"Causeless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has been drawn from her heart, she is quite happy; but she had no children but daughters, and would like a boy. This little drama of unjust suspicions, this comedy of the conjectures to which Mother Mahuchet gives rise, these phases of a causeless jealousy, are laid down here as the type of a situation, the varieties of which are as innumerable as characters, grades ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... remembered the darkness of the stream, and the softly-gurgling but rapid flow with which it hurried itself on beneath the black abyss of the building. She had often shuddered as she watched it, indulging herself in the luxury of causeless trepidation. But now, were she there, she would surely take that plunge into the blackness, which would bring her to the end of all ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... "These causeless whims and fancies are very much to be deprecated, Mr. Montgomery. Consider how many there are to whom these very potatoes and this very ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of universal momentariness, origination from the non-existent, causeless cognition, and so on, it would follow that persons also not making any efforts may accomplish all their ends. It is a fact that the attainment of things desired and the warding off of things not desired is effected through effort, and ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... Shudraka we find few of those splendid phrases in which, as the Chinese[6] say, "it is only the words which stop, the sense goes on,"—phrases like Kalidasa's[7] "there are doors of the inevitable everywhere," or Bhavabhuti's[8] "for causeless love there is no remedy." As regards the predominance of swift-moving action over the poetical expression of great truths, The Little Clay Cart stands related to the Latter Acts of Rama as Macbeth does to Hamlet. Again, Shudraka's style ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... when I should die? Canst answer that, good Sir? O there are women The world deem mad, or worse, whose life but seems One vile caprice, a freakish thing of whims And restless nothingness; yet if we pierce The soul, may be we'll touch some cause profound For what seems causeless. Early love despised, Or baffled, which is worse; a faith betrayed, For vanity or lucre; chill regards, Where to gain constant glances we have paid Some fearful forfeit: here are many springs, Unmarked by shallow eyes, and some, or all Of these, or none, may ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and at length there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me—to certain ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... during the march false alarms had been given and the soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and abused each other for their causeless panic. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... death to Clementina and my Lord—Clementina, Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the Master is all I know of the devil; I have known hints of him, in the world, but always cowards: he is as bold as a lion, but with the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much surprise in my two cowards. 'Tis true, I saw a hint of the same nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to attend to; the Master has nothing ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... that long dark passage, knowing the ground better than I do—tamn her, I will have amends on her, if there be whipping-post, or ducking-stool, or a pair of stocks in the parish!" And so saying, the Captain trudged off, his spirits ever and anon agitated by recollection of the causeless aggression of Meg Dods, and again composed to a state of happy serenity by the recollection of the agreeable arrangement which he had made between Mr. Tyrrel, and his friend Sir ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... nevertheless. His temper was not under control; but, after one of his fierce, volcanic bursts of ill-humour, he would be acutely miserable and angry with himself for days, particularly if the object of it had been Jim or Sam, his two especial favourites. On one occasion, after a causeless fit of anger with Jim, while the three were at Major Buckley's together, he got his pony and rode away home, secretly speaking to no one. The other two lamented all the afternoon that he had taken the matter so seriously, and were debating even next morning ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... you wear flannel, a heavy great coat and thick shoes, but all this does not prevent you from passing two months in bed. But when spring returns, with its leaves and flowers, its warm, soft breezes, and its smell of the fields, which cause you vague disquiet and causeless emotion, nobody ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Nelson serves under, on mission to Tunis, i. 113; Nelson's causeless dissatisfaction with conduct ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... this downfall into ruin of the loftiest bravery which ever astounded history,—is that causeless? No. The shadow of an enormous right is projected athwart Waterloo. It is the day of destiny. The force which is mightier than man produced that day. Hence the terrified wrinkle of those brows; hence all those great souls surrendering their swords. Those who had conquered ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... be absent. Tics are of cortical origin, being coordinated and synergic, clonic or at times tonic[*] muscular movements, physiologically and not anatomically grouped, premeditated, purposive, of abnormal intensity, apparently causeless ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... CLINIA within.) There is nothing, Clinia, for you to fear as yet: they have not been long by any means: and I am sure that she will be with you presently along with the messenger. Do at once dismiss these causeless ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... be so base as to leave me," said she, "and in styling himself my friend does he not promise to protect me. I will not torment myself with these causeless fears; I will place a confidence in his honour; and sure he will not be so unjust ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... the law, for, like the rest of their kind, if they could make themselves objects of observation, they were regardless whether their bizarreries were paid with admiration or only anger or fear, though, if they could produce by any means a causeless panic, the very height of their ambition was attained. In regard to this last effect of their escapades, they were, in the instance I am about to record, more than satisfied. They had gone, on a fine, clear, winter ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... Not causeless is this journey to the abyss; Thus is it willed on high, where Michael wrought Vengeance upon ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... uttered. Anathema is a solemn ecclesiastical condemnation of a person or of a proposition. Curse may be just and authoritative; as, the curse of God; or, it may be wanton and powerless: "so the curse causeless shall not come," Prov. xxvi, 2. Execration expresses most of personal bitterness and hatred; imprecation refers especially to the coming of the desired evil upon the person against whom it is uttered. Malediction is a general wish of evil, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... think themselves right. Meanwhile, let them learn that Occultism differs from Magic and other secret Sciences as the glorious Sun does from a rush-light, as the immutable and immortal Spirit of Man—the reflection of the absolute, causeless, and unknowable all,—differs from ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... had not divined in her solitude, notwithstanding vague yearnings and apparently causeless sadness, he had revealed to her. She knew herself when she knew him. It was a happy astonishment. Their sympathies were not in their minds. Her inclination toward him was simple and frank, and at this moment she found ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... continued the old gentleman, "mind you, I do not approve of petty jealousies and quarrelings, nor of causeless assaults. But, when any person is assailed, it is his peculiar privilege, sir, to hit back. And when he hits he should hit hard. He should use both strategy and force. He should see to it, sir, that his enemy is punished. ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... abashed her and inspired respect for her neighbor. She sat down beside me. The old man did not choose to leave the charming creature, to whom he clung capriciously with the silent and apparently causeless obstinacy to which very old persons are subject, and which makes them resemble children. In order to sit down beside the young lady he needed a folding-chair. His slightest movements were marked by the inert heaviness, the stupid hesitancy, which characterize the movements ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... reconquered Spain, and has its little Catholic church and its confraternities of the Virgin, of Jesus, and of several of the saints, is proved by the character and the customs of its inhabitants; by the perpetual feuds, as terrible as they are causeless, which unite or separate them; and by the gloomy black eyes, pale complexions, laconic speech, and infrequent laughter of ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... of menstruation seems to be troubling several of you. I am sorry that you did not all have the advantage of having this explained at an early age. You might have been saved a great deal of suffering and causeless worry. ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... a causeless deprivation settled it. Captain Pharo seized Miss Pray, blushing with alarm and amaze at such sudden retributive lightning on the part of her long-delayed charms, and bore her out into ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... unfruitfulness between them. There may have been some cause that history has not recorded, or unknown to the state of medical science of those days. There are doubtless many cases of apparently causeless unfruitfulness in marriage that even physicians, with a knowledge of all apparent conditions in the parties, cannot explain; but when, as elsewhere related in this volume, impregnation by artificial means is successfully practised, it is useless to attribute barrenness to purely psychological ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... cried all the group breaking into shouts of laughter, to which the little old woman paid not the slightest attention. Her soft gray eyes were fixed on the Prince, who seemed to answer to the look, smiling again and again in the causeless, aimless fashion ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... inspired Eustace Reynolds with a melancholy too insistent to be ignored and too causeless to be enjoyed. The grey sky overhead between the house-tops, the cold wind round every street-corner, the sad faces of the men and women on the pavements, combined to create an atmosphere of ineloquent misery. Eustace was ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... an attempt to reach a goal never clearly seen. Wandering in a labyrinth of fanaticism, agonizing in the effort to distort nature, the biographical record of religious aspiration serves to show how nearly multitudes may approach the boundary line of insanity in their protracted periods of causeless mental agony and in their fierce hostility to heresy and to science. Alike in Brahmin, Buddhist, Mohammedan, and Christian nations have we seen the vast expenditure of spiritual energy in the blind struggle of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... convinced Madeleine that M. de Bois would not have made this inquiry out of sheer, causeless curiosity; and she made known to him the count's request concerning the votes which she was to exert herself to obtain. Gaston caught eagerly ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... stifled his laughter during this speech, at length broke out into a fit of mirth, so hearty and so resistless, that, angry as he was, the call of sympathy swept Nigel along with him, and despite of himself, he could not forbear to join in a burst of laughter, which he thought not only causeless, but almost impertinent. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... chanced that there flitted over the infant-face one of those smiles that we see sometimes in young children—strange, causeless smiles, which seem the reflection of some ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... pleasures of inactivity. It is astonishing how quickly a definite task which one has to perform, whether one likes it or not, draws off a cloud of anxiety from one's spirit. I am myself liable to attacks of depression, not causeless depression, but a despondent exaggeration of small troubles. Yet in times of full work, when meetings have to be attended, papers tackled, engagements kept, I seldom find myself suffering from vague anxieties. It is simply ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... unkind. This behavior on the part of his former ally did not injure Balfour in the regards of Agnes; she resented Charley's conduct, and did her best to redress it by manifesting her own good-will; she had herself had experience of his shifting moods and causeless changes of demeanor, and perhaps she was willing to show what small importance she attached to his capricious humors. Thus it happened that Richard and herself "got on" together much better (as well, of course, as much more speedily) ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... at length awake the sleeping sword, And force revenge from their offended lord? How long, ye gods, how long Can royal patience bear The insults and wrong Of madmen's jealousies, and causeless fear? ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... look down on me, Mourning my causeless anger still; Forgive my hasty word to thee— O God! I did not mean ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... consequently in beds, cribs, and cradles. To dream of cats is considered unlucky, denoting treachery and quarrels on the part of friends. Cats, from no apparent cause, seeming shy, agitated, and traversing the house uttering cries, as if alarmed, is believed to forbode sudden and causeless strife between the members of the families with whom they reside. That the breath of these animals is poisonous, that they can play with serpents and remain uninjured, whilst their fur communicates ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... not concern us here whether his bodily form and frame were developed once for all in the mind of a Creator, or gradually in the creation itself, which from the first monad or protoplasm to the last of the primates, or man, is not, I suppose, to be looked on as altogether causeless, meaningless, purposeless; think of him only as man (and man means the thinker), with his mind yet lying fallow, though full of germs—germs of which I hold as strongly as ever no trace has ever, no trace will ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... exult in his victory. The trumpeters, all the while, blew their blasts shriller and shriller; each soldier shouted a battle cry, and often fell with it on his lips. It was the strangest spectacle of causeless wrath, and of mischief for no good end, that had ever been witnessed; but, after all, it was neither more foolish nor more wicked than a thousand battles that have since been fought, in which men have slain their brothers with just as little reason as these children of the dragon's ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Henderson, Gowrie's steward, either simply to run away, and then come in later with corroboration, or actually to be present in the turret, and then escape. Or perhaps the King told his man-in-the-turret tale merely 'in the air;' and then Henderson, having run away in causeless panic, later 'sees money in it,' and appears, with a string of falsehoods. 'Chance loves Art,' says Aristotle, and chance might well befriend an artist so capable and conscientious as his Majesty. To be sure Mr. Hill Burton says 'the theory that the whole was a ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... of youth into which the old cannot enter. It seems unreal and causeless. But it is even more bitter and burdensome than the sadness of age. There is a sting of resentment in it, a fever of angry surprise that the world should so soon be a disappointment, and life so early take on the look of a failure. It has little reason in it, perhaps, but it has all the more weariness ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... Darwin's critics. In its original and philosophically-correct usage, the term "accident" signifies a property or quality not essential to our conception of a substance: hence, it has come to mean anything that happens as a result of unforeseen causes—or, lastly, that which is causeless. But, as we know that nothing can happen without causes of some kind, the term "accident" is divested of real meaning when it is used in the last of these senses. Yet this is the sense that is sought to be placed ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... were shivered she was shorn of her darlings, Of bairns and brothers: they bent to their fate 25 With war-spear wounded; woe was that woman. Not causeless lamented the daughter of Hoce The decree of the Wielder when morning-light came and She was able 'neath heaven to behold the destruction [38] Of brothers and bairns, where the ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... of the realization of that much-to-be-desired consciousness which is fittingly described in Occidental phraseology as "cosmic consciousness." Whether this realization is the result of union with the soul's "other half," or whether it is an impersonal reunion with the Causeless Cause, The Absolute, from which we are earth wanderers, is not the direct purpose of this volume to answer, although the question will ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... armed pursuit, and this arrest of fugitives, of all ages and both sexes? Truth does not allow us to answer these inquiries in a manner that does credit to the wisdom or the justice of the times. This was not the flight of guilt, but of virtue. It was an humble and peaceable religion, flying from causeless oppression. It was conscience, attempting to escape from the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts. It was Robinson and Brewster, leading off their little band from their native soil, at first to find shelter ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... by side with this extravagant, apparently causeless merriment, there was also an extravagant, apparently causeless terror. The drug produced the laughter, I knew; but what brought in the terror I could not imagine. Everywhere behind the fun lay the fear. It was ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... places alleges the die and the balance, and several other things, which cannot fall or incline either one way or the other without some cause or difference, either wholly within them or coming to them from without; for that what is causeless (he says) is wholly insubsistent, as also what is fortuitous; and in those motions devised by some and called adventitious, there occur certain obscure causes, which, being concealed from us, move our inclinations ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... bars betwixt are easy to remove; For sanguinary laws were never made above. If you condemn that prince of tyranny, 680 Whose mandate forced your Gallic friends to fly, Make not a worse example of your own; Or cease to rail at causeless rigour shown, And let the guiltless person throw the stone. His blunted sword your suffering brotherhood Have seldom felt; he stops it short of blood: But you have ground the persecuting knife, And set it to a razor edge on life. Cursed be the wit, which cruelty refines, Or to his father's ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... industrious folly! Oh! vain and causeless melancholy! 20 Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young Lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast Thou to do with sorrow, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things, supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors; ensconcing ourselves in a seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... eased of her causeless fright by the entry of the noble peer, who was not only an intimate acquaintance of Mrs Fitzpatrick, but in reality a very particular friend of that lady. To say truth, it was by his assistance that she had been enabled to escape ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the deception which had led her into such a position, and made such a tragedy possible. He foresaw her recoil, her bitter condemnation, the final ruin of the relation between himself and her; and yet more than these did he dread her pain, her causeless, innocent pain. To stab the hand which had helped him, the heart which had already suffered so much, in the very first hours of his own shock and misery, he had shrunk from this, he had tried his best ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... deserved well of the apostolic see. This we say ought to have been motive sufficient with you, without need of petition on our part; and if we had added our entreaties, it should have been but as men yielding to a causeless anxiety, and wasting words for which there was no occasion. Since, however, neither the merit of the cause nor the recollection of the benefits which you have received, nor the assiduous and diligent supplications of our prince have availed anything with ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... relations to the universe, are an entirely different line of study from that of the Spiritual Monad, the over-soul of every prakritic atom. Each prakritic atom has what may be called a soul, its three-fold astral cause; and an over-soul, or the three-fold spiritual archetype, or causeless cause. ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... snapped Mr. Smith, with an irritability that was as sudden as it was apparently causeless. "I didn't suppose you had to tell any woman on this earth how to be contented—with a ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... 'The curse, causeless, shall not fall.' And yet, madame, I assure you that I most tenderly sympathize with you in your ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... root In reason, is judicious, manly, free; Yours, a blind instinct, crouches to the rod, And licks the foot that treads it in the dust. Were kingship as true treasure as it seems, Sterling, and worthy of a wise man's wish, I would not be a king to be beloved Causeless, and daubed with undiscerning praise, Where love is more attachment to the throne, Not to the man who fills ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... catching wild horses. Bot'tom, power of endurance. 8. Flank'ing, overlooking or commanding on the side. 9. Jack-o'-lan'tern, a light seen in low, moist grounds, which disappears when approached. 9. Cov'ert, a covering place, a shelter. 10. Pan'ic, sudden fright (usually, causeless fright). 11. Pro-mis'cu-ous, mingled, confused. 15. Marred, interrupted, spoiled. Mer-cu'ri-al, sprightly, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... lord, the character of Richard earl Temple, was not that of causeless suspicion. He proved himself, in a thousand instances, honest, trusting, and sincere. He was not, like some men, that you and I know, dark, dispassionate, and impenetrable. On the contrary, no man mistook him, no man ever charged him with a double conduct or a wrinkled heart. ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... shall I find the King? When I gave him the flowers the Queen had sent, he did not seem much interested in me at the time; but ever since that hour he has been showering gifts and presents on me. This causeless generosity makes me more afraid.... Where are the birds flying at such an hour of the night? What has frightened them all of a sudden? This is not the usual time of their flight, certainly, ... Why is the Queen's pet deer running that way? Chapata! ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... unpleasant one—when suddenly the now well-known symptoms of the visitation to which I had become subject suddenly seized upon me,—the leap of the heart; the sudden, causeless, overwhelming physical excitement, which I could neither ignore nor allay. I was terrified beyond description, beyond reason, when I became conscious that this was about to begin over again: what purpose did it answer; what good was in it? My father indeed understood the meaning of it though ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... the tables—and the whole apartment swang to and fro like a hammock, with an exhilarating motion. For some while I was so extremely pleased with these particulars that I thought I could never be weary of beholding them: then dropped of a sudden into a causeless sadness; and then, with the same swiftness and spontaneity, arrived at the conclusion that I was drunk and had better ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tongue denies, Your heart should grant; and not a short reprieve, But length of certain life, to Turnus give? Now speedy death attends the guiltless youth, If my presaging soul divines with truth; Which, O! I wish, might err thro' causeless fears, And you (for you ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... Ophelia is insane. Her sweet mind lies in fragments before us—a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies; her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to sadness—each equally purposeless and causeless; her snatches of old ballads, such as perhaps her nurse sung her to sleep with in her infancy—are all so true to the life, that we forget to wonder, and can only weep. It belonged to Shakspeare alone so to temper such a picture that we can endure ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... See, the Muse unbars the gate; Hark, the monkeys, how they prate! All ye gods who rule the soul:[5] Styx, through Hell whose waters roll! Let me be allow'd to tell What I heard in yonder Hell. Near the door an entrance gapes,[6] Crowded round with antic shapes, Poverty, and Grief, and Care, Causeless Joy, and true Despair; Discord periwigg'd with snakes,'[7] See the dreadful strides she takes! By this odious crew beset,[8] I began to rage and fret, And resolved to break their pates, Ere we enter'd at the gates; Had not Clio in the nick[9] Whisper'd me, "Lay down your stick." What! ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... brought forward as a justification of war, while there existed a Constitutional tribunal for adjusting difficulties of Constitutional interpretation. Yet, as it was almost universally asserted, of course, by the Northern partisan presses, and by Northern Congressmen, that the Rebellion was utterly causeless, and as the writer was therefore exceedingly anxious to obtain, concerning their grievances, the latest opinions of the Southern leaders, as stated by themselves, he ventured to propose, in a pause of Mr. Toombs's somewhat rapid rhetoric, a question which, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... place, we saw that even if Mr. Spencer's argument were fully subscribed to, and Mind in its substantial essence were conceded to be causeless, the central position of Materialism would still remain unaffected. For Mr. Spencer does not suppose that his "units of Force" are themselves endowed with consciousness, any more than Professor Clifford supposes his "moving molecules of inorganic matter" to be thus endowed. ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... the tragedy—whether Bisesa had, in a fit of causeless despair, told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and she tortured to tell; whether Durga Charan knew his name and what became of Bisesa—Trejago does not know to this day. Something horrible had happened, and the thought of what it ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... unborn, and whose workings he testifies with his earliest cries, when, 'drowned in tears,' he first beholds the light; for, as the sparks fly upward, so is man born to trouble, and woe doth he bring with him into the world, even thyself, dark one, terrible one, causeless, unbegotten, without a father. Oh, how unfrequently dost thou break down the barriers which divide thee from the poor soul of man, and overcast its sunshine with thy gloomy shadow. In the brightest days of prosperity—in the midst of health and wealth—how sentient is the poor human ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... chiefly by a horde of semi-barbarian ignoramuses of African descent. If the world had not by this time thoroughly assessed the intrinsic value of Mr. Froude's utterances, one who knows Grenada might have felt inclined to resent his causeless depreciation of the intellectual capacity of its inhabitants; but considering the estimate which has been pretty generally formed of his historical judgment, Mr. Froude may be dismissed, as regards Grenada and its people, with a certain degree of scepticism. Such ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... she, "this weak babe will be in pain and misery all its days and die in agony. And, husband dear, you have once again struck me a causeless blow. Oh, do be on your guard, and not ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... weapon which could be employed against her; but in that he and his partisans had long been adept. Every old libel and pretext for detraction was diligently revived. The old nickname of "The Austrian" was repeated with pertinacity as spiteful as causeless; even the king's aunts lending their aid to swell the clamor on that ground, and often saying, with all the malice of their inveterate jealousy, that it was not to be expected that she should have the same feelings as their father or Louis XIV., since ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... that the only reason that you are unable to think of or picture a Causeless Cause, is because everything that you have experienced in this relative world of the senses has had a cause—something from which it sprung. You have seen Cause and Effect in full operation all about you, and quite naturally your ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... Alfonso! husband now no more, If ever you indeed deserved the name, Is 't worthy of your years?—you have threescore— Fifty, or sixty, it is all the same— Is 't wise or fitting, causeless to explore For facts against a virtuous woman's fame? Ungrateful, perjured, barbarous Don Alfonso, How dare you think your lady would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... exquisite delicacy of painting; the 19th for tender simplicity; and the 25th for manly pathos, are compositions of, perhaps, unrivalled merit. Yet while I am selecting these, I almost accuse myself of causeless partiality; for surely never was a writer so equal in excellence!—S. T. C. [In this note as it first appeared in the Morning Chronicle a Greek sentence preceded the supposed English translation. It is not to be found in the Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... required no more at his hands. But it is evident, from the manner in which he conducted himself toward his heaven favored and pious father, that he was an egregious sinner, and the curse of God fell upon him, and his progeny. "The curse causeless shall ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... repeated he, "do you call it?—what strange abuse of words! what causeless trifling with honesty! is language of no purpose but to wound the ear with untruths? is the gift of speech only granted us to pervert the use of understanding? I can give you no pleasure, I have no power to give it any one; you can give none to me-the whole world could ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... somewhat timid and narrow-minded, devout from constitution rather than from rational conviction. He was as superstitious as Herodotus, but in a way far more offensive. The very peculiarities which charm us in an infant, the toothless mumbling, the stammering, the tottering, the helplessness, the causeless tears and laughter, are disgusting in old age. In the same manner, the absurdity which precedes a period of general intelligence is often pleasing; that which follows it is contemptible. The nonsense of Herodotus is that of a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are often maniacal, it is equally true that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. When I was engaged in a controversy with the CLARION on the matter of free will, that able writer Mr. R.B.Suthers said that free will was lunacy, because it meant causeless actions, and the actions of a lunatic would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse in determinist logic. Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... the propensities which teach mankind to torment themselves, that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... renown By these two sisters here; The third had causeless banishment, Yet was her love more dear: For poor Cordelia patiently Went wand'ring up and down, Unhelp'd, unpitied, gentle maid, Through many an ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... regretfully, "was an exceedingly proud woman, belonging to a family of social prominence in the East. She felt deeply the causeless gossip connecting her name with the case, as well as the open disgrace of her husband's conviction. She refused to receive her former friends, and even failed in loyalty to your father in his time ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... that Susanna Martin, upon a Causeless Disgust, had threatned him, about a certain Cow of his, That she should never do him any more Good: and it came to pass accordingly. For soon after the Cow was found stark dead on the dry Ground, without any Distemper to be discerned upon her. Upon which he was followed with a strange ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... if the very devils of panic and cowardice had seized every mortal officer, soldier, teamster, and citizen. No officer tried to rally a soldier or do anything but spring and run toward Centerville. There was never anything like it for causeless, sheer, absolute, absurd cowardice—or rather panic—on this miserable earth before. Off they went, one and all—off down the highway, across the fields, towards the woods, anywhere, everywhere, to escape. The further they ran the more frightened they ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... elapsed since the day when, incensed at the flogging received—this cruel as causeless—he ran away, resolved to risk everything, life itself, rather than longer endure the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... head and listened. In the ancient woodwork of the manse, somewhere in the crumbling wainscoting, the little boring creature called a death-watch ticked like the ticking of an old verge watch. Mr. Welsh broke off with a sudden causeless auger very appalling in one so sage and ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... change created by the Thirteenth Amendment might be practically set aside by State legislation. In this belief they exhibited their policy towards the Negro. Considering all the circumstances, it would be hard to find in history a more causeless and cruel oppression of a whole race than was embodied in the legislation of those revived and reconstructed State governments. Their membership was composed wholly of the 'ruling class,' as they termed it, and, in no small degree, of Confederate officers below the rank of brigadier-general, who ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... of death upon his face," Mannering answered. "The men who are traitors to their country to-day are those who, healthy enough themselves, talk causeless and shallow optimism which is fed alone by their own prosperity. The doctrine of Christ is the care of others. If you do not believe, the sick-room is open also to you; go there unprejudiced, and with an open mind, and you will come away ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Gibe? Attentive Truth and Nature to descry, And pierce each Scene with Philosophic Eye. To thee were solemn Toys or empty Shew, The Robes of Pleasure and the Veils of Woe: All aid the Farce, and all thy Mirth maintain, Whose Joys are causeless, or whose Griefs are vain. [Footnote ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... Penelope, this causeless fear, To render sleep's soft blessing unsincere? Alike devote to sorrow's dire extreme The day-reflection, and the midnight-dream! Thy son the gods propitious will restore, And bid thee cease his ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... of the night, the dampness, and the cold; she engenders the miasmatic poisons that rack our bones; she conceals in her mantle the foe who takes us unawares; she rules those vague shapes which fright us in the dim light; the causeless sounds of night or its more oppressive silence are familiar to her; she it is who sends dreams wherein gods and devils have their sport with man, and slumber, the twin brother of the grave. In the occult philosophy of the middle ages she was "Chief over the Night, Darkness, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... regular place when he was within doors. "I scarce know the child again in some of her moods. She was always wayward and capricious, but as gay and happy as the day was long—as full of sunshine as a May morning. Whence come, then, all these vapours and reveries and bursts of causeless weeping? I have found her in tears more oft these last three months than in all the years of her life before; and though she strives to efface the impression by wild outbreaks of mirth, such as we used of old to know, there is something hollow and forced about these ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in innocence, Nor envy's snaky eye, finds any harbour here. Nor flatterer's venomous insinuations. Nor coming humourist's puddled opinions, Nor courteous ruin of proffer'd usury, Nor time prattled away, cradle of ignorance, Nor causeless duty, nor cumber of arrogance, Nor trifling titles of vanity dazzleth us, Nor golden manacles stand for a paradise. Here wrong's name is unheard; slander a monster is, Keep thy sprite from abuse, here no abuse doth haunt, What man grafts ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... Beverley," cried he, more seriously, "why this resentment? why all this causeless distress? Has not my heart long since been known to you? have you not witnessed its sufferings, and been assured of its tenderness? why, then, this untimely reserve? this unabating coldness? Oh why ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Returning home he loaded two pistols, one for the first student who should again insult him, and the other to blow out his own brains. It was no idle threat. The man Guizot had nicknamed ‘Werther’ was capable of executing his plan, for this causeless unpopularity was anguish to him. After his death, I found those two pistols loaded in his bedroom, but justice had been done another way. All opposition had vanished. Every student in the ‘Quarter’ followed the modest ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... very necessary and urgent business, which does require his attention at this time, and whereas the said Sir Henry Bedingfeld has made an oath before us of the truth of the same, and that he will not make any causeless stay from his said place of habitation, we therefore, four of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the said county upon examination taken by us as of the premisses, do give this our licence to the said Sir Henry Bedingfeld to travel out of the precincts or compass of five miles from the place ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... favourable notice, or that pecuniary bribes have made the honest editor his tool? Verily, my public, thou art not generous here; ay, and thou art grievously deceived, as well as sordid: for by careless praise, causeless censure, credit given for corrupt bribery, and no allowance made for unamiable criticisms, poor maltreated authors speak to many wrongs: and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... healthy myself, I have no mercy for ill-health in others. There are invalids who are objects of sympathy indeed, guiltless heirs of ancestral disease, or victims of parental folly or sin,—those whose lives are early blighted by maladies that seem as causeless as they are cureless,—or those with whom the world has dealt so cruelly that all their delicate nature is like sweet bells jangled,—or those whose powers of life are all exhausted by unnoticed labors and unseen cares,—or those prematurely old with duties and dangers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... with beauty, and the heart Rejoiced with sense of life and peace renewed; And yet at such an hour as this, upstart Vague myriad longing, restless, unsubdued, And causeless tears from melancholy mood, Strange discontent with earth's and nature's best, Desires and yearnings that ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... weep; I would not weep; Our mother needs no tears: Dry thine eyes, too; 'tis vain to keep This causeless grief ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... other abrasions and contusions, pointed unmistakably to the violent impact of the Mounting Beginner upon the bicycling saddle, and that the ruinous state of the right knee was equally eloquent of the concussions attendant on that person's hasty, frequently causeless, and invariably ill-conceived descents. One large bruise on the shin is even more characteristic of the 'prentice cyclist, for upon every one of them waits the jest of the unexpected treadle. You try at least to walk your ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... his odd, endless, wordless songs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes with an affectionate manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me an embarrassment of which I was ashamed. But for all that, he was capable of flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy sullenness. At a word of reproof, I have seen him upset the dish of which I was about to eat, and this not surreptitiously, but with defiance; and similarly at a hint of inquisition. I was not unnaturally curious, being in a strange place and surrounded by string ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the same point where they stood, and some even have declined since America first emerged out of an unexplored darkness which had covered her for thousands of years, like the gem in the sea; while it is but yesterday a few pilgrims landed on the wild coast of Plymouth, flying from causeless oppression, seeking but for a place of refuge and of rest, and for a free spot in the wilderness to adore the Almighty in their own way; still, in such a brief time, shorter than the recorded genealogy of the noble horse of the wandering Arab; yes, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... knew the effect of her words; the chief HATED causeless killing; and to hear a lady talk of shooting a high-soaring creature of the air as coolly as of putting on her gloves, was nauseous to him. Ian gave him praise afterwards for his unusual self-restraint. But it was a moment or two ere ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... of this mind—the minority that is right—is, I hope, the case. I hope we know assuredly that the arts we have met together to further are necessary to the life of man, if the progress of civilisation is not to be as causeless as the turning of a wheel ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... beggar who, like most negroes, has a dread of dogs, and his repeated, and often causeless, cry of 'Chain me up that dog!' earns ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman |
