"Undesired" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hastily re-armed themselves. Some one had once aptly described her as a hedgehog with the protective mimicry of a puffball. If there was an awkward remark to be made at an inconvenient moment before undesired listeners, Joan invariably made it, and when the occasion did not present itself she was usually capable of creating it. She was not without a certain popularity, the sort of popularity that a dashing highwayman sometimes achieved among those who were not in the habit of travelling on his particular ...
— When William Came • Saki
... occasionally hurrying by as if they feared they were late and must hasten to be in time for the sport. I began to think it possible she had changed her mind and would stay at home rather than go with an undesired escort. ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... different species of error and misconduct." To be professional Don Juan, to accept the provocation of any lively lass upon the village green, may thus lead a man through a series of detestable words and actions, and land him at last in an undesired and most unsuitable union for life. If he had been strong enough to refrain or bad enough to persevere in evil; if he had only not been Don Juan at all, or been Don Juan altogether, there had been some possible road for him throughout this ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... how in one short hour The schemes, pursued in vain for twenty years, Are—by a stroke, though undesired, complete— Crown'd with success, not in my way, but Heaven's! This at a moment, too, when I had urged A last, long-cherish'd project, in my aim Of peace, and been repulsed with hate and scorn. Fair terms of reconcilement, equal rule, I offer'd to my foes, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... wisdom of the souls With whom great passions have no more to do, Serene, since ours the dusty arles Death doles, Oblivions dim of all there is to rue!— Peace comes to hearts of whom proud Love has tired; Beyond all danger dwell the undesired. ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... and order," kept the parishioners in their seats during what they termed the "play-acting" which took place on this occasion, but when they left the Church and went their several ways, they all resolved on the course they meant to adopt with the undesired introduction of "'Igh Jinks" for the future. And from that date henceforward not one of the community attended Church. Sunday after Sunday, the bells rang in vain. Mr. Arbroath conducted the service solely for Mrs. Arbroath and for one ancient villager who acted the double part of sexton ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... sooner ended, then that you'l begin to stink here; for the Mistris will begin to consider with her self, that she can make a shift with the Maid and Wet-Nurse; so that then you must expect to get your undesired Pass. ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... uneasy over the matter. He did not wish to urge an undesired escort upon her, but he did not like to think of her working alone by the solitude of the ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... to the young cows and want of patience with them I can never forget. It has often brought upon me the threat of immediate extermination for volunteering scathing and undesired opinions on his conduct. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... was all insincere? Let the matter drop, and be good enough to leave my presence, which, you will remember, you entered unsummoned and undesired." ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... from his back room and again glowered above his spectacles. But this time he faced no weakling who made a subterfuge of undesired goldfish. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... but of feelings, which made us strangers though calling one another man and wife. Upon this fact I rest my own justification; our living together under these circumstances was, I dare say, equally undesired by us both. It was, in fact, but a deference to the formal hypocrisy of the world. At all events, the irrevocable act which separates us forever is done, and I have now merely to state so much of my intentions as may relate in anywise to your future arrangements. I have written to your cousin, and ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... windings and the stagnant smells held their suggestions of Venice for his senses, and he thought the business he was going about was very similar to the business which had brought so many of the gentry of Venice to sudden and undesired ends. ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... add an undesired note to the chorus of rejected appeal? How dare I lift up my voice in the Wilderness, when other voices, far stronger and sweeter, are drowned in the laughter of fools and the mockery of the profane? Truly, I do not know. But I am sure that I am ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... commerce of our ancient ally. These considerations would not be without their influence on England. She has colonies near us which we may capture, or essentially injure, and which cannot be defended by her, but at very inconvenient expense. A war with us must ever be undesired by her, for the obvious reason that in such a contest she has little to gain and much to lose. Our treaty also with France would deprive England of the aid of the only nation that could afford her effectual assistance ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... the majority of human beings belong either to the Undesired Class or the Undesirable Class. To realise that this is so, we are bidden to read the newspapers or to walk along the streets of the cities—whichever they may be—wherein dwell the highest products of our civilisation. ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... water-pressure. He knows how to look for the key-log in breaking jams; and by the inverse reasoning, when need arises he can form a jam as expertly as Koosy-oonek himself—that bad little god who brings about the disagreeable and undesired—"who hides our pipes, steals our last match, and brings rain on the just when ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... interest in Worthington from which there was anything to expect commercially. He had peremptorily banished Esme Elliot from his heart and his hopes, though she still forced entrance to his thoughts and would not be denied, there, the precarious rights of an undesired guest. He was now simply and solely a journalist with a mind single to his purpose, to go down fighting the best fight there was in him. Defeat, he believed, was practically certain. He would make it a defeat of which no ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... gates. He had to go back to harness, and he was as fitted to go in harness as the ordinary domestic cat. All night, Fate, with the quiet complacency, and indeed at times the very face and gestures of Johnson, guided him towards that undesired establishment at the corner near the station. "Oh Lord!" he cried, "I'd rather go back to cribs. I should keep my ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... the averaging up and down of those accustomed to large classes. I gained far more there than I gave, for I learned my limitations, or some of them, and to try to stick closely to my own work, to be less impulsive, and not offer opinions and suggestions, unasked, undesired, and in that early stage of the college, objectionable. Still, President Seelye writes to me: "I remember you as a very stimulating teacher of English Literature, and I have often heard your pupils, here and afterwards, express great ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... Greeks set a high value upon). The women are generally of the middle height, with Turkish eyes, straight hair, and clear olive complexion, but are not nearly so amorous as the Spanish belles, whom I have described to you in former letters. I have some feats to boast of when I return, which is undesired and undesirable—I always except you from my complaints, and hope you will expect me with the same delight that I anticipate meeting you. You can have no conception of Lord S.'s ecstasy when I informed him of my probable movements. The ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... not dream of the actual misery which filled the heart of the graceful, dignified young man by her side. She considered herself in the position of a mother, who forces an undesired, but nevertheless, delectable sweet upon a child, who gazes at her with adoration when the savour has reached his palate. She did not expect Von Rosen to be much edified by Miss Bessy Dicky's report. She had her own opinion of Miss Bessy Dicky, of her sleeves, of her gown, and her report, but ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... became extra-motherly, and Cossie endowed him with button-holes, pairs of ill-knit shapeless socks, and sent him many notes. She seemed to appropriate him as a matter of course, and once when they parted at the gate, had held up her face to be kissed—but this undesired favour he affected not to see. He noted, too, that when Cossie accompanied him to the same little gate, Delia and Sandy lingered behind with alarming significance. He began to hate Cossie and to revolt against ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... round of prayer and work, and his heart was with them in both. Bloodless and emaciated as he lay there, the life of love and war which had once seemed to him the only one worth living, faded away into the dimness of an undesired impossibility. He had failed, too, in his first great deed of arms; his father's murderer was alive, and he himself had most narrowly escaped death. It seemed to him that his thin white hands, which could hardly pull ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... with that startled sensation that follows unexpected, undesired slumber, the door was open, and Lovin Child was gone. She had not believed that he could open the door, but she discovered that its latch had a very precarious hold upon the worn facing, and that a slight twist of the knob was all it needed to swing the door open. She ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... thought; and yet—dared she to murmur such treacherous criticism ever so softly?—what was the man worth whom a woman inferior to herself did not value? The sentiment which lurks more or less in all animate nature—that of not desiring the undesired of others—was lively as a passion in the super-subtle, epicurean heart of Eustacia. Her social superiority over him, which hitherto had scarcely ever impressed her, became unpleasantly insistent, and for the first ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the Flat Hat Hunt, who declined—Mr. Crane of Crane Hall; Captain Guano, late of that noble corps the Spotted Horse Marines; and others who accepted. Mr. Spraggon was a sort of volunteer, at all events an undesired guest, unless his lordship accompanied him. It so happened that the least wanted guest was the first to ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the unexpected and undesired apparition which presented itself, in the manner described at the end of the last chapter, Mowbray yet felt, at the same time, a kind of relief, that his meeting with Lord Etherington, painfully decisive as that meeting must be, was for a time suspended. So it was with a mixture ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... this instinctive desire, albeit in conflict with and overborne by the perverted instinct of destruction—what is there left to him, beyond his very own, except the weeds that spring up in his fields under all skies, ringing him round with old-world monotonous forms, as tenacious of their undesired union with him as the rats and cockroaches that inhabit ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... train bound for Semlin, across the Danube from Belgrade. We completed our journey to the Jugoslav capital in a fourth-class compartment into which were already squeezed two Serbian soldiers, eight peasants, a crate of live poultry and a dog, to say nothing of a multitude of small and undesired occupants whose presence caused considerable annoyance to every one, including the dog. We were glad when ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... been as cool as she, or almost. Now he was maddened; she defended him, she warded and thrust for him, only for him, to save him a touch; unasked, undesired, detested for the box on his ears of to-morrow's public mockery, as she would be, overwhelming him with ridicule. Have you seen the kick and tug at the straps of the mettled pony in stables that betrays the mishandling of him by his groom? Something so ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the petition, as does Aida, and though the priests warn and protest, Radames asks the boon of their lives and freedom, and the King grants it. Also, without the asking, he bestows the hand of his daughter upon the victorious general, who receives the undesired honor ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... was subordinated, had done to his family, rose upon the recollection of the younger; all the still bitterer sting of that injury which had been personal to himself; all the burden and peril of this present undesired visit, the discontent, the threats, the evident power of doing evil, woke the temper and spirit of the young doctor. It was not Fred's fault that his brother had made that mistake in life which he ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Tressilian could not help acknowledging to himself, the Anthony Foster who now stood before them was the last person, judging from personal appearance, upon whom one would have chosen to intrude an unexpected and undesired visit. His attire was a doublet of russet leather, like those worn by the better sort of country folk, girt with a buff belt, in which was stuck on the right side a long knife, or dudgeon dagger, and on the other a cutlass. He raised his eyes ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... always looked upon as a hot headed and indiscreete man, and soe accordingly handled, hearing him, but never trusting him with anything but his own offered and undesired endeavours to gett the ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... of the learned of those days toward every new discovery seems stupid and almost insane. They had a crystallized system of truth, perfect, symmetrical; it wanted no novelty, no additions; every addition or growth was an imperfection, an excrescence, a deformity. Progress was unnecessary and undesired. The Church had a rigid system of dogma which must be accepted in its entirety on pain of being treated as a heretic. Philosophers had a cast-iron system of truth to match—a system founded upon Aristotle—and so interwoven with the great theological dogmas that to question one was almost equivalent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... to the colouring of the individuals he selected. A single white feather was sufficient to cause the rejection of a female; and even when the colour scheme was otherwise perfect, too light a shade proved undesired. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... mind to be carried into execution, any small hopes which remained of our ever winning the war would inevitably be blotted out for good and all. As for Mr. Lloyd George in drab days before he became First Minister of the Crown in spite of his superhuman efforts to avoid that undesired consummation, he always loved to make his voice heard, and he always succeeded—just as a canary will in a ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... and was tired, Chid her visits as too few; Crownless now and undesired, She to seek me is inspired Oftener than ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... more confidence in you than you appear to have in me. I shall certainly discover some means by which I may do my part in shaping this girl's future, but in the meanwhile will relieve you of my undesired presence." ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... temperament was by nature far less warlike than that of the savage and intrepid natives in the regions of the coast. These Guarani Indians, nevertheless, made some show of aggression, and would doubtless have been glad to scare away these undesired strangers. Owing to this, a collision between the two forces occurred; but so crushing was the defeat of the Indians that they resigned themselves submissively to the Spaniards, and henceforth became a vassal tribe, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... we are prepared for general starvation; whether we are prepared for the starvation of our individual selves we cannot, of course, say until we experience it. But we hope for the best, and believe that we shall go through with it to death, in the undesired company of all who do not agree with us.' And it is certain, sir, that some of them were capable of this; for there is, as you know, a type of man who will die rather than admit that his views are too extreme to keep himself and his ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... slowed up she stepped to the right to let them pass, and then walked on, thus placing the cart between herself and her undesired companion. The youth looked disconcerted by these tactics, and for a few moments could find nothing to say. Then, dropping his long white lashes sheepishly, he ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... direction, and was among unfamiliar streets. She went on from street to street, and all the glory of London had departed. Against the sinister, the threatening, monstrous inhumanity of the limitless city, there was nothing now but this supreme, ugly fact of a pursuit—the pursuit of the undesired, persistent male. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... follows. Only that Righteousness is eternal which is not promoted by the desire of fruit or reward. (That Righteous, however, which is prompted by the desire of reward, not eternal. Hence, the reward though undesired that attaches to the first kind of Righteousness, viz., attainment of identity with Brahman, is eternal. The reward, however, that attaches to that Righteousness prompted by desire of fruit. Heaven is not eternal).[630] All men are equal in respect of their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in the seclusion of a monastery, and had emerged for her undesired trip to the altar a young woman of rare beauty and charm, with glorious brown eyes, the delicate tint of the wild rose in her dimpled cheeks, a wealth of golden hair, and a figure every line and movement of which was instinct with beauty and grace. ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... coffin. Adj. causing pain, hurting &c. v.; hurtful &c. (bad) 649; painful; dolorific[obs3], dolorous; unpleasant; unpleasing, displeasing; disagreeable, unpalatable, bitter, distasteful; uninviting; unwelcome; undesirable, undesired; obnoxious; unacceptable, unpopular, thankless. unsatisfactory, untoward, unlucky, uncomfortable. distressing; afflicting, afflictive; joyless, cheerless, comfortless; dismal, disheartening; depressing, depressive; dreary, melancholy, grievous, piteous; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... subject of maternity, and the relation that leads to it. Interchange thoughts and feelings with them as to what nature allows or demands in regard to these. Can maternity be natural when it is undesigned by the father or undesired by the mother? Can a maternity be natural, healthful, ennobling to the mother, to the child, to the father, and to the home, when no loving, tender, anxious forethought presides over the relation ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... and become self-respecting. The customs of the time placed many disadvantages in the way of her social and moral reform. As a rule, the young girl was confined to a convent until she reached marriageable age; when that came and with it an undesired husband, she was ready for almost any prank that would relieve the monotony of her uncongenial marital relations. The convents themselves were so corrupt or so easily corruptible, that, very frequently, young girls did ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... quite timidly. "Since you press me thus gravely, I must admit that I have been obliged to repel the affection of a certain man. Yet, please don't infer, sir, that he has ever been ungentlemanly. He even has done me the honor, if one can so term an undesired proposal, to protest that he wished to make ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... required at his bedside. We journeyed over land and sea, and on a bleak country road, one winter's evening, a man approached us and I heard him say that all was over, that my father was dead. I loved my father; I burst into tears; and yet my soul said, "I am glad." The thought came unbidden, undesired, and I turned aside, shocked at the sight it ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore |
