"Involuntarily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dusty stage that had brought her from the station over the prairies to the unpretentious little house where Wesley Brooke lived. A young girl, so like what Ogden Greene's wife had been fifteen years before that Theodosia involuntarily exclaimed, "Phoebe," came to the door. Beyond her, Theodosia saw the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... into a ditch of a wrong idee, we'd better not scare 'em to death hollerin at 'em, it would be apt to send 'em in head first, while if we could kinder creep along behind, and speak a few words kindly, they would turn round, and we could tell 'em of their danger." Her similes were original, and we involuntarily smiled an approval of her sentiment, when ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... that instant, another sensation swept through me as quick as lightning. I was conscious of the presence of the Count, and of his being as if lapped in a storm of fury. As my eyes opened involuntarily I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with giant's power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with passion. But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to the ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... it. Next, she busied herself a little with needlework, in company with Tzu Chuan. She felt however thoroughly dejected and out of sorts. So she strolled out of doors along with her. But catching sight of the newly sprouted bamboo shoots, in front of the pavilion, they involuntarily stepped out of the entrance of the court, and penetrated into the garden. They cast their eyes on all four quarters; but not a soul was visible. When they became conscious of the splendour of the flowers and the chatter ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Strand turned into one huge pantomime scene, roars of laughter included, as people came out of theatres) we have no special name. (The French, in whose capital it is said to be even more frequent, call it verglas.) In telling it he had drawn himself sitting (as involuntarily though one hopes not so eternally as infelix Theseus) with arms, legs, hat, etcetera in disorder suitable to the occasion and with a facial expression of the most ludicrous dismay. It can hardly have taken a dozen strokes of the pen: but they ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... the look that was for his wife was for no other upon earth; nor even for her in the presence of others. He went through the necessary greetings and congratulations with a manner of courtly carelessness, which involuntarily made Hazel think of those first days when she ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... her better now that she had involuntarily fallen into something of her old accent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... conciliatory letter, and this had already given birth to unpleasant feelings on my part. And at this moment, when I was told that she had gone away, all these things seemed to have been done almost purposely, and I involuntarily began to suspect that her very jealousy had only been assumed by her on purpose to cause me to become tired ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... "Roy—Dilkusha!" Involuntarily her hands went out to him. "If it is true ... you are caring—and if I must not belong to you, there is a way you can belong to me without trouble for any one. If—if we make pledge of betrothal ... for this one night, if you hold me this one ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... wondrous calm and quiet. Within one mile of a watchful foe and not a sound. Once or twice a machine gun awoke wild echoes with brief spluttering bursts ... in silence more acute for the interruption hearts beat faster, hands tightened involuntarily about rifles. ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... I involuntarily pressed the spur against the side of my horse; but he needed not that. He had already eyed the water, and sprang forward, inspirited with new energy. The next moment he was in ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... I tell you. There won't be any paying on account with that bill: it'll be all or nothing. All, perhaps; and, if so, something more than all"—he laid down his clasp-knife and almost involuntarily put a hand up to his cheek—"but nothing, most like. I put that slip of leather there to remind me, but I don't need it. 'Twelve-seventeen-six'—better ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... party to the Opera, as Charlotte ascended the flight of stairs leading from the grand entrance up to the lobby of the first tier of boxes, she was so much struck with the architectural effect of the splendid decorations of that vestibule and saloon, that involuntarily she slightly pressed his arm, and whispered, "You know I am not accustomed to this sort of thing." Indeed, it must have formed a vivid contrast to what they were doing and seeing an hour or two earlier ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... slow and his mood too meditative for narrative poetry. He values his own thoughts and reflections too much to sacrifice the least of them to the interests of his story. Moreover, it is never action that interests him, but the subtle motives that lead to or hinder it. The Waggoner involuntarily suggests a comparison with Tam O'Shanter, infinitely to its own disadvantage. Peter Bell, full though it be of profound touches and subtle analysis, is lumbering and disjointed. Even Lamb was forced to confess that he did not like it. The White Doe, the most ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... forward on his elbows and laughing foolishly, stupidly. It was a queer laugh, and struck terror into Brent as he himself coughed and clutched involuntarily at his throat. Brent ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... throbbed between us so that I had involuntarily emphasized my words. Briefly her eyes clung to mine, and very slowly we relaxed ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... travellers are resting on the bank of a brawling brook, along which they are delighted to see the lively Dipper frisking wren-like from stone to stone. On the stunted bushes above them some curious Jays are chattering, and as my friends are looking upon the gay and restless birds, they are involuntarily led to extend their gaze to the green slope beneath the more distant crags, where they spy a mountain sheep, watching the movements of the travellers as well as those of yon wolves stealing silently toward the fleet-footed animal. Again the pilgrims are in motion; they wind ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... mother! how many were her maxims and advices; how many her predictions of happiness. He began to look at his own form in the mirrors, and to feel in his own person the movement of desires, hopes, ambitions. Once he caught himself bowing and making gestures, almost involuntarily, before the mirrors. He laughed aloud, his mother laughed also, for she had caught him ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... miracles, but that the Deity was irrational; for He commanded that He should be believed, He proposed the highest rewards for faith, eternal punishments for disbelief. We can only command voluntary actions; belief is not an act of volition; the mind is even passive, or involuntarily active; from this it is evident that we have no sufficient testimony, or rather that testimony is insufficient to prove the being of a God. It has been before shown that it cannot be deduced from reason. They alone, then, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... squeak as I have ever beheld, sir," he exclaimed, as he joined the skipper. "If it had not been for that half-board that we involuntarily made, we should never have ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... at the question. The uncompromising directness of the words startled him even more than had her first swift, silent coming. Involuntarily, spasmodically his arms closed until the rabbit squealed again in ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... his men, and coming up to the admiral and commissioner, who were standing opposite the gates, asked, so I understood him, whether he might be permitted to surround the delegates, complaining of the insults offered to himself and his men. On this I involuntarily exclaimed, 'Now's the time;' when the admiral asked me what I meant, and how I dared to speak? I said, 'These are all the delegates,' pointing out to them Parker and Davis and others. The fellows overheard me, and I have no doubt I became a marked ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... and the expression of her face was changing into one from which Mrs. Trent involuntarily turned her eyes. Cunning and avarice predominated, and in the woman's throat was a curious clicking sound, as if she had lost and were trying to find her voice. Which, when found, seemed not to belong to the good-natured Elsa, ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... her personal appearance has troubled her very little this dismal March morning. And yet as you look at her, at those big black somber eyes, at those almost classically regular features, at all that untidy abundance of blackish-brown hair, you think involuntarily "what a pretty girl that might be if she only combed her hair, put on a clean dress, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... the old mission in which they stood. In the cold, yellowish twilight even the flaring cook fires of his hundred and eighty-two men could not dispel the ghostly air that clung to the old place. Travis shivered involuntarily. But the walls were thick, and they could turn one-pounders. He asked, "What was it you called this place, ...
— Remember the Alamo • R. R. Fehrenbach
... Witherington involuntarily looked to his lady, while, guided by a similar impulse, her looks were turned upon him. They exchanged a momentary glance of deep and peculiar meaning, and then the eyes of both ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... Mynheer von Tromp grinned furiously. We were just the customers he liked, and promised to fulfil our wishes to the utmost of his power. In the meantime we strolled about the town. There was very little to attract us in it, and our footsteps took us involuntarily to a spot whence we could obtain a good view of the ocean, which we feared that we were destined for so long a time not again to see. Alas! how many of us were destined never again to behold that ocean we loved so well! As Delisle and I sat together and looked out on the bright blue expanse ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... midst of these calculations the rhythmic cadences began to reassert themselves. He stood still, as if rooted to the spot, with fixed gaze. After a while his hands involuntarily found their way to the table drawer, from which he pulled out a much-used copy-book. He dropped into a chair with the same fixed look, humming softly to himself and every now and again shaking back his wavy hair, began writing line after line, sometimes scratching ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... of man." Bacon, though a utilitarian philosopher, was such a lover of flowers that he was never satisfied unless he saw them in almost every room of his house, and when he came to discourse of them in his Essays, his thoughts involuntarily moved harmonious numbers. How naturally the following prose sentence in Bacon's Essay on Gardens almost ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... Involuntarily Edmondstone half frowned. Absurdly enough, he resented in secret this amiability on the part of M. Villefort toward his own wife. He was quite prepared to be severe upon the reading, but was surprised to be compelled to acknowledge that M. Villefort read wondrously well, ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... discharge, would be equal to a very great flash of lightning; while the chemical action of a single grain of water on four grains of zinc would yield electricity equal in quantity to a powerful thunderstorm. Thus his mind rises from the minute to the vast, expanding involuntarily from the smallest laboratory fact till it embraces the largest and grandest ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... man had jilted me twenty years ago, I wouldn't be so overwhelmingly glad to see him when he came back—especially if he had got fat and bald-headed," she added, her face involuntarily twitching into a smile. Cecily, in spite of her serious expression and intense way of looking at life, had ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... over his head and screwed on to the gorget. Then with the life-line attached he moved towards the gangway, the air-pump clanking as the crew turned the wheel; and step by step the man went down the ladder lashed to the lighter's side. Josh involuntarily gripped Will's hand as the diver descended lower and lower, to chest, neck, and then the great goggle-eyed helmet was covered, while from the clear depths the air that kept rapidly bubbling up rendered the water confused, ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... shook his head as he read this letter, and then laid it down with a pish! He did it involuntarily, and was surprised at himself when he found that he had so done. "I should like to argue the point," thought Jack, in spite of himself; and then he threw the letter on the table, and went into Gascoigne's room, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... eye among the lookers-on. An ambulance had carted off to the hospital four or five, whose battered skulls bore witness to the hammering powers of big Milligan and his bung-starter. That redoubtable giant himself, weak from the shock of having involuntarily gulped more water in a second than ever before he had swallowed in weeks, was flattened out in a baggage-car. Two more of the arriving reinforcements failed to appear to the public eye at the scene of congratulation, and, as sometimes happens in ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... approaching. She turned and saw the prince Gracious, clothed in an elegant and rich hunting-dress, standing before her and regarding her with admiration. Rosalie immediately recognized the prince of her dream and cried out involuntarily:— ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... Palla involuntarily turned her head and looked at the photograph. Of course Ilse was safe with a man like John Estridge.... That is ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Involuntarily they turned, but the next instant they heard a triumphant laugh, and when they turned back, having seen no one, they beheld the mysterious man racing across the sands toward the interior of ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... afflicted as others, "the rain falls on the just and the unjust;" nay, more, the wicked even seem favored; "he is not in trouble as other men;" prosperity smiles on him, like a woman on her favored lover; and the spirit cries out involuntarily, as if thrust through by an angry sword, "How can these things be?" And this bitter cry, wrung from the suffering good man, is theme for the drama of Job; and in this stands solitary ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... so utterly surprised that his hands jerked themselves involuntarily above his head, though he did not feel particularly frightened; he was filled with a stupefied sort of curiosity to know what would come next. The coach, so far as he could see, seemed filled with uplifted, trembling hands, so that he did not ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... with much good taste and feeling. Not loud and martial as on the street, but soft, low and pleading. Many eyes glistened and many lips trembled when the song came to a close; and as the singers dropped to their knees, not a few heads involuntarily bowed. ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... the only inhabitant of the wild, and shortly afterwards, our guide, an uncouth bundle of sheep-skins, slipped over a frozen stone, and came down in the freezing water with a splash, which, at that hour of the morning, made one shudder all over involuntarily. The snow-shoes which F. and myself had donned, alone saved us several times from a similar, uncomfortable fate. Our path, properly speaking, should have led over the very centre of the glacier; but, in consequence of the numerous crevasses ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... As we moved along rapidly we saw on the banks some cows feeding, and the whole party almost involuntarily raised a shout of joy at seeing this image of civilization and domestic life. Soon after we reached the little French village of La Charette, which we saluted with a discharge of four guns and three ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... and put out his hand toward the neck that lay in the golden coil. She threw her head back, her eyes narrowing and her forehead drawing down so that Dick thought her head actually flattened itself. He started involuntarily; for she looked so like the little girl who had struck him with those sharp flashing teeth, that the whole scene came back, and he felt the stroke again as if it had just been given, and the two white scars began to sting as they did after the old Doctor had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... faintly, but I did not even turn to look at her. My heart was thumping on my ribs, my nerves tingling, my muscles involuntarily tightening for a spring. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... this question came from the enemy. Several flashes of fire broke out along the German front, and the boys involuntarily ducked their heads as bullets ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... note of something unusual in Borrowdean's voice, a portent of things behind. Mannering involuntarily straightened himself. Something was awakened in him which had lain dormant for many years—dormant since those old days of battle, of swift attack, of ambushed defence and the clamour of brilliant tongues. Some of the old light ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the palms of my hands as I entered the shack, and his head turned slowly as I came in, and in his eyes I saw the confession his babbling had revealed to me. But then an expression of pain came also, that made me involuntarily look at Frenchy's little crucifix ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... shrewder intelligence, at a glance, the short cut to almost any thing at which their intellects might be employed; and you indulge in a very natural feeling, when, as conquerors, in glancing over their Canaan, you involuntarily plan what you will do some day, if a farm should by chance be your share of the bounty-money, when the war is over. For it is absurd to suppose that such a country will continue forever a prey to the wasting and exhaustive ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... I am the victim, I am the father and mother of the world; I am the road of the good, the comforter, the creator, the witness, the asylum, and the friend. They who serve other Gods with a firm belief, involuntarily worship me. I am the same to all mankind. They who serve me in adoration are in me. If one whose ways are ever so evil serve me alone, he becometh of a virtuous spirit and obtaineth eternal happiness. Even women, and the tribes ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... after a residence of more than three years, amidst the chaos of a revolution, on the eve of my departure from France. Yet, while I joyfully prepare to revisit my own country, my mind involuntarily traces the rapid succession of calamities which have filled this period, and dwells with painful contemplation on those changes in the morals and condition of the French people that seem hitherto to be the only fruits which they have produced. In this recurrence to ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Involuntarily Slimak's hand reached for his belt, but he recollected himself; he made up his mind in despair to ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... I went again to the forester's garden. I had wrapped myself closely up in my cloak, slouched my hat over my eyes, and advanced towards Minna. As she raised her head and looked at me, she started involuntarily. The apparition of that dreadful night in which I had been seen without a shadow was now standing distinctly before me—it was she herself. Had she recognised me? She was silent and thoughtful. I felt an oppressive load at my heart. I rose from my seat. She laid ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... fear so," I said. "When we involuntarily left her she was being steadily driven ever nearer to the edge of the reef; and if she passes that point I believe she will sink like a stone. Still, there is no use in anticipating the worst. I would recommend you to ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... Tuileries crashed in. In these days of the plain French Republic,—of its sober, unornamental, business government,—the contrast is vivid with the glitter and "go" of Louis Napoleon's regime. And the nation feels it, and involuntarily grieves over it. The twenty years have far from sufficed to smother that certain inborn Gallic joy in monarchy,—autocratic rule, a brilliant court, leadership in fashion, and all the pomp and pageantry which the French love ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... mistaken about the laws of motion, he was the first to divine that there must be some." Buffon divined the epochs of nature, and by the intuition of his genius, absolutely unshackled by any religious prejudice, he involuntarily reverted to the account given in Genesis. "We are persuaded," he says, "independently of the authority of the sacred books, that man was created last, and that he only came to wield the sceptre of the earth when that earth was ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... never was found?" asked Abonus, eagerly. He spoke very rarely. He looked now at me as he spoke, and there was a strange, ungodly glitter in his eyes which made me shudder involuntarily. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... with the other. The action to those who knew her ways denoted mental perplexity and embarrassment. This assignation was bristling with peril as well as charm. Her grandfather had the eyes of a turkey-buzzard, eyes which she contrasted involuntarily with the soft, kindly orbs now bent upon her. She decided instantly that blue was a prettier colour than yellow. Rinaldo's skin, too, commended itself. She had never seen so white a forehead, such ruddy cheeks. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... still calm, but nevertheless felt a certain uneasiness, a longing to be up and doing, to throw himself into the fray; and his eyes kept on involuntarily returning to the face of the clock. The minute hand seemed ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... did every night when we went up together. In a little while I heard him come in and go to his room. I knew nothing then; but next day, going into mother's room, I saw him standing before the glass door of her armoir, looking at a black coat he had on. Involuntarily I cried out, "Oh, don't, Hal!" "Don't what? Isn't it a nice coat?" he asked. "Yes; but it is buttoned up to the throat, and I don't like to see it. It looks—" here I went out as abruptly as I came in; that black coat so tightly buttoned ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... of middle age, lean and gaunt, came forward and introduced himself. He had sailed in every kind of ship, and was now whaling, he declared, for the last time. As I had made several "last voyages" myself, I knew that he meant simply to show involuntarily that he was a confirmed sailor of ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... at each other. The latter's face had paled. Roldan contracted his lids suddenly, and when his friend met the glance that grew between them he compressed his lips and involuntarily straightened himself: he knew ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... large cosmopolitan group of young women, she sees some with hard faces, some marked by suffering, many marked by selfishness and fretfulness and many more showing dissatisfaction and unhappiness, and her mind goes back involuntarily to the fairy story with the mirror which showed "the girl you meant to be." The contrast between what many a girl meant to be and what she is, reveals ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... involuntarily from Miss Stead, who blushed and cast down her eyes as if conscious of having said too much for maidenly propriety, but the smile of acknowledgment on Colonel Washington's face gave way to a look of grave anxiety as he replied, "No ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... them, of course, but I never saw one before," and the officer touched the shining symbol lightly with his finger, jerking backward involuntarily as there shot through his whole body a thrilling surge of power, shouting into his very bones an unpronounceable syllable—the password of the Secret Service. "Genuine or not, it gets you to the Captain. ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... west prepared for the distaste I must experience at its mushroom growth. I know that where "go ahead" is the only motto, the village cannot grow into the gentle proportions that successive lives, and the gradations of experience involuntarily give. In older countries the house of the son grew from that of the father, as naturally as new joints on a bough. And the cathedral crowned the whole as naturally as the leafy summit the tree. This cannot be here. The march of peaceful is scarce less wanton than that of warlike invasion. The ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... him occasionally, now, pulling a heavy load of stones or hay past our place as meekly and quiet as the dull ox by his side, and involuntarily I exclaim: "How ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... and this cowering was so evident in my bride's demeanour, that, after trying for a couple of hours to coax her into confidence and unreserved feminine fluency, I began to feel almost impatient. It was fortunate that, just as my tone involuntarily betrayed to her quick and watchful ear some shade of annoyance, just as I caught a furtive upward glance that seemed to ask what error she had committed and how it might be repaired, a scratching ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... forward, and was about to pass near her, when Sidwell involuntarily held her hand to him. He took it and gazed into her face with a ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... go on from this success," she said. Involuntarily she raised her hand to her breast. "I must, since it is the only way for me. You see," with a humour far more touching than the saddest ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... observers; that a remark made by a bad observer CANNOT be right; an observer who deserves to be damned you would utterly damn. I feel entire deference to any remark you make out of your own head; but when in opposition to some poor devil, I somehow involuntarily feel not quite so much, but yet much deference for your opinion. I do not know in the least whether there is any truth in this my criticism against you, but I have often thought I ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... to ask what that one thing was, and at mention of it her thought turned involuntarily to Allen. Was he safe or had he too—she ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... door should be shut at all, that evening, Dolly paused involuntarily, and Geordie stood by her side. They had no intention of eavesdropping; indeed, Geordie thought perhaps some new game ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... bare feet, and in my haste I lost these, and then the thorns pricked me so that I could not run, and thus I was left behind and alone. The man came up and lifted his whip to strike me, when I looked him in the face and involuntarily exclaimed,— ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... have begun. You are unconsciously absorbing this atmosphere. You are involuntarily becoming more and more of our cult,—of our inspirations. You are evolving,—you don't realise it, ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... Involuntarily the orphan and Bernard seized each a hand of the mysterious man beside them, who, silently drawing the two hands together, and uniting them in his own, said, gently, "Love one another as you will, my young friends, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Curlie saw some object, all white and ghostly, rising slowly from the hatchway leading to the forecastle. Cold perspiration sprang out upon his brow, his heart beat madly, his knees trembled as he involuntarily moved forward. That was the way he had of treating ghosts; he walked straight ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... help shuddering on being reminded of his adventures, and involuntarily glanced at the window, half expecting to see one of the strange beings he had encountered in the forest grinning at him through it; but nothing was to be seen except the deep black night, which had now ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... read of its restoration in the twelfth century by Prince Vladislaus I, a scion of the House of P[vr]emysl. Charles IV loved to live here, and restored the place for the first of his four wives, Blanche of Valois. Other guests more or less distinguished visited here, some of them involuntarily; these latter were generally lodged in the Huderka Tower suitably fitted with oubliettes. Among these guests were two already mentioned, a leading religious light, John Augusta, Bishop of the Bohemian Brethren, and another less certain light, Kelly, the Irish alchemist. "Irish alchemist" has ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... pressed upon my hoop.—I was so offended (all I had heard, as I said, in my head) that I removed to another chair. I own I had too little command of myself. It gave my brother and sister too much advantage. I day say they took it. But I did it involuntarily, I think. I could not help it.—I ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the society of the two others, he sat sad and solitary in one of the deep window-recesses, and after in vain struggling with the difficulties of his task, and his disinclination to learn it, he found himself involuntarily engaged in watching the movements of the other two students, instead of toiling ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Celtic Ireland was repugnant to him, and he never thoroughly understood it. In religious matters Froude could not be neutral. Where Catholic and Protestant came into conflict, he took instinctively, almost involuntarily, the Protestant side. In the England of the sixteenth century the Protestant side was the side of England. In Ireland the case was reversed, and the spirit of Catholicism was identical with the spirit of nationality. Irish Catholics to this day associate ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... furiously without, and ran down in plashing streams from the thatched roof. Some summer insect, with no escape into the air, flew blindly to and fro, beating its body against the walls and ceiling, and filling the silent place with murmurs. The figure moved again. The child involuntarily did the same. Once in her grandfather's room, she ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... which the canary spent his involuntarily celibate life, an ancient microphylla rose-bush, with a single imperfect bud blooming ahead of summer amid its glossy foliage, clambered over a green lattice to the gabled pediment of the porch, while the delicate shadows of the leaves rippled like lace-work on the gravel below. ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... admire the poem "Madoc," such is the simplicity of its sentiments and the beauty of its delineations. Looking it over, here, (amidst the woods and canes of that island where repose the bones of Columbus,) the song of Prince Hoel attached itself to my thoughts, and has been (involuntarily) put into rhyme. This song may be found in the first part of the poem mentioned. The lyric metre in which it now appears must rather injure than improve the belle nature of the original. Still I wish it to be published, as coming from my hand; because it gives me an opportunity of expressing, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprize, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when, to his astonishment, he found his beard ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... the tall blackened planking had been torn down. The pieces of it lay about, and the earth had been dug up to considerable depth, to make a foundation for a new wall between Life and Death. The uncanny emptiness of the place seized upon me. I halted involuntarily as if to harden myself against it. It was a raw, cold, stormy evening. The clouds flew past the moon in jagged fragments, so that the churchyard, with its white crosses and stones, lay now in full light, now in dim shadow. Now and then a rush of wind rattled over the graves, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... moss, reminds him of the ruined tower of some stronghold. He will see, as he rounds some rocky point, half a dozen of these gigantic boulders piled together, leaning against each other with great cavernous openings between, through which he can walk erect, and he involuntarily looks around him for the armor of the ancient giants who piled up these stupendous rocks and walled in the lake with these ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... of so weird and ghostly a figure the General was strangely moved. There was something startling in such an apparition. At first there came involuntarily half-superstitious thoughts. He recalled all those mysterious beings of whom he had ever heard whose occupation was to haunt the seats of old families. He thought of the White Lady of Avenel, the Black Lady of Scarborough, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... asked him the time of day and set his watch according to the reply. In Ohio the manservant scowled at him because he involuntarily stared after his mistress as she paced the platform while the train waited at a station. Again, in Ohio, they met in the vestibule, and he was compelled to step aside to allow her to pass. He did not feel particularly jubilant over this meeting; ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the right and left, the great Roche Melon and Roche Michel soaring to the clouds. The valley then contracts and winds round a great rocky chasm (the Wild Gorge), where the hills are veritably rent asunder, passing through which one involuntarily shudders, and dreams of being in the land of some Titanic race, whose rocky thunder-bolts are ready to fall upon and crush the small, fragile creatures who have ventured ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... to exercise his judgment in either adding, omitting, harmonically or otherwise embellishing the work (while preserving the original idea and characteristics), so as to thoroughly re-create it, so completely destroying the very sensing of the original timbre that one involuntarily exclaims, 'Truly, this never was anything but a violin piece!' It is this, the blending and fusion of two personalities in the achievement of an art-ideal, that is the result of a ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... back his long hair. "I was once called Don Pedro Garcia," said he; "tell me," he added, as all four of us rose involuntarily at this startling announcement, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... involuntarily. Her outflung hand had unwittingly gripped my wrist, caught the electrode there. The touch burned her, and close-circuited my robe. There was a hiss. My current ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... reside in a meditative mood, and as he entered, was singularly annoyed to see a flaring poster outside, announcing the arrival of Miraudin and his whole French Company in Rome for a few nights only. The name "MIRAUDIN" glared at him in big, fat, red letters on a bright yellow ground; and involuntarily he muttered, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... behind him, and particularly to young Whitcomb's share in it. Upon hearing the latter's statement that he had with him the cash returns for the shipment of bullion, Darrell saw the muscles of his face suddenly grow tense and rigid, while his hands involuntarily tightened their hold upon the paper. He grew uncomfortable under Darrell's scrutiny, moved restlessly once or twice, then turning, looked directly into the piercing dark eyes fixed upon him. His own eyes, which were small and shifting, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... strode up and down the room, radiant with joy, he seemed for the moment quite unconscious of any one's presence. But presently he stopped, looked involuntarily upward a minute, as if he felt himself observed from above. Then, turning to the old people, who stood together before the mantel, delightedly watching him, ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... Agatha's mind, as she tried to read Jim's face; then, as he stirred uneasily and tried to throw off the light boughs that she had spread over him, she got up and went to the edge of the water to moisten afresh the bandage for his forehead. Involuntarily she shuddered at sight of the dark water, though the lapping waves, pushing up farther and farther with the incoming tide, were gentle enough to soothe ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... pronoun struck me, and involuntarily I looked up at Mrs. Grancy's portrait. Line by line I saw my fear reflected in it. It was the face of a woman who knows that her husband is dying. My heart stood still at the thought ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... can be better than that of a Gipsy band; there is life and animation in it which carries you away. If you have danced to it yourself, especially in a czardas, {176} then to hear the stirring tones without involuntarily springing up is, I assert, an absolute impossibility." Poor, deluded mortals, I am afraid they ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... terrier—they made a charming picture—and trying to formulate an introduction. I reached a low stone wall that separated the lawn from the beach just as she effected a running pick-up of the ball. She turned swiftly and flung it straight at my head. Involuntarily I put up my hand and caught it just as she saw me and cried out—a cry of warning and contrition. I tossed the ball ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... splendid landscape—some great forest, perhaps, in the silence. We need not go into these various classes; I only mention them in order to separate from the rest that particular class of freed, liberated, or, if you like the Christian term, "saved," persons, who no more need come involuntarily into incarnation, but who are free both as regards consciousness and ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... Involuntarily the hand of her listener touched his breast, the first sign he had made that her story moved him. Jacqueline, watching him keenly, smiled, and demurely looked away. Her next words seemed to dance from her ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Harbundia handy now to keep her in check. The Professor had a distinct sensation, while peeling a pear, that he was being turned into a guinea-pig—a curious feeling of shrinking about the legs. So vivid was the impression, that involuntarily the Professor jumped off his chair and ran to look at himself in the mirror over the sideboard. He was not fully relieved even then. It may have been the mirror. It was very old; one of those things with little gilt balls all round it; and it looked to the Professor ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... bodies, surely. At a hint, you must move; at a notice to quit, you depart. Simpletons show us, that a body can get along almost without a soul; but of a soul getting along without a body, we have no tangible and indisputable proof. My lord, the wisest of us breathe involuntarily. And how many millions there are who live from day to day by the incessant operation of subtle processes in them, of which they know nothing, and care less? Little ween they, of vessels lacteal and lymphatic, of arteries femoral and temporal; of pericranium or pericardium; ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... and a jet of smoke drifting away from its bows in the still morning air showed me whence the delicate attention had come. Was ever a respectable gentleman in such an impasse? The treacherous sand slope allowed no escape from a spot which I had visited most involuntarily, and a promenade on the river frontage was the signal for a bombardment from some insane native in a boat. I'm afraid that I lost my temper very ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... country colony's church when one of the torch-like flares reddened on the night, and the glow picked out the gilt cross at the top of the sham Norman tower. He flung up a hand involuntarily, as if to put the emblem, and that for which it stood, out of his life. At the same instant a whiff of the acrid smoke from the distant furnace fires tingled in his nostrils, and he quickened his pace. The hour for which all ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... drawn from external fact, and the "idea" is not exclusively musical, but admits an infusion of pictorial and literary elements. In listening to the love duet of the second act of "Tristan," although the lovers are before us in actual presence on the stage, I find myself involuntarily closing my eyes, for the music is so personal and so spiritualized, it is in and of itself so intensely the realization of the emotion, that the objective presentment of it by the actors becomes unnecessary and is almost ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... and carefully distinguish his perceptions and sensations from the external cause exciting them, and at the same time from the quantity or superficies under which that cause is acting, he would instantly find himself, if we mistake not, involuntarily identifying the ideas of Quality and Life. Life, it is admitted on all hands, does not necessarily imply consciousness or sensibility; and we, for our parts, cannot see that the irritability which metals manifest ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... abandon him. He fell; his eyes involuntarily closed. He did not wish to look, and these words escaped his lips: "Too late! too late!" But by a superhuman effort he raised himself up. No; it was not too late, the corpse of Joam Dacosta was not hanging at the end of ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... brushed past them, and, instinctively, they grasped each other by the arm. A moan was distinctly heard; then another, louder and more terrible. A cry of agony succeeded, then a shriek, so loud and appalling that a cry of horror involuntarily burst from ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Yet through his shadow falling on the weak and sick as he passed by, he unconsciously wrought health and hope in men. In like manner it is said that while Jesus Christ was seeking to comfort the comfortless, involuntarily virtue went out of him to strengthen one who did but touch the hem of his garment. Character works with or without consent. The selfish man fills his office with a malign atmosphere; his very presence chills like a ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... were pronounced in a tone of unexampled sweetness. The Cavaliers again broke off their discourse, but for this time they were not contented with looking up: Both started involuntarily from their seats, and turned themselves ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... a conscientious examination, questions madame, feels her pulse discreetly, inquires into the slightest symptoms, and, at the end, while conversing, allows a smile, an expression, which, if not ironical, are extremely incredulous, to play involuntarily upon his lips, and his lips are quite in sympathy with his eyes. He prescribes some insignificant remedy, and insists upon its importance, promising to call again to observe its effect. In the ante-chamber, thinking himself alone with his school-mate, ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... during the long afternoon, when Susanna was at school, she got up and looked at herself in the mirror. She moved up her hair from off her ears, knowing where she would find a few that were grey, and shaking her head, as though owning to herself that she was old; but as her fingers ran almost involuntarily across her locks, her touch told her that they were soft and silken; and she looked into her own eyes, and saw that they were bright; and her hand touched the outline of her cheek, and she knew that something of the fresh ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... clear as the blue March sky, but Rose looked as flushed and guilty as she felt. She shrank from looking at her sister or lover, and clung involuntarily to Reginald's arm. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... should awake, and search into the cause of this affliction; for as an affliction every one that loves Zion must view it. When we call to mind how 'few and far between' cases of true conversion are, and the almost unparalleled impertinence and hardness of sinners, we almost involuntarily exclaim, 'Has God forgotten to be gracious? or, Is the door of mercy ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... motionless, gloomy, and silent world, where everything threatens the annihilation of human faculties. Should he have the misfortune to be left here alone, no help, no consolation, no spark of hope, would soothe his last moments. One is involuntarily reminded of the famous inscription on the gate ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... day to walk over the high snowdrifts after hares; to breathe the keen frosty air, while half-closing the eyes involuntarily at the fine blinding sparkle of the soft snow; to admire the emerald sky above the reddish forest!... And the first spring day when everything is shining, and breaking up, when across the heavy streams, from the melting snow, there is already the scent of the thawing ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... Armstrong too had arisen in his dismissal, involuntarily obedient. "But you said, before I told you, before you understood, that afterward, perhaps—You remember you ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... light on the cliff behind detached him prominently from the surrounding shadows. He poised a spear in his right hand, and, while Edith gazed at him in terror, the weapon flew whistling through the air and was buried in the side of the wolf. But so close did the spear pass, that Edith involuntarily stepped back as she heard it whiz. In doing so she lost her balance and fell over the cliff. Fortunately, Arnalooa caught her by the dress and partially broke her fall, but the descent was sufficiently steep and rugged to render the ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... equanimity of temper. Having had recourse to his glasses, lie stood on the pavement, examining the prints, unobservant of any other object; when a porter with a load brushed hastily forward, and coming in contact with the Baronet, put him, involuntarily, by the violence of the shock, to the left about face, without the word either of caution or command. "Damn your spectacles!" at same time, exclaimed the fellow; "Thank you, my good friend," rejoined ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... and was still full of enthusiasm for scenery and sanitation. Also there was Princess —— surrounded by packing cases. Some months earlier she had visited our hospitals in Vrntze and she had asked if one of our V.A.D.'s could be sent to her as housemaid. Seeing her in the station, Jo involuntarily ran over in her mind, was ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... not much reason to bear love to the old creature for any kindness she had ever shown me, but this sight overcame me at once. Springing to her aide, and upsetting half a dozen of the gossips by the movement, I laid my paw on hers; and, involuntarily raising my head in the air, I sent forth a howl which shook the rotten timbers of the old kennel, and so frightened the assembled party as to make them scamper out of the place like mad things. The sound even called back the departing ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... bravado, holding out my hand. She dug her teeth into one of my fingers. It hurt so that I involuntarily ground my own teeth, but ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... There came another explosion, not so loud as the first, but enough to cause the men to start involuntarily, and to bring frantic screams from ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... started perceptibly, and his glance involuntarily wandered to that part of the wall behind which the will was discovered, for they were sitting in the very apartment where Mrs. ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... ought to be hanged," he said in a vexed way. "You are the only person in the world I care for, and every time I see you I plunge you into trouble. Well, this is the last time. Good-bye, Wenna." Almost involuntarily she put out her hand, but it was with the least perceptible gesture, to bid him remain. Then she went past him, and there were tears running down her face. "If—if you will wait a moment," she said, "I will see if mamma and I can go ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... pain, a sharp, yet aching throb of agony which involuntarily closed his eyes and clenched tight his teeth until it should pass. When he looked again, she was gone, and the opening of a door in the next room told him where. Almost wondering, he turned his eyes then toward the blankets and sought ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... it treated Mihalevitch as an old friend. The performance on the stage ceased to interest Lavretsky, even Motchalov, though he was that evening in his "best form," did not produce the usual impression on him. At one very pathetic part, Lavretsky involuntarily looked at his beauty: she was bending forward, her cheeks glowing under the influence of his persistent gaze, her eyes, which were fixed on the stage, slowly turned and rested on him. All night he was! haunted by those eyes. The skillfully ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... bottom shelf of the bookcase.... Yes! The pronged plug of the lamp cord had been jerked almost out of the baseboard outlet! It was easy to visualize what had happened: The murderer, after firing the shot, had involuntarily taken a step or even several steps backward, until his foot had caught in the loop of electric cord, causing the big lamp to be thrown violently against the wall near which it stood.... ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... moment's hesitation, 'in hers too. Ursula,' with a sudden passionate inflexion in his voice, 'you have no idea how she loved that poor boy, and how she suffered: it nearly killed her. Now you know why I say that she is lonely and wants a friend.' 'But she has you, Max,' I exclaimed involuntarily, for I knew what he must have been to them in their trouble; Max could be as tender as a woman; but he started aside as though I had struck him; and his voice was quite ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... so honest and frank in Joe's speech, that Mr Haredale put his hand in his involuntarily, though their meeting was suspicious enough. But his glance at Edward Chester, and that gentleman's keeping aloof, were not lost upon Joe, who said bluntly, glancing at ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... was on her arm; her eyes were raised to her nurse's face wonderingly but complacently, and, though quite conscious, Mistress Fiddy involuntarily sighed out "mother." Very motherly was the elder woman's assurance: "Yes, my dear, I'll serve as madam your mother in her absence, till madam herself comes; and she'll laugh at our confusion and clumsiness, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... such rock? Even he doubted the possibility of lightning causing such destruction. No, his thoughts flew to an earth disturbance of some sort. But then, what of the lake? He gazed up at where the rocky arch jutted out from the parent hill, and apprehension made him involuntarily move his horse aside. But his observation had killed the theory of an earth disturbance. Anything of that nature must have brought the lake down. For the dislodgment began under its very shadow, and had even further deepened the yawning cavern beneath ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... times that morning; twice to mend fence, and once more involuntarily. He determined, with a mighty vow to the bow-legged god of all horseflesh, to learn to stay on ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... our admiration of the Philoctetes is in the comparison it involuntarily courts with the Prometheus of Aeschylus. Both are examples of fortitude under suffering—of the mind's conflict with its fate. In either play a dreary waste, a savage solitude, constitute the scene. But the towering sublimity ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a number of convicts were indicted at the Admiralty Sessions of the Old Bailey for having on the 5th of September in the previous year piratically seized a brig called the Cyprus. A South Seaman was innocently and most involuntarily, as shall be discovered presently, involved in this tragic business, to which he is able to add a narrative that is certainly not known to any of the chroniclers of crime. But first ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... strictures on us. But please don't write to me again so furiously. Such excessive annoyance is quite out of keeping with your pretty handwriting, and besides, it takes away my appetite to think I have even involuntarily given you pain. Be kind enough to look out for my next letter, but don't, for goodness' sake, tell me what you think about it, unless it should happen to please you. In that case I shall, of course, be proud and glad ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... languor or rest. He has no choice. His job drives him. His movements are fixed and regulated by the nature of the machine with which he is working, and of the task to be accomplished. At the end of the day he has acted involuntarily and mechanically until his own powers of will and choice are accumulated. Being repressed through long hours of prescribed labor he is ready for a rebound. His nature demands self-expression. This self-expression takes the ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... my patron had carried all my powers of pleasing to the grave. I had formerly been celebrated as a wit, and not perceiving any languor in my imagination, I essayed to revive that gaiety which had hitherto broken out involuntarily before my sentences were finished. My remarks were now heard with a steady countenance, and if a girl happened to give way to habitual merriment, her forwardness was repressed with a frown by her ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... associated with the sight, and even with the name of the Rhine. When the Austrians, in one of the last actions of the campaign of 1813, carried the heights of Hockheim, in the neigbourhood of Mentz, and first came in sight of that river, they involuntarily halted, and stood for some minutes in silence; when the Prince Marshal coming up to know the cause of the delay, their feelings burst forth in peals of enthusiastic acclamation, as they again advanced to the charge. The Prussian corps of the army of Silesia, destined to force the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... beyond our control in so far as that we must see and hear the greater part of what presents itself to us as near, and at the same time unfamiliar, unless we turn away or shut our eyes, or stop our ears by a mechanical process; and when we do this it is a sign that we have already involuntarily seen or heard more than we wished. The familiar, whether sight or sound, very commonly ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... and I involuntarily gave a groan that beat the ghost's all hollow, so full of anguish was I at the thought of several hours of weary waiting in such ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... he said, "I hope I shall be able to"— Involuntarily Jane looked at her hands. He saw the look and smiled, though he had the grace to colour beneath his tan,—"to FACE the ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... issuing from the frame, much louder than I had noticed the night before, caused me to turn involuntarily, and as I did so I uttered a cry of wonder at the marvelous vision that met my eyes. There lay before me, as bright as daylight, a picture that a thousand times surpassed my highest, wildest hope. The ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... off page after page of my life-book and comes to the black one covering that ride, I fear 'twill be no easy task excusing the murderous passion that filled my heart and the poison-steeped curses my lips involuntarily formed. After an eternity I was at 26 Broadway. I flew to the elevator, was on the eleventh floor in an instant, bolted by Fred, the colored usher who guards Mr. Rogers' sanctum, and strode, without ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... early the stronger love of mechanical processes and of probing natural forces manifested itself. Edison has said that he never saw a statement in any book as to such things that he did not involuntarily challenge, and wish to demonstrate as either right or wrong. As a mere child the busy scenes of the canal and the grain warehouses were of consuming interest, but the work in the ship-building yards had an irresistible fascination. His questions were so ceaseless and innumerable that the penetrating ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... greeted this speech with an unqualified ha! ha! and Fleda involuntarily raised her head to look at the last speaker; but there was nothing to be noticed about her, except that she was in rather nicer order than the ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... case in changes of view of this nature, Marius asked himself whether he had nothing with which to reproach himself. Had he been wanting in divination? Had he been wanting in prudence? Had he involuntarily dulled his wits? A little, perhaps. Had he entered upon this love affair, which had ended in his marriage to Cosette, without taking sufficient precautions to throw light upon the surroundings? He admitted,—it is thus, by a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in abjectly bitter self-contempt. His hand went involuntarily to his cropped head, and dropped with a gesture of self-doubting. He looked down at his tan shoes and silk socks. He rolled back his shirtsleeve and contemplated the forearm that had once been as brown and tough as leather. It was now the arm of a city ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... quick, eager nod and a smile, which made the man look more cheerful for a moment; but as he drew back his hand, he raised his white garment involuntarily and began to wipe the fingers, passing the white cotton over them two or three times before he realised what ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... cast off the cloak of despair which clogged his energies and impaired his brilliant intellect. He rose to his feet and involuntarily squared his shoulders. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... The wooded glen was dark and silent. From its warm depths arose the perfume of the young, green earth. John McIntyre stood for a moment on the pathway, where its shadows met the lights of the open fields. He threw back his head and looked up into the quivering deep of the heavens. Involuntarily his eyes closed against their glory. He was overcome, too, with the glory of a sudden devout thought. God, away up there, encompassed by ineffable light and beauty, was like His own abiding place—too blindingly radiant to be gazed at by mortal eye, and therefore ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... Involuntarily Maurice looked at the speaker, feeling that this must be mere cant. It struck him as nonsense, yet one glance at the serene, honest face of the deacon who spoke, with its tender, candid eyes, like those of a pure girl, was enough to convince him of the entire sincerity of ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... accused, having committed a crime within one State and having left the jurisdiction before being subjected to criminal process, is found within another State.[198] The motive which induced the departure is immaterial.[199] Even if he were brought involuntarily into the State where found by requisition from another State, he may be surrendered to a third State upon an extradition warrant.[200] A person indicted a second time for the same offense is nonetheless a fugitive from justice by reason of the fact that after dismissal of the first ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... space enclosed was covered with as tempting a spread of dainties as ever fascinated the eyes of a crowd of little people. For a whole minute, longer than a full hour of ordinary schoolboy enjoyments, they had to stand facing that sight, involuntarily attitudinising for the plunge. At the end of that long minute, the signal sounded, and, in an instant, there was a scene in the ring that would have made the soberest octogenarian shake his sides with the laughter ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... under the curtain, resumed their silent supervision. The appearance in a row of nine disembodied heads, whose staring eyes rolled with synchronous motion from side to side as we moved, was so ludicrous that we involuntarily burst into laughter. A responsive smile instantly appeared upon each of the nine swarthy faces, whose simultaneous concurrence in the expression of every emotion suggested the idea of some huge monster with nine heads and but one consciousness. Acting upon Dodd's suggestion ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... mounds. But, for myself, I confess that I am always awed by the presence of the dead. I cannot jest above the gravestone. My spirit is silenced and rebuked before the tremendous mystery of which the grave reminds me, and involuntarily pays: ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Eugenio, in the field early, was mounting guard over the compartment he had secured. The strain, though probably lasting, at the carriage-door, but a couple of minutes, prolonged itself so for our poor gentleman's nerves that he involuntarily directed a long look at Eugenio, who met it, however, as only Eugenio could. Sir Luke's attention was given for the time to the right bestowal of his numerous effects, about which he was particular, and Densher fairly found himself, so far as silence could go, questioning the ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James |
