"Unsavoury" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time her only visitor was an uncouth Swede, the Kincaid's unsavoury cook, who brought her meals to her. His name was Sven Anderssen, his one pride being that his patronymic was spelt with a ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to be the general name of a people, and it has been handed down to us so that we still call the South African natives Kaffirs. I doubt whether the tribes concerned have ever used or recognised among themselves this unsavoury name. I may note, by the way, that one of the most ancient tribal names in Asia is that by which the Greeks, outside the Turkish empire, are often known—Yunani, or Ionian—which must have been in use from the days when the Greek colonies settled on the coast of Asia Minor, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... town, Eighteen big chimneys darken our daylight and deluge us with smuts when the wind brings the smoke, our way; and besides the smoke we are subject to unsavoury vapours from chemical works in the other direction, so that when the wind shifts we only exchange evils. They say these chemical fumes are not unwholesome, and quote the death-rate, which is lower than any other place of the size in England. In fact, ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... bread, a halfpenny, a few brass buttons, and a very greasy and very crumpled and very filthy copy of a "penny awful" paper. I need hardly say that this scrutiny did not afford me absolute pleasure. In the first place, my temporary lodging was most unsavoury and unclean; and in the second place, there was not one among my many fellow-lodgers who could be said to be in my position in life, or to whom I felt in any way tempted to ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... to the table; a roast fowl formed no exception, for it was sodden, half-raw, and saturated with oil. It was only at the very best hotels in France that we ever found fowls tolerably well roasted; generally speaking, they are never more than half-cooked, and are as unsightly as they are unsavoury. Our fellow-passengers did ample justice to the meal, from which we gladly escaped, in order to devote the brief remainder of our ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... had pushed away his untasted breakfast and lit the unsavoury pipe which was the companion of his deepest meditations. "I wonder!" said he, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. "Perhaps there are points which have escaped your Machiavellian intellect. Let us consider the problem in the light of pure reason. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... uneventful ones, the only incidents worthy of remark being a visit from the King on the 2nd December; a minor operation by the North Staffordshire Regiment on the 12th March, resulting in the inclusion in our line of the unsavoury Epinette Salient; the sudden move of the 16th Infantry Brigade to Vlamertinghe at the time of the enemy's attack at St. Eloi in the middle of March, and a little mining and counter-mining on the Frelinghien and Le Touquet ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... animal magnetism. 'I have a canine appetite for natural history,' he told his brother in 1828. He describes with all the zeal of a clever youth of nineteen how busily he is employed in macerating skulls, dissecting unsavoury creatures before breakfast, watching the ants reduce a viper to a skeleton for him, and striving with all his might to get a perfect collection of animal and human skulls. All this, however, was rather an accidental outbreak of exuberant intellectual activity than serious ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... James Mabbe) of Aleman's famous romance is, indeed, entitled The Rogue, and it had as running title The Spanish Rogue. There is a novel by George Fidge entitled The English Gusman; or, The History of that Unparalleled Thief James Hind (1652, 4to). Salamanca had an unsavoury reputation owing to the fictions of Titus Gates. cf. The Rover (II), Act v: ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... to conceal it, was necessarily the more remarked by all the world: he changed it so seldom, that it was filled with dirt and vermin: his usual diet was bread; his drink water, which he even rendered farther unpalatable by the mixture of unsavoury herbs: he tore his back with the frequent discipline which he inflicted on it: he daily on his knees washed, in imitation of Christ, the feet of thirteen beggars, whom he afterwards dismissed with presents [e]: he gained the affections of the monks by his frequent charities to the convents and ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... spittle unsavoury and without taste? A. If it had a certain determinate taste, then the tongue would not taste at all, but only have the taste of spittle, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... to love such a man. Quite the reverse. But when such a man is a perfect stranger, has never uttered a word in one's presence, or vouchsafed so much as a glance, and is gravely, stolidly engaged in the unsavoury work of greasing some of the tackling of a boat, it does seem unaccountable that he should be unwittingly capable of stirring up in another man's bosom feelings of ardent goodwill, to ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... summon a special force of police to clear a way for the numerous motor-cars which came bowling from every point of the compass and which were afterwards parked in the narrow side streets, to the intense amazement and interest of the curious denizens of the unsavoury neighbourhood in which the court ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... dirty rooms called nurseries, and the servants, even when they were old and respectable, slept on the kitchen floor and covered themselves with rags. Except in Lent all the houses smelt of bortsch, and during Lent of sturgeon fried in sunflower oil. The food was unsavoury, the water unwholesome. On the town council, at the governor's, at the archbishop's, everywhere there had been talk for years about there being no good, cheap water-supply and of borrowing two hundred thousand roubles from the Treasury. Even the very rich people, of whom ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... state of agitation and upset because worthy settlement workers were at that time almost an unknown quantity in California. Just at present she was availing herself of her brother's hospitality because she had no assistant at all at the "Alexander," and was afraid to stay in its very unsavoury environment alone. She loved Barbara dearly, but she was usually perverse ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... the Revenge, and divers of our men fearing Sir Richard's disposition, stole away aboard the General and other ships. Sir Richard thus over- matched was sent unto by Alfonso Bacan to remove out of the Revenge, the ship being marvellous unsavoury, filled with blood and bodies of dead, and wounded ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... as an unsavoury subject. It deals with dirt and its expulsion—from the skin, from the house, from the street, from the city. It is comprised in the words—wherever there is dirt, get rid of it instantly; and with cleanliness let there be a copious supply of pure water and of pure ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... it left so? And here without staying for my reply, shall I be called as many blockheads, numsculs, doddypoles, dunderheads, ninny-hammers, goosecaps, joltheads, nincompoops, and sh..t-a-beds—and other unsavoury appellations, as ever the cake-bakers of Lerne cast in the teeth of King Garangantan's shepherds—And I'll let them do it, as Bridget said, as much as they please; for how was it possible they should foresee the necessity I was under ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... grunted and turned the can over and over in clawlike hands, and said he wanted a match and a paper. Casey went farther; he rolled a cigarette and gave it to him and then rolled one for himself. They smoked, there in that unsavoury tepee, saying nothing at all. Casey had achieved the first part of his dream; he was making friends ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... revolution that aimed at seizing the banks and mines with the hope of dividing the spoil amongst the "revolutionists" was planned in the Yukon a decade or more before the Bolshevistic terror was let loose in Europe. "Soapy Smith" the unsavoury but reckless gunman of Skagway, had developed a school of imitators. There were probably a couple of thousand or so of these tough characters scattered all through the north country camps, and the idea was to rally them to a centre, overpower the few policemen, establish a ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... administration has had no abler or more attractive exponent than Dr Mackenzie. He adds to a thorough grasp of the problems an illuminating style, and an arresting manner of treating a subject often dull and sometimes unsavoury."—Economist. ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... food, a bunch of hair, a handful of cinders, or even an old shoe being no uncommon addition to the ordinary ingredients, yet so completely did grace triumph over nature in these Christian heroines, that unsavoury as was the seasoning of their soup, and countless as were the discomforts of their position, they enjoyed indescribable happiness in their poverty, and preferred their humble lodging with its uncouth inmates, to the grandest mansion ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... returned home! He had not enjoyed the experience of the day as an experience, but already in retrospect he was thrilled by it. The fellows would surely envy him! When he was wet to the skin and chilled to numbness, he had longed again and again for the warmth of the mail boat, even with its unsavoury smells, and he had asked himself why he had been so foolish as to go ashore. Now that he was dry and warm, his regrets passed, and he felt himself ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... thick with fat: the fat of beef; fat of mutton—anything they could not finish in the sitting-room; the overplus of cabbage or potatoes, savoury or unsavoury; vast slices of bread and cheese; ale, and any number of slop-basins full of tea—the cups were not large enough—and pudding, cold dumpling, hard as wood, no matter what, Jearje ate ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... I doe? lye like a patient Asse? Feele my selfe tortur'd by this diffused poyson, But tortur'd more by these unsavoury drugges? ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... good stead; with his back against an old wall, he received the assaults of his adversaries with all his wonted ferocity: so that after ten minutes' fighting they drew off, leaving two of their number motionless on the ground, and a third struggling in vain to escape from the unsavoury hole where the whisk of Bruin's coat-tails had cast him. To this spot Bruin now proceeded; and sitting himself down on the edge, told the struggling dog he would help him out if he would divulge the ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... received in the shoe. At last under the table, round which the family had been sitting, I found a pincushion, which, being stuffed with bran, afforded me enough to satisfy my hunger, but was excessively dry and unsavoury; yet, bad as it was, I was obliged to be content at that time with it; and had nearly done eating when the door opened, and in ran two or three of the children. Frightened out of my senses almost, I had just time to escape down a little ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... in New York. I believe the firm has a rather unsavoury reputation; they have to be watched, I am told. Then, too, one or the other of the partners makes frequent trips abroad, mostly Pierre. Pierre, as you see, was very intimate with Mademoiselle, and the letters simply confirm what the girls told my detective. He was believed ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... games, and the panthers to be exhibited at them, about which Caelius is for ever worrying his friend in Cilicia, we shall see something in another chapter. There is plenty of other gossip in these letters, and gossip often about unsavoury matters which need not be noticed here. It lets in a flood of light upon the causes of the general incompetence and inefficiency; the life of the ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... that some condiment would render the lettuces a little more palatable, when an individual in the company, recollected a question, once propounded by the most patient of men, 'How can that which is unsavoury be eaten without "salt"?' and asked for a little of that valuable culinary article. 'Indeed, sir,' Betty replied, 'I quite forgot to buy salt.' A general laugh followed the announcement, in which our host heartily joined. This was nothing. We had plenty of other good things, and while crunching ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... corrected his wife, before proceeding to his own man's form of elaboration; "no question about that, I believe. He's her favourite nephew, and she's as rich as a pig. He follows her out here every year, waiting for her empty shoes. But they are an unsavoury couple. I've met 'em in various parts, all over Egypt, but they always come back to Helouan in the end. And the stories about them are simply legion. You remember—" he turned hesitatingly to his wife—"some people, I heard," ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... vigilant. On the other hand, no student of Jonson will need to be reminded how closely and precociously familiar the big stalwart Westminster boy, Camden's favoured and grateful pupil, must have made himself with the rankest haunts and most unsavoury recesses of that ribald waterside and Smithfield life which he lived to reproduce on the stage with a sometimes insufferable fidelity to details from which Hogarth might have shrunk. Even his unrivalled proficiency in classic learning ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... cried Spotts. And before the Englishman could think, his coat and hat had been whipped off and thrown on the box seat along with a small handbag which the actor carried, and he was being helped into the very hot and unsavoury clothes of the driver. ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... reputation; then company-promoting of a more and more doubtful kind; and, finally, a swindle more energetic and less skilful than the rest, which bomb-like went to pieces in the face of the public, filling the air with noise, lamentations, and unsavoury odours. Nor was this all. A man has many warnings of ruin, and when things were going badly in the stock market, Richard Boyce, who on his return from the East had been elected by acclamation a member of several fashionable clubs, tried to retrieve himself at the gaming-table. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Lady Foljambe more angry than she was, it was having it shown to her that she was in the wrong. She now turned her artillery upon Perrote, whom she scolded in the intervals of heaping unsavoury epithets upon Amphillis and Ricarda, until Amphillis thought that everything poor Perrote had ever done in her life to Lady Foljambe's annoyance, rightly or wrongly, must have been dragged out of an inexhaustible memory to lay before her. At last it came to an end. Ricarda was dismissed ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the bunks and lockers and hold of the unsavoury vessel, Trimble proposed that it would be best for the club to occupy seats on the floor of the barge, where, quite invisible to any one on shore or stream, we could ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... the less our duty (if I may use a word of so unsavoury a connotation) to advance the accomplishment ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... dead more than twenty years before the controversies about all that was unimportant in him flickered out and died an unsavoury death. The vital fact about him and his wife is that they contributed, if not equally, at least in an unparalleled degree, to the common stock of genius. But for Froude we might never have known that Mrs. Carlyle had genius at all. Through him we have a series of letters not surpassed ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Francisco argued on insufficient premises they condemned a fellow-creature to a most unpleasant death in a far country, which had nothing whatever to do with the United States. They foregathered at the top of a tenement-house in Tehama Street, an unsavoury quarter of the city, and, there calling for certain drinks, they conspired because they were conspirators by trade, officially known as the Third Three of the I.A.A.—an institution for the propagation of pure light, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... he took me with him into the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, and threading his way without hesitation through its maze of unsavoury slums, paused before a narrow three-storeyed house ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... for a fortnight, advancing scarcely a mile, and all this time her single passenger could just manage to take seven steps on her little deck without wetting his feet. Then, to make matters worse, provisions gave out, and the ship's company was reduced for twelve days to an unsavoury diet of water-buffalo and peanuts—all they could get from a nearby island. Was it any wonder that Hart could never afterwards endure the taste of peanuts, or that at the mere sight of a passing water-buffalo his appetite was ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... literary activities during her last days is her correspondence with Elizabeth Jeffries. "That unsavoury person" was, with her paramour, John Swan, convicted at Chelmsford Assizes on 12th March, 1752, of the murder at Walthamstow, on 3rd July, of one Joseph Jeffries, respectively uncle and master to his slayers. Elizabeth induced John to kill the old gentleman, ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... come recollection of his own eyes glued to the unsavoury details of many a divorce suit in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... still very dark. An hour or so hence the moon at its full would make many things visible, and chiefly for that reason but also because he desired to return to London the same night, Bullard with his unsavoury companion, had arrived thus early at the gates of Grey House. Yet now it looked as though his programme would have to be abandoned, or, at any rate, drastically altered. For the house, as was plain to see, was occupied. There was no great display ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... torments of toothache which befell Mrs Fielding. A servant was despatched in haste to Wapping, but the desired 'toothdrawer,' arrived after the ship had at last, on Sunday morning, the 30th of June, left her unsavoury moorings. That Sunday morning "was fair and bright," and the diarist records how, dropping down to Gravesend, "we had a passage thither I think as pleasant as can be conceiv'd." The yards of Deptford and Woolwich were 'noble sights'; the Thames with its splendid shipping ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... down his allowance. From associates at White's he descended to the lower resorts. There was one fellow that I specially feared, and with whom he had become a boon companion, a Captain Villecourt, a gambler and a rake, whose reputation was unsavoury. I pleaded, but in vain. I could not desert the boy. He loved me, and I him, and so I dogged his footsteps, helped him out of difficulty whenever I could, and lost no opportunity for pleading his cause ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... who gripped Andy hard round the middle and pushed his horse to a hand gallop, followed by the rest of the party. The proximity of Andy to his cavaliero made the latter sensible to the bad odour of the pig's bed, which formed Andy's luxurious bust and bustle; but he attributed the unsavoury scent to a bad breath on the lady's part, and would sometimes address ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... episode, and would relate it to guests and point out the scene of the duel. Happy and illusory days of Romance now dead and gone! It is not conceivable that, generations hence, the head of a family will exhibit with pride the stained newspaper cuttings containing the unsavoury details of the divorce ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... with shameless brows. List, Lady; be not coy, and be not cozened With that same vaunted name, Virginity. Beauty is Nature's coin; must not be hoarded, But must be current; and the good thereof Consists in mutual and partaken bliss, Unsavoury in the enjoyment of itself. If you let slip time, like a neglected rose It withers on the stalk with languished head. Beauty is Nature's brag, and must be shown In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... to the harbour and saw the craft on which he had undertaken to embark he was seized with a sudden faintness. Even the toughest seafarer would have thought twice before venturing beyond the breakwater in such an unsavoury derelict; and Reginald, be it remembered, had only once in his life made a sea voyage, and that in the peaceful security of an ironclad. His heart quailed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... shed at Seal Cove, where all the fish oil, whalebone, blubber, ivory, skins, and other produce of the sea harvest were stored pending ocean shipment. Jervis Ferrars had a small office railed off from one end of this unsavoury shed, and he was sitting in it writing, one afternoon in early May, when he saw Katherine's boat coming across from Fort Garry. He had been looking for it any time within the last hour, and had begun to wonder that it was so long delayed. But it was coming at last, and putting on his cap he locked ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... Perkins, he would retire often with his strength unrecruited and his hunger unappeased, and, though he gradually achieved a certain skill in picking his way through a meal, selecting such articles of food as could be less affected than others by the unsavoury surroundings, the want of appetising and nourishing food told disastrously upon his strength. His sleep, too, was broken and disturbed by the necessity of sharing a bed with Webster. He had never been accustomed to "doubling up," and under the most favourable circumstances ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... Newcomes, Barry Lyndon, the Book of Snobs, the Hoggarty Diamond, some of the Burlesques and Christmas Books, and the English Humourists. Of these, Esmond has every quality of a great book, except its artificial form, its excessive elaboration of historical colouring, and its unsavoury plot. Beatrix Esmond is almost as wonderful a creation as Becky Sharp; though, if formed on a grander mould, she has less fascination than that incorrigible minx. The Newcomes, if in some ways the most genial of the longer pieces, is plainly without the power of Vanity Fair. And ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... good opinion of the people here; the constant fatigue and inconvenience to which we have been subjected; the little arts we have practised; the forced laughter; the unnatural grin: the never-ending shaking of hands, &c. &c., besides the dismal noises and unsavoury smells to which our organs have been exposed, still, after all, some scoundrels are to be found hardened against us by hatred and prejudice, and so ungrateful for all our gifts and attentions, as to take a delight in poisoning the minds of the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... on the light, and Malcolm Sage saw before him the puffy face of a man of about sixty, in the centre of which was a hideous purple splotch that had once been a nose. A moment later the handkerchief obscured the unsavoury sight. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... an extreme line on this matter solely because of some calculation of social harm; many, but not all and not even most. Many people think that paper money is a mistake and does much harm. But they do not shudder or snigger when they see a cheque-book. They do not whisper with unsavoury slyness that such and such a man was "seen" going into a bank. I am quite convinced that the English aristocracy is the curse of England, but I have not noticed either in myself or others any disposition to ostracise ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... just out of the town beyond the blacksmith's forge and the children had come to it through the wood. They went back the same way, and then down through the town, and through its narrow, unsavoury streets to the towing-path by the timber yard. Here they ran along the trunks of the big trees, peeped into the saw-pit, and the men were away at dinner and this was a favourite play place of every boy within miles made themselves a see-saw with a fresh cut, sweet-smelling pine plank ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... outward good humour, even when his mother, once his staunch ally, openly advised him to give up business and travel for a year. Their prejudice was certainly not unnatural, and had been strengthened by the perusal of the unsavoury details published by the papers at each new bankruptcy during the year. But they found Orsino now always the same, always quiet, good-humoured ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... though she did give a date for the event which was historically impossible, the confirmatory evidence of the Premonstratensian Abbot Richard nearly thirty years later put the matter beyond the doubt of any pious Christian. But the interest of these unsavoury remains of anonymous men and women, however saintly, pales before certain relics of our Lord's life on earth which gained currency. Of these the most famous were the Veronica, a cloth on which Christ, on His way to Calvary, was ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... vertues necessary to be incident in every gentleman: had in question at the siege of Troy betwixt sundrie Grecian and Trojan Lords: especially debated to discover the perfection of a Souldier. Containing mirth to purg melancholly, wholsome precepts to profit manners, neither unsavoury to youth for delight, nor offensive to age for scurrility. Ea habentur optima qu & jucunda, honesta' & utilia. Robertus Greene, in Artibus Magister. London, Printed by Eliz. ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... a number of footmen, farming servants, and people collected in haste, who had come to the examination of Wicks's house. On their arrival, they were ushered into a tall dining-room with carved panels, the atmosphere of which was strongly imbued with the mingled odour of punch and tobacco, an unsavoury but at that time very ordinary perfume in the dining-room of almost every country gentleman. The mistress of the mansion, however, proved, in point of manners and appearance, considerably superior to her lord and master, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... trifle unsavoury and unswept. Municipal authorities seem particularly stingy in the matter of brooms, brushes and water-carts. Such little disagreeables must not prevent the traveller from exploring every corner. But the real, the primary attraction ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... no knowledge of where the murderer had been buried. No one but an old saloon-keeper and a couple of miners could recollect the execution even, and they, so far as they could remember, had never met Richard Bridges in the flesh, though his unsavoury reputation ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... set in the sockets, that each appeared like the unextinguished snuff of a farthing candle, gleaming through the horn of a dark lanthorn. His nostrils were elevated in scorn, as if his sense of smelling had been perpetually offended by some unsavoury odour; and he looked as if he wanted to shrink within himself from the impertinence of society. He wore a black periwig as straight as the pinions of a raven, and this was covered with a hat flapped, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... provisions, such as flesh, corn, and fruits. It has fresh damascene grapes all the year round, with pomegranates, oranges, lemons, and excellent olive trees; likewise the finest roses I ever saw, both red and white. The apples are excellent, but the pears and peaches are unsavoury, owing as is said to too much moisture. A fine clear river runs past the city, which is so well supplied with water that almost every house has a fountain of curious workmanship, many of them splendidly ornamented with embossed or carved work. Outwardly their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... the faintest preconception should be formed of the events that really befell me. My temper was inquisitive, but there was nothing in the scene to which I was going from which my curiosity expected to derive gratification. Discords and evil smells, unsavoury food, unwholesome labour, and irksome companions, were, in my opinion, the ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... more picturesque than this constant multiplication of projecting storeys, and perhaps there was no more unwholesome or insanitary plan possible than this, which effectually excluded daylight and fresh air, keeping the streets damp and muddy, and rendering the whole atmosphere unsavoury. Indeed, the constant visitations London received in the form of pestilence is to be referred to this source alone; and much as every one must regret the loss of the picturesque old houses, with their projecting ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... empty house is like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed. Decay sets in at once in every part of it, and what mould and wind and weather would spare, street boys commonly destroy. Ernest's shop in its untenanted state was a dirty unsavoury place enough. The house was not old, but it had been run up by a jerry-builder and its constitution had no stamina whatever. It was only by being kept warm and quiet that it would remain in health for many months together. Now it had been empty for some weeks ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... pulpit, the schoolmaster not only endeavoured to pour his feelings and desires into the mould of his prayers, but listened to the sermon with a countenance that revealed no distaste for the weak and unsavoury broth ladled out him to nourish his soul withal. When however the service—though whose purposes the affair could be supposed to serve except those of Mr Cairns himself, would have been a curious question—was over, he did breathe a sigh of relief; and when he stepped out into the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... our farewells to Mrs. Davis, to Mr. Peppermint also, and to his bride. If thou art an elegant reader, unaccustomed to the contamination of pipes and glasses, I owe thee an apology in that thou hast been caused to linger a while among things so unsavoury. But if thou art one who of thine own will hast taken thine ease in thine inn, hast enjoyed the freedom of a sanded parlour, hast known 'that ginger is hot in the mouth,' and made thyself light-hearted with a yard of clay, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... about a great bequest which was supposed to be—whether rightly or wrongly, I know not—of that sort, that it was 'the heaviest fire insurance premium that had been paid in the memory of man.' 'The money does not stink,' said the Roman Emperor, about the proceeds of an unsavoury tax. But the money unfaithfully won does stink when it is thrown into God's treasury. 'The price of a dog shall not come into the sanctuary of the Lord.' Do not think that money doubtfully won is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of well-appointed sleighs dashing, with a merry clash of bells, up and down the crowded street, and sauntering amongst the groups of well-dressed women and brilliant uniforms, until darkness drove me back to our unsavoury quarters at the Metropole. My companions generally patronised the skating rink, a sign of advancing civilisation, for ten years ago there was not a pair of skates to be found throughout the length and breadth of Siberia. Thus passed our days, and the evenings were even longer and more wearisome. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... and I am sorry to say that the same can not be said of certain crofting villages not far distant. I expect that the visits of the Government Sanitary Officer, whom I met at Lochmaddy, and who knows his business well, will ultimately work an enormous amount of good. That gentleman gave me such unsavoury details regarding the conditions of life in certain of the townships as made me hope that the "taint of Lochmaddy," that is to say, the cleanliness and civilised life of that village, may more and more become evident throughout ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... a tight grip, out of sight, of Lance's coat; Mr. Smith grew red and bit his lips; but Lance walked close to him, and as they began to be jostled, took his arm, holding the blue sunshade over both their heads. Unsavoury missiles began to fly; but a woman screeched, 'Bad luck to ye, ye vagabone! ye've ruinated the young gentleman's ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the fighting, drunken, riotous mobs? Quarterstaves were rising and falling upon heads and shoulders. No deadlier weapons were used, but showers of missiles from time to time descended, unsavoury or otherwise. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... a paragraph to itself. This unsavoury residence housed two platoons of D Company, Company Headquarters, and Stobie, our doctor, with the Regimental Aid Post. In construction the dug-out, which indeed was typical of many, was a corridor with wings opening off, about 40 feet deep and some ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... to eat it yerself, Dick, lad," cried Joe, throwing down his spoon, and spitting out the unsavoury mess. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... nostrils have their other function of smell. Here the delicate nerve-ends run direct from the lower centers, from the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion, or even deeper. There is the refined sensual intake when a scent is sweet. There is the sensual repudiation when a scent is unsavoury. And just as the fullness of the lips and the shape of the mouth depend on the development from the lower or the upper centers, the sensual or the spiritual, so does the shape of the nose depend on the direct control of the deepest centers of consciousness. A perfect ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... years from now you—even you, dear Melicent!—and all the loveliness which now causes me to estimate life as a light matter in comparison with your love, will be only a bone or two. Your lustrous eyes, which are now more beautiful than it is possible to express, will be unsavoury holes and a worm will crawl through them; and what will it matter ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... "I suppose you prefer to be made infamous. Do you hear what I say?... Infamous! Infamous! Infamous!" he shrieked, raising and falling on his toes and getting very red in the face. Lieutenant D'Hubert, on the contrary, became very pale at the sound of the unsavoury word, then flushed pink to the roots ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... appearance flushed with the heat of the stove and the excitement of turning the muffins, and the little iron spatula she used for that purpose still in her hand; and a fresh and larger puff of the unsavoury blue smoke accompanied her entrance. She came forward, however, gravely, and without the slightest embarrassment, to receive her cousin's somewhat unceremonious "How do, Fleda?" and, keeping the spatula still in one hand, shook hands with him with the other. But at ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... de Courcy Smyth, blear-eyed, sandy-red bearded, unsavoury, trying, poor wretch, to rally whatever of manhood was left in him and swagger himself out of his fit of hysteria. The Latin, however dignified, is instinctively more demonstrative than the Anglo-Saxon. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... through the glasses, that no more carcasses of the mollyhawks they are now catching are thrown overboard. This means that they have begun to eat the tough and unsavoury creatures, although it does not mean, of course, that they have entirely exhausted their ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... only in the middle, instead of flat kernels, which the melons have, these have a handful of small blackish seeds about the bigness of peppercorns; whose taste is also hot on the tongue somewhat like pepper. The fruit itself is sweet, soft and luscious, when ripe; but while green it is hard and unsavoury: though even then being boiled and eaten with salt-pork or beef, it serves instead of turnips and is as much esteemed. The papaw-tree is about 10 or 12 foot high. The body near the ground may be a foot and a half or 2 foot diameter; ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... close to the table; he had taken off his hat, and Marguerite could just see the outline of his thin profile and pointed chin, as he bent over his meagre supper. He was evidently quite contented, and awaited evens with perfect calm; he even seemed to enjoy Brogard's unsavoury fare. Marguerite wondered how so much hatred could lurk in one human ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... diminutive mules and asses employed for conveying all articles necessary for subsistence and use in the town, it was painful to witness. The streets are as void of every kind of vehicle as those of Venice, and almost as unsavoury as its canals. There is scarcely room for two loaded mules to pass each other. Every morning, nearly the whole population pours forth, with their beasts of burthen, to their labour in the country, there being no villages in ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... forth another volley of oaths and unsavoury exclamations, and all was bustle and confusion, and packing up of bundles, and settling ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... A happy thought at this time started into one of our minds, that some condiment would render the lettuces a little more palatable, when an individual in the company, recollected a question, once propounded by the most patient of men, "How can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt?" and asked for a little of that valuable culinary article. "Indeed, sir," Betty replied, "I quite forgot to buy salt." A general laugh followed the announcement, in which our host heartily joined. This was nothing. We had plenty of other good ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... tread on lambswool that is soft as any dream: Still more unsavoury than thyself to me thy goatskins seem. Here will I plant a bowl of milk, our ladies' grace to win; And one, as huge, beside ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... while the master was out farming, Ned at school, and the mistress and all her maids engaged in the unsavoury occupation of making candles, by repeated dipping of rushes into a caldron of melted fat, after the winter's salting, she escaped under pretext of attending to the hall fire, and kneeling beside the glowing embers, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he that's so respectless in his courses, Oft sells his reputation vile and cheap. Let not your carriage and behaviour taste Of affectation, lest while you pretend To make a blaze of gentry to the world A little puff of scorn extinguish it, And you be left like an unsavoury snuff, Whose property is only to offend. Cousin, lay by such superficial forms, And entertain a perfect real substance; Stand not so much on your gentility, But moderate your expenses (now at first) As you may keep the same proportion still: Bear a low sail. Soft, who's ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... watched the green water breaking over the brown sand, and far out at sea he saw the thick haze still brooding low. He knew the evening would be fine, and he knew that he would have a good basket for next day's market. He put his hands in his pockets, and strolled away from the unsavoury neighbourhood of the Fishers' Row on to the glistening moor. His eyes were fixed on the ground, and into his mind entered no thought saving calculations about money and drink. Any stranger who had ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... immensely wealthy, and immensely detested, it appeared, by the European settlement; had native blood in his veins; was charged with poisoning an Englishman with whose wife he was supposed to have been carrying on an amour. "A wretched, unsavoury business," said Harry, and went on to say that, though the fee offered was extraordinarily handsome, he had declined the proposal. It was doubtful he would actually make more money over it than in his normal round at home, more than that it went against the grain to be defending a man of ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... of St. Ouen, small, dirty, crowded and unsavoury as it is, has a place, like every other French village. When we drove into it, to look at the house, I confess to having laughed outright, at the idea of inhabiting such a hole. Two large portes-cocheres, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... happiness and trepidation. She came every day and sat with unwearying patience on what we called the model throne, the one comfortless wooden arm-chair the studio possessed, while Paragot mounted guard near by on an empty box. Everything delighted her—the approach through the unsavoury court-yard, the dirty children, the crazy interior, Cazalet's ghastly and unappreciated masterpieces, even Cazalet himself, who now and then would slouch awkwardly about the place trying to hide his toes. She expressed simple-hearted wonder at the mysteries of my art, and vowed she ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... 'MY DEAREST LILY—-This will be a joint letter, for Ada will finish it to-morrow, and I must make the most of my time while waiting for the Waits to dwell on unsavoury business. Macrae came over here with a convoy of all sorts of "delicacies of the season," for which thank you heartily in the name of Whites, Hablots, and others who partook thereof, according, no doubt, to your kind intention. He was greatly ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thing more than another on which Punch prides himself—on which, nevertheless, he is constantly reproached by those who would see his pages a remorseless mirror of human weakness and vice—it is his purity and cleanness; his abstention from the unsavoury subjects which form the principal stock-in-trade of the French humorist. This trait was Thackeray's delight. "As for your morality, sir," he wrote to Mr. Punch, "it does not become me to compliment ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... no rivers. Rivers are, indeed, marked on the map—rivers of great length and with many tributaries; but when in travelling during the dry season you come to them you find either a waterless bed or a mere line of green and perhaps unsavoury pools. The streams that run south and east from the mountains to the coast are short and rapid torrents after a storm, but at other times dwindle to feeble trickles of mud. In the interior there are, to be sure, rivers which, like the Orange River or the Limpopo, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... red-bearded follower of the Prophet, with a general appearance of wealth and dignity, he walked slowly until he came to the doorway of Leh Shin's shop. His step caused the Chinaman to look up from the string bed where he lay, gaunt, yellow and unsavoury, his dark clothes contrasting with the flowing white garments of the venerable man who regarded him through ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... had chosen this unsavoury corner to dwell in because 'the poor' of the village lived there, and she wished to count herself among them. It emphasised the spite, the grudge, she felt against humanity. At first she came into dejeuner and souper, but afterwards her meals were sent over ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... despite the unsavoury thing of which they seemed to hold a promise, fell sweetly on my ear, inasmuch as for the time they relieved my fears touching Madonna. It was not to advise me of her capture that he had had me haled into his odious ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... it is with blood, not with water. It is a more serious case this—one of attempted murder, which later developed into one of murder. There was an altercation with a man, a lover who had abandoned her, and she stabbed him with a pocket knife, and waited without attempting to escape. An unsavoury, sordid drama, but it is treated in the same cool, business-like way ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... narrowly, puzzled. He knew nothing of this man, beyond his reputation—something unsavoury enough, in all conscience!— had seen him only once, and then from a distance, before that conference in the rue Chaptal. And now he was becoming sensitive to a personality uncommonly insinuating: Wertheimer was displaying all the poise of an Englishman of the better caste More than anybody ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... this small town? Not the younger branches of the county families that held hereditary state in their manor-houses on the wild bleak moors, that shut in Monkshaven almost as effectually on the land side as ever the waters did on the sea-board. No; these old families kept aloof from the unsavoury yet adventurous trade which brought wealth to generation after generation of certain families ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... part of that insensate desire to torture the body which went to make up the ascetic ideal; on the other hand, the fondness for whipping bare flesh and for being whipped has a distinctly pathologic character. The subject is rather too unsavoury to dwell upon, but it has long been established that there is a close connection between the whipping of certain parts of the body and the production of intense sexual pleasure.[183] And it is also clear that the life led by monks ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... "I dare say it is. It's her company that's unsavoury. Especially for a parson. Eh? ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... and as his character was, there was no wavering. I wrote to him immediately to express my lively gratitude, and we considered, the Marquise and I, as to the intermediary to whom we could entrust the unsavoury commission of approaching the Marquis de Montespan. He hated all my family from his having obtained no satisfaction from it for his wrath. We begged the Chancellor Hyde, a personage of importance, to be good enough to accept this ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... later on that night led him into unsavoury parts. He left his car at the corner of Fourteenth Street, and, after a moment's reflection, as though to refresh his memory, he made his way slowly eastwards. He wore an unusually shabby overcoat, and a felt hat drawn over his eyes, ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and drink," he cried, "bestow it freely upon my men, tired of the unsavoury food on shipboard, and if they transgress the laws of hospitality then I, their captain, shall be your avenger; we want none of your goods or money, having enough in our well-laden vessel to satisfy all your necessities, if ye have them, and ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... was again brought to him, and at the same time his guard was changed. While he was yet eating his unsavoury meal one of the new men entered—it was the man ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... therefore he goes about the work of redemption,—a second creation more laborious and also more glorious than the first, that so he might glorify his Father and our Father. Thus the breach is made up, thus the unsavoury salt is seasoned, thus the withered branch is quickened again for that same fruit of praises and glorifying of God. This is the end of his second creation, as it was of the first: "We are his workmanship created to good works in Christ Jesus," Eph. ii. 10. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the Bank we dismissed the hansom and proceeded to walk to Ratcliffe Highway. Before reaching it I was appalled at the forbidding aspect of the neighbourhood. It was not merely that the unsavoury character of the streets offended and disgusted me, but the locality wore a sinister aspect which acted upon my imagination in the strangest, wildest way. Why was it that this aspect fairly cowed me, scared me? I felt that I was not frightened on my own account, and yet when I asked myself why ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... opposition, which was set down to modesty, he was on every side surrounded by the donors of popularity, the unsavoury tide of which now floated around him. His two burgomaster friends, who were Schoppen, or Syndics of the city, had made fast both his arms. Before him, Nikkel Blok, the chief of the butchers' incorporation, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... confused together!—towers, towns, gateways, drawbridges, religious rites and processions, pealing organs and jangling chimes, long dusty roads lined with regimental trees, blouses, fishwomen's caps, sabots, savoury and unsavoury smells, France dissolving into Belgium, Belgium into France, France into Belgium again; in short, one bewildering kaleidoscope! A day and two nights had gone, during all which time I had been on my legs, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... prevented from his purpose, the light being struck from his hand, and himself tumbled backwards into a deep and muddy ditch, extinguishing both light and life apparently together. But he arose, and would have run a tilt at them in this unsavoury condition, had he not been caught by one of his enemies, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... following there was room only for one. "Let her come to us," he added; "she will do very well as a fisherman's daughter." Being reluctant to part with her, and not perceiving then the significance of his garb and vocation, I objected that the calling was a dirty and unsavoury one, and would soil her hands and dress. Whereupon the man became severe, and seemed to insist with a kind of authority upon my acceptance of his proposition. The child, too, was taken with him, and was moreover anxious to leave the rough ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... of the inhabitants, the Spaniards were surprised to see them roll up the dried leaves of a plant which they called "tobacco," and smoke it with a satisfaction which the voyagers could not comprehend, as it appeared to them an unsavoury nauseous indulgence, little dreaming what determined smokers their descendants would become. The envoys described the country as fertile in the extreme, the fields produced pepper, sweet potatoes, maize, pulse, and yuca, while the trees were laden with tempting fruits of delicious flavour. There ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... went rap-rap-rap across the clear glass of the water, leaving a long trail of light behind it like a comet, and the sweet evening odours were mingled with the unsavoury scent of gasoline. Helen had often sped joyfully over the bay at home in just such a noisy little craft, quite unconscious of being obnoxious to any one else. It was not the first time she had found ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... named tells in verse, "timed by raps of the knuckle," how the painter Pacchiarotto must needs become a world-reformer, or at least a city-reformer in his distressed Siena, with no good results for his city and with disastrous results for himself. He learns by unsavoury experience his lesson, to hold on by the paint-brush and maul-stick, and do his own work, accepting the mingled evil and good of life in a spirit of strenuous—not indolent—laissez-faire, playing, as energetically as a human being can, his own part, and leaving others ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... at the south-east corner there is no apsidal chamber to correspond to that in the storey above. There is, however, an unsavoury hole from which have been extracted a number of skulls. Indeed, this crypt formerly contained huge piles of bones, which had probably been brought here by the sixteenth century builders from the foundations of their ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... unsavoury composite wraith, the hall was empty when P. Sybarite entered it. But it echoed with sounds of rowdy revelry from the room in back: mechanical clatter of galled and spavined piano, despondent growling of a broken-winded 'cello, nervous giggling and moaning of an excoriated violin—the three wringing ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... of conscience. Hence a myth has arisen that in order to punish Prajapati for his incest with his daughter the gods created Bhuta-pati (who is Pasu-pati or Rudra under a new name), who stabbed him. The rest of the myth is as immaterial to our purpose as it is unsavoury; what is important is that the conscience of the Brahmans was beginning to feel slight qualms at the uncleanness of some of their old myths and to look towards Rudra as in some degree an avenger of sin. In this is implied an immense moral advance. Henceforth there will be a gradual ennoblement ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... took this farm, undertook this body, I undertook to drain not a marsh but a moat, where there was, not water mingled to offend, but all was water; I undertook to perfume dung, where no one part but all was equally unsavoury; I undertook to make such a thing wholesome, as was not poison by any manifest quality, intense heat or cold, but poison in the whole substance, and in the specific form of it. To cure the sharp accidents of diseases is a great work; to ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... Jake rose before his eyes. The half-breed's unsavoury reputation forced itself forward. And there was the circumstance of Indian Jake's visit to Flat Point camp the previous evening, his hurried departure in the morning, and his evident desire to hurry into the interior wilderness where he would be swallowed up for several ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... were of greatest potency. The clergy, to secure the offerings, invented the relics, and invented the stories of the wonders which had been worked by them. The greatest exposure of these things took place at the visitation of the religious houses. In the meantime, Bishop Shaxton's unsavoury inventory of what passed under the name of relics in the diocese of Salisbury, will furnish an adequate notion of these objects of popular veneration. There "be set forth and commended unto the ignorant people," he said, "as I myself of certain which be already come to my hands, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... parley as to price, Lady C—— hinted that she doubted its being perfectly sweet: the very suspicion of vending an unsavoury article roused the old she-dragon at once into one of the most terrific passions imaginable, and directing all her ire against the ladies, she poured forth a volley of abuse fiery and appalling as the lava of a volcano, which concluded as follows.—"Not sweet, you ——," ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... own pockets. How one learns to loathe, in Italy and in England, that lovely word socialism, when one knows a little of the inner workings of the cause and a few—just a few!—details of the private lives of these unsavoury saviours of their country! ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas |
