"Causeless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in such a transcendental sense is causeless and free will evidently not be causal or determinant, being something altogether universal and notional, without inherent determinations or specific affinities. The objects figuring in consciousness will have implications and will require ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... is necessary and expedient for the general advantage of the publick[c]. Hence we may collect that the law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind: but every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of the subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny. Nay, that even laws themselves, whether made with or without our consent, if they regulate and constrain our conduct in matters of mere indifference, without ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... in solitude, with her hands folded and her heart filled with unutterable tender woe, that so much causeless cloud had settled upon the home of her refuge. She could not experience that relief many of us feel in deep adversity, that it is all illusion, and will in a moment float away like other dreams. Brought to this house an orphan, and twice ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... young monarch found life very bright around him. His courtiers called him "the rising sun," and his ambition was to justify the title, to be what with his enormous wealth and authority was scarcely difficult, the Grand Monarch. He rushed into causeless war and snatched provinces from his feeble neighbors, exhausted Germany and decaying Spain. He built huge fortresses along his frontiers, and military roads from end to end of his domains. His court was one continuous round of splendid entertainments. He encouraged literature, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... known the somewhat startling nautical command, "Get the whip ready for the ladies," blanch many a fair cheek with sudden and most causeless alarm. It cannot be denied that we "gentlemen of the ocean" have singular names for things; but every thing at sea must have a name, or there would be no ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... of gentler mould Though Rakshas born, her grief consoled: "Dear Queen, thy causeless woe dispel: Thy husband lives, and all is well. Look round: in every Vanar face The light of joyful hope I trace. Not thus, believe me, shine the eyes Of warriors when their leader dies. An Army, when the chief is dead, Flies from the field dispirited. Here, undisturbed ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... no sooner left with the Chieftain and Waverley, the rest of his attendants being at some distance, than he said, 'If I owed less to your disinterested friendship, I could be most seriously angry with both of you for this very extraordinary and causeless broil, at a moment when my father's service so decidedly demands the most perfect unanimity. But the worst of my situation is, that my very best friends hold they have liberty to ruin themselves, as well as the cause they are engaged in, upon ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... wherefore do I live when I should die? Canst answer that, good Sir? O there are women The world deem mad, or worse, whose life but seems One vile caprice, a freakish thing of whims And restless nothingness; yet if we pierce The soul, may be we'll touch some cause profound For what seems causeless. Early love despised, Or baffled, which is worse; a faith betrayed, For vanity or lucre; chill regards, Where to gain constant glances we have paid Some fearful forfeit: here are many springs, Unmarked by shallow eyes, and some, or all Of these, or none, may prompt my conduct now— ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... did they agree; they were unanimous that if Young Denny Bolton's bearing that morning—the angle at which he held his chin, and the huge cut that adorned it, and his causeless mirth—was not entirely damning, it was at least suspicious enough to require more than a little explanation. But that verdict, too, was none other than the very one which the Judge ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... general of the interior, with a request of a nature unusually interesting. He stated his name to be Eugene Beauharnois, son of the ci-devant Vicomte de Beauharnois, who, adhering to the revolutionary party, had been a general in the republican service upon the Rhine, and falling under the causeless suspicion of the committee of public safety, was delivered to the revolutionary tribunal, and fell by its sentence just four days before the overthrow of Robespierre. Eugene was come to request of Bonaparte, as general of the interior, that his father's sword might ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... hastily made an imperious sign which abashed her and inspired respect for her neighbor. She sat down beside me. The old man did not choose to leave the charming creature, to whom he clung capriciously with the silent and apparently causeless obstinacy to which very old persons are subject, and which makes them resemble children. In order to sit down beside the young lady he needed a folding-chair. His slightest movements were marked by the inert heaviness, the stupid hesitancy, ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... of the law of aerial perspective, but it startled, almost terrified me. We so rely upon the orderly operation of familiar natural laws that any seeming suspension of them is noted as a menace to our safety, a warning of unthinkable calamity. So now the apparently causeless movement of the herbage and the slow, undeviating approach of the line of disturbances were distinctly disquieting. My companion appeared actually frightened, and I could hardly credit my senses when I saw him suddenly throw his gun to his shoulder and fire both barrels at the agitated grain! Before ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... wish'd sight I desire, Suspicion you pretend, Causeless you yourself retire Whilst I in vain attend, Thus a lover, as you say, Still made more eager by delay. Is this fair excusing? O no, ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... although their joint endeavors could not wholly prevent the rebellion, yet they checked it considerably for some time, and prevented many thousands from plunging into it who otherwise would certainly have done so. . . . The present rebellion is certainly one of the most causeless, unprovoked and unnatural that ever disgraced any country; a rebellion marked with peculiarly aggravated circumstances of guilt and ingratitude. . . . About the middle of April, Mr. Washington—commander-in-chief of the rebel ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... I was not so happy: and I looked back fondly