hard creature to convince, once thoroughly aroused. Ed was not too sure of how well the pants would stand up to persistent assault himself. After the third ambush, he took to spraying ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams |
