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More "Polite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... continued Mr, Kennedy, "don't you think that it would have been a polite piece of attention on your part to have asked my permission before you addressed my daughter on such a ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... freshness that characterizes so much of Peele's best work breathes deliciously through the polite convention of the Descensus Astraeae, the 'Pageant, borne before M. William Web, Lord Maior of the Citie of London on the day he tooke his oath; beeing the 29. of October. 1591.' The conceit is graceful in itself, and significant of the sentiment of contemporary London. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... to me, elaborately polite, "kindly take Mr. Mugridge's arm and help him up on deck. He is not ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... Hardee's army to his rear moved back, and during this operation he was with a single aide in the woods, and was captured by two men of Kilpatrick's skirmish-line that was following up his retrograde movement. These men called on him to surrender, and ordered him, in language more forcible than polite, to turn and ride back. He first supposed these men to be of Hampton's cavalry, and threatened to report them to General Hampton for disrespectful language; but he was soon undeceived, and was conducted to Kilpatrick, who sent him back to ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... and looked away at the clergyman. When the text was given out, he found the place in his Bible, and handed it to her pointedly—"There shall be snares and traps unto you;" a line from Joshua. She received the act as a polite pawing civility; but when she was coming out of church, Robert saw that a blush swept over her face, and wondered what thoughts could be rising within her, unaware that girls catch certain meanings late, and suffer a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her in the little arbor, and made polite inquiries about the school where they had taught together, about Jane M'Gann's "beaux," the "cat," and the "house" where ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... listening to their conversation, watching them from under my eyelids while they thought I was asleep, and smelling them carefully, I could form a sufficiently just estimate of their characters to regulate my own conduct towards them. Though a polite dog both by birth and breeding, I was too honest and independent to show the same respect and cordiality towards those whom I liked and those whom I despised; and though very grateful for the smallest favours from persons I esteemed, ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... lifted from her eyes, and as their glance, frank and kindly, met his, he trembled. Then, with a polite ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... his strange host necessarily spoke a good deal while welcoming him and offering him the hospitalities of his abode, he was by no means communicative. On the contrary, it was evident that he was naturally reserved and reticent, and that although polite and gentle in the extreme, there was a quiet grave dignity about him which discouraged familiarity. It must not be supposed, however, that he was in any degree morosely silent. He was simply quiet and undemonstrative, ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... good-nature and subtle good sense soon combined to eliminate arbitrary distinctions. The Commandant won the first credit by starting a conversation; it was really the only thing to do. Had the Commandant and I been opposite each other we should probably have dined in polite silence. But the Corporal was one of those red-faced burly people with whom you have, if you are close to them, either ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... forgot to be afraid of me, and laughed and chattered among themselves, very little deterred by my presence, except for giving me a shy glance now and again. They were most polite and gentle with me, and would help me if they saw me lifting a heavy crock of milk, with a "By your leave, Miss Bawn," ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... you going, Ruth?" the miller demanded, sternly eyeing Tom Cameron, and without returning the lad's polite greeting. ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... She had no illusions about her French; it did very well in a shop or a restaurant, but it was apt to peeter out feebly in polite conversation. Certainly it was no vessel for voyaging in untried seas. There were simply loads of things, she thought discouragedly, the things she wanted most to ask, that she would not be ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... back, and knows that in his politeness he will bring me the plate, there comes a fear on me, my daughter, that he may see the ten pieces of gold and think I has stolen them. And then I knows not what I shall do, for the nobility and gentry, though quick and polite in a matter of obliging the poor, such as this one,—when they sits as poknees[C] to administer justice, loses both their good sense and their good manners as completely as ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... after polite inquiries as to the illness of Artois, took their leave with many salutations. Only Gaspare remained on the edge of the plateau staring at the sea. As Salvatore went to fetch the chair Artois ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... being naughty, the old grandfather told them the story of crackling Frost, and how kind words won kindness, and cross words cold treatment. And now, listen to Frost. Hear how he crackles away! And mind, if ever he asks you if you are warm, be as polite to him as you can. And to do that, the best way is to be good always, like little Martha. ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... think he is very polite," said Helen, after her escort had bade them good night, and was out of hearing. "He offered me his arm, and then, after we had walked a little way, suggested that we could get along more comfortably ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... as he began puffing away, he seemed to recollect himself, and drew out a cigar, which he offered with a polite ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... dislike to everything artificial, than to any want of affections. Two girls, educated, however, as had been Anneke and Mary Wallace, could not but acquit themselves better, in such a scene, than those who had been less accustomed to the usages of polite life, which are always more or less, the usages ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... when, the moment school was over, he saw the lad hurry to catch Marjorie, and the two then turn together toward the little stranger. Both thrust out their hands, and the little mountain girl, so unaccustomed to polite formalities, was quite helpless with embarrassment, so the teacher went over to help her out ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... up, stretched himself, yawned prodigiously, came a couple of steps nearer, and sat down again, with his head cocked to one side, and a polite air of ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... an odd match: Floretta, pale, polite, impractical and intensely romantic; Thad, florid, rough and to the point. Yet the married pair seemed to be happy together. Winslow went to sea on several voyages and, four years after the marriage, remained at home for what, ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... which Dorsey had not aspired. Crawford had doubtless introduced it as a refinement which would put to shame the humble efforts of his predecessor. One of the scholars was required to retire, and then to re-enter the room as a polite gentleman is supposed to enter a drawing-room. He was received at the door by another scholar and conducted from bench to bench until he had been introduced to all the young ladies and gentlemen in the room. Lincoln went through ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... "You're a deuced polite fellow, Wharton. But I'm not going to bore you. You'll be really interested in what I'm going to tell you; and especially will you be interested when you come to go through the museum by the light of the little history ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... when the southern Trades blew steadily, and the braces hung untouched upon their pins for a week on end. No, in the second dog-watch here, one took a solemn constitutional preparatory to dressing for dinner; and in the first night-watch one smoked and listened willy-nilly to polite small talk, and (from the ship's orchestra) the latest and most criminal products of New York's musical genius. I never heard or saw the process of relieving wheel or look-out aboard the Oronta, and ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the monarch, so polite, Asked Mr. Whitbread if he'd be a KNIGHT. Unwilling in the list to be enrolled, Whitbread contemplated the knights of Peg, Then to his generous sovereign made a leg, And said, "He was afraid he was too old. He thanked however his most gracious king, For ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... which to a superficial observer appear closely related to those of the Semitic or Hamitic languages, are ni, "I"; hi, "thou"; gu, "we"; zu, "you" in modern times, zu has become a polite form of "thou," and a true plural "you" (i.e. more than one) has been formed by suffixing the pluralizing sign k—zuek. The pronouns of the third person are mere demonstratives. There are three: hura or kura, "that"; hau or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... unknown poetess. As a part of the staple monotonous humor of the voyage, it had only disgusted him. With a feeling that he was unconsciously sharing the burlesque relief of the passengers, he said, with a polite attempt at interest, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... the notice of Kepenau, who at once recognised me, and steered his canoe for the bank. He and Ashatea stepped on shore, and seemed much pleased at seeing me. I introduced Reuben, who made as polite a bow to the Indian girl as he would have done to a princess. She put out her hand, and in her broken language inquired if he had a sister. On his replying that such was the case, Ashatea expressed a hope that she would become a friend to her, ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... has a way of assimilating what he sees, and hence speaks in something of the figurative and flowery style so common among the dark-skinned people of all oriental countries, for an Arabian robber will be as polite as a French dandy, and apologize for being compelled ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... to inquire politely as to my health, for the moment dropped his own language, and in good English said, "Does your mother know you're out?" I found out afterwards that a roguish fur-trader had taught him the expression, as a very polite one to ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... understanding; Nature unkindly frustrated that ambition in rendering her a model of feminine grace. Graham was intimately acquainted with Colonel Morley; and with Mrs. Morley had contracted one of those cordial friendships, which, perfectly free alike from polite flirtation and Platonic attachment, do sometimes spring up between persons of opposite sexes without the slightest danger of changing their honest character into morbid sentimentality or unlawful passion. The Morleys stopped to accost ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... smelling salute as well as possible under the circumstances, encouraged the poor creature to come ashore, warned off the other dogs, and trotted by the wanderer's side for miles down the beach until they disappeared around the point. What reward Pichou got for this polite escort, I do not know. But I saw him do the gallant deed; and I suppose this was the origin of the well-known and much-resisted Law of ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... author can only give out what is in him. If I write of wretched and strange things, it is because these move me most. Happiness needs no understanding; but these darker things—they are kept too much from sensitive eyes and polite ears; and so are too harshly judged upon the world's report. I am no reformer; I have never 'studied' people; and I have no 'purpose,' unless it ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... he said. "People don't take to me don't like my ways, I suppose: I thought I was as polite as a man could be. But if you keep on whittling you're sure to get through the stick: whether it take a long time or a short time, PFB, my friend, depends upon the blade. Now, is your blade a sharp one, or will it only cut cheese if you put ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... little qualmish, therefore pray excuse her. She is a well-meaning jade, and if it was not for the wild treatment she received last night would, I have no doubt, have given you a very polite invitation, but I fear, Johnny, nothing will move you. Your heart is as hard as an overseer's. I dined at Elton's two days ago. We talked about you, wondered if you would come, feared not, regretted it, and the loss of the fine weather, and the fine scenery, ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... a means of being alone with the Reverend Mother, and this is what I planned. I told Marie, that, as we were to have the great privilege of seeing her, we must be very good and polite, and tell her our little secrets, and in order to do that, we must go out of the room in turns. Though she did not quite like it, because she had no secrets to confide, Marie took me at my word, and so I was able to be alone with you, ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... Chateau-Renard's two supporters were both polite men of the world. They were as indifferent as Louis was to the choice of weapons, and by a spin of a coin it was decided that pistols were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... acquaintances likely to be useful in my future career. I wasted my energies in numberless frivolous pursuits, and in the short-lived love intrigues that are the disgrace of salons in Paris, where every one seeks for love, grows blase in the pursuit, falls into the libertinism sanctioned by polite society, and ends by feeling as much astonished at real passion as the world is over a heroic action. I did as others did. Often I dealt to generous and candid souls the deadly wound from which I ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... nation,—are entitled to a much higher place than they have yet assumed. We believe in this "good time coming," for working men and women,—when an atmosphere of intelligence shall pervade them—when they will prove themselves as enlightened, polite, and independent as the other classes of society; and, as the first and surest step towards this consummation, we counsel them to PROVIDE—to provide for the future as well as for the present—to provide, in times of youth and plenty, against the times of adversity, misfortune, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... be soil, than any durable material.—The monks still remain, and although the decree has passed for their suppression, they cannot suppose it will take place. They are mostly old men, and, though I am no friend to these institutions, they were so polite and hospitable that I could not help wishing they were permitted, according to the design of the first Assembly, to die in their habitations— especially as the situation of St. Eloy renders the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... position. Previous to leaving Edinburgh he was entertained at a public dinner, attended by men of letters and other leading individuals. The drudgery of newspaper life has left Mr Hedderwick little leisure for contributions to polite literature. While in Edinburgh, however, he wrote one number of "Wilson's Tales of the Border," and has since contributed occasionally to other works. In 1844 he published a small collection of poems, but in too costly a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the class offended him. She received a polite note, signed with a neat butterfly, requesting her not to attend further. "It was worth being expelled to get the note," she said. ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... dident care for the dishes and asked him if he was hurt and said it was my falt and she told me i had aught to be ashamed and I hadent aught to have company if i dident know how to treet them. she dident send me to bed becaus she had to be polite to Beany and Nipper and so i was all rite, after supper we played domminoes til the nine oh clock bell rang and then Beany and Nipper ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... SERVANT). Be polite to my friend; escort this lady. She has a mind to see my prison-chamber—take care that none approach to incommode her. The night air is blowing somewhat keenly, the storm which rives the house of Doria may, perchance, ruffle ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... oath and making his mark. The presence of these adventurers, many of them entirely ignorant of the sea, would not be exactly an encouragement to the ordinary seaman. It is here very likely that the influence of the Pinzon family was usefully applied. I call it influence, since that is a polite term which covers the application of force in varying degrees; and it was an awkward thing for a Palos sailor to offend the Pinzons, who owned and controlled so much of the shipping in the port. Little by little the preparations ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Have you ever sat on the edge of the bed in the morning with your elbows on your knees, your head buried in your hands, and wondered if there was anything you overlooked the night before that would have made you feel worse? Among the more polite, this feeling is spoken of as the realization of indiscretion in diet; but we plain people call it old Colonel R. E. Morse. There are lots of things that will give you a Colonel, but a R—R—S— is the only thing that ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... had been keeping an ear on all that I had been saying, praised me when the lady had gone. Nothing, she said, could have been more polite according to Erewhonian etiquette. She then explained that to have stolen a pair of socks, or "to have the socks" (in more colloquial language), was a recognised way of saying that the person in question was ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... him to that class by whom he lives, and who constitute the great mass of humanity, from whose toil and labor originate the happiness of his order. When in conversation, the natural animation of his lordship's countenance was checked, not only by a polite and complacent sense of what was due to those with whom he spoke, and a sincere anxiety to put them at their ease, but evidently by an expression that seemed the exponent of some undivulged and corroding sorrow. We may add, that he was affectionate, generous, indolent; ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... in the meantime, has been gradually coming back to life, through a curious series of transitions. The Vendramin monument is one of the last which shows, or pretends to show, the recumbent figure laid in death. A few years later, this idea became disagreeable to polite minds; and, lo! the figures which before had been laid at rest upon the tomb pillow, raised themselves on their elbows, and began to look round them. The soul of the sixteenth century dared not contemplate its body ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... politeness," said Phil Kennedy. "She can be taught to be polite. If you had looked at her, you would have ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... not like it that his word should not have as much weight with his little cousin as any other person's, after her father and mother. Like other boys, and men, for the most part, he was fond of having his own way even in little things; though he sought it in a polite fashion. And Daisy was very fond of him, and always followed his lead; but now he could not move her. He went off at a bound, and soon was out upon the water, with the girls and Alexander and Ransom also who ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... very polite to them only, because he was a civil servant of his Government; but after a bit they became so friendly that he loved them even better than himself, and went to tea with the rabbit in its hole, and climbed the tree to share a nut-breakfast with ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... at the restraint, "I don't see why they shouldn't be polite to us. We were just as polite as could be when the ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... faiths and instincts, shaking off all rule, ignorant of all conventionalities, only bent, amidst difficulties, and obstacles, and delays, on steadily working towards one fixed and well-defined end—surely, tried by any of the received laws of polite society, concerning correct, well-educated young ladies of thirteen, she would be found sadly wanting. Shall we blame her? or shall we not rather, with a kindly compassion, try for a while to understand from what point of view she had learnt to look at life, and to arrive at ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... life rendered him somewhat uncertain at times in the discharge of his duties as sexton of Christ Church, he never failed to disarm criticism by his plausible and polite excuses. In his day the bell rope was operated from the vestibule of the church, and Joe Tom, arrayed in Sunday finery, was a familiar figure to church-goers, as he stood in the church porch tolling the bell with measured stroke, and inclining his woolly head ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... faintly smiled, wishing I knew what feeling prompted this subtle attempt to learn the nature of the interview which had just passed. "Mr. Guy Pollard has never been any thing but polite to me." ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... then, though Von Ullrich masked it in polite words, was a story of piracy, until they found by degrees that there was more gold on the bottom of the ocean than the top; and from this to the discovery of the sunken empire where he now held reign ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... Silas Peckham had some contrivance for packing his Committees, whether they happened always to be made up of optimists by nature, whether they were cajoled into good-humor by polite attentions, or whether they were always really delighted with the wonderful acquirements of the pupils and the admirable order of the school, it is certain that their Annual Reports were couched in language which might warm the heart of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... polite," reproved Meg quickly. "You must be glad to see company whether they bring you things ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley
... these girls had the least desire to have a husband with a blue beard, and also, not knowing the fate of the other wives, they did not like to risk disappearing from the world as those had done, but being very polite young women they would not refuse Bluebeard's proposals outright. The younger said, "I would not for a moment take away Sister Anne's chance of marrying such a wealthy man," while Sister Anne declared that, although the elder, she would much prefer to give way to her ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... to her hotel unreasonably comforted. "What a nice voice that boy had, and how polite he was. I know Emil was always like that to women." And again, after she had undressed and was standing in her nightgown, brushing her long, heavy hair by the electric light, she remembered him and said to herself, "I don't think I ever heard a nicer voice than that boy had. I hope ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... small elevations just above the level of the eyes is very common; there are however, various other devices on the cheeks and the lobes of the ears are sometimes pierced for the insertion of a ring of ivory nearly as large as a serviette ring. The natives are very polite, every single one giving a salute so that at the end of a long village one's arm aches with returning it. Chicken and eggs can be bought here for cloth at about the price one pays in an expensive shop in London. Some of the ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... followed. But to write that polite letter, which said nothing, cost Gratian a sleepless night, and two or three hours' penmanship. She was very conscientious. Knowledge of this impending visit increased the anxiety with which she watched her sister, but the only inkling she obtained of Noel's state of mind was when the girl ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fireplace, that he might watch Madame de Vaudremont with the jealous anxiety of the first flame of passion, from behind the heads which formed a sort of rampart; a secret voice seemed to warn him that the success on which he prided himself might perhaps be precarious. But the coldly polite smile with which the Countess thanked Monsieur de Soulanges, and her little bow of dismissal as she sat down by Madame de Gondreville, relaxed the muscles of his face which jealousy had made rigid. Seeing Soulanges, however, still standing quite ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... looked about her for the guest of honor. It transpired that the affair was quite informal, after all. The Englishwoman was sitting in a tea-tent discoursing with a number of gentlemen who hung over her with polite attentions. They were well-known bachelors of advanced ideas—men with honorary titles and personal ambitions. The great suffragist was very much at home with them. Her deep, musical voice resounded ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... mustache, dark hair, and laughing black eyes, and the whitest of white hands. When he helped me off the car he held my hand so tightly and so long that I felt terribly embarrassed and did not know what to do or say. But, oh! he was so polite! I dropped my eyes and never looked at him as I stepped off. How I ever got into the other car I never knew. A moment later the other conductor came around for my fare, and then—oh, horrors! I could not find my pocket-book. I searched frantically in every pocket. 'I—I must have lost ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... a year to do the joint duties, and I hardly think the man was worth the money. He subsequently obtained a Government living and was in the habit of asking his congregation, as they went into church, whether they wanted a sermon or not. The general concensus of opinion was a polite negative—to the relief of ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... less stifling than before; but unluckily there was nothing worth seeing. The district is certainly a garden, but then it is a flat uninteresting kitchen garden, for the supply of the Lunel brandy merchants, and the rich Nismes manufacturers, who appear too polite in their tastes to venture into it. Hardly a single thing that can be called a gentleman's house occurs, and that not for want of culture or opulence. The case seems to be this; the people of Nismes, like the Bordelais, are proud of their elegant ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... dream a visitor came to our home and stayed for dinner. Then instead of going home, the visitor stayed all night. Then the visitor stayed two or three days. Then two or three months. Then two or three years. We were surprised but were too polite to say anything. ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... But a variety of important occurrences, continually interposing to distract the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologize for the delay, and plead my excuse for the seeming but not real neglect. I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me, in the elegant lines you enclosed; and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetical talents; in honor of which, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... a bond of intellectual brotherhood, I say to people just what I think is likely to please them. In the society of fashionable people I am utterly lost. I get into a muddle and flounder about, losing the thread of my ideas in some tissue of absurdity. With an inveterate habit of being over polite, as priests generally are, I am too anxious to detect what the person I am talking with would like said to him. My attention, when I am conversing with any one, is engrossed in trying to guess at his ideas, and, from excess of deference, to anticipate him in the expression ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... but when they ask me what you are doing, as they all did in London this time, and I reply that you can't get a job, there is generally a polite little silence. No one believes it. I ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spectacular, too violent?" she wondered, returning her gaze to Peter, with an air of polite readiness to defer to his opinion. "Not too much like a decor ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... his face and assented with a polite bob. Perhaps she was the daughter of an elder. Quite nice people were taking ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... let him," was Dick's polite answer. Fred could have knocked him down with the greatest satisfaction, but in the first place he was out of reach, in the second, the young ladies were present, in the third he was a little boy, and a stupid one, and Fred had temper enough left to see that there would be nothing gained by quarrelling ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... features were naturally harsh and severe; and when he attempted to smile, in polite acquiescence to the truth of what the King told him, the grimace which he ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Samuel Quirk regarded her as chief critic and adviser on the estate, and to Kathleen she was a cheerful, madcap companion, who reminded her that she was yet young. Denis Quirk's sentiments in regard to the girl he carefully concealed from the outside world, even from Sylvia herself. He was polite and deferential, yet humorous, with her; but she would have liked him to demonstrate clearly that he had enrolled himself among her bodyguard. She had given him abundant opportunities so to do, walking almost ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... beloved Fatherland. I wonder what Frederick the Great would have thought of these boastful warriors. We English are looked upon with horror as the brutal barbarians who use dum dum bullets, and Sir Edward Grey's dignified disclaimer is reported under the polite heading "Grey leugnet" ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... Misses Mills of Saxham Hall, where he was taken to dinner by Dr Hake, who states that "long afterwards, his inquiries after the black eyes were unfailing." {360b} He was also very kind and considerate to women. "He was very polite and gentlemanly in ladies' society, and we all liked him," wrote one woman friend {360c} who frequently accompanied him on his walks. She has described him as walking along "singing to himself or quite silent, quite forgetting me until he came to a high hill, when he would turn round, seize ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... onomatopoeia; betacism[obs3], mimmation, myatism[obs3], nunnation[obs3]; pasigraphy[obs3]. lexicology, philology, glossology[obs3], glottology[obs3]; linguistics, chrestomathy[obs3]; paleology[obs3], paleography; comparative grammar. literature, letters, polite literature, belles lettres[Fr], muses, humanities, literae humaniores[Lat], republic of letters, dead languages, classics; genius of language; scholarship &c. (scholar) 492. V. express by words &c. 566. Adj. lingual, linguistic; dialectic; vernacular, current; bilingual; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the lovely Surrey scenery. A carriage was waiting for the travelers when they reached their destination—a carriage drawn by a pair of spirited grays. Nora thought of Black Bess, and secretly compared the grays to the disadvantage of the latter. But she was determined to be as sweet and polite and English as her mother would desire. For the first time in her whole existence she was feeling a little shy. She would have been thoroughly at home on a dog cart, or on her favorite outside car, or on the back of Black Bess, who would have carried her swift as the wind; ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... governments, the centralizing of small and dependent communities around the feet of petty tyrants, the frequency of wars large and small, and the devotion of men to skill in the use of arms, made it impossible that attention should be bestowed upon so polite and sedentary a form of amusement as ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... blew out behind and her ribbons flew like blue butterflies all about her hat. She forgot to hold down the brim, as polite little girls did who knew how to wear their Sunday clothes. She, too, held three small packages in her lap. For days, ever since Peter Junior and Richard Kildene had taken tea with them in their new uniforms, ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... who opened the door could not tell me—she did not know. At my request she went for her mistress. The lady of the house came down to me, a tall slender woman, indifferent, but well-bred enough to be polite. She had taken the house from the Bruntons, she said. It was too large for them after their daughter's marriage. It was dusk, and she could not see my face, but she heard my startled exclamation—'Married? To whom?' To a Mr. Turold—a very suitable match. They had ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... regarded me with something like dismay when they saw me, but were polite enough to make no remark beyond giving me permission to wear my hat if ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... saw in person, a very pompous gentleman with manners the reverse of polite. He could scarcely contain his outraged feelings when it came to the question of the solicitor. "I can have no connection with such a case," he said firmly, and I again retired, ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... bureau-drawer would see the little book she received from "her friend Lawrence Newt" treasured like a priceless pearl, with a pressed rose laid upon the leaf where her name and his are written—a rose which Lawrence Newt playfully stole one evening from one of the ceremonious bouquets pining under its polite reception, and said gayly, as he took leave, "Let this keep my memory fragrant till ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... strange that the daughter of the house should be so free with the stranger. But the young people were distant cousins, and it wouldn't have been polite in him to have objected to ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... this was queer! I'll go right back to that store, and sit down on the piano stool. If Horace Clifford can't be more polite! Well, I ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... exceedingly beautiful place, for all its naughty name. It is somewhat like the Dargle, but more wild and romantic. It also has its rugged hills, its stream, and its waterfall—or its mountains, river, and cataract; as, being in a foreign country, I suppose we should be polite enough to call them, instead of letting ourselves be carried away by conceit in our Mississippis and Niagaras, and being "stuck up" on our ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... seemed a strong probability of their being compelled to "camp out" on the portico. But it was not in Benson "to give it up so." He possessed, as we have already hinted, that faculty so alarmingly common in his country, which polite people call oratory, and vulgar ones the "gift of the gab;" and he was not the man to throw away the opportunity of turning any of his gifts to account. Warming with his subject, he poured out upon the gorgeously-attired Mr. Black such a flood of conciliatory and expostulatory eloquence, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... I know very well what you mean. His Majesty is kind and polite to everybody. The last thing he said to me was, 'Angelique! do not forget to compliment Monseigneur the bishop on the dignity I have conferred upon him, of almoner to the dauphiness. I desired the appointment for him only that he might be ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... through his thick curls. But he was still mute; he was still ruefully chewing the cud of the epithet green. What occult horrid meaning did the word convey to ears polite? Why should he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... leave all these attractions to a later visit, since we had come to Castleton to see the largest cavern of all, locally named the "Devil's Hole," but by polite visitors the "Peak Cavern." The approach to the cavern was very imposing and impressive, perpendicular rocks rising on both sides to a great height, while Peveril Castle stood on the top of the precipice before us like a sentinel guarding ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... who had lately been brought to court; a prince who afterwards became memorable, but who was now attacked with a twofold accusation, as the iniquity of his enemies thought requisite. First, that he had gone from the Park of Macellum, which lies in Cappadocia, into Asia, from a desire of acquiring polite learning. Secondly, that he had seen his brother ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... him. He found powerful enemies. Doubtless ridicule also met his projects. To plough the bottom of the Atlantic, in search of a ship that had gone down fifty years before, certainly seemed to yield fair food for mirth. Yet the polite behavior, the plausible speech, the enthusiasm and energy of the man had their effect. He won friends among the higher nobility. The story of the mutiny and of its bold suppression had also its effect. A man who ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... want to know how I succeeded. Well, at first only moderately; but I think I had some tact in adapting myself to the different classes of persons with whom I came in contact; at any rate, I was always polite, and that helped me. So my sales increased, and I did a good thing for my employer as well as myself. He would have been glad to employ me for a series of years, but I happened to meet a traveling salesman of a New York wholesale house, who offered to obtain ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... said Arthur. "Sorry we weren't at home when you called on us, and thought we'd do the polite and look you up. That makes us square, ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... all went over to Stafford House, and the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland went with us into Lord Ellesmere's collection adjoining. Lord Ellesmere sails for America to-day, to be present at the opening of the Crystal Palace. He left us a very polite message. The Duchess of Argyle, with her two little boys, was there also. Lord Carlisle very soon came in, and with him—who do you think? Tell Hattie and Eliza if they could have seen the noble staghound that came bounding in with him, they would have turned ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... about to enter a Bluebeard's castle, but deeming it polite to take no notice of the uproar, she tried to appear unheeding though the shrieks increased in violence as they came up to the house and the carriage stopped at ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... journeys must come to an end, and we reached the frontier in the small hours of the morning. Here we found the customs officials ready to render us any service we might require. Leroux had not failed to order the fresh relay of horses, and whilst these were being put to, the polite officers of the station gave Madame and myself some excellent coffee. Beyond the formal: "Madame has nothing to declare for His Majesty's customs?" and my companion's equally formal: "Nothing, Monsieur, except my personal belongings," they did not ply us with questions, ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... which consists of a few other mansions of similar elegance, the Seminary buildings looked rather dismal, though they are better than the old barracks in which the students of Yale and Harvard reside. Thirty cheerful and athletic young gentlemen, and half a dozen polite and learned professors, constitute at present the theological family. The room in which Mr. Beecher lived is still about fifteen feet by ten, but it does not present the bare and forlorn appearance it did when he inhabited ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... grand corridors—all lined with ornamental tin—and under stately tin archways and through the many tin rooms all set with beautiful tin furniture, his eyes had grown bigger than ever and his whole little body thrilled with amazement. But, astonished though he was, he was able to make a polite bow before the throne and to say in a respectful voice: "I salute your Illustrious Majesty and offer ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... dressed for the part with all the care of an exquisite. He rode a noble roan, in his Spanish belt were stuck silver-hafted pistols, and a long sword swung at his side. When I presented Grey to him, he became at once the cavalier, as precise in his speech and polite in his deportment as any Whitehall courtier. They talked high and disposedly of genteel matters, and you would have thought that that red-haired pirate had lived his life among proud lords and high-heeled ladies. That is ever the ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... me; and this fact improved his chances with me. I went to the custom-house, and transacted my business there. As I came out with the mate, I met Mr. Cornwood at the door. I introduced Washburn to him; and the Floridian was as polite ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... the slim figure, and delicate features of Mr. De Royster, and thought that he would hardly be strong enough for the rough life on the plains. But he was too polite to mention this. ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster
... the courts of law a sad sight is, that probably in no scene in human affairs are disappointment and success set in so sharp contrast—brought so close together. There, on the bench, dignified, keen, always kind and polite (for the days of bullying have gone by), sits the Chief Justice—a peer (if he pleases to be one)—a great, distinguished, successful man; his kindred all proud of him. And there, only a few yards off, sharp-featured, desponding, soured, sits poor Mr. Briefless, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... property has before ascended the spout, when some unprincipled student, at the beginning of the season, picked his pocket of a big silver lancet-case, which he had brought up with him from the country; and having, pledged it at the nearest money-lender's, sent him the duplicate in a polite note, and spent the money with some other dishonest young men, in drinking their victim's health in his absence. And, by the way, it is a general rule that most new men delight to carry big lancet-cases, although they have about as much use for them as a lecturer upon practice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... called me a jackass, in fact. I woon allow that. I 'ad to 'epoove 'im. 'Doctah Seveeah,' says I, 'don't you call me a jackass ag'in!' An' 'e din call it me ag'in. No, seh. But 'e din like to 'ush up. Thass the rizz'n 'e was a lil miscutteous to you. Me, I am always polite. As they say, 'A nod is juz as good as a kick f'om a bline hoss.' You are fon' of maxim, Mistoo Itchlin? Me, I'm ve'y fon' of them. But they's got one maxim what you may 'ave 'eard—I do not fine that maxim always come t'ue. 'Ave you evva yeah that maxim, 'A ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... described by him as "stickers." All gentlemen wearing high hats also belong to this classification. Deaf customers are embarrassing, for the reason that one always addresses one's next customer as though he were deaf, too. Foreigners are invariably very polite to clerks. They bow when they enter and take off their hats upon leaving. Very respectful people. "There," said a fellow thrall, "come two old women in at the door. Now, if I were my ancestor, I'd dance around that table ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... was gone, the brief adieu leaving each of them to wonder how much more was meant than the polite ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... ring at the bell at length allayed her fears, and Miss Benton, hurrying into her own room and shutting herself up, in order that she might preserve that appearance of being taken by surprise which is so essential to the polite reception of visitors, awaited their coming with ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... you up to be polite, Elizabeth," she said. "Things do sometimes happen that are very trying, to be sure, but we should not give way to irritation. Why, where should I have been if I had? Think how it would have distressed your dear mother to have you ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... out, Tommy Raynard after him. Peter stood back to let Julie pass, and as she did so she said: "You're very glum and very polite to-night, Solomon. What's ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... too-indulgent grandmother had placed him, he ransacked the desks of his school-fellows, and avenged a birching by emptying his master's pockets. Wherefore he lost the hope of a polite education, and instead of proceeding with a clerkly dignity to King's College, in the University of Cambridge, he was ignominiously apprenticed to a breeches-maker. The one restraint was as irksome as the other, and Harry Simms abandoned ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... seat near the entrance door, and you watch the arrival of the couples, and also watch them as they cross the room and go to the table that is assigned to them by the head waiter. Now, in Europe, you would find a very polite head waiter, who invites you to go in, and asks you where you will sit; but in America the head waiter is a most magnificent potentate who lies in wait for you at the door, and bids you to follow him sometimes in the following ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... he said, "and there are a dozen women in town at least of your connections who'd do the polite things by you. As to inclination—well, ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in such polite society," said Eve, with a mocking courtesy, skipping toward the door. "I may take a notion to write a little note to Mr. Rex, inviting him over here to see our household fairy, just as the spirit ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... at Port Royal a few days before the Enterprise, and the admiral was very much astonished. He returned a very polite answer to Don Alfarez, promising an investigation immediately upon the arrival of the schooner, and to send a vessel with the result of the ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... at this table—that polite, unctuous man I saw talking to you. Listen. I have rescued Miss Challoner from Stapleton and her accomplices. We are going to leave Paris for London in less than half an hour; it's not safe for Miss Challoner to stay here longer. And you must travel with us. It is imperative that you should. I ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... not your aunt. Why, even her sister, who was married to your uncle, was only your aunt by courtesy." I could not help feeling that Rupert meant to be rude to my father, though his words were quite polite. If I had been as much bigger than him as he was than me, I should have flown at him; but he was a very big boy for his age. I am myself rather thin. Mother says thinness is ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... bauble at once, and was about to hand it to the bride with polite gallantry. "She may wear it forever, for the matter of that, if she likes," he said, good-humoredly. "I make ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... slight, and very thin. There was a certain affectation of polite address in his manner and mien which did not quite become him; and though he was received by the old wits with great cordiality, and on a footing of perfect equality, yet the inexpressible air which denotes birth was both pretended to and wanting. This, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... politeness as I could express. He received me very honourably, offering me every service in his power, in the most obliging manner; saying, that he was ordered by the king of Poland to treat me in every thing as well as possible; on which I thanked him for his polite attentions, and endeavoured to recommend myself to his friendship. From him I was informed that he was in daily expectation of the arrival of an ambassador from Lithuania, going with presents to the prince of the Tartars, who was to have an escort ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... visit from a polite interviewer, shopping, driving, calling, arranging about the people to be invited to our reception, and an agreeable dinner at Chelsea with my American friend, Mrs. Merritt, filled up this day full enough, and left us ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... therefore, as you will perceive, no danger of anything interfering with the auspicious event. My dear friend, let us ring the church bells and sing a Te Deum; and the Chancellor shall write a speech concerning the constant and peculiar favour of God toward my family, and the polite piety with which we have always requited His attentions. For just now all is well. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... civilly, and said he had been ordered to leave the birds with Miss Montgomery. Ellen, in surprise, took them from him, and likewise a note which he delivered into her hand. Ellen asked from whom the birds came, but with another polite bow the man said the note would inform her, and went away. In great curiosity she carried them and the note to her mother, to whom the letter ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... an old saying that "you must summer and winter" a man before you know him. Mr. Parasyte was considered a tyrant; not a coarse and brutal tyrant, but a refined and gentlemanly one, who cows you by his polite impertinence. He seldom indulged in harsh speech, never in personal violence—at least no instance of it was known to the students. He indulged in sneers and polished browbeating. A boy was never stupid—he lacked common intelligence; never a blockhead—his perceptions ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... here. We go to the commissaire at headquarters," said the polite politzei. It was then that we cut loose, told him to bring the commissaire or the burgomaster to us, and started to walk off. It was a bad move. So far he had handled us with a velvet grip, but at the first sign of insurrection he showed his teeth, locked arms with each ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... of Kepenau, who at once recognised me, and steered his canoe for the bank. He and Ashatea stepped on shore, and seemed much pleased at seeing me. I introduced Reuben, who made as polite a bow to the Indian girl as he would have done to a princess. She put out her hand, and in her broken language inquired if he had a sister. On his replying that such was the case, Ashatea expressed a hope that she would become a friend to her, ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... pallidly and took the proffered accommodation. Patoux again meditated. He was not skilled in the art of polite conversation, and he found himself singularly ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... man in a cave before a furnace, burning lime, and he sat looking into the fire with his back to the moonlight. He was a quiet moody man, and I am afraid I bored him, for I could get hardly anything out of him but "Oh altro"—polite but not communicative. So after a while I left him with his face burnished as with gold from the fire, and his back silver with the moonbeams; behind him were the pastures and the reflections in the lake and the mountains and the distant ringing ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... speed the hour already fixed When, mid the bathers (freely mixed), In a polite costume I mean to plunge beneath the spray And, washing from a soul at play The City's stain—three times a day— Restore ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... enemies—that a request of an inquiry into the expenditure of the civil list should be refused, is to me most extraordinary. Does the King of England want to build a palace equal to his rank and dignity? Does he want to encourage the polite and useful arts? Does he mean to reward the hardy veteran who has defended his quarrel in many a rough campaign, whose salary does not equal that of some of your servants? Or does he mean, by drawing the purse-strings of his subjects, to spread ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... at the little girl, who had curls precisely like yours, and the same little nose and mouth. And that little girl, who is now your mother, said very simply: 'Won't you come home to luncheon with us? May he, mother? He has run a very long way to be polite to us.' ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... into the currency of a whole neighborhood. We picked up two such the other day, both of the same coinage. The county-jail (the only stone building where all the dwellings were of wood) was described as "the house whose underpinning comes up to the eaves"; while the place unmentionable to ears polite was "where they don't rake up the fires at night." A man, speaking to us once of a very rocky clearing, said, "Stone's got a pretty heavy mortgage on that farm"; and another, wishing to give us a notion of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... than the champagne, and made even Maitland laugh. He recounted little philanthropic misadventures of his own—cases in which he had been humorously misled by the Captain Wraggs of this world, or beguiled by the authors of that polite correspondence—begging letters. ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... and very polite; but it appeared at once that he was not willing to permit the escape of the platoon, good-looking and well-dressed as were the officer and the men. He could not help observing the contrast between the Riverlawns and the Confederate company near them. Captain Gordon, who had been the principal ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... have been standing there upon the old-gold sand, with only one eye doing duty and an unspeakable agony in the other eye, than be that herring-gull in the condition he was then, going back to the bosom of his tribe. It is not a thing to dwell upon in polite society, but I tell you that the gull-folk do not always treat their wounded well, and there would be no chance, no earthly chance at all, of his finding a place in all that vast horizon of sea and sky and island where they, the ceaseless, never-resting "White Patrol," ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... my property, and were plundered from me by the nation. He had, indeed, paid their full value. In a fortnight after I had quitted him, these, with six other pictures, were deposited in my room, with a very polite note, begging my acceptance of them, and assuring me that he had but the day before heard from his picture dealer that they had belonged to me. He added that he would never retake them, unless he received an ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... he said addressing them in his most polite manner, "to observe me very closely. I am about to give you a few further examples of what intense mental concentration can do, thus proving to you to what an unlimited extent mind can gain dominion over matter. You all know that will-power can overcome ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... the supreme command was, by the concession of Agrippa, resigned to his colleague, an arrangement most salutary in the conduct of matters of great importance; and he who was preferred made a polite return for the ready condescension of the other, who thus lowered himself, by making him his confidant in all his plans and sharing with him his honours, and by putting him on an equality with him although he was by no means as capable. ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... if he was rude to the fisherman he should certainly lose all chance of getting a supper, he became more polite, and ended by saying,— ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... others seized a mouthful, and ran away to eat it in a corner. The chicks got into the pan entirely, and tumbled one over the other in their hurry to eat; but the mammas saw that none went hungry. And the polite cock waited upon them in the most gentlemanly manner, making queer little clucks and gurgles as ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... to Tusker; for elephants are polite to each other, even though, in the jungle, they sometimes may be a bit rough toward lions and tigers, of ...
— Umboo, the Elephant • Howard R. Garis
... you,' said Urashima with a polite bow, which pleased the tortoise greatly; 'but I am only a man, you know, and cannot swim a long way under the ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... what in good vernacular English would be called "the teaching of handicrafts." And probably, at this stage of our progress, it may occur to many of you to think of the story of the cobbler and his last, and to say to yourselves, though you will be too polite to put the question openly to me, What does the speaker know practically about this matter? What is his handicraft? I think the question is a very proper one, and unless I were prepared to answer it, I hope satisfactorily, I should have chosen some ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... must be polite And do what others say is right, And think men wise and formidable— At least as ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... of polite surprise, but said nothing. Instinct warned him to be sparing of words lest he should ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... cadger, la Palferine and Malaga, Massol, Vauvinet, and Theodore Gaillard, a proprietor of one of the most important political newspapers, completed the party. The Duc d'Herouville, polite to everybody, as a fine gentleman knows how to be, greeted the Comte de la Palferine with the particular nod which, while it does not imply either esteem or intimacy, conveys to all the world, "We are of the same race, the same blood—equals!"—And this greeting, the shibboleth ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... care if it be true: he is noble, gallant, polite, rich, and all-powerful at Court. He is reported to be prime favorite of the Marquise de Pompadour. What more do I want?" replied ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and the Swedes. These three branches of the same family have much in common, though for many years they objected to being thus rudely shaken together into one ethnic measure. The Swede is the aristocrat, the Norwegian the democrat, the Dane the conservative. The Swede, polite, vivacious, fond of music and literature, is "the Frenchman of the North," the Norwegian is a serious viking in modern dress: the Dane remains a landsman, devoted to his fields, and he is more amenable than his northern kinsmen to the ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... and the little clocks instantly made a circle around Caddy, and each bent one knee and slid back one little brass foot in the most polite courtesy to Caddy. One of the oldest of the little clocks then hopped off to a tiny wire harp that stood in a corner, and began to play a sweet lively waltz with her queer brass fingers. The rest of ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... professor. It is a liberality which shines more brightly, as reflected by one, whose religious education was drawn solely from the pure fountain of truth—the holy oracles; and however unlettered he was, as to polite literature or the learned languages, his Christian liberality can no more be enlightened by the niggard spirit of learned sectarians, than the sun could be illuminated by a rush-light. The inquiry was then, as, alas, it is too frequent now, Are there many that be saved? ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... is not challenged by a fool, humble in his attitude to God if not to a foolish world, and, albeit with the awkwardness inevitable in one who lives so habitually with his own thoughts and his own silence, anxious to be polite. ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... miller's thumbs, those quaint big-headed beasts which divide with the sticklebacks the polite attentions of ingenious British youth, are also nest-builders, and the male fish are said to anxiously watch and protect their offspring during their undisciplined nonage. Equally domestic are the habits of those queer shapeless creatures, the marine lump-suckers, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Harry Desmond a paper with something written on it, in pencil, which the latter read. After running his eyes over it, the captain nodded his head, and the lieutenant quitted the cabin. While he was absent, my companion, in a polite manner, gave me the particulars of the combat I had witnessed, going so far as to direct my attention to a paper he had brought on board, to show to Captain Rowley, and which contained the English official ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... indeed, I know not how, polite society was haunted by the obstinate fiction that it was the duty of a man of parts to express himself from time to time in verse. Any special occasion of expansion or exuberance, of depression, torsion, or introspection, was sufficient to call it forth. So we have poems of dejection, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... by them as a prodigy of learning. His behaviour in every other way being unblamable, and therefore not spending above half what his father sent him, he distributed the rest among the indigent scholars there, of all nations and religions. As a mark of his early and polite genius, we have thought proper to entertain our readers with a short description of the city of Prague, which he wrote in the German tongue, and which on this occasion we have ventured to ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... the boys feeding the parrots, off he would go and seat himself at the foot of the perch. He used to sit up and beg all the time, and evidently thought the pieces were thrown down to him out of pure good-nature; for he was always exceedingly polite to the parrots, and when he heard them shrieking at sight of the cats, would ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... the Underground offer a prize of twenty pounds to their most polite employee. We have always felt that the conductor who pushes you off a crowded train might at least raise his hat to you as he moves out of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... "I got brother to put that board there. We tried to make it polite. The caddies used to frighten the ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... congratulate the inhabitants of this polite metropolis on what may be styled a discovery of the most splendid and useful nature. We refer to the sudden appearance of an artist of consummate skill, possessing all the qualifications that can render a painter worthy to transfer to the magic canvass the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... and chairs, a huge Japanese umbrella, every accommodation for lounging, in that prettiest bit of the spacious old orchard which adjoined the garden, and here Ida made this polite offer of refreshment ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... The first time he had made a pest of himself with Gordon who was polite, evasive, always plausible. Gordon, Gordon—it was becoming an obsession with him he knew, but the man appeared at every turn. He ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... we were compelled to keep beneath the shelter of our lean-to's, with nothing to do except to listen to the unintelligible jokes of the king, many of them we suspected at our expense, although Aboh was too polite to say so. It cleared up in the evening, but it was then too late to start. In the morning we proceeded, after a plentiful breakfast, to the north-east. We observed that the hunters advanced in a more cautious way than before, and we soon discovered that we were entering the territory ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... he reflected, would wear a hat on a day like the one he was swimming through. But the people who passed him as he trudged onward to no particular destination didn't seem to notice; they gave him a fairly wide berth, and seemed very polite, but that wasn't because they thought he was nuts, Malone knew. It was because they knew he was an ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... not supposed to notice social deformities of that sort," said Janetta; "it wouldn't be polite. Besides, what trouble did they take to find out whether we read Wordsworth with gladness? For all they knew or cared we might be frantically embedded in the belief that all poetry begins and ends with John Masefield, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... very modest, and rather timid, too, but also very polite; so she said, "No excuse is necessary; but will you not take a seat, sir? though I fear my music will not afford you any pleasure, for you know I am only a little girl, and ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should be told lies by her even if I did ask questions. But she never was polite ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... said, a sudden light breaking in on her. "Ma says when ye git a nice Englishman there's nothing nicer, and pa knowed one once that was so polite he used to say 'Haw Buck' to the ox and then he'd say, 'Oh, I beg yer pardon, I mean gee.' It wasn't ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... anxious to show its desire of universal fraternity, conferred the title of citizen. With Bentham were joined Priestley, Paine, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Washington, and others. The September massacres followed. On 18th October the honour was communicated to Bentham. He replied in a polite letter, pointing out that he was a royalist in London for the same reason which would make him a republican in France. He ended by a calm argument against the proscription of refugees.[264] The Convention, if it read the letter, and had any sense ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... said Bully Tom, in a tone of polite assent; "and there's a weathercock on the church-steeple but I never heard of either of 'em coming down to help a body, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... professions, as in Paris and London, and a complicated social life in which all the amenities known to the modern world were seen, especially in Athens and Corinth and the Ionian capitals. What could be more polite and courteous than the intercourse carried on in Greece among cultivated and famous people? When were symposia more attractive than when the elite of Athens, in the time of Pericles, feasted and communed together? When was art ever brought in support of luxury to greater ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... and tell them how rotten they were. That was her phrase. When I observed that Mr. March didn't impress me as the sort of person who could conceivably wish to be rude as that she said he could no more remember to be polite when he heard those songs for the first time than she herself could sing them in corsets. She summed it up by saying that it wasn't going to be a polite affair and the fewer polite people there were, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... people. Its peculiarities in pronunciation, syntax, phraseology, and the use of words we are inclined to avoid in our own speech, because they mark a lack of cultivation. We test them by the standards of polite society, and ignore them, or condemn them, or laugh at them as abnormal or illogical or indicative of ignorance. So far as literature goes, the speech of the common people has little interest for us because it is not the recognized literary medium. These two ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... abolished, though they had lost their credit for a considerable time before the coming of Christ. It was concerning this more common and general sort of oracles that Minutius Felix said, they began to discontinue their responses, according as men began to be more polite. But, howsoever decried oracles were, impostors always found dupes; the grossest ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... desire to take up my abode in an oratory, that I may worship Allah Almighty and give my kingdom and Sultanate to my son Sayf al-Muluk for that he is grown a goodly youth, perfect in knightly exercises and intellectual attainments, polite letters and gravity, dignity and the art of government. What sayst thou, O Minister, of this project?" And quoth the counsellor, "Right indeed is thy rede: the idea is a blessed and a fortunate, and if thou do this, I will do the like and my son Sa'id shall be the Prince's Wazir, for he is a comely ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... of the prettiest faces he had ever seen, and entwined in the heavy silken braid that fell over her shoulder were a number of red autumn leaves. As she straightened herself in her canoe she looked at Rod and smiled, and he in making a polite effort to lift his cap in civilized style, lost that article of apparel in a sudden gust of wind. In an instant there was a general laugh of merriment in which even the old Indian joined. The little incident did ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... to seize upon some salient point, or one generally overlooked by foreigners, or some very subtle one known only to the scholar, and devote myself to its mastery. A little knowledge here blinds the hearer to much ignorance elsewhere. In Italian, for example, the polite way of addressing one's equal is to speak in the third person singular, using Ella (she) as the pronoun. "Come sta Ella?" (How are you? but ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that you called to-day," he said, cutting short the Governor's polite speeches with a slightly imperious manner which he never adopted in speaking to the country folk. "It was probably on the business about which I have been wishing to speak ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... second, offended though she was by his religious reference (she never heard the name of God mentioned in polite society), this quaint begging Mr. Vivian had her upon the balance. Her flying thoughts swept down the parting of the ways. But they flew swiftly back, stabbing ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... attempt on his weapon, for he had, a few minutes before, told him a story about a prisoner who escaped in exactly that way. Stoliker was suspicious of the good intentions of the man he had in charge; he was altogether too polite and good-natured; and, besides, the constable dumbly felt that the prisoner was a ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... kept her seat, my boy,—and that was the first thing that set me thinking. She didn't seem to be conscious that there was before her one of the latest representatives from Belgravia, not she! But when I took an honest look at her face, I understood. I'm glad that I had my hat in my hand, polite as any Frenchman on the threshold of a blanchisserie: for I learned very soon that the Woman had been in Belgravia too, and knew far more than I did about what was what. When she did rise to array the supper table, it struck me that if Josephine ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... enjoyment! But both could not be made happy exactly at the same instant? One or other must be first told the glad truth that was in store for them? Apart they must be told it; and to which was I to give the preference? I resolved to follow that rule of polite society, which extends priority to the softer ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... streets, to the office of Captain Jonathan's and Captain Jacob's agent, who sold the things for them. And after that they went about among the shops and saw all the things that the men had to sell, and Captain Solomon went with them. And the men were very polite to Captain Solomon because they thought he might buy some of their things, but he didn't. And so they did all that day, and, late in the afternoon, they were rowed back to the ship. Little Jacob and little Sol were very tired, and went to sleep ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... to conductors, "Set me down as near as you can to Brown and Hodgkinson's!"), and there was purchased a blouse of white lace—costing so much that Gertie, on hearing the amount, had to clutch at one of the high chairs; and as Clarence paid readily with gold, the polite young woman on the other side of the counter assured him it was well worth the money. Gertie, at another establishment, bought a pair of slippers, saying to herself that they would come in handy, even though she did not go to Ewelme. Reluctance to accept the invitation conveyed through ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... a polite man but not to the point of procrastination. He advanced to meet the puzzled American, smiling amiably and twirling his imposing mustachios ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... "That is polite. You heard what Senor Zuroaga said about the wrecks. They were terrible! Can you not say that you are glad ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... replied that lady, "I am much of your opinion—yet I don't know either; although polite and courteous, there is something rather disagreeable ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... came back there was an awkward surprise. All our waggons had been shifted and a French heavy battery were hauling their howitzers up the incline that led from the road to the field. The senior French officer was polite but firm. He was sorry to disturb us, but this was the most suitable spot for ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... person some time since, as he was driving me to see a carriage which he wished to sell me, and therefore desired to be particularly polite to me and my nation,—"a great man, your Vashintoni! but I was sorry to hear, the other day, that his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... another old gentleman—at least, not so old as Mr. Aked,—and I remembered now having seen him at the back of the shop. He was taking off his hat, as polite as you please. ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... before, the only other man visible above the mahogany, it occurred to my uncle that it was almost time to think about going, especially as drinking had set in at seven o'clock, in order that he might get home at a decent hour. But, thinking it might not be quite polite to go just then, my uncle voted himself into the chair, mixed another glass, rose to propose his own health, addressed himself in a neat and complimentary speech, and drank the toast with great enthusiasm. Still nobody woke; so my uncle took a little drop more—neat ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... trout—big fellows, the kind the fishers of little streams dream of but awake to call Morpheus a liar, just as they are too polite to call you a liar when you are so indiscreet as to tell them a few plain facts. I have one solemnly attested and witnessed record of twenty-nine inches, caught in running water. I saw a friend land on one cast three whose aggregate weight was four and one half pounds. I witnessed, and ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... the duty Mrs Gibson absolutely required of them, as she was willing enough to take her full share in the conversation. Osborne fell to her lot, of course, and for some time he and she prattled on with all the ease of manner and commonplaceness of meaning which go far to make the 'art of polite conversation.' Roger, who ought to have made himself agreeable to one or the other of the young ladies, was exceedingly interested in what Mr. Gibson was telling him of a paper on comparative osteology in some foreign journal of science, which Lord Hollingford was in the habit of forwarding ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... unwelcome, physical, one, that, common, handsome, happy, able, polite, hot, sweet, vertical, two-wheeled, infinite, witty, humble, any, thin, intemperate, undeviating, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... fact all the people we saw in Brazil) were kind, extremely hospitable, and polite; living in thrift generally, their wants were but few beyond their resources. The mountain scenery, viewed from the harbour of Antonina, is something to gloat over; I have seen no place in the world more truly ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... rattled the coins in his pocket, and gave his orders. The nymph had to put on a street dress, set a modest hat on her head, and draw a veil over her rouged face. Thereupon he went up to her, spoke to her courteously, and kissed her hand. He had never in his life acted in so polite and chivalric a fashion in ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... either her determined Enemy, or her professed Toad-eater. How much more amiable are women in that particular! One man may say forty civil things to another without our supposing that he is ever paid for it, and provided he does his Duty by our sex, we care not how Polite he is to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... you believed it, of course! Have you no observation of character? Can't you see, unless you're as blind as a bat, that Lilias Russell is one of those polite sort of people who always must say pleasant things just for the sake of making themselves agreeable? Well, my dear, go and worship her, you have got a chance now for a week; only for goodness' sake don't worry ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... be taught to be respectful toward their parents and others older than themselves, to be polite towards those of their own age, and very thoughtful for the comfort of the sick and weak. Respect must also be shown toward servants and dependants, and no unnecessary demands made upon ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... to see a dance hisself on occasion, his friend does. Comes anyhow, trustin' his welcome will be hearty; just to see old Buck Annixter dance, just to show Buck Annixter's friends how Buck can dance—dance all by hisself, a little hen-on-a-hot-plate dance when his broncho-bustin' friend asks him so polite. A little dance for the ladies, Buck. This feature of the entertainment is alone worth the price of admission. Tune up, Buck. Attention now! I'll give ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... to a sweeper will now pay for a ride, and the smallest coin is considered a sufficient guerdon for a service so light. But what he has lost in substantial emolument, he has gained in morale; he is infinitely more polite and attentive than he was; he sweeps ten times as clean for a half-penny as he did for twopence or sixpence, and thanks you more heartily than was his wont in the days of yore. The truth is, that civility, as a speculation, is found to pay; and the want ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... with a single aide in the woods, and was captured by two men of Kilpatrick's skirmish-line that was following up his retrograde movement. These men called on him to surrender, and ordered him, in language more forcible than polite, to turn and ride back. He first supposed these men to be of Hampton's cavalry, and threatened to report them to General Hampton for disrespectful language; but he was soon undeceived, and was conducted to Kilpatrick, who sent him back ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... and stockings, and he was amusingly proud. When we parted at the alley he said, "You let me go you house again, and have some nice things and see the dog?" Of course I invited him, and henceforth he waylaid me in the afternoons as I went home. At first he was not polite, and his mode of calling, "Hoy, man! wait for me!" drew marked attention from the public. But he soon learned to lift his hat and to shake hands. At intervals I gave him set lessons on manners, and, if he behaved nicely, we had a game at cricket ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... him," said Ben, "I'll go. I'll be your beau. And see here, Hanny, it's polite to answer an invitation. Now you write yours and I'll write mine, and I'll ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Complement that, like a matins sung By virgins, may enchant her amorous ear. The Spanish Basolas[63] manos sounds, methinks, As harsh as a Morisco kettledrum; The French boniour is ordinary as their Disease: hees not a gent that cannot parlee. I must invent some new and polite phrases. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... not forgotten; for, always after that, the man was very polite when he brought his presents. And the Dean also took the hint; for he always remembered to give the man a "tip" for his trouble. Jonathan Swift, often called Dean Swift, was famous as a writer on many subjects. Among other books he wrote "Gulliver's Travels," ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... in his sentiments. I answered him with so much clearness and energy, that he had not a word to reply. This increased his desire to win me in order to do it, to contract a friendship for me. He continued to importune me for two years and a half. As he was very polite, and of an obliging temper, and had a good share of learning, I did not mistrust him. I even conceived a hope of his conversion, in which I found myself mistaken. I then ceased going near him. He came to inquire why he could see me no more. At that time he was so agreeable to my sick husband, ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... "Rock of Independence" to which he had proudly retired was but a castle of air, over which the meteors of French political enthusiasm cast a lurid gleam. In the last years of his life, exiled from polite society on account of his revolutionary opinions, he became sourer in temper and plunged more deeply into the dissipations of the lower ranks, among whom he found his only companionship ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... myself a soldier—it's a bloody insult to be called a soldier. I'm not a bloody patriot either—I reckon patriotism's a bloody curse. I kept out of the army as long as I could, but they combed me out (that's their polite way of putting it!), and shoved me into khaki, but they never made a soldier of me! I've never been any use to them! I only worked when they forced me to. I've been more expense and trouble to them than I'm ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... Grande Rue de Sainct Denys," being, no doubt, at one time the ne plus ultra of all that was considered wide and commodious. Now its appellation is curtailed into the Rue St D'nis, and it is avoided by the polite inhabitants of Paris as containing nothing but the bourgeoisie and the canaille. Once it was the Regent Street of Paris—a sort of Rue de la Paix—lounged along by the gallants of the days of Henri IV., and not unvisited by the red-heeled marquises of the Regent d'Orleans's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... 'A polite fox!' observed the colonel. 'He's leading the squire straight home to Whitford, just in time ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... and worthy office; but the author can only give out what is in him. If I write of wretched and strange things, it is because these move me most. Happiness needs no understanding; but these darker things—they are kept too much from sensitive eyes and polite ears; and so are too harshly judged upon the world's report. I am no reformer; I have never 'studied' people; and I have no 'purpose,' unless it ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... endeavors were fruitless. Napoleon, July 7, thus described to Josephine the dinner of the evening before to the charming Queen: "My dear, the Queen of Prussia dined with me yesterday. I was obliged to refuse her some concessions she wanted me to make to her husband; but I was polite, and also kept to my plan. She is very amiable. When I see you I will give you all the details which would be too long to write now. When you read this letter, peace will have been concluded with Russia and Prussia, and Jerome will have been recognized as King of Westphalia with a ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... head was no larger than that of a child of two, the anterior fontanelle was widely open, indicating that there was pressure within. He was strong and muscular; grave and sedate in his manner; cheerful and affectionate; his manners were polite and engaging; he was expert in many kinds of handicraft; he possessed an ardent desire for knowledge ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... attack was a doozer! I wrecked a week's work looking for the little man who wasn't there. The urge to kill is becoming more intense. I want to destroy the author of my misery. Even though I am still a balanced personality—polite language for being sane—I can't take much more of this. I will not go mad, but I will go into the adrenal syndrome unless I ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... can't hand a lady in and out of a carriage as Lord Chesterfield can, nor can he make so grand a bow, nor does he put on evening dress for a late dinner, and we never go to the opera nor to the theatre, and know nothing of polite society, nor can we tell exactly whom our great-great-grandfather sprang from. I tell you, there is a gulf between us and that Englishman, wider than the one ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... half-dozen angry country-fellows grouped about a solitary individual who fronted them in very desperate and determined manner, his back to the wall; an extremely down-at-heels gentleman this, who yet cocked his hat and glared about him with an air of polite ferocity. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... lethargic temperaments, but there are in the country tens of thousands of quick, nervous, sanguine, excitable temperaments ready to be acted upon, and their feet will soon take hold on death. For some months and perhaps for years they will linger in the more polite and elegant circle of gamesters, but, after a while, their pathway will come to the fatal plunge. Finding themselves in the rapids, they will try to back out, and, hurled over the brink, they will clutch the side of the boat ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... said Blanche; and then, thinking that she ought to try to be polite and friendly, "What ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... pole decked out with flags. It was she. On seeing me, she suddenly disappeared. I reentered the house at midday for lunch and took my seat at the general table, so as to make the acquaintance of this odd character. But she did not respond to my polite advances, was insensible even to my little attentions. I poured out water for her persistently, I passed her the dishes with great eagerness. A slight, almost imperceptible, movement of the head and an English word, murmured so low that I did not ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Smithson knew Miss Galindo a little before, both personally and by reputation; but I don't think he was prepared to find her installed as steward's clerk, and, at first, he was inclined to treat her, in this capacity, with polite contempt. But Miss Galindo was both a lady and a spirited, sensible woman, and she could put aside her self-indulgence in eccentricity of speech and manner whenever she chose. Nay more; she was usually so talkative, that if she had not ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... relaxed. "Best give it up," a whisperer said. "By heaven, I'll range their rebel den" "They'll treat you well," the captive cried; "They're all like us—handsome—well bred: In wood or town, with sword or pen, Polite is Mosby, bland ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... on a jutting rock. There was a curious, set expression about his fine mouth as he marched Nelly up to Mrs. Keyton-Wells and introduced her. Mrs. Keyton-Wells's greeting was slightly cool, but very polite. She supposed Miss Ray was some little country girl with whom Burton Winslow was carrying on a summer flirtation; respectable enough, no doubt, and must be treated civilly, but of course wouldn't expect to be made an equal of exactly. The other women took their cue from ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... feel humble when Mr. Pickwick told him Jingle's real character. He was terribly afraid the story would get out and that the town would laugh at him, so he became all at once tremendously polite, declared their arrest had been all a mistake and begged the Pickwickians to make themselves at home. Sam Weller was sent down to the kitchen to get his dinner, where he met a pretty housemaid named Mary, with whom ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... captain alone for the future, particularly as he had shown himself so deficient in the ordinary breeding of a gentleman. And I could hardly credit it, that this was the same man who had been so very civil, and polite, and witty, when Mr. Jones and I called ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... soft little fingers in hers. Georgina didn't want to have her hand held, especially in such a stiff, bony clasp. It made her uncomfortable to sit with her arm stretched up in such a position, but she was too polite to withdraw it, so she read on for ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... so repulsive in his manners as this account would lead us to think. There is no grave anachronism in introducing here the impression which he made on two fine ladies not many years after this. "He pays compliments, yet he is not polite, or at least he is without the air of politeness. He seems to be ignorant of the usages of society, but it is easily seen that he is infinitely intelligent. He has a brown complexion, while eyes that overflow ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... so, that from 1 in 1,633 of the population in 1805, it had risen to 1 in 340 in 1849; and Dr. Kyle, of Xenia, Ohio, asserted that abortions occurred most frequently among those who are known as the better class; among church members, and those generally who pretend to be the most polite, virtuous, moral and religious. And, without mincing matters at all, this eminent physician boldly declares that "a venal press, a demoralized clergy, and the prevalence of medical charlatanism, are the principal causes of the fearful increase of this abominable ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... most distinctive points in Flamenca, and shows what it had been aiming at from the beginning—namely, the expression in an elegant manner of the ideas of the Art of Love, as understood in the polite society of those times. Flamenca is nearly contemporary with the Roman de la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris. Its inspiring ideas are the same, and though its influence on succeeding authors is indiscernible, where that of the Roman de la Rose is widespread and enduring, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... so that he could move the easier and with less pain, and raised himself on his well elbow. There was no use of his hoping any more; she had evidently sent Miss Felicia to end the matter with one of her polite phrases,—a weapon which she, of all women, knew so well ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... easily than the other Cunard Screws, is kept in perfect order, and is most carefully looked after in all departments. We have had nothing approaching to heavy weather; still, one can speak to the trim of the ship. Her captain, a gentleman; bright, polite, good-natured, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the hotel was sensible of keen regret that he had left at Peter Kenny's, what time he changed his clothing, the pistol given him by Mrs. Jefferson Inche, together with the greater part of his fortuitous fortune—neither firearms nor large amounts of money seeming polite additions to one's costume ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... outer or champagne area (as it might be at Dulwich), he would try to discover, either by inquiry among his friends or by employing a private detective, whether this house fulfilled the necessary condition. If not, of course, then he would write a polite note to say that he would be in the country, or confined to his bed with gout, on the day ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... Circumscribe cxirkauxskribi. Circumspect singardema. Circumstance cirkonstanco. Circus cirko. Cistern akvujo. Citadel fortikajxo. Citation citajxo. Cite citi. Citizen urbano. Citron citrono. City urbo. Civic urba. Civil civila. Civil (polite) gxentila. Civilian nemilita. Civility gxentileco. Civilization civilizacio. Civilize civilizi. Claim pretendo. Claimant pretendanto. Clamber suprenrampi. Clammy glua. Clamour bruego. Clan gento. Clandestine sekreta. Clank resoni. Clap manfrapi. Clarify klarigi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... fellow," she said. "I said to Lucy—she'll tell you if I didn't—that there wasn't a man to compare with him in our train. And so gallant and polite. Last night, when I was heating the water to wash the children, he carried the pails for me. None of the men with us do that. They'd never think of offering to ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... cap with ironical gravity, and acknowledged the compliment with an expression of polite contempt that was altogether lost on its insensible subject. But Pathfinder had too much native courtesy, and was far too just-minded, to allow ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... been generous to them both. Since his marriage his attitude had changed entirely. He was polite, agreeable, charmingly devoted: no ship arrived without some tangible and expensive evidence of his often-expressed desire to make his wife and stepdaughter happy; he anticipated their slightest wish. Under his assiduous attentions Natalie's distrust and dislike had slowly melted, and she came ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... to be entirely destitute of all relish for those noble entertainments. The most perfect character is supposed to lie between those extremes; retaining an equal ability and taste for books, company, and business; preserving in conversation that discernment and delicacy which arise from polite letters; and in business, that probity and accuracy which are the natural result of a just philosophy. In order to diffuse and cultivate so accomplished a character, nothing can be more useful than compositions of the easy style and manner, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... events was over, he would spend an hour or two over the newspapers, of which he was a great reader, in company with his cigar and his glass. And I'll say for him that from first to last he never put anything out, and was always civil and polite, and there was never a Saturday that he did not give the servant-maid a half-crown to buy ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... near here! You are going home to the north soon?" The polite query was in a tone which checked all his new impulses in regard ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... manager in disgust. "If these Herringport tabbies had the toothache they would register only polite anguish—in public. They are the most insular and self-contained and self-suppressed women I ever saw. These Down-Easters! They could walk over fiery ploughshares and only ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... that the evening of Dickens's first reading in New York was bright with moonlight veiled in a soft gray snow-cloud. The crowd at the entrance was not large. The speculators in tickets were not troublesome, because all the tickets had been long sold. The police, as usual, were polite and efficient; and going up the steep staircase, and passing through the single door, we were all quietly and pleasantly seated by eight o'clock. The floor of Steinway Hall is level, so that the audience is lost to itself; but it was easy for all of us ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... is too Simple, 'tis for Tragedy so, not for Pastoral; and because DESDEMONA was a Senators Daughter, and Educated in so polite a place as VENICE; but in Pastoral, I think, we may Introduce a Character so Young, Simple and Innocent, that there is no Thought so Simple but will square with it; at least, we have no Instance of any such one as yet. The Simplicity of this Scene would ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... or more; Mrs. Winscombe is bright wine for a young man. Women like her play at sensation, like eating figs." He thought contemptuously what nonsense was talked in connection with feminine intuition; it was nothing more than a polite chimera, like all the other famous morals and inhibitions supposed ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... he was going to seek his landlady, when she appeared. She was as severely polite as people who have got the last penny they hope to get out of one can be. Mrs. Tresham had gone to the sea-side. She had left five days ago—gone to Broadstairs. The address was in the letter which she gave him. Greatly to Roland's relief she said nothing about ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the consideration of Art, so as to attain one day the power of speaking the language of conviction in the accents of persuasion; though they rather apprehend that whatever pains they take to modify and soften, an abrupt word or vehement tone will now and then occur to startle ears polite, whenever the subject shall chance to be such as ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... amazement betrayed on the stolid face of an elderly workman, to whom it was explained that he was required to distemper the walls of the drawing-room with a sole colour, instead of covering them with a paper, after the manner of all the other drawing-rooms he had ever had to do with. But he was too polite to express his difference of taste by more than looks;—and some days after the room was finished, with etchings duly hung on velvet in the panels of the door,—the sole-coloured walls well covered with pictures, whence they stood out undistracted by gold and flowery paper patterns—the distemperer ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... best part of Boulevard Malesherbes, to cook onions in. I don't know what he didn't say to me in his effervescent state. For my part, I was naturally vexed to be spoken to in that insolent tone. The least one can do is to be polite to people whom one neglects to pay, deuce take it! So I retorted that it was too bad, really; but, if the Caisse Territoriale would pay what they owe me, to wit my arrears of salary for four years, plus seven thousand ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... The rest of the band made off as empty-handed as they came, with one exception. One brave had succeeded in capturing and mounting a horse before the white men could reach him. Notwithstanding he had a dead brother lying on the ground, he appeared to be altogether too polite to make the trappers a longer visit; at least, without a proper introduction. On the contrary, he galloped off; seemingly, quite proud of his trophy. Had it not been that the trappers had taken the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... guiding me over the prairies, and gave him a large bowie-knife, which he said he would keep for the sake of the brave hunter. The whole squadron then wheeled off and I saw them no more. I have met with many polite men in my time, but no one who possessed in a greater degree what may be called true spontaneous politeness than this Comanche chief, always excepting Philip Hone, Esq. of New York, whom I look upon as the politest man I ever did see; for when he asked me to take a drink at his own sideboard, ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... the broader and more essential rules of politeness, there are certain conventionalities adopted by good society, which, sanctioned by custom and absolute obligation, cannot, without some good reason, be neglected by the truly polite gentleman or lady. Every day the question is raised whether such and such a custom is adopted, received, and proper; there will constantly arise a doubt about the details of some ceremony, the proper hour for some entertainment, the true etiquette for some occasion. At such a time, there is ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... you know," he said trying to be polite. "Out of a thousand and one things that may have ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... keeping an ear on all that I had been saying, praised me when the lady had gone. Nothing, she said, could have been more polite according to Erewhonian etiquette. She then explained that to have stolen a pair of socks, or "to have the socks" (in more colloquial language), was a recognised way of saying that the person in question ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... Steffen Margaret, in Only a Fiddler.— M. H.] Many years afterwards, when I had reached another step on the ladder of life, when the refined world of fashionable life was opened before me, I saw one evening, in the midst of a brilliantly lighted hall, a polite old gentleman covered with orders—that was the old father in the shabby coat, he whom I had let in. He had little idea that I had opened the door to him when he played his part as guest, but I, on my side, then had also no thought but for my own comedy-playing; that is ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... he made himself useful with his pen, he got his mother to write for him; but Lord Burghley, probably because he thought his nephew more of a man of letters than a sound lawyer and practical public servant, did not care to bring him forward. From his cousin, Robert Cecil, Bacon received polite words and friendly assurances. Cecil may have undervalued him, or have been jealous of him, or suspected him as a friend of Essex; he certainly gave Bacon good reason to think that his words meant nothing. Except Essex, and perhaps his brother Antony—the most affectionate and devoted ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... to smother that tiresome little yawn, which seemed most distressing, when he desired to be most polite. Then he flicked off a grain of dust from his immaculate lace ruffle and buried his long, slender hands in the capacious pockets of his white satin breeches; finally he said with the ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a small child, for the noise of the birds had come down to him in the hold. 'There is nobody at home but me,' he said; for he thought the birds must have come to call, and he wished to be polite. 'They are all gone but me,' he went on, 'all gone. ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... York, I staid at the "Pearl-street Boarding-house," and experienced from Messrs. Haskell and Perry, the proprietors, the most polite attention. Most Europeans are astonished at the rapidity with which the Americans despatch their meals; but I, having admitted the proposition, that there was "nothing new under the sun," had long previously ceased to be astonished ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... Person of Cadiz, Who was always polite to all ladies; But in handing his daughter, he fell into the water, Which drowned that ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... Rawley Plumston, a very tall, bony and dignified woman in gray, wearing a most flowery hat. To every man of Morovenia Mrs. Plumston was the apotheosis of all that was undesirable in her sex, but they were exceedingly polite to her, for the reason that Morovenia owed a great deal of money in London and it was a set policy to cultivate ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... on account of Charlie. We ain't fer puttin' his place on de rough, an' gettin' him raided by de bulls. Charlie's all to de good. See? Well, dat's wot 'd likely happen if me an' Pinkie busts in on Pete an' Marny widout sendin' in our visitin'-cards first, polite-like. Dey would pull deir guns, an' though we'd get de coin just de same, dere'd be hell to pay fer Charlie, an' de whole place 'd go up in fireworks right off de bat. Well, dis is where youse come in. Youse are de visitin'-card. Youse gets into ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... with surprise—seeing his broad white collar with ruffles, his turned-back, ruffled cuffs, and his boots with red tops; but they were too polite to say anything. Still Chad felt Margaret taking them all in and he was proud and confident. And, when her eyes were lifted to the handsome face that rose from the collar and the thick yellow hair, he caught them with his own in an unconscious look of fealty, that made the little ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... the Bitter Springs yard; and by the time Jack had been seen off with them and our own camp packed up, the drovers had become so involved in baggage that Dan and the Dandy felt obliged to offer assistance. Finally every one was ready to mount, and then we and the drovers exchanged polite farewells and parted, seller and buyer each confident that he knew more about the cash for that cheque than the other. No doubt the day came when those drovers ceased to marvel at the Maluka's ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... an Arabic article in the "Jenan" for Sept. 1, 1872, written by Frances Effendi Merrash, brother of the Sitt Mariana, whose paper we have translated on a preceding page. It is evident that the Effendi writes from the atmosphere of Aleppo. The more "polite" society of that city is largely made up of that mongrel population, half French and half Arab, which is styled "Levantine" and too often combines the vices of both, with the virtues of neither. It will be seen that the able author is combatting ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... this that he was amazed that it conveyed no warning to Muller. Captain Muller, however, was already drinking heavily. He looked up when addressed and uttered a sound which might have been taken for an expression of polite acquiescence. Then ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... Is there anything so marvelous in a man of my refined tastes and exquisite notions taking a fancy to inspect the jewels of one of the proudest beauties of gay Florence? By my patron saint! you should thank me that I come in so polite a manner to request a favor, the granting of which I could so easily compel without ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... care much for Eben's company but he was too polite to say so. He waited therefore, till Eben appeared with hat ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... very much like militia generals, in scarlet coats trimmed with gold lace and white trousers, met us at the door. Thinking them distinguished people, I bowed low and solemnly. They stared and bowed. "Go on," said the Senator, "don't be so polite to those fellows, they are servants; give them your cloak." I hurried in pulling off my cloak as I went. Just within the first door of the drawing room stood a fat, oily little gentleman, bowing also, but not so magnificently gotten up as my first acquaintances. ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... followed by the skipper, after a polite but futile attempt to give him precedence, and made his way to the cabin for two or ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... [Footnote 48: A polite correspondent reminds me of the Registration Act, 52 G. III. c. 156, in which the fruit of penalties is divided between the informer, who gets one half, and certain charitable purposes, to which the other is devoted, while the only penalty set forth ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... exclaimed Mr Inglis; "that was certainly not a very polite speech, but there was a good deal of common sense in it; and I don't think Master Phil, there, would care much about stopping out when it rained. But make haste, boys; we must not stop talking, for there ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... was polite, and after promising to go and fetch the volume of Longfellow, he proposed to the gentleman from Sydney a game at cards. While the two men played their sham game, the Baron had time to reflect; he saw that he had been ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... on ceremony with that rascal? Bother about rules and regulations, legal hours and all that rot? And suppose he's not quite so polite to us and gives us the slip meanwhile? Suppose he plays us one of his Lupin tricks? No, no, we must have no nonsense! We've got him: let's collar him; and ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... beside her in the little arbor, and made polite inquiries about the school where they had taught together, about Jane M'Gann's "beaux," the "cat," and ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the keen observation of childhood, that it was only a sense of hospitality, and duty to a relative, which made their father and mother polite ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... people more unlike than the sisters. Sedalia is really handsome, and she is thin. But she is vain, selfish, shallow, and conceited. Gale is not even pretty, but she is clean and she is honest. She does many little things that are not exactly polite, but she is good and true. They both went to the barn with me to milk. Gale tucked up her skirts and helped me. She said, "I just love a stable, with its hay and comfortable, contented cattle. I never ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... dread over the inevitable meeting between Masten and the new range boss, it must have been dispelled by Randerson's manner, for he was perfectly polite to Masten, and by no word or sign did he indicate that he remembered ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... As he concluded this polite parting address, Adam Woodcock, who was again seated by the table on which stood the now empty can, said to him, "Will you drink a cup, young man, in the way of courtesy, now you have done your errand, and listen to a good song?" and without waiting for an answer, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... inspectors have reason to believe or suspect deception. Gangs of coolies in livery, each wearing a brass tag with his number, stood by ready to seize the baggage and carry it to the hotel wagons, which stood outside, where we followed it and directed by a polite Sikh policeman, took the first carriage in line. Everything was conducted in a most orderly manner. There was no confusion, no jostling and no excitement, which indicates that the Bombay officials have correct notions of what is proper ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... labour; and D'Alembert goes so far as to tax them with poverty, even with hollow ideas, with vain and ridiculous efforts; he goes so far as to call Bailly, relatively to his letters, the illuminated brother. Voltaire is, on the contrary, very polite and very academical in his communications with our author. The renown of the Brahmins is dear to him; yet this does not prevent his discussing closely the proofs, the arguments of the ingenious astronomer. We could also now enter into a serious ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... they had got them at the apple-warehouse. They had chests, a cupboard, a samovar, and crockery. In the corner there were numerous images, and two lamps were burning before them; on the wall hung fur coats covered with sheets. The old woman, who had star- shaped wrinkles, and who was polite and talkative, evidently delighted in ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... to attend so particularly to our manner of speaking, it is much more so with regard to the matter. Fine turns of expression, a genteel and correct style, are ornaments as requisite to common sense, as polite behaviour and an elegant address are to common good manners; they are great assistants in the point of pleasing. A gentleman, 'tis true, may be known in the meanest garb, but it admits not of a doubt, that he would be better received into good company genteely ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... themes, the artificial dragging in of these and their insufferable repetition—all this the silent, large-eyed child who has been allowed to stay if quiet, hears and remembers. See the little girl's "playing house." See the visitor arrive, the polite welcome, the inquiries after health, the babbling discussion of babies and dress and cookery and servants,—these they have well learned are proper subjects ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... policy in sex matters and his striking impersonations of the characters in his plays have been interpreted as the unabashed bid for notoriety of a clever poseur. But his acting could hardly have made palatable to theatre audiences topics tabooed in polite conversation and with appalling candor presented by him on the stage. Neither his quality as actor nor his quality as author could account for the measure of popularity his plays have attained. It would rather indicate that the German public was ready for open discussion of the problems involved ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... courageous, even to rashness; but cross-grained and incorrigibly obstinate: his genius was fertile in mathematical experiments, and he possessed some knowledge of chemistry: he was polite even to excess, unseasonably; but haughty, and even brutal, when he ought to have been gentle and courteous: he was tall, and his manners were ungracious: he had a dry hard-favoured visage, and a stern look, even when he wished to please; but, when he was ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... and her letter had been sent on to him there, wrote a polite secretary. And then there came a letter that warmed the girl's heart and brought back all her belief and ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... the table. Washington, looking like himself on a monument, was making not a pretence to entertain poor Lady Sterling, who was almost sniffling. Lord Sterling, having gratified, an hour since, Mrs. Washington's polite interest in his health, was stifling yawn after yawn, and his chubby little visage was oblong and crimson. Tilghman, looking guilty and uncomfortable,—it was his duty to relieve Hamilton at the table,—was flirting with Miss Boudinot. Lady Kitty and Baron Steuben always managed to entertain ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... the Cornish men, all of the land was at peace for many years, and the nobility became very scholarly and the people very polite. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... ladies take little notice of him and he is less petted than other children; therefore he does not care for them, and is less spoilt by their company; he is not yet of an age to feel its charm. I have taken care not to teach him to kiss their hands, to pay them compliments, or even to be more polite to them than to men. It is my constant rule to ask nothing from him but what he can understand, and there is no good reason why a child should treat one sex differently from the other.] On our way, the thought will occur to him, "All those people who laboured to prepare ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... very good lunch, and talked to his host about turnip-drillers and new machines for reaping; while the host, thinking it only polite to attend to a stranger, and fearing that perhaps he might not care about turnip crops on a Sunday, mooted all manner of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Why does a man never kill a man? Why does a man never kill himself? Why is nothing ever accomplished? In real life murder, adultery, and suicide are of common occurrence; but Mr James's people live in a calm, sad, and very polite twilight of volition. Suicide or adultery has happened before the story begins, suicide or adultery happens some years hence, when the characters have left the stage, but in front of the reader nothing happens. The suppression or maintenance of story in a novel is a matter of personal ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Oxford. Garret was a secret member of the London Society, and had come down at Clark's instigation, to feel his way in the university. So excellent a beginning had already been made, that he had only to improve upon it. He sought out all such young men as were given to Greek, Hebrew, and the polite Latin;[507] and in this visit met with so much encouragement, that the Christmas following he returned again, this time bringing with him treasures of forbidden books, imported by "the Christian Brothers;" New Testaments, tracts and volumes of German divinity, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... let it be! A polite man would have flatly contradicted me. . . . O I am ashamed of this!' she added a moment after, with a subdued, sad look upon the ground. 'I am speaking by the card of the outer world, which I have left ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... was fine, neither too cool nor too warm; the breezes were gentle, and Nature smiled. But there were no walks or rides with Madeline. She seemed to be much engaged during the day, and I saw but little of her. When we met at meals she was polite, but very quiet and reserved. She had evidently determined on a course of conduct, and had resolved to assume that, although I had been very rude to her, she did not understand the import of my words. It would be quite proper, ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... now moving in a new atmosphere. Labanya's husband, Babu Nilratan, a leader of the bar, was reproached by many because he refused to pay his respects to European officials. To all such reproaches Nilratan would reply: "No, thank you,—if they are not polite enough to return my call, then the politeness I offer them is a loss that can never be made up for. The sands of the desert may be very white and shiny, but I would much rather sow my seeds in black soil, where ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... boy,' he said, 'when you've got a skunk in the house, it's a good time to be careful. You might spyle the skunk with that club, but the skunk would be right certain to spyle the house. While he's our guest, I reckon we'll have to be polite, whether we want to ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... their great surprise they found the consular court already arranged, in many particulars, upon the old model of the monarchy, and daily approximating to that example, step by step. Josephine had restored, titles alone excepted, the old language of polite intercourse: Citoyenne had been replaced by Madame; and Citoyen was preparing to make way for Monsieur. The emigrant nobility had flocked back in great numbers; and Buonaparte, dispensing with the awkward ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... was foolish enough to try and be polite, but I've given it up. My style of talk is quite good enough for my company. What on earth does it matter whether I'm vulgar or not. I can feed calves and milk and grind out my days here just as well vulgar as unvulgar," I ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Ruth?" the miller demanded, sternly eyeing Tom Cameron, and without returning the lad's polite greeting. ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... it, and so I felt dreadfully nervous when she began to say that our bill at the house had gone unpaid too long and that we must pay her at once what we owed her. It took some time before Uncle William understood what she was talking about, but when he did he became dreadfully frigid and polite. He said, "Let me understand clearly, madame, just what it is that you wish to say: do I apprehend that you are saying that my account here for our maintenance is now due and payable?" Mrs. O'Halloran ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... been the learned language of the middle ages: it was used in the Church, in the universities, and in polite society. If a lecturer taught a class or an author wrote a book, Latin was usually employed. In those very middle ages, however, the nations of western Europe were developing spoken languages quite at variance with the classical, scholarly tongue. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... did not receive your polite note and the pamphlet in relation to your claim till this morning. The statement of your case is very strong, both as to the clear proof of "value received" from you by the Government, and on which was founded its promise to pay, and as ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... boy's brought his sinse iv propriety wid him!' she cried. 'Maybe ye' have a few words to say on moral conduct an' the dacent observances iv polite society, an' ye'll be axin' me to put on a proper decorum before the min. Arrah! ye have some purty maxims for young ladies, an' a heap iv illegant an' rare ideals iv yer own as to what's good an' becomin' in young persons iv the other sex, ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... think well worth relating. It occurred when I was Governor of Illinois. I was invited by the Agricultural Society of McLean County to deliver an address, and went to Bloomington on the day designated. I was called upon by Judge Davis, who resided there. He was a very polite man, and asked me if he could not take me out to the fair-ground. I told him I would be delighted if he would do so. He came for me with his carriage, and on our arrival at the grounds took me to the stand, disregarding the prearrangements ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... words is the foundation of Eloquence; and who has bestowed," said he, (addressing himself again to Brutus) "the highest encomiums on this friend of ours, who yet chooses to leave Caesar's character to me;—that he should be a perfect master of the language of polite conservation, is a circumstance which is almost too obvious to be mentioned." "I said, the highest encomiums," pursued Atticus, "because he says in so many words, when he addresses himself to Cicero—if others have bestowed ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... her a moment, apparently in polite consideration, but really wondering, as she often did, if anything would thicken the hair at Mrs. Pray's parting. She frequently, out of the strength of her address and capability, had these moments of musing ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... himself into an eagle as often as he wished. No sooner had he said this than he shook himself, and immediately became a handsome youth, but the next morning he was forced to creep back again into his crab-shell. And the same thing happened every day. But the Princess's affection for the Crab, and the polite attention with which she behaved to him, surprised the royal family very much. They suspected some secret, but though they spied and spied, they could not discover it. Thus a year passed away, and the Princess had a son, whom she called Benjamin. But her mother ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... the Parkers and myself at the entrance of the restaurant, was a study. His polite bow and smile of welcome seemed suddenly frozen on his face as his eyes fell upon Mr. Moss. Mr. Moss was still wearing his hat, which was a black bowler with a small brim, set at a jaunty angle a little on one side and affording a liberal view of his black curls ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had been buying books. Looking across the road, he saw, to his amazement, great beads of perspiration glistening on the brows of those Emperors. He trembled, and hurried away. That evening, in Common Room, he told what he had seen; and no amount of polite scepticism would convince him that it was but the hallucination of one who had been reading too much Mommsen. He persisted that he had seen what he described. It was not until two days had elapsed that ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... Bedelia," Patience said, doing the honors. "She's very clever, she knows us all already. Fanny hasn't been very polite to her, and she knows it—Bedelia does, I mean—sometimes, when Fanny isn't looking, I've caught Bedelia sort of laughing at her—and I don't blame her one bit. And, oh, Hilary, she can go—there's no need to 'hi ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... believe it!' 'It is a fact, nevertheless,' retorted Horace, stoutly. 'Well,' said the Bore, 'if it is, I am of course all the more anxious to know such a man!' Horace smiled quietly. 'You have only to wish it, my dear Sir,' he answered, with the faintest modulation of polite irony in his tone. 'With such gifts at your command, you will certainly charm him. Why, the very reason of his keeping most people at arm's length is that he knows how easily he yields!' 'In that case, I will ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... have I done?" I hear you cry, And writhe beneath some critic's eye; "What did I want?"—when, scarce polite, They do but yawn, and roll you tight. And yet methinks, if I may guess (Putting aside your heartlessness In leaving me and this your home), You should find favour, too, at Rome. That is, they'll like you while you're young, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... piece of rubber; it can be conveniently sewed to the camisole and worn next the heart. Her pretty lips once touched this piece of peel'—and she dangled the peel right in front of Judy's eyes. 'Get out of my room quick,' said our polite little Judy, 'and take your garbage with you!' Jane said it gave her a nasty turn. It's my belief that Judy wants to come first in history or something, and she wants to be left alone ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... his ability to maintain his rights and to protect his honor without calling for assistance. Frontiersmen are quick to resent an affront, and when their veracity is impugned they fight. The word "lie" is not considered a polite mode of expressing dissent. All over the South, in every class of society, one finds this sensitiveness to an accusation of lack of veracity. Such a theory of life dies hard. The presence of a less advanced ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... instantly took possession of horses and carriages, and my sister-in-law, toiling up a steep hill, would be passed by her own carriage and horses filled with German officers. However, on the whole, W. said, the Germans, as a victorious invading army, behaved well, the officers always perfectly polite, and keeping their men in good order. They had all sorts and kinds at the chateau. They rarely remained long—used to appear at the gate in small bands of four or five, with a sous-officier, who always asked to see either the proprietor or someone in authority. He said how many men and horses he ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... is capable of filling a better position;" a more polite way of saying that a man has outgrown his present job but has not developed ability to get a ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... thinks you are unhappy, when at peace; To find you news, who racks her subtle head, And vows—that her great-grandfather is dead. A dearth of words a woman need not fear, But 'tis a task indeed to learn—to hear: In that the skill of conversation lies; That shows, or makes, you both polite and wise. Xantippe cries, "Let nymphs, who nought can say, Be lost in silence, and resign the day; And let the guilty wife her guilt confess, By tame behaviour, and a soft address;" Through virtue, she refuses to comply With all the dictates of humanity; Through wisdom, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... of about thirty-five years of age. He introduced me to his wife, a confined invalid who never left her chamber. I then saw my pupils, two little girls, the eldest not more than six years of age. I found Mr. Clarence to be a perfect gentleman, courteous, polite and agreeable. I soon felt quite at home with him. Mrs. Clarence never interfered with me, and days passed without my even seeing her. I pitied poor Mr. Clarence having such a sick wife, for it was easy to be seen that he ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... thanks for your very polite attention; and do me the favor to believe me, with the most perfect sentiments ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Bagstock had arrived at what is called in polite literature, the grand meridian of life, and was proceeding on his journey downhill with hardly any throat, and a very rigid pair of jaw-bones, and long-flapped elephantine ears, and his eyes and complexion in the state of artificial ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... court to the graces. They are a robust, healthy race, distinguished for their common sense and turn for humour, rather than for wit or sentiment. I include not, as you may suppose, in this general character, some of the nobility and officers, who having travelled, are polite and well informed. ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... stood between her and Ilusha's bed and did not let her see the new puppy. With the greatest courtesy he made her a bow, scraping his foot, and turning to Nina, he made her, as the only other lady present, a similar bow. This polite behavior made an extremely favorable impression on ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... looked at the fish-bone face that you beheld something acrid and old. His manners were excellent, though hardly English, and he had two half-conscious tricks by which people who only met him once remembered him. One was a trick of closing his eyes when he wished to be particularly polite; the other was one of lifting his joined thumb and forefinger in the air as if holding a pinch of snuff, when he was hesitating or hovering over a word. But those who were longer in his company tended to forget these oddities in the stream of his quaint and ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... could only distinguish the outline of her figure, except by staring through my glasses, which I regard as a polite rudeness, but she seemed to merit the homage that all eyes ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... yes, to be sure I did; he was such a gentleman I wanted to oblige him,—it shows you how important it is always to be polite," said the Captain, by way of giving a moral ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... smiled doubtfully. He was too polite, it seemed, to be sceptical, and by his attitude expressed a readiness to be convinced as much from ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... of mine." Sue held out her best doll to the little girl. It is always polite, you know, to give company, and your friends, the best that you have, instead of keeping it yourself, no matter how ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... 'an' I'm undher ordhers to be polite with citizens I stop,' he says; 'but, if ye don't duck up that road in half a minyit, ye poy-faced, red-eyed, lop-eared, thick-headed ol' bosthoon,' he says, 'I'll take ye be th' scruff iv th' neck an' thrun ye into th' ga-as-house ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... admirer a severe case of stage fright. That was "all the matter with him"; but it was the beginning of his troubles, and he did not recover until he and Sam reached the "gentlemen's dressing-room", whither they were directed by a polite coloured man. ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... dark-haired woman whom the spy had so grossly betrayed turned pale, and sat utterly staggered that her secret was out. She had never dreamed that the handsome, polite man who had one day been presented to her in the lounge of the Hotel d'Europe was a German agent, that he was engaged in committing outrages on behalf of the enemy, or that he was friendly with ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... pulled at the bell, and when the Captain came to the door, said: 'Dear Captain Murderer, marry me next, for I always loved you and was jealous of my sister.' The Captain took it as a compliment, and made a polite answer, and the marriage was quickly arranged. On the night before it, the bride again climbed to his window, and again saw him having his teeth filed sharp. At this sight she laughed such a terrible laugh at the chink ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... retorted Jean, as if the very mention of such a state of things was too dreadful to be polite. "—But, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the sunburnt faces. For there were as many men as women present. The majority of them looked about them as at a show, but all were silent and respectful. All made room readily enough for any who wished to kneel. There was no pushing, no impatience. All were polite and forbearing. ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... was not sufficiently loud to shake a single leaf of the ivy on the towers of Nightmare Abbey; and some months afterwards he received a letter from his bookseller, informing him that only seven copies had been sold, and concluding with a polite request for ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... spoke a Latin dialect, I attempted to beat him down from his demand of a franc an hour. "It's too much," I cried. "It's the price," he answered, laconically. Clearly I was to take it or leave it, and I took it. We did not find our fellow-republicans flatteringly polite, but we found them firm, and, for all I know, honest. At least they seemed as honest as we were, and that is saying a great deal. What struck us from the beginning was the surliness of the men and the industry of the women; and I am persuaded that the Swiss Government is really ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... home of learning. Herat was at that time the most magnificent and refined city of the world[4]. The court was splendid, polite, intelligent, and liberal. Poetry, history, philosophy, science, and the arts of painting and music were cultivated by noblemen and scholars alike. Baber himself was a poet of no mean rank. The religion was that of Islam, and the sect the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... M. le Marquis. I have no wish to be offensive. But I resent having hands violently laid upon me, especially when they are hands that I cannot consider clean, In the circumstances I can hardly be expected to be polite." ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... on the 18th at Cangrejos (Santurce) with 3,000 men, and demanded the surrender of the city. Governor Castro, in polite but energetic language, refused, and hostilities commenced. For the next thirteen days there were skirmishes and more or less serious encounters on land and sea. On the morning of the 1st of May the defenders of the city were preparing a general attack on the English ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... Brefar, which faces Inniscaw. Her farmstead there (the solitary one on the island), stood a short way above the landing quay; and once or twice, catching sight of her in her doorway and lifting his hat as he went by (for the Commandant was ever polite), he had found it in his mind to stop and inquire ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... rights, and if only him and Mr. Ellins could have got together for half an hour peaceable-like things could have been squared all around. We needed Groff every tick of the clock, and just because he ain't always polite in statin' his views over the wire wa'n't any first-class reason for us extendin' him an official invitation to go sew his head ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... call myself a soldier—it's a bloody insult to be called a soldier. I'm not a bloody patriot either—I reckon patriotism's a bloody curse. I kept out of the army as long as I could, but they combed me out (that's their polite way of putting it!), and shoved me into khaki, but they never made a soldier of me! I've never been any use to them! I only worked when they forced me to. I've been more expense and trouble to them than I'm worth. I haven't helped to win this wicked war, and I'm proud of it too! Sentimental ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... When present, his looks and words occupied her whole attention; when absent, she thought but of what had passed at their recent interview. She would wander with him through the green lanes and rural scenes of the vicinity. He taught her to see new beauties in Nature; he talked in the language of polite and cultivated life, and breathed into her ear the witcheries of romance ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... iceberg, urging Mr. Ryder to come forward now at this critical time and clear him of this abominable charge, or in any case to kindly return the two letters he must have in his possession, as they would go far to help him at the trial. Three days passed and no reply from Ryder. On the fourth came a polite but frigid note from Mr. Ryder's private secretary. Mr. Ryder had received Judge Rossmore's letter and in reply begged to state that he had a vague recollection of some conversation with the judge in regard to investments, but he did not think he had advised ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... the Princess tried to get near her escritoire to ascertain if the drawer had been tampered with: the man kept between her and it all the time, still smiling, still polite, but watching every movement that she made. Suddenly he took his watch from ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... think, look, move, talk, dress, and even eat, alike; the only remarkable personage being a woman somewhat more beautiful than the beauties who surround her, and a man rather more original in his affectations than the puppies that surround him. The proof of the general dulness of polite circles is the great sensation that is always produced by a new face. The season always commences briskly, because there are so many. Ball, and dinner, and concert collect then plentiful votaries; but as we move on the dulness will develop itself, and then come the ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the young man in an exchange of intelligence as full as it was rapid; and this brief scene left Anna so oddly enlightened that she felt no surprise when her companion, pushing an arm-chair forward, sociably asked her if she wouldn't have a cigarette. Her polite refusal provoked the remark that he would, if she'd no objection; and while he groped for matches in his loose pockets, and behind the photographs and letters crowding the narrow mantel-shelf, she ventured another ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... here we've just bulled ahead without any regard whatever for law or regulations. Of course, I showed your letter stating your agreement and talks with Plant, but the department has his specific denial that you ever approached him. They stand pat on that, and while they're very polite, they insist on a detailed investigation. I'm going to see the ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... may mention that I have always found the native officials to be most polite, considerate, and obliging, and such, I feel sure, is the general experience of those who have been ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... Twelve hours ago it had seemed that I should never know such happiness in this world again as I had found with them, and here we all were on Monday morning with everything changed, Mrs. Wreford sulking in bed and Wreford displaying a polite but firm hatred of me and all the world. In this case my feeling was that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... "Katrina, it isn't polite to look so bored," said her brother John, who was amusing himself with Sydney's help by drawing caricatures of the men ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... not covertly teasing his next-door neighbor, Timothy carried on a very polite conversation with Miss Eliza on sundry country matters. He complimented the stand of corn in the Redfield lot near that "V" lot of his own, and told her that it did not seem to show the need of rain so badly as did his corn; and Miss Eliza bridled at the compliment. She was proud of her ability ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... his honour's further patronage; and then, upon being civilly assured by Mr. Jeremiah, that if he did not in one instant walk down the stairs, he would, to his certain knowledge, have to fly down them; the rough-rider, in company with the landlady, took a rapid and polite leave of Mr. Schnackenberger; who was too much irritated by the affront to compose himself again ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... order in excellent French, which the steward hastened away to carry out. This done, he twisted his moustaches and looked calmly at his companions, not curiously, but rather as if he regarded them with a polite indifference, and merely because they were near him. Mrs. Armine seemed quite unaware of his scrutiny, but Nigel spoke to him almost immediately, making some remark about the ship in English. The stranger answered in the same ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... but now that it seems at hand, I find that, while my reason is still acquiescent, my nerves are disposed to—excuse the phrase—kick. I ask myself, what have I done nothing for, all my life, and lived as a gentleman should, upon the earnings of somebody else, in the possession of every polite taste and feeling that adorns leisure, if I'm to come to this at last? And I find no satisfactory answer. I say to myself that I might as well have yielded to the pressure all round me, and gone ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... what I would you say, is not only for the Englishes, but for the strangers, who come at your country from all the other kingdoms, polite and instructed; because, as they tell me, that they are abonnements[10] for you in all the kingdoms in Europe, so well as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... the truth, but see, smell, handle, hear, and devour the truth. All great spiritual scriptures are full of the invitation not to test, but to taste; not to examine, but to eat. Their phrases are full of living water and heavenly bread, mysterious manna and dreadful wine. Worldliness, and the polite society of the world, has despised this instinct of eating; but religion has never despised it. When we look at a firm, fat, white cliff of chalk at Dover, I do not suggest that we should desire to eat it; that ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... conceit of the individual, growing by violence and strife, and ending in dissolution. This is the ever-repeated refrain of his political discourses, puerile enough, it may be, to our rude hearing in Britain, but very grateful to polite and patriotic ears at Vienna, when the cannon of Wagram was yet sounding in audible echo beneath their towers. The propounder of such philosophy had not only the common necessity of all philosophers to pile up his political in majestic consistency with his ecclesiastical creed, but he had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... and gobbled; some stood meekly outside the crowd, and got what they could; others seized a mouthful, and ran away to eat it in a corner. The chicks got into the pan entirely, and tumbled one over the other in their hurry to eat; but the mammas saw that none went hungry. And the polite cock waited upon them in the most gentlemanly manner, making queer little clucks and gurgles as if ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... left here till called for, like a sack of potatoes. Cousin Theodora is too polite to say so; but I know she must wish I were in—Dawson City. It's dreadful, Allyn, not having ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... both legs in an absurd way he had. "To you, my sister—" which is the polite method of story asking in ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... murmured the monosyllable with polite indifference. But he watched, lynx-eyed, the strong, brown face ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... man, deigning no reply to this polite inquiry. "I am the King of what you mortals call the Golden River. The shape you saw me in was owing to the malice of a stronger king, from whose enchantments you have this instant freed me. What I have seen of you, and your conduct to your wicked brothers, ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... announced in the Daily Whistler, that Miss Goodrich would soon return to her home. The article stated that she had been living with some friends in the east, finishing her education, and the public accepted the polite lie with a nod ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... two volumes of "Notions" of his countrymen, in the course of which he bestows on them the following surperlative epithets: "most active, quick-witted, enterprising, orderly, moral, simple, vigorous, healthful, manly, generous, just, wise, innocent, civilized, liberal, polite, enlightened, ingenious, moderate, glorious, firm, free, virtuous, intelligent, sagacious, kind, honest, independent, brave, gallant, intellectual, well-governed, elevated, dignified, pure, immaculate, extraordinary, ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... you wretch! And yet we poor women," she went on, "are forbidden pleasures far less voluptuous than this. There is no flesh in the world as soft as these. None. When M. Verdurin did me the honour of being madly jealous... come, you might at least be polite. Don't say that you never ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the dessert. After the last plate had been removed, the grizzled captain at the head of the table lighted a coarse cigarette, which, in accordance with the Spanish custom, he then passed to the mate, so that the mate could light his cigarette. This is a more polite way than to make an offer of a match. Coffee and cognac was brought on after a considerable interval. Although this process was repeated course for course at eight o'clock, during the interim you found it ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... praying for a good husband. And she said to a girl friend: "My friend, I wonder where I could see the man who was here. Where is the great man? You girls must hunt for him and ask him to be good enough to come and accept our hospitality. For he is a wonderful man, and we must be polite to him." ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... having now some hopes of seeing you again. If you make any tour in Italy, I shall not easily forgive you for not acquainting me soon enough to have met you there. I am very certain I shall never be polite unless I travel with you, and it is never to be repaired, the loss that Homer has sustained for want of my translating ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... seemingly never-ending stream. There were uneducated country women, whose curiosity could only be satisfied by going through every room in the missionary's house and minutely examining each article that met their eyes. There were those who were educated and formally polite, and dexterously steered the conversation into other channels every time we endeavored to present the claims of Christ to them. There were Christians, some coming with their troubles, others with plans for forwarding the work of the church, and still others with requests ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... the French the most hearty good-feeling, affection, and good-will. Through the government at Washington this feeling has been ill-expressed, if not entirely concealed. It is unfortunate. Mr. Kipling, whose manners are his own, has given as a toast: "Damn all neutrals." The French are more polite. But when this war is over we may find that in twelve months we have lost friends of many years. That over all the world we ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... were the "king's men," or royalists, and the Puritans republicans. The different characteristics of these two sects were quite marked. The Puritans were sober and industrious, quiet, fanatically religious and strict, while the cavaliers were polite, gallant, brave, good livers and quite fond of display. They were nearly all of the Church of England, with rather loose morals, fond of fox-hunting and gay society. During the time of the Commonwealth of England, the Puritans were in power, and the king's people, cavaliers, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... authentic to justify more minute reference than that rumour assigned it to have been an accusation that Alan was imprudently intimate with the handsome widow of Strone (a Bhanntrach Ruadh). The delicate insinuation was resented by Alan in language probably more plain than polite. Mr Cameron was Alan's senior by some twenty years or so, but notwithstanding this, his high spirit could not brook the rough retort of the accused; and, much to Alan's confusion, the result was that he received a peremptory demand to apologise or arrange a meeting ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... frivolous pursuits, and in the short-lived love intrigues that are the disgrace of salons in Paris, where every one seeks for love, grows blase in the pursuit, falls into the libertinism sanctioned by polite society, and ends by feeling as much astonished at real passion as the world is over a heroic action. I did as others did. Often I dealt to generous and candid souls the deadly wound from which I myself was slowly perishing. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... sure you don't want me to give it up? Judge Wilton has asked me twice, out of politeness, not to give it up. Are you merely being polite?" ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... that) evolutions on paper with a black-lead pencil; profitless alike to performer and beholder, unless as a matter of vanity, and that the smallest possible vanity. If any young person, after being taught what is, in polite circles, called "drawing," will try to copy the commonest piece of real work—suppose a lithograph on the title-page of a new opera air, or a woodcut in the cheapest illustrated newspaper of the day—they ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... and some trays, We called at quaint Japan, Where a very polite old Japanese Gave Dolly ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... parliamentary beginners from the working class succumb to the charm of the Junker appeal. The Junkers themselves are not to be coaxed in this manner: it is no use offering tracts to a missionary, as the poor Kaiser found when he tried it on. The Labour Party will soon learn the value of these polite demonstrations that it is always its duty not to hamper the governing classes in their very difficult and delicate and dangerous task of safeguarding the interests of this great empire: in short, to let itself be gammoned by elegant phrases and by adroit practisings on its personal ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... had been refreshed by some pure draughts from the neighbouring crystal brook, and partaken of such fare as the Champion could offer them, he led them forth from the wood, and with courteous attentions, and many polite expressions, placed them in his chariot drawn by the crocodiles and hippopotami. Then, and not till then, did he inquire their names, and state, ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... that lady, "I am much of your opinion—yet I don't know either; although polite and courteous, there is something rather disagreeable ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... staff officers advanced silently and bowed profoundly to the two cavaliers, who were such a singular contrast to one another, and who were evidently the important persons of the cavalcade. They swung themselves lightly from their saddles, and returned the polite greetings of the generals; the one in fluent German, the other in equally flowing words, but in a language which no one understood, and to which the only answer was a few murmured words, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... in his most flute-like tones, "I have brought a friend to see you, my little girl; turn round and give him your pretty hand. It is good to be devout; but it is necessary to be polite, my niece." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... considering; then with a shade of polite contempt, "O! Jumbo's fiddle! I did not know it could be heard in your room, but no doubt the ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... complaints he made he could get no better reply from the English captain than this: 'That just as his duty obliged him to honor the ambassador's rank, it also obliged him to exact the honor due to the flag of his master as sovereign of the sea.' If the words of King James himself were more polite, they nevertheless had no other effect than to compel the Duke to take counsel of his prudence, feigning to be satisfied, while his wound was all the time smarting and incurable. Henry the Great had to practise moderation on this occasion; ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... to this polite intimation, being too sincere to tender the thanks which, in courtesy, were the proper answer.—A second pause ensued, which was broken by Julian asking the stranger whether their roads were likely to lie long together ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... fascinated the minds of Plato's followers, that Apollonius found theorems and problems relating to these figures sufficient to fill eight books with condensed truths concerning them. The study of the conic sections has been a part of polite learning from his day downward. All men confess their beauty, which so entrances those of mathematical genius as entirely to absorb them. For eighteen centuries the finest spirits of our race drew some of their best means of intellectual discipline from the study ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... her age as near seventy. She was evidently quite reserved about some details. Her father's marriage to her mother after the War would not necessarily mean that he was not married to her slave fashion before the War. She didn't care so much about giving any story, but she was polite and obliging after she had satisfied herself as ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... clipper, thirty feet long, with only nine inches draught of water, with a gorgeous morning over our heads, luxurious cushions on the seats, a tug, in the shape of a most strong, active fellow, pulling us by the towing-path, and, seated at the helm, the most civil, the most polite, the most communicative, and the most talkative man that it ever was our fortune to meet. He united in his own person a vast multiplicity of trades and offices. He was innkeeper, boat-builder, boat-owner, pilot, turner, Bristol-trader, wood-merchant, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... wrong not to be polite," she said; "you are losing a good fee, without counting many a good drink I would stand you when I ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... no property save his bare designation, Sir Mungo had been early attached to Court in the capacity of whipping-boy, as the office was then called, to King James the Sixth, and, with his Majesty, trained to all polite learning by his celebrated preceptor, George Buchanan. The office of whipping-boy doomed its unfortunate occupant to undergo all the corporeal punishment which the Lord's Anointed, whose proper person was of course sacred, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the Rumanian delegates drew the obvious corollary. Exasperated by the treatment they received, they quitted the Conference, pursued their own policy, occupied Budapest, presented their own peace conditions to Hungary, and relegated, with courteous phrases and a polite bow to the Council, the directions elaborated for their guidance to the region ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... at the door, well-fed, suave, polite, a burly man, well-clad and bearing the marks of alertness and success. Always of few words, he scarcely more than spoke at present, his mildly elevated eyebrows making inquiry of the dusty ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... expected to see to it that the officers and men under you (especially those detailed in small parties) will lead a clean and decent life and be modest and polite, without abating their loyalty and courage, thus exemplifying in their conduct the noble traditions of our ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... Number Five study had a reputation for more variegated insanity than the rest of the school put together; and so far as its code allowed friendship with outsiders it was polite and open-hearted to its ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... entire lack of manners, was slightly puzzled. Any politeness would have made the situation quite impersonal. But here it was a case of wills in confusion. Brangwen flushed at her polite speech. Still he ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... moon with the critical eye of a connoisseur. The reader is no doubt aware, that among the natives of India the popular prejudice does not run in favour of this wholesome article of food; and perhaps to this fact I must attribute it that the surrounding Mussulmans and Hindoos became wondrously polite all on a sudden, and left a wide circle vacant around me, so that I had ample room to make down my bed; nor was I disturbed from a ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... sir, in transmitting me the anonymous letter you had received, lays me under the most grateful obligations; and, if any thing could give a still further claim to my acknowledgments, it is the very polite and delicate terms in which you have been pleased to make ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... hands and was very polite indeed, and asked Peter in to breakfast, and Peter went. So they all three sat down together, the King, the Princess, ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... philologist he feels little interest in the language of the common people. Its peculiarities in pronunciation, syntax, phraseology, and the use of words we are inclined to avoid in our own speech, because they mark a lack of cultivation. We test them by the standards of polite society, and ignore them, or condemn them, or laugh at them as abnormal or illogical or indicative of ignorance. So far as literature goes, the speech of the common people has little interest for us because it is not ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... rapt in thought, and more absent than was polite to his friend for the rest of the evening. An idea that it might be Elizabeth had shot through him, and he could not divest himself of it, although the more he reflected the more certain he knew he ought to be that she had been married long ago to young Beck. ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... kindly and friendly in spirit and most courteous and polite, much more so than most American children in similar schools. They certainly appreciated warmly what we were doing for them and were most anxious to do as the children do in American schools. They lacked the life and tendency ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 4, October, 1900 • Various
... luckily caught sight of his car in the distance. I contrived to intercept him. I told him there is a plot on foot to massacre every individual of my race in the Near East—a veritable pogrom. He was polite. He seems to think politeness is the Christian quality that covers the multitude of sins. He ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... have gone on for years, enjoying the friendship of an elegant lady like Mrs. Bagman, and receiving the polite attentions of a French nobleman, had it not been for the countrified notions of Pa and Mr. Hilson; and now, I am torn from my friends, I am calumniated, and the Baron accused of being an impostor! But the fact is, as Mrs. Bagman says, Mr. Hilson ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... for your welcome," replied Pinkie Whiskers, for Mother Gray had taught her children to be very polite. ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous
... at Bab with her small pocket handkerchief. "You can tell me exactly what you think of me. Ruth and Grace might be too polite. I am so sorry; I was ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... mother at a party later in the evening, she had an absurd anticipation that everybody would talk to her about him. Nobody did; that evening an Arctic explorer and a new fortune-teller divided the attention of the polite; men came and discussed one or other of these subjects with her until she was weary. For once then, on Marchmont making an appearance near her, her legs did not carry her in the opposite direction; she awaited and ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... first for a polite refusal of the money. It was so "queer," they said. It seemed too "odd." It was not as if Pa had decided to do it, or as if Dr. Ben really was the child's uncle. It was better ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
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