"Unconstrained" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attention to the private soldiers, and to see that they had plenty of the best to eat and to drink. These are the longest repasts I have seen the emperor make; and on these occasions he was amiable and entirely unconstrained, making every effort to put his guests entirely at their ease, though with many of them this was a difficult task. Nothing was more amusing than to see these brave soldiers sitting two feet from-the table, not daring to approach their plates or the food, red to the ears, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... down over the shoulders in front; or, more often, one end is thrown over the opposite shoulder, so that the young lady's face is set in it, like a picture in a frame. Add to this a springy step, the peculiarly unconstrained movement in walking which comes of living in the open air and wearing a loose dress, a pleasant pale face, small features, bright eyes, small hands and feet, little slippers and no stockings, and you have as good a picture of a Mexican half-caste girl as I can give. A book of Mexican ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... and generally locked. I was never admitted into this strong-hold, where the old man would remain for the greater part of the time, drawn up like a veteran spider in the citadel of his web. The rest of the mansion, however, was open to me, and I sauntered about it unconstrained. The damp and rain which beat in through the broken windows, crumbled the paper from the walls; mouldered the pictures, and gradually destroyed the furniture. I loved to rove about the wide, waste chambers in bad weather, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... so imperative as that of Rob Roy, should have defied all control within forty miles of the city of Glasgow, an important and commercial city. "Thus," as Sir Walter Scott observes, "a character like his, blending the wild virtues, the subtle policy, and unconstrained licence of an American Indian, was flourishing in Scotland during the Augustan age of Queen Anne and George the First. Addison, it is probable, and Pope, would have been considerably surprised if they had known that there existed, in the same island ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... clattering, almost convulsive strokes, to seek to gesticulate and dance and leap. And Berlioz possessed this elemental feeling for rhythm. Schumann was convinced on hearing the "Symphonie Fantastique" that in Berlioz music was returning to its beginnings, to the state where rhythm was unconstrained and irregular, and that in a short while it would overthrow the laws which had bound it so long. So, too, it seems to us, despite all the rhythmical innovations of our time. The personality that could beat out exuberantly music as rhythmically ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... through this obedience a great deal that is charming and sweet in daily intercourse. For him and for Madame de Maintenon the great and inexhaustible attraction of the Duchess of Burgundy was her gayety and unconstrained ease, tempered by the most delicate respect, which this young princess, on coming as quite a child to France from the court of Savoy, had tact enough to introduce, and always maintain, amidst the most intimate familiarity. "In public, demure, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... but affectation and false shame are the contrary. Refinement was rather overworked, and there has been a reaction of late; simplicity and unconstraint have been the fashion, but unfortunately some dispositions are not made to be unconstrained.' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... air, And a glimpse of white teeth glancing And a laughing face beneath tossing hair; An orgy, a revel, a living joy, Embodied in one slim woodland boy, Dancing forward, backward, now here, now there, Swaying to every impulse unconstrained. ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... without a certain infusion of democracy; but it was for the most part essential to their national interest that such an infusion should be strictly limited. In Europe the two ideals have never been allowed a frank and unconstrained relation one to the other other. They have been unable to live apart; but their marriage has usually been one of convenience, which was very far from implying complete mutual dependence and confidence. No doubt the collective interests of the German or British ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... under conditions of external constraint, as will be urged more fully further on, and that in fact the special conditions of old age do not and cannot express the true law and tendency of the dynamic relations of life in the face of its evident advance upon the Earth. The law of the unconstrained cell is growth on an ever increasing scale; and although we assume the organic configuration, whether somatic or reproductive, to be essentially unstable, so that continual inflow of energy is ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... degree a spoilt child of fortune; he acquired everything without effort; existence fitted him like an elegant dress, and he wore it with such unconstrained amiability that people forgot ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... kind. No doubt, we may describe it positively as a possibility of free movement, and such a description is at once true and important. Yet even it involves a negative. The term "free" is in reality, though not in form, a negative term and means "unconstrained." And the reason why such a term is necessarily negative is to be found in the fact that a state of dynamic constraint is the essential condition under which we enter upon our organic existence. Freedom is a negation of the Actual. ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... affairs, from marriage, from the family, hands him over, with all his sentiments and all his faculties, to social worldliness, him and all that belong to him. Below him fine ways and forced politeness prevail, even with his servants and tradesmen. A Frontin has a gallant unconstrained air, and he turns a compliment.[2241] An Abigail needs only to be a kept mistress to become a lady. A shoemaker is a "monsieur in black," who says to a mother on saluting the daughter, "Madame, a charming young person, and I am more sensible than ever of the value of your kindness," ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... with the same benevolence, which already goes for a good deal. But what is extremely poignant is at the end of the seance to see the people who came in gloomy, bent, almost hostile (they were in pain), go away like everybody else; unconstrained, cheerful, sometimes radiant (they are no longer in pain!!). With a strong and smiling goodness of which he has the secret, M. Coue, as it were, holds the hearts of those who consult him in his hand; he addresses himself in turn to the numerous persons who come ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... is spoken of as "free by nature," the mode of his existence as well as his destiny is implied; his merely natural and primary condition is intended. In this sense a "state of nature" is assumed in which mankind at large is in the possession of its natural rights with the unconstrained exercise and enjoyment of its freedom. This assumption is not raised to the dignity of the historical fact; it would indeed be difficult, were the attempt seriously made, to point out any such condition as actually existing or as having ever occurred. Examples of a savage state of life can be ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... of old friends and of old times, but their talk was not all unconstrained, because, you see, they couldn't refer to those former times and scenes without recalling, involuntarily, some day or some hour when they two were together, and when there seemed a chain between their hearts which nothing in the world ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... his astonishment; and the king was so delighted with the superiority which it gave him at the moment, that he rubbed his hands, chuckled, and finally, his sense of dignity giving way to the full feeling of triumph, he threw himself into his easy-chair, and laughed with unconstrained violence till he lost his breath, and the tears ran plentifully down his cheeks as he strove to recover it. Meanwhile, the royal cachinnation was echoed out by a discordant and portentous laugh from behind the arras, like that of one who, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... King—for he flattered both his ministers and his mistresses—he, nevertheless, mingled with his respectful demeanour the demeanour of a brother, and the free and easy ways of one. In private, he was yet more unconstrained; always taking an armed chair, and never waiting until the King told him to sit. In the Cabinet, after the King appeared, no other Prince sat besides him, not even Monseigneur. But in what regarded his service, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... against the inclemency of the heavens. All then was peace, all amity, all concord. The heavy colter of the crooked plough had not yet dared to force open and search into the tender bowels of our first mother, who, unconstrained, offered from every part of her fertile and spacious bosom whatever might feed, sustain, and delight those, her children, by whom she was ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... we have, must have been more elegant and moral, as when he introduced the goddesses contending for the prize of beauty, or Nausicaa offering protection to the shipwrecked Ulysses. It is a striking feature of the easy unconstrained character of life among the Greeks, of its gladsome joyousness of disposition, which knew nothing of a starched and stately dignity, but artist-like admired aptness and gracefulness, even in the most ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... me; tha t her constant companionship might, for all I knew, become intolerably tedious to me; that I could not answer for my feelings for a week in advance, much less to the end of my life; that to cut me off from all natural and unconstrained relations with the rest of my fellow creatures would narrow and warp me if I submitted to it, and, if not, would bring me under the curse of clandestinity; that, finally, my proposals to her were wholly unconnected with any of these matters, and were the outcome of a perfectly simple ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... failing to understand a word of this explanation, had given themselves up to the unconstrained enjoyment of the sweets, began now to apprehend that some change was impending, and prepared for the worst by hastily swallowing what they had in their mouths, thus defying enchantment, and getting ready for speech. Polly, who had closely ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... considerations, which perhaps in the study seemed too familiar, and to employ modes of address, which are allowable in personal communion with a friend, but which one hesitates to commit to writing, lest he should infringe the dignity of deliberate composition. This forgetfulness of self, this unconstrained following the impulse of the affections, while he is hurried on by the presence and attention of those whom he hopes to benefit, creates a sympathy between him and his hearers, a direct passage from heart to heart, ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... enough for her not to be alone in her surprise at his absenting himself before he at length made his appearance, just before luncheon, so as to miss the unconstrained morning hours he used so much to enjoy. He found Guy, Charles, and Amy, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dancer. The head should be kept up and the chest open: the body will then attain an advantageous position, and that steadiness so much required in good walking. The arms should fall in their natural position, and all their movements and oppositions to the feet be easy and unconstrained. The employment of soldiers to teach young ladies how to walk, which, we are sorry to say, is a practice adopted by many parents and heads of seminaries, is much to be deprecated. The stiffness acquired under regimental tuition, is adverse to all the principles ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... arrived from Bristol at Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He answered in some degree to his friend's description of him, but was more gaunt and Don Quixote-like. He was quaintly dressed (according to the costume of that unconstrained period) in a brown fustian jacket and striped pantaloons. There was something of a roll, a lounge in his gait, not unlike his own Peter Bell. There was a severe, worn pressure of thought about his temples, a fire in his eye (as if he saw something in objects more than the outward ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... alike gravitated towards the Demoiselle de Luxemburg for sympathy. He could but hover on the outskirts, conscious that he must cut a ridiculous figure, but unable to detach himself from the neighbourhood of the magnet. As he looked back on the happy weeks of unconstrained intercourse, when he came to her as freely as did these young girls with all his troubles, he felt as if the King had destroyed all his joy and peace, and yet that these flutterings of heart and agonies of shame and fits of despair were worth all ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge |
