"Unread" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... decline; Why reign no more the once-triumphant Nine? Alas! new charms the wavering many gain, And rival sheets the reader's eye detain; A daily swarm, that banish every Muse, Come flying forth, and mortals call them NEWS: For these, unread, the noblest volumes lie; For these, in sheets unsoil'd, the Muses die; Unbought, unblest, the virgin copies wait In vain for fame, and sink, unseen, to fate. Since, then, the Town forsakes us for our ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... was all her life very true to Sussex both in her work and in her homes—she was at school at Chichester, and lived at Woolbeding and Brighton—was born in 1749. A century ago her name was as well known as that of Mrs. Hemans was later. To-day it is unknown, and her poems and novels are unread, nor will they, I fear, be re-discovered. Her sister, Catherine Turner, afterwards Mrs. Dorset, was the author of The Peacock at Home, a very popular book for children at the beginning of the last century, suggested by Roscoe's Butterfly's ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... vitality. To found a "Bible Defence League" is as unbelieving as to inaugurate a society for the protection of the sun. Like the sun the Bible defends itself by proving a light to the path of all who walk by it. The only defence it needs is to be used; and the only attack it dreads is to be left unread. ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... suffer was destroyed as it appeared. Efforts at a thorough purge were dull, were libellous, were not of the "form" which the Universities and the public schools taught to be sacred. They were rejected as unreadable, or if printed, were unread. The ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... wander with me," she said, "Into regions yet untrod; And read what is still unread In the ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... as it is what we read and the manner it is done that benefits us, for as Poor Richard says: "The used key is always bright," so the well-read book always shows the handling. A small well chosen library carefully read is of vastly more benefit than the large, poorly chosen, unread volumes that adorn the shelves of many homes. Yet I am not sure but that poorly chosen books are better not read than read. A learned doctor once said: "It is not what we eat that sustains life, ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... no answer to either of his three letters beyond that of sending Alaric's back unread; but this, without other reply, was sufficient to let them all guess, nearly with accuracy, what was the state of his mind. Alaric told Gertrude how his missive had been treated, and Gertrude, of ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... over at George. He was sleeping peacefully. It was too early to wake him, but I could not lay that letter down unread; was not my name on it? Tearing it open, I devoured its contents,—the exclamation I made on reading it, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... letter in her hand—the rest unread—and sat with her face suddenly very still. She had received it just before morning school, and had opened it when the junior mathematicians were well under way. Presently she resumed reading with an appearance of great calm. But after the first sheet she went on ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... of Jude Rush?—and she curled her lip with contempt for both father and son. She ceased to mention his name, and revealed to no one that he still lived. Moreover, she disdained answering his letter, even had she not destroyed his written, but unread address and fictitious name. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... devour.' The Queen Regent was not disposed to go very far with the bishops, but still less was she fervent for God's glory and public Reformation. Accordingly, on the first Court day she handed Knox's letter, perhaps unread, to the Bishop of Glasgow, with the words, 'Please you, my Lord, to read a Pasquil.' The unwise jest came to Knox's ears, and some years after he published his letter with resentful additions and interpolations. In these he assumed—much too soon—that there was no longer hope of the Regent ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... from appointments in the army and navy; little remained to them except commerce and manufactures. Protestants could not hold Catholics as servants; soldiers were unjustly quartered upon them; their taxes were multiplied, their petitions were unread. But in 1685 dragonnades subjected them to still greater cruelties; who tore up their linen for camp beds, and emptied their mattresses for litters. The poor, unoffending Protestants filled the prisons, and dyed the scaffolds with their blood. They were ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Goethe aired his opinions with the "frank confidingness" which he notes as a trait of his own character, and which gave Herder frequent opportunities for scathing criticism. Herder gibed at his youthful tastes—at his collection of seals, at his elegantly-bound volumes which stood unread on his shelves, at his enthusiasms for Italian art, for the writings of the Cabbalists, for ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... struggle endured. His father wrote to him, begging him by the love he had for him to return. From that hour Richard burnt unread all the letters he received. He knew too well how easily he could persuade himself: words from without might tempt him and quite extinguish the spark of honourable feeling that tortured him, and that he clung to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mother and father. Uncle Jimmie was afraid to go and get his mail all summer, although he had a great many letters on blue and lavender note paper scented with Roger et Gallet's violet, and Hudnut's carnation. We used to go down to the beach and make bonfires and burn them unread, and then toast marshmallows in their ashes. He said that they were communications from the spirits of the dead. I should have thought that they were from different girls, but he seemed to hate the sight of girls so much. Once I asked him if he had ever had an unhappy love-affair, ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... the oiled floors, hard-wood staircase, unused fireplace with tiles which resembled brown linoleum, cut-glass vases standing upon doilies, and the barred, shut, forbidding unit bookcases that were half filled with swashbuckler novels and unread-looking sets of Dickens, Kipling, O. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... important way, I assure you!" exclaimed Helen. "It eliminates this man—this Talpers—as a personal menace. But when you are so eager to get every thread of evidence, how is it that you can give this letter to me, unread? You must feel sure it has some bearing on the awful thing—the tragedy that took place back ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... struck her, as she brooded over it, that there would be positive disloyalty in thus stealing in upon the secrets of Kemper's past. No, she would place it in his hands, she determined finally, still unread; and in so doing she would not only defeat the purpose of the sender, but would prove to him as well as to herself that her faith in him was as unalterable as her love. After all to trust was easier than to distrust, for the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... had listened absorbed to this before unread chapter in the family history, was deeply moved, and, while the tears filled his eyes, asked, in ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... reading this letter, make allowance for extenuating circumstances. If you only knew, I think you do, what these letters mean, the self-denied slumbers and washes, fatigues shirked, books and papers unread, and other little treats which comrades have indulged in when the rare and short opportunities have occurred—you would forgive much. On Tuesday (August 21st) we had five Sussex men and three Somerset in the ranks of our troop of the Composite Squadron of ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... little Brotherkin, suddenly covered up within the largest imaginable Glass bell,—what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for the world! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all the four winds, impinge against thy Glass walls, but have to drop unread: neither from within comes there question or response into any Post-bag; thy Thoughts fall into no friendly ear or heart, thy Manufacture into no purchasing hand: thou art no longer a circulating venous-arterial Heart, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... letter; until, remembering how long she had been upstairs, and how all that time Emma's transparent disposition and love of talk might have laid her and her whole affairs open before the Iansons, she quickly put the epistle in her pocket unread, and went down into ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... worship. Religion is obedience to God's law. You teach people that they can, and do, obey this law perfectly, while they do not know it. Your church has no bibles in her pews, few in her families, and these unread. Preachers and all, not one in twenty can repeat the ten commandments. You are blind leaders of the blind, and must all fall into the ditch, ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... and still she sat motionless, with the letter in her hand. "Mamma," she said at last, "if you tell me not to read it, I will give it back unread. If you bid me exercise my own judgment, I shall take it upstairs and ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... capable of magnanimous actions which, when uncovered of all romance, are worthy of the best days of Roman virtue, yet more cunning, false, and cruel than the Bengalee,—this copper-colored sphinx, this riddle unread of men, equally fascinates and foils ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... my pocket unread," and Doctor Dick now glanced over the note as he rode along. "I fear he is too far gone, Larry, for if he had been able he would have come into the camp. I will ride still faster, for every moment counts with a badly wounded man, and you see I ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... foreheads or groan, however great the provocation. And in moments of stress he would shake hands with people and turn away to hide his emotion. And it wasn't only in gestures, he became dramatic in conduct. When compromising letters came into his hands, he used to burn them unread and without any one looking on, which is manifestly absurd. I forget what happened to him in the end, but I expect he was charged with something he hadn't done to save the husband of the woman he wanted to marry—and whom he'd have made perfectly miserable, if ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... mere scientific zeal, therefore, paleontologists turned anew to the records in the rocks, to inquire what evidence in proof or refutation might be found in unread pages of the "great stone book." And, as might have been expected, many minds being thus prepared to receive new evidence, such evidence was not ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Titian had refused to paint a Madonna simply because other people had painted Madonnas before them. Some subjects, no doubt, were treated once for all; if Southey had written his history of the Peninsular war after Napier, he would have done a silly thing, and his book would have been damned unread. But what reason was there why we should not have half a dozen books on English thought in the eighteenth century? Would not Grote have inflicted a heavy loss upon us if he had been frightened out of his plan by Thirlwall? And so forth, and so forth. But all ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... the author an opportunity of explaining the object of the work, or of vindicating himself and replying to his critics. As a rule, however, the reader is concerned neither with the moral purpose of the book nor with the attacks of the Reviewers, and so the preface remains unread. Nevertheless, this is a pity, especially with us Russians! The public of this country is so youthful, not to say simple-minded, that it cannot understand the meaning of a fable unless the moral is set forth ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... impossible. They were also the result of vague and unconfessed fears, and that made their strength. For myself, with a very definite dread in my heart, I was careful not to allude to their character because I did not want the Note to be thrown away unread. And then I had to remember that the impossible has sometimes the trick of coming to pass to the confusion of minds and often to the crushing ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... but fraught with unread meaning, gave the name into the nation's keep, albeit its formal christening and national adoption was not to come until the soil beneath its folds should be deep-dyed with the blood of conflict between ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... drawing-room to the left of the entrance hall, bending over a book. If she heard the entrance of her visitors into the hall, she made no sign, but kept her eyes bent upon her novel, the left-hand side of which, supported on her knee, had grown to the thickness of half an inch. Only a few pages remained unread, half lifted on the other side, above which her ivory paper knife hung suspended. Clothed in a yellow gown and sitting in a flood of yellow light that radiated from the shaded lamp beside her, she presented an extraordinarily vivid picture against the brown ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... allowed to ask Sir Peregrine's opinion as to Lady Mason's innocence or to express his own. These three days had been dreadful to Sir Peregrine. He had not left the house, but had crept about from room to room, ever and again taking up some book or paper and putting it down unread, as his mind reverted to the one subject which now for him bore any interest. On the second of these three days a note had been brought to him from his old friend Lord Alston. "Dear Orme," the note had run, "I am not quite happy as I think of the manner in which we parted the other day. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... standard to the works of American writers, and may disregard many a minor author whose productions would have cut some figure had they come to light amid the poverty of our colonial age. Hundreds of these forgotten names, with specimens of their unread writings, are consigned to a limbo of immortality in the pages of Duyckinck's Cyclopedia and of Griswold's Poets of America and Prose Writers of America. We may select here for special mention, and as most representative of the ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... and whence came they? Each little tribe is a book unread before, and full to the brim of fascination. When they are confronted with the picture of an elephant in a current magazine, they are all excitement. The book is carried eagerly to the old man sunning himself down in the anchored oomiak. Animation, retrospection, agitation ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the gesture, and for a moment it crossed his mind in self-reproach that the part he chose to play was that of a bully. A second he hesitated. Should he surrender the letter unread, and fight on without the aid of the information it might bring him? Then the thought of Ashburn and of his own deep wrongs that cried out for vengeance, overcame and stifled the generous impulse. His manner grew yet more frozen ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... of infancy is as apprehensive as that of maturest wisdom, in relation to any capital wound inflicted on the happiness; "it is finished, and life is exhausted." How? Could it be exhausted so soon? Had I read Milton, had I seen Rome, had I heard Mozart? No. The "Paradise Lost" was yet unread, the Coliseum and St. Peter's were unseen, the melodies of Don Giovanni were yet silent for me. Raptures there might be in arrear. But raptures are modes of troubled pleasure; the peace, the rest, the lulls, the central security, which belong to love, that is past all understanding, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... to the unthinking, and it is a fact that none but the unread in history will deny, that, in periods of popular tumult and innovation, the more abstract a notion is, the more readily has it been found to combine, the closer has appeared its affinity, with the feelings of a people, and with all their immediate impulses to action. At the commencement of the ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... bay-windowed, three-storied. Ugly, immense, unfriendly, it struck an inharmonious note in the riotous free growth of the surrounding woods. The dark entrance-hall was flanked by a library full of obsolete, unread books, and by double drawing-rooms, rarely opened now. All the windows on the ground floor were darkened by the shrubbery outside and by ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... truthfully the living dead Whose sensibilities were slain By tyros, oft unskilled, unread, In all the workings of the brain; Whose concepts of the avenues That reach the mind of tender youth, Are labyrinths of tangled views Devoid of art, science, and truth; Touch but that chord of magic power Which gives the soul augmented bliss, And lifts it for the present hour ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... tranquil spring evenings, the priest was seen sitting by the mound, his finger closed in the unread breviary. ...
— Pere Antoine's Date-Palm • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... commonplace, ridiculous, or disgusting themes, such as the making of gold, the game of chess, the management of silkworms, astrology, and venereal diseases (morbus gallicus), to say nothing of many long Italian poems of the same kind. Nowadays this class of poem is condemned unread, and how far, as a matter of fact, they are really worth the reading, we are unable to say. One thing is certain: epochs far above our own in the sense of beauty—the Renaissance and the Greco-Roman world—could not dispense with this form of poetry. It may be ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the Blight fortune. How many a worthy Jones or a poor but noble Robinson has to descend to an advertisement to make his happiness known to the careless world? How many a lovely Joan goes to her wedding unread-of because her forebears were lacking, not in those qualities which open the gates ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... after all its adventures, having been found, we shall never know where, by a gentleman in the days of Queen Elizabeth, having lain on his bookshelves unknown and unread for a hundred years and more, having been nearly destroyed by fire, having been still further destroyed by neglect, Beowulf at last came to its own, and is now carefully treasured in a glass case in the British Museum, where any one who cared about it may go ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... manuscripts sent to the magazines of to-day are, in every case, read, and frequently more carefully read than the author imagines. Editors know that, from the standpoint of good business alone, it is unwise to return a manuscript unread. Literary talent has been found in many instances where it was ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... Index in haste, and looked down it with hurried eyes. Almost sooner than I could have hoped, the riddle unread itself. "Ber-, Berb-, Berc-, Berd-," I read out: "Berkshire: Berham: Berhampore: that won't do: Berlin: Berling: Bernina: Berry—what's that? Oh, great heavens!"—my ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... her home in Hampshire; but she could not say whether the mother and daughter had ever returned, or had ever been heard of afterwards. No further search, on Miss Halcombe's part, through the few letters of Mrs. Fairlie's writing which she had left unread, assisted in clearing up the uncertainties still left to perplex us. We had identified the unhappy woman whom I had met in the night-time with Anne Catherick—we had made some advance, at least, towards connecting the probably defective condition of the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... certain," he continued in the same calm, slow voice, "there is within this envelope some lie, some plot. I will not even know what it is. I will not ask you a single question, and I will throw these letters, unread, into the fire; but swear to me, that, whatever this Menko, or any other, may write to me, whatever any one may say, is an infamy and a ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... shaded lights here and there. It had such tempting crannies. I loved its deep quiet, so pleasantly broken now and then by a step, a whisper, the sound of a book being moved from its shelf where perhaps it had stood unread for years, or occasional voices passing outside or snatches of song from the campus. And here I thought I was finding myself. That French prof had introduced me to Voltaire, Hugo, Balzac, Maupassant and others who were becoming my new idols. This was art, this ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... three masters had most affected Des Esseintes in modern, French, secular literature. But he had read them so often, had saturated himself in them so completely, that in order to absorb them he had been compelled to lay them aside and let them remain unread ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... by the divine impulse; and now for reward he is poor, despised, sick, paralyzed, neglected, dying. His message to men, to the delivery of which he devoted his life, which has been dearer in his eyes (for man's sake) than wife, children, life itself, is unread, or scoffed and jeered at. What shall he say to God? He says that God knows him through and through, and that he is willing to leave ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... of the writer[59]. The contents were written in columns, the lines of which ran parallel to the long dimension[60], and the reader, holding the roll in both hands, rolled up the part he had finished with his left hand, and unrolled the unread portion with his right. This way of dealing with the roll is well shewn in the accompanying illustration (fig. 9) reduced from a fresco at Pompeii[61]. In most examples the two halves of the roll are turned inwards, as ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... he was doing was coming slowly, but what difference did it make? It would never be published. Probably it would be filed with a Department of Defense code number as Research Report DDNE-42 dash-dash-dash. And there it would remain, top-secret, guarded, unread, useless. Somewhere in the desk drawers was the directive worded in the stiff military manner describing the procedures for clearing papers for publication. When he had first come ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... Crabbe now left unread, which is very far from being the case, his would be an enviable fame—for was he not one of the favored poets of Walter Scott, and whenever the closing scene of the great magician's life is read in the pages of Lockhart, must ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... words of not more than three syllables had begun to tell on me. I bade the artist good-bye, wandered away up the half-dozen steps to the Parade, sat down on a bench, and opened the morning paper that I had brought out unread. During the War one felt it a duty to know the worst before breakfast; now that the English polity is threatened merely from within, one is apt to dally.... Merely from within? Is that a right phrase when the nerves of unrestful Labour in any one land are interplicated with its nerves ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... glance was for the letter. There it stood as she had left it. More than once during the evening she had caught herself fearing that something might happen to it in her absence. She might find the letter gone—forever gone—and unread! She smiled at it as she saw it standing there, but still she did not open it. She took off her dancing frock, braided her hair for the night in two heavy plaits, and slipped into a little loose gown of cambric, lace, and ribbon before at last she ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... the truth it contains. They place it upon the table as such; and indeed many do not even give it that prominence, but, yielding to the taste of fashion, place it under the parlor table, and there it rests, unmolested, untouched and unread even for years. In many professedly religious families this is their family bible! Ah! it is not so heartsome as that well-marked and long-used old bible which lies upon the table of the nursery room, speaking ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... in looking over some unread mail which I had with me while Hugh was laying these flattering unctions to his soul, and came at this point upon a letter from one Hastings, an American from the village of Boston in North America, offering in a kind sure way to marry my daughter Nancy if he could have my consent. ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Cressida's face when she ran over her morning mail at breakfast. She usually put their letters by to read "when she was feeling up to it" and hastened to open others which might possibly contain something gracious or pleasant. Sometimes these family unburdenings lay about unread for several days. Any other letters would have got themselves lost, but these bulky epistles, never properly fitted to their envelopes, seemed immune to mischance and unfailingly disgorged to Cressida long explanations ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... hesitation, though she knew as well as he himself that the yet unread words contained the solution of the great problem. But she sat patiently by his side, her white hand resting on his shoulder, her anxious face turned towards his, her lips already parted, as though but awaiting her breath to speak words of consolation for the suffering that ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... multiplication of saints' offices (officia de sanctis), which after the canonization of saints gradually grew to such a huge number that very often the Dominical and Ferial Office remained unread, and hence not a few psalms were neglected, which yet are as the rest, as St. Ambrose says, "the benediction of the people, the praise of God, the praise offering of the multitude, the acclamation of all, the expression of the community, the voice of the Church, the resounding ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... instantly by the average business man, although the letter may come from an entirely reliable house and contain an excellent business proposition on good, substantial paper. For this reason, the letter that departs from the usual standards must assume unnecessary risks of being thrown away unread. ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... it must always be borne in mind that you will find many digressions, many bits of affectation, some mawkish pathos. But these defects do not seriously injure the stories. You cannot afford to leave Pickwick Papers unread, because this novel contains more spontaneous humor than any other of Dickens' work, and it is also quoted most frequently. The boy or girl who cannot follow with relish the amusing incidents in this book is not normal. Older ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... pas le francais," said Captain Mulcaster, at Elizabeth Castle, as he put the letter into his pocket unread. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Carlyle performed with an admirable conscientiousness. His numerous letters applying for out-of-the-way books to buy or borrow, for every pamphlet throwing light on his subject, bear testimony to the careful exactitude which rarely permitted him to leave any record unread or any worthy opinion untested about any event of which or any person of whom he undertook to write. From Templand (1833) he applies for seven volumes of Beaumarchais, three of Bassompierre, the Memoirs of Abbe Georgel, and every attainable account of Cagliostro and the Countess de ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... are gracious and serene By gift of God, in human lore unread, May pluck these holy blooms and grasses green That now I wreathe for thine immortal head, I that may walk with thee, thyself unseen, And by thy whispered ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... curious sensation about the heart, and an eagerness of interest I have rarely experienced. I had no idea what a mere letter—a mere unopened unread letter—would mean to ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... of evil conduct would appear no less clearly. The Emperor who, when the head of his rebellious general was brought to him, grieved because that general had not lived to be forgiven; the ruler who burned unread all treasonable correspondence, would not, nay, could not believe in the existence of such an inhuman monster as Commodus proved himself to be. The appointment of Commodus was a calamity of the most terrific character; but it testifies in trumpet tones to the nobility of the Emperor's ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... the followers of Christ within the space of ninety years from the date of the Resurrection. I do not myself think that any of these writings were composed as late as A.D. 120; but I wish to preclude all dispute. This Book I resume as read, and yet unread—read and familiar to my mind in all parts, but which is yet to be perused as a whole, or rather a work, cujus particulas et sententiolas omnes et singulas recogniturus sum, but the component integers ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... artificial civilization, and follow instinct. Brooke, in the prologue of his Gustavus Vasa, shows that he foresaw the political bearings of this theory; it is, in his opinion, peculiarly a people "guiltless of courts, untainted, and unread" that, illumined by Nature, understands and upholds freedom: but this was a thought too advanced to be general at this ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... seek, I cannot understand what I would learn; but this unread letter has lightened my burdens and turned my ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... had her golden age of letters as well as her age of military glory. Her libraries and archives are filled with unread, musty manuscripts, comprising treatises on philosophy and metaphysics, histories, biographies, and poems, rich in the classic erudition of the Orient. In 1336, Sultan Orkan found leisure from war and conquest to establish, at Brusa, a literary ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... living ministry is not indispensable to a parish. All our parishes ought to have it, and we ought to see to it that they all get it; but neither the conversion of sinners, nor the sanctification and comfort of God's saints, is tied up to any man's lips. You will read your unread Bibles more: you will buy more good books: you will meet more in private converse and prayer: and it will not be bad for you for a season to look above the pulpit, and to look Jesus Christ Himself more immediately in the face.' As Fraser of Brea also said in a striking passage ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... to read a letter which I tell you I did not wish my sister to write to you. If it is some mistaken sense of loyalty to Vava, I may as well tell you that she has told me what was in it, and knows that I am asking for it back unread,' she said. ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... and curious device To send their letters yet evade the most preposterous price; Still to despatch to London Town a business "line or two" Would cost a Connemara peasant half his weekly "screw;" Still mothers, longing much for news, must let their letter lie Unread at country post-offices, the postage being too high For their lean purses, unprepared. And Trade was hampered then, And Love was checked, and barriers raised—by cost—'twixt men and men. Then up and spake brave ROWLAND HILL ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... while still in this depressed state of mind, he turned his attention to some Christian tracts which had been given to him on his first appearance at the examination, but which he had so far allowed to remain unread. In these he discovered what he thought were interpretations of his earlier dreams, and soon managed to persuade himself that he had been divinely chosen to bring to his countrymen a knowledge of the ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... had searched not only in her pockets but in every other possible place, the letter could not be found; and though Mrs. Kaye assured them that there was probably very little of importance in it, her children could not help imagining something quite to the contrary; and to learn the unread message became the ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... in front of Mary Cahill as though to shield her. His eyes stole stealthily towards Cahill's confession. Still unread and still unsigned, it lay unopened upon the table. Cahill was gazing upon Ranson ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... by what means or at what sacrifice) a personal interview with Rachel—this was my plan of action, so far as I was capable of forming it at the time. There was more than an hour still to spare before the train started. And there was the bare chance that Betteredge might discover something in the unread portion of Rosanna Spearman's letter, which it might be useful for me to know before I left the house in which the Diamond had been lost. For that chance ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... and giving some explanation of difficult terms, we are often able to create an interest in poems that would otherwise remain unread. The best of old English ballads are so full of martial spirit that they may well prove an inspiration to many a boy in these days when war has so recently rent the whole world and proved the courage of our own young men. Back of the action ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... White House, or the State Department. Everybody may be seen there. It is the meeting-place of the true representatives of the country,—not such as are chosen blindly and amiss by electors who take a folded ballot from the hand of a local politician, and thrust it into the ballot-box unread, but men who gravitate or are attracted hither by real business, or a native impulse to breathe the intensest atmosphere of the nation's life, or a genuine anxiety to see how this life-and-death struggle is going to deal with us. Nor these only, but ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... individual who was the victim of injustice, large or small, at the hands of Pyramid Gordon, someone who got in his way, perhaps years ago. Now I am to do something that will offset that old injury. While the name remains unread, we have a bit of mystery, an unknown adventure ahead of us, perhaps. And that, my dear McCabe, is the ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Lactantius who would now condemn Copernicus unread, and produce authorities of the Scripture, of divines, and of councils in support of their condemnation. I hold these authorities in reverence, but I hold that in this instance they are used for personal ends in a manner very different from the most ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... from the other," the boy's mother sighed, as she took up an unread letter—there were but two more. There was no harm in reading such letters as these, she thought with relief, and noticed as she drew the paper from the envelope that the postmark was ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... story-books were John's realities. And these were books to him, as well, while Chesterfield went unread, and other things and conditions, not of nature and her seclusions, but vibrant with human energies and strifes, were making, unheeded of him, his world and his fate. A little boy's life does right to loiter. But if we loiter with him here, we are likely ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... of ten or twelve sons and daughters might keep under the sixpences and shillings of the circulating library; but they soon became jealous of new books, although they often returned them uncut and unread; and so far from knitting the bonds of acquaintance, we at last thought our plan served to estrange the members, by affording the little aristocracy frequent opportunities for venting their splenetic pride; the books were like disjunctive conjunctions, and when we left the place, the "society" ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... on one of the pink and gold sofas, and lay there brooding, an unread novel on her knee. Mrs. Spragg timidly slipped a cushion under her daughter's head, and then dissembled herself behind the lace window-curtains and sat watching the lights spring out down the long street and spread their ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... gentlemen fell in love; but the more sincere the lover, the more timid he became; and besides, the lady inspired awe, and it was a difficult matter to find enough courage to speak to her. Finally, if a few of the bolder sort wrote to her, their letters must have been burned unread. It was Mme. Willemsens' practice to throw all the letters which she received into the fire, as if she meant that the time spent in Touraine should be untroubled by any outside cares even of the slightest. She might have come to the enchanting retreat to give ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... But, read or unread, there was the manuscript—rejected. There was no appeal from the decision; there was no explanation, no apology—they had simply rejected it! It was like a blow in the face to Thyrsis; he felt like a woman whose ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... lazy, with an unread book, You scarcely tried to keep your lids apart, While to my youthful love new growth I took, Kissing your hands ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... occasion sometimes required an immediate utterance. The new book must be reviewed before other journals had thoroughly dissected and discussed it, else the ablest critique would command no general attention, and perhaps be, by the greater number, unread. That the writer should wait the flow of inspiration, or at least the recurrence of elasticity of spirits and relative health of body, will not seem unreasonable to the general reader; but to the inveterate hack-horse of the daily press, accustomed ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... most distinguished men in Rome, who had held secret communications with the rebel leader and had even invited him over into Italy. With admirable wisdom Pompey, while he ordered the instant execution of the traitor, burned the letters unread. ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... him of the unread letter lying on her dressing-table upstairs, and not till long after he had gone did she pick up the envelope and turn it over and over in her fingers. Then, at ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... "I? An unread, illiterate dotard! Why, I never had so much as a day's schooling. As a lad I slept with the rats, held horses, swept crossings and lived like a mudlark! Me write a play! I might let fall a suggestion here and there; how to set a flat, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... visions of a sea of angry white faces closing around some one dark face, perhaps guilty and perhaps innocent; and as he thought thereon he shuddered. He felt sorely tempted to toss the note out of the window unread, but remembering the pleading look on the face of the young woman he did not follow the ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... few hooks on art that painters and critics should on no account leave unread this ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... discovery began. Once before he had tried Spencer, and choosing the "Principles of Psychology" to begin with, he had failed as abjectly as he had failed with Madam Blavatsky. There had been no understanding the book, and he had returned it unread. But this night, after algebra and physics, and an attempt at a sonnet, he got into bed and opened "First Principles." Morning found him still reading. It was impossible for him to sleep. Nor did he ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Matilda, and he was in sore need of repose besides. So he rose just in time to swallow his coffee and array himself carefully for his aunt's early dinner, leaving his two Sunday papers—the theatrical and the general organs—unread on his table. ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... thick letter from Cossie, which her ungrateful and distracted relative tore up unread. Already, in his mind's eye, Shafto could see Cossie permanently established in Rangoon, informing everyone that she was his cousin, bombarding him with chits, worrying him for visits, treats and attentions. Heaven be praised! neither of his horses carried a lady, it was as ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... be walking in the cool of the evening with Don Francisco de Las Casas, a sensible, strong man, not unread in the philosophers. He spoke to me of his son, a young man whom he loved, who would sooner or later come out to him to Hispaniola, if he, the elder, stayed here. So soon as this we had begun to speak thus, "Come ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... Petersburg. Mr. Motteux's solicitors wrote immediately to inform him of his accession to their late client's wealth. It being one of Mr. Cowper's maxims never to read lawyers' letters, (he was in daily receipt of more than he could attend to,) he flung this one unread into the fire; and only learnt his mistake through the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... a week in his house he was able to talk with comparative ease. He seemed to enjoy my companionship, and I spent most of my time in his library, conversing with him or conning the musty books that had long lain unread. To me this room was a fascinating and restful place. Somehow it reminded me of an old cemetery. The time-worn books upon its shelves stood in solemn rows, like headstones, sacred to the memory of the men who wrote them—their titles like inscriptions half obliterated. ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... does not clothe them, what anguish Must be known in the world of the dead, If the future lies open before them, And fate has no secret unread. And yet, oh how rarely our vision May know the lost presence is nigh; How seldom its purpose be gathered, Be it comfort, or ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... he looked, whence the telegram came; and he dreaded to make sure. For an instant, he was tempted to put the folded bit of paper in his pocket, unread until Touggourt, or even Biskra. "Why shouldn't I keep these few days unspoiled by thoughts of what's to come, since they're the only happy days I shall ever have?" he asked himself. But it would be weak to put off the evil moment, and he would not ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... failure to-night," added Stuart, "or catastrophe, I authorise you to read this statement—and act upon it. If, however, I escape safely, I ask you to return it to me, unread." ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... to-day there will be put up for auction an unread and unsoiled copy of yesterday's Times. The donor of this superb gift desires to remain anonymous, but his incredible generosity is expected to benefit charity to the extent ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... preserved a lasting appreciation of his work, or cheerfully and intelligently recognised his immense force. And accordingly we cannot help perceiving that generations are arising who know not Byron. This is not to say that he goes unread; but there is a vast gulf fixed between the author whom we read with pleasure and even delight, and that other to whom we turn at all moments for inspiration and encouragement, and whose words and ideas spring up incessantly ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... self, that is, of his free and living will. The Stoics improved on the military metaphor; for to the soldier, after all, it does matter whether in his part of the field he wins or loses. Life is not like a battle but like a play, in which God has handed each man his part unread, and the good man proceeds to act it to the best of his power, not knowing what may happen in the last scene. He may become a crowned king, he may be a slave dying in torment. What matters it? The ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... nought else But the protractive trials of great Jove To find persistive constancy in men; The fineness of which metal is not found In fortune's love? For then the bold and coward, The wise and fool, the artist and unread, The hard and soft, seem all affin'd and kin. But in the wind and tempest of her frown Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan, Puffing at all, winnows the light away; And what hath mass or matter by itself Lies rich in virtue ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... each conspirator ran to save himself by denouncing all others. One Cuban, of large fortune and small reputation, being implicated in these matters, brought General Concha a list of all his confederates, which Concha burned before his face, unread. Piteous, laughable spectacle! Better be monkeys than such men; yet such work does Absolutism in government and religion make of the noble human creature! God preserve us ever from tyrants, spies, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... feature of the revelry was the distribution of gifts on the Christmas Tree—the handing over to this person and to that person of those unread lessons of the ages—little mummied packages of the lord of time. One thing no one noted. Fresh candles had replaced those burnt out on the Tree the night before: all the ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... desirable. This I do not take to be the case of France, or of any other great country. Until now, we have seen no examples of considerable democracies. The ancients were better acquainted with them. Not being wholly unread in the authors who had seen the most of those constitutions, and who best understood them, I cannot help concurring with their opinion, that an absolute democracy no more than absolute monarchy is to be reckoned among the legitimate ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Disenchantment is the key to all things. When I like a woman I carefully avoid all her acquaintance, any one who can tell me aught about her. The sound of her name pronounced by careless lips, puts me to flight; the letters that she receives might be given me open and I should throw them, unread, into the fire. If in speaking she makes any allusion to the past events of her life, I change the conversation; I tremble when she begins a recital, lest some disillusionizing incident should escape her which would destroy the impression I had formed of her. As studiously as others ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... book of life upon her knee, Fate sits! the unread page of love's delight By her firm hand is half concealed from me, And half revealed to sight. Ah Fate! be kind! so well I learned love's sorrow, Give me its full delight ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... soon. You, Carl, may be the heir of more than my goods. If matters should so fall out, then break the seal, and read what I have written. If not, I beg of you, after five years have elapsed, to destroy the packet unread. I do not care to ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... hard-looking, in a police-court; I heard a charge of disorderly conduct, profane language, resisting an officer, and a few other things, read by a clerk; and I saw myself across in Blackwell's Island. Oh, I knew the game. I lost all interest in explanations. I didn't stop to pick up my precious, unread book. I turned and ran. I was pretty sick, but I ran. And run I shall, to my dying day, whenever a bull begins to explain with ...
— The Road • Jack London
... purely intellectual progress brings about its revenges. Problems settled in a rough and ready way by rude men, absorbed in action, demand renewed attention and show themselves to be still unread riddles when men have time to think. The beneficent demon, doubt, whose name is Legion and who dwells amongst the tombs of old faiths, enters into mankind and thenceforth refuses to be cast out. Sacred customs, venerable dooms of ancestral wisdom, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... favorite seems to us a safe prediction.... There is no part of it which, once begun, is likely to be left unread."—The Dial. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... and into crooked lanes, and finally into ditches, and he never arrived at his goal. There in that library window nook it is cool in summer, and warm in winter. So he sits and dreams, holding an open volume, unread, on his knees. Some times he writes, hunched up in his corner, feverishly scribbling at ridiculous plays, short stories, and novels which later he will insist on reading to the tittering schoolboys and girls ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... but he was cheap and other workmen were not better, and thus he remained there two years. His life was uneventful. One day he received a letter, written in Esthonian, but as he himself was illiterate, and as the others did not understand Esthonian, the letter remained unread; and as if not understanding that the letter might bring him tidings from his native home, he flung it into the manure with a certain savage, grim indifference. At one time Yanson tried to make love to the ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... are meant for us. In art as in the complex details of living, there is need of selection; and criticism helps toward that. In literature alone, to name but a single art, there is so much to be left unread which the length of our life would not otherwise permit us to escape, that we are grateful to the critic who aids us to omit gracefully and with success. But the most serviceable criticism is positive and not ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... "A truce to your idle discourses!" I cry, "What's knowledge, indeed, unattended by might?" If you offered me, knowledge and wisdom and all, with my inkhorn and papers, in pawn for a mite, To buy one day's victual, the pledge they'd reject And cast, like an unread petition, from sight. Sorry, indeed, is the case of the poor, And his life, what a load of chagrin and despite! In summer, he's pinched for a living and cowers O'er the fire-pot in winter, for warmth and for light. The curs of the street dog his heels, as he goes, And the scurviest ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... said the teacher, as he took the message and flung it on the fire, unread. "Faraway, New York;" he continued on his way to the blackboard as if nothing ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... Copied out (three times) December, 1896. Submitted to Messrs. Kesteven, Sydney; but they say they are publishing very little at present, as times are depressed. To James & James, Melbourne; returned. And unread, I am sure; the package had hardly been touched. To Brown & McMahon, Melbourne. A most polite note, but they do not care to publish so long a story. Shortened it, and copied again (July, 1898). Sent ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... thing is that he should have kept the book which had probably been given to him by the prison chaplain. Still everybody makes mistakes sometimes. Or it may have had associations for him, and of course he had never seen this stamp upon an unread page, which happened to ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... read the letter aloud to him ... said it was a fine effort as a composition in rhetoric, but I might expect nothing of it—if the perpetually drunk jailer really brought it to its destination—except that it would be tossed unread into ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... a fact correctly stated; and yet it is phrased with such ingenious infelicity that it can be depended upon to convey misinformation every time it is uncarefully unread: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to his sense of Ruth's perfections and his own poor deserts. No man can quite know, until he has tried it, how severe an ordeal it is to sit at table with the lady of his heart, while that lady has his declaration, as yet unread, ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... told here, sub rosa, and I believe it that some of our laboured efforts, in this way to obtain redress in the protracted negotiation for indemnity, have actually lain months in the bureaux, unread by those who alone have power to settle the question. Some commis perhaps may have cursorily related their contents to his superior, but the superior himself is usually too much occupied in procuring and maintaining ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... not only be good citizens, and men possessed of that information and integrity which are indispensable to magistrates, but they must be statesmen—politicians, not unread in the signs of the times, not afraid to brave the obstacles which can be subdued, nor slow to turn aside such encroaching elements as may threaten the supremacy of the Union and the obedience which ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... pamphlets bearing on his own work. He had one shelf on which were piled up the books he had not yet read, and another to which they were transferred after having been read, and before being catalogued. He would often groan over his unread books, because there were so many which he knew he should never read. Many a book was at once transferred to the other heap, either marked with a cypher at the end, to show that it contained no marked passages, or inscribed, perhaps, "not read," or "only skimmed." The books accumulated in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... religion. She never passed by a chapel or heard the name of God, or the singing of a hymn, without thinking of her former mistress. To have looked into this Bible would have reminded her of Mrs Starvem; that was one of the reasons why the book reposed, unopened and unread, a mere ornament on the table ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... a dejected mind and an aching heart, what were the sorrows of Agnes? The only child of doating parents, she never had been taught the necessity of resignation—untutored, unread, unused to reflect, but knowing how to feel; what were her sufferings when, on waking, she called to mind that "William was gone," and with him gone all that excess of happiness which his presence had bestowed, and for which she had exchanged ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald |
