"Unintentional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with them a boy of eleven or twelve, Samuel Lloyd Osbourne, to be much referred to later (a son of Mrs Stevenson by a former marriage), whose delight was to draw the oddest, but perhaps half intentional or unintentional caricatures, funny, in some cases, beyond expression. His room was designated the picture-gallery, and on entering I could scarce refrain from bursting into laughter, even at the general effect, and, noticing this, and that I was putting some restraint on myself out ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... pardon—it was quite unintentional on my part. I trust you are not offended? Will you allow me to introduce myself? I am Captain C—, of the —. Will you permit me to present my card, and to say how happy I shall be to make your acquaintance?" So saying, the third gentleman presented me with his card, and returned the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... think lightly of half a dozen lions seen drinking through the twilight at the very same pond or river as himself. Nobody can have any wish to undervalue the adventurous gallantry of Mr. G. Cumming. But, in the single case of the Cape lion, there is an unintentional advantage taken from the traditional name of lion, as though the Cape lion were such as that which ranges ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... of Monsieur the Viscount's thoughts. No more selfish reflections now. He must comfort this poor creature, of whose death he was to be the unintentional cause. Antoine's first anxiety was that Monsieur the Viscount should bear witness that the gaoler had treated him kindly, and so earned the blessing and not the curse of Monsieur le Cure, whose powerful ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... love and forgiveness that we can ever comprehend the infinite love and forgiveness of God. If any of you have ever thought he wronged you, in some small, insignificant way, I give you my word that it was entirely unintentional, and I bespeak for ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... the Mosaic Deluge must be considered a preternatural event, far beyond the reach of philosophical enquiry; not only as to the causes employed to produce it, but as to the effects most likely to result from it; that determination wears an aspect of scepticism, which, however much soever it may be unintentional in the mind of the writer, yet cannot but produce an evil impression on those who are already predisposed to carp and cavil ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... to cooeperate with Burgoyne was no doubt the most fatal military blunder made by the British in the whole course of the war. The failure was of course unintentional on Howe's part. He meant to extend sufficient support to Burgoyne, but the trouble was that he attempted too much. He had another plan in his mind at the same time, and between the two he ended by accomplishing nothing. While he kept one eye on Albany, he kept the other ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... humanity would never be left absolutely void of the means of instruction, nor any worthy human achievement be absolutely lost or forgotten. The experience of these later years has demonstrated the value of such legacies even when unintentional, unselected, and wretchedly fragmentary. It has made clear also how a legacy deliberately made may ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... think this is an excellent, though unintentional, pun. "Pudor" is Spanish for "shame," but this meaning makes the sentence difficult to read (at best), although it does convey the intent. I think that the word intended is "powder," but left the original in case I ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... crisis, left his "bike" under the care of the proprietor of an hotel in Normandy. In the morning he found the tyres slashed to pieces, and on the saddle a gummed envelope, on which was bravely written, "Fashoda." This was unintentional mortuary poetry. The gallant Frenchman who did the daring deed when the owner of the "bike" was asleep did not realise that the word itself was a splendid mortuary epic for ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... even the unintentional killing of a man is punished with a two-year term at hard labour—which is exactly what one ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... the first Sunday I spent in this prison. I was very nearly getting reported to the governor for a very unintentional violation of the prison rules. In accordance with these rules, convicts were not allowed to turn their heads in any direction in chapel, and if they did so they were taken by the attendant officer before the governor, who punished them for disobedience. I cannot but suppose that ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... representation of a statue on a high pedestal. The centre piece comprises a double action. In one part we see a rocky grotto, in which Diana was bathing when the unwary hunter made his appearance above: in the other he is torn by his own dogs, a severe punishment for an unintentional intrusion. The background represents a wild and mountainous landscape. A painted frieze, and other paintings on the walls, complete ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... to carry considerable weight with her. For a day or two after our somewhat sanguinary encounter, she was prone to start—even to jump slightly—when I addressed myself to her with unintentional directness. She soon got over ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... most stately of earthly institutions is a peculiarly modest, truthful, and unintentional epigram ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... commentator calls it, of piercing the exposed child's feet in order to ensure its death and yet avoid having actually murdered it (Schol. Eur. Phoen., 26); the whole treatment of the parricide and incest, not as moral offences capable of being rationally judged or even excused as unintentional, but as monstrous and inhuman pollutions, the last limit of imaginable horror: all these things take us back to dark regions of pre-classical and even pre-homeric belief. We have no right to suppose ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... may not be. St. Augustine needed years to feel the spell that one word, nay, one glance from Christ cast upon St. Peter. Nor again is it always in some striking and notable crisis that a character reveals itself abruptly, but often in the merest nuance—a manner, an intonation, something quite unintentional, unpremeditated. We know well, if we know ourselves at all, how irresistible is the impression created on us at times by such trifles, and yet how more than reasonable ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... be afraid: it wont overtax your brain. My father was 44 when I was born. My mother was 41. There was twelve years between me and the next eldest. I was unexpected. I was probably unintentional. My brothers and sisters are not the least like me. Theyre the regular thing that you always get in the first batch from young parents: quite pleasant, ordinary, do-the-regular-thing sort: all body and no brains, ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... well on the whole, though some whimpered that she had not taken them as far as she took Nancy or Grace or Dorothy, and others jagged her, but it was quite unintentional, and she was too much of a lady to cry out. So much walking tired her, and she was anxious to be off to the ball, but she no longer felt afraid. The reason she felt no more fear was that it was now night-time, and in the dark, you remember, Maimie was ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... I should think. We didn't speak of details; they were postponed. You will hear everything yourself. And she suggested all sorts of ways,' pursued Virginia, with quite unintentional exaggeration, 'in which we could make better use of our invested money. She is full of practical expedients. The most wonderful person! She is quite like a man in energy and resources. I never imagined ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... demanded purity, continence and self-mastery. The other point of view—I don't think this was clear to me at the time; I don't believe that I intentionally pursued this course with the object in view that it actually accomplished; nevertheless, whether intentional or unintentional, planned or unplanned, the effect was produced. The physical work required of me was light, very light, and all my leisure time was spent in study. I studied so hard and so conscientiously that I tired ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... margin after it, from whence it slipped into the text:—accidents to be much regretted, as, from Professor Smyth's remarks to the Society on the 20th April, they had evidently given him much, but most unintentional offence.] ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... expression to the human capacities of sublimity or of horror. We read it in the fearful composition of the sphinx. The dragon, again, is the snake inoculated upon the scorpion. The basilisk unites the mysterious malice of the evil eye, unintentional on the part of the unhappy agent, with the intentional venom of some other malignant natures. But these horrid complexities of evil agency are but objectively horrid; they inflict the horror suitable to their compound ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... threatens, he refuses to give you support while you are exploring the field of literature, you should feel grateful to him for this unintentional incentive to success. ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... criticism of the pictures was one of great despondency to Dennis. He had read in Christine's face that he had wounded her sorely; and, though she knew it to be unintentional, would it not prejudice her mind against him, and snap the slender thread by which he hoped to draw across the gulf between them the cord, and then the cable, that might in time ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... his, in retranslating and fusing them with Pipino's version for the Navigationi, made those minor modifications in names and other matters which we have already noticed. The mere facts of digestion from memoranda and double translation would account for a good deal of unintentional corruption. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... secret and undreamable bonds were being established. They it was that could have given the cue to her saying yes when she had meant to say no. And in some such fashion, in some future crisis of greater moment, might she not, in violation of all dictates of sober judgment, give another unintentional consent? ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... injury soon spread about the college, it was reported merely as one of those unintentional happenings for which no one was actually culpable. The owners of cherished cars were canny enough to realize that to capitalize the accident meant jeopardy to their privileges. All knew that a certain important college for girls had recently banned cars. None were anxious that Hamilton College ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... much matter what particular arrangement we adopt, so long as it is comprehensive enough to include all our cases; perhaps a convenient one will be to group them under the broad divisions of intentional and unintentional clairvoyance in space, with an intermediate class that might be described as semi-intentional—a curious title, but I ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... back to me. "You probably understand, Mr. Lyndon, that this unfortunate affair with the police alters our plans entirely. At present I am quite unable to see how they have found you out, unless you have betrayed yourself by some piece of unintentional carelessness. Anyhow, the fact remains that they know where you are, and that very probably they will be able to ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... by this unintentional eavesdropping on my part, was the source of much reflection—and as I lay on the bed without taking off my clothes, it occupied my thoughts till the day began to break. That I still retained the good opinion of Miss Trevannion ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... These unintentional misdoings are the "sins" one repents of all one's life long: I have others stored away, the bitterest of small things done or undone in haste and repented of at so much leisure afterwards. And always done to people or things I had no grudge against, sometimes even ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... infallibly have called forth, Ottima would, I believe, without Pippa have saved herself. Direct intervention: not every soul needs that. And—whether it be intentional or not, I feel unable to decide, nor does it lose, but rather gain, in interest, if it be unintentional—one of the most remarkable things in this remarkable artistic experiment, this drama in which the scenes "have in common only the appearance of one figure," is that by each of the Four Passings of Pippa, a ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... came. His Royal Highness expressed to the Military authorities and the House of Commons his apologies for an unintentional infraction of Army regulations; it was pointed out that playing a game of cards in a private house was not setting a public example and that the situation was so unique that any man in the Prince's place would have ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... brought the story of John Scott up to the night of the banker's murder, and his own unintentional share in the tragedy. ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... over-inflect. Too much modulation produces an unpleasant effect of artificiality, like a mature matron trying to be kittenish. It is a short step between true expression and unintentional burlesque. Scrutinize your own tones. Take a single expression like "Oh, no!" or "Oh, I see," or "Indeed," and by patient self-examination see how many shades of meaning may be expressed by inflection. This sort of common-sense practise will do you more good than a book of rules. But don't forget ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... even clearer than the trader intended. He was supposed to take the piece of grim humour as a reassurance. The derisive banter was an unintentional notification that he could expect to be murdered immediately after the finding of the lost lode. But until then he must ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... my damnation) I have gained. I am sure you will sympathise. It is hard work to sleep; it is hard to be told you are a liar, and have to hold your peace, and think, 'Yes, by God, and a thief too!' You remember my lectures on Ajax, or the Unintentional Sin? Well, I know all about that now. Nothing seems so unjust to the sufferer: or is more just in essence. LAISSEZ PASSER ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the captain departed; and as we did not doubt that the message which he had delivered had been suggested by some unintentional misconstruction of O'Connor's first billet, we felt assured that the conclusion of his last note would set the matter at rest. In this belief, however, we were mistaken; before we had left the table, and in an incredibly short time, the captain returned. He entered the room with a countenance evidently ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... disregarded, dried her eyes and set herself to fill the poor child's infrequent leisure with anti-toxin injections of the higher morality as conveyed in the poetry of TENNYSON. You now take my meaning when I speak of Mr. INGE as sufficiently single-minded to brave some danger of unintentional humour. Really my sketch has done less than justice to a story that will hold your interest, if only for the sincerity with which it is handled; for myself I was first impatient, then derisive, finally curious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... my son, forbear, interrupted Mr. Grant. These angry passions most be subdued. The accidental injury you have received from Judge Temple has heightened the sense of your hereditary wrongs. But remember that the one was unintentional, and that the other is the effect of political changes, which have, in their course, greatly lowered the pride of kings, and swept mighty nations from the face of the earth. Where now are the Philistines, who so often held the children of Israel in bondage? or ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... while Magdalen succeeded in saying what she had intended—that Hubert must not consider himself in the smallest degree bound by what had been accident, entirely unintentional and innocent. ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to determine if Father Greer deliberately devised this felicitous amalgamation of the two words that were in his mind, or if it was unintentional, and an indication that Barty's brief flare of revolt had flustered him a little. I am inclined to the latter theory. In any case, the word is a ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... liable to severe punishment—in some cases even unto death. Some of the crimes that can be charged to the feathered tribe are cherry and berry-stealing, grape-puncturing, apple-pecking, corn-pulling, grain-eating, the unintentional carrying from place to place of some kinds of scale insects that happen to crawl on their legs and feet, the possible spreading of hog cholera by crows and buzzards, the robbing of the poultry yard, and lastly some birds are accused of making noises that ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... distress you, my dear girl," he replied soothingly; "we should perhaps make some allowance for unintentional exaggeration. There are always two sides to a story, and we have ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... of listening, with the head a little bent on one side, to the most trivial subject broached by a friend in conversation, as if it was of the deepest importance, which pleased you with its unintentional flattery. With true Christian politeness he never interrupted you, but, if the subject was an important one, he would come down with some unanswerable view which at once approved itself to the listener as the course to be followed: 'Hope ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... 'Please excuse this unintentional break.... I fancied the door creaked.... No, she's not coming yet, the heartless wretch! You will ask me how all this is going to end, and what I intend to do with myself, and whether I shall stay here long? I know nothing about it, my boy, and I don't want to. What will be, will be.... Why, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... be generous enough to try to do so, you will make me less unhappy. If you accept the sum I enclose you to meet the expenses of your journey, I shall be less miserable. By taking it you will prove that you pity and forgive me,—the unintentional cause of so much evil to you and your excellent mother." George enclosed a check for five hundred dollars, all he had saved from his earnings as a clerk for ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... fundamental issues McCloy thought the board did "not speak with the complete clarity necessary," but he considered the ambiguity unintentional. Experience showed, he reminded the secretary, "that we cannot get enforcement of policies that permit of any possibility of misconstruction." Directness, he said, was required in place of equivocation based on delicacy. If the Gillem Board intended black officers to command white officers ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... in reply to my letter and cannot help saying that I feel very hurt at your decided refusal to allow me to take you out. I thought we were to be friends? Have I been so unfortunate as to offend you? If so, I can only assure you that it has been utterly unintentional. Won't you let me see you, if only for a moment? I will meet you at any time or place.— Yours ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... customary self-possession upon the receipt of Winn's warm greeting. He was on the point of returning it in a manner that would have proved most unpleasant for poor Winn, when he discovered that his supposed assailant was only a boy, and that the act was unintentional. It took the shrewd man but a few minutes to discover the exact state of affairs aboard the raft, and to form a plan for gaining peaceful, if not altogether lawful, possession of it. This plan he began to carry out by the ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... his style, the skill with which he uses seemingly indifferent incidents and sayings to trick out and light up his pictures, the apparently unintentional and therefore most effective touches of pathos, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... he accidentally told Crofter he was a beast yesterday. He did not know it was him when he saw him, or he would not have told him what Tempest said about him, which was quite unintentional. He also must explain that what he said about his being expelled was in consequence of a dog's death, about which there was a misunderstanding. He hopes Crofter will not tell him he told him, as he would be ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... I'm like you," Graham said, "that commoner and lesser creature, a genius. For I, too, on occasion, flare and do the most unintentional things. And I am not above falling on my knees ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... grandeur, to the noise and the rush, and he had divined more and more the careless good-nature and friendly indifference of the vast, sprawling, ungainly metropolis. There were happy moments when he felt a poetry unintentional and unconscious in it, and he thought there was no point more favorable for the sense of this than Stuyvesant Square, where they had a flat. Their windows looked down into its tree-tops, and across them to the truncated towers of St. George's, and to the plain ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was not the least frightened member of the party. His plunge through space had been unintentional, and when he rolled off into one corner of the cabin he ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... John Clerk rose and addressed the Bench: "I am sorry, my lords, that my young friend so far forgot himself as to treat your lordships with disrespect. He is extremely penitent, and you will kindly ascribe his unintentional insult to his ignorance. You will see at once that it did not originate in that: he said he was surprised at the decision of your lordships. Now, if he had not been very ignorant of what takes place in this Court every day; had he known your ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... been graciously acceded to, and the deputation received by his excellency in due form, the spokeswoman of the party, a young lady in spectacles, expressed the conviction, on behalf of herself and companions, that a sad but no doubt unintentional mistake had been made by his majesty in including themselves in the party sent to Comoro. They were associated, and had been so for years past, as workers together for many benevolent objects and therefore this sending of them to the "Selfish Island" was a double ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... drawl of his: "Boys, while I was back there trying to do a little something for you in Congress, I heard a lot of swell bands; but I didn't hear any such music as this little old band of ours has made to-night!" The unintentional humor somehow didn't make you ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... Prussian ideal of a State. Nietzsche was too much averse from politics to intend such an application of his teaching, which is essentially individualistic, and he had nothing but contempt for the bluster and philistinism of the Prussian State in particular. We must admit, however, that in this unintentional way he contributed to the formation of that German temper which led to the war. General von Bernhardi's admiring references to ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... thou hast served us too faithfully to be quarrelled with, for perchance unintentional irreverence. The imposition of her child's murder, when he lives and is well, is the coinage of thine own brain, sir earl, and thou must reconcile it to thine own conscience. We hold ourselves exempt from all such peculiar mercy, for we scarce see its wisdom." ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... leaves, but nothing else." The old man turned his head slightly, and replied, "What you see is the badger scratching his neck against a tree; the ticks are evidently tickling him." And he chuckled as he recognised his unintentional pun. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Kindly communicate with me there. I should like, while carrying out my elder brother's wish, to act entirely on it without troubling him in any way. He is, I am sorry to say, very ill, so ill that the least, the very least, agitation is dangerous to him. He feels with me the unintentional injustice done to your wife, but he cannot ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... some appointment at the Spanish court would follow. When he returned to Harley and told him he had accomplished the task, Harley said, "Then, Mr. Rowe, I envy you the pleasure of reading 'Don Quixote' in the original." Pope asks, "Is not that cruel?" But {32} others have held that it was unintentional on Lord Oxford's part, and merely one ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... I received your letter of the 21st inst., and in reply will say, if I have done you any wrong in my story, "Frenzied Finance," or otherwise, it has been unintentional, and I regret it, and I seek this, the first opportunity, to give my regrets the same wide circulation as my ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... had at last become no longer visible, and found a young man of about his own age standing close to him, and apparently as much lost in reverie as he had been. As in turning round Alexander brushed against him, he thought it right to apologise for the unintentional act, and this occasioned ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... moon in time to prevent their captain's unintentional defection from being seen by his troops. They had, therefore, fought on against such antagonists as, in the darkness, they could keep located. The moon reappeared, and showed many of the Hessians making for the wooded hill near ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... "Partiality, however unintentional it may be, is thus entirely obviated and every one feels satisfied that all is fair, even though one may look a little enviously at the next man's helping, which differs in some especially appreciated detail from one's own. We break ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... was, he thought, a proof of a providential order that each man, by helping himself, unintentionally helped his neighbours. The moral sense based upon sympathy was therefore not opposed to, but justified, the economic principles that each man should first attend to his own interest. The unintentional co-operation would thus become conscious and compatible with the established order. And, in the next place, so far from there being a want of humane feeling, the most marked characteristic of the eighteenth century ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... we had. It was mentioned to them, the last time that this and other movements excited our suspicion, that they were moving their troops. They said that they had noticed it themselves, and had it stopped; that it was unintentional on their part, and that it should not ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... much on cruelty as a sin against love, and distinguishes between intentional and unintentional cruelty. He says: "Intentional cruelty is purposely to give pain to another living being; and that is the greatest of all sins—the work of a devil rather than a man." The use of the cane must be classed under this, for He says of intentional cruelty: "Many schoolmasters do it habitually." ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti
... angry that she would cast him off. Probably I was mistaken, but in my despair the impulse to disclose it was almost irresistible. I struggled against it, however, and when she pressed me, I praised him and strove in my praise to be sincere. Whether it was something in my tone, quite unintentional, I know not, but she stopped me almost in the middle of a sentence and said she believed I had kept something back which I did not wish her to hear; that she was certain he had talked to me about her, and that she wished to know ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... given the order, the men had raised their pieces, and the condemned man had heard the clicks of the triggers as they were pulled back, and he had not moved. And then happened one of the most cruelly refined, though unintentional, acts of torture that one can very well imagine. As the officer slowly raised his sword, preparatory to giving the signal, one of the mounted officers rode up to him and pointed out silently—the firing squad were so placed that when ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... its subjective commotion as to mistake the suspension of all discriminating and representative faculties for a true union in things, and the blur of its own ecstasy for a universal glory. These pleasures are all on the sensuous plane, the plane of levity and unintentional wickedness; but in their own sphere they have their own value. AEsthetic and speculative emotions make an important contribution to the total worth of existence, but they do not abolish the evils of that experience on which they reflect with such ruthless satisfaction. The satisfaction ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... be good to you, for I fear the world will not." He bowed with old-fashioned courtesy over her hand and departed; yet such was his knowledge of life that now his soul was more deeply troubled than it had been since his unintentional eavesdropping on ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... discovered her to be altogether sensible and agreeable. Apparently the young English Girl Guide had understood and accepted the circumstances. She not only failed to express any show of resentment at Tory's unintentional disregard of her, she appeared not to feel ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... wishes to thank the membership for its kind reception of the Department's reports. It is ever the Chairman's design to render impartial judgment, and if harshness or captiousness may at any time have been noticed in the reports, it has in each case been unintentional. An ideal of sound conservatism has been followed, but in no instance has the critic sought to enforce upon others that peculiarly archaic style of which he is personally fond, and which he is accustomed to employ in his own compositions. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... know how to commence my answer to your letter after so long a delay which has been unintentional and unexpected, and in a great measure unavoidable. I might, indeed, and ought to have written to you when I first received it, but I then hoped it would be in my power to make you a short visit in compliance with your invitation. On this point I was kept in suspense by the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Caldecott died, a minor poet, unconsciously paraphrasing Garrick's epitaph, wrote: "For loss of him the laughter of the children will grow less." I quote the line from memory, perhaps incorrectly; if so, its author will, I feel sure, forgive the unintentional mangling. Did the laughter of the children grow less? Happily one can be quite sure it did not. So long as any inept draughtsman can scrawl a few lines which they accept as a symbol of an engine, an elephant or a pussy cat, ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... away in irrepressible sobs which shook him from head to foot. He dared not utter the word "forgiveness" yet. Unintentional as the harm might be that his hand had done, it was sadly ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... grey-bearded old soldier, leader of many a raid and victor in many a struggle, with this new revelation of beauty and purity bursting upon his later life, becomes to us a recognisable and friendly human soul in these glimpses we have of him, unintentional and by the way. Theodoric himself must have liked Malcolm, half-barbarian as he was, and even admired the look of ardent supplication which would come into the King's face, "a great intentness and emotion," such as seemed to him extraordinary ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... stiffly, "that I am as yet conspicuously superannuated. Indeed, I never felt younger in my life than I have felt during the past fortnight. I have a little touch of rheumatism to-night," he added, frankly, and at the same time gave unintentional emphasis to his admission by catching his breath and almost groaning as he slightly moved his legs, "but it has nothing to do with sitting on the rocks with Dor—with your charming niece. You forget that my rheumatism is hereditary, Port. Why, I had an attack ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... have been strongly aroused on such occasions with a child's terror of being made an exhibition before the others. As a boy at Harrow, in the form of the Rev. F.W. Farrar, afterwards Dean of Canterbury, I had an unpleasant experience, though it was no fault of his and quite unintentional. The Russian Government had sent a deputation of two learned professors to England, to inquire into the educational system of the Public Schools, with the view of sending a member of the Royal family for education in ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... reading and study of English language and literature. The early English period had always interested me, and we had not been together for two months before Field was inoculated with a ravenous taste for the English literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Its quaintness and the unintentional humor of its simplicity cast a spell over him, which he neither sought nor wished to escape. He began with the cycle of romances that treat of King Arthur and his knights, and followed them through their prose and metrical ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... character, represented in no amiable colours, bore the name of Captain Marryat." The truth of the story seems to be that the Captain went in hot wrath to Bentley, and demanded an apology or a statement that the coincidence was unintentional. Maurice replied, through his publisher, that he had never heard of Captain Marryat. It may be questioned whether the apology was not more ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... daughter, if her unhappy father dared to pray, he would invoke Heaven's choicest blessings on her young innocent head. And, Minnie love, let our baby's eyes and lips successfully plead pardon for her father's unintentional sins against the wife he never ceased ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... up the little Persian he possessed, apologized for his unintentional intrusion, mingling a good deal of English, as he said, with his rather ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the kind." He also spoke with a deliberate lowering of the note. His great desire not to wake the Colonel gave an unintentional softness to ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... an austere charm, an unintentional, unconscious attraction in her, which won every one. Her notorious origin was not visited upon her, and even the rich girls in the village gladly made her their friend. While at work in the fields ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... towel. His contemporaries, however, unlike those of Gifford's artist, do not seem to have found out the mistake, and so the betowelled monkey has come to hold a conspicuous place among the solemnities of the Cathedral. It does not seem difficult to conceive how unintentional ludicrosities of this nature, introduced into ecclesiastical erections in ages too little critical to distinguish between what the workman had purposed doing and what he had done, might come to be regarded, in a less earnest but more knowing age, as precedents for the introduction ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... therefore, the difference between the colour of the upper and lower frescos unintentional. The life of St. Francis was always full of joy and triumph. His death, in great suffering, weariness, and extreme humility. The tradition of him reverses that of Elijah: living, he is seen in the chariot of fire; dying, he submits to more than ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... always just and elegant; few writers can express truisms with greater fervour. The letters to Tacitus with whom he was throughout life in close intimacy, are among the most interesting and the fullest of unintentional humour. Tacitus was the elder of the two; and Pliny, "when very young"—the words are his own,—had chosen him as his model and sought to follow his fame. "There were then many writers of brilliant genius; ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... time, but I feel that I am about to take a trip into the hereafter from which I shall never return. If you and Ghak should manage to escape I want you to promise me that you will find Dian the Beautiful and tell her that with my last words I asked her forgiveness for the unintentional affront I put upon her, and that my one wish was to be spared long enough to right the wrong ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Keene's death Mr. Tuer's humorous vein was turned on to others of the Staff. One of his contributions may be quoted as illustrating how unintentional are the originals of some of Punch's jokes. In 1889 appeared a picture entitled "A New Trade," in which a country maid, on being asked what her last employer was, replied, "He kept a Vicarage." The circumstance had actually taken ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... had been the unintentional cause of his friend's disappointment, was equally well pleased. This pleasure, however, did not last; for, on seeing "the comrade," he received a most unpleasant impression. The man was tall and powerfully built, but the expression of his ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... each other, instead of idle reproaches. But it is mainly as a soporific, that I would recommend "Silwood:" on four different occasions, under most trying circumstances it succeeded perfectly and promptly with me, for which relief—unintentional, perchance—I tender much thanks to the unknown author, and wish "more power to ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... mischief. He was kind-hearted—he would not willingly injure the smallest living thing—but his wild, ungovernable spirit, his sense of the ludicrous in all and every circumstance, made him sometimes do unintentional harm, and his mother had some difficulty in getting him out of the scrapes into which he was always putting himself. No work he had ever done had so delighted the boyish heart of James Price, alias Pickles, as the capture of Sue from the hands of the police. The ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... that honor; and my happiness at your escape from the danger that threatened you is redoubled by the consciousness that I have been the unwilling and the unintentional cause of all the peril you have incurred. I yesterday purchased these horses of the baron; but as the baroness evidently regretted parting with them, I ventured to send them back to her, with a request that she ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 'procurator' [Greek: epitropou] of Judaea. He instituted the census not in this capacity, but as proconsul of Syria. The first procurator of Judaea was Coponius. Some of Justin's peculiarities may quite fairly be explained as unintentional. General statements without the due qualifications, such as those in regard to the massacre of the children and the conduct of the disciples in Gethsemane, are met with frequently enough to this day, and in works of a more professedly critical character than Justin's. ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... multiplied in number, and furthermore the reaction to them is intensified. In the "Arabian Nights" the princess boasts that a rose petal bruises her skin, while her competitor in delicacy is made ill by a fiber of cotton in her silken garments. So with the hyperaesthetic; an unintentional overlooking is reacted to as a deadly insult; the thwarting of any desire robs life of its savor; sounds become noises; a bit of litter, dirt; ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... could not believe the crime ever premeditated—it was sudden, unintentional, consummated in a lover's quarrel, in a fit of jealousy, rage, disappointment, madness! Stumbling upon half the truth, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... this monstrous claim, that sedition may be unintentional and may consist in some action which the Government judges by its results, one would have to hark back to the days of Judge Jeffreys, whom indeed McQueen of Braxfield resembled in ferocity, cunning, and effrontery. The insolence of Margarot at the bar to some extent ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... is and ought to be, it may be necessary for the sake of clear exposition, or to steady the course of an argument, to avoid either sophistry or unintentional confusion, that words should be defined and discriminated; and we must discuss the means of ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... glad tears in her eyes, turned and thanked Philemon by a glance that meant far more than any words. Then she went to her room, only to lie for hours staringly awake, listening to the wild whirring and whistling of the wind as she bemoaned her unintentional treachery to the aide, and sought for some method of ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Van Pelt, his wrong to Mary had been unintentional, as he was ignorant of her connection with the eclipse-glass scheme. Though Mr. Ten Eyck had been honest in advising Miss Trigillgus to abandon her plans, under the persuasion that with her limited means and want of business training ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... feast, which was sure to end in the usual way—general drunkenness—but it was well meant, and there was at least one advantage in it, that he would at once be made acquainted with all the details of garrison gossip; for, though altogether beneath contempt, they must be known in order to avoid giving unintentional offence. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... in the shape of new railway-lines and canals, fine stations, and public buildings, not to speak of the thousands of fruit-trees with which, in German fashion, they have lined the roads—a small, unintentional reparation for the murdered ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... repulsed, Grace proudly resolved to make no more overtures toward the sulking freshman. She had done everything in her power to make amends for what had been an unintentional oversight on her part, and her self respect demanded that she should allow the matter to drop. She decided that if, later on, Mildred showed a disposition to be friendly, she would meet her half way, but, until that time came, she would take ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... fingers, unintentional as it was. sent a strange thrill through the man, and, for an instant, he wavered in his recital. But he forced himself to continue. And after a few seconds the girl seemed to realize what she was doing. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... than Franz Lachner, appeared to me very droll. It is well known that Wagner has never heard this work, let alone conducted it!— Ignorance of this kind is, moreover, not the worst on the other side, where intentional and unintentional ignorance and lies (not to mince the matter) are continually being ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... back doors, if I don't know my family history," I said. "I know who I am, and something inside of me tells me where to go." And I pressed the button so hard I thought I'd broken it unintentional. ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... confident of his re-election that they insisted on a four-year term. As so amended the matter went to the people and was adopted. At the following election Mayor James Rolph, Jr., was elected for four years, two of which were an unintentional gift ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... of St. Bartholomew's Day cannot have been too humane to think of capturing, or even assassinating, two nobles, although one of them was a prince of the blood. A more probable story is that Tavannes was the unintentional instrument of the disclosure, a letter of his having fallen into Huguenot hands, containing the words: "The deer is in the net; the game is ready."[578] But, in point of fact, the Huguenots needed no such hints. With their perfect organization, in the face of so treacherous a foe, after so many ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... the time of purchase; and to avoid mistakes, let the goods be compared with these when brought home. Though it is very disagreeable to suspect any one's honesty, and perhaps mistakes are often unintentional; yet it is proper to weigh meat and grocery articles when brought in, and compare them with the charge. The butcher should be ordered to send the weight with the meat, and the checks regularly filed and ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... sheriffs, he was permitted long and frequent interviews—settled down into calmness and resignation. One thing only he would not bear to hear even from her, and that was any admission that she had been guilty of, even the slightest offence. A hint of the kind, however unintentional, would throw him into a paroxysm of fury; and the subject was consequently ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... by this time become in the last degree maudlin, and wept abundantly, inferred from the foregoing avowal, that it was his mission to communicate to others the blight which had fallen on himself; and that, being a kind of unintentional Vampire, he had had Miss Pecksniff assigned to him by the Fates, as Victim Number One. Miss Pecksniff controverting this opinion as sinful, Moddle was goaded on to ask whether she could be contented with a blighted heart; and it appearing on further ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... your gentle spirit may forgive me, but I never can forgive myself for the reckless haste that has wrought all this ruin!" groaned Herman, sinking on his knees and burying his face on the counterpane, overwhelmed by grief and remorse for the great, unintentional wrong he had done; and by the impossibility of explaining the cause of his fatal mistake to this poor girl whose ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... farm had sunk into the ground the parents could not have been more astonished than they were at hearing it thus despised, and Mildrid's silence showed that she agreed with Hans. There was something in this resolution of the young people, unintentional on their part, that, as it were, took away from the parents the right of decision; ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... apologies, assured him that it was quite unintentional, hoped that he wasn't hurt, begged his pardon; but the stranger only panted, and still he stroked his forked red beard, and ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... to the Council for Foreign Plantations in London that while he was in sober Boston town, being ignorant of the laws of the land, and having walked half an hour after sunset on Saturday night, as punishment for this unintentional and trivial offence, a constable entered his lodgings, seized him by the hair of his head, and dragged him to prison. Henderson claimed L800 damages for the detention of his vessel during his prosecution. I have always suspected that the gay captain may have misbehaved himself ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Judith had gone from hopefulness to anxiety and from anxiety to nervousness. In consequence, she failed to play on Saturday with her usual snap and vigor, and had not her teammates put forth an extra effort, her unintentional lagging would have lost them the game. As it was they won it ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... action begins in the bay. I ascribe the disappointment I have experienced to the unfortunate change of wind, and shall rejoice to learn that my reasonable expectations have been frustrated by no other cause.' 'No other cause.' The innuendo, even if unintentional, was there. Downie, a junior sailor, was perhaps suspected of 'shyness' by a very senior soldier. Prevost's poison worked quickly. 'I will convince him that the Navy won't be backward,' said Downie to his second, ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... This unintentional and wholly innocent falsehood stopped any inquiry that there might have been. MacPherson had meant to 'phone the club during the day, but he failed to do so, and it was not until evening that he walked up himself to ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... connection with this same Fafnir, as showing how necessary it is for the tourist to be careful of his personal safety in Hades, it is related that upon one occasion the keeper of the dragon having taken a grudge against Siegfried for some unintentional slight, fed Fafnir upon Roman-candles and a sky-rocket, with the result that in the fight between the hero and the demon of the wood the Siegfried was seriously injured by the red, white, and blue balls of fire which the dragon breathed out upon him, while the sky-rocket flew out ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... without being true? It was an impossibility. The more he reflected, the deeper became his conviction of the guilt of Hadley and of the existence of a plot to defame Duffel. Another idea suggested itself: "Was his daughter an intentional or an unintentional party to these transactions? Might not her dislike of Duffel and her preference for Hadley induce her to seek for some means to accomplish the disgrace of the former?" While he was weighing this supposition in the balance of his mind, he chanced to see his daughter walking ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison |
