"Inopportunely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vivid and touching, like the breaking open of a flower, or the first sun after long winter, the memory, too, of all that came after, often intruded itself, unaccountably, inopportunely on Lady Baynes, when her mind was set upon ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... notoriously inopportune, may even die inopportunely, and this was the revenge that Mr. Aubyn, some two years after her return to Hillbridge, took upon his injured wife. He died precisely at the moment when Glennard was beginning to criticise her. It was not that she bored him; she did what was infinitely worse—she ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... cried; "a light morning-coat? Are you mad? Do you think it is a tea-cup I am inquiring about?" This light morning-coat came most inopportunely; it spoilt the whole man for me such as I ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... of Fort Donelson had barely reached us, the roar of the guns celebrating our rapid successes had not died away, ere that fragment of the Northern ultra pro-slavery party which had done so much towards deluding the South into secession, impudently raised its head and began most inopportunely and impertinently to talk of amnesty and the rights of the South. There are things which, under certain limitations, may be right in themselves, but which, when urged at the wrong time, become wrongs and insults; and these premature cries to restore the enemy to his old social and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... old gentleman must needs get exceeding wet; moreover, it was close time. There was no shadow of excuse. But he was a boy again; fifty years had slipped off his shoulders. And I know not what came of the salmon, but it left the water; nor do I know what the watcher said who came over the hill inopportunely. Maybe the trouser-pocket where the old gentleman kept his silver was a good deal lighter, and that of the watcher a good deal heavier, when the twain parted. And therein the old gentleman sinned doubly; for himself he broke the law, and he put temptation in the way of the watcher, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... to be most effectively "shown off" in the presence of visitors. It is of little use to affect grieved surprise, or stern reprobation, when one's children are merely exhibiting their daily discipline. Most parents feel keenly the embarrassment of having the infant misbehave so inopportunely, and they are apt to offer a tacit apology and a vague self-defense by sharply reprimanding the child in words that are meant to give the visitor the idea that they—the parents—never heard or saw such conduct before, and are now frozen ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... Uncle Coffin, not yet comprehending this idea, and smoking triumphantly with their hats on, listened to several ranting recitations from the wife who had so inopportunely defaced her husband's visage; but when, after a brief recess, she again appeared with a stage bow, Captain Pharo looked blankly at ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... nightgown, after menacing Hood with a pistol, stuck the barrel of it into Deering's mouth, opened inopportunely to protest his innocence. The policemen threw themselves upon Hood and Cassowary, toppled them over, and flashed electric ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... sat with both arms leaning on the table before him, and wondering which of the ladies, half whose names he had not heard, was the Samian Here,—if any of them was,—and if,—and if;——and here Mr. Roger Raleigh's reflections went wandering back to the lakeside path and its vision. Not inopportunely at this moment, a white garment, which, it is unnecessary to say, he had long ago seen advancing, fluttered down the opposite ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... said, with a show of hesitation—"it may be that I have come not altogether inopportunely. Perhaps I can ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... the bar, began to hold up his head and endeavored to push his fortunes; but fate seemed against him. He felt certain that if he possessed any gift in the world it was that of eloquence, but he could get no cause to plead; and his aunt dying inopportunely, first his resources failed, and then his health. He had no sooner returned to his home, than, to complicate his difficulties completely, he fell in love with Mademoiselle Natalie de Bellefonds, who had just returned from Paris, where she had been completing her education. To expatiate ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... my heart upon talking to you about it in the four above mentioned senses. And having already descanted on the literal sense, I had just made an assertion which appertained to the allegorical sense, when you so inopportunely interrupted me, My Ombra Adorata, with your sharp observation about nonsense: so now we will go on in peace and ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... was a little extravagant, and so it might naturally be if it were forced. But I can't understand his speaking to young Mr. Atwood as he did. Papa never showed such a lack of tact or delicacy before. I would not dare tell him things if he spoke of them afterward so inopportunely. I felt as if I could sink into the ground. And when Belle—who can't help seeing everything in a ridiculous light—began to laugh he turned and spoke to her as he has never spoken to any of us before, And yet he did not seem angry, but his gravity was more oppressive ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... unfortunately given out that he was sent by the Indian Government, and that his masters would, if he gave a favourable report of them, come to terms with the Kafirs, so as to secure them in future against Mahommedan inroads. My visit occurred inopportunely with regard to this statement of the evangelist, and although I stated that his utterances were false, the Kafir would have it that I had come on behalf of the Government, and that the Chief of Chitral had persuaded ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... rout over, for she tormented herself with the ingenuity of a lively fancy, and suffered more from her own terrors than at the discovery of a dozen vampires. Every tale of diablerie she had ever heard came most inopportunely to haunt her now, and though she felt their folly she could not free herself from their dominion. She wondered till she could wonder no longer what the morning would show her. She tried to calculate in how many springs she could reach ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... alone to the Railway to catch my train at night (Specks had meant to go with me, but was inopportunely called out), I was in a more charitable mood with Dullborough than I had been all day; and yet in my heart I had loved it all day too. Ah! who was I that I should quarrel with the town for being changed ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... appeared so inopportunely for the safety of the ill-manned British cruiser, was, in truth, a ship that had roved from among the islands of the Caribean sea, in quest of some such adventure as that which now presented itself. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... unfavorable; unsuited &c 24; inexpedient &c 647. unpunctual &c (late) 133; too late for; premature &c (early) 132; too soon for; wise after the event, monday morning quarterbacking, twenty-twenty hindsight. Adv. inopportunely &c adj.; as ill luck would have it, in an evil hour, the time having gone by, a day after the fair. Phr. after death the doctor, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pardons. I have had the misfortune to have been at the university, and to have learned a little Latin, which sometimes comes back very inopportunely. But, speaking in plain English, what I meant to say is this: I invoked the Muse to descend from heaven and bring with her—the original says a fife, but I meant—a fishing-rod. I should think your apartment would suit me exactly; pray show ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... moment came a knock at the door, and Dudley put in his head most inopportunely for the vision of ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... I hope we shall find him not difficult to get on with, after all. We shall have to wait a week or so, however, before putting the question to the test, as he has just gone off rather abruptly, and at this particular time rather inopportunely, on a journey, for what object ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... Kant's mythology, as machinery behind the scenes, as a system of non-natural efficient forces, as a partner in a marriage the issue of which was human thought. The idea could thus suggest itself—favoured also by remembering inopportunely the actual psychological situation—that all experience, in every sense of the word, had supernatural antecedents, and that the dialectical conditions of experience, in the highest sense, were efficient conditions of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... with matches and fire, as I've told you often," said Mary, pointing her moral rather inopportunely. Still she patted and consoled the little chap as much as she could; and when Doctor Jolly came up from Endleigh presently, he said that she had done everything that was proper for the patient, only suggesting that his face might be covered during the night with a piece of ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... a little way, discreetly, and put in his head, ready to draw it back at once should he see his morning call as befalling inopportunely. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... I said gravely, as I drew and took my place. 'A dun. I am sorry that the poor devil caught me so inopportunely. Now however, I am at ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... I enter my dear birthplace and return home to my beloved parents and sisters, I would announce my arrival to your highnesses, that you may not be alarmed by my unexpected coming, and that I may not come inopportunely to his grace, my father. I enjoy greatly getting home, and all the testimonials of love and sympathy which I have received ever since I set foot within my father's territories, and they will remain ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... subject is taken from the quarrel of the Colonna in Rome; the success of the piece will not occasion any fresh quarrels; nor will that of two new Operas that I have seen—Der Widerspanstigen Bezahmung [The subduing of the refractory ones.] by Gotz and Golo of Scholz, which have come inopportunely into competition with Schumann's Genoveva—a work which has been taken up again with marked success this year (after it had been prudently ignored for twenty years—except at Leipzig and Weimar) at Leipzig ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... would never have power over men. He made the desperate adventure, and would have succeeded but for the folly of one of the birds which accompanied him. This little bird, which sings at sunset, burst out laughing inopportunely, wakened Hine-nui-te-po, and she crushed to death Maui and all hopes of earthly immortality. Had he only come forth alive, men would have been deathless. Now, except that the bird which laughed sings at sunset, what ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang |
