"Coincidence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gods, to punish her pride and ambition, had sent a spectre to confront her. But being of strong mind and but little given to superstitious terrors, she instantly reasoned out the facts of his simultaneous captivity with herself and coincidence of ownership; and her sole remaining doubt was in what manner she should treat him. They had parted in sorrow and tears, and she knew that he now expected her to fall into his arms and there repeat her ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... his memory be better than mine? Tell him, will you, how very glad I shall be to renew our old intimacy. I should think nothing of running down to him for a day or two in the dull time of the year,—say in September or October. It's rather a coincidence our both ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... unless we are dogmatically determined to reject all testimony which bears on this subject, there seems no escaping the conclusion that specific prayers have been specifically, directly, and unmistakeably answered in instances too numerous to admit of explanation by coincidence.[8] The volume of human testimony bearing on this subject is too great to be swept aside by a simple refusal to consider it; if there is no insurmountable logical obstacle to the possibility of prayer proving ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... confident assurances of others as to the effects experienced by them, and which he is striving to arrive at. All these form a practical Christian. Add, however, a gradual opening out of the intellect to more and more clear perceptions of the strict coincidence of the doctrines of Christianity, with the truths evolved by the mind, from reflections on its own nature. To such a man one main test of the objectivity, the entity, the objective truth of his faith, is ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... long known my opinion concerning the literary acquisitions of our immortal Dramatist; and remember how I congratulated myself on my coincidence with the last and best of his Editors. I told you, however, that his small Latin and less Greek would still be litigated, and you see very assuredly that I was not mistaken. The trumpet hath been sounded against "the darling project of ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... in Paris, where we stopped for a while after we crossed, before we came here. I was so surprised when I saw him at our hotel the very day after we arrived! It seemed such a coincidence, that our only acquaintance over on this side should arrive at the same place ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... from the ceiling slowly; perhaps it was coincidence that they rested on the place on the mantelshelf where Cynthia's ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... inclined to regard varicella as a very attenuated form of smallpox, hence the name "chicken pox," by which it is popularly known. This opinion is based merely on the analogy between the two types of skin eruptions and the coincidence sometimes observed between two epidemics of smallpox and chicken pox. But the theory falls on considering that, on the one hand, chicken pox offers no safeguard against infection by smallpox and does not prevent the effects of vaccination, and, on the other hand the disease may occur in children ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... period has itself three stages, in which Fetishism, Polytheism, and Monotheism successively prevail. The chief social characteristics of the Polytheistic period are the institution of slavery and the coincidence or "confusion" of the spiritual and temporal powers. It has two stages: the theocratic, represented by Egypt, and the military, represented by Rome, between which Greece stands in a ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... McComas: I desire to consider your feelings in every possible way: but I warn you that if you stretch the long arm of coincidence to the length of telling me that Mr. Crampton of this town is my father, I shall decline to entertain the information ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... O. Watts, of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, was the first president of this, the first Young Men's Christian Association of the United States. It is a strange coincidence, easily understood by the Christian, that on the twenty-fifth of November, one month previous, without any knowledge on the part of Boston, the first Young Men's Christian Association of America had been organized at ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... the remarkable coincidence—which seemed to prove beyond doubt that there still existed some connexion between the family of Quodling and the titled house which he had heard of from Greenacre—he stood in the entrance passage, and looked out for five minutes through the glass ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... unmeasured denunciation those responsible for that judicious act; and Webster was bitter when Taylor and Scott were nominated in the first instance, but came, after a time, grandly out of the clouds. It is an interesting coincidence that Webster when Secretary of State was a candidate for the Presidential nomination against his chief, President Fillmore, and died, on the 24th of October, 1852, a few months after Scott's triumph at Baltimore and a few days before the popular election of Pierce. The enduring ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... strikingly suggestive of the Elephant Mound of Wisconsin, with the peculiarities of which the sculptor, whether ancient or modern, might almost be supposed to have been acquainted. It certainly must be looked upon as a curious coincidence that carvings found at a point so remote from the Elephant Mound, and presumably the work of other hands, should so closely copy the imperfections of ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... coincidence, my good fellow. I was coming down, and I telegraphed Miss Cavendish to that effect. When you brought her message to the office you received mine, which must have been delayed. It ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... and muttering slowly to himself, "Tut! but a chance coincidence,—a haphazard allusion to a fact which he ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unite in the formation of separate churches, under their own pastors. Prominent among these was the Reverend Mr. Myles, who preached in various places with great success, until the year 1649, when we find him pastor of a church which he organized in Swansea, in South Wales. It is a singular coincidence that Mr. Myles's pastorate at Swansea, and the separation of the members from the Rehoboth church, a part of whom aided in establishing the church in Swanzey, Massachusetts, occurred ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... British Museum, he says, does not possess a copy; probably there are not six in the world. I never saw it, nor heard of it till now; just twenty-nine years after the publication of my Proverbial Philosophy. It is a curious coincidence that the headings of this Wits' Miscellany are similar to my own; as Of so and so throughout; I first wrote On so and so; but did not like the sound, and remembering it would be De in Latin, altered it to Of. The treatment also of the subjects has some apparent similitude; ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... is a language of flowery metaphors. It means, I suppose, that when you touch the drums they bite. In journeying from one spot to another they always leave misfortune behind, as I understand it. Just coincidence; but you couldn't drive that into an Oriental skull. This is what makes the study of precious stones so interesting. There is always some enchantment, some evil spell. To handle the drums is to invite a minor accident. Call it twaddle; probably is; and yet I have reason to believe that there's something ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... the anniversary of Pio Nono's return to Rome from Gaeta, that refuge of destitute sovereigns. It is also, by a strange coincidence, the anniversary of the day on which his Holiness and General Goyon narrowly escaped being killed by the falling of a scaffold, from which they were inspecting the repairs at the church of St Agnese. ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... which was obligingly snapped by Captain Triplett, the entire party was listening to the thrilling cry of the fatu-liva bird. Captain Triplett had just requested the group to "listen to the little birdie" when the distant wood-notes were heard, the coincidence falling in most happily with the photographer's attempts to secure the absolute attention ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... of the two reversible photographs is as great as the last and the subject as picturesque though it be discovered that the first is the second placed on end. It is able to satisfy us not only because of the happy coincidence that the leaves upon the bridge represent bark texture and the subdued light upon its near end creates the rotundity of the trunk or that a distant tree serves as the horizontal margin of a pool, but because its light and shade is conceived upon the terms of balance expressing ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... no reply. The suggestion of poisoning was a welcome one. It was preferable to the sinister hintings of the brown man. But even if it had been poisoned it was a very singular coincidence, unless indeed the Burmese had himself poisoned it He tried to think whether it could have been possible for his visitor ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... contemplated the possibility of a second marriage, and that if the would-be bridegroom is not in his first youth—why, she is prepared to make the best of it. In this connection it is perhaps not uninstructive to note that Signor Odoardo is in comfortable circumstances, and is himself a widower. What a coincidence! ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... phratries as are spread over wide areas should in the main follow the lines of linguistic or cultural areas. Our knowledge of these is hardly sufficient to enable us to say at present how far the presumption of coincidence is fulfilled; but it is certain that in more than one large area the facts are as Mr Lang's theory requires them ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... wait ten minutes. At last he came, but as he neared her seat, Rachel felt like sinking into the earth with mortification when she recognized in the wearer a stalwart negro. She hoped that it was a mere chance coincidence, but he approached her, and raising his hat ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... others in the shade: that a crowned head and a portier, the very top of an empire and the very bottom of it, should pass the very same criticism and deliver the very same verdict upon a book of mine—and almost in the same hour and the same breath—is a coincidence which out-coincidences any coincidence which I could have imagined with such powers of imagination as I have been favored with; and I have not been accustomed to regard them as being small or of an inferior quality. It is always ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... certain measure, they remind one of Figs. 4 and 5, Pl 11, of Witham's "Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables," and which were drawn from specimens of cannel coal derived likewise from Lancashire, but which are not so highly magnified. There is an interesting fact to note in this coincidence, and that is that this structure, which is so difficult to explain in its details, is not accidental, but a consequence of the nature of the materials that served to produce the coal of this region. In the midst of a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... remarkable coincidence it was on this very evening that Iris first made the acquaintance of her pupil, Mr. Arnold Arbuthnot. These coincidences, I believe, happen oftener in real life than they do even on the stage, where people are ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... never come alone, this was followed by my supersession, as literary agent of "Scribner's," by Mr. Gosse, who had been making a visit to New York. It was in curious coincidence with these disasters that I addressed (with a letter of introduction from Madame Bodichon, who always was the kindest of friends to me) a distinguished lady member of the staff of an evening paper, with a request to help me to get work on it, and was told distinctly that ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... left town, I easily found the direction he had taken; and, after waiting several days to prevent any suspicious coincidence in the time of our departure, I one night, soon after midnight, crept from my bed and followed him. I overtook him at a village some twenty miles distant, where he was remaining a day or two, and easily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... disclosure of bygone events or emotions. We are, indeed, afforded brief glimpses into the past both of Stensgaard and of Stockmann; but the glimpses are incidental and inessential. It is certainly no mere coincidence that if one were asked to pick out the pieces of thinnest texture in all Ibsen's mature work, one would certainly select these two plays. Far be it from me to disparage An Enemy of the People; as a work of art it is incomparably ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... By a coincidence which afforded more pleasure to my fellow-voyagers than to me, one of the two boats reserved for the use of the Conversation Club was named the Sarah, the other rejoicing in the inappropriate name of Firefly. I was, of course, voted to a place of honour ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... their unfortunate coincidence with those of Lord Byron, I have before adverted. Like his noble friend, ardent in the pursuit of Truth, he, like him too, unluckily lost his way in seeking her,—"the light that led astray" being by both friends ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Enriquez's usual light-hearted levity, but the fact that he should have TELEGRAPHED it to me struck me uneasily. That I should have received it at the hotel where his wife and Professor Dobbs were both staying, and where I had had such a singular experience, seemed to me more than a mere coincidence. An instinct that the message was something personal to Enriquez and myself kept me from imparting it to Mrs. Saltillo. After worrying half the night in our bizarre camp in the redwoods, in the midst of a restless festivity which was scarcely the repose I had been ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... in the Mosaic narrative five points which correspond in order and character to five points in the Geological record; and with reference to two, at least, of these points, we cannot imagine any cause for the coincidence in the shape of a fortunate conjecture, because, so far as we can tell, there was nothing apparent on the face of the earth to suggest to the mind of the writer the long past existence of such a state of things as has been revealed to us by the discovery of the ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... advice, in fact, corresponded to an inward thirst, and had, moreover, a coincidence to back it. In one of the Manchester papers two or three mornings before he had seen the advertisement of a farm to let, which had set vibrating all his passion for and memory of the moorland. It was a farm ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... circumstances did not permit of his having been invited, his coming uninvited is shown to have been due to chance. I do not think the authoress thought all this out, but attribute the strangeness of the coincidence to unconscious cerebration ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... few lines in the cab, and sent off the packet, registered, in time I hoped, to catch the post—but after all, it didn't. Coming out from the post office, there was Godensky again, in his motor-brougham. That could have been no coincidence. A horrid certainty sprang to life in me that he'd followed my cab from the Foreign Office, to see where I would go. Why couldn't I have thought of that danger? I have always thought of things, and guarded against them; yet this time, this time of ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... who had been so mysteriously recalled to his recollection, and giving December 19 as the date of death. More than sixty years later we find him, in his autobiography commenting on the experience anew, granting that it was a strange coincidence but refusing to admit that it was anything more than the coincidence of ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... before. She checked them with all her might, but remembering how little it had helped her then, her powers of resistance gave way, she was almost sobbing when the very word was used in the song. The coincidence was too superb, it swept all emotion aside, she could have laughed aloud instead. She was sure of everything, everything now. It thus happened that the last line in its literal sense, in its jubilant sympathy, came to ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... had to do her utmost to amuse him. She caught up something bright to hold before him, and was surprised to see it was a coral cross, which Violet, in changing her dress, had laid for a moment on the dressing-table. The coincidence was strange, thought Theodora. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by coincidence happened besides, namely that there was a sacred enclosure of the Eleusinian Demeter close by the side of both the battle-fields; for not only in the Plataian land did the fight take place close by the side of the temple of Demeter, as I have before said, but also in Mycale it was to be so likewise. ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... naturalist, might commit. Oiseau de Nazaret is simply a corruption of oiseau de nausee—the original French name of the dodo, a literal translation of the original Dutch walghvogel. It is a curious coincidence, that as the bird of Nazareth has been found in books only, so the island of Nazareth has been found only on paper. At first, it appeared quite a respectable island; as maritime discovery progressed, it degenerated to a reef, and from that ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... the biggest one he ever saw, but I took very little notice of the ship until in tacking across her wake, I noticed her name in gold letters across the stern—'Duncan McDonald.' Now that is my own name, and was my father's; and try as I would, I could not account for this name as a coincidence, common as the name might be in the highlands of the home of my ancestors; and before the staunch little steamer had gotten a mile away, I ordered the boat to follow her. I intended to go aboard and learn, if possible, something of ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... that sin exists, notwithstanding this perfect coincidence between the will of God and the conduct of his creatures, it will follow, most conclusively, that God is the author of sin. He has decreed and brings to pass all the sensations, perceptions, emotions, inclinations, volitions, and overt actions, of the whole human race. Various attempts have ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... excuse that the writer did not deliberately select the time of publication, but that the Transvaal Government in its wisdom chose to impose silence for three years, and that the project with which their action had interfered was resumed at the earliest possible moment. The coincidence of another crisis with the date of emancipation may be an unlucky coincidence, or it may be a result. But there is neither necessity nor intention to offer excuses. The responsibility is accepted and the answer is that ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... curious coincidence that Maitland should within a few years have had two sovereigns as passengers,—one the central figure of modern European history, the other the good-natured elderly buffoon who in this country is chiefly remembered as the husband of the friend of Lady Hamilton. ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... he said, "I believe that she has reasons for desiring her present whereabouts to remain unknown. I should perhaps not have mentioned her name at all. It was, I fancy, indiscreet of me. The coincidence of hearing you mention the name of the place where I believe she resided surprised my question. With your permission we will ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... alas I it was of a much more fleshly kind. This Miss Nancy, who seemed to me almost divine, was the daughter of a rich merchant. I said that I wanted to make her father's acquaintance, and she replied that her father proposed coming to call on me that very day. I was delighted to hear of the coincidence, and gave order that he should be shewn in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... belief that they will thus be protected from contagious and other diseases, and in these practices protective fumigation originated. That such different nations should have had the same idea of fixing the purification by fire on St. John's Day is a remarkable coincidence, which perhaps can be accounted for only by its ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... invariably ran back again and Beverly would do likewise when she got ready. She was probably with some friend in the neighborhood. She was in the habit of forming friendships with all sorts and conditions of people. That her horse was also gone might be a mere coincidence, or else she was trying to frighten them all, and would come riding back by sundown. She was capable of almost any insubordination, and rising at dawn and riding off somewhere was merely ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the next day the removal of the three prisoners became known to everybody. Master Raymond wondered when he heard it, whether it was a check-mate to the plan of escape, with which the magistrates, in some way had become acquainted; or whether it was a mere chance coincidence. Finally he satisfied himself that it was the latter—though no doubt suggested by the rather loose threats of ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... the Gothic princes who expressed, in writing, the manners and customs of his people; and the composition of the Burgundian laws was a measure of policy rather than of justice; to alleviate the yoke, and regain the affections, of their Gallic subjects. [68] Thus, by a singular coincidence, the Germans framed their artless institutions, at a time when the elaborate system of Roman jurisprudence was finally consummated. In the Salic laws, and the Pandects of Justinian, we may compare the first rudiments, and the full maturity, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... just wondering," Jack returned ambiguously. "If you hadn't happened along—say, how did you happen to come? Was that another sample of my fool's luck?" Since the coincidence had not struck him before, one might guess that he was accustomed to having Dade at his elbow when he was ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... going to the Ruins of Karnstein?" he said. "Yes, it is a lucky coincidence; do you know I was going to ask you to bring me there to inspect them. I have a special object in exploring. There is a ruined chapel, ain't there, with a great many tombs of that ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... By an unhappy coincidence, the Emperor had come to Fontainebleau, and had decided to conduct manoeuvres for several hours, under a blazing sun. My poor brother, compelled to run without rest, his arm dragged down by the weight of his heavy musket, was overcome by the heat and his wound re-opened! He should have fallen ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... that there are many of that kind need not be doubted. For example: Is not the rule, Si inoequalibus aequalia addas, omnia erunt inaequalia, an axiom as well of justice as of the mathematics? and is there not a true coincidence between commutative and distributive justice, and arithmetical and geometrical proportion? Is not that other rule, Quae in eodem tertio conveniunt, et inter se conveniunt, a rule taken from the mathematics, but so potent in logic as all syllogisms ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... I was struck with the coincidence of the compliment of Alexander at the theater and this frightful nightmare, especially as the Emperor was not subject to disturbances of this kind. I do not know whether his Majesty related his dream to the Emperor ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... this coincidence was accepted as certainly more than an accident by the old-fashioned astronomers, who want rigid proof for every new theory. But the last doubts have long vanished, and a connection has been further traced between violent outbursts ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... some disused scaffolding in a lonely place, when a beam on which they were standing gave way under their feet. Both fell, the elder a little before the younger. But just in time the elder managed to clutch another beam and hold fast to it. By a providential coincidence, his brother, catching wildly at anything within his reach, seized his legs, and the two hung suspended thus, with all the weight on the elder boy's arms. Before long, the strain became too great, and he called ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... ministry which would necessarily assume full responsibility for the action of the lieutenant-governor under the circumstances, and after some delay the new ministry went to the country and were sustained by a large majority. It is an interesting coincidence that the lieutenant-governor who dismissed the Mercier government and the prime minister who assumed full responsibility for the dismissal of the Mercier administration, were respectively attorney-general ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... develops on its surface a pellicle or "skin." The cause of this change in taste is not well known. Usually it has been explained as being produced by changes in the nitrogenous elements in the milk, particularly in the albumen. Thoerner[133] has pointed out the coincidence that exists between the appearance of a cooked taste and the loss of certain gases that are expelled by heating. He finds that the milk heated in closed vessels from which the gas cannot escape has a much less pronounced cooked flavor ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... By a happy coincidence, when the callers had taken their departure, another visitor arrived—F., the very man ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... plowed a pocket-book and $30 in greenbacks under, and by a singular coincidence the next spring it was plowed out, and, though rotten clear through, was sent to the Treasury, where it was discovered that the bills were on a Michigan National Bank, whither they ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... dismissal due to some offence of which he had unwittingly been guilty; but his neighbour at table relieved his fears by explaining that the Admiral was merely directing the immediate departure of one of the vessels of his squadron, which, by a strange coincidence, bore the same name as ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... as the Algonquin which abounds in labials, but more so than the Winnebago, which is the most harsh and guttural language in America. The Narcotah sounds to an English ear, like the Chinese, and both in this, and in other respects, the Sioux are thought to present many points of coincidence. It is certain that their manners and customs differ essentially from those of any other tribe, and their physiognomy, as well as their language, and opinions, mark them a distinct race of people. Their sacrifices and ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... the summer months. The clerk knew very well that this "PERHAPS" meant "CERTAINLY," but as he thought he could make more out of a tenant like the prince, he felt justified in speaking vaguely about the present inhabitant's intentions. "This is quite a coincidence," thought he, and when the subject of price was mentioned, he made a gesture with his hand, as if to waive away a question ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... indigenous, and is an article of religious belief. "To the common people in India the spots look like a hare, i.e. Chandras, the god of the moon, carries a hare (sasa), hence the moon is called Sasin or Sasanka, hare mark or spot." [75] Max Mueller also writes, "As a curious coincidence it may be mentioned that in Sanskrit the moon is called Sasanka,i.e. 'having the marks of a hare,' the black marks in the moon being taken for the likeness of the hare." [76] This allusion to the sacred language ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... neighbourhood, anticipating no difficulty in getting a patent from the Plymouth Company, which was anxious to obtain settlers. For five weeks they stayed in the ship while little parties were exploring the coast and deciding upon the best site for a town. It was purely a coincidence that the spot which they chose had already received from John Smith the name of Plymouth, the beautiful port in Devonshire from which the Mayflower had sailed. [Sidenote: ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... an odd coincidence, while this chapter was being written a letter came to Miss Anthony from Dean M. Jenkins, of Detroit, which said: "Enclosed please find my check to help on the good work to which you have devoted your life. You see I have almost pardoned you for saying, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... remember as a pendant—but one so much more grave that we hesitate to cite it, though the coincidence is curious—the pause made by Dante in the beginning of the Inferno, which resembles so exactly the pause in Scott's career. The great Florentine had written seven cantos of his wonderful poem when the rush of his affairs carried ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... coincidence. When the ship tossed in an unusually rough crossing he was prepared to admit to himself that ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... of course, be a mere coincidence, or it may point to some nervousness which would indicate that he had reason to apprehend danger. Had you noticed anything unusual in his ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... lieutenant, who was on his knees sighting a gun, when a shot entered the port, split the quoin, drove a great piece of metal against his breast, and stretched him dead upon the deck without breaking his skin. By a singular coincidence, fifteen minutes later a shot from one of the "Saratoga's" guns struck the muzzle of a twenty-four on the "Confiance," and, dismounting it, hurled it against Capt. Downie's groin, killing him instantly without breaking the skin; a black mark about the size ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... "It's a queer coincidence, by the way, that you should have known Adrian Borlsover and that you should have received a blessing at his hand. Has ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... he continued, 'all things are arranged, and but for the unfortunate coincidence of this person's poverty and of her father's cupidity, the details of the wedding ceremony would undoubtedly now be in a very advanced condition. Upon these entrancing and well-discussed plans, however, the shadow of the grasping and commonplace ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... to take the auspices. Two delightful letters from you delivered at the same time! For which I do not know what I am to pay you by way of reward for good news. That I owe you for them I candidly confess. But observe the coincidence. I had just made my way from Antium on to the via Appia at Three Taverns,[226] on the very day of the Cerealia (18th April), when my friend Curio meets me on his way from Rome. At the same place and the same moment comes a slave from you ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... met people from home—the McGanums. They laughed, shook hands repeatedly, and exclaimed, "Well, this is quite a coincidence!" They asked when the McGanums had come down, and begged for news of the town they had left two days before. Whatever the McGanums were at home, here they stood out as so superior to all the undistinguishable strangers absurdly hurrying past that the Kennicotts held them ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... said, 'is not an expected pleasure, and is all the greater on that account. By a curious coincidence I find we are ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... it being the habit of most people to denounce as heresy or ridicule as madness things too high for their sight or too deep for their comprehension. As these people would say, "oddly enough," or "by an extraordinary coincidence," this very letter was from Miss Ercildoune,—a letter which she wrote as she purposed, and as she well knew how to write, in behalf of Sallie. It was ostensibly on quite another theme; asking some information in regard to a comrade, but so cunningly ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... Northern Buddhist literature—embracing both the "Romantic Legend"[82] and the "Lalita Vistara"—many incidents of Buddha's childhood are given which show a seeming coincidence with the life of Christ. It is claimed that his birth was heralded by angelic hosts, that an aged sage received him into his arms and blessed him, that he was taken to the temple for consecration, that a jealous ruler ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... not aware whether the coincidence in time of the Icelandic eruptions, and of the peculiar appearance of the sun, described by Gilbert White, has yet been noticed; but this coincidence may very well be taken as some little evidence towards explaining the connection between ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... hearing that they were still idolaters, with a deep sigh, 'What a pity that such a beauteous frontispiece should possess a mind so void of internal grace.' The name of their nation being mentioned to be Angles, his ear caught the verbal coincidence—the benevolent wish for their improvement darted into his mind, and he expressed his own feelings, and excited those of his auditors, by remarking—'It suits them well: they have angel faces, and ought to be the co-heirs of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... swept analytically over Mike the Angel's face. "You want a drink? I snuck a spot o' brandy aboard, and just by purty ole coincidence, there's a bottle right over there in the speaker housing." Without waiting for an answer, he turned away from Mike and walked toward the cabinet that held the intercom speaker. Meantime, ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of the unknown sorcerer and of Prelati, both getting dangerously wounded in an empty room, under identical circumstances—I tell you, it's a remarkable coincidence," said Durtal ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... coming right!—and next year they would all dance at Fontenoy with light hearts, at Unity's wedding. It had begun to come right the evening of the day that she had met Ludwell Cary in the cedar wood. She wondered, slightly, at that coincidence, and then ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... not wrong; she came into the parlor by one door as he entered it by the other. The coincidence was auspicious, and he warmly pressed his suit, pouring into Pauline's ears such a confused account of his feelings and his affairs as only love ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... which Coronado had invented to forestall suspicions at the hacienda. It was surely a wonderful coincidence of lying, and shows how great minds work alike. Vexed and angry as the nephew was, he could ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... chief assistant, Auguste Chouteau, born at New Orleans in 1739, lived one hundred years, not dying till 1839. There are many people in St. Louis who remember him. A very remarkable coincidence was, that his brother, Pierre Chouteau, born in New Orleans in 1749, died in St. Louis in 1849, having also lived just one hundred years. Both of these brothers were identified with St. Louis from the beginning, where they lived in affluence and honor for seventy years, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... Strange coincidence! If I had been Mr. Victor Hugo, my dear, or a poet of any note, I would, in a few hours, have made an impromptu concerning that Lafayette-crowned pump, and compared its lot now to the fortune of its patron some fifty ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... Faraday. There is, then, an intangible but none the less potent web of association between the scientific work of Rumford and some of the most important researches that were conducted at the Royal Institution long years after his death; and one is led to feel that it was not merely a coincidence that some of Faraday's most important labors should have served to place on a firm footing the thesis for which Rumford battled; and that Tyndall should have been the first in his "beautiful book" called Heat, a Mode of Motion, to give wide popular announcement to the fact that at last the scientific ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... determined. The bamboo is filled with water while in the vertical position. It is then tilted till it points towards a certain star, when of course some water escapes. After it has been restored to the vertical, the level of the surface of the remaining water is noted. The coincidence of this level with the mark mentioned above indicates that the time for sowing ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the name of the son and heir. I was about to remark that he is a baronet and that it is a singular coincidence that he should also have been here in America while his mother was stricken with paralysis. It is strange, too, that his first name should be the same as ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... details because of a curious coincidence. I said to Jack—I was steering—that I had had since dawn a feeling that some calamity was about to happen. Now this was, as I recall it, a notion quite new to me, and far more like Jack himself. He laughed and said it was the east wind. Then after a pause he added: "I was trying to recall ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... "Master, what a coincidence! Are these newly decorated walls really ancient with memories?" I looked around my simply furnished ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... railway depot, or in Cincinnati to a music hall, or in Pittsburgh to building a church or another rolling mill. Every community has its social idiosyncrasies, but it struck us as rather an amusing coincidence that while we had recently greeted no less a man than Potter Palmer, Esq., behind the counter in Chicago as "mine host of the Garter," we should so soon have found ourselves in the keeping of Senator Sharon, lessee of the Palace. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... a strange coincidence, but the officer of the day happened to have been promoted from the ranks, had served his three years as an enlisted man, and then passed a stiff examination for a commission. One could see by his walk that he had no sympathy for the mother's ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... appear childish, she bowed ever so slightly. When he was safely past, she could not resist giving a furtive look behind her, and at precisely the same moment, he turned, too. In spite of her trouble, Ephic found the coincidence droll; she tittered, and he saw it, although she immediately laid the back of her hand on her lips. It was not in him to let this pass unnoticed. With a few quick steps, he was at ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... new world whose treasures were now opening to them. In conclusion, he admitted in their full extent the reasons which had been given by the noble lords for their several resignations, and the statements which they had made in accounting for that remarkable coincidence; but he could not help expressing his surprise that government had been able to go on so long, being conducted, as it now appeared, by ministers who did not think proper to communicate with one another upon the most important ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... come round to the summer season again, and it happened, by mere accident, that the day appointed for the marriage was the anniversary of that on which Mendez had been robbed and wounded. Nobody, however, appears to have thought of this coincidence, till Mendez himself, observing the day of the month, requested that the ceremony might be postponed till the day after: 'Because,' said he, 'I have business which will take me to Aquila on the 7th, so the marriage had better take place on the 8th.' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... lowering of the ocean, on which the present West Indian Islands were mountains, rising high above the level and fertile plains that are now covered by the sea? Obscurely the accounts of it have come down to us from the dim past, but there is a remarkable coincidence between the traditions that have been handed down on the two sides of ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... His manner when he appears at our board meetings is quiet and not unpleasant. Marian, it appears, met him at Towers Cottage the year before last, and had some scientific lessons from him. He was quite unknown then. It was rather a curious coincidence. I did not know of it until about a month ago, when he read a paper at the Society of Arts on his invention. I attended the meeting with Marian; and when it was over, I introduced him to her, and was surprised to learn that they knew one ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Narada, that royal sage after duly worshipping him, and taking his permission, repaired to the city of Varanasi, and having reached there, that famous prince did as he had been told, and remembering the words of Narada, he placed a corpse at the gate of the city. And by coincidence, that Brahmana also entered the gate of the city at the same time. Then on beholding the corpse, he suddenly turned away. And on seeing him turn back, that prince, the son of Avikshit followed his footsteps with his hands clasped together, and with the object of receiving instruction ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... By a curious coincidence, two books relating to vivisection were published in America at almost the same time. One, under the above title, was a collection of essays and contributions to various periodicals from the pen of Dr. William W. Keen, which have appeared during the ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... ready we got under way solemnly, our camels rising and sniffing the breeze with a superior air, as who should say, 'I happen to be going where you happen to be going; but don't for a moment suppose I do it to please you. It is mere coincidence. You are bound for Wadi Bou: I have business of my own which chances to take ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... then you say, "Well, this is the most remarkable coincidence I ever heard of. I didn't get my own watch from the fellow, but I got yours, Mr. Bemis;" and then you hand it over to him and say, "Sorry I had to break the chain in getting it from him," and then everybody laughs again, ...
— The Garotters • William D. Howells
... the incident, when his roommate came in a little later, and they were discussing the queer coincidence, ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... vacillate coincidence publicity license tenacity crescent prejudice scenery condescend effervesce proboscis scintillate ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... ticklish night. The few wild Yanks who roamed the dark, without pass, had all the room and road. There was a particularly good mission at once found for this American company on another front, whether by design or by coincidence. A board of officers whitewashed the Canadian flyers of the Royal Air Force ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... region of the heavens between Cepheus and Cassiopeia. Sir J. Herschel remarks, that, 'from the imperfect account we have of the places of the two earlier, as compared with that of the last, which was well determined, as well as from the tolerably near coincidence of the intervals of their appearance, we may suspect them, with Goodricke, to be one and the same star, with a period of 312 or perhaps of 156 years.' The latter period may very reasonably be rejected, as one can perceive no reason why the intermediate ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... interesting coincidence there was living in Norwich at the moment when Borrow was about to leave it, a man who had long identified himself with good causes in Russia, and had lived in that country for a considerable period of his life. John Venning[99] was born in Totnes in 1776, and he is buried in the Rosary ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... modern had met for the first time and as irreconcilable enemies in the cloisters of Pisa; and the modern had triumphed in the great mediaeval fresco of the Triumph of Death. By a strange coincidence, by a sublime jest of accident, the antique and the modern were destined to meet again, and this time indissolubly united, in a painting representing the Resurrection. Yes, Signorelli's fresco in Orvieto Cathedral is indeed ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... affairs, to the revenue and expenditures, and to the military force of the Union by land and sea. A coordinate department of the judiciary has expounded the Constitution and the laws, settling in harmonious coincidence with the legislative will numerous weighty questions of construction which the imperfection of human language had rendered unavoidable. The year of jubilee since the first formation of our Union has just elapsed; that of the ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... beautiful specimen of the florist's art. As I noted how the main bunch of roses and lilies was connected by long satin ribbons to the lesser clusters which hung from it, I recalled with conceivable horror the use to which a similar ribbon had been put in the room below. In the shudder called up by this coincidence I forgot to speculate how a bouquet carried by the bride could have found its way back to this upstairs room when, as all accounts agree, she had fled from the parlor below without speaking or staying foot the moment ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... refrained from speaking of the blazing eyes and made my way to the bathroom wondering if some chance reflection might not have deceived me and the presence of a woman's footmarks at the same spot be no more than a singular coincidence. Even so the mystery of their ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... tenth of the golden spoil being reserved for the Delphian shrine, and wrought into a golden tripod, which was placed on a column formed of three twisted bronze serpents. This defeat was the salvation of Greece. No Persian army ever again set foot on European soil. And, by a striking coincidence, on the same day that the battle of Plataea was fought, the Grecian fleet won a brilliant victory at Mycale, in Asia Minor, and freed the Ionian cities from Persian rule. In Greece, Thebes was punished for aiding the Persians. Byzantium (now Constantinople) was captured by Pausanias, ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... gunwale, and, as decently as was possible, laid the remains of what had once been a big, strong man in the bottom of the boat. A flag was then taken from the locker and covered over him, just as, by a strange coincidence, and very faintly heard, came ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... reservoir into which flowed all the streams of public and private benefaction throughout the empire. Some of the statements, through credulity, and others, in the desire of exciting admiration, may be greatly exaggerated; but, in the coincidence of contemporary testimony, it is not easy to determine the exact line which should mark the measure of our skepticism. Certain it is, that the glowing picture I have given is warranted by those who saw these buildings in their pride, or shortly after they had ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... By a curious coincidence, not five minutes after making this observation, Doctor Long Ghost himself fell down in an unaccountable fit; and without asking anybody's leave, Captain Bob, who was by, at once dispatched a boy, hot ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... clear of the words which I should have liked her to write to me, from fear lest, by first selecting them myself, I should be excluding just those identical words,—the dearest, the most desired—from the field of possible events. Even if, by an almost impossible coincidence, it had been precisely the letter of my invention that Gilberte had addressed to me of her own accord, recognising my own work in it I should not have had the impression that I was receiving something that had not originated in myself, something ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... of individual fighting, and its introduction has waited so long the establishment of some high compelling power—for the influence of the Religion of Peace has in this matter been less than nil—that it is evident that only the coincidence of very powerful and peculiar factors could have brought the question into the region of practical politics in our own time. There are several such factors, most of which have been developing during a long period, but none have been clearly ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... observations that hour of the night at which the Milky Way skirts our horizon. This is nearly the case in the evenings of May and June, though the coincidence with the horizon can never be exact except to observers stationed near the tropics. Using the figure of the grindstone, we at its centre will then have its circumference around our horizon, while the axis will be nearly ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... a matter which seems almost more than a coincidence, and one which has been too often remarked to be ignored, and that is, that in the midst of ruins which are almost totally destroyed the figure of Christ in some niche often remains untouched. I have seen it myself, and many writers have commented on the fact. Sometimes it ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... deuce does she sign herself "Yours, Rosa?" She's not mine, and I don't want her; it seems funny to me that I once thought of her vaguely in that sort of way. Now, I feel rather disturbed that she is coming here, though I don't quite see why I should worry, and yet I wonder if it is a coincidence her coming ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... meanwhile, recovered so far as to pace the floor. "I'm goin' to pack up and light out for home!" he declared, over and over. And even oftener he read and reread the card to make sure of the actuality of that fatal coincidence, ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... friendship. He accepted it as a gift from the gods. Maybe somewhere in his inner consciousness, barely articulate even to his own heart, he dreamt of it as a foundation to something further. Yet for the present, the foundation sufficed. Death-letters—he laughed joyously at the coincidence—had laid the first stone, and each day placed others in firm and secure position round it. The building was largely unconscious. It is the way with true friendship. The life, also, conduced to it. There are fewer barriers of convention ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... intrigue and Bolshevist propaganda upon the Italian situation. Bolshevist envoys had been received with open arms at Turin, and Orlando, then Minister of the Interior, had refrained on principle from hampering their activities. More singular was the coincidence of Von Buelow's offensive with a Parliamentary crisis which precipitated the fall ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... prospective host into the cab. Was it altogether a coincidence, I wondered, that we were bound for the same restaurant whither the man and the girl had preceded us a few ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... has been his good fortune to win high commendation for the few works he has published. He made his studies in composition under the late Heinrich Dorn, the same who was the master of Schumann in composition—though this may be no more than a coincidence. Mr. Liebling, although born in Berlin, has resided in the United States for nearly thirty years. He is essentially American. The two Romances represent the most serious side of his work, in addition to which I have put ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... called the Villa of Marcus Arius Diomedes, on the strength of a tomb discovered about the same period immediately opposite to it, bearing that name. No other tomb had then been discovered so near it, and on this coincidence of situation a conclusion was drawn that this must have been a family sepulchre, attached to the house, and, by consequence, that the house itself belonged to Diomedes. The conjecture at the outset rested but on ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... to be overcome in forming a Canal between Panama, and the nearest point of the opposite coast, which is the Gulph of San Blas (likewise called the Bay of Mandingo), render it expedient to select a position west of that line, and the happy coincidence of two navigable rivers, traversing the low lands to the west of Porto Bello, the one falling into the Atlantic, and the other into the Pacific Ocean, which may either form part of the navigation, or be used to feed the Canal, ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill
... Miss Mapp," he said in his high falsetto. "Blow me, if it isn't our mutual friend Miss Mapp. What a 'strordinary coincidence." ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... for /me,/ and I sensed a strange secret service intrigue around me. Then, in an instant this impression, which had got the better of my common sense, gave way. Evidently a pure coincidence. Still I was left with the vague apprehension that they were going to notice that I /knew,/ and were ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... Schenk in a voice which positively trembled with vexation, "General, I assure you that it is a pure coincidence. Never before has the firm been robbed, and how or why it should happen now I do not know. But it shall be fully investigated and I will leave no stone unturned to recover possession of the valuables—be assured ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill |
