"Graceless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be off, now, graceless pack: Get you gone, lost children mine: Your release is earned in fine: ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... handsome. His features were angular and somewhat irregular, and upon every one of these individualities the graceless artist enlarged at will. He turned up the nose, and set the stray bits of whiskers, and dotted the cheeks, at war one with another. He even went further, and with a few clever strokes sketched a dwarfed body for the life-sized ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... locket somewhat shyly, and blushed deeply when he opened it and discovered a tiny miniature of herself. He was pleased to have it, and told her so in a graceless way. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... had stolen Mr. King's property from Dave, a graceless youth named Gregg, was found, and the property recovered. He had also got hold of some papers that belonged to Dave's father. Gregg through these had obtained a trace of a Mr. Dale, a great friend of the dead balloonist. He had made Mr. Dale believe he was the real Dave ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... there may be those who are disinclined to credit the statement that some of the denizens take in lodgers. But the fact remains. Having ample room and to spare within their own walls, they offer hospitality to homeless and unprotected strangers, whom graceless Nature has not equipped to take part in the rough-and-tumble struggle for existence outside. A tender-hearted mollusc (PINNA) accepts the company of a beautiful form of mantis-shrimp—tender, delicate and affectionate—which dies quickly when removed from its asylum, as well as a singular ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Lebanon, that we may celebrate with apt libations the monks of the Holy Land, and though the poor fellows be theoretically “dead to the world,” we will drink to every man of them a good long life, and a merry one! Graceless is the traveller who forgets his obligations to these saints upon earth; little love has he for merry Christendom if he has not rejoiced with great joy to find in the very midst of water-drinking infidels those lowly monasteries, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... like courtiers, were laughing amongst themselves as they followed him: and I was left with the two queens, one of whom was making ruffles for the man she loved, and the other slopping tea for the good of her country. They renewed their generous endeavours to set me right, and I (graceless beast that I am) take up the smoked card which lay before me, and with ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... "You—you—you graceless villain, you," cried the commodore in a rage—"to think that I had such confidence in you, sir; defended you upon all occasions, sir; refused to believe in your villainy, sir; refused to close my doors against you, sir. Yes, sir; and should have continued to ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... this; you will mourn, when you cannot mend it. I would my mother had been here, soon would she have persuaded you. And yet,' he added, with the smile of his accustomed gaiety, 'it would have been an unco thing, as we say in Scotland, for her ladyship to have waited upon you, as her graceless son has done, and hopes to do again ere long. Down the cliffs I came, and up them I must make way back again. Now adieu, fair Cousin Lorna, I see you are in haste tonight; but I am right proud of my guardianship. Give me just one flower for token'—here he ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... measure mayst thou mete our love; For how should I be loved as I love thee?— I, graceless, joyless, lacking absolutely All gifts that with thy queenship best behove;— Thou, throned in every heart's elect alcove, And crowned with garlands culled from every tree, Which for no head but thine, by Love's decree, All beauties and ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... "You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burned me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you! but you must be eating fire, and I know not what—what have you got there, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... obstinate cousin that she wished to be friends. The intimacy ripened rapidly, and, Mr. Lockwood, on their wedding day there won't be a happier woman in England than myself. Joseph was the only objector, and he appealed to Heathcliff against 'yon flaysome graceless quean, that's witched our lad wi' her bold een and her forrad ways.' But after a burst of passion at the news, Mr. Heathcliff suddenly calmed down and said to me, 'Nelly, there is a strange change approaching; I'm ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... tall donjon, 130 feet high, and most of the outer wall, are of the fourteenth century. The inner wall encloses a sixteenth-century mansion, marked with none of the picturesqueness of the Renaissance period, but heavy and graceless. In the interior, however, are sculptured chimney-pieces and other interesting details. This residence was built by the sister-in-law of Pierre de Bourdeilles. The burg itself, which lies close to the castle and is much embowered ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... up wi' care! An', if he live to be a beast, To pit some havins in his breast! [put, behavior] An' warn him, what I winna name, [will not] To stay content wi' yowes at hame; [ewes] An' no to rin an' wear his cloots, [hoofs] Like ither menseless graceless brutes. [unmannerly] 'An neist my yowie, silly thing, [next] Gude keep thee frae a tether string! O may thou ne'er forgather up [make friends] Wi' ony blastit moorland tup; But ay keep mind to moop an' mell, [nibble, meddle] Wi' sheep ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... through East an' Wast, And still in ilka age an' station Saw naething but abomination. In thir uncovenantit lands The gangrel Scot uplifts his hands At lack of a' sectarian fuesh'n, An' cauld religious destituetion. He rins, puir man, frae place to place, Tries a' their graceless means o' grace, Preacher on preacher, kirk on kirk— This yin a stot an' thon a stirk— A bletherin' clan, no warth a preen. As bad as Smith ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it, which at first her Reverence deny'd to return, 'till Mr. Constable produc'd the Emblem of his Authority, upon which it was deliver'd, without so much as re-minding Gracelove of his Bargain; who then pretended he would search the House for Sir William Wilding; but her graceless Reverence swore most devoutly that he had never been there, and that she had neither seen nor heard from him since the Day he left Philadelphia with her. With these Things, and this Account he return'd to Counsellor Fairlaw's, who desir'd Gracelove, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... what horrors of death; during what long nights she lay moaning, and in almost delirious agonies respecting that future world which she quite ignored when she was in good health.—Picture to yourself, oh fair young reader, a worldly, selfish, graceless, thankless, religionless old woman, writhing in pain and fear, and without her wig. Picture her to yourself, and ere you be old, learn ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... occupied by cranks." What an example for Sylvia of the futility of charity—the effort on the part of benevolent capitalists to civilise the poor by putting bath-tubs in their homes, and the discovery that the graceless creatures were using them for the storage ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... way at once into the Serapeum. But that was out of the question, for no one moved from his place. There was, however, plenty to be seen. A complete revulsion of feeling had come over the crowd. In the place of Expectancy, its graceless step-child, Disappointment, held sway. There were no more shouts of joy; men's lungs were no longer strained to the utmost, but their tongues were all the busier. Caesar was for the most part spoken of with contempt as Tarautas, and with the bitterness—the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you been plotting, you two?" she asked lightly when they reached her. To Roy her eyes said: "D'you call this being discreet?" To Aruna her lips said: "Graceless one! I thought you were purdah nashin ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... of yoush," he said drunkenly. "Hev a drink—everybody—no, everybody—come up hyar, I say!" And the graceless saloon bums dropped their cards and came trooping up together. A few of the more self-respecting men slipped quietly out into the card rooms; but the studious stranger, disdaining such puny subterfuges, remained in his place, as impassive and ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... had a passing wonder about Shawn's having known that Susan's husband was gone to America—she had not associated the person who had saved Shawn from accident at Ashbridge Park with Susan's graceless husband. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... existed only for ignoble purposes. The gladiator succeeded naturally to the athlete, the circus to the stadium, and the sanguinary scenes of the amphitheatre brutalized the pure tastes of earlier years. Then came the barbarians, and the rough, graceless strength of Goths and Vandals supplanted the supple vigor of the gymnast. The rude, migratory life of the Dark Ages needed not the gymnasium as a means of physical culture, and was too changeable and evanescent to establish permanent institutions. Chivalry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... pride of his father? And how was it possible for Mr. Britling, disfigured by heedless misadventures, embarrassed by complications and concealments, to help this honest youngster out of his perplexities? He imagined possible forms of these perplexities. Graceless forms. Ugly forms. Such forms as only the nocturnal imagination would have ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... falls into a graceless obscurity from compressing into a few words what he ought to have said in a more expanded form: his great fault is that he outdoes Tacitus in conciseness: hence he keeps his reader in ignorance of things which would have been known if he had only more ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... wondered aloud what he had done that he should be saddled with such a graceless nephew. It was in vain that Mr. Rushton offered to make ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... and as he became aware that she was a pleasant-looking lady of middle age, who regarded him with very friendly and truthful eyes, he vowed to himself that he would bring Mr. Ogilvie to task for representing this decent and respectable woman as a graceless and dangerous coquette. No doubt she was the mother of children. At her time of life she was better employed in the nursery or in the kitchen than in flirting with young men; and could he doubt that she was a good house-mistress when he saw with his own eyes how spick and ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... says; "the mystery is explained; the key of conceptualism has opened the tabernacle, and Saint Bernard was right in saying that, thanks to Abelard, every one can penetrate it and contemplate it at his ease; 'even the graceless, even the uncircumcised.' Yes! the Trinity is explained, but after the manner of the Sabellians. For to identify the Persons in the terms of human concepts is, in the same stroke, to ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... she looks as she does it; still there is something strange, deserted, and graceless in this large bare room. I should not like to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the Squire lived a graceless old infidel named MYERS, who was wont to entangle his simple neighbors in arguments sadly vexing to their orthodoxy. On one occasion he devoted an hour to prove to BULLARD that there was no ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... gold. People don't do such acts as are to torture their minds here, and perhaps be punished hereafter—that is, if there be one, child. I say, people don't do such deeds as these, merely because a graceless son comes to them, and says, 'If you please, mother.' Do you understand that, child? I've blood enough on my hands already—good blood, too—they are not defiled with the scum of a parish boy, nor shall ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... the man, "for all that I can see, you may as well bide a while with us; for, indeed, with leave of my graceless maid, I think we may even end our wild-goose chase here and get us back to ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... tranquillity mounts up Parnassus, in his own conceit, in loftier tracts than Virgil or Theocritus ever knew. But, alas! what would become of him, if some audacious person should dare unbind his eyes, and make him see his weak and graceless lines, which, however smoothly they may run, are, at best, but exquisitely dull; contain terms that have no meaning in them, and have no other ornament, but unintelligible jingle, and initial letters? How would he curse the day which deprived his senseless soul of that happy error that so ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... of her eye she saw him bowing like an Italian opera singer, as impudently insouciant, as gracefully graceless as any stage villain in her memory. Once again she saw him, when her machine swept round a curve and she could look back without seeming to do so, limping across through the sage brush toward a little hillock near the road. And as she looked the bare, curly head was inclined ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... though they were not the same delight to him, and were studied rather as a duty and as a step to the ministry of the Church, the desire of his heart from the first. At school, his companions respected him heartily, and loved him for his unselfish kindness and sweetness, while a few of the more graceless were inclined to brand him as soft or slow, because he never consented to join in anything blameable, and was not devoted to boyish sports, though at times he would join in them with great vigour, and was always ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the copies of it, and being taunted by the rivals whom he had thought to overwhelm, he died of chagrin. Even death did not end his misfortunes. The copies of the first edition having been sold by a graceless descendant to a Leipsic bookseller, a second edition was brought out under a new title, and this, too, is now much sought as a precious memorial ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... more than that. David was that rare builder, a man who can work with his hands and see all the time inside his soul the completed work. He could no more endure slipshod work or graceless lines in his building than the knight himself could do a cowardly or dishonest thing. David would have done his task faithfully in any case, but it rejoiced his soul to find that the knight and his lady would know not only ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... daily associates. Him we invited to a meeting at a tavern in the neighborhood of the prison, disguising our names as too certain to betray our objects, and baiting our invitation with some hints which we had ascertained were likely to prove temptations under his immediate circumstances. He had a graceless young son whom he was most anxious to wean from his dissolute connections, and to steady, by placing him in some office of no great responsibility. Upon this knowledge we framed the terms of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... perversely under its baptism and surged beneath the awnings of the shops. It was Saturday, universal shopping-day in the farmland, and a ramshackle line of rustic vehicles—buggies, democrats, sulkies, lumber wagons—with graceless plough horses slumbering in the thills, stretched in ragged alignment down the curb. Shelby's smart turnout seemed fairly urban by contrast, and Ruth saw that it met with the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... his feet Rejoicing I shall say:—"The girl you gave Was my first Heaven, an angel bent to save. Oh, God, her maker, if my ingrate breath Is worth this rescue from the Second Death, Perhaps her dear proud eyes grow gentler too That scorned my graceless years and trophies few. Gone are those years, and gone ill-deeds that turned Her sacred beauty from my songs that burned. We now as comrades through the stars may take The rich and arduous quests I did forsake. ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... I, who had been so witless as to let this come upon us! Moa's weapon prodded me. Her voice hissed at me with all the venom of a reptile enraged. "So that was your game, Gregg Haljan! And I was so graceless as ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... habitations; and many a house which looked so very picturesque at a distance was found, on a nearer inspection, to be a very dirty domicile. Still the views from them were beautiful. Nature has done everything; it is graceless man who is in fault that all is not in accordance with it. At the corner of one of the streets we saw a number of horses, and mules, and donkeys, standing together with ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... his tarred and weather-beaten Chamberlains, Dukes and Lord High Admirals surrounded him, arrayed in all the pomp that spare tarpaulins and remnants of old sails could furnish. Then the visiting "watch below," transformed into graceless ladies and uncouth pilgrims, by rude travesties upon waterfalls, hoopskirts, white kid gloves and swallow-tail coats, moved solemnly up the companion way, and bowing low, began a system of complicated and extraordinary smiling which few monarchs ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the fairy children, their schoolmaster, and his wench. Some of the obscenity of this part may be elaborated from passages in the Maid's Metamorphosis. The piece has a prologue for representation at court, but it is most unlikely that it ever had that honour. It is from beginning to end a graceless ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... graceless humor of names! On my shelf of poetry, arranged by the alphabet, Coleridge and J. Gordon Cooglar are next-door neighbors! Mrs. Hemans is beside Laurence Hope! Walt Whitman rubs elbows with Ella Wheeler Wilcox; Robert Browning with Richard Burton; Rossetti with Cale Young Rice; Shelly ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... his own dog or dogs, and there he stops; the force of perverted affection can no further go. He loves his own dog partly because that thrifty creature, ever cadging when not maurauding, tickles his vanity by fawning upon him as the visible source of steaks and bones; and partly because the graceless beast insults everybody else, harming as many as he dares. The dog is an encampment of fleas, and a reservoir of sinful smells. He is prone to bad manners as the sparks fly upward. He has no discrimination; his loyalty ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... stood for a moment or two silently in front of his host. "When I was in the Soudan, travelling through the deserts, I used to pass the white skeletons of camels lying by the side of the track. Do you know the camel's way? He is an unfriendly, graceless beast, but he marches to within an hour of his death. He drops and dies with the load upon his back. It seemed to me, even in those days, the right and enviable way to finish. You can imagine how I must envy them that advantage ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... damned and a bloody work; The graceless action of a heavy hand,— If that it be the work ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of the sown seed is secret; secret also is its failure. It is quite true, there may be grace in the heart of a neighbour unseen, unsuspected by me; but the heart of my neighbour may be graceless while I am in its earlier stages ignorant of the fact. The gnawing of a worm at the root of one plant is for a time as secret as the healthful growth of another. "Lord, is it I?" I must not too lightly assume either in the natural or the spiritual husbandry, that everything is prospering that ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Beardsley, an unscrupulous man, of some influence, who used, for amusement, to potter about in various antiquarian enterprises of no moment, but who had now been dead for some fifteen years. I then also recollected that he had an only child, a graceless gallows-bird of a son, who broke his father's heart, then wasted his substance in riotous living, and, after being long a disgrace and nuisance at home, had sunk out of sight amid the lowest strata of vice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... at the time of which I am speaking, the stage-coach contained, if not actually a bad character, I a person on the very verge of being one—that I was that graceless, yet tolerated being, a scamp, was very certain—yet my gentle demeanour, my smooth, bright countenance, and never-ceasing placid smile, would have given a very different impression of my qualities. I have been thus liberal in my confessions, in order that parents ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the things of religion, that persons may have from education or otherwise, may help forward their affection. We read in Scripture of many that were greatly affected with things of a religious nature, who yet are there presented as wholly graceless, and many of them very ill men. A person therefore may have affecting views of religion, and yet be very destitute of spiritual light. Flesh and blood may be the author of this; one man may give another an ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... that there was not a subject in England, duke, earl, or baron, but, within a certain day, he should bring him to his majesty, either quick or dead.[117] At length he, seeing no hope of favour, said very proudly, 'It is folly to seek grace at a graceless face; but,' said he, 'had I known this, I should have lived upon the borders in despite of King Harry and you both; for I know King Harry would down-weigh my best horse with gold, to know that I were condemned ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... Thus, graceless, holds he disputation 'Tween frozen conscience and hot-burning will, And with good thoughts makes dispensation, Urging the worser sense for vantage still; Which in a moment doth confound and kill All pure effects, and doth so far proceed, ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... holy men Hide their home from the harm of their foe And know no peril, neither with poison 450 Nor with treacherous token in time of evil. There God's warrior works him a nest, With doughty deeds dangers avoids, He distributes alms to the stricken and needy, He tells graceless men of the mercy of God, 455 Of the Father's help; he hastens forth, Lessening the perils of this passing life, Its darksome deeds, and does God's will With bravery in his breast. His bidding he seeks In prayer, with ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... looked when I knew her In those old days of childish sooth, Ere my boyhood dared to woo her. I will not seek nor sue her, For I'm neither fonder nor truer Than when she slighted my lovelorn youth, My giftless, graceless, guinealess truth, And I only lived to rue her. But I'll never love another, And, in spite of her lovers and lands, She shall ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... found a future state in Moses's saying nothing of the matter! I could go on with a chapter of severe interrogatories, but I think it more cruel to treat you as a hopeless reprobate; yes, you are graceless, and as I have a respect for my own scolding, I shall not throw it away ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... this shame or fear of the taunts of his irreligious companions, which was very heavy with a nervous and sensitive boy like myself. But though I had all through my attendance on the revival meetings earnestly desired to attain to that exaltation, and considered it an indication of my graceless state, that I was so insensible to the "spirit," which was another term for the frenzy, I found it impossible to provoke it. It is a curious subject, this usurpation of the reasoning faculties by the irrational, which is permitted when religion becomes emotional, either ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... to slip an arm around his charmer's waist. To his astonishment, however, she lifted up her skirts and began to dance a "can-can" in the road. It then became apparent that her legs were clothed in trousers. The lady was at home in bed; she had been personated by a graceless young cub whose stature was ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... alas, graceless and suicidal seems the unwisdom of the world, in action against all who offer it salvation from its pain; aye, though he ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... Pinchin, his career was not nearly so prosperous, nor his end so happy. You will learn, a little further on, what scurvy tricks Fortune played him, and how at last his poor little brains succumbed to the rough toasting of that graceless jade. I had always thought him Mad, and Mad, indeed, as a March hare he proved to be ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... ever luckless, godless, graceless, witless child, Hast thou Drupad's virtuous daughter thus ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... monstrous; gaunt &c. (thin) 203; dumpy &c. (short) 201; curtailed of its fair proportions; ill-made, ill- shaped, ill-proportioned; crooked &c. (distorted) 243; hard featured, hard visaged; ill-favored, hard-favored, evil-favored; ill-looking; unprepossessing, unattractive, uninviting, unpleasing. graceless, inelegant; ungraceful, ungainly, uncouth, stiff; rugged, rough, gross, rude, awkward, clumsy, slouching, rickety; gawky; lumping, lumpish[obs3]; lumbering; hulky[obs3], hulking; unwieldy. squalid, haggard; grim, grim faced, grim visaged; grisly, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... greens, and everything you can imagine" in its particular style of romance. The hero, who begins as a falconer's son and ends as a rich enough colonel in the army and a Viscount by special grace of the Roi Soleil, is a sapeur, but far indeed from being one of those graceless comrades of his to whom nothing is sacred. At one time he does indeed succumb to the sorceries of a certain Genevieve de Chateaufort, a duchess aux narines fremissantes. But who could resist this combination? even if there were a marquise of the most beautiful and virtuous kind, only waiting ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... varon, y muy experimentado y prudente en negocios," says Oviedo of the cardinal, "pero a vueltas de las negociaciones desta vida, tuvo tres hijos varones," etc. Then follows a full notice of this graceless progeny. Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... from London, where I have come, as a good profligate, graceless bachelor, for a day or two; leaving my wife and babbies at the seaside. . . . Heavens! if you were but here at this minute! A piece of salmon and a steak are cooking in the kitchen; it's a very wet day, and I have had a fire lighted; the wine sparkles on a side table; the room looks the more snug ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... first a Papist, then a Protestant, next a Papist, and lastly a Protestant again. "He must have been at times," said Mr. Webster, "terribly confused between gowns and robes, and," continued the Senator, "I can fancy him listening at his window to the ballad written on him, as trolled forth by some graceless varlets: ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... sooner did the god of day His glorious locks enkindle, Than both the wheels began to play, And from each whirling spindle Forth danced the thread right merrily, And back was coil'd unceasingly. Soon as the dawn, I say, its tresses show'd, A graceless cock most punctual crow'd. The beldam roused, more graceless yet, In greasy petticoat bedight, Struck up her farthing light, And then forthwith the bed beset, Where deeply, blessedly did snore Those two maid-servants tired and poor. One oped an eye, an arm one stretch'd, And both their breath ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... now, bethink you!. . .The fond hope to be Beloved, e'en by some poor graceless lady, Is, by this nose of mine for aye bereft me; —This lengthy nose which, go where'er I will, Pokes yet a quarter-mile ahead of me; But I may love—and who? 'Tis Fate's decree I love the fairest—how ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... dogged indifference was ready to die. He could not, he would not walk back; his feet were lacerated, swollen, and almost in a state of putrefaction. The savages saw this, and took him back by water, but only to experience new torments. The young ones imitated their elders, and these graceless little rascals pulled out his beard and whiskers, and eyebrows and eyelashes. In order to save himself some part of the pain of this wretched process of their amusement, he was permitted to perform a part of this work with his own hands. He was indeed a pitiable ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... to be commended, especially when, coming from the direction of the railway- station, you see it frame with its sharp compass-line the perfect picture, the reach of the Canal on the other side. But the backs of the little shops make from the water a graceless collective hump, and the inside view is the diverting one. The big arch of the bridge—like the arches of all the bridges—is the waterman's friend in wet weather. The gondolas, when it rains, huddle ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... mid clouds of scattered rice, through all the wedding whirl A laughing fellow hurries out a certain graceless girl, Unless my hand have lost its strength, unless my eye be dim, I'll lift the shoe, the contract too, and fling ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... little minister, in his navy blue coat, white collar, and neatly bowed tie. His black eyes shone, and his black curls were brushed up in quite a ministerial pompadour, but threatened to tumble over at the top in graceless ringlets. ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a breach he counts For graceless escalade; And, though he's silent ere he mounts, My ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... climbing the stairs to the little room Kenneth inhabited, Mr. Watson was forced to conclude, with a sigh of regret, that he could not blame Miss Jane for wishing to find a more desirable heir to her estate than this graceless, sullen youth who had been thrust upon her by a thoughtless request contained in the will of her dead lover—a request that she seemed determined to fulfil literally, as it only required her to "look after" Tom's relatives and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... had been an easy, melancholy, unaspiring officer, enervated and depressed by a parental affection quite beyond his control for the graceless lad Dare—the obtrusive memento of a shadowy period in De Stancy's youth, who threatened to be the curse of his old age. Throughout a long space he had persevered in his system of rigidly incarcerating within himself all instincts towards the opposite sex, with ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... their mother's heart to her mouth, and became generally ungovernable. A visit to a house of poor reputation having been discovered, their father and Mr. Du Pre set upon them with horsewhips, whereupon the graceless but agile youths ran to a neighbouring house and swarmed to the top of a stack of chimneys, whence partly by word and partly by gesticulation they ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... must die, I have now no fear, and this is why I am bold to tell thee this that I have spoken, though I wot now I shall be presently slain. And now I tell thee I repent it, that I have asked grace of a graceless face." ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... graceless loon, Sae loud's I hear ye lee! There never yet was Englishman That came to skaith ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as one owes a prince, Even such, a woman oweth to her husband: And when she's froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor to her loving lord? I am asham'd that women are so simple To offer war, where they should kneel for peace; Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway, When they are bound ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... Ruth worshipped him. He was a sacred charge to her from their dead father, who, knowing the stoutness of her soul and the feebleness of Richard's, had in dying imposed on her the care and guidance of her graceless brother. But Ruth, in all things strong, was weak with Richard out of her very fondness for him. To what she had he might help himself, and thus it was that things were not so bad with him at present. But when Richard's calculating mind came to give thought to the future he found that ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... his ministerial vocation, while the preparations of war were making. Coming back by Cananor, he lodged in the house of a Christian, who himself was religious, but his son debauched, and subject to all sorts of vices. The good man, sensibly afflicted at the ill conduct of his graceless son, wept day and night; and Xavier began at first to comfort him, saying, those vices were ordinary in youth, and riper age would reclaim him from them. Having done speaking, he stood mute awhile, and recollected himself; then, suddenly lifting up his eyes to heaven, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... Graceless faces, Loveless graces, Are but motes in light that quicken, Sands that run down Ere the sundown, Roseleaves dead ere ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... marriage of it, my sweet wife,' said Eugene. 'A shattered graceless fellow, stretched at his length here, and next to nothing for you when you are a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Tom Thornton was a villain, by his own confession. My uncle had declared that he had stained his soul with crime for his son's sake. Whichever was the greater villain, it was clear that the son was the more obdurate, graceless, and unrepentant of the two. I had no patience with him. I had no respect for him, and I certainly had no fear of him. Even policy would not permit me to treat him with a ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... frolicked on the sand-bar at the head of the island for an hour or more, they would swim back in the dusk, a distance of half a mile, breasting the strong, steady Mississippi current without exhaustion or fear. They could swim all day, likely enough, those graceless young scamps. Once—though this was considerably later, when he was sixteen—Sam Clemens swam across to the Illinois side, and then turned and swam back again without landing, a distance of at least two miles, as he had to go. He was seized with a cramp ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... graceless, gallant fellow, who at the war's end had fallen, dying, into his arms, had sent by him a last word of penitent love to his mother, an aged widow. She lived in Suez, and when Ravenel brought this message to her—from whom marriage had torn all her daughters and death her only son—she accepted ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... he knew their stay would be short, the captain bore these neighborly attentions with mild forbearance. It was guests more graceless than these who had ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... a reckless, passionate, uncontrollable, unthinking fool without method and moderation, that's what I am—a creature without any sense of right and honour, distrustful, hotheaded, loveless, graceless, crabbed and born crabbed! Yes, yes, I'm everything that I wish some one else was! Is this credible? There's not a viler man alive, a man more unworthy of heaven's kindness, of having a mortal soul love him or ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... with him to the races; he took him to lunch at suburban hotels, frequented by fast men who drove fast horses; he ministered to every coarse taste and vulgar desire possessed by the man whose nature and graceless caprices he so carefully studied. He did all this at his own expense, and at the same time he kept his principal out of the clutches of gamblers and sharpers. It was for his interest to be of actual use to ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... pocket he is sure to feel (With what disgust I need not say to you) Another hand inserted in the same. You crack a crib at dead of night, and lo! As you explore the dining-room for plate You find, in session there, a graceless band Stuffing their coats with spoons, their skins with wine. And so it goes. Why even undertake To salt a mine and you will find it rich With ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... What's the matter! the disturbance! Why, Sister, this Rogue here—this unintelligible graceless Rascal here, will needs set up for a Rakehell, when there's scarce such a thing in the Nation, above an Ale-draper's Son; and chuses to be aukardly out of fashion, merely for the sake of Tricking and Poverty; and keeps company with the senseless, profane, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... without her? For it was his redeeming feature that he felt, or professed to feel, affection for this graceless harridan who was the only person on earth that believed, or professed to believe, in the integrity of his motives. It is to be presumed that they saw through each other perfectly; she, at least, may well have appraised him at his true value. She must have known him for ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... to represent this principle of Love as the only principle in nature. Unity somehow exercises an evil spell over metaphysicians. It is admitted that in real life it is not well for One to be alone, and I think pure unity is no less barren and graceless in metaphysics. You must have plurality to start with, or trinity, or at least duality, if you wish to get anywhere, even if you wish to get effectively into the bosom of the One, abandoning your separate existence. Freud, like Empedocles, has prudently ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... one who rules the Church of God. How is it possible for him to admit any to the Lord's table, when he is but a judge himself?" How is it possible to excommunicate, when he ought to be excommunicated himself? So, brethren, a graceless elder is a curse instead of ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... ushered in the new epoch of liberty and well-dressed poverty. Of these buildings, the cathedral has the right to be named first. As a whole it cannot be called a beautiful structure, for its form is graceless; but what a charm there is in its details! Even its incongruity has a singular fascination. This most evident incongruity arises from the combination that it expresses of the Gothic and Byzantine styles. The ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... saw thee, O thou best of the human race, Bring out a book which brought to graceless, grace. Thou showedst righteous road to men astray From right, when darkest wrong had ta'en its place:— Thou with Islam didst light the gloomiest way, Quenching with proof live coals of frowardness: I own for Prophet, my Mohammed's self, and men's award upon ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... at all and have no more behind one than Macbean. And yet of these three, two are gone and have left less; and this book, perhaps, when it is old and foxy, and some one picks it up in a corner of a book-shop, and glances through it, smiling at the old, graceless turns of speech, and perhaps for the love of ALMA MATER (which may be still extant and flourishing) buys it, not without haggling, for some pence - this book may alone preserve a memory of James Walter Ferrier and Robert ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... How shall I enter on this graceless errand? I must not call her child; for where's the father That will in such a suit seduce his child? Then, Wife of Salisbury;—shall I so begin? No, he's my friend; and where is found the friend That will do friendship ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... beautiful, was there ever a woman who looked her best in the uniform of approaching servitude? In any case, Ellaphine's best was not good, and she was at her worst in her ill-fitting white gown, with the veil askew. Her graceless carriage was not improved by the difficulty of keeping step with her escort and the added task of keeping step ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... had to be—but most impressive in his effigy by his master's wine vat, in the perpetual aroma that most inspired him, where, by a mechanical arrangement inside him, he still makes a joke of sorts, in somewhat graceless aspersion of the methods of the professional humorists. Emmeline found him very like her father, and confided her impression to Mrs. Malt. "But of course," she added condoningly, "poppa was ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... year after this oath of Hannibal the fortunes of the lad took a turn for the better. An uncle, Howard Hastings, who had a place in the Customs, was willing to give a helping hand to the son of his graceless brother. He brought Warren Hastings to London. In London Warren Hastings was first sent to school at Newington, where his mind was better nourished than his body. In after life he used to declare that his meagre ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... decadence, as also in a tetragonal aspect to Saturn, associated with Mercury. Thou wilt be soundly peppered, my good, honest fellow, I warrant thee. I will be? answered Panurge. A plague rot thee, thou old fool and doting sot, how graceless and unpleasant thou art! When all cuckolds shall be at a general rendezvous, thou shouldst be their standard-bearer. But whence comes this ciron-worm betwixt these two fingers? This Panurge said, putting the forefinger of his left hand betwixt the fore and mid finger of the right, which he thrust ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the colourless monotony of that reiteration which Lindy Turk, whose teeth were chattering in the icy wind, could not deny. With a graceless ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... his fate, as the reader may be prepared to expect, the condemned betook himself to mourning the loss of his kingdom, and devising means to regain it. He was also not a little puzzled to know what road his graceless army had taken, for he knew in his heart, they would lose no time in getting safely out of the country. In truth he began to curse the day he took command of Glenmoregain's army; for though he might have been a good enough gentleman himself, and have a praiseworthy liking for kingdoms, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... and he is humbly confident that his hopes are well-founded. When they speak to him of Salvation by Faith and Conviction by Sin, he cannot understand what they mean. As he leaves them they are reminded of one Temporary, 'once a forward man in religion.' Temporary dwelt in Graceless, 'a town two miles from Honesty, next door to one Turnback.' He 'was going on pilgrimage, but became acquainted with one Save Self, and was never ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... contrary; "for," said he, "what am I the better for this graceless buttock? 'Tis well known I took her out of a bawdy-house, and made her an honest woman, but now blown up like a frog she bespatters herself; a very block, no woman: But this poor boy born in a hovel, never dreams of palaces. May my good genius so befriend me, as I'll bring down this seeming ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... Dame Dorothy had no idea of parting with the graceless brute, but continued to pet and pamper him. She was even secretly proud of Nero, because he was the biggest dog in the village, and by far the most terrible. Once she told the neighbours over the palings that he was a great protection to her, especially ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... of us. In the first place, it robs death of its terrors by making dying a change for the better, and burial but the planting of a seed from which there will spring a new life. In the next place, behold me as I am—weak, weary, old, shrunken in body, and graceless; look at my wrinkled face, think of my failing senses, listen to my shrilled voice. Ah! what happiness to me in the promise that when the tomb opens, as soon it will, to receive the worn-out husk I call myself, the now viewless doors ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... he led poor Juno, we often wondered why she did not turn grayer than ever, having to deal with this graceless young reprobate. If he found her trying to sleep a little, he would bite her ears and pull at her tail, bracing himself back on all four of his absurd little feet, and sometimes tumbling over in his ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... that is, by making appointments and promotions for merit rather than for political influence. This was intolerable to the spoilsmen in politics; and within two years he was summarily dismissed in a manner as graceless and cruel as any President, no matter how unfortunately bred, was ever guilty of. Jewell was succeeded by James N. Tyner, an entirely complaisant official. In 1875 Congress neglected to make any appropriation for ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... any time hereafter happen to transgress, your friends will all beg for you and be security for your good behaviour; but if your are a naughty boy,... then everybody will hate you, and say you are a graceless and undutiful child; your parents and masters will be ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... what mean you by trying to make common cause with the ruffians who would have carried your sister off as a prey of that graceless scamp well-called Devil's Own? I marvel to hear such words from you. You ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... water beneath cauld ice, Surely it is a great follie; I have asked grace at a graceless face, But there is nane for my men ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... enables me to plead honourably 'not guilty' to one of the absurd charges of cruelty trumped up against me with respect to my stepson. Let my detractors apologise, if they dare, for the conduct of a graceless ruffian who trips up the heels of his own natural guardian ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in their custody he was impatient to browbeat the youth and taunt him with his helplessness. But Arnold Baxter would not listen to it, so the graceless son had ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... together, Anne feeling altogether at ease and natural with congenial playmates. Even Sedley's tortures were preferable to Peregrine's attentions, since the first were only the tyranny of a graceless boy, the other gave her an indescribable sense of strangeness from which these ordinary mundane comrades were ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The authorities reconsidered their decision. But the father would not reconsider his. Ignorant of his boy's graceless existence, he fumed at the first fine thing in the boy's life. 'Tis a wise father that knows his ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the ten graceless individualists soared along ahead and gathered in everything in sight. But General Kelly fixed us. He sent horsemen down each bank, warning farmers and townspeople against us. They did their work thoroughly, all right. The erstwhile hospitable farmers ...
— The Road • Jack London
... words that grandly roll. Hence some have questioned if the Muse we call The Comic Muse be really one at all: Her subject ne'er aspires, her style ne'er glows, And, save that she talks metre, she talks prose. "Aye, but the angry father shakes the stage, When on his graceless son he pours his rage, Who, smitten with the mistress of the hour, Rejects a well-born wife with ample dower, Gets drunk, and (worst of all) in public sight Keels with a blazing flambeau while 'tis light." Well, could Pomponius' sire to life ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... she was abandoned by Prosper; she believed that she deserved it. She must be graceless, would die disgraced, having served her turn, she supposed. If, nevertheless, she persisted in loving, who was hurt? Besides, she could not help it any more than she could help being a scorn and a shame. Fatalist! So it ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... needn't tell me. You may be very well as young men go, you fancy you can more than fill a mother's place in Bessie's inexperienced heart, but you can't get me out. I am Adamant. Your intentions are all very honorable, but you are a graceless intruder. Your credentials are rejected on sight." I saw the difficult task I had undertaken. "Mrs. Pinkerton," I said, mustering all my forces, "it is no use mincing the matter, or beating about the shrubbery. I am in love with your daughter, and ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... "green unknowing youth." In the years before he left Stratford, and after he left school (1577-87?), I can easily suppose that he was not ALWAYS butchering calves, poaching, and making love; and that, if he could get books in no other way, this graceless fellow might be detected on a summer evening, knitting his brows over the stories and jests of the chained Ovid and Plautus on his old schoolroom desk. Moi qui parle, I am no genius; but stories, romance, and humour would certainly have dragged me back to ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... the General even before he caught sight of his face. "Nobody else has that perfection of manner. Stephen won't condescend to it. Edmonson is the most graceful fellow I know. And, upon honor, I believe he is the most graceless. But his theories can't harm that woman." Yet as Pepperell stood watching the young man's expression now that it was turned toward him, and understood by his gestures the eager flow of words that was greeting Elizabeth, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... be as wrong-headed and as graceless as women. We have already mentioned the name of Landois in connection with Diderot's article on Liberty. Landois seems to have been a marvel of unreasonableness, but he was a needy man of letters, and ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... man or beast. Oh yes, that I know full well now; and I have killed Phoebus because you looked at me; and my mother, who has loved me all her life, is old before her time through my fault. I am a graceless fool, a mountebank. When I put off my spangles and stand thus, you see the rude peasant that I am. And yet in all the great, wide, crowded world I know there does not live another who could love you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... Island, or in the Providence Plantations! Let him dare to keep his pitiful image out of my sight the lawful time, and then, when he returns, he shall find himself, as many a vagabond has been before him, without wife, as he will be without house to lay his graceless head in."[1] Then, catching a glimpse of the inquiring face of the old seaman, who by this time had worked his way to her very side, she abruptly added, "Here is a stranger in the place, and one who has lately ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... to a Sepulchral rite such as they have been sent to perform by their Queen, terrified as she has been by a dream the night before, a dream signifying how the Dead were wroth with those that slew them. But the Chorus like not this graceless deed of grace: what ransom can be found for the overthrow of the lord of a house? with him Awe has been overthrown, and Fear takes its place, or yet more ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... stirred her spinster heart—they were so gay, so appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived in the brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What made her so different from everybody else. Could it be that her graceless popinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some strange combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows, the color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and words, proclaimed her ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... hold her love for years through the stress of life. Moreover, Bucky O'Connor held the respect of all men. She had heard him spoken of, and always with a meed of affection that is given to few men. Whoever this graceless scamp was, he was ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... congregation squeezing out of the arched windows thereof. Mr. Simcoe's tracts fluttered into the doors of all the Doctor's cottages, and were taken as greedily as honest Mrs. Portman's soup, with the quality of which the graceless people found fault. With the folks at the Ribbon Factory situated by the weir on the Brawl side, and round which the Low Town had grown, Orthodoxy could make no way at all. Quiet Miss Myra was put out ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... youth? Lissoy was no doubt a poor enough Irish village; and perhaps the farms were not too well cultivated; and perhaps the village preacher, who was so dear to all the country round, had to administer many a thrashing to a certain graceless son of his; and perhaps Paddy Byrne was something of a pedant; and no doubt pigs ran over the "nicely sanded floor" of the inn; and no doubt the village statesmen occasionally indulged in a free ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... summer Mark Twain began the writing of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." He had been planning for some time to set down the story of those far-off days along the river-front at Hannibal, with John Briggs, Tom Blankenship, and the rest of that graceless band, and now in the cool luxury of a little study which Mrs. Crane had built for him on the hillside he set himself to spin the fabric of his youth. The study was a delightful place to work. It was octagonal in shape, with windows on all sides, something like a pilot-house. From any direction the ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... well that there is nothing in me, who was wicked and graceless to a very high degree, and wanting in knowledge, but was yet chosen, upon this sinful earth and in these last days, when wickedness and hypocrisy is abounding, to open to all who would be saved a new church which is such as that which the angel hath revealed to me a church should be, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... woman to death, but were afterward cut to pieces by the enraged neighbors. Hers is but one of the many ghosts that haunt the neutral ground, and the croaking of the birds of ill luck that nest at Raven rock is blended with the cries of her dim figure. Still, graceless as these fellows were, they affected a loyalty to their respective sides, and were usually willing to fight each other when they met, especially for the plunder that was to be ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... some queer kin' o' justice! No' 'at I'm daurin' or wad daur to say a word agen the w'y 'at the warl's goverrnt, but there's some things 'at naebody can un'erstan'—I defy them!—an' yon's ane o' them—what for, cause oor graceless auld lord—he was yoong than—tuik the life o' the laird o' Glenwarlock, the faimily o' Warlock sud never thrive frae that day to this!—Read me that riddle, yoong man, gien ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... through wildernesses of beauty, after whirling one past nooks where one could gladly linger whole summers, it is strange at what commonplace and graceless termini these railroads contrive to land one. Lovely Wells River, where the road makes its sharp angle, and runs back again until it strikes out eastward through the valley of the Ammonoosuc; where the waters leap to each other, and the hills bend round in majestic greeting; ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... That graceless creature only knows that the dead man (whom he recognized just now by his yellow face and black hair) was sometimes hooted and pursued about the streets. That one cold winter night when he, the boy, was shivering ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... time, and I am not blinded to the motive behind it. What do you care about those devils of Indian savages? What does Horace Spotswood care about them? Just as little! Enough, and too much, of my money has gone already to the prolonging of their worthless lives. If that graceless cub chooses to go on wasting money on them he can do it, but I take this occasion to inform you, Lady Hurdly—and I'd advise you to remember what I say—that I do not choose that any more of my money shall go in that direction. Do ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... "Ah, graceless wretch, I knew that thou wouldst soon spoil all, and bring thyself to poverty. So, to hide thy shame, and bring thy sorrows to an end, I left this rope, which ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... jumped from the wagon, and, tying my handkerchief to the ferule of my umbrella, advanced, waving it and shouting, "A flag of truce!" The General ordered a halt and despatched himself to the flag. As he approached I beheld a stout, middle-aged, good natured looking man, dressed in the graceless costume of Uncle Sam's army; but I must say that he wore it with more grace than most of the Regulars I have seen. Our soldiers look unbecomingly in their clothes,—there is no denying it,—a good deal like sups in a procession at the Bowery. A ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... pun, For slipshod rhyme, and lazy word, Have pity on this graceless one— Thy mercy on ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... as commentators of the day among the graceless subs were won't to call Colonel Stevens, was having his bad quarter of an hour. Leaving his team with the orderly, John Folsom had stamped into his presence unannounced, and after his own vigorous fashion opened the ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... tongues, the blustering hate Of frantic Party raving o'er the realm, Sonorous insincerities of debate, And jealous factions snatching at the helm, And Out o'er-bidding In with graceless strife, Selling the State for votes:—O happy fields, I cried, where Herbert, by the world misprized, Found in his day the life That no unrest or disappointment yields, Vergilian vision here ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... the contents of public and private libraries, exaggeration holds sway. The library of George the Fourth, inherited by that graceless ignoramus from a book-collecting father, and presented to the British nation with ostentatious liberality only after he had failed to sell it to Russia, was said in the publications of those times to contain about 120,000 volumes. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... school-boy and student Melchior had been one of the most gifted and most brilliant, and many a father, whose son took a wicked delight in wanton and graceless escapades, had with secret envy congratulated old Ueberhell on having such an exceptionally talented, industrious and obedient treasure of a son and heir. But later not one of these men would have exchanged his heedless scrapegrace of a boy for the much bepraised paragon of the Court apothecary, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... clinched its knot Too fast for mortal strength to sunder; The lightning bolts of noon are shot; No fear of evening's idle thunder! Too late! too late!—no graceless hand Shall stretch its cords in vain endeavor To rive the close encircling band That made ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a fight and got whipped," said Bobby Coon to his neighbor, for Bobby Coon is a graceless young scamp and does not always show ...
— The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat • Thornton W. Burgess
... 'Mrs. Bounderby, though a graceless person, of the world worldly, I feel the utmost interest, I assure you, in what you tell me. I cannot possibly be hard upon your brother. I understand and share the wise consideration with which you regard his errors. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... us move with very heavy feet. There is little of the fawn about us as we go along the road. There is reluctance in our obedience. There is a frown in our homage. Our benevolence is graceless, and there is no charm in our piety, and no rapture in our praise. We are the victims of "the spirit of heaviness." And yet here is the word which tells us that God will make our feet "like hinds' feet." He will give us exhilaration and spring, enabling ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... seized the gunwale and said, 'Steady her, please, while I climb in,' but had no answer. The boat, apparently, had torn loose from her davits and gone voyaging alone. But as I made to climb in I was fiercely attacked in the face by the wings, beak, and claws of Jaffray's graceless parrot. In the first surprise and discomfiture I let go and sank. Coming up, choking with brine and fury, I overcame resistance with a backhanded blow, and tumbled over the gunwale into the boat. And presently I was aware ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris |
