"Unprecedented" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the farthest districts, not heard from till quite late in the day, in which Walter Hoxon had felt secure, Quigley developed unexpected strength. In great perturbation Walter swiftly patrolled the town in search of Justus; unprecedented developments were imminent, and he hardly dared face the emergency without his valiant backer at hand. Justus had disappeared as utterly as if the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... masculine equipment (I am speaking in accordance with the effete standards) in the battle which is before her. Dr. Nordan, the family physician, her parents, and those of her fiance, take her to task and endeavor to demonstrate to her the consequences of her unprecedented demand. She learns in the course of this prolonged debate that she has been living in a fool's paradise. She has been purposely (and with the most benevolent intention) deceived in regard to this question from the very cradle. Her ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Virginia. I shall have it delivered to him after the end of the war; till that time it shall not be opened.' A second despatch was addressed to his Excellency General Washington." A better lesson in courtesy was contained in a letter from Washington to him, complaining of "wanton, unprecedented and inhuman murder," which closed with the following: "I beg your Excellency to be persuaded, that it cannot be more disagreeable to you to be addressed in this language, than it is to me to offer it; but the subject ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... and unprecedented change. In the first years of this century, steam and commerce produced an enormous increase in the population. Millions of fresh human beings found employment, married, brought up children who found employment in their ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... them without making any resistance whatever; under such circumstances no further opposition could have been expected, and, consequently, their intention must have been completely defeated. What justification can there then be made to appear for the subsequent brutal, unprecedented butchery and mutilation? NONE! The most shameless and barefaced advocates and apologizers for ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... Department has decreed that owners of garments "bearing the marks of prodigal eating" will not be permitted to replace them, and the demand among the elderly dandies of Berlin for soup-coloured waistcoats is said to have already reached unprecedented figures. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... pleasant surprise to get letters from every one of my uncles the first week I got back to school. It was unprecedented. You wrote me two letters last year, Uncle David six, and Uncle Peter sixteen. He is the best correspondent, but perhaps that is because I ask him the most advice. The Christmas party was lovely. I shall never forget the expressions on all ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... utterly beyond the power of any finite causes, and entirely beyond the reach of our experience, yet some of these men admit that this miracle occurred. Supernatural events then are not impossible, nor unprecedented. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... she went home, for to-night there was no one to quarrel with. Mrs. Bubb and all the lodgers had shown that they meant to hold aloof; not even Moggie would look at her or speak a word. It was quite an unprecedented state of things, and Polly found ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... suggested substitute for the family is in the least satisfactory. Plato's is the best grounded in reason; but to succeed it would have to count on a degree of virtue absolutely unprecedented in man. To be sure, the Platonic regimen, if it demands heroism for its inception, provides in its scientific breeding and education a means of making heroism perpetual. But to submit to such reforming regulations men would first have to be ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... fact Nancy would on these occasions, retire and invest herself in some such romantic, emancipated, role. Possibly she would be a great surgeon. Having gone through her preliminary training with unprecedented speed, she had established herself as a famous specialist—of the brain. People who had gone wrong in their heads would be brought to her by their desperate friends and relatives. If she only would help them ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... thickly strewn with marginal comments in the fine, small, shaky hand she had learned to associate with Uncle Ebeneezer. The paragraph about the skull, in the tree above the treasure, had evidently filled the last reader with unprecedented admiration, for on the margin was written twice, in ink: "A very, very ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... a fatal objection to this policy that it is simple and beneficent thoroughly, which is the attribute of a moral action. An unprecedented material prosperity has not tended to make us Stoics or Christians. But the laws by which the universe is organized reappear at every point, and will rule it. The end of all political struggle is to establish morality ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... 29th, and next day they anchored at Spithead; and Cook, Wales, Hodges, and the two Forsters immediately started for London, having been away from England three years and eighteen days. During this time they had lost four men, three from accident and one from disease—a record unprecedented in the annals ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... ill-conceived fiscal stabilization measures. The aftermath of El Nino and depressed oil market of 1997-98 drove Ecuador's economy into a free-fall in 1999. The beginning of 1999 saw the banking sector collapse, which helped precipitate an unprecedented default on external loans later that year. Continued economic instability drove a 70% depreciation of the currency throughout 1999, which eventually forced a desperate government to "dollarize" the currency regime in 2000. The move ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... after three o'clock; and he sprang up and rushed out. Of course he had not undressed; his life was too strenuous for mere formalities. The stars shone above him as he ran along, wondering whether after all, though late, he could by unprecedented effort make the ordained number of handles before his master tumbled into ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... humorous side of it was too much for our self-control. Salemina, in rushing for stimulants and smelling salts, broke her only comfortable eyeglasses, and this accident, coupled with her other anxieties and responsibilities, caused her to shed tears, an occurrence so unprecedented that Francesca and I kissed and comforted her and tucked her up on the sofa. Then we sent for the doctor, gave our opera tickets to the head waiter and chambermaid, and settled down to a cheerful home evening, our first ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... remote impersonal passion for her beauty which he had felt before, had passed now into personal devotion, and tender thought of her lot. The notion of murder was absurd: no motive was discoverable, the young couple being understood to dote on each other; and it was not unprecedented that an accidental slip of the foot should have brought these grave consequences. The legal investigation ended in Madame Laure's release. Lydgate by this time had had many interviews with her, and found her more and more adorable. She talked little; but that was an additional charm. She was ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... there came a second, creating the author an officer of the Papal Order of St. Sylvester. The cardinal archbishop assured the delighted physician that such a double honour of brief and brevet was perhaps unprecedented, and suggested only that in a new edition of his book he should "insist a little more on the relation existing between the narratives of Genesis and the discoveries of modern science, in such fashion as to convince the most incredulous of their perfect agreement." The prelate urged also ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the Rajputs for support against his rebel son Khusru, he was so pleased with the zeal of the Rathor prince, Raja Gaj Singh, that he not only took the latter's hand, but kissed it, [564] perhaps an unprecedented honour. But the constant absence from his home on service in distant parts of the empire was so distasteful to Raja Sur Singh that, when dying in the Deccan, he ordered a pillar to be erected on his grave containing ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... of Sicily had devised for me unprecedented honours. So I left the island in a state of great elation, thinking that the Roman people would at once offer me everything without my seeking. But when I was leaving my province, and on my road home, I happened to land at Puteoli ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... punctuating his remarks by thumping the table. "No, things don't happen like that. No, fate does not display those refinements of cruelty and chance is not added to chance with such reckless extravagance! It was already an unprecedented chance that, on the very night on which the doctor, his man-servant and his maid were out of the house, the two ladies should be seized with labour-pains at the same hour and should bring two sons into the world ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... assistant collector, listening for a chance word that would explain the presence of armed Mexico on American soil, knew that the proprietor was also listening for that same word that might explain their unprecedented visit. Presently the assistant collector of customs began a tirade against Nogales, its climate, institutions, and citizens collectively and singly. The proprietor awoke to argument. Their talk grew loud. The assistant collector thumped the bar with his fist, and ceased talking ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... already, sociable, elated, smoking a cigar. Upstairs with the ladies he and his bon-bons had met with unprecedented success. Rickman opened ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... what has been must be; that the future is always to repeat the past, and society to tread for ever the beaten path. But can any thing be plainer than that the present condition of the world is peculiar, unprecedented? that new powers and new principles are at work? that the application of science to art is accomplishing a stupendous revolution? that the condition of the laborer is in many places greatly improved, and his intellectual aids increased? that abuses, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... unexampled, unparalleled, unprecedented, do not admit of comparison, hence such expressions as the most unexampled bravery, the most unparalleled heroism, etc., should ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... fashion, the above-mentioned robe all embroidered with roses, made of rubies and diamonds"; on a third, he "wore royal robes down to the ground, of gold brocade lined with ermine"; while "all the rest of the Court glittered with jewels and gold and silver, the pomp being unprecedented". ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... that subsequently befell us, strange and varied as they were, I have, after deliberation, determined not to record them here. In these pages I have only tried to give a short and clear account of an occurrence which I believe to be unprecedented, and this I have done, not with a view to immediate publication, but merely to put on paper while they are yet fresh in our memories the details of our journey and its result, which will, I believe, prove interesting to the world if ever we determine ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... beside himself; Sarah Stack, foolish thing! said he was in love, and was observed to look in the glass several times herself; other people did not know what to think—it was quite a mystery. To recount only a few of his unprecedented exploits on that ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... winter of unusual severity, but of unprecedented good health, they sailed out of Port Bowen on the 20th of July, the expedition being in every respect in the most perfect condition, and the season remarkably forward and fine. Pushing over to the west coast of Prince Regent's Inlet, ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... that really moved these assembled statesmen and diplomats was the fact that something new had appeared in the history of legislative chambers. A great nation had committed an outrageous wrong—that was something that had happened many times before in all countries. But the unprecedented thing was that this same nation had exposed its fault boldly to the world—had lifted up its hands and cried, "We have sinned!" and then had publicly undone its error. Proud as Page had always been of his country, that moment was perhaps ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... giving their attendance gratis. In a few years, the patients became so numerous, that in 1790 it was considered necessary to add two wings to the building. It is supported by voluntary subscription, and once in three years a music meeting is held, from which it derives unprecedented advantage. At the meeting which took place in 1817, the gross receipts, during the three days' performance, amounted to the sum of L8476. 6s. 9d., of which the treasurers of the hospital received the sum of L4290. 10s. 10d.; there not being an instance upon record of ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... not clear that you have only to step forward once again as the champions of this crowd of sufferers from injustice, and you will attain to a pinnacle of power quite unprecedented? In the days of your old empire you were leaders of the maritime powers merely—that is clear; but your new empire to-day will be universal. You will have at your backs not only your former subjects, but ourselves, and the Peloponnesians, and the king himself, with all that mighty ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... to find Alfred Somers Pierston walked homeward, moodily thinking that the desire to make reparation to the original woman by wedding and enriching the copy—which lent such an unprecedented permanence to his new love—was thwarted, as if by ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... tightening of the bonds of metre having had its due effect, an unprecedented thing occurred. In the Odes of 1868, absorbed finally into The Unknown Eros of 1877, the iambic metre is still used; but with what a new freedom, and at the summons of how liberating an inspiration! At the same time Patmore's substance is purged and his speech loosened, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... work be? Sure, you will say, it must be an allegory; or (as the writer calls it) a religious PARABLE, showing the dreadful danger of self-righteousness? I cannot tell. Attend to the sequel: which is a thing so extraordinary, so unprecedented, and so far out of the common course of human events that, if there were not hundreds of living witnesses to attest the truth of it, I would not bid any ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... with him in succession; and great was the confidence which thereby inspired the said clerks, prompting them to the perpetration of several rash and unparalleled pieces of presumption—such as drinking wine with each other (an act of free-will on their part almost unprecedented), and indulging in sundry sly pieces of covert humour, such as handing the vinegar to each other when the salt was requested, and becoming profusely apologetic upon discovering their mistake. But the wildest storm is often succeeded by the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... up from the chair in front of his fire, in which he had already begun to see images of Sylvia. This intrusion of his mother's was a thing utterly unprecedented, and somehow he at once connected its innovation with the strange manner he had remarked already. But there was complete cordiality in his welcome, and he wheeled ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... something, sir," I replied, "in the unprecedented circumstances of this meeting, and in your position with regard to that lady, which, joined to your advanced age, will enable me to regard that useless insult as unspoken. I am a married man. There is the signature of my wife's last ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... asserted for the Princeton was established during the Mexican War by her performance before Vera Cruz as a blockading ship of unprecedented efficiency, which, having been displayed under the admiring observation of a British squadron, tended more than any other single event to confirm the Admiralty in the conclusions to be drawn from the experiments just related, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... purpose in the great undertaking [that of restoring the temple, and of enlarging it on a plan of unprecedented magnificence] was that of aggrandizing himself and the nation, rather than the rendering of homage to Jehovah. His proposition to rebuild or restore the temple on a scale of increased magnificence was regarded with suspicion and ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... cleanly with sheets and pillow cases, which were in each case the property of the school girl at whose house they met, and putting up cheap scrim curtains at the two little windows, then these students of scrubology, on a stove, shining with a perhaps unprecedented coat of blacking, prepared before their somewhat dazed parents a neat and wholesome meal of such simple material as they had, set it out on a white covered table just as nicely as they are taught to do at school, and invited their parents to eat with them. This ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... well as the reference and study collections were moved to the fifth floor of the new building. The exhibits, however, will be displayed in the gallery at the southwest corner of the first floor. These exhibits, it is hoped, will show a new dimension and an unprecedented approach in displaying the development of the healing arts throughout the ages and the instruments and equipment associated with health professions. They also present the expanding objectives and plans of ...
— History of the Division of Medical Sciences • Sami Khalaf Hamarneh
... the attack with great spirit, and were received with equal spirit by the Indian wing of the enemy, and with a steady concert of action unprecedented in Indian warfare. But hardly had the Kentuckians sent forth their first volley when Proctor, too tender of his precious body even to strike a single blow for his precious booty, to say nothing of his precious honor, turned ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... having made the passage from the river Gaboon, hitherward, in seven days and fourteen hours, from anchorage to anchorage—an unprecedented run! The Macedonian has ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... 18th I found her in a state of unprecedented excitement, squeaking almost incessantly. At first I attributed this to concern at my presence, but after a while it transpired that a young oriole—a blundering, tailless fellow—was the cause of the disturbance. By some accident he had dropped ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... at the end of the summer of 1835 to find himself confronted with a discouraging state of affairs. A short session of the Assembly in the earlier part of the year had been marked by unprecedented violence. Papineau had attacked Lord Aylmer in language breathing passion; and had caused Lord Aylmer's reply to the address of the Assembly containing the Ninety-Two Resolutions to be expunged from the journals of the House as 'an ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... This extraordinary and unprecedented state of things gave rise to the Hanseatic League, which rose at last to such importance that those who had been so long seeking after glory, without finding it, began to see the importance which was derived from wealth. They began to ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... replied the landlord, who was evidently flurried out of his usual calm by what I gathered to be an episode unprecedented in his memories of the Abbey Inn. "Mr. Addison, she asked for. She is waiting in ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... restore her shipping, her commerce, and her navy, and thus tended to recall her from the path of continental ambition which had been so fatal to her interests, and in the same proportion favorable to the unprecedented growth of England's power upon the ocean. The opposition, and indeed some of the ministry, also thought that so commanding and important a position as Havana was poorly paid for by the cession of the yet desolate and unproductive region called ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... the service; notwithstanding which, she has proved herself, under every possible variety of trial, in all kinds of weather, an excellent sea boat. She was built at Woolwich in 1819, and her first exploit was the novel and unprecedented one of passing through old London bridge (the first rigged man-of-war that had ever floated so high upon the waters of the Thames) in order to salute at the coronation ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... point of view here taken it would appear that during the present century no science has made such rapid and unprecedented strides as Chemistry; and its progress becomes all the more striking, when we consider the state of the science previous to the French Revolution. For centuries nothing had been done in it whatever. Besides the commonest previsions ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the unprecedented action of the gruff old Serbian General in taking Princess Delgrado for a drive that evening was destined to have consequences not to be foreseen by any person, least of all the young couple whose contemplated marriage was then in the mouths of all men. It was the first step in the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... though she had been married twenty-two years, his birth was considered as a particular favor from heaven, and he was called the "Gift of God." He is sometimes styled "Louis the Great," is notorious as a period of licentiousness. He left behind him monuments of unprecedented splendor and expense, consisting of palaces, gardens, and other ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a voice, in a low but most offensive tone—"alone? How uncommon"—Miss Aubrey for a moment seemed thunderstruck at so sudden and unprecedented an occurrence: then she hurried on with a beating heart, whispering to Margaret to keep close to her, and not to be alarmed. The speaker, however, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... from the horrid din on deck, I made my way to the cabin. It was a place well named, being cabined, cribbed, confined, in quite an unprecedented degree. It was then and there that I first saw the subject of this sketch,—the Peptic Martyr. Unknowingly, I was face to face with my Man of Destiny. Shipmate, Philosopher, Martyr, Rhapsodist, Mentor, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... brim wide enough to have served, at a pinch, for the tent of a side-show. His wagon was a great lumbering affair, constructed, like himself, after an ante-diluvian pattern, and pretty nearly capacious enough for a first-rate man-of-war. In late September and early October it was no unprecedented thing to see as many as thirty or forty of these ponderous vehicles moving southward, one at the tail of the other, in a continuous string. They came down empty, and returned a day or two afterwards laden ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... improbability of rain falling at such seasons, except as a consequence of some law quite unconnected with the ordinary course of the weather. In the cases of great volcanic eruptions, as that of Coseguina, where torrents of rain fell at a time of the year most unusual for it, and "almost unprecedented in Central America," it is not difficult to understand that the volumes of vapour and clouds of ashes might have disturbed the atmospheric equilibrium. Humboldt extends this view to the case of earthquakes unaccompanied by eruptions; but I can ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... I could do, you have now seen, and been justly alarmed at, the Person with whom I allowed myself to become involved in such a unhappy and unprecedented manner, and having done so, you can think for yourself whether that Art of Stone was able for to supplant yours for a single moment, though the way in which such a hidgeous Event transpired I can not trust my pen to describe except in the remark ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... theology, an author whose vein was copious. His Passion, written about the middle of the fifteenth century, embraces the entire earthly life of Christ in its thirty-four thousand verses, which required one hundred and fifty performers and four crowded days for the delivery. Its presentation was an unprecedented event in the history of the theatre. The work of Greban was rehandled and enlarged by Jean Michel, and great was the triumph when it was given at Angers in 1486. Greban was not to be outdone either by his former self or by another dramatist; in collaboration with his ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... intimated to the Town Clerk that in that case he must trouble the Council with an exact copy. The Council then appointed a deputation to wait on him, and Mr. MacKinnon declared himself unworthy of such an unprecedented honour, and declined to see them. And then the Council, in despair, and with a sad sense of the inevitable, strained their powers to the utmost with immense unanimity, and voted a handsome pension to "Dugald MacKinnon, ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... completely staggered. He stood for a minute as if he did not know where he was or what had happened. And then, an unprecedented thing occurred. While he thus stood, Sayers put both hands behind his back, and coolly walked up to his foe to inspect the damage he had inflicted. I had hold of the ropes in Heenan's corner, consequently could not see his face without leaning over them. When I did so, and ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... universal and never-failing interest to the mountain folk was the unprecedented number of letters that Auntie Sue received and wrote. That some of these letters written by their backwoods teacher were addressed to men and women of such prominence in the world that their names were known even to that remote Ozark district was a source of no little pride to Auntie Sue's immediate ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... widespread and devastating flood, during their voyage, and as they drew near its end they became aware that an acquaintance with this most terrible of all the river's efforts at destruction was to be added to their experience. The drought of summer had been followed by an almost unprecedented rainfall during the autumn. The earth in every direction was like an oversoaked sponge, and the surplus water was pouring in turbid torrents into the rivers. From every quarter of the vast Mississippi Valley these watery legions were hurried forward ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... the liberated serfs rushed upon their tormentors was as unprecedented as the cruelties ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not make any long statement of the case to you. We are here assembled to elect a President. Our position is almost unprecedented in the history of the country. Instead of acquiescing in the declared will of the people, our fellow-citizens, we are told that the people's wish is divided, and we are called upon to act spontaneously for the people, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... I had reconstructed all the elements of this unprecedented operation. The ray, the blasting ray that whiffed into non-existence all that it touched, was the keynote. The great plain had been cleared by the ray. The dim shapes floating high in that far-circling ellipse were pouring down the dreadful vibrations, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... tribune, but in the lobbies. He had been one of the first champions of Swadeshi as an economic weapon in the struggle against British rule, and he saw in the adoption of the boycott, with all the lawlessness which it involved, an unprecedented opportunity of stimulating the active forces of disaffection. As far as Bengal was concerned, an "advanced" Press which always took its cue from Tilak's Kesari had already done its work, and Tilak could rely upon the enthusiastic support of men like Mr. Bepin Chandra ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... discover any principle in this Emancipation Bill for the Slaves, except a principle of fear of the abolition party struggling with a dread of causing some monstrous calamity to the empire at large? Well! I will not prophesy; and God grant that this tremendous and unprecedented act of positive enactment may not do the harm to the cause of humanity and freedom which I cannot but fear! But yet, what can be hoped, when all human wisdom and counsel are set at nought, and religious faith— the only miraculous agent amongst men—is not invoked or regarded! and that most ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... epoch for uncle Pullet was no other than little Lucy, with one side of her person, from her small foot to her bonnet-crown, wet and discolored with mud, holding out two tiny blackened hands, and making a very piteous face. To account for this unprecedented apparition in aunt Pullet's parlor, we must return to the moment when the three children went to play out of doors, and the small demons who had taken possession of Maggie's soul at an early period of the day had returned in all the greater force after a temporary absence. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... breakfast," he advised. "It is unusual to see you noticing business affairs, Dick; I might say unprecedented. I am glad if Bailey's new man is capable of his work, at least. I suppose for the rest, that he could scarcely do less than take an injured person to the hospital. Why are you putting sugar ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... by falling in love, which he did on a scale and with an abandon unprecedented in the history of Park Row. It was a tempestuous upheaval for the emotional Southerner, and every other interest in his life retired to the remotest background and remained there, unseen and unsuspected. ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... most advanced specimens that Sanus afforded; the only ones, in fact, whose intellect were strong enough to appreciate the value of what they were told. The investigators were obliged to work with Rolla, Dulnop, and Corrus only; upon these three depended the success of their unprecedented scheme. ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... is recent is not quite so sharply distinguished from the past as that which is new; recent publications range over a longer time than new books. That which is novel is either absolutely or relatively unprecedented in kind; a novel contrivance is one that has never before been known; a novel experience is one that has never before occurred to the same person; that which is new may be of a familiar or even of an ancient sort, as a new copy of an old book. Young and youthful are applied ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... was five years old, the death of his blind aunt came as a relief to means which were in every sense overtaxed. Twelve months later, a piece of unprecedented good fortune seemed to place the Peaks beyond fear of want, and at the same time to supply Nicholas with a fulfilment of hopeless desires. By the death of Mrs Peak's brother, they came into possession of a freehold house and about nine hundred pounds. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... nurse had intimated, it was an altogether unprecedented meeting. Formality had been gently tossed out of the window; after which the President sat, not behind his desk, but upon it—an open letter in his hand. His whole attitude suggested a wish to banish, as far as it lay within his ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... gardeners deserted; ninety-eight of the original Wanyamuezi porters deserted; twelve mules and three donkeys dead. Besides which, more than half of my property had been stolen; whilst the travelling expenses had been unprecedented, in consequence of the severity of the famine throughout the whole length of ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... at Miss Roscoe, too surprised to answer. Such a proposal as a change of Form was absolutely the last thing she could have expected. In the middle of a term it was surely an unprecedented happening. For the moment she scarcely knew whether to be alarmed or flattered at the honour thus ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... reversal of Anglo-American trade balance was a decline in the exchange value of the pound sterling, which was normally worth $4.86-1/2 in American money, to the unprecedented level of $4.50. This decline in sterling was reflected in different degrees in the other European money markets, and the American press was jubilant over the power of the dollar to buy more foreign money than ever before. Because Europe bought much more merchandise than she sold the demand in London ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... a peal of laughter, which made Louis stand aghast, both at such unprecedented merriment and at the cause; for hitherto he had so entirely felt with Mary, as never to have seen the ludicrous aspect of the elopement. Presently, however, he was amused by perceiving that his father not merely regarded it as a relief from an embarrassing charge, but as an entire acquittal for his ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lest such cruelty should seem impossible and unprecedented, the writer may mention that in the museum of the city of Mexico, he has seen the desiccated body of a young woman, which was found immured in the walls of a religious building. With it is the body of an infant. Although ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... clime of the extreme of South America, or parched by the heats of North Australia; under every vicissitude, from the grave to the gay, I have struggled along with her; and after wandering together for eighteen years, a fact unprecedented in the service, I naturally parted from her with regret. Her movements, latterly, have been anxiously watched, and the chances are that her ribs will separate, and that she will perish in the river* where she ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... The Numidian king was then thrown into a dungeon, and there starved to death. Marius, during his absence, had been elected Consul a second time, and he entered upon his office on the day of his triumph. The reason of this unprecedented honor will be related in the ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... enfranchise them, there was clear gain. "Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it. What has been said of Louisiana will apply generally to other States. So new and unprecedented," he ended, "is the whole case that no exclusive and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed as to details and collaterals. Such exclusive and inflexible plan would surely become a new entanglement. Important principles may and must be inflexible. In the present ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... buildings which must attract the attention of every intelligent traveller; and when we consider the few brief years that have elapsed since the Upper Province was reclaimed from the wilderness, our progress in mechanical arts, and all the comforts which pertain to modern civilization, is unprecedented in ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... heroine; though their courtship was, to them, the only one that has ever noticeably approached the ideal, it had many aspects in which it was entirely commonplace in other people's eyes. While the world in general smiles at lovers with kindly approval and sympathy, it refuses to be aware of the unprecedented delight which is amazing to ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the occasion of Sybil Berners' mask ball; and Black Hall, the Black Valley, and the town of Blackville were all in a state of unprecedented excitement; for this was the first entertainment of the kind that had ever been given in the locality, and the gentry of three contiguous counties had been ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... not another line has he sent to tell me of his whereabouts! Curious fellow he is! ... but, by Jove, what a genius! No wonder he has besieged Fame and taken it by storm! I don't remember any similar instance, except that of Byron, in which such an unprecedented reputation was made so suddenly! And in Byron's case it was more the domestic scandal about him than his actual merit that made him the rage, . . now the world knows literally nothing about Alwyn's private life or character—there's no woman in his history that I know of—no vice, ... he hasn't ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... or less with these personalities. Mrs. Piper nearly always does. Those others say many things, and very often correct things, unknown to sensitives, to anybody present, or to anybody else that can be found. Rather unusual among ordinary dreamers, but by no means unprecedented. But from here on the experiences of the sensitives are ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... sometimes whistling behind my ears, while the cloud-land beneath me fell away to such a distance that the folds and hummocks of silver had all smoothed out into one flat, shining plain. But suddenly I had a horrible and unprecedented experience. I have known before what it is to be in what our neighbours have called a tourbillon, but never on such a scale as this. That huge, sweeping river of wind of which I have spoken had, as it appears, whirlpools within it which were as monstrous as itself. Without a moment's ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Canadians that it is with difficulty I restrain them till my Batteries are ready from assaulting your works, which afford them a fair opportunity of ample vengeance and just retaliation. Firing upon a flag of truce, hitherto unprecedented, even among savages, prevents my taking the ordinary mode of communicating my sentiments. However, I will at any rate acquit my conscience. Should you persist in an unwarrantable defence, the consequences be upon your own head. Beware of destroying stores of any kind, Publick ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... upon the market by the Meredith-Lowell Company in the height of his popularity, and being fiction, in point of sales it made even a bigger strike than "The Shame of the Sun." Week after week his was the credit of the unprecedented performance of having two books at the head of the list of best-sellers. Not only did the story take with the fiction-readers, but those who read "The Shame of the Sun" with avidity were likewise attracted to the sea-story by the cosmic grasp of mastery ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Jacob, he had thrust his pitchfork into the ground, and had thrown himself down beside it, in thorough abandonment to the unprecedented pleasure of having five lozenges in his mouth at once, blinking meanwhile, and making inarticulate sounds of gustative content. He had not yet given any sign of noticing the guineas, but in seating himself he had laid his broad ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... away in the spring of 1837, by a sudden and unprecedented rising of the Androscoggin River. Bridge was financially ruined, but like a brave and generous young man he did not permit this stroke of evil fortune, severe as it was, to oppress him heavily, and Hawthorne seems to have felt no shadow of it during his visit to Augusta the following summer. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Mr. Jackson failed to appear at business. This was an almost unprecedented event, and caused quite a flutter of excitement in the office; but it was not until the afternoon that Desmond learned the reason. He was summoned into the Chief's office to find Mr. Jackson, grey-faced ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... up and went toward his book-shelves; and they saw how magnificently large a man he was. He paused a book in his hand, to answer a question from Saxon. No; there were no mosquitoes, although, one summer when the south wind blew for ten days—an unprecedented thing—a few mosquitoes had been carried up from San Pablo Bay. As for fog, it was the making of the valley. And where they were situated, sheltered behind Sonoma Mountain, the fogs were almost invariably high fogs. Sweeping in from the ocean ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... self-command. She seemed to examine, with an eager and inquisitive eye, first one object, and then another by turns. The novelty of the whole scene appeared for an instant to engross her attention. Every part of the furniture was unlike that of a shepherd's cot; and completely singular and unprecedented by any thing that her memory could suggest. But this self-deception, this abstraction from her feelings and her situation was of a continuance the shortest that can be conceived. All seemed changed ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... tragic event of the war to show what the people of the camps went through and what little cause for surprise there is in the unprecedented death-rate. ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... the Dead, and a few volumes of Moliere, were soon ranged in my father's closet, where, during the hours he was employed in his business, I daily read them, with an avidity and taste uncommon, perhaps unprecedented at ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the greatest difficulty be induced to do that. If clerks do not try to shirk their work, our whole great commercial system breaks down. It is breaking down, under the inroad of women who are adopting the unprecedented and impossible course of taking the system seriously and doing it well. Their very efficiency is the definition of their slavery. It is generally a very bad sign when one is trusted very much by one's employers. And if the evasive clerks have a look of being blackguards, ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... of Lomasa is unprecedented. Therefore, protect ye Krishna, and be not careless. Lomasa knows this place to be certainly difficult of access. Therefore, do ye ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... undoubted right to do, appealed to the General Assembly. Ludwell felt, no doubt, that should the appeal be allowed, his great influence in the House of Burgesses would secure him a light sentence. But the court declared the case so unprecedented that the whole matter, including the question of appeal, must be decided ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... he had laughed and thrown himself into his chair. He had forced the laugh, seeking to batter down with it a thrill that was akin to fright at an abrupt realization that in those two dreadful hours he had done three unprecedented things. He had spoken aloud there by himself, an action he had always ascribed exclusively to children and maniacs; he had harbored absurd temptations; and finally he had ejaculated "My God!" which he had thought appropriate to a man ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... afternoon, while this gentleman and his friends were at dinner in the hotel, a terrific storm of rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning, broke forth and continued with dire fury for two or three hours. It was a thing unprecedented in Smyrna at that time of the year, and scared some of the most skeptical. The streets ran rivers and the hotel floor was flooded with water. The dinner had to be suspended. When the storm finished and left every body drenched through and through, and melancholy and half-drowned, the ascensionists ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... It was an unprecedented evening. At the close of it he had four new friends, and had discovered that "Tom" was Thomas Mayernick, one of the attorneys of the Spaceways Commission, and one of the men whom he had gone to ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... a touch the prince's car was drawn to the road's extreme edge, and the Golden Guards rode furiously back along the train, hailing the peaceful, slow-going machines into orderly retreat. They were all sufficiently amenable, for at sight of the alarming and unprecedented onrush of the growing speck that was bearing full down upon them, anxiety sat ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... unusually good. Settlers looking for land filled the hotel, and now elevators were to be built, farmers hired extra labor and broke new soil. Household supplies were purchased on an unprecedented scale, and when snow melted the hotel stables were occupied by rough-coated teams, while wagons, foul with the mud of the prairie trails, waited for their loads in front of the store. Sadie felt cheered and encouraged, and although Bob sometimes spent in ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... incorrectly remarked this morning—and go on my way, rejoicing to say 'bon jour' to all my dear flower friends. And first, the 'Asters'—they always were rich, you know, from 'John Jacob' down; but this summer, malgre taxes and curtailment of incomes and go-comes, the family appear in unprecedented splendor. What gorgeous Organdies! all quilled in the fashion—but not by Madame Peinot: her cunning right hand, with all its cunning, ne'er quilled so exquisitely. Those graceful, fragile Petunias (what a family ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