to the days of the greenwood and the fellowship of the Dry Tree, and the days before that, of my flight with my lord. And moreover with the wearing of the years those murmurs against me and the blind causeless hatred began to grow again, and chiefly methinks because I was the king, and my lord the king's cloak: but therewith tales concerning me began to spring up, how that I was not only a sorceress, but even one foredoomed from of old and sent by the lords of hell to wreck that fair Land of the Tower ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... All ye gods who rule the soul:[5] Styx, through Hell whose waters roll! Let me be allow'd to tell What I heard in yonder Hell. Near the door an entrance gapes,[6] Crowded round with antic shapes, Poverty, and Grief, and Care, Causeless Joy, and true Despair; Discord periwigg'd with snakes,'[7] See the dreadful strides she takes! By this odious crew beset,[8] I began to rage and fret, And resolved to break their pates, Ere we enter'd at the gates; Had not Clio in the nick[9] ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... blush at his apparently causeless emotion, he stepped to the clerk who always stood next to Arthur, and inquired if he knew where ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... improve what he had received. God required no more at his hands. But it is evident, from the manner in which he conducted himself toward his heaven favored and pious father, that he was an egregious sinner, and the curse of God fell upon him, and his progeny. "The curse causeless ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... mystery, counting them on my fingers: the pavilion secretly prepared for guests; the guests landed at the risk of their lives and to the imminent peril of the yacht; the guests, or at least one of them, in undisguised and seemingly causeless terror; Northmour with a naked weapon; Northmour stabbing his most intimate acquaintance at a word; last, and not least strange, Northmour fleeing from the man whom he had sought to murder, and barricading himself, like a hunted creature, behind the door ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I wish to notice the fifth and sixth sections, they may be considered together. That the enforcement of these sections would do no injustice to the persons embraced within them, is clear. That those who make a causeless war should be compelled to pay the cost of it, is too obviously just to be called in question. To give governmental protection to the property of persons who have abandoned it, and gone on a crusade to overthrow the same government, is absurd, if considered in the mere light of justice. The severest ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... had the curiosity to investigate the causes of this disaster? It is a curiosity which can be easily gratified. The Democratic party was killed in cold blood by Southern traitors. There never was a more causeless, malicious, or malignant murder. The fool in the fable who gained an unenviable notoriety by killing the goose which laid golden eggs, Balaam, who, but for angelic interposition, would have slain his faithful ass, were praiseworthy in comparison. Well might any one of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... less degree), but an abnormal element in exceptionally morbid natures, and therefore a sentiment (or sensation) with which no great number of people or large proportion of a public audience can sympathize or even understand. Intense and causeless hatred is one of the commonest indications of insanity, and, alas! one that too often exhibits itself toward those who have been objects of the tenderest love; but De Montfort is not insane, and his loathing is unaccountable to healthy minds upon any other plea, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... call myself a Frenchman again!" he panted, his eyes gleaming with wrath. "What think you, Corinne? They are flying from the camp at Beauport as sheep fly before wolves. It is no retreat, it is a rout—a disgraceful, abominable, causeless rout. There is no enemy near. The English are up on the heights, intrenching themselves no doubt, and resting after their gallant enterprise. Our uncle has exhausted his powers of persuasion. He has shown them again ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... into the room, and Clara explained to her what had happened. As Heidi continued her weeping, the lady, who was evidently getting impatient with her, went up to Heidi and said with decision, "Now, Adelaide, that is enough of all this causeless lamentation. I will tell you once for all, if there are any more scenes like this while you are reading, I shall take the book away from you and shall not ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... the Church. And of these Bishop Sanderson was one, and then chose to be a moderator in that debate: and he performed his trust with much mildness, patience, and reason; but all proved ineffectual: for there be some prepossessions like jealousies, which, though causeless, yet cannot be removed by reasons as apparent as demonstration can make any truth. The place appointed for this debate was the Savoy in the Strand: and the points debated were, I think, many; some affirmed to be truth and reason, some denied to be either; and these debates being then in words, ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... superannuated—such was his impenetrability to learning—at the age of five from the school of which his father had been master. He was moreover till the age of six and a half so frequently subject to long fits of abstraction and of apparently causeless crying that his mother and grandmother feared for his reason and thought him 'an absolute fool.' We are told also by his sister—and there is no incongruity in the two accounts—that he early displayed a taste for 'preheminence ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... succeeded in the next national election; but General Garfield, who was chosen President, was mortally wounded by an assassin (July 2, 1881), a few months after his inauguration. Guiteau, who committed the causeless and ruthless deed, claimed to be "inspired by the Deity," but was judged to be morally and legally responsible, and died on the gallows. Chester A. Arthur, the Vice-president, filled the highest office for the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... being mere signs of passion or of feeling, they seem not to have any strict grammatical relation, or dependence according to the sense. Being destitute alike of relation, agreement, and government, they must be used independently, if used at all. Yet an emotion signified in this manner, not being causeless, may be accompanied by some object, expressed either by a nominative absolute, or by an adjective after for: as, "Alas! poor Yorick!"—Shak. Here the grief denoted by alas, is certainly for Yorick; as much so, as if the expression were, "Alas for poor Yorick!" But, in either case, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... incessant, passionless sensibility, it was not unnatural that his thirst for friendship was stronger than his need of love; that to him friendship was hardly distinguishable from love. Throughout all his letters there is a series of causeless explosions of emotion, which it is hardly possible to take seriously, but which, far from being insincere, is really, no doubt, the dribbling overflow of choked-up feelings, a sort of moral leakage. It might be said ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... industrious folly! Oh! vain and causeless melancholy! 20 Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young Lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast Thou to do with sorrow, Or ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... usage, the term "accident" signifies a property or quality not essential to our conception of a substance: hence, it has come to mean anything that happens as a result of unforeseen causes—or, lastly, that which is causeless. But, as we know that nothing can happen without causes of some kind, the term "accident" is divested of real meaning when it is used in the last of these senses. Yet this is the sense that is sought to be placed upon it by the objection which we are considering. If the objectors ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... the timid fellow-traveller of Frank Osbaldistone, who carried the portmanteau. Osbaldistone says, concerning him, "Of all the propensities which teach mankind to torment themselves, that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, painful, pitiable."—Sir W. Scott, Rob ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... smiles—some, to rid themselves of painful regrets, took refuge in forgetfulness, and closed their eyes to the past—duty banished some abroad, and duty imprisoned others at home—estrangements there were, at first unconscious and unintended, yet erelong, though causeless, complete—changes were wrought insensibly, invisibly, even in the innermost nature of those who being friends knew no guile, yet came thereby at last to be friends no more—unrequited love broke some bonds—requited love relaxed ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... know quite how to regard a man's jealousy. It flatters her, yet it pains her. She is the cause of it, yet she would believe it causeless. She deplores it, yet she would not have it quite away. It is proof of love, yet it is fatal to love. How to treat it, puzzles her. Implicit obedience to the man's wishes lowers her in her own eyes, and, consequently, so she thinks, in ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... splendid phrases in which, as the Chinese[6] say, "it is only the words which stop, the sense goes on,"—phrases like Kalidasa's[7] "there are doors of the inevitable everywhere," or Bhavabhuti's[8] "for causeless love there is no remedy." As regards the predominance of swift-moving action over the poetical expression of great truths, The Little Clay Cart stands related to the Latter Acts of Rama as Macbeth does to Hamlet. Again, Shudraka's style is simple and direct, a rare quality in ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... she hasn't got a divorce from you that's what you'll have to do, and what you ought to do—if I understand your story. For by your own showing, a more causeless, heartless, and utterly inexcusable desertion than yours, I never ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... renown By these two sisters here; The third had causeless banishment, Yet was her love more dear: For poor Cordelia patiently Went wand'ring up and down, Unhelp'd, unpitied, gentle maid, Through many ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... driving back the tears at this causeless injury. "Mr. Leverich said it was best not to. Nobody knows about your being away at all. You're not going ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... fainting fits were more frequent than ever, and the Erbprincessin sank into a deep and brooding melancholy, which was varied by attacks of painful excitement and sudden bursts of causeless anger. It was whispered at Ludwigsburg that she ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, harkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me—to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... said significantly to a friend who spoke of some causeless dislike in another, 'My dear, I have known people to be hated for no other reason than ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a rebellious rebel. Yes,' she added, rising, 'I detest with all my heart this wicked, causeless rebellion. I detest the very names of the leaders of it. And yet I am compelled to go about with lies upon my lips, and to act lies, till I detest myself more than all else! I have consoled myself somewhat by making a flag and worshiping it in secret. ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... valor, until at last, by my friends and aid of such as followed gold more than right or virtue, I banished him from Bordeaux, and he, poor gentleman, lives no man knows where, in some distressed discontent. The gods, not able to suffer such impiety unrevenged, so wrought, that the king picked a causeless quarrel against me in hope to have my lands, and so hath exiled me out of France for ever. Thus, thus, sir, am I the most miserable of all men, as having a blemish in my thoughts for the wrongs I proffered ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... when thus my life had no commerce with the outside, when I was engrossed in the contemplation of my own heart, when my imaginings wandered in many a disguise amidst causeless emotions and aimless longings, has been left out of that edition; only a few of the poems originally published in the volume entitled Evening Songs finding a place ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... purify the soul and uplift the brow in a splendid renewal of hope and courage? Better a thousand times to suffer, to toil, to fight and weep, than to let life exhale itself in a ceaseless irresponsible gayety, causeless, objectless, and imperturbable! Better to stand bleeding on the breach than to lie ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... inadequate one. If we think this concept through we come upon a trilemma, a threefold impossibility. Whether we endeavor to deduce the change from external or from internal causes, or (with Hegel) to think it as causeless, in each case we involve ourselves in inconceivabilities. All three ideas—change as mechanism, as self-determination or freedom, as absolute becoming—are alike absurd. We can escape these contradictions only by the bold decision to conceive ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... remained for two or three days and then marched on in the track of the army. While at Shelbyville, the first and only causeless stampede of our pickets and false alarm to the camps which occurred during our squadron organization, took place. Ten or fifteen men were posted on picket some eight miles from the town toward Nashville, near a small bridge, at the southern end of which the extreme outpost vidette ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... so hasty, or given to causeless anger," said Alcinous; "excess in all things is evil."[1] Then he looked earnestly at Odysseus, and continued, after a pause: "I would to heaven that thy thoughts were as mine; then wouldst thou abide for ever in this land, and take my daughter to wife, and I ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... dilation of her pupils. At the sixth there was a momentary rigor. At the seventh her lids began to droop. At the tenth her eyes were closed, and her breathing was slower and fuller than usual. I tried as I watched to preserve my scientific calm, but a foolish, causeless agitation convulsed me. I trust that I hid it, but I felt as a child feels in the dark. I could not have believed that I was still open to ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... suffers this explosion in a periodic lawsuit—a rare action for the Hill; another in an almost insane family quarrel, another in an occasional fury of futile violence, another in periods, increasing in frequency as he grows older, of causeless and uncontrolled anger, or extravagant grief; and when weightier occasion is lacking, in torrents of language poured forth from the treasuries of an exhaustless memory. The very serenity and placidity which Quaker ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... fear or unfear never yet warded off misfortune," she said gravely. "It is better to entertain causeless concern ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... approach of evening, in place of that physical contentment which usually heralds the dinner-hour, at sea, I experienced a fit of the seemingly causeless apprehension which too often in the past had harbingered the coming of grim events; which I had learnt to associate with the nearing presence of one of Fu-Manchu's death-agents. In view of the facts, as I afterwards knew them to be, I cannot account ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... and sympathy, and, above all, a wise forbearance from probing into his still open wounds, might have won a certain amount of gratitude and affection from him. But Helen was unequal to this. She only drove him wild with causeless and senseless jealousy, and goaded him almost to madness by endless ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... to human feelings, and entering into the soul.'—The 13th Sonnet for exquisite delicacy of painting; the 19th for tender simplicity; and the 25th for manly pathos, are compositions of, perhaps, unrivalled merit. Yet while I am selecting these, I almost accuse myself of causeless partiality; for surely never was a writer so equal in excellence!—S. T. C. [In this note as it first appeared in the Morning Chronicle a Greek sentence preceded the supposed English translation. It is not to be found in the Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius, but the following passage ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... entirely contented and happy. What charm was there in his rude massiveness that so attracted and soothed this shadow-like girl? It appeared to me, who have always been curious in such matters, that Priscilla's vague and seemingly causeless flow of felicitous feeling was that with which love blesses inexperienced hearts, before they begin to suspect what is going on within them. It transports them to the seventh heaven; and if you ask what brought them thither, they neither ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sea of the past was glorious in its smiles, irresistible in its anger, capricious, enticing, illogical, irresponsible; a thing to love, a thing to fear. It cast a spell, it gave joy, it lulled gently into boundless faith; then with quick and causeless anger it killed. But its cruelty was redeemed by the charm of its inscrutable mystery, by the immensity of its promise, by the supreme witchery of its possible favour. Strong men with childlike hearts were faithful to it, were content to live by its grace—to ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... Not causeless were you christened, gentle flowers, The one of faith, the other fancy's pride; For she who guides both faith and fancy's power, In your fair colors wraps her ivory side. As one of you hath whiteness without stain, So spotless is my love and never tainted; And as the other shadoweth ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... although it figures among the towns of reconquered Spain, and has its little Catholic church and its confraternities of the Virgin, of Jesus, and of several of the saints, is proved by the character and the customs of its inhabitants; by the perpetual feuds, as terrible as they are causeless, which unite or separate them; and by the gloomy black eyes, pale complexions, laconic speech, and infrequent laughter of ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... many times had I enveloped her with this moral vitriol, with this jealous hatred, that she was degraded thereby. In the periods of this causeless hatred I gradually uncrowned her. I covered her ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... opened only on one side into the big bare dining-room, the chairs all ranged on the tops of the many round tables, standing at equidistant intervals. An echo—doubtless that was all. She upbraided herself to have sustained so sudden and causeless a fright. Her heart was beating like a trip-hammer. It seemed to fill all the building with the wild iteration of its pulsations. As she sought to reassure herself, she remembered that in a cross-hall she had noted the telephone, the wire still intact, as she knew, for ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... pressed upon her race, had only consented to adopt this unusual mode of changing her condition, under a sensitive, apprehension that any other would have necessarily led to the exposure of her origin. This fear, though exaggerated, and indeed causeless, was the result of too much brooding of late over her own situation, and of that morbid sensibility in which the most pure and innocent are, unhappily, the most likely to indulge. The concealment, as has already ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... have no mercy for ill-health in others. There are invalids who are objects of sympathy indeed, guiltless heirs of ancestral disease, or victims of parental folly or sin,—those whose lives are early blighted by maladies that seem as causeless as they are cureless,—or those with whom the world has dealt so cruelly that all their delicate nature is like sweet bells jangled,—or those whose powers of life are all exhausted by unnoticed labors and unseen cares,—or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... are of cortical origin, being coordinated and synergic, clonic or at times tonic[*] muscular movements, physiologically and not anatomically grouped, premeditated, purposive, of abnormal intensity, apparently causeless and inopportune. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... especially when the interests of a king and kingdom are at stake, which in so many ways have deserved well of the apostolic see. This we say ought to have been motive sufficient with you, without need of petition on our part; and if we had added our entreaties, it should have been but as men yielding to a causeless anxiety, and wasting words for which there was no occasion. Since, however, neither the merit of the cause nor the recollection of the benefits which you have received, nor the assiduous and diligent supplications of our prince have availed anything with your Holiness; since we cannot obtain from ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... merely. And what wonder that he should have an avidity for the sole delight he was able to enjoy? No man conversed so well as he on every subject; no man so acutely discerned the reason of every fact, the motive of every action, the end of every design. He was indeed often pained by the ignorance or causeless wonder of those who knew less than himself, though he seldom drove them away with apparent scorn, unless he thought they added presumption to stupidity. And it was impossible not to laugh at the patience he showed, when a Welsh parson of mean abilities, though a good ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Susanna Martin, upon a Causeless Disgust, had threatned him, about a certain Cow of his, That she should never do him any more Good: and it came to pass accordingly. For soon after the Cow was found stark dead on the dry Ground, without any Distemper to be discerned ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... and feelings, then, are not lawless and causeless, but are a part of a world of law and order. They are themselves caused and therefore subject to control ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... Does any one seriously believe that a powerful nation intent on peace—the strongest power in the world, the friend of all mankind, ready to submit any international question to arbitration—would be in danger of an unjust, lawless, causeless assault from the Christian nations of Europe, who have so much to lose and nothing to gain by war, and who have already, in their groaning, tax-burdened people, a sufficient reminder of the folly and criminality of war? They have not money for another war, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... carried away by a blind spirit of faction. He opposed the arbitrary design of the English ministry with great spirit and firmness, though with some indiscretion; but he was no advocate of turbulent dissensions or causeless revolt. He allowed himself to be ruled by the greater moderation and prudence of his associates, while he inspired them with his own ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... character of Richard earl Temple, was not that of causeless suspicion. He proved himself, in a thousand instances, honest, trusting, and sincere. He was not, like some men, that you and I know, dark, dispassionate, and impenetrable. On the contrary, no man mistook him, no man ever charged him with a double conduct or a wrinkled heart. His countenance ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... as a most causeless one," once said an Austrian officer to me, "for had the Federals stood but half an hour longer—which, with their position and supports, there was no earthly reason for their not doing—there could have been but one result. Smith's forces ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... companion, who tried to keep down his cousin's lively spirits, by suggesting the probability of the jar being cracked, or that the Indians might have returned for it; but Louis was not one of the doubting sort, and Louis was right in not damping the ardour of his mind by causeless fears. The jar was there at the deserted camp, and though it had been knocked over by some animal, it was sound and strong, and excited great speculation in the two cousins, as to the particular material of which it was made, as it was unlike any sort of pottery they had ever before seen. ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... It is written, 'The curse, causeless, shall not fall.' And yet, madame, I assure you that I most tenderly sympathize with you in your misfortunes, whatever ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... to kill a man in self-defense, and to take the life of a murderer as a punishment for his crime. The habitual concealment of one's actions is wrong, but it may be right at particular times and for special reasons. It is not a dreadfully wicked thing, like the causeless taking of human life, and may be justifiable much oftener and for less weighty reasons. Still habitual secrecy, or secrecy, except at particular times and for special reasons, is, according to the common judgment of men, suspicious and unjustifiable. Now, with secret societies secrecy is the ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher
... was jealous, without being able to see any just cause for my jealousy. It was, however, quite enough for a proud spirit like my own, that its secret fear should be revealed. It did not much matter, after this, whether my suspicions were, or were not causeless. It was enough that they were known—that busy, meddling women, and men about town, should distinguish me with a finger—should say: "His wife is very ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... initiations, were heard skylarking along the sidewalk, rattling sticks on the fences, squawking hoarsely, and even attempting to sing in the shocking new voices of uncompleted adolescence. For no reason, and just as a poultry yard falls into causeless agitation, they stopped in front of the house, and for half an hour produced the effect of a noisy multitude in ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... the distance of the eleventh mile-stone, where the river Allia, descending from the Crustuminian mountains in a very deep channel, joins the river Tiber not far below the road. Already all places in front and on each side were crowded with the enemy, and this nation, which has a natural turn for causeless confusion, by their harsh music and discordant clamours, filled all ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... us on the part of the said Sir Henry Bedingfeld that he has very necessary and urgent business, which does require his attention at this time, and whereas the said Sir Henry Bedingfeld has made an oath before us of the truth of the same, and that he will not make any causeless stay from his said place of habitation, we therefore, four of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the said county upon examination taken by us as of the premisses, do give this our licence to the said Sir Henry Bedingfeld to travel out of the precincts or compass of five miles from the ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... sound as of kisses and whispers. To one who found himself alone, beyond the limits of the village and beyond the hearing of its voices,—the vast silence, the vast light, seemed full of weirdness. And these hushes, these transparencies, do not always inspire a causeless apprehension: they are omens sometimes—omens of coming tempest. Nature,—incomprehensible Sphinx!—before her mightiest bursts of rage, ever puts forth her divinest witchery, makes more manifest her awful ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... dark reminder of a causeless deprivation settled it. Captain Pharo seized Miss Pray, blushing with alarm and amaze at such sudden retributive lightning on the part of her long-delayed charms, and bore her out ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... passage, knowing the ground better than I do—tamn her, I will have amends on her, if there be whipping-post, or ducking-stool, or a pair of stocks in the parish!" And so saying, the Captain trudged off, his spirits ever and anon agitated by recollection of the causeless aggression of Meg Dods, and again composed to a state of happy serenity by the recollection of the agreeable arrangement which he had made between Mr. Tyrrel, and ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... in the case of rats: it aids them to maintain their equilibrium when scampering along cornices and narrow ledges. They swing it to the right or the left by way of counterpoise when they lean over to the one side or the other; hence the constant switching which appears so causeless. When one observes Nature carefully, one readily comes to the conclusion that she does nothing that is unnecessary, and that one ought to be very careful in attempting ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... judicious advice we can prevent a bloody and causeless war in Italy we are bound to give ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... description of the realization of that much-to-be-desired consciousness which is fittingly described in Occidental phraseology as "cosmic consciousness." Whether this realization is the result of union with the soul's "other half," or whether it is an impersonal reunion with the Causeless Cause, The Absolute, from which we are earth wanderers, is not the direct purpose of this volume to answer, although the question will be ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... reflection convinced Madeleine that M. de Bois would not have made this inquiry out of sheer, causeless curiosity; and she made known to him the count's request concerning the votes which she was to exert herself to obtain. Gaston caught eagerly at her ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... certain antecedents is not to destroy them: granted that they are—a man does not cease to be a man when we reflect that he has had a father and mother, nor do will and memory cease to be will and memory on the ground that they cannot come causeless. They are manifest minute by minute to the perception of all sane people, and this tribunal, though not infallible, is nevertheless our ultimate court of appeal—the final arbitrator in ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... neither did I love you, though I was able to hide it from you. And it has often irritated me that you were so unobservant. You know now the cause of many of my difficult moods, which have seemed causeless. ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... very white, and trembling visibly, said: "I hope you will forgive us, Mr. W——, but from causeless jealousy my father deserted mother, and—and he stole my little brother, mamma's only son! We have never heard of either of them since. Widowhood seemed a sort of protection to poor mamma, and she has hidden behind its veil for sixteen years. She meant no harm. She would ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things, supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors; ensconcing ourselves in a seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... Mighty Poet, nor despise My causeless, yet not impious, surmise. But I am now convinc'd, and none will dare Within thy Labours to pretend a share, Thou hast not miss'd one thought that could be fit, And all that was improper dost omit: So that no room is here for Writers left, But to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... interests of the outside world, from the gipsy roving of the passions. The time arrives, when this becomes, they think, too great for endurance, and their impatience shows itself in a daily irritability quite new in the household, apparently causeless, full of sudden, inexplicable turns of thought and act which turn the peaceful into a tempestuous home. It is not that the husband or the wife are inconstant by nature—to call Fifine at the Fair a defence of inconstancy is to lose the truth of the matter—but ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... regretfully, "was an exceedingly proud woman, belonging to a family of social prominence in the East. She felt deeply the causeless gossip connecting her name with the case, as well as the open disgrace of her husband's conviction. She refused to receive her former friends, and even failed in loyalty to your father in his time of trial. It is impossible now to fix the fault clearly, or to ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... the door, to CLINIA within.) There is nothing, Clinia, for you to fear as yet: they have not been long by any means: and I am sure that she will be with you presently along with the messenger. Do at once dismiss these causeless apprehensions which ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... artful intelligence came into Nott's eyes, which had remained blankly staring at Renshaw's apparently causeless hilarity. Turning to him he winked solemnly. "That keerless kind o' hoss-laff jist fetched her," he whispered, and vanished before ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... November Sunday inspired Eustace Reynolds with a melancholy too insistent to be ignored and too causeless to be enjoyed. The grey sky overhead between the house-tops, the cold wind round every street-corner, the sad faces of the men and women on the pavements, combined to create an atmosphere of ineloquent misery. ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... will be a relief to honest Longman, who has business enough on his hands. Next, it will make the good couple easy, to have an opportunity of enjoying that as their due, which now their too grateful hearts give them so many causeless scruples about. Thirdly, it will employ your father's time, more suitably to your liking and mine, because with more ease to himself; for you see his industrious will cannot be satisfied without doing something. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... that mere lack of adaptability was the cause of unfruitfulness between them. There may have been some cause that history has not recorded, or unknown to the state of medical science of those days. There are doubtless many cases of apparently causeless unfruitfulness in marriage that even physicians, with a knowledge of all apparent conditions in the parties, cannot explain; but when, as elsewhere related in this volume, impregnation by artificial means is successfully practised, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... Constitutional tribunal for adjusting difficulties of Constitutional interpretation. Yet, as it was almost universally asserted, of course, by the Northern partisan presses, and by Northern Congressmen, that the Rebellion was utterly causeless, and as the writer was therefore exceedingly anxious to obtain, concerning their grievances, the latest opinions of the Southern leaders, as stated by themselves, he ventured to propose, in a pause of Mr. Toombs's somewhat rapid rhetoric, a question which, at that moment, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... desperate an issue. What the necessities, which they are driving him into, may make him part with on the other hand, I know not. But how can they answer it to our Posterity, that for private Picques, self Interest, and causeless jealousies, they would destroy the foundation of so excellent a Government, which is the admiration and ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden
... have been the idol of the North. The follies of his youth, the selfish ambition of his manhood, the Lollards roasted at slow fires the prisoners massacred on the field of battle, the expiring lease of priestcraft renewed for another century, the dreadful legacy of a causeless and hopeless war bequeathed to a people who had no interest in its event, everything is forgotten but the victory of Agincourt. Francis Sforza, on the other hand, was the model of Italian heroes. He made his employers and his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of this mind—the minority that is right—is, I hope, the case. I hope we know assuredly that the arts we have met together to further are necessary to the life of man, if the progress of civilisation is not to be as causeless as the turning of a ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... says they happen of necessity; at others he says, "We are profoundly ignorant of their causes." These are only different ways of saying that they are not intentional. When a man lets anything fall from his hands, and says it was accidental, he does not mean that it was causeless, he only means that it was not intentional. And that is precisely what Darwin means when he says that species arise out of accidental variations. His whole book is an argument against teleology. The whole question is, How are ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... and she was not sorry to be delivered from a marriage which had promised her little felicity, either from her destined bridegroom, or from the severe temper of Manfred, who, though he had distinguished her by great indulgence, had imprinted her mind with terror, from his causeless rigour to such amiable princesses as Hippolita ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... Your heart should grant; and not a short reprieve, But length of certain life, to Turnus give? Now speedy death attends the guiltless youth, If my presaging soul divines with truth; Which, O! I wish, might err thro' causeless fears, And you (for you have ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... length awake the sleeping sword, And force revenge from their offended lord? How long, ye gods, how long Can royal patience bear The insults and wrong Of madmen's jealousies, and causeless fear? ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... an attempt to reach a goal never clearly seen. Wandering in a labyrinth of fanaticism, agonizing in the effort to distort nature, the biographical record of religious aspiration serves to show how nearly multitudes may approach the boundary line of insanity in their protracted periods of causeless mental agony and in their fierce hostility to heresy and to science. Alike in Brahmin, Buddhist, Mohammedan, and Christian nations have we seen the vast expenditure of spiritual energy in the blind struggle of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... continued the old gentleman, "mind you, I do not approve of petty jealousies and quarrelings, nor of causeless assaults. But, when any person is assailed, it is his peculiar privilege, sir, to hit back. And when he hits he should hit hard. He should use both strategy and force. He should see to it, sir, that his enemy is punished. Have your two hostile bodies yet met in open ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... smote down his brother, and was himself smitten down before he had time to exult in his victory. The trumpeters, all the while, blew their blasts shriller and shriller; each soldier shouted a battle cry and often fell with it on his lips. It was the strangest spectacle of causeless wrath, and of mischief for no good end, that had ever been witnessed; but, after all, it was neither more foolish nor more wicked than a thousand battles that have since been fought, in which men have slain their brothers with just as little reason as these ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... have been no sufficient cause, the terrified crew wet their powder and ceased to fire on the British works. The panic spread to the other batteries, and from them to the forces on shore, even the commander-in-chief being affected by the causeless fear. At one moment the assailants were enthusiastic with expectation of success. Not many minutes afterwards they were so overcome with unreasoning terror that an insane order was given to burn the batteries, and these were fired with such precipitate haste that the crews were allowed no time ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... "from morn to dewy eve," provided a flask of Gascon wine, or a stoup of good English ale, remained on the board. It may be remembered that De Walton, when he dismissed the minstrel from the dungeon, was sensible that he owed him some compensation for the causeless suspicion which had dictated his imprisonment, more particularly as he was a valued servant, and had shown himself the faithful confidant of the Lady Augusta de Berkely, and the person who was moreover likely to know all the motives and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... knew the sound well. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... piercing gibe? Attentive truth and nature to descry, And pierce each scene with philosophick eye; To thee were solemn toys, or empty show, The robes of pleasure, and the veils of woe: All aid the farce, and all thy mirth maintain, Whose joys are causeless, or whose griefs are vain. Such was the scorn that fill'd the sage's mind, Renew'd at ev'ry glance on human kind; How just that scorn, ere yet thy voice declare, Search ev'ry state, and canvass ev'ry pray'r. [i]Unnumber'd suppliants crowd preferment's gate, Athirst ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... others in which both the proper names and the situations suggest the artificial romances. None of the missives reveals emotions of any but the most tawdry romantic kind, warm desires extravagantly uttered, conventional doubts, causeless jealousies, and petty quarrels. Like Mrs. Behn's correspondence with the amorous Van Bruin these epistles have nothing to distinguish them except their excessive hyperbole. There is one series of twenty-four connected letters on the model of "Letters from a Lady of Quality to a ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... the young nobleman roused himself from his reverie, with a light laugh, apparently causeless; and without speaking another word to ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... the cloud of materialism, and behind the mechanism of nature, to an Infinite Spirit, to a God, to a Father. All things are moved by infinite Love. Life is not merely a phenomenon, it is a Lesson. Its events do not come and go, in a causeless, arbitrary manner; they are meant for our discipline and our good. In whatever aspect they come, then, let their appropriate lesson be heeded. This is the religious view of life, and is wide apart from ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... thy chilly mind, With all this desperate solitude of wind, The solitude of tears that make thee blind, Of wild and causeless tears. Speak! thou hast need of me, heart, hand and head, Speak, if it be an echo of thy dread, A dirge of hope, of young illusions dead ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... two pistols, one for the first student who should again insult him, and the other to blow out his own brains. It was no idle threat. The man Guizot had nicknamed ‘Werther’ was capable of executing his plan, for this causeless unpopularity was anguish to him. After his death, I found those two pistols loaded in his bedroom, but justice had been done another way. All opposition had vanished. Every student in the ‘Quarter’ followed ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... on the other hand—as is the theory of our Government—the war you have levied against the U. S. be a rebellion the most causeless, crafty and bloody ever known,—a conspiracy having the rule-or-ruin policy for its basis; the plunder of the black race and the reopening of the African slave trade for its object, the continued and further degradation of ninety per cent. of the white ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... who had to endure the apparently causeless fluctuation of spirits incidental to one compelled to dwell for long periods of time in the ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... colors on a bird's wing, or of the radiations of a crystal of hoarfrost or of sapphire, concerning any of which matters men, so called of science, are necessarily and forever silent, because the distribution of colors in spectra and the relation of planes in crystals are final and causeless facts, orders, that is to say, not laws. And more than this, the infidel temper which is incapable of perceiving this spiritual beauty has an instant and constant tendency to delight in the reverse of it, so that practically its investigation is always, by preference, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... adequate idea of what was going on around her, retained, however, in her bosom, amidst the rapture that made up her life, a vague feeling of sorrow, of some weight that made her heart bleed despite herself. At times, when she was plunged in one of those causeless transports which made her melt with tenderness, an anxious thought would come to her—she imagined that some misfortune was hovering behind her. She turned round, however, and then smiled. People are ever in a tremble when ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... elapsed since the day when, incensed at the flogging received—this cruel as causeless—he ran away, resolved to risk everything, life itself, rather than longer endure the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... back the hair from his forehead; "a mere trifle!" That the action had discovered the gash to be wider than he thought, he saw in the countenance of his wife! She turned deadly pale. "Marion," said he, "to convince you how causeless your fears are, you shall cure me yourself; and with no other surgery ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... a horde of semi-barbarian ignoramuses of African descent. If the world had not by this time thoroughly assessed the intrinsic value of Mr. Froude's utterances, one who knows Grenada might have felt inclined to resent his causeless depreciation of the intellectual capacity of its inhabitants; but considering the estimate which has been pretty generally formed of his historical judgment, Mr. Froude may be dismissed, as regards Grenada and its people, with a certain degree of scepticism. ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... to him to learn something of foreign manufacturing processes. Frank had gladly agreed to go, but he was now rather in the mood for delay. Mr Palmer conjectured a reason for it, and the conjecture was confirmed when, after two or three more visits to Fenmarket, perfectly causeless, so far as business was concerned, Frank asked for the paternal sanction to his engagement with Madge. Consent was willingly given, for Mr Palmer knew the family well; letters passed between him and Mrs Hopgood, and it was arranged that Frank's visit to Germany should be postponed till ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... but I worked harder than ever. I was either in an exalted state of mind or pining away under a spell of yearning and melancholy—of causeless, meaningless melancholy. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan |
