"Random" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Elmete; Marshall's Rural Economy of England, In 1739 Roderic Random came from Scotland to Newcastle on ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... embroidery frame, and the back numbers of the Catholic Weekly. The early twilight had begun to fall, and presently a slanting ray across the desk showed Darrow that a servant was coming across the hall with a lamp. He pulled out a sheet of note-paper and began to write at random, while the man, entering, put the lamp at his elbow and vaguely "straightened" the heap of newspapers tossed on the divan. Then his steps died away and Darrow sat leaning his head ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... was fed spasmodically and clad at random, but their meals were regular and their raiment well assorted compared with Paul's. Naturally they came in for clouts and thumps like all the children in Budge Street; it was only Paul who underwent organized chastisement. The little Buttons often did wrong; ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the elms which here stood somewhat at random about the wide, grassless street, between the high, windowy bulks of the shoe shops and hat shops. The dust gradually freed itself from the cinders about the tracks, and it hardened into a handsome, newly made road beyond the houses of the shop hands. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... are erased from my heart. Good God, then what do I retain that is of value? The little boy that I was is dead forever, before my eyes. I survived him, but forgetfulness tormented me, then overcame me, the sad process of living ruined me, and I scarcely know what he knew. I remember things at random only, but the most beautiful, the sweetest memories ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... of her contemporaries. To help us to get a fairer estimate, her own "Memoirs," written by herself, and now first given to readers in an English dress, should surely serve. Avowedly compiled in a vague, desultory way, with no particular regard to chronological sequence, these random recollections should interest us, in the first place, as a piece of unconscious self-portraiture. The cynical Court lady, whose beauty bewitched a great King, and whose ruthless sarcasm made Duchesses quail, is here drawn for us in vivid fashion by her own hand, and while concerned with depicting ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... is—according to official prognostics—to be graded, leveled, drained, cultivated and planted till it looks like a private millionaire's park, it is a raw, rough unsightly waste of red clay and weeds, gouged out here and there with random and meaningless excavations, heaped up in other places with piles of earth; diversified in one quarter with some forlorn chicken coops and fences, made by the voluntary and unskilled labor of one of the convicts; and adjoining these, with the Tuberculosis Camp, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... good excuse of her nationality for her peculiar English, the choicest, funniest, maddest, and saddest English ever penned on this planet or in any other, and of which I hope "N. & Q." will accept some small specimens, taken at random among thousands such. To begin with ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... Biblical Song. Budde suggests that there were "guilds of professional singers at weddings, and that we have in the Song of Songs simply the repertoire of some ancient guild-brother, who, in order to assist his memory, wrote down at random all the songs he could remember, or ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... different patients in diverse manner. The hypnotic experiments of Dr. Charcot, the well-known French biologist, also demonstrate the rapport existing between the sensitive patient and foreign bodies when in proximity or contact; as for example, when a bottle containing a poison was taken at random from among a number of others of exactly similar appearance, and applied to the back of the patient's neck, the hypnotised subject would once develop all the symptoms of poisoning by arsenic, strychnine, prussic acid, etc., it being afterwards ascertained that the bottle thus applied ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... part, I cared very little whether I lost or won at a game so random, so complex, and so dull; but it was sorry news to write to my poor father, and I employed all the resources of my eloquence. I told him (what was the truth) that the successful boys had none of the education; so that if he wished me to learn, he should rejoice at my misfortune. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... trumpet from one of the men and blew a long, thrilling note. Before its last echo was ended, the little army rushed upon the town. Three or four shots came from the houses, and the soldiers fired a few at random in return, but that was all. Indian scouts had brought warning of the white advance, and the great chiefs, gathering up all the people who were in the village, had fled. A retreating warrior or two had fired the shots, but when the white men entered this ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... occupation. Bring these fellows into the country, or set them aboard ship, and you will see how they pine for their desk or their study. They have no curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to random provocations; they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its own sake; and unless Necessity lays about them with a stick, they will even stand still. It is no good speaking to such folk: they cannot be idle, their nature is not generous enough; ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not again resort to volleys. One by one, from different angles, they began to shoot, and they were not firing at random. A few bullets came straight in at the windows to pat into the walls; a few others ticked and splintered the edges of the windows; and most of them broke through the clay chinks between the logs. It dawned upon ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... side, interested in her novel, yet glancing up from time to time to see what her friends were doing, and perhaps make a random guess at their thoughts, these weeks of country and seaside life with those she loved had added a new brightness to her refined and delicate face. The autumn sunshine had not embrowned the transparent skin, but the red of the lips seemed deeper, and the ethereal ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... reasonable amount of probability, to any one man. Let me mention the names of a score of men and women recently or still living, and let me ask the reader whether anything in my hero's career was stranger than the adventures which marked theirs? Here is a penful taken at random,—Lord Dundonald, Lola Montes, Raousset-Boulbon, Richard Burton, Garibaldi, Felice Orsini, Ida Pfeiffer, Edgar Poe, Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson (the Siberian travellers), Marshal St. Arnaud, Paul du Chaillu, Joseph Wolff, Dr. Livingstone, Gordon Cumming, William ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... arena of the early world of Greece, we see in one of its most romantic forms the age-long strife between paganism and spirituality. We have taken at random four of the most popular stories of Greece. We have found in each of them pagan elements partly bequeathed by that earlier and lower earth-bound worship which preceded the Olympians, partly added in decadent ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... you are saying," says the professor, driven beyond his self-control. "You are a mere child, a baby, you speak at random." ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... in position. The head remains almost most motionless; but the black, quick, piercing eyes flash into every window and door-way to watch for a customer's signal. And the creole street-cries, uttered in a sonorous, far-reaching high key, interblend and produce random harmonies very pleasant ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... tied to a post." Dramatic changes of mood had no place. So later, a voice had to be found for shifting, complex, theatrically conflicting moods—states of mind characteristic of the modern and not of the bewigged world. When Haydn was still young the problem composers were more or less at random trying to solve was the creation of a new form of music and a new kind of music to fill the form. Neither the old form nor the old style would serve; the naive dance-forms were too short. The content had to be as poignantly expressive, as direct in its appeal, as a folk-song; ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... described. It was then examined on the subject. To the question what Judas did, no one could return an answer until it came my turn. I had a vague impression of some one hanging himself, and so I said quite at random that he hanged himself. It was with a qualm of conscience that I went to the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... God is not a Lombard usurer. I may have killed people good and bad at random in my time, but I am not afraid of ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... frame like lightning. All within me was tumult and terror, and I rushed precipitately out of the house. I went forward with unequal steps, and at random. Some instinct led me into the fields, and I was not apprized of the direction of my steps, till, looking up, I found myself upon the ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... wanders in his course a-straying Through the sweet and tangled glade With his golden mead o'erladen, Where beneath the pleasant shade Of the darkling boughs a maiden— Milky limb and fiery tress, All at sweetest random laid— Slumbers, drunken with the excess Of the ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... a-kissing one another among the sheep, like a picture—and th' old squire was sitting there, for he mostly sits with her. Well, she was mighty pleased with the screen, and then she wanted to know what pay she was to give me. I didn't speak at random—you know it's not my way; I'd calculated pretty close, though I hadn't made out a bill, and I said, 'One pound thirty.' That was paying for the mater'als and paying me, but none too much, for my work. Th' old squire looked up at this, and peered in his way at the screen, and ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... same, he's a good young man," stammers the waddling street cleanser, brandishing her broom-bereaved hands at random, and shaking over her swollen and many-storied boots a skirt weighted round the hem by a coat-of-mail ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... because they would die to serve you; but have you never had friends who were your equals in education and intelligence?" He was speaking hastily, using random words to suggest that more could be had out of such ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... now walked at random. She had made up her mind to call a cab, when she caught sight of the Seine. She then ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... to Pye, but went to my own cabin in an irritable condition. It ought not to have mattered to me that the sister of a millionaire, my employer, should treat me more or less as a lackey; but it did. I threw myself on my bunk and took down a book at random from my little shelf. Out of its pages tumbled an evening news-sheet which I now remembered to have bought of a screaming boy as I hurried into the dock gates on the previous afternoon. I had not had time to look at it in my various preoccupations, but, after all, it was the last ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... away; hard as the random taunt and remark of his opponent was, yet it recalled him to a sense of his duty, and his forgetfulness of the fact that he had not hitherto asked of God for special help in this circumstance. With cheerful steps he hurried home, and ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... scoundrel, it was all your fault,—you moved your shoulder as I pulled the trigger. Thank Heaven, however, the aim of the Indian appears to have been no better, although the sharp whistling of his ball proves his piece to have been well levelled for a random shot." ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... a small sitting-room, simply and almost shabbily furnished, remarkable for some strange articles which were heaped at random on various small tables. There was a planchette, a tambourine, and other more mysterious appliances which suggested that the inmate spent much time with the trappings and rappings of spiritualism. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... round us lie Some random truths he can impart,—50 The harvest of a quiet eye That broods and sleeps on his ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... looking puzzled. "Bywater's a cautious fellow with his money; he never bets at random. I say, sir, what else did ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... capital of America only to abandon it; and these assertors and representatives of the dignity of England, at the tail of a flying army, let fly their Parthian shafts of memorials and remonstrances at random behind them. Their promises and their offers, their flatteries and their menaces, were all despised; and we were saved from the disgrace of their formal reception, only because the congress scorned to receive them; whilst the state-house ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... long coat that reached below his knees, with his red face and unkempt hair, walked up and down the room with his hands in his pockets, pacing, not from corner to corner, but backwards and forwards at random, like a wild beast in its cage. He would stand still by the table, sip his glass of tea with relish, and pace ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... though he has made up his mind on the subject with unhesitating dogmatism, he has never investigated its bearings or facts, even in outline. Nevertheless, to your surprise, you will find him perfectly ready to start some random theory, at a moment's notice, unconscious of the momentous, the awful nature of the matter he is handling. You see, perhaps, that his mind is powerfully influenced by the singular character of many Catholic miracles. He thinks them strange, unnecessary, ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... his dark face seemed even darker; his long, crisp, curly hair, his hat pressed down over his eyes, his black beard and moustache, his strongly aquiline nose, all proclaimed his gypsy origin. He wore a threadbare blue doublet, braided with cords, which were buttoned here and there at random, and over this was fastened some ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... mantel-piece. He opened them and saw, in fact, that there were groups of words or lines missing, regularly and neatly cut out. But he had only to read the words that came before or after to ascertain that the missing words had been removed with the scissors at random, evidently by Henriette. It was possible that, in the pile of papers, there was one which mademoiselle had cut herself. But how was he ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... take a second look, and saw Zulora in the very act of giving a piece of paper which looked like a cheque to one of the cashiers. He did not examine it, but putting his hand into an antique coffer hard by, he pulled out a quantity of dull-looking metal pieces apparently at random, and handed them over without counting them; neither did Zulora count them, but put them into her purse and departed. It seemed a very singular proceeding, but I supposed that they knew their own business best, at any rate Zulora seemed quite satisfied, thanked him for the money, and began making ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... of tree-distribution over the mountains is to me a never-failing source of interest. Though the various species of trees appear to be growing almost at random, yet each species shows a decided preference for peculiar altitude, soil, temperature, and moisture conditions. It is an interesting demonstration of tree adaptability to follow a stream which comes out of the west, in the middle mountain-zone, and observe how unlike the trees are ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... circumstances which, at the outset, and even in the absence of experimental verification, make it difficult, or impossible, that even the bare mortality of war (for the eugenical bearings of war are not confined to its mortality) should leave the eugenist indifferent. For war never hits men at random. It only hits a carefully selected percentage of "fit" men. It tends, in other words, to strike out, temporarily, or in a fatal event, permanently, from the class of fathers, precisely that percentage of the population which the eugenist wishes to ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... of the senses, so it also was not the thought, not the rational mind, not the learned wisdom, not the learned ability to draw conclusions and to develop previous thoughts in to new ones. No, this world of thought was also still on this side, and nothing could be achieved by killing the random self of the senses, if the random self of thoughts and learned knowledge was fattened on the other hand. Both, the thoughts as well as the senses, were pretty things, the ultimate meaning was hidden behind both of them, both had to be listened to, both had to be ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... exclaimed at random. Fortunately it seemed to be the right answer; and the relief this assurance gave was like a helping hand to a beginner skating on thin ice. Sir Elmer went on to repeat some story which he said he had been ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... contribution to this subject was recently made by G. H. Hardy. Considering the distribution of a single factor in a mixed population consisting of the heterozygous and the two homozygous forms he showed that such a population breeding at random rapidly fell into a {148} stable condition with regard to the proportion of these three forms, whatever may have been the proportion of the three forms to start with. Let us suppose for instance, that the population consists of p homozygotes of one kind, ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... we love, and why we hate, Is not granted us to know: Random chance, or wilful fate, Guides ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... good many things that happened during our first days, when the impressions were so vivid, and I should have got to addressing my records to myself, and I think I had better keep to the form of letters. If they reach you, and you read them at random, why that is very much the way ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... attorneys put their heads together, turn and turn over the leaves of their statutes. His honour, the Court, looks wiser still. Marston trembles and turns pale; his soul is pinioned between hope and fear. Romescos has told something more than he knows, and continues, at random, recounting a dozen or more irrelevant things. The court, at length, deems it necessary to stop his voluntary testimony, orders that he only answer such questions as are put ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... longer, but your father after that soon talked at random, and addressed Arthur as Mr. Montresor. I doubt if he remembered a word of it the day after. When he left and went upstairs your father fell into sleep again. I went away home alone, and the day ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... manifests a marvellous ability to discover and communicate a fresh gladness about the commonest experiences. We cannot but rejoice with him in all sights and sounds. But though we cannot deny him truth, his truth is honesty and not understanding. The experiences in which he discovers so much worth, are random and capricious, and do not constitute a universe. To the solution of ultimate questions he contributes a sense of mystery, and ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... "it is more probable that they wander at random, and it is their interest to rove about until the time when they will be masters of ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... raised his rifle with the intention of firing at random into the underwood on the remote chance of bringing his enemy into the open. But the fascination of this duel of cunning was too strong, and he crept onwards ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... That was all. Random remarks here and there, being pieced together gave Laura a vague impression of a man of fine presence, abort forty-three or forty-five years of age, with dark hair and eyes, and a slight limp in his walk—it was not stated which leg was defective. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... upper falls are about a quarter of a mile farther up the gorge. The height of the falls, with the rapids between, is about 300 feet above the little rustic bridge at the foot of the lower falls. The glen between is a place of wild beauty, with rocks and huge boulders "in random ruin piled." ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... hands of an exhausted trooper the subaltern set to work with a will, for much had to be done in a very short space of time. It was a case of excavating under extreme difficulties, for apart from the smoke and heat from the blazing huts bullets were dropping frequently and at random upon that part of the kraal still held by the hard-pressed but as ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... points had been thoroughly mastered, and only then did the team practise begin. But again, no player was allowed in unprepared. Reeder instituted blackboard practise and saw that every one attended it. Placing before his assembled squad the possible formations, he made players selected at random explain the duties of every position in each formation. By this system he obliged every player to use his brains, and he found out the amount of water-polo intelligence that each possest. He also imparted to each the ideas of all the others, he taught them ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... latter, because of the great ease with which he caught the various kinds of fishes, which travelled from one sea to the other, through the narrow strait. He had but to cast his net into the water, and to draw it out full; his spear, thrown at random into the strait, might almost be said to be sure of attaching to it a good fat fish. Once upon a time, having constructed a weir to catch fish, such a vast quantity were caught, that the strait was choked up, and the water rose and overflowed the whole face of the earth. To save himself ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... me one at random. Why, my pretty Nais, not ten months ago there were a score who would have leaped at the chance of having you for a wife. Drop your coyness, girl, and name me one of those. I warrant you that I will be your ambassadress and will put the matter to him with such ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... variety of trees gave place to the ohia alone, with its sombre foliage. There were neither birds nor insects, and the only travellers we encountered in the solitude compelled us to give them a wide berth, for they were a drove of half wild random cattle, led by a lean bull of hideous aspect, with crumpled horns. Two picturesque native vaccheros on mules accompanied them, and my flagging spirits were raised by their news that the volcano was quite active. The owner of these cattle knows that he has 10,000 head, and may have a great many ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... none the easier to bear by the arrival, just a fatal fortnight late, of the money from his brother, a forgetful sort of man, who had mistaken the date of the mail. The tragic irony of the whole is skilfully heightened by the fact that it is half-witted "Clutie," with his penny whistle and his random words, who goads young Andrew ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... containing a couple locked in each other's arms, floating at random, and another in which a number of people were singing at the top of their voices. And that ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... there are many young ladies that Beaton's afraid of," said Fulkerson, giving himself the respite of this purely random remark, while he interrogated the faces of Mrs. Leighton and Colonel Woodburn for some light upon the tendency of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the skipper, "the game's going to begin. There is sure to be some firing, so keep well down under the shelter of the bulwarks. Of course they will never have a chance to take aim, but there is no knowing what a random shot may do." ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... case and leaving the abstract principle to the theorist, there are certain obvious things to be said for and against jury trial. The jury represents the opinion of the common or ordinary man—the vox populi. Twelve men picked at random are probably neither all capitalists nor all laborers. They are made up of a few of both, but the majority, if not all, are the small tradesmen or the great middle class. These men are not ignorant, prejudiced, or unintelligent. They have a limited ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... many a wretch in Bedlam knows How to distinguish friends from foes; And though perhaps among the rout He wildly flings his filth about, He still has gratitude and sap'ence, To spare the folks that give him ha'pence; Nor in their eyes at random pisses, But turns aside, like mad Ulysses; While Traulus all his ordure scatters To foul the man he chiefly flatters. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... a machine which they know is to be composed of plates and joints, and wheels and screws and springs:—they temper their springs, and smooth their plates, and carve out carefully their wheels and screws, but having no idea of the machine in its combination, they either fasten them together at random, and create some monster of disjointed undirected force, or else pile the finished materials into a heap together, and trust to some organic spirit in themselves which will shape them into unity. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... scene of the disaster was approached there was revealed upon the plates a confused mass of debris; a mass whose individual units were apparently moving at random: yet which was as a whole still following the orbit of Roger's planetoid. Space was full of machine parts, structural members, furniture, flotsam of all kinds; and everywhere were the bodies of men. Some were encased in space-suits, and it was to these that the rescuers turned first—space-hardened ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... the well-ordered estate laid waste;—the peasants killed or hiding in the woods;—the mansion smashed, and its elegant furniture;—the squire, the kindly-severe religious matron his mother the young wife,—gracious lady of the house,— and the bonny children:—they are hacked corpses lying at random in the wrecked salons, or in the trampled garden where my lady's flowers now grow wild. The land went out of cultivation; the populace, what remained of it, crowded into the walled cities, there to frowse in mental and physical stuffiness until the Middle Ages were ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Natalya pulled herself together, got up, wiped her eyes, and, lighting a candle, she burnt Rudin's letter in the flame, and threw the ash out of window. Then she opened Pushkin at random, and read the first lines that met her. (She often made it her oracle in this way.) This ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... masonry of the wall is carefully dressed but not regularly coursed. Other primitive walls and gates showing openings and embryonic arches of various forms, are found widely scattered, at Samos and Delos, at Phigaleia, Thoricus, Argos and many other points. The very earliest are hardly more than random piles of rough stone. Those which may fairly claim notice for their artistic masonry are of a later date and of two kinds: the coursed, and the polygonal or Cyclopean, so called from the tradition that they were built by the Cyclopes. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... questionable news, and habitually indulge in the luxury of sincere editorial opinion. There are some exceptions to the rule. In our own day we have seen a proletarian paper become a magnificent editorial organ, while somewhat illogically maintaining a random and sensational policy in its news columns. But generally the distinction is unmistakable. Imagine the plight of New York journalism if four papers, which I need not mention, ceased publication. It would mean a distinct and immediate cheapening of the mentality of the city. Then observe ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... quite possible to preserve random shapes and rock faces in stonework that is structurally good, yet still fail in a measure to please the eye and satisfy the artistic sense. A house built of stones which, although irregular and of variable size, are generally cubical in shape ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... that he knows the end they have in view: this, unfortunately, is the rock he splits upon. According to his own admission, the ways of God are impenetrable to man. If we grant his position, what is the result? Why, that it is at random he speaks. If these ways are impenetrable, by what means did he acquire his knowledge of them? How did he discover the end proposed by the Deity? If they are not impenetrable, they then can be equally known to other men as ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... if, as is very certain, no one would envy the madman the glow and originality of his conceptions, why must we extol the cultivation of that intellect which is the prey, not indeed of barren fancies but of barren facts, of random intrusions from without, though not of morbid imaginations from within? And in thus speaking, I am not denying that a strong and ready memory is in itself a real treasure; I am not disparaging a well-stored mind, though it be nothing besides, provided it be sober, any ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... foretaste of the fulfilment of this promise, the company disposed of a second bottle of liqueur, and, becoming excited, they chattered at random for some time, but at length slowly dispersed, and the street relapsed into the silence of night. But, a few hours later, the inhabitants were surprised to see the two ends occupied by unknown people, while other ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... "strange things" of which Sastre had spoken in his sermon. Margery had taken the precaution of fastening the door before she commenced the study of the book. After the first glance which had made her acquainted with the particulars above noticed, she opened the book at random near the middle, and her eye fell ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... reference to the variations of a particular character, the variations group themselves so as to be described by identical or similar curves of error. It is certainly significant that this is true for such diverse characters, cited at random from the lists of the literature, as the number of ray-flowers of white daisies, the number of ribs of beech leaves, and of the bands upon the capsules of poppies, for the shades of color of human eyes, for the ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... coincidence, but must be consequent on the members of the same family inheriting something in common in their constitution. Let it be assumed that, in a large population, a particular affection occurs on an average in one out of a million, so that the a priori chance that an individual taken at random will be so affected is only one in a million. Let the population consist of sixty millions, composed, we will assume, of ten million families, each containing six members. On these data, Professor Stokes has calculated for me that the odds will be no less than 8333 millions to 1 that in ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... more warning than a cry, the signal for the onslaught, and the sudden scuffling noise of several pair of feet, he wheeled, found himself already closely pressed by a number of men, and struck out at random. His stick landed on somebody's head with a resounding thump followed by a yell of pain. Then three men were grappling with him, two more seeking to aid them, and another lay in the roadway clutching a fractured skull ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... into a half unconsciousness, put her a question and then answer it himself, drop into the veiled tone of voice of one soliloquising, and leave her at last as though he had forgotten her existence. It was odd, too, that in all this random converse, not a fact of his past life, and scarce a name, should ever cross his lips. A profound reserve kept watch upon his most unguarded moments. He spoke continually of himself, indeed, but still in enigmas; a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... many of these pages catch with exquisite skill the subtle charm of the country between land and wave, as it would present itself to a receptive summer visitor rather than the returned native. Mr. SYMONS' similes are essentially urban; the sea (to take an example at random) has for him "something of the colour of absinthe." In fine, though he can and does get into his pages much of the exhilaration of a tramp over heathery cliffs "smelling of honey and sea wind," one retains throughout a not unpleasing consciousness of Paddington. I have left myself too little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... jargon. He must write "crittur" or "craythur," when he means "creature"; he says "Yiss, ma'am, I'd be glad to jine the Book Club"; he uses the word "galore"; he talks of "the resipiscential process" when he means growing wiser—at least I think that is what he means. The following, taken quite at random, are specimens of the sort ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... then it swung forward with increased speed. The river at this point sank into darkness, save when the lightning flared across it, and the Indian bullets, which still came like the rain itself, were of necessity fired at random, ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... too, his friends were convinced that he was not talking at random, and that when he spoke of the "fort" near at hand he ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... monstrous and odious uniformity: and the evil is here aggravated, not in merely direct proportion with the augmentation of its sources, but in a ratio constantly increasing. In fact, a room with four or five mirrors arranged at random, is, for all purposes of artistic show, a room of no shape at all. If we add to this evil, the attendant glitter upon glitter, we have a perfect farrago of discordant and displeasing effects. The veriest bumpkin, on entering an apartment so bedizzened, would be instantly aware of something ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... spirit like this. Doubtless his early renderings of random choice were weird, but more and more as he went on, the great living things righted themselves in his consciousness, for he had ear and soul and love for them. Some great fissure in his nature had ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... The ferridge or cloak, worn by this "Queen of the Sweet Waters," was thrown loosely on her shoulders, disclosing a dress remarkable for its elegant simplicity. Her veil of white gauze, worked at the ends with silk and gold, floated at random over her head and shoulders; a rich shawl was bound round her waist, and served to confine the tunic close to her bust: the remainder of her dress was of muslin, plain, neat, and of the purest white. She appeared perfectly ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... and Jimmy, looking at him, could see that all was not well with him. He was pale. He talked at random. A slight perspiration ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... years ago looks the same, for it is past, it is no more. Life is not short, but in retrospect it seems to be, and its memories are distant, as they float like fish in the oceans of time, lacking both definition and scale, and hanging lifelessly around in random arrays. Every moment is of the same length, but a moment in the past is nothing, its thoughts and emotions are nothing, they are gone and useless to the present, while a moment in the future is long and touchable. A thought that is past is as nothing, and it is forgotten, for the past ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... effective service. With many a soft thud upon the sward and leaves the burrs rained around, while the detached chestnuts rattled down like hail. The children were careering about this little tempest of Jeff's manufacture in a state of wild glee, dodging the random burrs, and snatching what nuts they could in safety on the outskirts of the prickly shower. At last the tree was well thrashed, and bad the appearance of a school-boy bully who, after bristling with threats and boasts for ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... streets, and walked up and down the unfrequented side of a gloomy square. Once he turned and retraced his steps in the direction of Fitzgeorge-street. But after all this hesitation he walked home, and ate his dinner very thoughtfully, answering his young wife at random when she talked to him. He was a struggling man, who had invested his small fortune in the purchase of a practice which had turned out a very poor one, and he had the battle of life ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... of theology, as a direct and separate branch of study, the points are so many at which theology inosculates with philosophy, and with endless casual and random suggestions of the self- prompted reason, that inevitably from that same moment in which I began to find a motive for directing my thoughts to this new subject, I wanted not something to say that might have perplexed an antagonist, or (in default ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to and fro, he stopped before a shelf where, beside some coarse eating utensils and the heap of tobacco pegs, the cutting of which occupied his spare moments, lay a little worn book. It had been Godwyn's. He opened it at random, and read a few verses. With a heavy sigh he laid his arm along the shelf and rested his burning forehead upon it. "'Let not your heart be troubled,'" he said beneath his breath; and again, "'Let not your ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... fear shot through her. Nine valleys in every ten, she knew, ended in surmountable divides; and she knew, also, that one valley in every ten did not. Suppose this one that she had chosen at random terminated in a cul-de-sac? The way became steeper. Running was out of the question, and her horse was forging upward in a curious scrambling walk. A noise of clattering rocks sounded behind her, and Patty glanced backward straight ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... Vice, secure and bold, Lord it with all her sons, whilst Virtue's groan Meets with compassion only from the throne. Enough of Patriots—all I ask of man Is only to be honest as he can: 90 Some have deceived, and some may still deceive; 'Tis the fool's curse at random to believe. Would those, who, by opinion placed on high, Stand fair and perfect in their country's eye, Maintain that honour, let me in their ear Hint this essential doctrine—Persevere. Should they (which Heaven forbid) to win the grace Of some proud courtier, or to gain a place, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... houses. Negroes talking politics were occasionally visited and warned—sometimes with physical violence—to keep silent. On election day determined men with rifles or shotguns, ostensibly intending to go hunting after they had voted, gathered around the polls. An occasional random shot might kick up the dust near an approaching negro. Men actually or apparently the worse for liquor might stagger around, seeking an excuse for a fight. It is not surprising that among the negroes the impression that it was unwise to ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... minutes after that, when her husband suddenly asked her a question, Mrs. Bunting answered at random. It was clear she had not heard the last few words he ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... mournful, chords, In random rhythm lightly flung From off the wire, came shaped in words; And thus, ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... concise synthesis. One resorts to figures of speech, and they were abundantly resorted to by those who paid him the tribute of their admiration and love upon the occasion of his seventieth anniversary. Let us take an instance at random ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... of Sir Launcelot Greaves. "The great northern road!" It was that over which the youthful Smollett made his way to London in 1739; it was that over which, less than nine years later, he sent us travelling in company with Random and Strap and the queer people whom they met on their way. And so there is the promise that Smollett, after his departure in Count Fathom from the field of personal experience which erstwhile he cultivated so successfully, has returned to see if the ground will yield ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... face, and he turned presently to regard his companion with an enquiry which might have been darkly furtive had not the luminous publicity in which he moved rendered the smallest of his mental processes so brilliantly overt. It was immediately plain to Adams that the jerky sentences were shot out at random in order that Perry's slow mind might gain a larger space in which to grope for the word he really wanted. There was something evidently behind it all, and until the situation should disclose itself they walked on in an embarrassed and waiting silence. In his top hat and his mink-lined ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... his box. His seaman's chest was a deal box, bought in Paimpol, to keep all his loved treasures in; inside were letters from Granny Yvonne, and also from Yann and Gaud, a copy-book into which he had copied some sea-songs, and one of the works of Confucius in Chinese, caught up at random during pillage; on the blank sides of its leaves he had written the simple account of ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... second feature of this philosophy consisted in the elucidation of the changes that happen in the physical world, a long series of which is here set forth by the Poet; truth being mingled at random with fiction. While some of his facts are based upon truth, others seem to have only emanated from the fertile invention of the travellers of those days; of the latter kind are the stories of the river ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso |
