"Obtrusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... benefactress. She was constant as her shadow; a faithful watch-dog, always at hand, yet never obtrusive. She was a creature who seemed to have been born without eyes and without ears; so careless was the widow of her presence, so reckless what secrets were ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... had offended people by not returning their calls, or not leaving a card after having dined with them, paying the so-called digestion-visit to them. How should I know? Nobody had ever told me, and I thought it obtrusive to call. Nor did I know that in England to touch fish with a knife, or to help yourself to potatoes with a fork, was as fatal as to drop or put in an h. Nor did I ever understand why to cut crisp ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... to finding the right friends are as great, the peril is as great of being lost in a Babel of voices and an ever-changing mass of beings. Books are not wiser than men, the true books are not easier to find than the true men, the bad books or the vulgar books are not less obtrusive and not less ubiquitous than the bad or vulgar men are everywhere; the art of right reading is as long and difficult to learn as the art of right living. Those who are on good terms with the first author they meet, run as much risk as men who ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... philosophy; and in 'Transformation' we are left finally in doubt as to the great question of Donatello's ears, and the mysterious influence which he retains over the animal world so long as he is unstained by bloodshed. In 'Septimius' alone, it seems to me that the supernatural is left in rather too obtrusive a shape in spite of the final explanations; though it might possibly have been toned down had the story received the last touches of the author. The artifice, if so it may be called, by which this is effected—and the romance is just sufficiently ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... decided that it was better for Lily's father to visit her than for the little girl to go to his boarding-house. Waythorn, having acquiesced in this arrangement, had been surprised to find how little difference it made. Haskett was never obtrusive, and the few visitors who met him on the stairs were unaware of his identity. Waythorn did not know how often he saw Alice, but with himself Haskett was seldom ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... call solely for a scenic setting which should convey effective suggestion. The machinery to be employed for the purpose of effective suggestion should be simple and unobtrusive. If it be complex and obtrusive, it defeats "the purpose of playing" by exaggerating for the spectator the inevitable interval between the visionary and indeterminate limits of the scene which the poet imagines, and the cramped and narrow bounds, which the stage renders ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... has need of friendly consideration; and I stand just in that relation to my new neighbours. To certain extent I am ignorant of the ways and means appertaining to the locality; and can only get enlightened through an intercourse with the older residents. But I have no right to be obtrusive, or to expect too much concession to a mere stranger. Until I am better known, I will only ask the sojourner's kindness—not the confidence one friend gives ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... silence prevailing was painful—almost terrible. A great ormolu clock in the room, one of the Holy Father's "Jubilee" gifts, ticked the minutes slowly away with a jewel-studded pendulum, which in its regular movements to and fro sounded insolently obtrusive in such a stillness. Gherardi abstractedly raised his eyes to a great ivory crucifix which was displayed upon the wall against a background of rich purple velvet,—Manuel was standing immediately in front of it, and the tortured head of the carven Christ drooped over him as though in ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... already saddled and bridled, for Edith's use. When the troop of Indian horsemen, who were to serve as guides and spies for the Russians, started on their way, the boyish young rajah joined them, and no one made his strange appearance the subject of obtrusive questions. The Indians probably at first thought he was a very youthful Russian officer, who wore the native dress for special reasons, and on that account preserved a most respectful demeanour. Tchajawadse, who accidentally found himself close to Edith before starting, said nothing, ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... more or less annoyed by the obtrusive presence of his arms and legs, accompanied by a vague feeling that, at any moment, and no warning given, they might, with some insane and irrepressible flourish, break the Sabbath on their own account, and degrade ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... sensitive eye subjects every picture from whatsoever creed or camp it comes is balance or equipoise, judgment being rendered without thought of the law. After the picture has been left as finished, why does an artist often feel impelled to create an accent on this side or weaken an obtrusive one on the other side of his canvas if not working under ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... Poltons Park, he was due at his aunt's place, in Kent, on Saturday evening, and must therefore make his arrangements to leave by noon on that day. The significance was apparent. Had he come down to breakfast with "Now or Never!" stamped in fiery letters across his brow, it would have been more obtrusive, indeed, but not a whit plainer. We all looked down at our plates, except Jack Ives. He flung one glance (I saw it out of the corner of my left eye) at Newhaven, another at ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... only one of the three central courts in which everything is in harmony. There is nothing obtrusive about it. The effect is that of a perfect whole, simple, complete. The round pool, smooth, level with the ground, unadorned, gives its note. The colors are warm, the massive pillars softly smooth. The trees press close to the walls, the shrubbery is dense. Birds make happy ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... meets the critic who attempts to speak of Titian. To seize the salient characteristics of an artist whose glory it is to offer nothing over-prominent, and who keeps the middle path of perfection, is impossible. As complete health may be termed the absence of obtrusive sensation, as virtue has been called the just proportion between two opposite extravagances, so is Titian's art a golden mean of joy unbroken by brusque movements of the passions—a well-tempered harmony in which no thrilling note suggests the possibility of discord. In his ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... optics, these behold The images of some peculiar things With brighter hues resplendent, and portray'd With features nobler far than e'er adorn'd Their genuine objects. Hence the fever'd heart Pants with delirious hope for tinsel charms; Hence oft obtrusive on the eye of scorn, Untimely zeal her witless pride betrays! 160 And serious manhood from the towering aim Of wisdom, stoops to emulate the boast Of childish toil. Behold yon mystic form Bedeck'd with ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... his art T' ensnare the unsuspecting heart. The prostitute, with faithless smiles, Remorseless plays her tricks and wiles. Her gesture bold and ogling eye, Obtrusive speech and pert reply, And brazen front and stubborn tone, Show all her native virtue's flown. By her the thoughtless youth is ta'en, Impoverished, disgraced, or slain: Through her the marriage vows are broke, And Hymen proves a galling yoke. Diseases come, destruction's dealt, ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... indeed, approaches the allegorical form, in the obtrusive, untempered predominance of the qualities represented, so overdone as to wear the air of a caricature, though the historical combination is still here. These diagrams are alive evidently; they are men, and not allegorical spectres, or toys, though ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... efforts to conduct the performances. He was partly paralysed, and his baton, I believe, had to be fastened to his hand because he could not grasp it. Further, he was becoming deaf, and the result was that the loud brass instruments were allowed to become too blatant and obtrusive. Costa was a good man in his day, and he did good work. He was very autocratic, even despotic, but he introduced two good things into the orchestra—order and punctuality. With all his ability, tact, and nerve, it must, however, be admitted that his style ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... do it so beautifully, dearest!" Cecil bit her lip, and colored angrily. Nothing annoyed her like Mrs. Danvers' obtrusive partisanship ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... insignificant also is bad. There is only one thing worse, which is to be big and insignificant. If one is little and insignificant, one may be overlooked, insignificance and all. But if one is big and insignificant, it is to be an obtrusive cipher, a great lubber, not easily ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... covered waggons passes by. I turn and see a number of men sitting inside and looking almost as cheerful as a beanfeast in Epping Forest. They make facetious gestures. They have a subdued sing-song going on. But one of them looks a little sick, and then I notice not very obtrusive bandages. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... them off; tourist men and boys moved about with a decision that indicated the having of particular business on hand; tourist women and girls were busily engaged with baskets and botanical boxes, or flitted hither and thither in climbing costume with obtrusive alpenstocks, as though a general attack on Mont Blanc and all his satellite ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... is the more provoking because, putting aside the obtrusive and impertinent injustice to which it leads, Mr. Pattison's critical work is of so high a character. His extensive and accurate reading, the sound common sense with which he uses his reading, and the modesty and absence ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the warmest welcome in an inn, are very natural and tender—as most of his compositions are, when he was at all in earnest. For our own part, we cannot complain of ever meeting any other welcome than a warm one, go where we may; for we are not obtrusive, and where we are not either liked, or loved, or esteemed, or admired (that last is a strong word, yet we all have our admirers), we are exceeding chary of the light of our countenance. But at an inn, the only kind of welcome that is indispensable, is a ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... at all into 'company', and the unceasing depression which I am struggling up against during the whole time I am in it, which too often makes me drink more 'during dinner' than I ought to do, and as often forces me into efforts of almost obtrusive conversation, 'acting' the opposite of my real state of mind in order to arrive at a medium, as we roll paper the opposite way in order ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... of nobility, dwelling on the peculiar pleasure he experienced from our visit; another, an old man of a very venerable appearance, called our attention to a dirty stone which he held in his hand, affirming it to be a piece of Henri Quatre's identical foot: but none were troublesome or obtrusive, and most appeared to be deriving as much enjoyment from their own little vagaries as their melancholy state would admit of.[30] Their apartments, built round the square, are neat and airy, each furnished with a bed, dressing table, and a few plain utensils. In ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... particularly friendly to the other boarders, nor made himself obtrusive in the least, not one of them failed to speak of his leaving. Two or three affected to be pleased, but "Butter-and-cheese" said he "was a first-rate chap," and this seemed to gain the ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... keeps her wits about her much better than your superior reasoning masculine animal; and, while the gallant captain was losing himself upon her perfect lips, Miss Thankful distinctly heard the farm-gate click, and otherwise noticed that the moon was getting high and obtrusive. She half released herself from the captain's arms, thoughtfully and tenderly—but firmly. "Tell me all about yourself, Allan dear," she said quietly, making room for him on ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true methodical habits of D—, and so suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the document; these things, together with the hyper-obtrusive situation of this document, full in the view of every visiter, and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I had previously arrived; these things, I say, were strongly corroborative of suspicion, in one who came with ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... report we now see him in the act of judging and reflecting; his consciousness, no longer a matter of hearsay, a matter for which we must take his word, is now before us in its original agitation. Here is a spectacle for the reader, with no obtrusive interpreter, no transmitter of light, no conductor of meaning. This man's interior life is cast into the world of independent, rounded objects; it is given room to show itself, it appears, it acts. A ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... around us were suspiciously watching our movements, if not actually following us up the river. This, however, for the time being caused us little or no uneasiness, as we felt assured that, should their attentions become inconveniently obtrusive, a bullet or two, or failing that, a round-shot from our carronade, fired over their heads, would promptly send them to the right-about. Later on in the day, however, I must confess that I for one began to experience a ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... does her own work, is dependent upon circumstances. She certainly shouldn't follow her hostess all over the house with offers of help: "Can't I do this?" "Shan't I do that?" Let her quickly and unostentatiously render such small services as are helpful without being obtrusive. She may care for her own room; she may fill the vases with flowers; she may tell stories to the children or take them for a walk, but she must carefully respect the hostess's privacy and not intrude in the rear regions where the domestic rites are performed, without ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... sense-degrading She, Who swayed and sickened, scourged and scarified The unwilling slaves of fashion and discomfort A quarter of a century since! She sat, A spectral, scraggy, beet-nosed, ankle-less, Obtrusive-panted, splay-foot, slattern-shape, Of grim Medusa-faced Immodesty, Caged cumbrously in a stiff, swaying, swollen, Shin-scarifying, hose-revealing frame Of wide-meshed metal, like a monster mousetrap— Hideous, indecent, awkward! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... drinking champagne and not from the champagne. Perhaps I shall do well to say that on questions of right and wrong he had a will of iron. All his life he moved resolutely in whichever direction his conscience pointed; and, although that ever present and never obtrusive conscience of his made mistakes of judgment now and then, as must all consciences, I think it can never once have tricked him into any action that was impure or unclean. Some critics maintain that the heroes and heroines of his books are impossibly ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... expatiates in the regions of exalted fancy, as in the introductory discourse of the Spirit, and the invocation to Sabrina. They recur when he moralizes; and his morality is too interwoven with the texture of his piece to be other than obtrusive. He fatigues with virtue, as Lucan fatigues with liberty; in both instances the scarcely avoidable error of a young preacher. What glorious morality it is no one need be told; nor is there any poem in the language where beauties of thought, diction, and description spring up more thickly ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... of those universities. [Applause and laughter.] No doubt there is a considerable warfare going on between them as to the methods of instruction; but to us who have looked on, we have seen no more obtrusive manifestation of it than that the President on my left, of Yale, in dealing with the subjects that have successively been placed before him, has pursued the methods of that university, its comprehensive method, that takes in the whole curriculum; while on my right, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... fellow!—" But at that instant his servant brought in his supper, and he went no further. My own meal was before me a minute later, and we both devoted ourselves in angry silence to our food. I was still full of resentment at his obtrusive scorn of myself and my religious party, and I could see that he felt himself mightily outraged at my retorts. From the rapid, heedless way in which he ate, I fancied his mind was busy with all sorts of ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... solitudes, where no frequented paths But what thine own foot makes betray thine home, Stealing obtrusive there ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... loaded rifles. Eight hundred convicts attended service; some of them were penitent; most of them were trying to make a high profession of contrition as a bid for the good graces of the chaplain. The obtrusive reverence of one sinister gray-head near at hand attracted Hugh Ritson's especial attention. He knelt with his face to the gallery in which the choir sat. Beside him was a youth fresh from Millbank. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... undergraduate with Forbes says of him: He 'did not take a prominent part in religious movements in the College, such as the College prayer meeting or Bible readings, though he was occasionally present at them. In chapel his reverence was quiet, though in no way obtrusive. I think that by not identifying himself with any particular religious party he had greater influence with those men whose minds ran in very different grooves. I always felt when in his company that I was conversing ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... meets, an Englishman prudently avoids all contact with him. Men are afraid, lest some slight service rendered should draw them into an unsuitable acquaintance; they dread civilities, and they avoid the obtrusive gratitude of a stranger, as much ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... moved, too, and Noble's nose but pressed black cloth. And the noise everybody made was so baffling that, in order to be heard, Julia herself was shouting. Finally Noble contrived to squirm round the obtrusive back, and protruded his strained face among all the flushed and ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... Adventure"), redeemed from the aimless prolixity incident to that form by its regular plan, by the intercommunion of the adventures of the several knights (none of whom disappears after having achieved his own quest), and by the constant presence of a not too obtrusive allegory. This last characteristic attaches it on the other side to the poems of the Roman de la Rose order, which succeeded the Romans d'Aventures as objects of literary interest and practice, not ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... been said of scenery may be applied also to the use of incidental music. So soon as such music becomes obtrusive, it distracts the attention from the business of the play: and it cannot be insisted on too often that in the theatre the play's the thing. But a running accompaniment of music, half-heard, half-guessed, that moves to the mood of the play, now swelling ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... that and admired the taste with which they have kept the inscription so inconspicuous as not to clash with the decoration. An obtrusive inscription in Greek characters would have spoiled the consistency of the ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... chiefly affected by their condition are not private, but public interests. There are legal means for abating nuisances; and there is no reason why houses which affect the health of whole districts should not be treated in the same way as nuisances which are more obtrusive, though less pernicious. In some of the cities of Europe, in Nuremberg, for instance, there is a public architect, to whom all plans for new buildings are submitted for approval or rejection according as they correspond or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... sailing-orders; but just at that moment, as luck would have it, another cyclist flew past—the first soul I had seen on the road that morning. He was a man with the loose-knit air of a shop assistant, badly got up in a rather loud and obtrusive tourist suit of brown homespun, with baggy knickerbockers and thin thread stockings. I judged him a gentleman on the cheap at sight. "Very Stylish; this Suit Complete, only thirty-seven and sixpence!" The landlady glanced out at ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... and now, as anywhere and at any time!" returned Rosa, yet more resignedly. "And the end must come, sooner or later. This was what I was saying over to myself when you came in. I am a fool—a baby—to mind it!" angrily dashing away the obtrusive brine from her mournful eyelids. "I WISH you would leave me alone for a few minutes, Mr. Chilton, until I can ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution, so he told me, by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial ground of the family, I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... rose amidst showers and rainbows (for this is the showery season), I could hardly believe my eyes. Scenery, vegetation, colour were all changed. The glowing red, the fiery glare, the obtrusive lack of vegetation were all gone. There was a magnificent coast-line of grey cliffs many hundred feet in height, usually draped with green, but often black, caverned, and fantastic at their bases. Into cracks and caverns the heavy waves surged with a sound like artillery, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... this phenomenon I first became aware in rather a ludicrous way. My host's daughter was a very pleasant pretty girl, who made herself more agreeable to me than most of those about me. For some days my companion-shadow had been less obtrusive than usual; and such was the reaction of spirits occasioned by the simple mitigation of torment, that, although I had cause enough besides to be gloomy, I felt light and comparatively happy. My impression is, that she was quite ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... her feet. Firmstone had dismounted and was drinking from the stream. She stood waiting until he should notice her. As he rose to his feet he looked at her in astonished surprise. Above the average height, his compact, athletic figure was so perfectly proportioned that his height was not obtrusive. His beardless face showed every line of a determination that was softened by mobile lips which could straighten and set with decision, or droop and waver with appreciative humour. His blue eyes were still more expressive. ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... Obstacle baro, kontrauxajxo. Obstinacy obstineco. Obstinate, to be obstini. Obstinate obstina. Obstruct obstrukci. Obstruction baro, obstrukco. Obtain ricevi, atingi. Obtrude trudi. Obtrusion trudo—eco. Obtrusive trudema. Obtuse malakra, malinteligenta. Obverse antauxa flanko. Obviate malhelpi. Obvious videbla, evidenta. Occasion okazo. Occasional okaza. Occult kasxata. Occupant okupanto, logxanto. Occupation okupo. Occupy okupi. Occupied with, to ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... concentrated bitterness does the young lawyer write of these men who, he is convinced, had submitted to be ministerial tools for the aggrandizement, of their families. His bitterness is the greater, and his conscious rectitude the more obtrusive, because he also, the virtuous Adams, might have sat in that gallery. For the wily Hutchinson had offered him the lucrative post of solicitor-general—the open road to power; but he had declined it; he could not be bought by the man "whose character and conduct have been the cause ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... qualities than enthusiasm. He was capable of being so absorbed in a cause as to lose sight of his own identity; to forget that he was more than an instrument in the hands of God, to do God's work: and the distinction between these traits is broad indeed! Enthusiasm is noisy, obtrusive—self-abnegation is silent, retiring; enthusiasm is officious, troublesome, careless of time and place—self-abnegation is prudent, gentle, considerate. The one is active and fragmentary—the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... had pirated the ancient exclusive music of St. Peter's in Rome. He was at this period a thriving literary craftsman, and the author of a series of popular plays in which the critics of the time had just begun to note and resent an obtrusive democratic tendency. ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... draughts of milk. The feasters resembled Wordsworth's cows, "forty feeding like one:" in the left hand they held the meat to their teeth, and cut off the slice in possession with long daggers perilously close, were their noses longer and their mouths less obtrusive. During the dinner I escaped from the place of flies, and retired to a favourite tree. Here the End of Time, seeing me still in pain, insisted upon trying a Somali medicine. He cut two pieces of dry wood, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... mother, and to his wife adhere; And they shall be one flesh, one heart, one soul. She heard me thus; and though divinely brought, Yet innocence, and virgin modesty, Her virtue, and the conscience of her worth, That would be wooed, and not unsought be won, Not obvious, not obtrusive, but, retired, The more desirable; or, to say all, Nature herself, though pure of sinful thought, Wrought in her so, that, seeing me, she turned: I followed her; she what was honour knew, And with obsequious majesty approved My pleaded reason. To the nuptial ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... aristocrat a plebeian pedagogue to whom he must defer, just as, when he is a little older and sports a scarlet tunic, he must submit to the unlettered sergeant-major who teaches him his goose-step; to the rich parvenu more intolerable still, as the pruner of his obtrusive vulgarities of speech and manner, the index of his social inferiority and the standing menace to his innate rudeness, that is only intensified by his consciousness of wealth; to the poor man's son essentially a "schoolmaster"—a wielder of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... meadows, canals, and windmills, I suppose there must have been, as every picture has to have its background; but backgrounds are seldom obtrusive in Holland, as Mr. Starr says; and here the two lines of toy dwellings were so astonishing that ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... some measure," answered Harley, "with those who think that charity to our common beggars is often misplaced; there are objects less obtrusive whose ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... to intense lovers of France. Throughout M. Hallays' volume he acknowledges the courtesy of German officials, a fact to which I had borne testimony when first journalizing my own experiences. Certain aspects of enforced Germanization can but afflict all outsiders. There is firstly that obtrusive militarism from which we cannot for a moment escape. Again, a no less false note strikes us in matters aesthetic. Modern German taste in art, architecture and decoration do not harmonize with the ancientness and historic severity of Alsace. The restoration of ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... destiny, it strolled downhill or up as it wished, taking no trouble about the gradients, nor about the view, which nevertheless expanded. The great estates that throttle the south of Hertfordshire were less obtrusive here, and the appearance of the land was neither aristocratic nor suburban. To define it was difficult, but Margaret knew what it was not: it was not snobbish. Though its contours were slight, there was a touch of freedom in their sweep to which Surrey will never attain, and the ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... every prejudice its voice, and every prejudice and side and vagary even has the philosophical reason given for it, and the charitable explanation applied to it. She analyzes the religious motives without obtrusive criticism or acrid cynicism or nauseous cant—whether of the orthodox ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Here, perhaps, the favourable side of the catalogue should end. His speeches have the great blemish of insolence. They are wanting in geniality, and apparently wanting in reflectiveness. They contain too little thought and more than enough of gall. Perhaps their cleverness is too obtrusive. His hearers are pleased, but they suspect a trick, and levy a discount on his argument. The faults of his speeches are his faults as a politician. He is headstrong and impulsive. He borrows his ideas from his passions, and fancies he is sagacious when ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... During a friendship of nearly seven years, he permitted me to see that one true side of an author's nature which is never so far revealed to the public that the malignant may avail themselves of his candor to assail or the fools to annoy him. He is now beyond the reach of malice, obtrusive sentiment, or vain curiosity; and the "late remorse of love," which a better knowledge of the man may here and there provoke, can atone for past wrong only by that considerate, tender judgment of the living of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... features of our friends, are always distracting, especially during illness, when restfulness is so essential. The plain cartridge-papered wall with frieze and ceiling either flowered or of a light shade of the same or a contrasting color is never obtrusive and always in good taste. With a flowered wall a plain ceiling is a relief, and vice versa. Figures in both walls and ceiling are tiring, besides having none of the effect resulting from contrast. ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... he watched her discontentedly, alternately protesting against the adventure, and consoling himself weakly with the remembrance of the retainer; weighing the risks, and the patroon's ability to gloss over the matter; now finding the former unduly obtrusive, again comforted with the assurance of the power pre-empted by the land barons. Moreover, the task was half-accomplished, and it would be idle to ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... was now received by her with much cordiality, and I had an opportunity to survey the whole concourse and continue my observations. Brought up as I had been for the last few years, I found my own people markedly foreign,—not so much in any obtrusive respect as in that general atmosphere to which we often ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... second in blank amazement at the intruders. They were certainly unlike any other visitors who had ever come to Pendlemere. The speaker was a little, short, wiry man, in a slack-fitting, brown tweed suit, with a rather obtrusive striped tie. His raggy, grey beard straggled under his chin and up to his ears; his eyes twinkled through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles; in defiance of European etiquette, he wore his hat over a crop of rough, grey hair. Clinging ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... This is exceedingly striking. Had Sir T. B. lived now-a-days, he would probably have been a very ingenious and bold infidel in his real opinions, though the kindness of his nature would have kept him aloof from vulgar prating obtrusive infidelity. ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... The spell was broken. "Yes, the heap to be cleaned is rather obtrusive," he said, "but I suppose it is a ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... woman! I suppose it has been developed like a cat's whiskers to supply the deficiency of a natural scent. Also, like the whiskers, it is obtrusive, and a matter for much irritatingly complacent pride. Judith regarded me with a mock magisterial air, and I was put into ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... certain aspect of the matter which had always lain subconsciously in Merriman's mind was gradually taking concrete form. It had not assumed much importance when the two friends were first discussing their trip, but now that they were actually at grips with the affair it was becoming more obtrusive, and Merriman felt it must be faced. He therefore ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... wonder that they made friends where their intimacy was sought and appreciated. There was nothing underbred about themselves; both were ladies ingrain, though Arthurine was abrupt and sometimes obtrusive, but they had not lived a life such as to render them sensitive to the lack of fine edges in others, and were quite ready to be courted by those who gave the meed of appreciation that both regarded as Arthurine's ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Americans, everywhere Americans; rich and poor Americans, loud and quiet Americans; Americans who had taste and education, and some who had neither; well-dressed and over-dressed, obtrusive and unobtrusive, parvenu and aristocrat. Once Merrihew saw a fine old gentleman wearing the Honor Legion ribbon in his buttonhole, and his heart grew warm and proud. Here was an order which was not to be purchased like the Order of Leopold and ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... not reckoned upon the ravages of a long illness. The long, loose folds of her white gown had been especially designed to conceal the sharp outlines of her emaciated body, but the stamp of her disease was there; simple and ugly and obtrusive, a pitiless fact that could not be disguised or evaded. The splendid shoulders were stooped, there was a swaying unevenness in her gait, her arms seemed disproportionately long, and her hands were transparently white and cold to the touch. The changes in her face ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... standing by the doctor is a figure of the same gray-white as the bed. Within the pattern of the velvety-blacks there are as many subtle gradations as in the pattern of the gray-whites. The tableau is a satisfying scheme in black and gray, with practically one non-obtrusive texture throughout. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... But instead of thus furthering his object, he sacrifices the whole—and his story becomes, instead of a broad and faithful human record, really a curiosity of autobiographic perversion, and of overweening, if not extravagant egotism of the more refined, but yet over-obtrusive kind. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... with her hands clasped behind her, before the deal table. She gazed, under lowered brows, straight out of window; and following that gaze, I saw across the coombe a mean mud hut, with a wall around it, that looked on Sheba Farm with the obtrusive ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rest of the sleeping girl, that perfume of innocence shed around the maidenly couch, that lamp, open-eyed amid the shadows, like a soul in prayer, had inspired the seducer with an unknown distress. Irritated by what he called an absurd cowardice, he had extinguished the obtrusive light, and was advancing towards the bed, and addressing unspoken reproaches to himself, when Gabriel swooped upon him with a wounded tiger's fierce gnashing ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... those above them. The constant habit of meeting and discussing subjects connected with their own interests, in their own fields, and 'under their own fig-trees', with their landlords and Government functionaries of all kinds and degrees, prevents their ever feeling or appearing impudent or obtrusive; though it certainly tends to give them stentorian voices, that often startle us when they come into our houses to discuss the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... o'clock my short servitude ended. As soon as a bend in the road hid us from the house I opened my portmanteau, got out my own clothes, and, sub there, changed my raiment, putting on a quiet suit of blue, and presenting George Sampson's rather obtrusive garments (which I took the liberty of regarding as a perquisite) to Jean, who received them gladly. I felt at once a different being—so true it is that ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... this point that Marget gave way and scandalized Drumtochty, which held that obtrusive prosperity was an irresistible provocation to the higher powers, and that a skilful depreciation of our children was a ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... turned to my father, and, with the obtrusive lump in my throat by this time grown so inconveniently large that I could scarcely articulate, held out ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... care to people her own vast territory and that of many other States, no one of which has ever failed in truthfulness to the great principles in which she was born. Always more solid than noisy, and more reserved than obtrusive, she has ever served as the great balance-wheel in the mighty engine of our national organization. Her life, commingled with other lives attempered to her own, now pulsates from ocean to ocean and from the frozen lakes to the warm Gulf waters, all glad and glorious in the unity and sunshine of ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... experience, that he made use of a specific means to discover what kind of mind a person had. He used to tell his subjects the following story: "A gentleman, carrying a small peculiarly-formed casket, entered a steam car, where an obtrusive commercial traveler asked him at once what was contained in the casket. 'My Mungo is inside!' 'Mungo? What is that?' 'Well, you know that I suffer from delirium tremens, and when I see the frightful images and figures, I let my Mungo out and he eats them up.' 'But, sir, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... he should be looked upon and addressed as a gentleman, and for that purpose she encouraged him to associate with those only whose rank and position in life rendered any assumption of equality on his part equally arrogant and obtrusive. In his own family his bearing towards his parents was, in point of fact, the reverse of what it ought to have been. He not only treated his father with something bordering on contempt, but joined his mother in all that ignorant pride which kept ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... eyes and swollen noses are impertinently obtrusive and disdainful of disguise, and the captain's battle-flags provoked no little jocosity among ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... she chose to exert herself? She glanced about, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gryce; but her eyes lit instead on the glossy countenance of Mr. Rosedale, who was slipping through the crowd with an air half obsequious, half obtrusive, as though, the moment his presence was recognized, it would swell to the dimensions ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Salvator, and of Claude, says: "Even their skies seem to sympathise with their subjects." I have often been advised to consider my sky as "a white sheet thrown behind the objects." Certainly, if the sky is obtrusive, as mine are, it is bad; but if it is evaded, as mine are not, it is worse; it must and always shall with me make an effectual part of the composition. It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the keynote, the standard of scale, and the ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... protection of free persons of color against kidnappers," the Committee are of opinion that the existing laws appear to be amply sufficient, if properly executed. They have, therefore, no other measures to recommend than the less obtrusive, but persevering exertions, of the several associations now formed, and which may be hereafter instituted, in the different ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... officer with a high ecclesiastical title, the Rt. Rev. Lieutenant-General Leonidas Polk, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Louisiana, commanding a corps in Bragg's army. He was killed in battle at Pine Mountain, Ga., during Sherman's advance on Atlanta. Stonewall Jackson was so famed for his rather obtrusive though awfully real piety that men named him the Havelock of the army. But none who knew the three will call Lee less a Christian than either of the others. He prayed daily for his enemies in arms, and no word of hate toward the North ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... that this was a maker of history, and one who will be placed by chroniclers, writing in the calm of the twentieth century, only second to his greater uncle among remarkable Frenchmen, and merely wondered whether Napoleon III perceived the somewhat obtrusive emotion of my neighbour in the ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... all;—nothing, therefore, but those obvious thoughts and feelings that float over the surface of things: and all which is drawn from the depth of nature, all which impassioned feeling has made original in thought, would be misplaced and obtrusive. The talent that is allowed to shew itself is that which can repay admiration by furnishing entertainment: and the display to which it is invited is that which flatters the vulgar pride of society, by abasing what is too high in excellence for its sympathy. A dangerous ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... merit (in our judgment most essential) of being evidently a Christian writer: a merit which is much enhanced, both on the score of good taste, and of practical utility, by her religion being not at all obtrusive. She might defy the most fastidious critic to call any of her novels (as Caelebs was designated, we will not say altogether without reason), a "dramatic sermon." The subject is rather alluded to, and that incidentally, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of the priesthood. Nothing can be less obtrusive than the demeanor of the brethren. Visitors to their temples are welcomed, and courteous replies are always ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... heard the miserable sobbing again. It was farther than his mother could walk, or else, be the sorrow what it would, she was the natural comforter of this girl, her visitor. However, whether it was right or wrong, delicate or obtrusive, when he heard the sad voice talking again, in such tones of uncomforted, lonely misery, he turned back, and went to the green tent under the ash-tree. She started up when he came thus close to her; she tried to check her ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and looking now and then as if he were ready to start up and interrupt the preacher. This behavior evidently annoyed his neighbors who kept signing to him to be quiet and hushing him down, while he took no notice of their demonstrations but kept clearing his throat with obtrusive emphasis and at last scraped and shuffled his feet on the floor, though not very noisily. But Eusebius ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... inhabitants come down to see it, and the skippers of small craft pop up from their cabins and yell out to know where it's coming to. Even when they see it bound and guided by many hawsers they are not satisfied, but dangling fenders in an obtrusive fashion over the sides of their ships, ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... he could make or find excuses for harshness to a being who would not worship wealth; it would be joy and pride, and an honour to his idol, if he should keep Maria pretty short of cash, and so make her own its preciousness; triumphant would he feel, as a merely-moneyed man, to see troublesome, obtrusive Heart, with all its win-ways, and whimperings, and incomprehensible spirituality, with its sermons and its prayers, bending before him "for a bit of bread." Yes, poor loving disinterested Maria ran every chance of being disinherited, from ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... effectively in retouching composites. It would be easy to obliterate the ghosts of stray features that are always present when the composite is made from only a few portraits, and it would not be difficult to tone down any irregularity in the features themselves, due to some obtrusive peculiarity in one of the components. A higher order of artistic skill might be well bestowed upon the composites that have been made out of a large number of components. Here the irregularities disappear, the features are perfectly regular and idealised, but the result ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... Miss Gilman, least obtrusive of chaperones, had been peacefully napping for a good half-hour in her low rocker under the reading-lamp, and the pictures in a thick quarto of Gulf Coast views had pleasantly filled the interval for the two who were awake, ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... compatible with confinement at the public expence. But though Monthault took on himself the merit of this lenient treatment, the prejudices of the whole family against him formed an insuperable bar to his designs. His change of conduct was too pointedly obtrusive; his piety and penance too ostentatious to pass on a man who was thoroughly conversant with the marks of genuine repentance. Dr. Beaumont did not approve of an elaborate and unnecessary disclosure of the secret enormities of his early life, which seemed to him more like the wantonness of a ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the vintner silent, until they came to the end of their journey at number forty in the Krumerweg. It was a house of hanging gables, almost as old as the town itself, solid and grim and taciturn. There are some houses which talk like gossips, noisy, obtrusive and provocative. Number forty was like an old warrior, gone to his chair by the fireside, who listens to the small-talk of his neighbors saturninely. What was it all about? Had he not seen battles and storms, revolutions ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... of the friars, too, the village people have become well used, and the infrequent excursionists, for lack of intelligence and of any knowledge that would refer to history, look at them without obtrusive curiosity. It was only from a Salvation Army girl that you heard the brutal word of contempt. She had come to the place with some companions, and with them was trespassing, as she was welcome to do, within the monastery ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... leaving the room, returned with a bottle of wine which was port to the look and red-currant to the taste, and a seedcake of formidable appearance. The visitors attacked these refreshments mildly, Mr. Piper sipping his wine with an obtrusive carefulness which his niece rightly regarded as a reflection ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... to her as if these commodities must suggest to the mind of any one rusty iron and obtrusive insects, and as articles altogether outside the pale of ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... the patient experiment and investigation necessary for the procuring of the real substance; and Hippocrates, not knowing how to advance to a theory by rational experiment, and too honest to invent one, assumes the traditional theories, founded on the vaguest and most obtrusive generalizations. Those which his experience taught him to reject, were adopted and maintained by Galen and all who followed him for centuries, the chief instance of progress being only the substitution by the Arabians of some of the milder medicines ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... indispensable to the philosopher than to the poet. The paradox falls directly we restate the proposition thus: both poet and philosopher draw their power from the energy of their mental vision—an energy which disengages the mind from the somnolence of habit and from the pressure of obtrusive sensations. In general men are passive under Sense and the routine of habitual inferences. They are unable to free themselves from the importunities of the apparent facts and apparent relations which solicit ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... Leslie was waked from an unusually long after-dinner nap by Marilla's footsteps along the hall. She remained standing in the doorway, looking at him for a provoking length of time, and finally sneezed in her most obtrusive and violent manner. At this he sat up quickly and demanded to be told what was the matter, adding that he had been out half the night before, which was no ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... life;" but we do not crystallize this belief into action. We "dream," not "do" the "noble things." The kindergarten does not fence off a half hour each day for moral culture, but keeps it in view every moment of every day. Yet it is never obtrusive; for the mental faculties are being addressed at the same time, and the body strengthened for ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... irregularities, another tool was employed; namely, a stone cut in the form of an axe. Applying the sharp edge of this instrument to the projecting nodule, the artist struck it with a round stone in place of a mallet. A succession of carefully calculated blows with these rude tools pulverised the obtrusive knob, which disappeared in dust. All minor defects being corrected, the monument still looked dull and unfinished. It was necessary to polish it, in order to efface the scars of point and mallet. This was a most delicate operation, one slip of the hand, ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... in to clutter up the foreground, and hide the great distance. Men may live up at Darjeeling there on the heights for weeks, and never see the Himalayas towering opposite. The lower hills are clear; the peaks are wreathed in cloud. So the little aims, the nearer purposes, stand out distinct and obtrusive, and force themselves, as it were, upon our eyeballs, and the solemn white Throne of the Eternal away across the marshy levels, is often hid, and it needs an effort for us to keep it clear before us. One of the main reasons for much that is unsatisfactory in the spiritual condition ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... collar; it was for him, in the last analysis, that they cared much the most. They cared far more about Charlie than about the ballot. Olive Chancellor wondered how Mrs. Farrinder would treat that branch of the question. In her researches among her young townswomen she had always found this obtrusive swain planted in her path, and she grew at last to dislike him extremely. It filled her with exasperation to think that he should be necessary to the happiness of his victims (she had learned that ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... more he had irritated the local Cabalists who refused to have their "divine science" reduced to "reason." And so, disillusioned, he had rebounded to "human study," setting off on a pilgrimage in the depth of winter to borrow out-of-date books on optics and physics, and making more enemies by his obtrusive knowledge of how dew came and how lightning. It was not till—on the strength of a volume of Anatomical tables and a Medical dictionary—he undertook cures, that he had discovered the depths of his own ignorance, achieving only the cure ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... talked about her household affairs, asked her whether she had mended his clothes and ordered the coals. She knew that these things were not what was upon his mind, and she answered him in despairing tones, which showed how much she felt the obtrusive condescension to her level. I greatly pitied her, and sometimes, in fact, my emotion at the sight of her struggles with her limitations almost overcame me and I was obliged to get up and go. She was childishly affectionate. ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... are but two of our cows left at present, Taxey and Votey. It is something a little peculiar that Taxey is very obtrusive; why, I can scarcely step out of doors without being confronted by her, while Votey is quiet and shy, but she is growing more docile and domesticated every day, and it is my opinion that in a very short time, wherever you find Taxey there Votey ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... unprovoked changes give cause for reflection. When my geranium-flowers were devastated, how had the obtrusive Bee, untroubled by the profound dissimilarity between the petals, snow-white here, bright scarlet there, how had she learnt her trade? Nothing tells us that she herself was not for the first time exploiting the plant from the Cape; and, if she really did have predecessors, the habit had not had ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... It must be added, in justice both to the general and to his secretary, that the Relation does not differ substantially from other contemporary accounts, and that the attempt to varnish over the exceptionable passages in the conduct of the Conquerors is not obtrusive. ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... estimates the yield of oats to the acre by counting the sheaves that he stacks, or examines the lawn to see what kinds of grass are thriving. About all such matters his talk is the talk of an experienced man habitually interested in his subject, and yet it is never obtrusive. The remarks fall from him casually; you feel, too, that while he is telling you something that he noticed yesterday or years ago his eyes are alert to seize any new detail that may seem worthy of ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... letting them grow larger or smaller, black or blue, and by making them assume curious shapes. Amid throngs numbering hundreds of them I have moved about, and though my power over them varies, yet I never feel again the old nameless dread and when they become too obtrusive I can keep them at a distance by vigorous words of authority and also by a lash of the whip. This perhaps sounds strange to you, dear reader, but you must in truth understand that even in the senseless sphere, thought alone is not efficacious without a certain plastic expression in shape of a ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... not make it any easier. Daylight only made him a more weird, a more disturbing and unlawful apparition. Strangely enough in the evening when he came out of his mute supineness, this unearthly side of him was less obtrusive. At the gaming-table, when actually handling the cards, it was probably sunk quite out of sight; but Schomberg, having made up his mind in ostrich-like fashion to ignore what was going on, never entered the desecrated music-room. He had never ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... expect," she said, in her quiet, sad manner. The sadness was not obtrusive, not on the surface; it was only the background ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... faults of which you are innocent; she has boasted of a liberty which she does not possess, in order to clear you of the wrong which you have done in denying that liberty. The deafening rattle which your wife shakes will follow you everywhere with its obtrusive din. Your darling will stun you, will torture you, meanwhile arming herself by making you feel only the thorns of married life. She will greet you with a radiant smile in public, and will be sullen at home. She will be dull when you are merry, and will make you detest her merriment when you ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... where there was an English colony. For several years the family fluctuated between Tours and Elstree, and we hear of a great yellow chariot which from time to time rolled into daylight. Richard's hair gradually turned from its fiery and obtrusive red to jet black, but the violent temper of which the former colour is supposed to be indicative, and of which he had already many times given proofs, signalised him to the end of life. In 1823 Mrs. Burton gave birth to a daughter, Maria Katharine ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... though I dimly perceived his form drawn up in the empty space at the left of the door, it was not until she had passed him and flung herself into a chair, that I thought to look in his direction. Then it was too late, for he had turned his face aside and was gazing with rather an obtrusive curiosity at the old-fashioned room, murmuring, as he did so, some such ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... boy. This'll never do. Now you go right to sleep this minute, while I watch you. Look how fine and good Allan is." She spoke low, not to awaken the one virtuous sleeper, who seemed thereupon to breathe with a more swelling and obtrusive rectitude. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... did the work of composer, reviser, and adaptor of plays with that of actor and working partner. We are thus dealing with a temperament or mentality not at all obviously original or masterly, not at all conspicuous at the outset for intellectual depth or seriousness, not at all obtrusive of its "mission;" but exhibiting simply a gift for acting, an abundant faculty of rhythmical speech, and a power of minute observation, joined with a thoroughly practical or commercial handling ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... religions faith with the most universal religious toleration; to preserve the rights of all by causing each to respect those of the other; to carry forward every social improvement to the uttermost limit of human perfectibility, by the free action of mind upon mind, not by the obtrusive intervention of misapplied force; to uphold the integrity and guard the limitations of our organic law; to preserve sacred from all touch of usurpation, as the very palladium of our political salvation, the reserved rights and powers of the several States and of the people; ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that disuse would maintain or develop the projecting chin, increase its perpendicular height till the jaw is deepest and strongest at its extremity, evolve a side flange, and enlarge the upper jaw-bone to form part of a more prominent nose, while drawing back the savagely obtrusive teeth and lips to a more pleasing and subdued position of retirement and of humanized beauty. If human preference and natural selection caused some of these differences, why are they incompetent to effect ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... thought, but how short lived and unavailing it would prove before modern artillery. They came to a halt before the great Mosque of Mahommed Ali, and the fine, tapering minarets met with their deepest approval. At the entrance they assumed the apologetic sandals and were taken in hand by an obtrusive dragoman, who, besides impressing them with his own importance, related with small appreciation of truth fabulous facts concerning the edifice. They duly noted his salient pronouncements, rewarded him with a few piastres and "imshi yallah'ed" in duet when he demanded more. Then, in the late afternoon ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... space Judge Menefee felt crushed, humiliated, relegated. Second place galled him. Why had this blatant, obtrusive, unpolished man of windmills been selected by Fate instead of himself to discover the sensational apple? He could have made of the act a scene, a function, a setting for some impromptu, fanciful discourse or piece of comedy—and ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... Shepherd's Companion. Some of you call it Rickety Dick, or Willy Wagtail." Turning to the Kangaroo especially, it continued. "If you can bring yourself to speak to anything so obtrusive and gossiping, without any ancestry or manners whatever, you will be able to learn all you need from that bird. Humans and Wagtails fraternise together. ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... window-seat very quietly. Even when we were alone I was slow to disturb her. To sit with her in sight was happiness, and the proper happiness, for early morning—serene, incomplete, but progressive. Had I been obtrusive, I knew I should have encountered rebuff. 'Not at home to suitors' was written on her brow. Therefore I read on, stole now and then a look, watched her countenance soften and open as she felt I respected her mood, and enjoyed the gentle content ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... her delicate eyebrows. She was wearing no hat, as it was more comfortable to recline against the cushions with uncovered head, but a fluffy white parasol belonging to her hostess was placed by her side, in case an obtrusive sunbeam penetrated the branches overhead. "I never know where the sun is going to move next. Men always do, don't they? I think it is so clever of them!" Madame had declared in her charming, inconsequent fashion as she fluttered away. ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... equal, and actually patronised me in a sort of good-humoured fashion. What in particular excited in me this feeling was their feet, their dirty nails and fingers, a particularly long talon on Operoff's obtrusive little finger, their red shirts, their dickeys, the chaff which they good-naturedly threw at one another, the dirty room, a habit which Zuchin had of continually snuffling and pressing a finger to his nose, and, above all, their manner of speaking—that is to say, their use and intonation of words. ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... herself was elderly; she was also a woman of points, being bony and sharp featured, particularly as to elbows, which were generally bare. Indeed, they might be said to be her most salient and obtrusive features; but her shrewd, sharp eyes held an elusive kindliness at times, and when she smiled, which was very rarely, her elbows and her general ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... of, stand in the way of; act as a drag; hang like a millstone round one's neck. Adj. hindering &c v.; obstructive, obstruent^; impeditive^, impedient^; intercipient^; prophylactic &c (remedial) 662; impedimentary. in the way of, unfavorable; onerous, burdensome; cumbrous, cumbersome; obtrusive. hindered &c v.; windbound^, waterlogged, heavy laden; hard pressed. unassisted &c (assist) &c 707; single-handed, alone; deserted &c 624. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Cowley, and Waller; Milton, George Herbert, and Gray—to mention only the most familiar names—had owed allegiance to that mother who received Wordsworth now, and Coleridge and Byron immediately after him. "Not obvious, not obtrusive, she;" but yet her sober dignity has often seemed no unworthy setting for minds, like Wordsworth's, meditative without languor, and energies advancing without shock or storm. Never, perhaps, has the spirit of Cambridge been more truly caught than in Milton's Penseroso; for this poem obviously reflects ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... way, decorative, but subdued and in harmony with the subject of the play. A very few simple sets suffice for the plays of peasant life, a cottage interior, a village street, a crossroads in a gap of the hills, all to serve the action and the words as background, and to be no more obtrusive than the background of a portrait. It may be that this attitude of Mr. Yeats is in a measure due to his talks with Mr. Gordon Craig, but it is equally true, I think, that some of Mr. Gordon Craig's ideas are due in part to his talks with Mr. Yeats. Equally simple, though ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... wretched little room seemed to disappear when she softly glided into it; and even the pretty Minna herself receded into partial obscurity in her mother's presence. And yet there was nothing in the least obtrusive in the manner of Madame Fontaine, and nothing remarkable in her stature. Her figure, reaching to no more than the middle height, was the well-rounded figure of a woman approaching forty years of age. The influence she exercised was, in part, attributable, as ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... of course excepted, in which the superiority on the one side is not only fairly to be presumed but positive—and so prominently obtrusive, that to propose terms ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... both sides. After ten years' absence, and in spite of radical changes, the elegant, exquisitely kept town of Nancy appears little altered to me. The ancient capital of Lorraine is now one of the largest garrisons on the eastern frontier, but the military aspect is not too obtrusive. Except for the perpetual roll of the heavy artillery waggons and perpetual sight of the red pantalon, we are apt to forget the present position of Nancy from a strategic ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... made Luther a reformer at once. He started to purge his order of Pharisaism, and the university of the dross of Aristotle. Soon he was called upon to protest against one of the most obtrusive of the "good works" recommended by the church, the purchase of indulgences. Albert of Hohenzollern was elected, through political influence and at an early age, to the archiepiscopal sees of Magdeburg and Mayence, this last carrying with it an electorate and the primacy of Germany. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... distorted to its own shape the mental picture of all its kind elsewhere. But most deserts of actual nature are not all flat, nor all sandy; they present a considerable diversity and variety of surface, and their rocks are often unpleasantly obtrusive to the tender feet of ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... train or omnibus will every inch of boarding Be covered with advertisements of variegated hue; No more in every thoroughfare will each obtrusive hoarding Blaze, hideously chromatic, with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... to the custom, even with those who have no business, give an air of restless anxiety to every pedestrian. The exceptions to this rule are apt to go to the other extreme, and wear a defiant, obtrusive kind of indolence which suggests quite as much inward disquiet and unrest. The shiftless lassitude of a gambler can never be mistaken for the lounge of a gentleman. Even the brokers who loiter upon Montgomery Street at high noon are not loungers. ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... choosing a seat in the car, selecting and engaging a hand on arriving at the place of destination. Commit such things to his charge only so fast as you can really intrust him with power to act, and then, with slight and not obtrusive supervision on your part, leave the responsibility with him, noticing encouragingly whatever of fidelity and success you observe, and taking little notice—generally in fact, none at all—of ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... silent all this time, but I had observed that his more controlled excitement was even greater than the obtrusive emotion of the clergyman. He sat with a pale, drawn face, his anxious gaze fixed upon Holmes, and his thin hands clasped convulsively together. His pale lips quivered as he listened to the dreadful experience which had befallen his family, and his dark eyes seemed to ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... overcome, had not her affection been engaged elsewhere. With all the security which love of another and disesteem of him could give to the peace of mind he was attacking, his continued attentions—continued, but not obtrusive, and adapting themselves more and more to the gentleness and delicacy of her character—obliged her very soon to dislike him less than formerly. She had by no means forgotten the past, and she thought as ill of him as ever; but she felt his powers: ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... experienced for the first time, and might have become of great importance had I been favoured with more frequent and intimate intercourse. But it was less her position as wife of the general director than her constant ill-health and my own peculiar unwillingness to appear obtrusive, that hindered our meeting, except at rare intervals. My recollections of her merge somewhat, in my memory, with those of my own sister Rosalie. I remember the tender ambition which inspired me to win the encouraging sympathy of this sensitive woman, who was painfully wasting away amid the coarsest ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... admitted by a rather ill-tempered-looking housemaid, with a cap of obtrusive respectability and a spotless white apron. I fancied that she looked just a little superciliously at my boxes, which I daresay would not have ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... over the men of every other nation in their courtesy to women; and Miselle would fain most gratefully acknowledge the constant attention and kindness everywhere offered to her, while never once was she annoyed by obtrusive or unwelcome approach; and not the vast resources of her country, not the grandeur of Niagara, give her such pride and satisfaction as does the new knowledge she has gained ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... birth; a weakness but too common, and which few have strength of mind to resist or sufficient pride to overcome. The intuitive watchfulness of affection, however, led Adelheid to a different conclusion; she saw that he never affected to conceal, while with equal good taste he abstained from obtrusive allusions to the humble nature of his origin, but she also perceived that there were points of his previous history on which he was acutely sensitive, and which at first she feared must be attributed to the consciousness of acts that his clear perception ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... While in no way obtrusive, or gushing in his attentions, Mr. Gregory was most thoughtful and kind, and few women are without appreciation of ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... at least was left of it), and can describe it. B. Pond was really a fair-sized salmon fly—turkey wing, orange body, and claret hackles, with the gold tip of the Professor. The collar was of picked medium gut stained black, many of the American anglers contending that this is the colour least obtrusive to fish. The line was strong, but not large. The rod was just as small as described, and certainly a masterpiece ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... pretty much of Wilson's mind, who, when told of a new brown, said "I am sorry for it." Very many of our modern pictures are ruined by the violent contrasts of the asphaltum and similar browns with less obtrusive pigments. The very transparency is, in our eyes, an objection. Asphaltum, for instance, besides that it is a changeable and never thoroughly drying pigment, is too transparent for depth. It was a mistake of Gainsborough when he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... porch and stared for a moment at the half-legal official parochial notices posted on the oaken door,—his first obtrusive intimation of the combination of church and state,—and hesitated. He was not prepared to find that this last resting-place of his people had something to do with taxes and tithes, and that a certain material respectability and security attended his votive sigh. God and the reigning sovereign ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... capacity for binding time; and so he had to grope. It is not strange that he was puzzled by himself. It is not strange that he thought himself an animal; for he has animal propensities as a cube has surfaces, and his animal propensities were so obtrusive, so very evident to physical sense—he was born, grew, had legs and hair, ate, ran, slept, died—all just like animals—while his distinctive mark, his time-binding capacity, was subtle; it was spiritual; ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... firmness and such natural temperance, that there is seldom any thing of hollowness or insolidity in the result. Except in some of his earlier plays, written before he had found his proper strength, and before his genius had got fairly disciplined into power, there is nothing ambitious or obtrusive in his idealizing; no root of falsehood in the work, as indeed there never is in any work of art that is truly worthy the name. Works of artifice are a very different sort of thing. And one, perhaps the main, secret of Shakespeare's ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... "Berberis vulgaris" hands me a bit of pasteboard, and dangling from a resinous bough is the statement that it is "Pinus strobus" that welcomes me to fragrant shade. Like many city manners which are new to country folk these seem to be a bit obtrusive at first. Yet on second thought I find it an excellent custom which ought to be enlarged upon in various ways. I can fancy people coming to the bungalow for a day's intercourse with the pasture shrubs that have never before met them, and feeling awkward ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... the obtrusive impertinence of these two fellows, and when next he passed them, he surveyed them from head to foot with a haughty and indignant stare. The moment after he heard them burst into a laugh, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar |
