"Unpremeditated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... traditional Norse one, although the carving is comparatively modern. The points to be noted in the other box were its quaint and simple construction, the use of the letters as decoration, more especially the unpremeditated manner in which they have been grouped, the four letters below making a short line which is eked out by a rude bit of ornament. The letters are cut right through the wood, and are surrounded with an engraved line. ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... morning—when I was about to leave the dear old city of Sydney for an unpremeditated and long, long absence in cold northern climes, I went for a farewell stroll around the Circular Quay, and, standing on some high ground on the east side, looked down on the mass of shipping below, flying the flags of all nations, and ranging from a few hundred to ten thousand ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... Killing is not always murder. If it were, we should consign our conquerors to everlasting infamy, instead of crowning them with laurels and erecting statues to their memory. I am no murderer, Mr. Bacon. At the same time I do not cherish illusions. Unpremeditated murder is by no means the worst of crimes. Taking a life is only anticipating the inevitable; and of all murderers, Nature is the greatest and the cruellest. I have—if I could only tell you—make you see what I have seen—Even now, O God! ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... touched by the desire of my friends of Hannibal to confer these great honors upon me I must still forbear to accept them. Spontaneous and unpremeditated honors, like those which came to me at Hannibal, Columbia, St. Louis, and at the village stations all down the line, are beyond all price and are a treasure for life in the memory, for they are a free ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and disgraced themselves by returning a verdict of manslaughter only. Count Rice, upon his recovery, was indicted for the murder notwithstanding this verdict. On his trial he entered into a long defence of his conduct, pleading the fairness of the duel, and its unpremeditated nature; and, at the same time, expressing his deep regret for the unfortunate death of Du Barri, with whom for many years he had been bound in ties of the strictest friendship. These considerations ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... conventional expression: a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the "Paradise Lost" as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for the muse having "dictated" to him the "unpremeditated song." And let this be an answer to those who allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the "Orlando Furioso." Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is still more observable in the plastic and pictorial ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... madam, by the honour of your commands. I saw but too much reason to apprehend that measures the most violent would follow the affray of last night; yet as I found that the quarrel had been accidental, and the offence unpremeditated, I thought it not absolutely impossible that an expeditious mediation might effect a compromise: at least it was worth trying; for though wrath slowly kindled or long nourished is sullen and intractable, the sudden anger that has not had time to impress the mind with a deep sense ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... of one who was hearing the same vows, from the same person, under similar circumstances for the second time. She could scarcely have foreseen this, but there is no estimating the power of anticipation it is the mother of much presence of mind and unpremeditated wit. ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... attained the best form of expression; and he assured me that these slowly elaborated passages were the very ones in which he afterwards recognized the most ease and nature, and which others supposed him to have thrown off carelessly. I asked him how it was that children, in their unpremeditated way, expressed themselves with so much directness and beauty. They have but a single idea to present at a time, he said; they seize without hesitation on the first words that offer for its expression, unperplexed by any such choice of terms as would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... meerly accidental, wholly unpremeditated on either side, and by what can be judged by the character of the lady, and her behaviour afterwards, was no more on her part than a surprize on the senses, in which the mind was not consulted, and had not the least share, I know not whether it may ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... much my speaking out against Klu Klux had to do with arresting the outlawry that made the roads rattle with the clatter of the hoofs of horses at midnight raids, but I do know young Byron was the last man hanged by the Klu Klux in Madison county, and may I not hope the unpremeditated protest made in that Sunday evening address, helped in some measure to bring about the transformation, and contribute a mite to the public sentiment that has made Richmond a saloonless ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... deprived of any ovation. The banquets, luncheons, speech-makings, by which he was welcomed everywhere, had had no parallel in the country up to that time. They seemed to be too carefully prepared to be unpremeditated, and probably many of those who took part in them did not understand that they were cheering for a cause which they had never espoused. One wonders why he was allowed to carry on this personal campaign and to show rude unconcern for good manners, or indeed for any manners except those of a wayward ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... between the two girls; and he might be mistaken even in that. Miss Owen herself took such a view of the matter at the time, and passed it lightly by. But, afterwards, in the course of her ponderings, it came back again. The unpremeditated words, in which her employer had admitted the probability of a resemblance between herself and what his own lost child might most likely have become, seemed to find their place amongst the other strange things which were ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... of what Keats was doing ten years later. Every now and then one pauses to think that this lad, once his youthful vapours were over, might have done great things. And as he says in his quaint little preface, "the unpremeditated effusions of a boy, from his thirteenth year, employed, not in the acquisition of literary information, but in the more active business of life, must not be expected to exhibit any considerable portion of ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... about the room. His first impression was that Marette must have lived in it for a long time. It was a woman's room, without the newness of sudden and unpremeditated occupancy. He knew that formerly it had been Kedsty's room, but nothing of Kedsty remained in it now. And then, as his wondering eyes beheld the miracle, a number of things struck him with amazing significance. ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... unpremeditated action in much higher terms than it actually deserved; for, really, I did it, as I have said before, ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... us little that is worth knowing about him—a few poor quarrels about money and commissions. But it is quite otherwise with these songs and sonnets, written down at odd moments, sometimes on the margins of his sketches, themselves often unfinished sketches, arresting some salient feeling or unpremeditated idea as it passed. And it happens that a true study of these has become within the last few years for the first time possible. A few of the sonnets circulated widely in manuscript, and became almost within Michelangelo's ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... tremendous industrial pressure under which she earns her daily bread stirs the keenest resentment. One day patience, Jewish girlish patience, reaches its limit. A cut in wages, exhausting overtime, or the insults of an overbearing foreman, and an unpremeditated strike results. It may be small, poorly managed, and unsuccessful. The next time things may go better, and the girls come in touch with a union, and take their first lessons in the meaning of collective bargaining. (What is passing in the minds of the rank and file at this stage ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... lightly stepping feet. Shoes she wore shining with brightest wire of findruiney. As she came up the dell, rejoicing in her freedom and the sweetness of that sylvan place and the solitude, she contemplated the bright stream, and sang clear and sweet an unpremeditated song. ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... pirouettes, singing impromptu songs, and rhyming a whole company to their infinite amusement. Each one of his personal friends, in talking of him, says, "But if you could only have heard him" at such a time; but of course no one can repeat such unpremeditated jests, and the flavor is gone from them when any one tries to do so. He was the life of the clubs he frequented, and spent much time in them and at theatres, of which he was passionately fond. His duties as a man of fashion took much of his time, and his friends were always wondering when ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... much that is essential to the art," replied Kai Lung, not without an element of pride. "Should the company be chiefly formed of the illiterate and the immature of both sexes, stories depicting the embarrassment of unnaturally round-bodied mandarins, the unpremeditated flight of eccentrically-garbed passers-by into vats of powdered rice, the despair of guardians of the street when assailed by showers of eggs and overripe lo-quats, or any other variety of humiliating pain inflicted upon the innocent and unwary, never fail to win approval. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... examination. It may be a spurred, ticked or dotted beard, but in any case the initial stroke must be carefully examined, whatever form it may assume, for the oft-emphasized reason that it belongs so essentially to the clue-providing class of unguarded and unpremeditated automatic strokes that are overlooked by ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... tears well up as she remembers the silent fortitude, the heroic patience under the pain that was to kill! Shall we quote ancient philosophers and modern poets? They have all dwelt at greater or less length upon death and the grave. Or shall we say, in simple and unpremeditated words, the thoughts which ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... besides the honorable gentleman who do maintain these opinions, is quite certain. I recollect the recent expression of a sentiment, which circumstances attending its utterance and publication justify us in supposing was not unpremeditated. "The sovereignty of the State,—never to be controlled, construed, or decided on, but by her own feelings ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... mountainious right down; I didn't never ought to have left that island," there pierced a certain gusto of appreciation: and some of the rest were master-talkers. From their long tales, their traits of character and unpremeditated landscape, there began to piece itself together in my head some image of the islands and the island life: precipitous shores, spired mountain tops, the deep shade of hanging forests, the unresting surf upon the reef, and the unending peace of the lagoon; sun, moon, and ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of Marie's revenge was unpremeditated, after all. The light mountain snow was augmented by a storm; roads were ploughed through early in the morning, leaving great banks on either side. Sleigh-bells were everywhere. Coasting parties made the steep roads a menace to the pedestrian; every up-climbing sleigh carried ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... an eye if steel-cold fury on the servant the man broke into a low, almost whispered, cursing. The words ran out of his mouth, fluent, rapid, in an unpremeditated rush. They were as picturesque and malignantly savage as those with which he had cursed the tules; and suddenly they stopped, checked by the Chinaman's expression. It was neither angry or alarmed, but intently observant, the eyes unblinking—an ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... differently dealt with—it was found not "necessary to do anything more than restore it in permanent colour, and that," with a bottle of Brunswick black, "has accordingly been done;" and, as Mr. Bayliss adds, with unpremeditated truth, in the thoughtless pride of achievement, "the notice board was no longer the actual ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... Mr. Beirne's: 'low on the sand and loud on the stone.' In the soft-lit room no sound broke the nocturnal stillness except the mechanism of the clock, pushing busily toward the three-quarter mark. Carlisle was looking up at Canning with eyes full of unpremeditated sweetness. Into Canning's face the blood leapt suddenly. Without other warning, he leaned back against the heavy table, and took her ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... A little unpremeditated insincerity must be indulged under the stress of social intercourse. The talk even of an honest man must often represent merely his wish to be inoffensive or agreeable rather than his genuine opinion or feeling on the matter in hand. His thought, if uttered, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... disguised. It was the bust of a Venus, united to a form, to create which would have taxed the imaginative powers of a Praxiteles—a form so faultlessly moulded that every movement presented some new and unpremeditated grace. What added to the surpassing richness of her beauty was her hair, which, black, glossy, and of eastern luxuriance, and seemingly disdaining the girlishness of curls, reposed in broad Grecian bands, across a brow, the intellectual expression of which they contributed to form. Yet, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... had for one of its elements good humour and affectionate suggestion. At fourteen he was ready for any crime, but he was mercifully kept out of the worst till he was a full-grown man. Then he did his part. The affair of the old woman was an unpremeditated one. It happened in this wise: Miss Demarest's story had been true in every particular. Her mother was with her when she came to the house, and he, Jake, was the person sitting far back in the shadows at the time ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... sequence followed all the other incidents of that hideous carnival; the race, the foul, if it was a foul; the dreadful nightmare vision called into her mind by the look upon Montalvo's face; the trial of the Mare, her own unpremeditated but indelible perjury; the lonely drive with the man who compelled her to it; the exhibition of herself before all the world as his willing companion; and the feast in which he appeared as her cavalier, and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... which she could not but perceive existed between her father and her mother. Indeed, her mother's character for patience and placid submission was so remarkable, that Jane did not know how deeply she had suffered, nor what a life of martyrdom she was leading. The effect of Jane's unpremeditated remark opened her eyes to the sad reality. Her mother was greatly disconcerted. Her cheek changed color. Her lip trembled. She made no reply. She never again opened her lips upon the subject of the ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... on and suddenly turned round; and by an unpremeditated instinct each clasped the other's ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... with their various embellishment in the line of glass porticos and privet hedges, the General, Mrs. Horlick, Messrs Brookes and Berkins—how complete it seemed, how individual and how synthetical— his eyes filled with tears of unpremeditated grief. The leaves were falling, the hills were shrouded in wreaths of floating mist. Some trees had been cut down and scaffolding had been reared about the Manor House, some of the walls had already fallen revealing the wall paper, the pattern of which he could almost distinguish. He ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... the least, anticipated that a chance remark would produce such an effect. Like Ezekiel's field of death, strewn with dead men's bones, there was a quiver at the touch of the spirit, and the dead bones stirred. I had uttered an unpremeditated word of love and sympathy, and this word had acted on all as though they had only been waiting for this very remark, in order that they might cease to be corpses and might live. They all stared at me, and waited ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... of color in the grass or foliage. Is the air, the sunshine, the free spaces, the rocks, the soil, the trees, and the exhilaration of it all, nothing? There are flowers in Whitman, too, but they are amid the rocks or under the trees, and seem quite unpremeditated and by the way, and never the main concern. If our quest is for these alone, we shall surely be disappointed. "In order to appreciate Whitman's poetry and his purpose," says Joel Chandler Harris, "it is necessary to possess the intuition that enables the mind to grasp ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... unpremeditated, I assure you. We came in together," whispered Herbert, leading her to ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... degraded imagination found in the churches and convents of Rome, which made others turn their backs with a shivering of the bones and a creeping of the flesh. On expressing surprise at such a singular exhibition of taste, I received this innocent, unpremeditated reply:—"Why, I don't like them; the sight of them almost freezes my blood; but—somehow I do like to look at them, for I always feel better after it!" Now is there not involved in this artless answer a possible explanation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... great disorder. That looks as though her flight was unpremeditated. Almost as though she got a sudden warning ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... where was a bench that gave us a view while we gossiped of Mrs. Stannace's tiara-like headdress nodding at an upper window. Within doors and without Limbert's life was overhung by an awful region that figured in his conversation, comprehensively and with unpremeditated art, as Upstairs. It was Upstairs that the thunder gathered, that Mrs. Stannace kept her accounts and her state, that Mrs. Limbert had her babies and her headaches, that the bells for ever jangled at the maids, that everything imperative ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... sinned deeply, but she was never false to her husband in thought or deed; none of her wrong-doing was deliberate; she was tortured by remorse; and her murderous act was the impulse of a moment, and partly in self-defence. It was wholly unpremeditated; and it killed her no less than her victim. When, next day, she was removed by the police, she was already a dying woman. I have in my possession a letter—written to me by her—after her release, in view of her impending death, by the order of the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which tells of olden vintages and of long storing in the crypts of the brain; he has nothing in common with the easy generalizers who know as little of roots as Shelley's skylark, and who, seeking a shelter in welcome clouds, pour forth "profuse strains of unpremeditated art" upon questions which above all others are limited by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... in from behind SPEAKER'S Chair when Questions had advanced some way, startled by strident cheer from Ministerialists and Irish Nationalists. Opposition angrily replied. FIRST LORD, faintly blushing, found anchorage on Treasury Bench. Unpremeditated outburst of enthusiasm meant as welcome back from Bradford, where he reviewed political situation with force and frankness that recalled his father's platform speeches delivered in his prime. Demonstration repeated when later he rose to answer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... Lavinia disespoused; Or Neptune's ire or Juno's, that so long Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son: If answerable style I can obtain Of my celestial Patroness who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplored, And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse, {153} Since first this subject for heroic song Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late, Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... the exact opposite of what he was expecting. I did not doubt this for a moment; in fact, direct and deliberate transmission of thought is, even among men, a very rare, difficult and uncertain, phenomenon, whereas involuntary, unpremeditated and unsuspected communications between one subconsciousness and another can no longer be denied except by those who of set purpose ignore studies and experiments that are within the reach of any ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... social converse with his friends and family, and thus penetrates into his heart—detects every secret emotion of the man's soul, even when he thinks himself most effectually concealed, and in every glance of his eye, every whisper, every unpremeditated act and expression, dives to the very bottom of his designs and brings up his ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... Kamar, but several of the Shehaab princes who headed them, especially the Emir Kais, maintained the reputation of their house and displayed a brilliant courage. The Emir Fakre-deen was at Canobia at the time of the outbreak, which, as it often happens, though not unpremeditated, was unexpected. He marched to the scene of action at the head of his troops, and, when he found that Kais had been outflanked and repulsed, that the Maronites were disheartened in proportion to their previous vanity and insolence, and that the ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... disliked anything which reminded me of Gillian Hardress, without telling more about Gillian than would be pleasant to tell. So Rosalind went on calling me Jaques; and I was compelled to put up with a trivial and unpremeditated, but for all that a daily, annoyance; and I fretted ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... outrageous provocation, and that he himself was temporarily, if not chronically, insane. Every attempt was made by the partisans of his wife to enlist public feeling in her favor; to prove that Stanford White was the aggressor, and that her husband's deed was unpremeditated. The trial was protracted, and the story, as it was brought to light, was one which could hardly be equaled outside Balzac's novels. Had the heroine of this drama not been a beautiful young woman, she and her husband would probably have been forgotten in a week. As it was, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... inspiration, flash, spurt. improvisatore^; creature of impulse. V. flash on the mind. say what comes uppermost; improvise, extemporize. Adj. extemporaneous, impulsive, indeliberate^; snap; improvised, improvisate^, improvisatory^; unpremeditated, unmeditated; improvise; unprompted, unguided; natural, unguarded; spontaneous &c (voluntary) 600; instinctive &c 601. Adv. extempore, extemporaneously; offhand, impromptu, a limproviste [Fr.]; improviso^; on the spur of the moment, on the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... expression, which are indispensable in other departments of poetry, are here inadmissible. Not only must the versification not interfere with the common, unconstrained, and even careless tone of conversation, but it must also seem to be itself unpremeditated. It must not by its lofty tone elevate the characters as in Tragedy, where, along with the unusual sublimity of the language, it becomes as it were a mental Cothurnus. In Comedy the verse must serve ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... human theatricalities; nay perhaps touching, like the passionate utterance of a tongue which with sincerity stammers; of a head which with insincerity babbles,—having gone distracted. Yet, in comparison with unpremeditated outbursts of Nature, such as an Insurrection of Women, how foisonless, unedifying, undelightful; like small ale palled, like an effervescence that has effervesced! Such scenes, coming of forethought, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... he saw no reason why he should not marry her. He wanted to obtain her at once and to keep her for ever. She was not a lady and she knew it; but she had a gentleness, a fineness of the heart which was the secret of her unpremeditated charm. Without it Rose might have been as pretty as she pleased, she would not have pleased Tanqueray. He could withstand any manifestly unspiritual appeal, restrained by his own fineness and an invincible disdain. Therefore, when the divine folly fell upon him, he was like a thing fresh from the ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... whip, the man broke into a sort of endless, drawling song. In that song everything had a place. By "everything" I mean both the various encouraging and stimulating cries with which Russian folk urge on their horses, and a random, unpremeditated selection ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... reflection. He ceased, and the melodious sounds still hung upon their ear, and they still sat in the posture of eager attention. At length they recollected themselves; and it was no longer the low and increasing murmur of applause: it was the exclamation of rapture; it was the unpremeditated shout of astonishment. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... if the brief tempest of the morning had cleared the air. Two strong natures had asserted themselves. Surgeon Ackley's recognition of Miss Lou's spirit and the justice of her plea turned out to be as politic as it was sincere and unpremeditated. The slaves learned all they could hope from her or any one now in authority and were compelled to see the necessity of submission. Whately was taught another lesson concerning the beauties of headlong action, while even ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... responsibility incurred by the addition of another volume to the countless numbers already existing, and daily appearing in the world, the following Diary has been committed to the press, trusting that, as it was not written WITH INTENT to publication, the unpremeditated nature of the offence may be its extenuation, and that as a faithful picture of travel in regions where excursion trains are still unknown, and Travellers' Guides unpublished, the book may not be found altogether devoid of interest or amusement. Its object is simply to bring before the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... of 'doubtful' States, or, in the picturesque language of the days of Andrew Johnson, go 'swinging round the circle.' If I am not misinformed, an analogous operation is occasionally performed in England, when some popular idol finds it worth his while to make an unpremeditated political tour. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... may tell you one singer is worth all the rest. So, if Corkey were in this parlor, and should render one unforeseen, unpremeditated sneeze, you would not know the parlorful had sneezed along with him. Corkey's sneeze is unapproachable, unrivaled, hated, feared, admired, reverenced. The devout say "God bless you!" with deep unction. The adventurous ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... discursive preliminary sketch, the length of which was unpremeditated, of the leading influences which are fast hurrying to social disorganization, it is time that once more we stand face to face with the one disorganizing doctrine of one-sided free trade; with the banner on which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them. This applies equally to those acts called "spontaneous" and "unpremeditated" as to those, which are ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... that a woman who deliberately hid herself from her husband for more than a twelvemonth should be brought back by a mere advertisement. In fact, the whole business had worked almost too smoothly and effectually for unpremeditated sequence. It was too much like the indiscriminate righting of everything at the end of an old play. And there was that curious business of the keys and watch. Her way of accounting for their being left behind by forgetfulness had always seemed to him rather forced. The ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... is not necessary to know here, in a scientific or chemical sense, what has actually taken place. Two things are evident to common sense. One, that the change is organic, and the other that it is unpremeditated; and therefore, on both grounds, it is a thing to avoid, which indeed my friend's scientific explanation sufficiently confirms. It is well, therefore, on all accounts to paint swiftly and continuously, and to fire as soon as you can; and above all things not to let the colour ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... been reading my diary, you mean thing," cried Miss Molly, stamping her foot. "How dare you come creeping in here, spying at my private concerns! Oh! oh! oh!" with unpremeditated artfulness, relapsing into a paroxysm of sobs just in time to avert the volley of rebuke with which the hot-tempered old lady was about to greet this disrespectful outburst. "I am the most miserable girl in all the world. I wish ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Thyrsis would sigh for a stenographer. She would make herself a Grecian costume out of a sheet, and dance to music of her own making; or she would put trinkets upon her forehead, and be a gypsy-queen—she could be anything that was wild and exotic and unpremeditated. She had dances for that mood also—she would laugh and caper as merrily as any young witch. But then, again, there would come the Corydon of melancholy and despair; her features would shrink up, her face would become peaked and pitiful, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... us that the catastrophe was quite unpremeditated. Marion's entire ignorance of the customs of the New Zealanders occasioned that distressing event: as I have before observed, that strangers, not acquainted with their religious prejudices, are likely to commit some fatal error; and no action is more likely to lead a party into ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... knew the clank of those suspending chains and the slight unsteadiness of the meeting halves of the bridge as well as it knew oats. But it could not enjoy its own entirely premeditated surprise quite so much as Bertie and Billy were enjoying their entirely unpremeditated flight from Oscar. The wind rippled on the water; down at the boat-house Smith was helping some one embark in a single scull; they saw the green meadows toward Brighton; their foreheads felt cool and unvexed, and each new minute had the savor of ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... the same opinion, knowing Hubert better, and besides having found his work, his orders to his subordinates, and the belongings at the lodgings in a state that showed that whatever he had done had been unpremeditated. Sending off notes to stop the garden party was a sort of occupation, broken by many signs, much listening, and much sorrowful discussion, not quite vain, since it made Paulina more one with Magdalen than ever before. Poor old Mr. Delrio arrived in the afternoon, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... past ten o'clock when Kate Swift set out and the walk was unpremeditated. It was as though the man and the boy, by thinking of her, had driven her forth into the wintry streets. Aunt Elizabeth Swift had gone to the county seat concerning some business in connection with mortgages in which she had money invested and would not be back ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... somewhat of the predictions, to this day resorted to by maid-servants and others, from the appearance of the sediment to be found at the bottom of a tea-cup. Predictions of a similar sort are formed from the unpremeditated way in which we get out of bed in a morning, or put on our garments, from the persons or things we shall encounter when we first leave our chamber or go forth in the air, or any of ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... Esme; "he is only getting up from his seat. How wonderful he is! I never heard anything more impressive in my life. After all, unpremeditated art is the greatest art. Such an effect as that could never have been produced ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Thomas Callender nor Mr. Thomas Callender felt by any means at ease respecting the crockery catastrophe. Although feeling that it was a mere casualty of war, and an unforeseen and unpremeditated result of a fair and equal contest, they yet could not help entertaining some vague apprehension for the consequences. They felt, in short, that it might be made a question whether they were not liable for the damage done, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... an interesting volume (The Minor Works of George Grote, edited by Alexander Bain. London: Murray), we find Grote confirming Mr. Mill's estimate of his father's psychagogic quality. 'His unpremeditated oral exposition,' says Grote of James Mill, 'was hardly less effective than his prepared work with the pen; his colloquial fertility in philosophical subjects, his power of discussing himself, and stimulating others to discuss, his ready responsive ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... necessity as it was, and natural, equalled that of the most practised fine lady which should show her artificial habit or skill. Like an instinct of self-preservation, I suppose; swift in action, correct in adjustment, taking its measures with unpremeditated good aim. She answered ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... sang and sang,—as if his song could have no ending,—and meanwhile was flitting from tree to tree, intent upon his breakfast. As far as I could discover, he was without company; and his music, too, seemed to be nothing more than an unpremeditated, half-unconscious talking to himself. Wonderfully sweet it was, and full of the happiest content. "I listened till I had my fill," and returned the favor, as best I could, by hoping that the little wayfarer's lightsome mood would not fail him, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... little just pretension. The result of this conversation was a sudden determination to produce a work which, if it had no other merit, might present truer pictures of the ocean and ships than any that are to be found in the Pirate. To this unpremeditated decision, purely an impulse, is not only the Pilot due, but a tolerably numerous school of nautical romances ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... herself on her settee again in crosslegged, unpremeditated ease, and there she conversed with Mr. Rickman as if she had known him all her life. Kitty was ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... This unpremeditated buffoonery answered the purpose probably better than the set speech would have done. The Queen laughed heartily, and swore (in her turn) that he had made the best speech she had heard that day. Lambourne, who ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the quiet of the ship. It appeared that he was too bony about an essential part of his anatomy, a peculiarity that was very dangerous to a captain, as he himself was once so unfortunate as to put his great toe out of joint, by kicking one of those ill-formed youngsters with unpremeditated violence; a thing that was very apt to happen to a man in a hurry. Luckily, No. twenty passed, and was immediately promoted to the vacant berth. The very next day the ship put to sea, in good condition, and with every prospect of a ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sermons, their living interest, their unpremeditated variety in unity, fit them well for this purpose,—close personal influence on minds of widely differing views, united in the one great aim of a Christian life. We shall probably take an early opportunity of making ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... been that smart colleague himself; but that he knew was impossible. He and Neverbend were the Alpha and Omega of official virtues and vices. But he took an opportunity of mentioning before Sir Gregory, in a passing unpremeditated way, how excellently adapted Tudor was for the work. It so turned out that his effort was successful, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the witness's costume was unpremeditated, nevertheless acknowledged its power. He opened his examination with an apology for thus troubling her a second time, and explained that new witnesses and new evidence ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... tulip-tree as well as its beauty. Their most graceful pirogues were dug from its bole, and its odorous bark served to roof their rude houses. No boat I have ever tried runs so lightly as a well-made tulip pirogue, or dug-out, and nothing under heaven is so utterly crank and treacherous. Many an unpremeditated plunge into cold water has one caused me while out fishing or duck-shooting on the mountain-streams of North Georgia. If you dare stand up in one, the least waver from a perfect balance will send the sensitive, skittish thing a rod from under your feet, which of course leaves ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... made an unpremeditated surrender. A taxi was prowling along by the curb as slowly as regulations allowed. He raised his stick automatically as he caught the driver's eye. When the cab had halted, again he procrastinated with the handle of ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... The unpremeditated effusions of a Boy, from his thirteenth year, employed, not in the acquisition of literary information, but in the more active business of life, must not be expected to exhibit any considerable portion of the correctness of a Virgil, or the vigorous ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... would you dare to return earlier than you are expected, and converse with her before she leaves? We might explain to Chigi afterward that we had miscalculated the time, or that our appearance was in some other way unpremeditated." ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... evidence not only of human nature's inherent tendency to tell stories, but also of the irrepressible strength of feeling which breaks all laws and commandments under great stimulus. On the opposing unaesthetic side this may be compared to the feeling which prompts the unpremeditated assassination of a man who is guilty of great injustice, even though it be certain that in due course he would have met his deserts at the ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... as possible. These dispositions break out naturally in the conversation of servants with one another; if children are suffered to hear them, they will quickly catch the same tastes. But if these ideas break out in their unpremeditated gossiping with one another, how much more strongly will they be expressed when servants wish to ingratiate themselves into a child's affections by flattery! Their method of showing their attachment to a family, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... another Jeanne d'Albret, she urged her plans on Charles X., who decidedly disapproved of them; but "the idea of crossing the seas at the head of faithful paladins, of landing after the perils and adventures of an unpremeditated voyage in a country of knights-errant, of eluding by a thousand disguises the vigilance of enemies through whom she had to pass, of wandering, a devoted mother and a banished queen, from hamlet to hamlet and from chateau ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... entirely unpremeditated it seemed like a special piece of good luck that Mrs. Coombe should have at that moment in her pocket a note to the druggists (who were not called druggists, exactly) and that all she needed to do was to add Miss Milligan's address, and hand to that lady sufficient money to secure a postal note ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... person" of Lord John's measured approval, not so much by what she says or does as by her reactions on Tom himself. A study of her has to be made out of a number of pencil-scratches—one here, one there—put down by the diarist with unpremeditated art; for it is certain that, though Moore intended his diaries to speak for him after his death, what he had to say of his wife was the last thing in them he would have relied upon to do it. I am sure that ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... "That was quite unpremeditated on my part," he protested whimsically; "you are all far too good to me. I can never explain it to myself, but I accept it, and realise I am ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... seemed to come to a pause in the enchanting, mirage-like spectacle. "The Shenandoah," Jack said, mopping the dust, or rather the thin coating of mud, from his face and brow, for the perspiration, oozing at every pore, naturally covered the exposed skin with an unpremeditated cosmetic. The march to Fairfax Court-House, for which judicial temple the curious soldier looked in vain, was but eight miles from the point of departure in the morning, but it was two o'clock in the afternoon when the Caribees passed the hamlet, turning sharply to the right. They marched up the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... the massacre of St. Bartholomew was a sudden and unpremeditated act cannot be maintained; but it does not follow that the only alternative is to believe that it was the aim of every measure of the Government for two years before. Catherine had long contemplated it as her last expedient in extremity; but she had decided that she could not resort ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... repeated by them all together, tie in the individual soul to the great mass of humanity and it moves on, with its fellows, toward salvation as majestically and steadily as great rivers flow. The extempore and silent prayer, not unpremeditated but still the unformed outpouring of the individual heart, gives each man the consciousness of standing naked and alone before his God. Both these, the corporate and the separate elements of worships are vital; there should be a place for each in ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... quarter of an hour to make clear to the ruffled mind of Ralph the powerful, and in Mrs. Cliffs eyes the imperative, reasons for the sudden and unpremeditated matrimonial arrangements of the morning. But before she had finished, the boy grew quieter, and there appeared upon his face some expressions ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... Cauldron Lian, and the Rumbling bridge, a single arch thrown, it is said by the devil, over the Devon, at the height of a hundred feet in the air. It was the complaint of his companions that Burns exhibited no raptures, and poured out no unpremeditated verses at such magnificent scenes. But he did not like to be tutored or prompted: "Look, look!" exclaimed some one, as Carron foundry belched forth flames—"look, Burns, look! good heavens, what a grand sight!—look!" "I would not look—look, sir, at your bidding," ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... favours her feyther,' said he; and the moment he had uttered the incautious words he looked up to see how Sylvia had taken the unpremeditated, unusual reference to her husband. His stealthy glance did not meet her eye; but though he thought she had coloured a little, she did not seem offended as he had feared. It was true that Bella had her father's grave, thoughtful, dark eyes, instead ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... glasses are all down; and one may read, as on the stage of a theatre, everything that goes on within. It contains three ladies—one likely to be "mamma," and two of seventeen or eighteen, who are probably her daughters. What lovely animation, what beautiful unpremeditated pantomime, explaining to us every syllable that passes, in these ingenuous girls! By the sudden start and raising of the hands on first discovering our laurelled equipage, by the sudden movement and appeal to the elder lady from both of them, and by the heightened colour on their ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... had its own separate leaders and its own local agents. The first, though precipitated into action by fortunate discoveries on the part of the government, had been anxiously preconcerted for three years. The second was an unpremeditated effort, called forth by a most ill-timed, and also ill-concerted, foreign invasion. The general predisposing causes to rebellion were doubtless the same in both cases; but the exciting causes of the moment were different in each. And, finally, they were divided by a complete ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the cry had not been raised to halt, it is very doubtful if they would not have got into Quebec pell-mell with the fugitives, being near the town-gates when this cry began. Thus Quebec would have been retaken in a most singular manner,[C] unforeseen and unpremeditated. I know nothing worse than ill-disciplined troops; certainly a brave militia, with its simple, ancient way of fighting, even not drilled, is preferable to a force having a crude notion of discipline—a science entirely ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... the keys, tears running down his face: tears of weakness, because of the storm of divine inspiration that has passed through him: tears of sorrow, because he never can recapture the fine, careless rapture of his unpremeditated music: tears of joy, because he knows that on this particular day he has been the channel chosen by the ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... to reproach me for an act of unpremeditated folly, which I have repented bitterly enough without that. Oh, of course, I behaved like a fool; Anna Vassilyevna most kindly gave me the money for an expedition to Italy, and I went off to the Little ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... in the most natural and unpremeditated way, as soon as she caught her nephew's eye, "come here. I want to introduce you to Miss Dunstable." The introduction was then made. "Mrs Proudie, would you excuse me? I must positively go and say a few words to Mrs Barlow, or the poor woman will ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope |
