"Accidental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... habits, are only superficial dies, bright and pleasing for a little while, yet soon fading to a dim tinct, without any remains of former lustre; but the discriminations of true passion are the colours of nature; they pervade the whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits them. The accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes are dissolved by the chance which combined them; but the uniform simplicity of primitive qualities neither admits increase, nor suffers decay. The sand heaped by one flood is scattered by another, but the rock always continues in its place. The stream of time, ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... the list is the Fallacy of Accident ([Greek: t sumbebeks]). This fallacy consists in confounding an essential with an accidental difference, which is not allowable, since many things are the same in essence, while they differ in accidents. Here is the sort of example that ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... Dessalines remained at home, on their estate near Saint Marc. When he was in attendance on the Commander-in-chief, she was ever a welcome guest in Toussaint's family. Madame L'Ouverture loved her as a daughter; and she had endeared herself to the girls. At this time, from an accidental circumstance, she was at the palace without her husband. It was evident that she felt quite at home there; for, though she had arrived only a few hours before, she did not appear disposed to converse. As she sat alone, leaning against ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... little accidental about all Lamb's finest work. Poetry he seriously tried to write, and plays and stories; but the supreme criticism of the Specimens of English Dramatic Poets arose out of the casual habit of setting down an opinion of an extract just copied into one's note-book, and the book itself, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... of the Hungarians, that they live under what they are pleased to term, a free constitution. Subject to the sway of the house of Hapsburg only through the accidental lapse of the crown into the female line, they utterly eschew all dependence upon Austria, and would turn with indignation from him who should insinuate that over them the laws of the empire exercise ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... explosion vessel, and accordingly established a laboratory on the island of San Lorenzo, under the superintendence of Major Miller, the Commandant of Marines. Whilst engaged in this duty, that able and gallant officer was so severely burned by an accidental explosion, as to render his further services on this ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... not such a great city as this London, at least in its present amorphous, unorganised state, having grown up, and growing still, any how and any whither, by the accidental necessities of private commerce, private speculation, private luxury—is it not, I say, ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... and South Kensington, which, while it teaches art, joins hands with industry, surely does well. It is needless to debate before this audience the question whether there is any essential antagonism between art or esthetic culture, and the tendencies of an age of science. An accidental antagonism there may be, an essential antagonism there cannot be. What is science but truth, and why should not truth and beauty live together? Is an artist a worse painter of the human body from being a good anatomist? Then why should he be a worse painter of nature generally, because ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... optimistic ideas there was always with him an intuition of "the sublime tragedy of renunciation, the negation of the will." In trying to explain this, he is full of ideas philosophically, and full of the most amusing contradictions personally. Optimism, as an accidental excursion into the barren paths of reason on his own part, he calls "Hellenic." In others he denounces it as rank Judaism, the Jew having at that time become for him the whipping boy for all modern humanity. In a letter from London he expounds ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... wet; fourteen miles of march: fancy such a Promenade through the dripping Woods; heavy, toilsome, and with such errand ahead! The delays were considerable; some of them accidental. Vigilant Daun has Detachments watching in these Woods:—a General Ried, who fires cannon and gets off: then a General St. Ignon and the St. Ignon Regiment of Dragoons; who, being BETWEEN Column First and Column Second, cannot get away; but, after some ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... since he was himself a fine example of the type that he admired most. Probably only two persons in the world had the power of causing him annoyance, but both of these, by an irony of fate that it seemed scarcely possible to consider accidental, were closely connected with him, for one was his sister, the other his ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... astonishing career that carried him from obscurity to world-wide fame—from postmaster of New Salem village to President of the United States, from captain of a backwoods volunteer company to Commander-in-chief of the army and navy—was neither sudden nor accidental nor easy. He was both ambitious and successful, but his ambition was moderate, and his success was slow. And, because his success was slow, it never outgrew either his judgment or his powers. Between the day when he left his ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... or two pieces of luck in the way of accidental cases. One (which was of immense importance to me) was that of a grocer named Haywood, who fell down in a fit outside the floor of his shop. I was passing on my way to see a poor labourer with typhoid. ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... clouds, the clouds and the mountains, covered with their immense, mute attestation what the old city murmured beneath them; they confirmed in silence the sombre truths: heaven empty as the churches are, serving for accidental phantasmagoria, and uninterrupted times rolling their flood, wherein thousands of lives, like insignificant nothings, are, one after another, dragged and drowned.—A knell began to ring in that distance which Ramuntcho saw whitening; very slowly, the old belfry gave its voice, once more, ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... peaceful beauty of an ascending curl of blue smoke in a woody landscape, or the awful beauty of a lofty precipice. On the other hand, when the experience and recollections, which are the source of the pleasure, are restricted and accidental, any attribution of objective worth is illusory. Thus, the ascription of beauty to one's native village, to one's beloved friends, and so on, in so far as it carries the conviction of objective worth, may imply a confusion of the individual with the ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... "jokes" had inflicted ought perhaps to be counted in extenuation of his errors. It may be true, as his generous biographer suggests, that "his politics and his feud with many of these men was an affair of ignorance and accidental associations in Edinburgh," that under different circumstances "he might have been found inditing sonnets to Leigh Hunt, and supping with Lamb, Haydon, and Hazlitt."[23] But meanwhile irreparable mischief had been done to many reputations, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... (c) The accidental grounding of a telegraph line is termed an earth, as a dead, total, partial, or intermittent earth, describing the extent and ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... read in the letters of the late Victor Jacquemont upon India, with regard to the incredible dexterity of these men: "They crawl on the ground, ditches, in the furrows of fields, imitate a hundred different voices, and dissipate the effect of any accidental noise by raising the yelp of the jackal or note of some bird—then are silent, and another imitates the call of the same animal in the distance. They can molest a sleeper by all sorts of noises and slight touches, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... equally foreign to Rome before the Lex Aquilia, and to England when trespass took its shape. I do not know any very satisfactory evidence that a man was generally held liable either in Rome /4/ or England for the accidental consequences even of his own act. But whatever may have been the early law, the foregoing account shows the starting-point of the system with which we have to deal. Our system of private liability for the consequences of a man's own acts, that is, for his trespasses, ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... an accidental passion, for which the faculty indeed is unborn. In its nobler form and in its nobler motives it arises from love, and in its lower form it arises from the deepest and darkest Pit ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... in morals nature is one, constant, invariable ... that its laws never change;" and that "everything that may be advanced as to the variety in the morals of savage and civilised peoples, by no means proves that nature varies;" that at the outside it only shows "that from certain accidental causes which are foreign to it, some nations have fallen away from the laws of nature; others have remained submissive to them, in some respects from mere habit; finally, others are subjected to them by certain reasoned-out laws that are not always in contradiction with nature;" in a word, "man ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... his thoughts; every one of which, beginning with himself as the peculiar and intimate apprehension of this or that particular day and hour, seemed still to protest against such disturbance, as if reluctant to part from those accidental associations of the personal history which had prompted it, and so become a purely ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... succeeded that monarch as Philip II. By the Tordesillas division above described, the islands were properly in the Portuguese hemisphere, but on the earliest maps, made by Spaniards, they were placed twenty-five degrees too far east, and this circumstance, whether accidental or designed, has preserved them to Spain even to the present time. At the Philippine Islands Magellan was killed in an affray with the natives. One of his ships, the Victoria, after sailing around the Cape of Good ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... remained on the spirits of the gracious Duncan upon this occasion, that various "picqueerings," as David called them, took place upon the same and similar topics and it was only in consequence of an accidental visit of the Duke to his Lodge at Roseneath, that they were put a stop to. But upon that occasion his Grace showed such particular respect to Mr. and Mrs. Butler, and such favour even to old David, that Knockdunder ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... look. She was learning to think fast and decide quickly. But the news editor was quite right. Not a word of the disgraceful attempt to pervert justice appeared in either the local or any other paper. MacDonald's death was briefly recorded as accidental and the coroner's verdict given in a four line paragraph. Do not ask me the why of this, dear reader; or I shall ask you the why of a hundred other equally mysterious silences. Don't forget, as Wayland has already informed you, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Greene and Jonson composed many fine physical and licentious dramas, pandering to the London groundlings, bloated wealth and accidental power; but Shakspere threw a spiritual radiance over their brutal, sordid phrases and elevated stage characters into the realm of romantic thought, pinioned with hope, love and truth. His sublime imagination soared away ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... his way a world-historic opportunity, he seized it with delight. He knew that he was dicing with Death, but that was the very essence of his ideal; and he knew that if Death won the throw, his ideal was crowned and consummated, for ever safe from the withering touch of time, or accidental soilure. If it had been given to Swinburne to fall, rifle in hand, on, say, the field of Mentana, we should have been the poorer by many splendid verses, but the richer by a heroic life-story. And would his lot have been the less enviable? Nay, surely, much the more. That is the ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... Badger, and Wolverine go along with little variation. Probably the Coon does the same; the enormous rise in 1867 from an average of 3,500 per annum. to 24,000 was most likely a result of accidental accumulation and not representative of any special abundance. Finally, each and every line manifests extraordinary variability in the '30's. It is not to be supposed that the population fluctuated so enormously from one year to another, but rather ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of this new line taken in the Valmiki Pratibha, I composed another musical play of the same class. It was called the Kal Mrigaya, The Fateful Hunt. The plot was based on the story of the accidental killing of the blind hermit's only son by King Dasaratha. It was played on a stage erected on our roof-terrace, and the audience seemed profoundly moved by its pathos. Afterwards, much of it was, with slight changes, incorporated in the Valmiki ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... very strongly against the view that fetishism is a primary form of religion, and holds that the worship of casual objects is not a stage of religion once universally prevalent, but is, on the contrary, a parasitical development and of accidental origin. He does not tell us what the original religion of mankind was. The work in which he deals most directly with this question[5] is concerned chiefly with the Indian faith, the early stages of which he regards as the most typical instance of the growth of religion generally. He does ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... introductory scene, Euclides and Terpsion are described as meeting before the door of Euclides' house in Megara. This may have been a spot familiar to Plato (for Megara was within a walk of Athens), but no importance can be attached to the accidental introduction of the founder of the Megarian philosophy. The real intention of the preface is to create an interest about the person of Theaetetus, who has just been carried up from the army at Corinth in a dying state. The expectation of his death recalls the promise ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... Julius Caesar is doubtless a fairer instance, but the whole mode of argument is unsound and unsatisfying. Why run off from the fact in question, or the class at least to which it belongs? The victory can be but accidental—a victory obtained by the unguarded logic, or want of logical foresight of the antagonist, who needs only narrow his positions to narrations of facts and events, in our judgment of which we are not aided by the analogy of previous and succeeding experience, to deprive you of the opportunity ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... because of it, Christianity spread. Toward the end of the first two hundred years of the Empire, it seemed about the only prosperous institution in a world which was beginning to go badly. During the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the last of the "good" emperors (161-180), troubles, some accidental, some inherent in the Roman system, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... blind forces. Regression is as natural as progression. No one has pointed this out more convincingly than Huxley in his "Evolution and Ethics." The progress of the race is not natural, but artificial and accidental and precarious. Therefore Nietzsche believes in artificial selection. The Superman is not born, he must be bred. Nietzsche is the spiritual father and ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... My own accidental cut across the knuckles was a flea-bite. Doctor Livesey patched it up with plaster, and pulled my ears for me ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you will rashly persist, if you are determined to renew the shameful and mischievous examples of old seditions, proceed. As it becomes an emperor who has filled the first rank among men, I am prepared to die, standing; and to despise a precarious life, which, every hour, may depend on an accidental fever. If I have been found unworthy of the command, there are now among you, (I speak it with pride and pleasure,) there are many chiefs whose merit and experience are equal to the conduct of the most important war. Such has been the temper of my reign, that I can retire, without regret, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... I might have thought it accidental, except for one or two odd little circumstances. Primo, Victor Field is a guest at ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... miraculous interestingness of the universe. And the greatest makers of literature are those whose vision has been the widest, and whose feeling has been the most intense. Your own fragment of insight was accidental, and perhaps temporary. *Their* lives are one long ecstasy of denying that the world is a dull place. Is it nothing to you to learn to understand that the world is not a dull place? Is it nothing to you to be led out of the tunnel on to the ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... the prey of parasites. The growing tissue of a tree is comprised in a thin layer below the bark, and the life of this may seemingly be indefinitely prolonged by placing it in a situation in which it escapes the action of accidental injuries and decay, as by grafting on young trees. Where the nature of the dead wood is such that it is immune from parasites and decay, as in the case of the Sequoias, life seems to be indefinitely prolonged. The growing branches of one of these ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... with himself, he was pleased henceforth to read into his superior luck a revelation of superior intelligence, and from that moment followed his own inclinations and judgment. He liked Martin no less, but never turned to him for counsel again after his own accidental good fortune; and henceforward assumed an elder brother's manner and a show of superior wisdom. In matters of the world and in knowledge of such human character as shall be found to congregate in civilisation's van, or where precious metals and precious stones have been discovered ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... furnishing of the rooms and the costumes, Vassilyev realized that this was not lack of taste, but something that might be called the taste, and even the style, of S. Street, which could not be found elsewhere—something intentional in its ugliness, not accidental, but elaborated in the course of years. After he had been in eight houses he was no longer surprised at the color of the dresses, at the long trains, the gaudy ribbons, the sailor dresses, and the thick purplish rouge on the cheeks; he saw that it all had to be like this, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... things. In a sense, Cratylus is right in saying that things have by nature names; for nature is not opposed either to art or to law. But vocal imitation, like any other copy, may be imperfectly executed; and in this way an element of chance or convention enters in. There is much which is accidental or exceptional in language. Some words have had their original meaning so obscured, that they require to be helped out by convention. But still the true name is that which has a natural meaning. Thus nature, art, ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... Allen, "but I think he has a sort of fascination for her, and that she doesn't realize it. You'll let your visit appear casual and accidental, won't you? You won't let Barbara suspect that I had anything to ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... that I haven't forgotten a word. 'I mustn't make that poor little head of yours ache with Scotch law,' my uncle said; 'I must put it plainly. There are marriages allowed in Scotland, Blanche, which are called Irregular Marriages—and very abominable things they are. But they have this accidental merit in the present case. It is extremely difficult for a man to pretend to marry in Scotland, and not really to do it. And it is, on the other hand, extremely easy for a man to drift into marrying in Scotland without feeling the slightest suspicion of having done it ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... Irishman among the rank and file, he was unusually pleasant and communicative. With such a companion he always moved about the garrison, descanting upon its force and power, and imperceptibly stealing into his good graces, until he found some opportunity of making an apparently accidental enquiry touching the information he was desirous of obtaining. In this way he became possessed of the knowledge that even Quebec held within its impregnable walls many a man who was far from being the true friend of England, ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... gave me his care was Father Girolamo. He told the truth to thy secretary, for I am the son of poor Annunziata Altieri, who was once thought worthy to attract thy passing notice. The deception of calling myself another of thy children was practised for my own security. The means were offered by an accidental confederacy with one of the instruments of thy formidable enemy and cousin, who furnished the papers that had been taken with the little Gaetano. The truth of what I say shall be delivered to you at Genoa. As for the Signor Sigismondo, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... has succeeded in producing some fine new varieties of fruits and vegetables, much to the honour of his own talents and his country's benefit [Footnote: See Mr Knight On the Apple-tree.]. It is well known to gardeners that the cabbage tribe are liable to sport thus in their progeny; and to some accidental occurrence of this nature we are indebted for the very useful ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... as if by accident, draw their swords, and one of them is either killed or disabled, before any effectual means can be used to part them. Whatever may be the issue of the combat, the magistrate takes no cognizance of it; at least, it is interpreted into an accidental rencounter, and no penalty is incurred on either side. Thus the purpose of the law is entirely defeated, by a most ridiculous and cruel connivance. The meerest trifles in conversation, a rash word, a distant hint, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... again," he said, good-humoredly: "you regard as sure proof a circumstance which may be accidental, and at the ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... discovering a passage between China and Japan. As to the history we have of Roggewein's voyage, it affords such lights as nothing but our own negligence can render useless. But in the other voyages, whatever discoveries we meet with are purely accidental, except it be Dampier's voyage to the coasts of New Holland and New Guinea, which was expressly made for discoveries; and in which, if an abler man had been employed in conjunction with Dampier, we cannot doubt that the interior ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... population and in better facilities for internal communication, he declared, had rapidly brought these two systems into close contact, and collision was the result. "Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... ask you who the original of the photograph 'A September Dream' in your exhibit was, Miss Palmer," she said graciously. "The resemblance to a very dear childhood friend of mine is so startling that I am sure it cannot be accidental." ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... unavoidable error; for these critics being men of shallow capacities, very easily mistook mere form for substance. They acted as a judge would, who should adhere to the lifeless letter of law, and reject the spirit. Little circumstances, which were perhaps accidental in a great author, were by these critics considered to constitute his chief merit, and transmitted as essentials to be observed by all his successors. To these encroachments, time and ignorance, the two great supporters ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... that while Lilas was out enjoying herself with you poor Mr. Hammon was lying with a bullet in him. I NEVER had such a shock as when I read the extras. You've seen them?" Lorelei nodded—indeed, the room was strewn with newspapers. "They say it was accidental—but ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... to him was the fretful, querulous voice of an old, bedridden woman as he lifted the latch and opened the door of a poor house upon the ramparts, which had no entrance into the street; and where he lived alone with his mother, cut off from all accidental ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... that we do not lead individual isolated lives apart from our fellows. The parish is not the centre of the universe. The tendency of the uneducated mind is to isolate itself from the interests of others, and to look at all matters from a purely selfish point of view. The parish is an accidental collection of individual souls in a particular diocese. The diocese is an aggregation of separate parishes scattered through an assigned area. The members of the Church in a particular parish and diocese are members of the Holy Catholic Church, which by its very nomenclature abrogates individual ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry
... dereliction in the establishment of steam mail facilities, and the failure to establish locomotive accommodations for our merchants and other business classes call loudly for a change in our affairs, and the establishment of a national steam policy in the place of the accidental and irregular support hitherto given to foreign steam enterprise. The nation demands the means of competing with other nations. We have lost much of the trade of the world without it. The commercial men of this country complain bitterly that the Government gives them no facilities ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... this time De la Salle's attention does not seem to have been turned to that which ultimately became the great work of his life. As not unfrequently happens, the real bent was given to his energies by what might be described as accidental circumstances. The friend whom he consulted when in doubt concerning holy orders was one Canon Roland. This good man had interested himself much about an orphanage for girls at Rheims, which had fallen under bad management, and urgently needed ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... very useful, and when great detail is desirable, and fine, smooth work would make an accidental tear impossible to mend well, they are most valuable. They are made of mahogany and ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... remarkable a discovery had not been made before, a satisfactory explanation was given in the statement that she had been carried from Virginia to Kentucky, had been on the plantation of John S. Bowling so long that no one knew or cared how old she was, and only recently the accidental discovery by Mr. Bowling's son of the old bill of sale in the Record Office in Virginia had led to the identification of this negro woman as ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... be very careful to make it in the right quarter: it was a stock joke in Roman comedy to make a character 'ask for water from Liber, or wine from the nymphs.' Hence we find in the prayer formulae in Cato and elsewhere the most careful precautions to prevent the accidental omission of the deity concerned: usually the worshipper will go through the whole list of the gods who may be thought to have power in the special circumstances; sometimes he will conclude his prayer with the formula 'whosoever thou art,' or 'and any other ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... make any considerable percentage of the shots effective; and in the next place, except when marching to a close conflict, the men are generally protected by lying down behind inequalities of the ground, or other accidental or designed defences. The proportion killed in any battle by artillery fire is very small. Lines of men frequently lie exposed to constant shelling for hours, with small loss; in fact, in such cases, old soldiers will ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... interested in declining "fraudulent and unworthy" copy, I would call their attention to the ridiculous claims of Dr. Shoop's medicines, which "cure" almost every disease; to two hair removers, one an "Indian Secret", the other an "accidental discovery", both either fakes or dangerous; to the lying claims of Hall's Catarrh Cure, that it is "a positive cure for catarrh", in all its stages; to "Syrup of Figs", which is not a fig syrup, but a ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... night. A somewhat similar feeling comes over one who walks the narrow path down the centre of the machinery compartment of a submarine. He seems hedged about by mysterious apparatus a touch of which, or even an accidental jostle may release ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... distinction that belongs to few literary epochs. The men who made it lived lives that were as heroic in devotion to duty and principle as many of those written down in the sagas themselves. I have sometimes wondered whether it is merely accidental that English saga scholars were so often men of high soul and strong action. Certain it is that Richard Cleasby, and Samuel Laing, and George Webbe Dasent, and Robert Lowe are types of men that the ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... have been a more unaccountable proceeding on the part of Stanley Lake, and a more romantic situation, if Rachel and his lordship had not had before two or three little accidental rambles together in the grounds and gardens of Brandon. There was nothing quite new in the situation, therefore; and Rachel was for a moment indescribably relieved by ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... spear," as he has figuratively been called, who lived in the house of his conquer, and laboured at his lands. Now, however, the slave was no longer an accident of war. He had become the object of war. He was no longer a mere accidental subject of barter. He was to be sought for, to be hunted out, to be produced; and this change accordingly gave rise to a ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... comes as news to me—and in some respects as good news. For I gather I have no reason to be ashamed of this young man—which on your account, even more than on my own, is so much clear gain.—But I oughtn't to have brought you here to live at Deadham. I ought to have taken the possibility of some accidental revelation, such as the present one, into serious account and saved you from that. To expose you, however remotely, to the risk was both callous and stupid on my part. I own I have a strong sentiment for this house. It seemed natural and restful to return to it—the only house to call a home, I ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... see what the special characteristics of women are, ignoring as far as possible the accidental variations of individuals, and the temporary advantages or disadvantages due to economic or ideational forces, and all assertions of what would be if things were not as ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... narrowly escaped being burnt to death. The devouring element almost destroyed the lower part of the family mansion in Grosvenor-square, over which the lady and gentleman slept, who had retired early to bed, and who by the accidental return of Lord and Lady B. from a party, were awakened only just in time to effect their retreat by means of a fire-escape, fortunately attached to their bed-room window. We are informed that the fire occurred in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... The number of accidental deaths in France is attaining alarming proportions. It is certainly time that a stop was put to the quaint custom ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... while to try and get at the reason for this wide-spread, deep-rooted, fear of beauty: for some reason there must surely be. Such instinctive feelings, on so broad a scale, are not accidental. And so soon as one begins to analyse the attitude of religion towards beauty, the reason is ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... jealousy between neighbors. The feast has commenced; food is abundant, and the feasters are separated one from another by the walls of uneaten substance. With this isolation in separate cells no conflicts need be feared; no sudden bite of the mandibles, whether intentional or accidental. All the occupants enjoy the same rights of property, the same appetite, and the same strength. How does this ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... borne in mind that every historical example of a mystical movement may be expected to exhibit characteristics which are determined by the particular forms of religious deadness in opposition to which it arises. I think that it is generally easy to separate these secondary, accidental characteristics from those which are primary and integral, and that we shall then find that the underlying substance, which may be regarded as the essence of Mysticism as a type of religion, ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... any thing, whether or not it would get him into trouble; and consequently he was always in some scrape or other. He was old enough, certainly, to know better, and pleasant enough, in other respects, to be liked very much by all who knew him. He was full of fun, perfectly fearless, and bore an accidental scratch or tumble like a man. But, dear me! what a heedless, careless little scamp! That very morning, before school began, his mother had sent him into the garden to gather vegetables. He cut the carrots so that they would stand up on end, and with ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... you home," she said, as he reached her, and there seemed to her something delightful and romantic in this accidental meeting. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... always acceptable from her visitors. Asking of her the question how long she had smoked, her reply was 'Vary nigh a hundred years'!" In 1845 there died at Buxton, at the age of ninety-six, a woman named Pheasy Molly, who had been for many years an inveterate smoker. Her death was caused by the accidental ignition of her clothes as she was lighting her pipe at the fire. She had burned herself more than once before in performing the same operation; but her pipe she was bound to have, and ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... boys whooping and yelling as hard as they could, when Jimmy Webster raised his gun and pulled down on him, and cut the rabbit's head entirely off with a minnie ball right back of his ears. He was about two hundred and fifty yards off. It might have been an accidental shot, but General Leonidas Polk laughed very heartily at the incident, and I heard him ask one of his staff if the Whitworth gun had been awarded. The staff officer responded that it had, and that a certain man in Colonel Farquharson's regiment—the ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... up several times between that hour and the breaking of dawn Owen slept sounder than he had done for many a day; he seemed to feel a new confidence in himself, as if matters had taken a turn for the better, and in this accidental meeting with his benefactors his fortunes had begun to assume ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... cabman's fingers, and the skin of my neck had been scratched by his nails; my feet hurt exceedingly and I was lame from a little cut on one foot. I saw in time a blind man approaching me, and fled limping, for I feared his subtle intuitions. Once or twice accidental collisions occurred and I left people amazed, with unaccountable curses ringing in their ears. Then came something silent and quiet against my face, and across the Square fell a thin veil of slowly falling flakes of snow. I had caught a cold, and do as I would I could not avoid ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... credit of Portugal laurels and American junipers, be it remembered that they remained untouched amidst the general havoc: hence men should learn to ornament chiefly with such trees as are able to withstand accidental severities, and not subject themselves to the vexation of a loss which may befall them once perhaps in ten years, yet may hardly be recovered through the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... a fortnight had elapsed since the accidental meeting, and Isabella was in doubt as to who the lady was that Henry was with in the carriage. Little, however, did she think that it was his wife. With a smile, Isabella met the young man as he entered her little dwelling. Clotelle had already gone to bed, but her father's voice ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... an immense force of infantry. Vast accessions of forces joined him each day, and on the 17th of September he occupied a position between the Black Prince and Guienne. The first intimation that either the Black Prince or the King of France had of their close proximity to each other was an accidental meeting between a small foraging force of the English and three hundred French horse, under the command of the Counts of Auxerre and Joigny, the marshal of Burgundy, and the lord of Chatillon. The French hotly pursued the ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... opinion of these pavements having been the floors of baths, as founded on the circumstance of their being discovered three or four feet under the surface of the earth, is not conclusive; for the soil has been raised by accidental accumulation; and had not this been the case, the depth of three or four feet would not have been sufficient for a Bath as it could not have allowed room for submersion. Neither does the vault with a floor and walls of tesselated ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... slats, and very rarely of trim aspect. The men of this region seemed to ride in the saddle very generally, rather than drive. They looked sober and stern, less curious and lively than Yankees, and I fancied that a type of features familiar to us in the countenance of the late John Tyler, our accidental President, was frequently met with. The women were still more distinguishable from our New-England pattern. Soft, sallow, succulent, delicately finished about the mouth and firmly shaped about the chin, dark-eyed, full-throated, they looked as if they had been grown in a land of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... he tells us, "there are few sounds to disturb the traveller's night rest. The horn of the new-comers, and the reply to it from a neighbouring village, an accidental alarm, the chirping of crickets, and the cry from a sick child occasionally, however, broke the stillness. At dawn the first sounds were the crowing of cocks, the lowing of cows, the bleating of ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... after a while; could the boy continue to be as perfect right along as he seemed just now, and should the time come, was Mr. Goodwyn mean enough to look upon an accidental mistake ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... despair. From this despair arises an awakening of the soul. From such awakening proceeds study of the Scriptures. From contemplation of the import of the scriptures, O king, one sees the value of penance. A person possessed of the knowledge of what is essential and what accidental, O king, is very rare,—he, that is, who seeks to undergo penances, impressed with the truth that the happiness one derives from the possession of such agreeable objects as spouses and children leads ultimately to misery.[1533] Penances, O child, are for all. They are ordained ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... this quite drives me mad. I feel bitterly my wrong conduct and the baseness of my suspicions; but if anything can excuse me, it is my mournful state, my loneliness," and so on.[31] This prolonged physical anguish, which was made more intense towards the end of 1761 by the accidental breaking of a surgical instrument,[32] sometimes so nearly wore his fortitude away as to make him think of suicide.[33] In Lord Edward's famous letter on suicide in the New Heloisa, while denying in forcible terms the right of ending one's days merely to escape from intolerable mental ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... alongside the framework are the faint red sketch lines not cords. The diagonal line N on the left I do not understand, it does not seem an accidental one. ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... human arrogance, Commits to trivial chance the fate of nations! While, with incessant thought, laborious man Extends his mighty schemes of wealth and pow'r, And towers and triumphs in ideal greatness; Some accidental gust of opposition Blasts all the beauties of his new creation, O'erturns the fabrick of presumptuous reason, And whelms the swelling architect beneath it. Had not the breeze untwin'd the meeting boughs, And, through the parted shade, disclos'd the Greeks, Th' important ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... humor, that English Theory of Friedrich which has prevailed ever since. Perhaps the most surprising item of which is this latter, very prominent in those old times, That Friedrich has no 'constancy,' but follows his 'caprices,' and accidental whirls of impulse:—item which has dropped away in our times, though the others stand as stable as ever. A monument of several things! Friedrich's suddenness is an essential part of what fighting talent he has: if the Public, thrown into flurry, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... it, and the next evening Charlie put on a new neck-tie he 'ad bought, and arter letting Ted have arf an hour's start went out and met 'em accidental. The fust Mrs. Jennings knew of 'is being there was by finding an ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... proved, on assay, to be of the purest quality. Every one was questioned as to what he had cast into the furnace, when there appeared no reason to suppose the transmutation could have been effected by such an accidental mixture of metals. At length it was remarked, that a dervish, accompanying the barber's son, had cast in a lump of ore, and immediately disappeared. Upon this the sultan summoned the youth to his presence, and inquiring after his companion, was informed of the place of his ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... call his attention to the chapter in which the book-trade is discussed; with the view both of making him acquainted with what I had stated, and also of availing myself of his knowledge in correcting any accidental error as to the facts. Mr Fellowes, 'differing from me entirely respecting the conclusions I had arrived at', then declined the publication of the volume. If I had then chosen to apply to some of those other booksellers, whose names appear in the Committee of 'The Trade', it is probable that they ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... an idea of the ever-present and ever-ready state of this power is given to us, when we consider that not only every substance, but almost every mode of dealing with substance manifests its presence. It is not accidental at these times, but active and essentially so, and we may, in our endeavors to comprehend it, usefully compare and contrast it with gravity which never changes. There we see that power which in undisturbed and solemn grandeur holds equally the world and the dust of which ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... is curious and ethnologically valuable. The Badawi who eructates as a civility, has a mortal hatred to a crepitus ventris; and were a by-stander to laugh at its accidental occurrence, he would at once be cut down as a "pundonor." The same is the custom amongst the Highlanders of Afghanistan, and its artificial nature suggests direct derivation, for the two regions are separated ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... her breast, her eyes narrowed. "Until this hour I never knew the name of that officer. I never thought to ask. I never thought of the mistake lying there. The mistake! All these months I have thought of it as a mistake—as one of those misunderstandings, mishappenings, accidental, incomprehensible, that wound and blister human life! I never saw it in a lightning flash for what ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... that such or such Vegetables were produc'd out of the corruption of another, without any concurrent seminal principle (as I have given some reason to suppose, in the description of a Microscopical Mushrome) without derogating at all from the infinite wisdom of the Creator. For this accidental production, as I may call it, does manifest as much, if not very much more, of the excellency of his contrivance as any thing in the more perfect vegetative bodies of the world, even as the accidental motion of ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... After an accidental exposure as by getting the feet wet, or being caught in a shower, drink bountifully of cold water, and take a dose of Nux; followed in an hour by Aconite, if any chilliness is felt, or Copaiva if ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... latter placed two of his secretaries at the disposal of Baron de Nostitz to prepare under his direction the pamphlets with which Germany is flooded; but I cannot too often repeat," continued M. Gentz, "that the hatred against the French avowed by these various societies is simply an accidental thing, a singular creation of circumstances; since their prime object was the overthrow of the government as it existed in Germany, and their fundamental principle the establishment of a system of absolute equality. This is so true that the question has been earnestly ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... walk to the inn, except an accidental remark of Nicholas, that it appeared to him that his ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... important air, summoned his wife and Lenore to a conference in his room. He sat up in his arm-chair, and said, with a greater degree of satisfaction than he had for a long time evinced, "It was easy to discover that this visit of Fink's was not exactly accidental, nor occasioned by his friendship for Mr. Wohlfart, as the young men both made it appear: you two pretended to be wiser than I; but I was right after all, and the visit concerns us more nearly than ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... could not have had this but for the accidental arrangement of these convenient rooms," ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... new favorites was not only eager to obtain wealth for himself, but had a number of relations for whom provision must also be made. To the more prominent courtiers above enumerated was added Jacques d'Albon de Saint-Andre, son of Henry's tutor, who, from accidental intimacy with the king in childhood, was led to aspire to high dignities in the state, and was not long in obtaining a marshal's baton.[552] Herself securing not only the rank of Duchess of Valentinois, with the authority of a queen,[553] but the enormous revenues ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... at once," says, "these people are inclined to a swart, tawnie or chesnut colour, not by nature but accidentally." [Footnote: Ibid, IV, 1655.] And Roger Williams, partaking of the same idea as Pringe, that the swarthy color was accidental, testifies, almost in the same language as Captain Smith, that the Narragansets and others within a region of two hundred miles of them, were "tawnie by the sunne and their annoyntings, yet they were born white." [Footnote: Roger Williams's Key, 52.] Thus ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... Alexia had said: a most surprising thing, when one took into consideration how much Mr. John Clemcy had suffered from the carelessness of a Salisbury pupil on the occasion of the accidental visit. But evidently one of his reasons—though by no means the only one—was his wish to salve the feelings of the gentlewomen, who were constantly endeavoring to show him their overwhelming sorrow, and trying to make all possible ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... their very beautiful and compact nest. As the work progresses more cobwebs and fibre of a silky kind are applied externally, and at times the nest, when tossed about by the wind (sometimes at a considerable elevation), would be mistaken by a casual observer for an accidental collection of cobwebs. The inside of the nest is well felted with the down of the madar plant, and then it is finally lined with fine hair and grass-stems of the softest kind. Sometimes the nest is suspended from ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... the Europeans have entailed upon some of the natives of the South Seas, is the accidental introduction among them of that enemy of all repose and ruffler of even tempers—the Mosquito. At the Sandwich Islands and at two or three of the Society group, there are now thriving colonies of these insects, who promise ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... go to Bilbao by sea, but the advice came too late. The last steamer from Bayonne had ventured there four-and-twenty hours before I sought my passage, and even on that last steamer the few voyagers were unable to insure their lives with the Accidental Company, although they consented to promise that they would descend into the hold the instant they heard a shot. It was almost as full of jeopardy to travel to Bilbao by sea as to sail down the Mississippi with a racing captain and a lading ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... But admitting, in its fullest extent, the resemblance of some of the numerals used by the two nations, in the shape of the character, and of others in the sound, it certainly cannot be assumed to prove any thing beyond a mere accidental coincidence. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... walked slowly toward the station Crane met abruptly the girl who was just then so much in his thoughts. Her sudden appearance quite startled him, though it was quite accidental. She had gone in to do some shopping, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... strange, unearthly aspect of the scenes enacted in the Ark at that early hour, the fleeting vision of a morning repast which formed some accidental part in ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... discourse with the ladies, I observed to Mrs Maynard that by the account she had given me of their income, their expenses fell far short of it. She whispered me that their accidental charities were innumerable, all the rest being employed in that way. Their acquaintance know they cannot so much oblige as by giving them an opportunity of relieving distress. They receive continual applications and though they give ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... she went upstairs. She liked the clasp, and she liked the gracious feeling which had sent it; but what really occupied her more than either was a distressed fear that she had offended Tom Fenton. He never came to the farm now. The only hope she had of seeing him lay in an accidental meeting. ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... near to the Whately home my burden of anxiety and responsibility was doubled. In silent faithfulness he kept sentinel watch. I dared not tell Marjie, for I knew it would fill her nights with terror, and yet I feared her accidental discovery of his presence. Jean was doing more than this, however. His promise to be good seemed to belie Father Le Claire's warning. In and out of the village all that winter he went, orderly, at times even affable, quietly ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... for in that case the crime was to be adjudged manslaughter, and not murder, as in the first instance. In the following verse, another case of personal injury is stated, not intentional, nor extending to life or limb, a mere accidental hurt, for which the injurer is to pay a sum of money; and yet our translators employ the same phraseology in both places. One, an instance of deliberate, wanton, killing by piecemeal. The other ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... lines, where he was again made a prisoner by our troops because of his looks. Pike got some clothes, cleaned up, and I used him afterward to communicate with Wilmington, North Carolina. Some time after the war, he was appointed a lieutenant of the Regular, Cavalry, and was killed in Oregon, by the accidental discharge of a pistol. Just before his death he wrote me, saying that he was tired of the monotony of garrison-life, and wanted to turn Indian, join the Cheyennes on the Plains, who were then giving us great trouble, and, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... more or less decadent art lies in the fact that by the one things are appreciated for what they most essentially are—a young man, a swift horse, a chaste wife, &c.—by the other for some more or less peculiar or accidental relation that they hold to the creator. Such writers lament that the young are not old, the old not young, prostitutes not pure, that maidens are cold and modest or matrons portly. They complain of having suffered from things being cross, or they take malicious pleasure in pointing that ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... sound strange to say that the Sawtooth country had not had a real "killing" for years, though accidental deaths had been rather frequent. One man, for instance, had fallen over a ledge and broken his neck, presumably while drunk. Another had bought a few sticks of dynamite to open up a spring on his ranch, and at the inquest which followed the jury had returned a verdict of "death caused by ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... "New England Log-house," devoted to the contrasting of the cuisine of this and the Revolutionary period, strictly to be assigned to the women's ward of the great extempore city? Is its proximity to the buildings just noticed purely accidental, or meant to imply that cookery is as much a female art and mystery as it was a century ago? However this may be, the erection of this temple to the viands of other days was a capital idea, and a blessed one should it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... father thinks," he had once said, "that every penny he pays in fines goes to swell the accidental glory ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... accidental wounds of joints—such, for example, as result from a stab with a penknife or the spike of a railing—lies in the fact that they are liable to be followed by infection of the synovial cavity. The infection may involve only the synovial layer (septic ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... vanish before humour or mere fun; while having no deep root in life or interests in common with the settled Anglo-Saxon citizen, he cannot fail to appear at times to the latter as a near relation to Mephistopheles. But his "mockery" is as accidental and naif as that of Jewish Young Germany is keen and deliberate; and the former differs from the latter as the drollery of Abraham a Santa Clara differs from the brilliant ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... finally succeeded in rescuing the tenant of the cellar from the threatened deluge. She was comfortably cared for by a fellow-countrywoman, and a regular dispensary physician sent for. Wonderful to relate, the shock of the cold bath had accomplished one of those accidental cures, of which many are recorded in the history of rheumatic disorders; and in a few days, the sufferer was on her legs again. Furthermore, her sickness had proved the means of interesting several benevolent individuals in her fate, and by their assistance she was established ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... and cut the trunk open. A week elapsed before I again went to the woods, when, on cutting into the cavity of the tree, I found a pair of tree-toads, male and female, and a large, shelless snail. Whether the presence of the snail was accidental, or whether these creatures associated together for some purpose, I do not know. The male toad was easily distinguished from the female by its large head, and more thin, slender, and angular body. The female was much the more beautiful, both in form and color. The cavity, which ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the afternoon, I found myself one of ten messmates seated at table; and I question if the whole kingdom could produce such another assemblage of originals. Among their peculiarities, I do not mention those of dress, which may be purely accidental. What struck me were oddities originally produced by affectation, and afterwards confirmed by habit. One of them wore spectacles at dinner, and another his hat flapped; though (as Ivy told me) the first was noted for having a seaman's ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... accidental," cried he, "for we neither of us know the woman, who could not have any right or authority for the prohibition." Then yet more anxiously pursuing Cecilia, "why," he continued, "do you thus move off?—Why leave the ceremony unfinished? —Mrs Charlton, what is it you are about?—Cecilia, I beseech ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... however, before all else to study man—that is, human nature—and to distinguish in human nature what is universal and abiding from what is transitory and accidental; we cannot be expected to discover things absolutely new; it suffices to give to what is true a perfect expression. Unhappily, human nature, as understood by Boileau, included little beyond the court and the town. Unhappily his appreciation of classical ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... people yet; and that if at any time they should be driven here, it was probable they went away again as soon as ever they could, seeing they had never thought fit to fix there upon any occasion to this time; that the most I could suggest any danger from, was from any such casual accidental landing of straggling people from the main, who, as it was likely, if they were driven hither, were here against their wills; so they made no stay here, but went off again with all possible speed, seldom staying one night on shore, lest they should not have the help ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... possession, thus preventing the destruction of sables, seals, otters, and foxes by small traders and foreigners, interested him at once; or possibly he was merely fascinated at first by the shrewd and dauntless representative of a class with which he had never before come in contact. The accidental acquaintance ripened into intimacy, Rezanov became a partner in the Shelikov-Golikov Company, and married the daughter of his new friend. After the death of his father-in-law, in 1795, his ambitions and ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton |
