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More "Impertinent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... advancing towards them. The scrutiny of a dozen pairs of eyes—wondering, mischievous, critical, impertinent, or resentful—would have been a trying ordeal to any errant couple; but there was little if any change in Peter's grave and gentle demeanor, albeit his dark eyes were shining with a peculiar light, and Lady Elfrida had only the animation, color, and slight excitability that became the responsible ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... explained Bessie. "And, do you know, it's no fun to play romping games in these good boots of mine; so I hunted up an old pair. And, do you think, I stumbled on these old ones too. Would you mind using one pair? You won't think me impertinent, will you?" ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... child," I said (you will find Rupert is impertinent enough in one place to suggest that I have a tendency to be rude and a tendency to hold forth). "Surely the ideal story must contain the maximum of Objective Incident with the maximum of Subjective Incident. Only ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... in the public character of an author, he does it with fear and trembling. So dear is fame to the rhyming tribe, that even he, an obscure, nameless Bard, shrinks aghast at the thought of being branded as—an impertinent blockhead, obtruding his nonsense on the world; and, because he can make a shift to jingle a few doggerel Scotch rhymes together, looking upon himself as a poet of no small ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... among you, and examine him, gentlemen. Question him with all confidence, without fear of his troubling you with idle chatter or impertinent queries. Do not be afraid of his taking up all your time, or making it impossible for you to get rid of him. You need not expect brilliant speeches that I have taught him, but only the frank and simple truth without preparation, ornament, or vanity. When he tells you what he has been thinking ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... them, and then to leave the rest to the initiative and drive of individuals and companies." All government interference with the management, prices, rates, charges, and conduct of private business they held to be either wholly pernicious or intolerably impertinent. Judging from their speeches and writings, they conceived the nation as a great collection of individuals, companies, and labor unions all struggling for profits or high wages and held together by a government whose principal duty was to keep the peace among them and protect industry against the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... remarked the unusual deadly whiteness of his friend's complexion, and the air of lassitude and unhappiness which pervaded his face, but he would not have alluded to them for the world. He never made impertinent observations of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... canals at all hours, and if Venice be so impertinent in her system of watchfulness, thou knowest, father, that, without extraordinary motive, that disguise is sacred. Without this narrow privilege, the town would not be habitable ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... think I'm impertinent or nosey, will you, Roger, if I ask you one more question?" Charley's voice had tones in it like Felicia's and Roger was ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... me impertinent, and has written to my uncle that I have refused to obey the rules. I was not impertinent; and I never refused to obey the rules. So much for ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... all, no waverings of the mind, no impertinent doubts, no overcasting shadows, which at all disturb your peace, or impair the vividness of your faith? Are you wholly superior to fear—the fear of suffering ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... been reflecting on your discourse. If ironical, it was unkind. If sincere, it was—not impertinent perhaps, but certainly not ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... called volition, the word Science is out of place. If it is free to man to choose what he will do or not do, there is no adequate science of him. If there is a science of him, there is no free choice, and the praise or blame with which we regard one another are impertinent and out ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... ask her, but she sees him dancing with that identical dear friend, whom from that moment she hates more cordially than ever. Perhaps, what is worse than all, she has set her heart on refusing some impertinent fop, who does not give her the opportunity.—As to the men, the case is very nearly the same with them. To be sure, they have the privilege of making the first advances, and are, therefore, less liable to have an odious partner forced upon them; though this sometimes ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... to-night was in the character of a coster-girl, a part well suited to her audacity and impertinent prettiness. Poppy was the tiniest dancer that ever whirled across a stage, a circumstance that somewhat diminished the vulgarity of her impersonation, while it gave it a very engaging character of its own. Her small Cockney face, with ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... shabbiness of the house where the gambler lived. A moment after he spoke, he realized the question was highly impertinent, but by then it was too late: "I don't understand, Max. If you make so much money gambling, why do you live in a place like this? ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... Count of Monte Cristo resided there, and if he were within. While waiting, the occupant of the carriage surveyed the house, the garden as far as he could distinguish it, and the livery of servants who passed to and fro, with an attention so close as to be somewhat impertinent. His glance was keen but showed cunning rather than intelligence; his lips were straight, and so thin that, as they closed, they were drawn in over the teeth; his cheek-bones were broad and projecting, a never-failing proof of audacity and craftiness; while the flatness of his forehead, and the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to meet you all alone this longful time," said Jonas; "and I'm very wishful to ask you a question, Bill. You mustn't think me impertinent nor nothing like that. You and me be very good friends and long may we remain so; but I've took careful note of your character, and you know me just so well, so you'll understand, please, I be asking in a very gentlemanly spirit and not for no vulgar ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... He determined, before the day was over, to end his tortures of suspense by putting to Miss Patty the plain question whether or no she was engaged to her cousin, and to trust to her kindness to forgive the question if it was an impertinent one. He was unable to do this for the present, partly from lack of courage, and partly from the too close neighbourhood of others of the party; but he concocted several sentences that seemed to him to be admirably adapted to bring about the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... my stay.' 'My mind's a giant, though my bulk be small.' By such quaint speeches does he excite our smiles. And yet, by a very human touch, he is represented as furiously resenting any slighting allusion, by any one else, to his stature. In the pourparlers before battle Prince Balthezar grows impertinent. But we will quote the lines, and so take ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... to the disciples, when they interrogate him thus about the man born blind,[226] 'Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' It is clear that this question would have been ridiculous and impertinent if the disciples had not believed that the man born blind had sinned before his corporal birth, and consequently that he had existed in another state long ere he was born on earth. Our Saviour's answer is remarkable, 'Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... "Only an impertinent speech of that little simian, Vixen Lestrange. I forget what she said, but it left the impression of an acquaintance between Bab, as she called her, and some working fellow the child could ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... power in debate than the misshapen buffoon of the Iliad. But the king who had been thwarted and exposed by him in the day would, over his cups in the evening, enjoy the poet's travesty, and long for the good old times when he could put down all impertinent criticism by the stroke of his knotty sceptre. The Homeric Agora could hardly have existed had it been so idle a form as the poets represent. But as the lower classes were carefully marshaled on the battle-field, from a full sense of the importance which ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... she interrupted. "I dare say my questions seem impertinent, but they have a purpose back of them. My mother and I are looking for a private secretary for a charitable concern which we are going to organize shortly. We desire some one who is educated, who will be capable of guarding us from ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... gentleman, and aristocrat, and that he who does not honor it and seek it is vulgar, tho he be heir of a hundred earls, and leader of all society, and lord of millions. Every day that one lives in this presence that I speak of, he discovers a little more how sacred a thing is true nobility, and how impertinent is the standard that values men for the wealth they win, or for the ribbons they wear, or for anything else in the world. I fancy that you, if you came once to love your friend, would find it very easy to do ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... was different with the maid—a slave who by her mistress's consent bore children to her master. She was still a slave and if she rivalled her mistress, or was impertinent to her, she could be put back again among the slaves; perhaps even branded. But, if she had borne children, she was not to be sold as a slave. At the death of her master she was free. Her children by him were free in any case. If her ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... to like men at first sight, and did not love the conversation of men of many more years than themselves, and thought age not only troublesome, but impertinent. They did not love to deny, and less to strangers than to their friends; not out of bounty or generosity, which was a flower that did never grow naturally in the heart of either of the families, that of Stuart or of Bourbon, but out of an ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... higher hills beyond were painted in faint blue on the dreamy sky. Even the few grey houses of Yubets were spiritualised into harmony by a faint blue veil which was not a mist, and the loud croak of the loquacious and impertinent crows had a cheeriness about it, a hearty ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... Duke ought to have fought or not. Lord W.'s letter appeared last Monday, and certainly from that time to this it never entered into anybody's head that the Duke ought to or would take it up, though the expressions in it were very impertinent. But Lord Winchelsea is such a maniac, and has so lost his head (besides the ludicrous incident of the handkerchief[7]), that everybody imagined the Duke would treat what he said with silent contempt. He thought otherwise, however, and without saying a word to any ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... I was at school with Carlos, the first school I ever went to. An old priest kept it, in Plaza Nero. Carlos was a good fellow, and gave me the biggest licking once—I'm very glad we met, Miss Montfort. And—I don't mean to be impertinent, I'm sure you know that; but—what are ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... are making yourself out worse than you really are, Enna," said Elsie gravely. "I am sure you could never say anything so extremely impertinent as ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... camp been here?" Michael asked. "I hope you won't think my questions impertinent. I have a very particular reason for wishing ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... very often spend the whole night rambling about the city, inventing and carrying into execution the most impertinent, practical jokes. One of our favourite pleasures was to unmoor the patricians' gondolas, and to let them float at random along the canals, enjoying by anticipation all the curses that gondoliers would not fail to indulge in. We would rouse up hurriedly, in the middle of the night, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... jealous? Is that the way to know whether a man is in love with one? But if he is in love with me, it does not follow that I am in love with him — does it? Confess. Am I not very good to answer all your impertinent downright questions? They are as point blank as the church-catechism; — mind, I don't say as rude. — How can I be in love with two ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... returned. Then he said gently, "I want you to let me talk to you about what is most emphatically none of my business. I want you to let me ask you impertinent questions. I want you to talk to me about"—he hesitated; then finished ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... Mr. Trist to the Secretary of State, and especially such of them as bear date subsequent to the receipt by him of his letter of recall as commissioner, it will be perceived, contain much matter that is impertinent, irrelevant, and highly exceptionable. Four of these letters, bearing date, respectively, the 29th December, 1847, January 12, January 22, and January 25, 1848, have been received since the treaty ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... you impertinent little minx!" said Miss Calista; "I really hope the prinky old governess who is coming will be able to whip a little manners into you. I really wonder you can allow the children to be ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... exercises, and then, opening his writing-desk, addressed himself to his work. Hardly had he got into it when his landlord made his appearance; and, with many apologies for his intrusion, and a hope that he was not going to be impertinent, proceeded to inquire if Mr. Reding was a Catholic. "The question had been put to him, and he thought he might venture to solicit an answer from the person who could give the most authentic information." ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... continued, with one of his strident laughs, "what might be considered, by the thoughtless, as benefits, were resented, by the older and wiser of the crew, as innovations and intrusions of an impertinent and offensive nature. But the immediate result was that interest in the Society was undeniably developed, not only at home, but certainly abroad. Notably in Paris all the art circle was keenly alive to what was taking place in Suffolk Street; and, although their ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... averse to that violent interruption that comes from noise. Ordinary people are not much put out by anything of the sort. The most sensible and intelligent of all nations in Europe lays down the rule, Never Interrupt! as the eleventh commandment. Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought. Of course, where there is nothing to interrupt, noise will not be so particularly painful. Occasionally it happens that some ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... it, Aunt Peters, I know it is very impertinent for me to follow you up here, but how could you expect me to stay down yonder, with the floor trembling over head, and that violin—? I beg your pardon, sir," continued young Farnham, addressing Chester, "but the fact is, everything was so gloomy down stairs, and ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... stab of dislike for the girl, for daring to put Brian on a level with herself—and me. I wanted to punish her somehow, wanted to make the little wretch pay for her impertinent suspicions. I pushed past her brusquely to stand between her and Brian. "Let's go into the hotel," I said. "It's more important just now to see what our rooms are like than to play with the ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... at reading of this should be so impertinent as to ask to what purpose I would appoint a chaplain in a hospital of fools, I could answer him very well by saying, for the use of the other persons, officers, and attendants in the house. But besides that, pray, why not a chaplain for fools, as well as for ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... began to be tired with this impertinent declaration of the African magician, interrupted him, and said, "Let us drink first, and then say what you will afterwards;" at the same time she set the cup to her lips, while the African magician, who was eager ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... the eyes of the beholders, would either of them equally surpass all the power and industry of men. I shall not amuse myself with discussing largely many inutilities which may be found in this work; for instance, he does not fail to relate the impertinent story of the pretended magic of Sylvester II., which, as Panvinius has shown, had no other foundation than this pope's being much given to the study of mathematics ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... my own mind a very pretty return for all his favours to me. Nor was I the only person in the house to whom the worthy gentleman was uncivil. He ordered the fair Lischen hither and thither, made impertinent love to her, abused her soups, quarrelled with her omelettes, and grudged the money which was laid out for his maintenance; so that our hostess detested him as much as, I think, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fortune, as you have undoubtedly heard." At this remark the scoundrel turned on the other side, with his back toward me, and said, while yawning: "What I want? I want to sleep. Will you be good enough to keep the mosquitoes away for two hours?" Within five minutes I had my servant kick this impertinent and ungrateful wretch out of my park. If all of the low class think as this fellow, I fear our charitable efforts in ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... sure it's no business of mine," said Barbox Brothers. "That was an impertinent observation on my ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... say, "Sir, I would that you should grant me the use of Grace Church for a solemn service (a marriage, a baptism, or a funeral, as the case may be), and as it is desirable that the feelings of the parties should be protected as far as possible from the impertinent intrusion and disturbance of a crowd from the streets and lanes of the city, I beg that no one may be admitted within the doors of the church during the very few moments that we expect to be there, but our invited friends only,"—it would certainly, in such a case, be my pleasure to comply with ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous.' 'The external graces, the frivolous accomplishments of that impertinent and foolish thing called a man of fashion, are commonly more admired than the solid and masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesman, a philosopher, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... but there is a class of mortals who think my understanding impaired with my fortune, exalt themselves to the dignity of advice, and, whenever we happen to meet, presume to prescribe my conduct, regulate my economy, and direct my pursuits. Another race, equally impertinent and equally despicable, are every moment recommending to me an attention to my interest, and think themselves entitled, by their superior prudence, to reproach me if I speak or move without regard ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... abruptly, with her most animated smile, "I remember so well a statement I read some years ago in your 'Mes Etudes des Femmes' to the effect that you had never met a really intellectual woman. May I ask, without being impertinent, whether that ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... English visitors," she continued. "Shall I be impertinent if I ask why you have come ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... little longer to discontinue this narration, and if the celebratinge the memory of eminent and extraordinary persons, and transmittinge ther greate virtues for the imitation of posterity, be one of the principle endes and dutyes of History, it will not be thought impertinent in this place to remember a losse, which noe tyme will suffer to be forgotten, and no successe or good fortune could repayre; In this unhappy battell was slayne the L'd Viscounte Falkelande, a person of such prodigious partes ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... the thing which shames me. I have felt the most lively curiosity about you, and I have asked you thousands of impertinent questions." ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... trying all sorts of things. Then Mother and Dora came. When they came in Dora gave such a spiteful look and said: Ah, at their favourite occupation: look, Lizzi, their cheeks are quite red with excitement over their play. Wasn't it impertinent. We playing with dolls! Even if we had been, what business was it of hers to make fun of us? Hella was in a frightful rage and to-day she said: "One is never safe from spies; please put all those things away in the box so that I shan't see them any ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... of every allusion contained in this volume?" And if he cannot honestly answer "Yes," let him shut the book, assured that he is not impelled to the study of it by a sincere thirst for knowledge, but by impertinent curiosity, or a shallow desire to obtain undeserved ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... had very little to do; and as it never suited me to reside there, there was never any one to look after him. However, I make no complaint. Here they are intolerable—intolerable, self-sufficient, impertinent upstarts, full of crotchets of their own; and the bishop is a weak, timid fool; as for me, I never go inside a church. I can't; I should be insulted if I did. It has however gone so far now that I shall take permission to bring the matter ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... manifested by the company of men soon became impertinent and almost hostile. A few harsh words reached Francine's ear, and after a word said to her mistress the girl retreated into the embrasure of a window. Marie rose, turned towards the insolent group, and gave them a look full of dignity and even disdain. Her ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... pardon for this digression from the true course of this epistle; but that it may not seem altogether impertinent, I beg that I may plead the occasion of it, in part of that excuse of which I stand in need, for recommending this comedy to your protection. It is only by the countenance of your lordship, and the FEW so ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... a chair with his well hand, and sat down with that easy familiarity that came so natural to him. Helen watched him, lazily impertinent. ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... was no sooner out of my arms, I had scarcely imprinted the last long kiss on the ivory-like but still warm forehead, than I left the house. Clawbonny had no impertinent eyes to drive a mourner to his closet, and I felt as if it were impossible to breathe unless I could obtain the freedom of the open air. As I crossed the little lawn, the wails from the kitchens reached me. Now that the invalid could ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... as that was at Gaston's command he felt he could control Lauzoon, and who else mattered, except Filmer? Well, Filmer had sense to keep his opinions to himself—although the look in his eyes when he disapproved of anything, was unpleasant and—impertinent. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... of that door the members of the court looked round in sharp annoyance, suspecting here some impertinent intrusion. The next moment, however, this was changed to respectful surprise. There was a scraping of chairs and they were all on their feet in token of respect for the slight man in the grey undress frock who entered. ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... country with a soldier, but holds the civilian quietly in reserve for the future contingencies of submission. The nomination is a kind of political What-is-it? and voters are expected, without asking impertinent questions, to pay their money and make their own choice as to the natural history of the animal. Looked at from the Northern side, it is a raven, the bird of carnage, to be sure, but whitewashed and looking as decorously dove-like as it can; from the Southern, it is ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... with a flattering degree of warmth which was entirely absent from the stare and conventional smile with which she honoured Mrs. Dollond, and the somewhat impertinent air of patronage which she wore when one or two of the young artists were introduced to her. If they did not mind, Mrs. Dollond was inclined to be resentful, for the moment, at least; and, as a preliminary ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... is strange that people do not strive to forget their forlorn little identities, in such situations, instead of thrusting them forward into the dazzle of a great renown, where, if noticed, they cannot but be deemed impertinent. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an envelope addressed to "Miss Barbara Thurston," looking at her searchingly as he did so. Bab colored hotly under his almost impertinent scrutiny as she reached out her hand for the envelope. She had an uncomfortable feeling at that moment that perhaps Peter Dillon knew as much about the contents of the envelope ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... the situation became so strained that they refused to work for him. In one such instance a man, Wolanck by name, returned the manuscript which the master had sent him, writing him at the same time an impertinent letter. This copyist was evidently of a literary turn, with a talent for satire. He begins by begging to be permitted to express his gratitude for the honor which Beethoven has done him in being ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... you won't find Diana, Iris," answered Mrs. Dolman, "for the simple reason that she has been a very impertinent, naughty little girl, and I have been ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... "Well, I suppose if you've got the Western fever your case is hopeless. Would it be impertinent to inquire ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... enough to recognize these rudimentary facts about the poor, question our right to go among them with the object of doing them good, regarding it as an impertinent interference with the rights of the individual. But those who hold to this view seldom have the courage of their convictions. When they see suffering, they are very likely to interfere by sending help, though this well-meant interference, unaccompanied by personal knowledge of all the circumstances, ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... Borrow is never technical. If he quotes Gypsy it is not for the sake of the colour effect on those who read Gypsy as they run. His effects are for a certain distance and in a certain atmosphere where technicality would be impertinent. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... will only reform society on the condition of our reforming every man his own self, while the devil is quite ready to help us to mend the laws and the Parliament, earth and heaven, without ever starting such an impertinent and 'personal' request as that a man should mend himself." Yet without self-reform nothing is possible. "The character of the aggregate," says Herbert Spencer, "is determined by the characters of the ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... much disappointment felt by the royalist at this unsatisfactory result. "These bravadoes and impertinent demonstrations on the part of some of your people," wrote Richardot, ten days later, "will be the destruction of the whole country, and will convert the Prince's gentleness into anger. 'Tis these good and zealous patriots, trusting to a little favourable breeze that blew for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... spectacles. He was a graduate of a nice college, and he had a nice tenor and a nice family and nice hands and he was nicely successful in New York copper dealing. When he was asked questions by people who were impertinent, clever, or poor, Jeff looked them over coldly before he answered, and often they felt so uncomfortable that he didn't have ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... very sorry to have grieved you, but I could do nothing else this time. I was as innocent of any desire to fight a duel as was Marietta. She was followed in the park by an impertinent fellow who insisted upon pressing his attentions upon her; she was alone, unprotected. I saw what happened and knocked the fellow down for his pains. He sent me a challenge which I would not, and dare not decline. I have only Toni's pardon to beg for loving ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... with a placard round his hat bearing the inscription of "Corsican Boswell." In his Tour, he proclaimed to all the world that at Edinburgh he was known by the appellation of Paoli Boswell. Servile and impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a talebearer, an eavesdropper, a common butt in the taverns of London; so curious ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... in Williams' speech at this part, occurring in the Journals and in both Parliamentary Histories, is to a certain extent filled up by a letter of Chamberlain to Carleton of Nov. 24; 'intimating that they should forbear needless and impertinent discourses, long and extravagant orations which ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... de Chillon, mademoiselle?" the courier inquired. "Mademoiselle has made arrangements?" he added in a tone which struck Winterbourne as very impertinent. ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... now perched on her shoulder, and, as she talked, kept peeping into her face or biting her ear in the most impertinent way, while the others sprawled in her lap or ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... person to try to conciliate Buckingham and the King, enjoining him to lie so hard and so unblushingly as to declare that Bacon had never hindered, but had in "many ways furthered the marriage;" that all he had done had been to check Coke's "impertinent carriage" in the matter, which he wished had "more nearly resembled the Earl ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... Jim as the sloop rose and sank on the swells on her way over to Seal Island, "if you won't think me impertinent, I'd like ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... their homes when their turn of duty was over. They had, like the ladies who worked in the French hospitals, adopted a sort of uniform and wore the white badge with the red cross on their arms. With this they could go unquestioned, and free from impertinent remarks through the thickest crowds, everyone making way ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... believe nothing in their own disfavour!—I have told this man twenty times, that if I were disposed to think of a second marriage, which I do not believe I ever shall, the present sentiments I am possessed of, would never be reversed by any offer he could make me; yet will he still persist in his impertinent declarations.' ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... Peter's impertinent appearance as he slept. The open mouth, the drooping arm, the arched knee: they were such a personification of cockiness as, taken together, will never again one may hope be presented to eyes so sensitive to their offensiveness. ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... Trane oyle.] Another very great and principall commoditie is their Trane oyle, drawen out of the Seal fish. Where it will not be impertinent to shewe the maner of their hunting the Seal, which they make this oyle of: which is in this sort. [Sidenote: The maner of hunting the Seale fish.] Towards the ende of Sommer (before the frost beginne) they goe downe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... have laughed if she had not felt so indignant. She would have struck him as she had struck Chavis had she not been positive that behind his words was the utmost respect—that he did not intend to be impertinent—that he seemed as natural as he had been all along. She would have exhibited scorn if she could have summoned it. She did nothing but stare at him in genuine amazement. She was going to be severe with him, but the mild humor of his smile ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... opened by a servant, who told me her master was at home. He descended the stairway from the second floor and smiled at me inquiringly. I hardly knew how to frame my question, at once pertinent and impertinent. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... least afraid, but I had very bitter feelings in my heart. Why should I be called naughty, and disobedient, and impertinent, and all that, for the first time in my life? I knew I had sometimes a rather cross temper, but when mother had spoken to me about it, I had always felt sorry, and wished to be better. And since we had come to London, I had really tried ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... practical man, and had studied parish statistics for some years, so that his opinion is entitled to respect. He used to ask, why an honest girl should not receive her lover at her father's house, or in broad daylight, and many other impertinent questions which we won't go into, but which many a west-country parson has asked before, and never got ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... preliminary, although not impertinent to the main subject, which is Quincy Market. After having perambulated the principal markets of the other leading American cities, I must pronounce it facile princeps among New-World markets. A walk through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... doesn't talk to me in this impertinent fashion," thought Dorothy, slipping into her dress and combing her hair with her side comb. "Imagine being ordered about by a bed! I wonder if Sir Hokus is up." Parting the curtains, she jumped down, and the bed, without even saying goodbye, took ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... be getting a taste of the lonesomeness here of nights pretty soon," Mackenzie said, feeling himself in an awkward, yet not unpleasant situation with this frank girl's rather impertinent question still burning in his heart. "Dad's going to leave me to take ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... it as a positive injury to them to have found out their guilt. Since no man witnessed it, since they do not now confess it, attempts to discover it are half esteemed as officious intermeddling and impertinent inquiry. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... of her face he gathered that this remark was even more impertinent than the other. He had meant it ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... though terribly tried by the unjust criticism from many sources, by the piques and prides of new-made Generals who felt able to command armies though they could not command their own tempers; by the impertinent Buell who failed to move into East Tennessee and stop the Confederate depredations against loyal citizens; and by the unappreciative McClellan who was too young to understand the President's fatherly solicitude, and who drilled and drilled but ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... have been discharged for acts of discourtesy. One flipped a rubber clip across a platform and hit one of the officials in the eye, one refused to stay after hours to finish some work he had neglected during the day, and one was impertinent. All three could have stayed if each had used a little common sense, and all three could have stayed if each act had not been a fair indication of his general ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... Engineer Serko when my strolls take me in the direction of the Beehive. He always shows himself disposed to chat with me, though, it is true, he does so in a tone of impertinent frivolity. We converse upon all sorts of subjects, but rarely of my position. Recrimination thereanent is useless and only subjects me ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... person is one a man would leap a steeple from, gallop down any steep lull to avoid him; forsake his meat, sleep, nature itself, with all her benefits, to shun him. A mere impertinent; one that touched neither heaven nor earth in his discourse. He opened an entry into a fair room, but shut it again presently. I spoke to him of garlic, he answered asparagus; consulted him of marriage, he tells ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... were later to be considered as proofs of her sanctity, were during her lifetime grounds of suspicion. Some unknown, exercised in his mind over the reports of her extraordinary abstinence, took evidently what would to-day appear the somewhat impertinent course of writing her a letter of remonstrance. Catherine's inability or reluctance to eat as much as others was one of the most interesting marvels of her life to her simple contemporaries. It is clear, that partly from the extreme mortification which according ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... Then he laughed. "I suppose he has been drawing the long bow, as usual. Am I impertinent?—or may I ask, how you came to ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when those fathomless eyes glittered in his direction, his knees trembled, and a ball of copper invaded his throat. He could barely drag himself to her side and ask if he could help her. A burst of impertinent laughter ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... consequence. This gentleman thought fit to send his boat on board of me, with only the cockswain, in her, who was a very dirty ragged fellow: As soon as he was brought to me, he asked whence I came, whither I was bound, and many other questions, which I thought equally impertinent, at the same time pulling out a book, and pen and ink, that he might set down the answers; but as I was impatient to save him this trouble, he was desired immediately to walk over the ship's side, and put off his boat, with which he was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... my clothes after I am dead; as I shall then, you know, have no occasion for them." The proposed arrangement was assented to; and the fellow, having lost, was quietly submitting to the terms of the treaty, when he was interrupted by the patrol, whose impertinent interference he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... years. One gets so little encouragement. First you bolt away from my tears, then you send an impertinent message, and then when you come at last you pretend to behave respectfully, though you don't know how to do it. You should sit much nearer the edge of the chair and hold yourself very stiff, and make it quite clear that you don't know what to do ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... came a sunburnt, tattered and muscular-looking individual. He wore a ragged red shirt, his trousers were full of holes, and his feet were bare. His face was covered with freckles and he had big saucy blue eyes and an impertinent turned-up nose. When he came up he ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... fair little drive of their own. Their lot was not enviable. Indeed, only the pressure of work prevented some of the more aggressive of Orde's rear—among whom could be numbered the Rough Red—from going back and "cleaning out" this impertinent band of hangers-on. One day two of the latter, conducting the jam of the miniature drive astern, came within reach of the Rough Red. The latter had lingered in hopes of rescuing his peavy, which had gone overboard. To lose one's peavy is, among rivermen, the most mortifying disgrace. Consequently, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... gave vent to a sort of internal-sounding chuckle. She had not meant to be impertinent, and she knew her charge was aware that she had not, and that he was neither being lofty or severe ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sense, for instance, that it would be better if the members of this Society who are usually automatically absent were, instead, automatically present; or better, that this Paper, if (which is, perhaps, too likely) it be thought automatically impertinent, had been made by the molecular action ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... a minute, just as yours would have been, and it did not hesitate to inform the intruder that travellers who find fault with a country before they have taken the trouble to inquire into its merits, are very ignorant and impertinent people. ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... flights of stairs which were the only escape from them—three long, steep flights, which left her breathless, her knees trembling under her great weight, and which led out on the narrow side street, full of noisy, impertinent children and clattering traffic. Beyond that, nothing—a city full of strangers whose every thought and way of life were foreign to her, whose very breath came in hurried, feverish gasps, who exhaled, as they ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... she said gravely, "I think you did right to slap his ears—not because he is a hired boy, but because it would be impertinent in ANY boy. But talking of kissing makes me think of a story I found in Aunt Olivia's scrapbook the other day. Wouldn't you like to hear it? It is called, 'How ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Corona, who was greatly annoyed. "Some one suggested calling you to settle a dispute, and he went before I could stop him. I fear it is very impertinent of us." ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... having, after all these days of official reserve that she had placed between us, startled her into that rush to the door annihilated her dignity at a blow. So did I finish my sandwiches beneath her invisible but eloquent fire. What affair of mine was the cake? And what sort of impertinent, meddlesome person was I, shrieking out my suggestions to people with whom I had no acquaintance? These were the things that her nose and her neck said to me the whole length of the Exchange. I had nothing but my own weakness to thank; it ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... indeed, I began to think myself ill-natured, to offer to take from them, in a town where there are so few diversions, so entertaining an amusement. I know that my peaceable disposition already gives me a very ill figure, and that 'tis publicly whispered as a piece of impertinent pride in me, that I have hitherto been saucily civil to every body, as if I thought nobody good enough to quarrel with. I should be obliged to change my behaviour, if I did not intend to pursue my journey in a few days. I have been to see the churches ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... proposition as a political move of the Conservative Party. Throughout the Swan River district, the Dauphin district and all the way down to Neepawa the rumor spread ahead of the meetings; so that the speakers were asked many pertinent and impertinent questions, J. W. Robson, a Swan River farmer who was at that time a Conservative Member of the Manitoba Legislature, was giving his services free as a speaker on behalf of the proposed company; John Kennedy was known to be a political supporter of J. W. Robson. One and one make two; two ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... with a long account of his having caused four convicts to be condemned to transportation, he answered, "I heartily wish I were a fifth;" a repartee that calls to our mind Horace's answer to the impertinent fellow: ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... very long. The lady was of French extraction, had an only brother in the service of the East India Company, and, being an orphan, was the ward of the Marquis of Downshire,—circumstances on which gossips like Hogg made impertinent remarks. It is fair, however, to 'the Shepherd' to say that he speaks enthusiastically both of Mrs. Scott's appearance ('one of the most beautiful and handsome creatures I ever saw in my life'; 'a ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... me," Miss Painter continued in the tone of impartial narrative. "The cabman was impertinent. I've got his number." She fumbled in a ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... and endeavoured to prevent the duel; several other persons were collected in the garden. Mr Rowlls desired his Lordship and others not to interfere; and on a second attempt of his Lordship to make peace, Mr Rowlls said, if they did not retire, he must, though reluctantly, call them impertinent. Mr England at the same time stepped forward, and took off his hat; he said—"Gentlemen, I have been cruelly treated; I have been injured in my honour and character; let reparation be made, and I am ready to have done this moment." Lady Dartrey retired. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... about the back of impertinent puppies," cried the doctor, angrily. "I said lying—lying in ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... prudent nor just to shut out intelligence from our assemblies, and ridicule the good intention of those that offer it, to consult upon the best expedients for encouraging and increasing sailors, and when the merchants offer their scheme, to treat them as saucy, impertinent, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... That he should be frustrated in his attempts at any cost was equally plain. Miss Milly suddenly found herself invested with a rude chivalry that would have been amusing, had it not been at times embarrassing; that would have been impertinent, but for the almost superstitious respect with which it was proffered. Every day somebody from Five Forks rode out to inquire the health of the fair patient. "Hez Hawkins bin over yer to-day?" queried Tom Flynn, with artful ease and indifference, as he leaned over ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... doubt," he answered, putting on his hat and buttoning his befrogged surtout; "and should you," he continued, drawing on his gloves, "should you stare at me with those damned, impertinent fishes' eyes of yours, I should, most certainly, pull your nose ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... may be death to her, for she has a heart, and a fine, and true, and deep one; may be death to yourself—for you, too, are honorable, and true, and noble; and that is why I love you, George, and why I speak to you thus, at the risk of being held meddlesome or impertinent." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... three score and ten in actual years," she told him. "Vastly more than that in wisdom. Who's getting impertinent now?" ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... and then either turning the subject, or turning upon my heel. But as for women, it is astonishing how well I got on. The nervous rapidity of my first rattle soon subsided into a continuous flow of easy nonsense. Impertinent and flippant, I was universally hailed an original and a wit. But the most remarkable incident was, that the baroness and myself became the greatest friends. I was her constant attendant, and rehearsed to her flattered ear all my evening performance. She was the person with whom I practised, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... have that position if she doesn't know better than that! Carolyn Seymour in this house—I never heard of such a thing! I was denying it all the next day at the club and it's extremely unpleasant. Besides," added Ella, reddening, "she was extremely impertinent about it when ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... children pie. She believes in oatmeal as a staple diet, but their grandmother indulges them when they visit her. For once, I fancy, it won't hurt, and in the future I'll—Oh! what a lot I shall have to learn; and how delightfully exciting it all is! Mary, don't stare at me like that. It's impertinent. I know you don't mean it so, and you think I'm a little flighty. Well, I am. Very flighty, indeed! ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... you are grown rich, I think, Mr. Henley. So much the better for you. And you seem to know, Mr. Henley, that I am grown poor: or I think, Mr. Henley, you would not have written to me in a style which I could almost be tempted to call impertinent, but that I wish to avoid a quarrel with you, Mr. Henley, unless you force me to it. There is law as you say, Mr. Henley, for every man; but law is a very fretful and indeed fearful thing, to which you know I am averse, Mr. Henley. Not but there are proceedings, Mr. Henley, which may lead me to ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... trotting, with consequence, over the plain, A worm, in his progress remarkably slow, Cried—"Bless your good worship wherever you go; I hope your great mightiness won't take it ill, I pay my respects with a hearty good-will." With a look of contempt, and impertinent pride, "Begone, you vile reptile," his antship replied; "Go—go, and lament your contemptible state, But first—look at me—see my limbs how complete; I guide all my motions with freedom and ease, Run backward and forward, and turn when I please; Of nature (grown weary) you shocking essay! I ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... something softer than the most profound respect in it, I cannot see why I may not without offence remember it, since beauty, like the sun, must sometimes lose its power to choose, and shine into equal warmth the peasant and the courtier." He quaintly adds, "However presumptuous or impertinent these thoughts may have appeared at my first entertaining them, why may I not hope that my having kept them decently a secret for full fifty years may be now a good round plea for their pardon?" The imperious spirit which could rule Churchill long dominated the feeble nature of Queen Anne. But ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... of the kirk, even now, is applied to quite as impertinent a purpose as when Satan and the witches used it as a dancing-hall; for it is divided in the midst by a wall of stone masonry, and each compartment has been converted into a family burial-place. The name on one of the monuments is Crawfurd; the other bore no inscription. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... whom he had personally hastened to collect from the extreme west, passing in his course, and with impunity, the several American posts that lay in their way. In order more fully to comprehend the motives and character of this remarkable man, it may not be impertinent to recur summarily to events that took place prior to the declaration of war by ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... While in office he gave offence in some way to the men in power, and was called before the Senate to answer for himself. But he had the right on his side, it is likely, for they found him stubborn and impertinent, and they could make nothing of their charges against him. He was not bidding at this time, however, for the support of the mob. He had the integrity and sense to oppose the largesses of corn; and he forfeited his popularity by trying to close the public granaries before the practice had passed ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... says, "is full of kindnesses toward me, and I love him tenderly. But it is pitiable to see his weakness for Madame du Barri, who is the silliest and most impertinent creature that it is possible to conceive. She has played with us every evening at Marly,[2] and she has twice been seated next to me; but she has not spoken to me, and I have not attempted to engage in conversation ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... he was never angry at his brother; the faithful man, who was true to his engagements, kept his post, and, in weariness and painfulness, performed his appointed work till he was struck with death; the husband, father, friend, of whom, in these relations, it were impertinent to speak particularly, while wounded spirits are already telling, too much, how great his value, and how great their loss. He has passed away, dying as he had lived, and taught, and preached,—in faith; peaceful as a little child, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... a paved way, with or without houses, has been extended to roads lined with houses, whether paved or unpaved. 'Impertinent' signified at first irrelevant, alien to the purpose in hand: through which it has come to mean, meddling, intrusive, unmannerly, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... She is always seeing apparitions, and hearing death-watches; and was the other day almost frightened out of her wits by the great house-dog, that howled in the stable at a time when she lay ill of the tooth-ach. Such an extravagant cast of mind engages multitudes of people not only in impertinent terrors, but in supernumerary duties of life; and arises from that fear and ignorance which are natural to the soul of man. The horror with which we entertain the thoughts of death or indeed of any future evil, and the ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... riding out, she met a poor old woman walking along the road, who made a curtsy and was going on, when the queen had her stopped, and cried: 'You are a very impertinent person; don't you know that I am the queen? And how dare you not make me ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... affair of wisdom, I sometimes think I resemble—I have, I say, like him turned my eyes to behold madness and folly, and like him, too, frequently shaken hands with their intoxicating friendship. After you have perused these pages, should you think them trifling and impertinent, I only beg leave to tell you that the poor author wrote them under some twitching qualms of conscience, arising from a suspicion that he was doing what he ought not to do; a predicament he has more than once ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... "only think of our Wenna being married to Mr. Trelyon, and how happy and pleased and pretty she would look as they went walking together! And then how proud he would be to have so nice a wife! and he would joke about her and be very impertinent, but he would simply worship her all the same, and do everything he could to please her. And he would take her away and show her all the beautiful places abroad; and he would have a yacht, too; and he would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... rode down a trail from deep forest, lounging in the saddle, and flicking brush aside with a long dog-whip. There was a rain-storm gathering, and the hot air swayed no leaf. A rabbit, sluggish and impertinent, hopped across his path and wandered up the side trail toward Varian's cottage. Sanford halted the mare and whistled. His father needed cheering, and Ling Varian, if obtainable, would make a third at dinner. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... have sent for you to tell you that in consequence of your disgraceful conduct to my senior clerk, you can no longer remain under my roof. It appears that what I have been a witness to this day has been but a sequel to behaviour equally improper and impertinent; that so far from having, as I thought, done your duty, you have constantly neglected it; and that the association you have formed with that drunken old man and his insolent son has led you into this folly. You may say that it was not your wish to remain ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with a grave face, and he was divided between vexation and a sort of reluctant admiration of her coolness. She was bold and forward, not to say impertinent, but she seemed wholly unconscious of it, and, after all, she was from one of the wildest parts of Idaho. He kindly excused much of her conduct on ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... send a strong thought across the spruce-tops to us. There is a reverse to the shield. Should we, at any time before this journey ends, fail to make good, the men on the return voyage will cut the lobstick down. We are going to make no impertinent enquiries regarding the ulterior fate of these family trees. Is it not sufficient glory to say, "On the Peace River ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... a check—the formalities of her betrothed's house never failed to upset her. To begin with she had to face that impertinent upstart of a Nell Raddish, all tricked out in a black dress and white apron and cap and collar and cuffs, and she only a cowman's daughter with a face like a plum, and no sense or notions at all till she came to Farthing, since when, as everyone knew, her skirts had ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... gentlemen of Stepney going homewards over Moor-fields, about twelve of the clock at night, were staid by an impertinent constable with many frivolous questions, more by half to show his office than his wit; one whereof was, If they were not afraid to go home at that time of the night? They answered, 'No.' 'Well,' said he, 'I shall let you pass at this time; but if you should be knockt on the lead before ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... ludicrous thing about them was, that although the most timid and cowardly creatures in the world, they seemed the most impertinent things that ever lived! Knowing that their holes afforded them a perfectly safe retreat they sat close beside them, and as the hunters slowly approached, they elevated their heads, wagged their little tails, showed their ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... thing to say—or to withhold, if silence were better than speech; and her fit and proper place in the world as a great man's wife—and a good and beautiful woman—was always conceded to her with due honor, even by the most impertinent among the highly placed of her own sex, without any necessity for self-assertion on her part whatever—without assumption of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... suffering fellow-men and into closer communion with his God. He had learned that religion is a thing of the spirit, and not a matter of creeds and catechisms. Of Robert Burns's own religion it would be impertinent to inquire too curiously. The religion of a man is not to be paraded before the public like the manifesto of a party politician. After all, is there a single man who can sincerely, without equivocation or mental reservation, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... the reverse, as it would compel her to be for some hours in the company of a man she had so much reason to detest, sat in the stern sheets, with the fat clergyman directly in front, and forming an impenetrable rampart against the impertinent gallantries of the coxcomb Gregorio. She wore no jewels or ornaments, and from her pensive and serious expression of countenance, might have passed for an Athenian tribute-maiden whom the annual ship was about to carry to the den ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... the master isn't in?" she said with an intonation which is much more frequently heard by the hands on a farm, on a mas in her province, than by the impertinent lackeys of ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... that Cora should not attend that ball, or any other place of amusement, for a long time. And he was just on the brink of discovering the impertinent interference of Fate in human affairs, and especially those of ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... bad in any case on account of the weather, and here, on her arrival, that she should find the impertinent upstart who had made her look foolish at the Anningford luncheon, ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... the ende of my worke, I haue thought it not impertinent, to exhibite to the graue and discreet iudgements of those which haue the chiefe places in the Admiraltie and marine causes of England, Certaine briefe extracts of the orders of the Contractation house of Siuil in Spaine, touching their gouernment ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... the business, these people got the whole of it. At the rates they were selling, they must be receiving at least a dollar a quart, and that clear of the cost of the cream from their two cows. I suppose it might have been considered impertinent in us to be thus prying into our neighbors' concerns, wondering how they contrived to live and how much money they made by their business. But we had no idea of doing them any injury; I was only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... "You are impertinent," snapped Blennerhassett, turning from his rude critic. "If you have nothing to tell or to ask that is of any importance, make off, for I can be ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... to the chariot-wheels of history now, my dear children, and must follow on with name and place and date, whether my tale suffer by it or no. With such a drama as this afoot it were impertinent to speak of myself, save in so far as I saw or heard what may make these old scenes more vivid to you. It is no pleasant matter for me to dwell upon, yet, convinced as I am that there is no such thing as chance either in the great or the little things of this world, I am very sure ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... no automatic device for measuring facts. You and I are forever at the mercy of the census-taker and the census-maker. That impertinent fellow who goes from house to house is one of the real masters of the statistical situation. The other is the man who organizes the results. For all the conclusions in the end rest upon their accuracy, ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... long as that was at Gaston's command he felt he could control Lauzoon, and who else mattered, except Filmer? Well, Filmer had sense to keep his opinions to himself—although the look in his eyes when he disapproved of anything, was unpleasant and—impertinent. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... plain that she was deep in love and had no time to think of the opinions of others. Her little air of determination was not absent, but everything about her denoted frankness and good-will. There was nothing impertinent in her success, nothing selfish in her sense of power. Never have I seen so lovely a bride, when she answered with frankness her young friends who ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... with roses. Indeed, the whole house was a perfect bower of leaf and blossom, and I suppose I did look elfish as I ran, for a gruff old workman peered up at me and smiled, and muttered something about "pinky-posy"—and I know it did not seem impertinent to me at ...
— Different Girls • Various
... I can only meet with a short, sharp, and indignant denial. I know of no such "atmosphere" in all America; if it anywhere exists, I certainly never lived, moved, or worked in it. The statement is a gratuitous, impertinent, and totally false allegation of fact, wholly outside of my book and its contents, and is used in this connection solely to feather an arrow shot at my reputation; it is a pure invention, a manufactured assertion which is absolutely without foundation, and, ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... I feel that I am the peer of the foremost and highest of all these so-called statesmen. I do not need them, but they need me. Ah, my God! somebody knocks at the door again, and John is not at home. Good Heaven, if it should be another of those noisy, impertinent creditors! I am indebted to Julia for all these vexations. Because her things are being sent away, every door in the house is open, and every one can easily penetrate into my room. Yes, yes, I am coming. I ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... public vengeance ready to descend, so childishly misuse the interval, mercifully allowed for their own defence, in reading lectures upon abstract political speculations, confessedly bearing no relation to any militant interest now in question? Quite as impertinent it would be, when called upon for the answer upon 'Guilty or not Guilty?' to read a section from the Council of Trent, or a rescript from Cardinal Bellarmine. Yet the more extravagant was the logic of this proceeding, the more urgent became the presumption ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... which lasted until the month of June, Henry abandoned himself with even less reserve than formerly to his passion for the Marquise; while the forsaken Queen—who hourly received information of the impertinent assumption of that lady, and who was assured that she had renewed with more arrogance, and more openly than ever, her pretended claim to the hand of the sovereign—unable to conceal her indignation, embittered the casual intercourse between herself and her ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... "They were horribly impertinent to my husband," the woman spoke up, with a kind of feverish eagerness to have her say. "They actually asked him if there was anything he could ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... and thinking of nothing at all, for a pleasant stroll along the Sacred Way (Sat. I, ix).[1] A man whom he hardly knew accosts him, ignores a stiff response, clings to him, refuses to be shaken off, sings his own praises as poet, musician, dancer, presses impertinent questions as to the household and habits of Maecenas. Horace's friend Fuscus meets them; the poet nods and winks, imploring him to interpose a rescue. Cruel Fuscus sees it all, mischievously apologizes, ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... her protege with a flattering degree of warmth which was entirely absent from the stare and conventional smile with which she honoured Mrs. Dollond, and the somewhat impertinent air of patronage which she wore when one or two of the young artists were introduced to her. If they did not mind, Mrs. Dollond was inclined to be resentful, for the moment, at least; and, as a preliminary attack, she maliciously encouraged Eve, who, ensconced in a corner, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... be wrong, sir, because in my experience you almost invariably are wrong and never more so than when you lad-di-dah that you are right. You may be wrong, but let me tell you what you may not be. You may not be impertinent to me, sir. You may ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... of the Devil, whom they call Okee, his notions were very heterodox. He said, "It is true God is the giver of all good things, but they flow naturally and promiscuously from him; that they are showered down upon all men without distinction; that God does not trouble himself with the impertinent affairs of men, nor is concerned at what they do, but leaves them to make the most of their free will, and to secure as many as they can of the good things that flow from him; that therefore it was to no purpose either to ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... become impertinent—familiar—if not checked at the start?" he found himself constrained to ask, and the flame that shot into her cheeks told him his ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... seeing him about to relate some questionable anecdote, would hasten to interrupt him by screaming out: "Take care what you are saying, old man!" She called him habitually her "old man." This voluminous queen of drugs caused Mademoiselle de Fontaine to lose her aristocratic countenance, for the impertinent girl could not help laughing as she overheard her saying to her husband: "Don't fling yourself upon the ices, old ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... his very lack of reverence, in his impertinent assumption of equality, in his refusal to pay her the condescending homage due feebleness and old age, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... his name that I really could not trace him out. Methinks it is strange that people do not strive to forget their forlorn little identities, in such situations, instead of thrusting them forward into the dazzle of a great renown, where, if noticed, they cannot but be deemed impertinent. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... all entreaty made that she would answer the Countess's letter, and at last threatened her aunt that if the request were further urged she would answer it,—telling Lady Midlothian that she had been very impertinent. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... seen the Folly. It was a splendid, embroidered, be-ruffled, snuff-boxed, red-heeled, impertinent Folly, and knew how to make itself respected. I should like to have seen that noble old madcap Peterborough in his boots (he actually had the audacity to walk about Bath in boots!), with his blue ribbon and stars, and a cabbage ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... respect, as the prop of a hero. With this leg, which is fitted with a very handsome boot, he reviews his troops next Sunday, putting his best foot foremost; for generally he merely wears an unadorned wooden leg. The shoemaker, a Spaniard, whom I can recommend to all customers as the most impertinent individual I ever encountered, was arguing, in a blustering manner, with a gentleman who had brought a message from the general, desiring some alteration in the boot: and wound up by muttering, as the messenger left the shop, "He shall either wear it as it is, or review the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... that I have offended," said he at length, keeping a tight hand upon his every instinct—which was to knock this impertinent stranger down. "But if I have, I beg that you will believe that I have done so unwittingly. I had ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Pilau, through the agency of a candle accidentally poisoned. The idea struck my fancy at once. I knew my victim's habit of reading in bed. I knew, too, that his apartment was narrow and ill-ventilated. But I need not vex you with impertinent details. I need not describe the easy artifices by which I substituted, in his bed-room candle-stand, a wax-light of my own making for the one which I there found. The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... her lips moving, although no sound was audible, "the first thing to do is to get Lanigan away. As long as he is here I might as well not lift a finger, and it looks as if that impertinent minx of a child's nurse would be my best help. If he doesn't have one of his changeable fits, he will be ready in three days to follow her anywhere, but I must look sharp, for at this very minute he may be ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... retired, conscience knocked at Margaret's door. She tried to sleep, but her visitor persisted. Margaret was face to face with all her hard, impertinent words and ways toward ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... especially for its account of the contemporary stage. In describing an actor or actress he had few equals—witness his skilful portrait of Nokes, and his admirably graphic vignette of Mrs. Verbruggen as that "finish'd Impertinent," Melantha, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... the Power of Sound, as it is called, was written and printed in 1697. As it was designed for music (it was set by Jeremiah Clarke), the closing lines of every strophe are repeated by way of chorus. I have removed these repetitions as impertinent to the effect of the poem in print, and as interrupting the rushing vehemency of the narrative. The incident described ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... In verie briefe, the suite is impertinent to my selfe, as your worship shall know by this honest old man, and though I say it, though old man, yet poore man ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... being presented to that imperious and accomplished sovereign, deported himself with the same ludicrous arrogance which had characterised him at the Hague. His Latin oration, which had been duly drawn up for him by the Chancellor of Sweden, was quite as impertinent as his harangue to the States-General had been, and was delivered with the same conceited air. The queen replied on the instant in the same tongue. She was somewhat in a passion, but spoke ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... about it, nor of ill nature. In a land where there were no newspapers, telegraphs, telephones, railroads, or neighbours, it seemed like the expression of a confidence which had in it neither malice nor impertinent coarseness. And yet Bauer was puzzled to know what Clifford's real feeling was towards Miss Gray even after Clifford's own open statement made to him that day while they were sitting on the old ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... flew. They were always trim and tidy, and the gardener, Hogg, was terribly strict, and woe betide the author of any small footmarks that he found on one of the freshly raked surfaces. Nothing annoyed him more than the odd bulbs that used to come up in the midst of his precious buffalo grass; impertinent crocuses and daffodils and hyacinths, that certainly had no right there. "Blest if I know how they ever gets there!" Hogg would say, scratching his head. Whereat Norah was wont to retire behind a pyramid ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... for all his insolence of manner, was very devotedly attached to his employer, broke into remonstrances, impertinent of diction but affectionate of tenor. He protested that La Boulaye had left him behind, and lonely, during his mission to the army in Belgium, and he vowed that he would not ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... of Maine, in the swamps of Georgia, on the plains of California. But do not suggest to me, gentlemen; do not dare to suggest to me that I yield to the outrageous demand of this person who has made you the bearers of his impertinent ultimatum." ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... rocky path which led to the moor, when one of the servants announced from the rear that Caleb was calling loudly after them, desiring to speak with his master. Ravenswood felt it would look singular to neglect this summons, although inwardly cursing Caleb for his impertinent officiousness; therefore he was compelled to relinquish to Mr. Lockhard the agreeable duty in which he was engaged, and to ride back to the gate of the courtyard. Here he was beginning, somewhat peevishly, to ask Caleb the cause of his clamour, when the good old man exclaimed: "Whisht, sir!—whisht, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... was summoned by him. He sent up Crane in the motor. Other servants passed like water, but the chauffeur remained, though impertinent and disloyal. Margaret disliked Crane, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... lieutenant, having previously been an orderly at brigade headquarters. Feeling his newly acquired importance, he spurred his horse around among the guns, calling out, "Let 'em have it!" and the like, until, seeing our disgust at his impertinent encouragement, and that we preferred a chance to let him have it, he departed. Our next visitor came in a different guise, and by a hint of another kind was quickly disposed of. He, a man of unusually large ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... to gardening in it. Rather than a grief, it was a pain and disgust to see. Fruit-trees there were on the wall, but run wild with endless shoots, which stuck like a hog's mane over the top of it, and out in every direction from the face of it with a look of impertinent daring. All the fastenings were broken away, and only the old branches, from habit, kept their places against it. Everything all about seemed striving back to a dear disorder and salvage liberty. The walks were covered with weeds, and almost impassable with unpruned branches, while here ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... makes no claims to original investigations. He trusts, however, it will not be considered impertinent for a mere loiterer in the vestibule of the temple of science to attempt to lay before others the results of the investigations of our eminent scholars. He has endeavored faithfully to perform this task. As far as possible technical language has been avoided. This is ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... courtiers hailed me as greater than themselves, by reason of this woman's choice. There was method, too, in their salutation. Some rumour must have got about of my preference for the older and simpler habits, and there was no drinking wine to my health after the new and (as I considered) impertinent manner. Decorously, each lord and lady there came forward, and each in turn spilt a goblet at my feet; and when I called any up, whether man or woman, to receive tit-bits from my platter, it was eaten simply and thankfully, and not kissed ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... a pertinent—here an impertinent and superfluous question—literally put, as in the text, by a Persian to Morier, on seeing a Waltz in Pera. [See 'A Journey through Persia', etc. By James Morier, London ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... grand llama of tailors that D'Artagnan took the despairing Porthos; who, as they were going along, said to his friend, "Take care, my good D'Artagnan, not to compromise the dignity of a man such as I am with the arrogance of this Percerin, who will, I expect, be very impertinent; for I give you notice, my friend, that if he is wanting in respect I ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... been going to Switzerland had thrown her over without a thought. Anna Wolsky, who had spoken as if she really loved her only a day or two ago, and who had made that love her excuse for a somewhat impertinent interference in Sylvia's private affairs, had left Lacville without even sending her word that ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... on the meanness and absurdity of such conduct; but he silenced what he termed her impertinent interference in matters which did not concern her. He bade her to remember that she brought him no fortune, and he was forced to make these retrenchments in order to support her. After this confession, there was no end to his savings. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... he said gently, "I want you to let me talk to you about what is most emphatically none of my business. I want you to let me ask you impertinent questions. I want you to talk to me about"—he hesitated; then finished with meaning—"about ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... interview was that Borrow, after what appears to be a tactless, not to say impertinent, rejoinder, {50a} relapsed into silence and finally left the house, ordered back to his compilation by Sir Richard, as soon as he became sufficiently calm to appear coherent, and Borrow walked away musing on the "difference ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... exhibited more than this single one from a solitary friend. This is a more probable meaning than that Paratus solicited in this way the patronage of Pansa; for it would have been a bad method to gain it by disfiguring his walls in so impertinent a manner. We do not indeed mean to deny that adulatory inscriptions were sometimes written on the houses or doors of powerful or popular men or pretty women. A verse of Plautus bears testimony to such a custom (Impleantur meae foreis elogiorum carbonibus. Mercator, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... the consulship without having held the inferior magistracies. With Pompeius there was effected, if not a cordial reconciliation, at any rate a compromise. Sulla, who knew his man sufficiently not to fear him, did not resent the impertinent remark which Pompeius uttered to his face, that more people concerned themselves with the rising than with the setting sun; and accorded to the vain youth the empty marks of honour to which his heart clung.(51) If in this instance he appeared lenient, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Bacon, in his anxiety, sent Yelverton in person to try to conciliate Buckingham and the King, enjoining him to lie so hard and so unblushingly as to declare that Bacon had never hindered, but had in "many ways furthered the marriage;" that all he had done had been to check Coke's "impertinent carriage" in the matter, which he wished had "more nearly resembled the Earl ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... at law: A owed B three thousand ducats, due and not paid on an ascertained day. Whereupon B moves the court for the penalty, and demands judgment. If the defendant had no answer at law, there is an end to the case; and it was very irregular, impertinent, and contrary to well-settled practice for the defendant's counsel to endeavor to lead off the mind of the court from the true issue of the case. Portia, in what she says of mercy being 'twice blessed' and 'dropping like the gentle rain from heaven,' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... me a perpetual struggle. Yet this superiority, even this equality, was in truth acknowledged by no one but myself; our associates, by some unaccountable blindness, seemed not even to suspect it. Indeed, his competition, his resistance, and especially his impertinent and dogged interference with my purposes, were not more pointed than private. He appeared to be destitute alike of the ambition which urged, and of the passionate energy of mind which enabled, me to excel. In his rivalry he might have been supposed actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... in spite of me on small and impertinent matters—a sure symptom of failing mental health. My presence here is only one of several attempts that I have made to live idly since my father's death. They have all failed. Work has become necessary to me. I will go ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... to wait upon you, sir," he said; "and I have no doubt we shall be able to give you satisfaction. If my shopman has been impertinent—" ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... in Antique province, while in Capiz was a detachment of the regular army. And in full sight of both on the top of a precipice, an insurrecto flag flaunted its impertinent message. ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... impertinent; but I assure you the question is being asked amongst themselves by all the ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... with impertinent familiarity, "at four o'clock this morning I was dancing like mad with some of the prettiest ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... One gets so little encouragement. First you bolt away from my tears, then you send an impertinent message, and then when you come at last you pretend to behave respectfully, though you don't know how to do it. You should sit much nearer the edge of the chair and hold yourself very stiff, and make it quite clear that you don't know what to ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... month before nature was ready; each day we patiently coax it to "step out," we guide it from support to support, and we protect it from stumbling. Some day it walks, and we congratulate ourselves on the victory, when as a matter of fact, we not only had nothing to do with it but were impertinent meddlers, not instructors. Nature was the teacher and she was quite capable of completing the task without our aid. It is reasonable also to assume that any effort to force a natural function is quite likely to do much harm. We have found this to be so in various departments ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... behind a veil of flickering moonlight and shadow she had not known who I was. She had mistaken me for some impertinent stranger, and rather than give an alarm, she had hoped that a frown might rid her of the intruder. Then, I had gone without giving her a second chance to ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... European who travels without a servant—mine had run away with some wages I had rashly paid him in advance—is put down as a beggar, and I was overwhelmed with impertinent questions on the subject, which, however, I left unanswered. As I hadn't had the supper I stood considerably in need of, I took the liberty of taking a few savory morsels from the meatpot, which I ate in the midst of a little knot of wondering spectators; ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... once feel towards him each as to their individual father. He had faults, with which we had nothing to do; but, with all his faults, indeed, Mr. Perry was a most extraordinary creature. Contemporary with him and still living, though he has long since resigned his occupation, will it be impertinent to mention the name of our excellent upper grammar-master, the Rev. James Boyer? He was a disciplinarian, indeed, of a different stamp from him whom I have just described; but, now the terrors of the rod, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... heads of the gallant chiefs, who had led their ships to victory; but before long she was again on a cruise down channel. Rounding Ushant, she steered to the southward, boldly standing along the French coast, and making what the French probably considered a very impertinent examination of their ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... "growin' up as pretty as a picture," the tired, twenty-five-year-old, workaday face in the green glass was dreadful. What made her feel worst—and she entertained the thought with a whimsical consciousness of its impertinent vanity—was that she'd had so much more raw material than Eva! And the world had given Eva a chance because her father was rich. And she, Phyllis, was condemned to be tidy and accurate, and no more, just because she had to earn her living. That face in the greenish glass, looking tiredly back at ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... "You are an impertinent scoundrel," said the general. "If you had been a good soldier you would never need to ask for help. I shall not ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... play again and he was soon whistling merrily. Fifteen minutes later he was building a fire in the kitchen stove. It was too early for supper, but the iron kettle looked very lonely without any steam curling from its impertinent spout. After he had solved the secrets of the perplexing drafts, and ascertained by the simple expedient of placing a sooty finger in it that the water was really getting warm, he washed his hands at the sink and returned ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... old New England conscience! If you were all Spanish, you'd look as innocent as a madonna for a week, and if you were my kind of Californian you'd cheek it and make your elders feel that they were impertinent for taking ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... flouts this rather impertinent comment, and 'repeats the story of his birth' with still greater improvements, till Hotspur gives him a piece of advice which will do for his whole race of the present day, viz., 'tell the truth, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... This was the impertinent decision of the Porras brothers; but it did not quite commend itself to their followers, who were fearful of the possible results if they should persist in their mutinous conduct. They were very much afraid ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... and that talkative humour in which she had always been encouraged from her infancy, than to any real malice in her heart. She had been long accustomed to speak without thinking, and naturally imagined that her impertinent loquacity would be as much admired and applauded by other people as by her thoughtless parents. I have the satisfaction, however, to observe that you are perfectly sensible of her mistake, though she had not the good fortune ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... them with paper, and then bakes it in the oven like a pudding. The servant is an Italian with a long duck's bill of a nose and quick little black eyes. He makes our negro women giggle like anything. It's evident he is fearfully impertinent. And, what do you think?—he hooks Mrs. Winscombe into her stays! Mother says that that isn't anything, really; Mrs. Winscombe is a lady of the court, and the most extraordinary happenings go on ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... a whit less impertinent or objectionable now than heretofore. After making a profound salutation to Aveline, which he thought was executed in the most courtly style, and with consummate grace, he observed in a loud whisper to his partner, "'Fore heaven! a matchless creature! a divinity! Introduce ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... young man at the time, and I confess that it was a blow. Before I could fully recover, however, two or three of these admirers ran up to me radiating indignation, and told me that a public insult had been put upon me in the next room. I inquired its nature. It seemed that an impertinent fellow had dressed himself up as a preposterous parody of myself. I had drunk more champagne than was good for me, and in a flash of folly I decided to see the situation through. Consequently it was to meet the glare of the company and my own lifted eyebrows and freezing ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... waited a while, to see if there were any hope. The moon shone clearly overhead, with almost impertinent brightness, the small dark boats clustered on the water, there were voices and subdued shouts. But it was all to no purpose. Gudrun went ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... it really has conquered him; and he will stand now on his blood and his pedigree (no bad one either), and all the more stiffly because puppies like Lord Oxford, who instead of making their fortunes have squandered them, call him 'jack and upstart,' and make impertinent faces while the Queen is playing the virginals, about 'how when jacks go up, heads go down.' Proud? No wonder if the man be proud! 'Is not this great Babylon, which I have built?' And yet all the while he has the most affecting consciousness ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... know," she said quietly, "that you aren't going the right way to work. (It's very impertinent of me, isn't it?—but you did say just now you wanted to hear what ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... such and such a Law; but even why I am here, to wear and obey anything!—Much, therefore, if not the whole, of that same Spirit of Clothes I shall suppress, as hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked Facts, and Deductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that omniscient style, are ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... you are right. The trouble is, there are not many places where they will buy so expensive an article. Besides, they will be apt to ask impertinent questions." ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... You are a married man, and if you should seek consolation, where several of your fellow priests have lately sought it, in the Church of Rome, you will have to seek it as a layman. I do not pretend to know your private affairs, and I should consider it impertinent if I tried to pry into them at such a moment. But I do know your worth as a priest, and I have no hesitation in begging you once more with a heart almost too full for words to pause, Mr. Lidderdale, to pause and reflect before you take the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... back and forth, hopped nimbly along the branches and raised their voices in low churrs or louder agonized wails. The cub was nonplussed and stared at the birds, at first blankly, then angrily; but they grew constantly more impertinent, even making daring sallies at his face as if to peck out ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... stretching out their arms as if to welcome and embrace their former master; the starfish, zoophytes, sea-pens, and other innumerable marine insects, looking fresh and beautiful; and the crabs, as Peterkin said, looking as wide awake, impertinent, rampant, and pugnacious as ever. It was indeed so lovely and so interesting that I would scarcely allow myself to be torn away ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... We saw a young man vigorously clap the performance to which he had not listened, and, when the encore took effect, return immediately to his noisy and disturbing engrossment in the young ladies' society from whose impertinent whispering he had only rested for the moment, troubling all who sat near him both with his talk and his sympathetic lie. A true man will not move a finger or lisp a syllable to echo what he does not apprehend and approve. A true man never assents anywise to what is error to him. In the delicious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... action. It matters not whether the orator personates a trip-hammer or a wind-mill; if his mill but move with the grist, or his hammer knead the iron beneath it, he will not fail of his effect. An impertinent gesture is more likely to knock down ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... him among you, and examine him, gentlemen. Question him with all confidence, without fear of his troubling you with idle chatter or impertinent queries. Do not be afraid of his taking up all your time, or making it impossible for you to get rid of him. You need not expect brilliant speeches that I have taught him, but only the frank and simple truth without preparation, ornament, or vanity. ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... relaxation, when we may desipere in loco; so there are some times, and circumstances of things, wherein it concerneth and becometh men to be serious in mind, grave in demeanour, and plain in discourse; when to sport in this way is to do indecently or uncivilly, to be impertinent ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... necessary to define the person of the individual one meets so as to avoid it in passing. Any unusual attraction detected in a first glance is a sufficient apology for a second,—not a prolonged and impertinent stare, but an appreciating homage of the eyes, such as a stranger may inoffensively yield to a passing image. It is astonishing how morbidly sensitive some vulgar beauties are to the slightest demonstration of this kind. When a lady walks the streets, she leaves her virtuous-indignation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... point to it: a less strong man than I could undertake the work here. If it is God's voice that calls, I would not disobey it. One thought holds me back. What will happen here? Is it impertinent to ask? The presentation to ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... explain my meaning. A young American girl once went to the mistress of a pension where she was staying and complained that the concierge of the house had been impertinent. When the proprietress asked the concierge what this meant, the latter burst out with her wrongs. “Since Miss B. has been in this house, she has never once bowed to me, or addressed a word to either my husband or myself that was not a question ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... she began to feel embarrassed at the thought of beginning an acquaintance with Charlotte, and was distressed how to make the first visit. "I cannot go without some introduction," said she, "it will look so like impertinent curiosity." At length recollecting herself, she stepped into the garden, and gathering a few fine cucumbers, took them in her hand by way of apology ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... the public; and, moreover, every instrumental noise—every kind of preluding between the acts—constitutes a real offence to all civilized auditors. The bad training of an orchestra, and its musical mediocrity is to be inferred from the impertinent noise it makes during the periods of quiet ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... came in among them they looked, some of them, somewhat sourly on me, and asked me some impertinent questions, to which I gave them ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... say, old sucker of wine-skins, that he will attain the double advantage of always keeping her to himself, and always keeping her warm,' interrupted Colias, a ruddy, reckless boy of sixteen, privileged to be impertinent in consideration of ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... instant. I'm not an overreligious body, I reckon, and I've always held that the best compliment you can pay God Almighty is to let Him go His own gait and quit advising Him; but, I declare, as I sat here just now I couldn't help being impertinent enough to pray that I might live ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... were all in excellent spirits on the road home, and sang 'O Lady Fair,' Mr. Wopsle taking the bass, and assisting with a tremendously strong voice (in reply to the inquisitive bore who leads that piece of music in a most impertinent manner by wanting to know all about everybody's private affairs) that he was the man with his white locks flowing, and that he was upon the whole ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... any other time did I ever encounter the slightest disrespect from police, gendarmes, servants (those severe and often impertinent judges of one's attire and equipage), nor from their masters,—not even on this critical occasion when I so patently, flagrantly transgressed all the proprieties, yet was not interfered with by word or glance, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... sent her? She would encounter rough soldiers, and camp-followers of every nation, and officers of all grades of character; and could she bear herself so wisely and loftily in all trials as to awe the impertinent, and command the respect of the supercilious, so that she might be free to come and go at her will, and do what should seem good to her? Or, if she failed to maintain a character proof against even inuendoes, would she not break the bridge over which any ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... You bless me with this promise. —How can you, lady, suffer this impertinent Afflict ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... "in this queer crisis personalities may be pardoned. I may tell you without offence of a way in which you will do more good than by helping the gendarmes, who are bound to break through in any case. You will permit me the impertinent intimacy, but do you care about that girl? Care enough to marry her and make her a good husband, ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... he continued, with one of his strident laughs, "what might be considered, by the thoughtless, as benefits, were resented, by the older and wiser of the crew, as innovations and intrusions of an impertinent and offensive nature. But the immediate result was that interest in the Society was undeniably developed, not only at home, but certainly abroad. Notably in Paris all the art circle was keenly alive to what was taking place in Suffolk Street; ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... of the Convention was for years excluded, and a large majority in each association refused to receive into their fellowship those who advocated or contributed to its objects. Hyper-Calvinism, ignorance and avarice cooperated in making the very name "missions" odious, ministerial education an impertinent human effort to supplant a spirit-called and spirit-endowed ministry, Sunday-schools and prayer-meetings as human institutions, the aim of which was to interfere with the divine order, and the receiving of salaries for ministerial work as serving God for hire or rather as serving ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... of a keen desire for knowledge, which his more prosaic seniors were in the habit of misconstruing, deeming it to arise, as they said, from an insatiable and impertinent curiosity combined with an inherent love of mischief. Be that as it may, this desire for knowledge on Master Maurice's part frequently led him into places where, to put it delicately, his presence was undesirable in many ways; his love for investigation taking him especially to ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... Directors ought to order their Solicitor to write to me and others, to whom so impertinent a letter has been addressed, and beg to withdraw it, with an apology ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... deep womanly anxiety. The carriage of the head "did" the pride, the wide-open eyes "did" the wistful wonder and the romance, the deep womanly anxiety lurked in the tremulous smile, and a violent rubbing of the cheeks produced the colour of excitement. In answer to any impertinent questions, if she encountered such, she meant to give an absent answer, as if she had not understood. Thus equipped ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... repeated just because they have often been repeated before; a sort of exhausted quarries and dried-up wells. There is a certain class of vain and sneering mortals, in whose conceit nothing is such proof of superior sense as discarding the greatest number of topics and arguments as obsolete or impertinent. It is to be reckoned on that some of these, on hearing again the old maxims, that a people without divine instruction must be a vicious one, and that a vicious people must be an unhappy one,—and those maxims accompanied with a description of the old pagan world as illustrative evidence,—will ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... Observations may be much easier, and more accurately made with good Telescopes, then with any other Instruments, it will not, I suppose, seem impertinent to explain a little what wayes I judge most fit and convenient for that particular. Such therefore as shall be the Observators for this purpose, should be furnished with the best Telescopes that can be had, the longer the better and more exact will their Observations be, though they ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... you, especially when I've come with an impertinent question." Her gay eyes mocked him as ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... sure that Rudolf and Ann did not join in the burst of applause which greeted the end of Captain Mittens' song. Peter would have been glad to, for he was too young and foolish to understand how really impertinent Mittens had been, but his brother and sister quickly stopped that. As for Growler and Prowler, they merely yawned, as if they had heard this song more than once before, only faintly clapping their paws together in order not to attract the tyrant's ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... he pay me for this crowning stroke of a long course of slander and ill-will! Have I not seen it? Has not he hated me from the first, misconstrued every word and deed, though I have tried, striven earnestly, to be his friend,—borne, as not another soul would have done, with his impertinent interference and intolerable patronizing airs! But he has seen the last of it! anything but this might be forgiven; but sowing dissension between me and the Edmonstones—maligning me there. Never! Knowing, too, as he seems to do, how I stand, it is the very ecstasy of malice! ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Constitution, therefore you shall not? This would have been a prohibition to do what the Constitution gives power to do. Each successive Congress would still have gone to the Constitution for its power, brushing away in its course the cobwebs stretched across its path by the officiousness of an impertinent predecessor. Again, the legislatures of Virginia and Maryland, had no power to bind Congress, either by an express or an implied pledge, never to abolish slavery in the District. Those legislatures had no power ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... phrase came into repute in a brief space afterwards, in the form of the impertinent and not universally apposite query, "Has your mother sold her mangle?" But its popularity was not of that boisterous and cordial kind which ensures a long continuance of favour. What tended to impede its progress was, that it could not be well applied to the older portions of society. It consequently ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... courtesy or the sentiment of respect. The first look is necessary to define the person of the individual one meets so as to avoid it in passing. Any unusual attraction detected in a first glance is a sufficient apology for a second,—not a prolonged and impertinent stare, but an appreciating homage of the eyes, such as a stranger may inoffensively yield to a passing image. It is astonishing how morbidly sensitive some vulgar beauties are to the slightest demonstration of this kind. When a lady walks the streets, she leaves her virtuous-indignation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... rose to carry her candle and books into the chilly but quiet bedroom, biting her lips the while lest she should be tempted to say something which Selina called "impertinent," which perhaps it was, from a younger sister to an elder. I do not set Hilary up as a perfect character. Through sorrow only do people go on to perfection; and sorrow, in its true meaning, the cherished girl had ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... the high-bred Lady Fanciful to the vulgar Mrs. Heidelberg; in country girls, romps, hoydens and dowdies, superannuated beauties, viragos and humourists; she had an inimitable talent in ridiculing the extravagant action and impertinent consequence of an Opera-singer—of which she gave an excellent specimen in Lethe. Her mirth was so genuine that whether it was restrained to the arch sneer, and suppressed half-laugh, or extended to the downright honest burst of loud laughter, the audience ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... Lord Strathern angrily. "He has said a great deal more than I will tolerate." And, having broached the subject, he told the story of L'Isle's interview with himself, and his remarks to Bradshawe, pronouncing his whole conduct presumptuous and impertinent. Losing his temper more and more, he exclaimed: "Sir Rowland's absurd partiality has spoiled ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... gentleman, the bourgeois, whom I do not know, put snow in my back. Has any one the right to put snow down our backs when we are walking along peaceably, and doing no harm to any one? I am rather ill, as you see. And then, he had been saying impertinent things to me for a long time: 'You are ugly! you have no teeth!' I know well that I have no longer those teeth. I did nothing; I said to myself, 'The gentleman is amusing himself.' I was honest with him; I did not speak to him. It was at that moment that he ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... ex-governess from a new angle—a more illuminating than agreeable one, at which she no longer figured as pitiful, her little assumptions and sillinesses calling for the chivalrous forbearance of persons more happily placed; but as actively impertinent, an usurper of authority and privileges altogether outside her office and her scope. She was greedy—not a pretty word yet a true one, covering both her manner of eating and her speech. Registering which ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... imagine, however, that I do not wish woman to be elegant, to dance or to sing; but I should like to see as much care devoted to her mind as to her body, and between being ignorant and savante I should like to see a road taken which would prevent annoyance from an impertinent sufficiency or from a tiresome stupidity. I should like very much to be able to say of anyone of my sex that she knows a hundred things of which she does not boast, that she has a well-balanced mind, that she speaks well, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... to learn the matter of the wager, came up to pay closer attention to what they were saying, a tall, strong, good-looking young fellow, who, however, possessed the impertinent stare peculiar to people who have material force at their back, came ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... narrowly observed. A lieutenant of the foot guards, who was a public Ganymede, and against whom I had that natural antipathy and abhorrence I have for all such wretches, having indulged himself in some very impertinent jokes on the secret of my amour, I bestowed on him the epithet he deserved: we drew our swords, and he was wounded. On the Sunday following I presented myself to pay my respects to his Majesty on the parade, who said to me as he passed, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... ingenii ratione habita, major videtur esse gloria fabulam formare penitus novam, quam veterem, utcunque mutatam, de novo exhibere. (Poet. Prael. v. ii. p. 164.) Where, having first put a wrong construction on the word comnmnia, he employs it to introduce an impertinent criticism. For where does the poet prefer the glory of refitting old subjects to that of inventing new ones? The contrary is implied in what he urges about the superiour difficulty of the latter, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... answer. "The hours are absurd, the work is distasteful, and the mode of living repulsive. But it contents me. The secret of happiness lies in adapting one's self to conditions. I adapt myself wherever I happen to be. And now, may I, without impertinent curiosity, again ask what you meant when you said you had come down ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... of the workers, the property-holding class saw in it only a source of rage against a class of people who are fools enough to declare themselves no longer submissive to the treatment they had hitherto received. It saw in the just demands of the non-possessing workers only impertinent discontent, mad rebellion against "Divine and human order;" and, in the best case, a success (to be resisted by the bourgeoisie with all its might) won by "ill-intentioned demagogues who live by agitation and are too lazy to work." It sought, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... thinking," said he, "about what you told me"—this was a reference to an interview not recorded. "I am annoyed that Mrs. Harrop should have been impertinent to you." ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... touchy this evenin', Robert," said Abner placidly, for he was so given to interesting himself in the affairs of his neighbors that he did not realize that his curiosity was displayed in an impertinent manner. "Of course I want to sell all I can. You've got considerable money comin' back to you. Don't you want to buy ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... that led to this fortunate reconnoitre is not impertinent to our subject: in a time of dearth, which was severely felt in the city, the famous ballad-maker Delone composed a song reflecting on her Majesty. The ballad-maker and singer were both committed to the compter, but the poet defied government even while in the lion's den. In a letter ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... out of the cloak-room, his arm linked in mine, and crossed the corner of the dining-room toward the outside door. Jamieson threw up his arm and fluttered his hand in an impertinent gesture of farewell. "So long, Senator Swollenhead," he cried in a thick voice. "We'll teach you a lesson in how ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... quite alive to the difficulties of my task; and I am conscious that the work may to some appear supererogatory. Stricture and praise are, it will perhaps be said, equally impertinent to a fame so well established. Neither have I any rash hope of adding a single ray to the light of Hawthorne's high standing. But I do not fear the charge of presumption. Time, if not the present reader, will supply the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Instead of rebuking the impertinent young man, Ethelyn turned very red, and stammered out something about its being of no consequence; and so Harry Clifford held the secret which she had kept so carefully from Richard, and that party in Camden was made ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... cannot but feel that Hardy has a reticence so commendable that praise of it is superfluous and impertinent. After all, men and women are better than sheep and cows, and had he been more explicit, he would have tempted one to inquire whether he proposed making a story or a volume which might bear the title The Wessex Farmer's Own Hand-Book, and containing wise advice ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... entertaining distraction, a discreet but immoral spy, which places at your mercy all the mysteries of the public street. This contrivance, which enables you to see the world without being seen, certainly gives you a tempting advantage over the untimely caller or the impertinent creditor; but it encourages, in my opinion, a habit of vision better adapted to a sultan's seraglio than to the discreet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... for the whole house to hear, and for that traitor, Jean Baptiste, to come rushing out of his room marvelling at the impudence of the man, and cursing the Committee of Public Safety who were so slow in sending the soldiers of the Republic to lay this impertinent Englishman by ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... interrupted by salvoes of hearty laughter. The girls remain while the man undresses in the evening, and permit themselves to make remarks on the difference of the physique, of the Europeans and Japanese, which are not only, in our way of thinking, unsuitable for young girls, but even impertinent towards the guest. The male attendants are seldom seen, at least in the inner apartments. In the morning one washes himself in the yard or on the balcony, and if he wishes to avoid getting into disfavour, the guest will be careful not to spill anything ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... I ever possess it, I lost, as do most men, rather lamentably early in my career. If you suffer me to do so, I will ask Darcy Faircloth to bring his mother here to me, this evening at dusk, when her coming will not challenge impertinent observation—so that I may be satisfied no bitterness colours her thought of me and that we part in peace, she ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... has only a little boy of two. I think it's very impertinent of him to talk of me like that ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... moment. I cannot follow that." Then she laughed. "I will swear that I did not intend to be impertinent." ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... the Doctor again. "The Colonel says he hopes that you are not so foolish as to wear the belt at any time. Your schoolfellow forbids you to speak about it to any one. Well, there, I do not wish to ask impertinent questions. That will do, gentlemen. I merely sent to you for enlightenment. You need say ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... Street, and catching a glimpse of the blacks on the steps, he said he would go over and warn the men to get away from the street. So the patrolmen followed, and Sergeant Aucoin asked the smaller fellow, Pierce, if he lived there. The answer was short and impertinent, the black saying he did not, and with that both Pierce and Robinson drew up to ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... once; and Smythe discreetly busied himself tossing stones at an impertinent chipmunk that popped in and out among the ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... trying to be impertinent? Was he deliberately describing her? He did not look like that sort of man; yet why was he watching her so closely, so curiously at every question? Why did he look at her teeth when ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... I do now! How one evil brings on another! Dreadful news to tell thee! While I was meditating a simple robbery, here have I (in my own defence indeed) been guilty of murder!—A bl—y murder! So I believe it will prove. At her last gasp!—Poor impertinent opposer!—Eternally resisting!—Eternally contradicting! There she lies weltering in her blood! her death's wound have I given her!—But she was a thief, an impostor, as well as a tormentor. She had stolen my pen. While ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... admission to a territory, for the entering of which money is a surer passport than to a certain other more profitable (too) foreign kingdom? Whether these speculations of mine have any force in them, or whether they will not rather, by most readers, be deemed impertinent to the matter in hand, is a question which I leave to the determination of an indulgent posterity. That there were, in more primitive and happier times, shops where money was sold,—and that, too, on credit and at a bargain,—I take to be matter of ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... roses in blue jars, its two pictures—Velasquez' Maria Theresa in an old silver frame and Rembrandt's Night Watch—was pleasant, but overwhelmed now by the presence of these two enormous ladies. The evening sun, flooding it all with yellow light, was impertinent enough to blind the eyes of Mrs. Rossiter. She rose and moved slowly to draw down the blinds. A little silver clock struck ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... contracting a marriage as a matter of form. Don't you see that this consideration, and this alone, made it possible for an impertinent outsider like Curtis to offer his services as de Courtois's substitute, while my misguided daughter was equally ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... gives no end of information on river currents, wind-reefs, sand-reefs, alligator-water, and all that is useful to know about rivers, so that I was confident of my ability; all that had been required was the stirring-up that I got from the impertinent pilot, or buccaneer, whichever is proper to call him—one thing certain, he ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... meant almost anything whatever. The sound of "Chancery," the stereotype character of this volume, and its cheap price, may perhaps deter pirates,—who are but a weak body in this country as yet. I judged it right to help in that; and impertinent, at this stage of affairs, to go any farther. The Book is very fairly printed, onward. at least to the Essay New England Politics, where my "perfect-copy" of the sheets as yet stops. I did not read any of ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "I was so surprised I could not utter a word. That the man should offer me that infamous work is very impertinent. My father?... You do not know his scrupulousness in business. It is the honor of his profession. There is not a sovereign in Europe who has not ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... done well, Madam, (said D'Elmont, looking on her with Eyes sparkling with Indignation) you have done well, by your impertinent Curiosity and Imprudence, to rouze me from my Dream of Happiness, and remind me that I am that wretched thing a Husband! 'Tis well indeed, answer'd Alovisa, (who saw now that there was no need of farther Dissimulation) that any thing can make you remember, both what you are, and what I ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... him, not from obedience to his mother, or out of any feeling of gratitude to the count, but from sheer curiosity, and that some chance remark might give him the opportunity for making one of the impertinent speeches which made his mother say,—"Oh, that naughty child! But I can't be severe with him, he ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... proper person to examine whether you gave in a true report; where you lodge, why you came, how long you mean to stay; with twenty more inquisitive speeches, which to a subject of more liberal governments must necessarily appear impertinent as frivolous, and make all my hopes of bringing home the most trifling presents for a friend abortive. So there is an end of that felicity, and we must sit like the girl at the fair, described ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Representatives were sanguine against it. I beg'd him to let me see his Letter but he refusd in a kind of Pet, telling me it was a private Letter, & leaving me to conjecture whether I had really been impertinent in asking a Sight of his Letter or whether the Contents of it were such as it was not proper for me to see. You will easily conceive what a Scituation a Man must be in here, who having receivd no Intelligence of the Sentiments of his Constituents himself is obligd in ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... of Whiskers. Good Manners must certainly die with Chivalry; for what keeps all the pert Puppies about Town in Awe, but the Fear of being call'd to Account? Don't you know that there are a Set of impertinent Wretches, who are always disturbing publick Assemblies with Riots and Quarrels, only upon a presumption of being hinder'd from fighting, by the Crowd? There will be no end of such Grievances, if this Law takes Place. Besides, ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... paid no heed to the Lord, but immediately disobeyed his positive command. The moral position the man took was that which displeased the Lord, made him angry. He saw in him positive and rampant self-will and disobedience, an impertinent assurance and self-satisfaction. Filled, not with pure delight, or the child-like merriment that might well burst forth, mingled with tears, at such deliverance; filled, not with gratitude, but gratification, the keener that he had been so long an object of loathing to his people; filled with arrogance ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... one, but still it had done, and does, good, for it has put an end to all impertinent sneering for the future about Albert's riding. This journey has done great good, and my beloved Angel in particular has had the greatest success; for instance, at Birmingham the good his visit has done has been immense, for Albert spoke to all these manufacturers in their ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... first. I saw myself going up to her, and startling her with the statement, 'What you believe about me is not true!' Then again, I thought I might write her a letter and tell her. But of course it would be absurd; she would never acknowledge that she had believed anything, and she would think I was impertinent." ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... girl who had believed that he possessed "genius," and supposed that genius was to one's spiritual economy what full pockets were to one's domestic. And yet, with her, Rowland never felt, as with Mrs. Hudson, that undercurrent of reproach and bitterness toward himself, that impertinent implication that he had defrauded her of happiness. Was this justice, in Miss Garland, or was it mercy? The answer would have been difficult, for she had almost let Rowland feel before leaving Rome that ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... depresso supercilio, crudelitatem tibi non placere. Some think to bear it by speaking a great word, and being peremptory; and go on, and take by admittance, that which they cannot make good. Some, whatsoever is beyond their reach, will seem to despise, or make light of it, as impertinent or curious; and so would have their ignorance seem judgment. Some are never without a difference, and commonly by amusing men with a subtilty, blanch the matter; of whom A. Gellius saith, Hominem delirum, qui ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... drew up a chair with his well hand, and sat down with that easy familiarity that came so natural to him. Helen watched him, lazily impertinent. ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... Johnson allowed to be "well-done," is valuable in many respects, especially for its account of the contemporary stage. In describing an actor or actress he had few equals—witness his skilful portrait of Nokes, and his admirably graphic vignette of Mrs. Verbruggen as that "finish'd Impertinent," Melantha, in Dryden's ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... some amazement. She would have thought it rather impertinent in a stranger offering such familiar accommodation, but Bluebell availed herself of it with the frankest nonchalance, and, in the conversation that ensued, lost her place in the first rush of diners, who, at the ringing of the bell, instantly ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Utopia: but a little while, and they would cease to believe because the current had changed. Many believed from a need of action, a desire for adventure, from romantic folly. Others believed from a sort of impertinent logic, which was stripped of all common sense. Some believed from goodness of heart. The self-seeking only made use of ideas as weapons for the fight: their eye was for the main chance: they were fighting for a definite sum as wages ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... hope, Pyrophilus, you will not think it strange or impertinent, that I employ in divers passages of these Papers, examples drawn from Bodies and Shadows far more Gross, than those minute Protuberances and shady Pores on which in most cases the Colour of a Body as 'tis an Inherent ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... brutality with the utmost civility and mildness, meditating in my own mind a very pretty return for all his favours to me. Nor was I the only person in the house to whom the worthy gentleman was uncivil. He ordered the fair Lischen hither and thither, made impertinent love to her, abused her soups, quarrelled with her omelettes, and grudged the money which was laid out for his maintenance; so that our hostess detested him as much as, I think, without vanity, she ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ugly name of palpable darkness, over his creations; and his shadows flit before you without distinction or preference. Had he introduced a good character, a single gush of moral feeling, a revulsion of the judgment to actual life and actual duties, the impertinent Goshen would have only lighted to the discovery of deformities, which now are none, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... end of his pamphlet he makes a distinction between the Catholic clergy and gentry in England, which I know the latter consider to be very impertinent; and he makes it apropos of a passage in one of my original letters in January. He quotes me as saying that "Catholics differ from Protestants, as to whether this or that act in particular is conformable to the rule of truth," p. 48; and then he goes on to ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... County History, he replied, "I regret, sir, not to be able to contribute to so valuable a work; but the Smiths never had any arms. They invariably sealed their letters with their thumbs." In later life he adopted the excellent and characteristic motto—Faber meae fortunae; and, to some impertinent questions about his grandfather, he replied with becoming gravity—"He disappeared about the time of the assizes, and we ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... pressed me to go; and while I was thus uneasily deliberating what to do, the dance, I suppose, finished, for the people crowded down stairs. Had Lord Orville then repeated his offer, I would have accepted it notwithstanding Sir Clement's repugnance; but I fancy he thought it would be impertinent. In a very few minutes I heard Madame Duval's voice, as she descended from the gallery. "Well," cried I hastily, "if I must go-" I stopt; but Sir Clement immediately handed me into his chariot, called out, "Queen Ann Street," and then jumped in himself. ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... very honestly Dryden's Virgil, to let the reader know, that this is not that Virgil so much admired in the Augustaean age, an author whom Mr. Dryden once thought untranslatable, but a Virgil of another stamp, of a coarser allay; a silly, impertinent, nonsensical writer, of a various and uncertain style, a mere Alexander Ross, or somebody inferior to him; who could never have been known again in the translation, if the name of Virgil had not been bestowed upon him in large characters in the frontispiece, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... men's parts are less prominent, and neither the first lover, nor the virtuous model son who here and there occurs, lays claim to much significance. The servant- world—the crafty valet, the stern house-steward, the old vigilant tutor, the rural slave redolent of garlic, the impertinent page—forms a transition to the very numerous professional parts. A standing figure among these is the jester (-parasitus-) who, in return for permission to feast at the table of the rich, has to entertain the guests with drolleries ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... are ready enough to recognize these rudimentary facts about the poor, question our right to go among them with the object of doing them good, regarding it as an impertinent interference with the rights of the individual. But those who hold to this view seldom have the courage of their convictions. When they see suffering, they are very likely to interfere by sending help, though this well-meant interference, unaccompanied by personal knowledge of ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... Lucia to a seance, if we do," she said. "Dear me! How late it is: there was such a long wait between the tableaux. But we must keep our eyes on Georgie, and be careful how we answer his impertinent questions. He is sure to ask some. About getting that woman down again, Robert. It might be fool-hardy, for we've had an escape, and shouldn't put our heads into the same noose again. On the other hand, it would disarm suspicion for ever, if, after a few months, I asked her to spend ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... by giving them something of an orderly arrangement, I have conscientiously refrained from embellishing them with such small ornaments of diction as I may have felt myself able to bestow, which would not only have been impertinent, even if pleasing, but would have given me a somewhat closer relation to the work than I should care to have and ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... (History of English affairs), is written in good Latin, and has some of the same qualities as that of William of Malmesbury (q.v.). He rejects the legend of the Trojan descent of the early Britons, and animadverts severely on what he calls "the impudent and impertinent lies" of Geoffrey of Monmouth (q.v.). His record of contemporary ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... spacious Closet, stowed her within it, and then turned the Key. The Landlord and Theodore soon after appeared with lights: The Former expressed himself a little surprised at my returning so late, but asked no impertinent questions. He soon quitted the room, and left me to exult in the success ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... write down Captain Branscome's questions on paper, and divest them, as his gentle face and hesitating kindly manner divested them, of all offensiveness. I did not resent them at the time or consider then impertinent. But they were certainly close and minute, and I had reason before long to recall every detail of ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... of political guests was not of the quality they desired. The eminent politicians were either too busy or too scornful to accept their invitations. F. E. Robinson was impertinent to them until he heard that Mr. Balfour was interested in their proceedings ... had even asked to be introduced to Roger Carey ... and then he offered to address them on Young Toryism, but they told him that they did not now wish to hear ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... of the interview was that Borrow, after what appears to be a tactless, not to say impertinent, rejoinder, {50a} relapsed into silence and finally left the house, ordered back to his compilation by Sir Richard, as soon as he became sufficiently calm to appear coherent, and Borrow walked away musing on the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... later, as I was sleeping in a special bed one of the men then absent had made by a big rock some yards from the main camp, I was awakened by a wolf crunching bones by the fire not eight feet from my head. I wanted to shoot the impertinent wretch, but his form was indistinct and my rifle lying by my side had to be trained his way. This took some time, as I had to move cautiously, and in the midst of my effort my elbow slipped. Like a shadow he flitted ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... over the other, that his brown coat was perfect and his red waist-coat faultless. He practised his singing until his love-song was all he could wish it. He was wonderfully well satisfied with himself; but Jenny Wren's impertinent speeches would recur to his mind. The words fat and clumsy had especially annoyed him, and he never could altogether rid ...
— The Story of a Robin • Agnes S. Underwood
... was gazing at him with the deepest interest. "You have come to Algiers to find a woman," she murmured, "and I, to find a man. Do you—oh, don't think me impertinent—do you love ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... said I, "what for." I did not say this loud enough for the S. S. to hear me, but if I had, she would not have taken it for the reflection it meant. She seemed, the whole time, totally insensible to the numerous strange and, indeed, impertinent speeches which were made and to be very well satisfied that she was only manifesting a tenderness of disposition, that increased her beauty of countenance. At least, I can put no other construction upon her conduct which was, without exception, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... alive. He takes more pleasure in hunting bees than in expeditions with his dogs and gun; the king- birds destroy his bees—but, he adds, they drive the crows away. Ordinarily he could not persuade himself to shoot them. On one occasion, however, he fired at a more than commonly impertinent specimen, "and immediately opened his maw, from which I took 171 bees; I laid them all on a blanket in the sun, and to my great surprise fifty-four returned to life, licked themselves clean, and joyfully went back to the hive, where ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... From most men she would have considered the question impertinent, and would have resented it, but this frank faced boy meant no impertinence; he loved her in his honest way, and only wanted ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... country. Groningen is larger than Leeuwarden—it has nearly seventy thousand inhabitants—and its evening light seemed to me even more beautifully liquid. I sat for a long time in a cafe overlooking the great square, feeding a very greedy and impertinent terrier, and alternately watching an endless game of billiards and the changing hue of the sky as day turned to night and the clean white stars came out. In Holland one can sit very long in cafes: I had dined and ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... the French were compelled to give ground for a considerable distance. The glory which the French Army has won in this war would make it impertinent to labor the compelling nature of the poisonous discharges under which the trenches were lost. The French did, as every one knew they would do, all that stout soldiers could do, and the Canadian Division, officers and men, look forward to many occasions in the future in which ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... speak," continued the old gentleman bitterly; "I never was allowed to get a word in edgewise; I was shut up at once with some impertinent remark. They kept me on short allowance of pencils, when I wished to make notes of the most absorbing interest; the daily newspaper was guarded from me like a young baby from a gorilla. Now, you know me, Michael. I live for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been said that trains to the South would cease next day, the Geneva train was overfilled, and one had to be well satisfied to secure a seat at all. My travelling companions of the masculine gender were very unattractive: an impertinent and vulgar old Swiss who, as it was a cold night, and he had no travelling-rug, wrapped himself up in four or five of his dirty shirts—a most repulsive sight; a very precise young Frenchman who, without a vestige of feeling ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... factions—those who favored Ben Disraeli, and those who were opposed to him. The master cast his vote with the latter class, and the result was that Ben withdrew, thus saving the authorities the trouble of expelling him. His leave-taking was made melodramatic with a speech to the boys, wherein impertinent allusions were made concerning all schoolmasters, and the master of Walthamstow ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... historians are fond of dwelling. The pedant, on being presented to that imperious and accomplished sovereign, deported himself with the same ludicrous arrogance which had characterised him at the Hague. His Latin oration, which had been duly drawn up for him by the Chancellor of Sweden, was quite as impertinent as his harangue to the States-General had been, and was delivered with the same conceited air. The queen replied on the instant in the same tongue. She was somewhat in a passion, but ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with talk impertinent And idle fances he would fame a mirth, Yet is it easie seene somewhat is heere The which he dares not let his face ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... heeded the impertinent speech. He only saw in the stranger a man on whom he would like to bestow all the happiness that was triumphant in his soul. So full of love was he that he could not bear it alone. And he said: "I am no worm to be trodden under foot. I am that Son of Man ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... "The impertinent brute! Rosalind, he dared to look directly at me, and I am sure he would have winked at me in another instant! A gentleman!" she ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... in silence; then "Come," I said, "I am going to be impertinent! I am in a mood to ask questions, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Power of Sound, as it is called, was written and printed in 1697. As it was designed for music (it was set by Jeremiah Clarke), the closing lines of every strophe are repeated by way of chorus. I have removed these repetitions as impertinent to the effect of the poem in print, and as interrupting the rushing vehemency of the narrative. The incident described ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... and we should be able to show that each of the alleged consequences flows inevitably and logically from these established facts. Ignorance, hypothesis, assumption of facts, sophisms, begging the question, and the like, are wholly impertinent in any such discussion. Were they even tolerable in the field of metaphysical discussion, they must, by the rules of the Positive Philosophy itself, banishing all but ascertained facts from the halls of science, be excluded from this discussion of an alleged general ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... gentleman. I ask no confidences, my dear Eve, and now that I have made my explanations, lame though they be, I will kiss you and repair to the drawing-room, where we shall both be soon missed. Forgive me, if I have seemed impertinent in my interference, and continue to ascribe it to its ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... space. ... How curiously out of the world Bourcelles was, to be sure. Newspapers had no meaning any longer. Picture-papers and smart weekly Reviews, so necessary and important in St. James's Street, here seemed vulgar, almost impertinent—ridiculous even. Big books, yes; but not pert, topical comments issued with an absurd omnipotence upon things merely ephemeral. How the mind accumulated rubbish in a city! It seemed incredible. He surely had climbed a wall and dropped down into a world ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... decided bearing on any theory of heredity. Does the occurrence of near-by cases have no significance? We are not yet in a position to state this as a fact. Does inquiry concerning religion seem especially impertinent? What if some future investigation should prove that cancer everywhere, is more prevalent among the Christians than the Jews? Does the social condition of the sufferer seem to have no relation to cause? What if we discover, that everywhere,—and not among the foreign population of Chicago ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... produce a certificate to prove that the birth of the child occurred only seven months after the date of the ceremony, which she contends made her Cuthbert's wife. She rejects the abundant pecuniary provision which has been repeatedly offered, and in her last impertinent and insanely abusive communication, threatens a suit to force the acknowledgment of the marriage, and of the child, stating that you, sir, hold the certificate or rather the license warranting the marriage, and that you will espouse and aid in prosecuting her iniquitous claims. My son is ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... most impertinent proceeding," Aunt Anne replied curtly. "They will much prefer pounds, shillings, and pence to embraces," and Barbara thought that after all she ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... She was on her lover's arm, in her best clothes, and going out to have a dinner given to her. And her lover had told her that he had ever so many things,—ever so many things to say to her! But she would ask no impertinent questions in the first hour of her bliss. It was so pleasant to walk with him up to Pentonville;—so joyous to turn into a gay enclosure, half public-house and half tea-garden; so pleasant to hear him order the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... example of humour—provoking to smiles while touching to tears—with a wonderful introductory piling up of definitions: "A Poor Relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature,—a piece of impertinent correspondency,—a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity,—an unwelcome remembrancer," and so on. "This theme of poor relations is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... leave him to me," said the admiral; "I'll talk to him. Now, sir," he continued, turning to the boy sternly, "pray what did I say to make you start grinning like a confounded young monkey? I—I—I am not accustomed to be laughed at by impertinent boys." ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
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