"Premeditation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... daring to look in through the blank, unshuttered window. But, at last, they summoned up courage; and then saw that Bridget's absence from their little world was not the result of accident or death, but of premeditation. Such small articles of furniture as could be secured from the effects of time and damp by being packed up, were stowed away in boxes. The picture of the Madonna was taken down, and gone. In a word, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... stanzas, conveying such an excellent morale at the close, were written, almost without premeditation, for the amusement and instruction of a little girl, the author's grandchild, who had been on a visit at the manse of Glammis. The allusion to the board in the second verse refers to a little piece of timber ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... her hook with flattery there was no sign of premeditation in the gentleness of her accents or in the friendly look she gave me. Could it be possible that this was the person in whom I had seen such a menace ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... perceptions, and no mean gift of expression, finding silence becoming an agony. Much brooding has bitten the real and fanciful details of his life into his mind. He has, quite by accident, discovered in us a singularly acceptable audience. Without conscious premeditation he has told us his story. Every narrator of the most trivial incident can induce you to listen for something naive and individual in his utterance. Most of us disperse this quality over our days. Mr. Carville has secreted it, distilled it to a quintessence, and the result is—well, something in ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... pleaded. And it infused into her soul something—it was cruel now to call it malice—which was still and watchful and dangerous, which waited its opportunity, and then shot like an arrow from its bow out of the coil of brooding premeditation. Even those who had never seen the white scars on Dick Venner's wrist, or heard the half-told story of her supposed attempt to do a graver mischief, knew well enough by looking at her that she was one of the creatures not to be tampered ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... spirit, courage, and skill of our naval officers and seamen have many times in our history given to weak ships and inefficient guns a rating greatly beyond that of the naval list. That they will again do so upon occasion I do not doubt; but they ought not, by premeditation or neglect, to be left to the risks and exigencies of an unequal combat. We should encourage the establishment of American steamship lines. The exchanges of commerce demand stated, reliable, and rapid means of communication, and ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... knew his speech as well, a perhaps unusual likeness between the speech and the Letters; and yet, for most part, with a great inferiority on the part of these. These, thrown off, one and all of them, without premeditation, and with most rapid-flowing pen, are naturally as like his speech as writing can well be; this is their grand merit to us: but on the other hand, the want of the living tones, swift looks and motions, and manifold dramatic accompaniments, tells heavily, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... persuade him that everybody was jealous of his successes, his genius and his position in South Africa, that it became relatively easy with a man of Rhodes' character to make him smart under the sense of non-appreciation. Thus goaded, Rhodes acted often without premeditation. ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... suffered so much wrong as I had; But, mistress, I should say a thing to you: Tarry, it woll come to my remembrance even now I must needs use a substantial premeditation; For the matter lieth greatly me upon. I beseech your mistress-ship of pardon and forgiveness, Desiring you to impute it to my simple and rude dulness: I have forgotten what I had[199] thought to have said And am thereof full ill-afraid; But when I lost myself, I knew very well, I lost ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... himself to understand that the great States of Europe had, almost without premeditation, moved into a field of policy which involved the apportionment of regions scarcely yet known in any detail to the geographers; nor did he realize the far-reaching consequences of the acquisition or refusal of some of these districts. The question ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... operation was termed "dipping." The ceremony usually took place before breakfast, as it was absolutely necessary that the rite should be performed fasting. The Bible was laid upon a table, and opened haphazard, a finger being placed, without premeditation, upon a verse, and the future for the coming year was dependent upon the sense of the verse pitched upon. A correspondent in Notes and Queries (2 ser. xii. 303) writes: "About eight years ago I was staying in a little village ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... said Jurgen, "one must be romantic. But certainly this proves that nobody ever knows when he is being entrapped into respectability: and never did a fine young fellow marry a high queen with less premeditation." ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... stumble before; for he is always upon full speed, and the quickness of his motions takes away and dazzles the eyes of his understanding. All his designs are like diseases, with which he is taken suddenly before he is aware, and whatsoever he does is extempore, without premeditation; for he believes a sudden life to be the best of all, as some do a sudden death. He pursues things as men do an enemy upon a retreat, until he is drawn into an ambush for want of heed and circumspection. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... AND SOCIAL HABITS.—Within the province of the social will fall what may not inaptly be called the habits of a community—ways of acting acquired largely without premeditation and followed to a great extent through mere inertia. The province of the social will is a broad one. Deliberate choices; those half-conscious choices analogous to the unheeded expressions of preference which fill the days of the individual; ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... with those beings who every way are but too apt to be riddles. In many points the works of our great poet Vavona, now dead a thousand moons, still remain a mystery. Some call him a mystic; but wherein he seems obscure, it is, perhaps, we that are in fault; not by premeditation spoke he those archangel thoughts, which made many declare, that Vavona, after all, was but a crack-pated god, not a mortal of sound mind. But had he been less, my lord, he had seemed more. Saith ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... among the Negroes to the effect that "If you give a Negro an inch he will take an ell." Whatever may be the meaning of that expression, this we do know, that when Tiara gave Ensal one hand, he deliberately—no, we won't make the offense one of premeditation—he, without deliberating the matter at all, hastily took not only more of the hand than what Tiara offered, but ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... pretending to read the county newspaper by the window in the dining-room, Hilma came in to set the table. At the time Annixter had his feet cocked on the window ledge and was smoking a cigar, but as soon as she entered the room he—without premeditation—brought his feet down to the floor and crushed out the lighted tip of his cigar under the window ledge. Over the top of the paper he glanced at her covertly from ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... further in his own estimation than he was before, by showing him infinite things and his own abasement, till he falls into the frame of mind that leads to the catastrophe, from mere internal irritation, not premeditation, or envy of Abel (which would have made him contemptible), but from the rage and fury against the inadequacy of his state to his conceptions, and which discharges itself rather against Life, and the author of Life, than the mere living."—Letter to Moore, November ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... with increased intensity. Ah, Mr. Maringovich! You have committed there and you persist in committing a crime against humanity that nothing will ever efface. You stabbed us to the heart, with premeditation, and the wound is still bleeding; you killed our faith in the Slav brotherhood. You ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... the Rev. Dr. PUTNAM, who had acted as his spiritual adviser, and who laid before the Council a detailed confession, which he had received from Prof. Webster, in which he confessed that he killed Dr. Parkman with a single blow from a stick, but claimed that it was done without premeditation, in a moment of great excitement caused by abusive language. He gave at length a statement of the whole transaction. After considering the subject fully and carefully, acting under the advice of the Council, Governor Briggs decided against the application, and appointed Friday, the 30th day ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... more than accident or impulse to lead me to him. I cannot go, at least, without reflection, without premeditation. Avaunt, fiend. ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... given to illustrate the cruelty of the natives; and it may be presumed that, from the slaughter of Risdon, not many could be added to the number. These were, however, the acts of individuals, and without concert or much premeditation. It is conjectured that the first European who perished was Mange, the surgeon of the Geographe, in 1802. The attack was unprovoked, and it ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... station, Maria climbed in, Wollaston and Gladys after her. Neither Wollaston nor Gladys had the slightest premeditation in the matter; they were fairly swept along by the emotion ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sufficient to dash the lad to the ground and send his pistol flying. And before he could regain his feet or draw his remaining pistol, the last survivor was upon him, with a ponderous club upraised to dash out the youngster's brains. Like lightning the blow fell; but instinctively and without premeditation Dick just managed to dodge it; and such was the force of the blow that the club snapped short off in the brute's great hairy hand. And now the knowledge of boxing that the young sailor had aforetime somewhat painfully acquired, came ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... tripped up lightly before him, showing, doubtless without premeditation, as well-turned an ankle and as pretty a foot as could fall to a damsel's fortunate lot. "My sister and Mr. Rodney have gone to the play," she said, "but they left strict instructions with me to see that ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... possession, with no constructive aim either in plot or treatment; no composition in the modern sense of the term. Such a mass of poetic material in the possession of a large community was, in a sense, fluid, and ran into a thousand forms almost without direction or premeditation. Constant use of such rich material gave a poetic turn of thought and speech to countless persons who, under other conditions, would have given no sign of the possession of the faculty ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... bold. I became more and more convinced during the lessons on the Explanation, [Of Luther's Catechism] that my relations with Susanna, as long as they were kept a secret from her parents, were wrong, and now I was going, with this deliberate sin on my conscience, coolly and with premeditation to kneel at ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... seemed to imply that he did not choose to approach the altar without a previous preparation, as to which good men entertain different opinions, some holding that it is irreverent to partake of that ordinance without considerable premeditation. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... tangles is more conservative; it is shy of man haunts and needs to have the permanence of its drink assured. It stops far short of the summer limit of waters, and I have never known it to take up a position on the banks beyond the ploughed lands. There is something almost like premeditation in the avoidance of cultivated tracts by certain plants of water borders. The clematis, mingling its foliage secretly with its host, comes down with the stream tangles to the village fences, skips over to corners of little used pasture lands ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... "There was no identity to be established. The matter was very simple. The woman had murdered her child; the infanticide was proved; the jury threw out the question of premeditation, and she ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and too humane not to commiserate the unhappy situation of those, whom the law sometimes, perhaps—exacts—from you to pronounce upon. No doubt, you distinguish between offences which arise out of premeditation, and a disposition habituated to vice or immorality, and transgressions, which are the unhappy and unforeseen effects of casual absence of reason, and sudden impulse of passion; we, therefore, hope you will contribute all you can to an extension ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... hard to say. In any case they won't be found guilty of premeditation; but still... [A gentleman comes out, and Prince Abrzkov moves towards the door] ...
— The Live Corpse • Leo Tolstoy
... which it is about to receive, all the staff at their posts, the stove lighted, the goats picturesquely sprinkled over the park. Mme. Polge has donned her green silk dress, the director a costume somewhat less neglige than usual, but of which the simplicity excluded all idea of premeditation. The Departmental ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... with most cunning wisdom, a wild-animal murderer will often conceal his purpose until outside interference is an impossibility, and the victim is entirely helpless. These manifestations of fiendish cunning and premeditation are very exasperating to those responsible for the care of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... she shivered and shrank backwards, while over her countenance flitted a vague, undefinable, almost spectral expression of terror. He saw it, and swift words came at once to his lips,—words that uttered themselves without premeditation. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... that your lamp and mine are not conscious of the same things." To others, however, he would not much deny it, but would admit frankly enough, that he neither entirely wrote his speeches beforehand, nor yet spoke wholly extempore. And he would affirm, that it was the more truly popular act to use premeditation, such preparation being a kind of respect to the people; whereas, to slight and take no care how what is said is likely to be received by the audience, shows something of an oligarchical temper, and is the course of one that intends force rather than persuasion. Of his want ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... whole with a definite character. Alas, how many of our lives are liker a heap of stones tilted at random out of a cart than a house with a plan. But there is a character stamped on every life, and however the man may have lived from hand to mouth without premeditation, the result has a character of its own, be it temple or pig-sty. Each life, too, is built up by slow labour, course by course. Our deeds become our dwelling-places. Like coral-insects, we live in what we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... chronic depression in husbands of boarding-house keepers and women who rent furnished rooms. Bone-laziness filling the marrow and changing its natural pink to a Roquefort verdigris of decay, was my diagnosis of old Dewey's ailment. He moved with a premeditation which nine times out of ten amounted to standing still; rest resulted from two opposing forces, Mrs. Dewey's beseeching and threats colliding with his will traveling against her purpose with counter-balancing velocity and mass. A hired man would have left her ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... carriage not far from Belley, he had shot both his wife and the coachman. Balzac, however, was urgent in upholding Peytel's contention that his crime had been homicide, not murder, and brought forward the plea of "no premeditation." His energetic efforts were of no avail: Peytel was executed at Bourg on November 28th, 1839, and Balzac, who had espoused his cause with quixotic enthusiasm, was genuinely sorry. He wrote to Madame Hanska in September: ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... for the English tongue upon the model of that of the French. This project was promoted by the late Earl of Oxford, Lord High Treasurer, and much more by the Lord Bolingbroke, Secretary of State, who had the happy talent of speaking without premeditation in the Parliament House with as much purity as Dean Swift wrote in his closet, and who would have been the ornament and protector of that academy. Those only would have been chosen members of it whose works will ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... was acknowledged at an earlier period than Luther would admit; on the non-subjection to Rome of Eastern Christendom, to whom Luther referred, and whom Eck with a light heart put outside the pale of salvation, Eck on the second day of the disputation passed, after due premeditation, from the ecclesiastical authorities he had quoted in favour of the Divine right of the Papal primacy, to the statements of the English heretic Wicliffe, and the Bohemian Huss, who had denied this right, and had therefore been justly condemned. He was bound to notice ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... think it is all nonsense, that it doesn't matter at all!" thought Charmian. And more than ever she wanted to tell Miss Fleet. In self-restraint she became violently excited. Often she felt on the verge of tears. And at last, very suddenly and without premeditation, she spoke. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... sadly, now, and had risen and was standing by her as she sat there in the big easy-chair, still gazing into the fire, but listening for his every word. "In five long years I have heard no words from a woman's lips that gave me such joy and comfort as those you spoke so hurriedly and without premeditation. Only those who know anything of what my past has been could form any idea of the emotion with which I heard you. If I could not have seen you to say how—how I thanked you, I would have had to write. This explains what I said awhile ago: I owe you more pleasure than I can ever give. ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... in his own when he had said the words, and there was a momentary flash of intelligence, a dumb announcement of affinity in posse between herself and him, which, so far as Jude Fawley was concerned, had no sort of premeditation in it. She saw that he had singled her out from the three, as a woman is singled out in such cases, for no reasoned purpose of further acquaintance, but in commonplace obedience to conjunctive orders from headquarters, unconsciously received by unfortunate ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... And then, with no premeditation at all, there came strange words from her, words clothing with unlessoned ease thoughts that certainly she had never ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... one in case of need. The strong silk cord upon which Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had hanged himself had evidently been chosen and prepared beforehand and was thickly smeared with soap. Everything proved that there had been premeditation and consciousness up to the ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... carefully planned murder it is always safe to mistrust the obvious. Beard's outburst against Collins had seemed a genuine eruption of uncontrollable emotions, at first. But his subsequent conduct had given his words the aspect of shrewd premeditation. Now she appeared intent on fastening guilt on Collins. Her very anxiety to do so implied a hidden motive. It was necessary to be on guard ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... feet of the ladies, with enthusiasm, and had made absurd offers of himself to be "of use." There could be no doubt that in the circumstances this was mad enough, and culpable too; but it was done without premeditation, by impulse, as he was too apt to act, especially in such matters; and it could be put a stop to. He was pledged to call, it was true; but that might be once, and no more. And then there was the play, the opera, to which he had pledged himself to attend them; once there could not do much ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... was an affair got up with so little premeditation, that Captain Reud had no other arms than his regulation sword; and his aide-de-camp, my redoubtable self; no other weapon of offence than a little crooked dirk, so considerably curved, that it would not answer the purpose of a dagger to stab with, and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... dame" had appeared unexpectedly during a rehearsal—a peculiarly gingerless performance according to Connie's account—and had watched from the wings awhile, and then, unasked and apparently without premeditation, had broken in among them and at the edge of the footlights, to a gaping, empty theatre, had danced and sung a ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... woman without a husband (and fifty-five at that!) furnish faint images of the desolation of my heart without a pen." But although she wrote very fast, she never began to write without careful study and premeditation when her ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... 22nd, Foulon, one of the colleagues of Breteuil, and his son-in-law Berthier, also a high official, were massacred by premeditation in the streets. Neither Bailly, nor Lafayette with all his cohorts, could protect the life of a doomed man; but a dragoon who had paraded with the heart of Berthier was challenged, when he came home to barracks, and cut ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... top of the Batignolles-Jardin de Plates omnibus as it was turning the corner of the rue de Rivoli. He ran and caught the omnibus. But he had lost his two assistants. He must continue the pursuit alone. In his anger he was inclined to seize the man by the collar without ceremony. Was it not with premeditation and by means of an ingenious ruse that his pretended imbecile had ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... premeditation in beginning with this practical remark. But it is the only way for a grown-up person to get at once into confidential relations with a child, or still more with a group of children. One must begin in a serious, businesslike ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Senator Sargent, of California, took the floor. Mr. Conkling finally came in, and when he began to speak, appeared to be in better health than on the day previous, and he again uttered his well-rounded sentences as if without premeditation. Once he forgot himself, when, to give additional emphasis to a remark, he advanced across the aisle toward Senator Morton. The Senator from Indiana retreating, Mr. Conkling exclaimed, in the most dramatic tone, "I see that the Senator retreats before what I say!" "Yes," replied Senator ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Predetermination. — N. predestination, preordination, premeditation, predeliberation[obs3], predetermination; foregone conclusion, fait accompli[Fr]; parti pris[Fr]; resolve, propendency|; intention &c. 620; project &c. 626; fate, foredoom, necessity. V. predestine, preordain, predetermine, premeditate, resolve, concert; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder. They carry in them an inspiration of crime, that in one instant does the work of long premeditation.—George Eliot. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... did not suspect it. Mr. Wright did not suspect it. Nobody suspected it. The sudden action of a small body of men, unexpected, and only successful because unexpected, accomplished it. He is out of the reach of the officers in a moment, and there's the end of the whole business. No premeditation! No plan! Counsel knowing nothing about it! Nobody suspecting it, and the whole thing ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... of the open street door by the private watchman, and so boldly that the watchman, seeing them here, believed them clerks of the bank, and let them go unmolested. No: this was the coincidence of good luck, not of bold premeditation. There will be no second attempt. (Yawns.) If they don't come soon I shall fall asleep. Four nights without rest will tell on a man, unless he has some excitement to back him. (Nods.) Hallo! What was that? Oh! Jackson in the counting-room getting ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... is to prove that it was a case of chance-medley, or to bring it under manslaughter, as a thing done in a passion, and if he thinks that being employed by you will be any defence, or will show that it was a sudden burst of rage, without premeditation, he will tell the whole story as soon as he would ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... but that they must have that advantage from sitting down to write them which prompt speech could not always have. She should think it very strange therefore, if my letters were barren of sentiment; and as strange, if I gave myself liberties upon premeditation, which could have no excuse at all, but from a thoughtlessness, which itself wanted excuse.—But if Mr. Belford's letters and mine were upon subjects so general, and some of them equally (she presumed) instructive and entertaining, she could not but say, that she should be glad to see any ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Gabriel. "That's the worst of it. Everything points to premeditation. And when a man has been ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... difficulties one man shows fear and worry, another acts hastily and without premeditation, a third flares up in what we call a fighting spirit and seeks to batter down the resistance, and still a fourth becomes very active mentally, calling upon all of his past experience and seeking a definite plan to gain ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... executors [executrices] organised this solemnity magnificently. But, be it from premeditation or from forgetfulness, they completely neglected to invite to the ceremony most of the representatives of the musical world. Members of the Institute, celebrated artists, notable writers, tried in vain to elude the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Captain. The odds would have been against him, had he not in his wife possessed one advantage. While Mrs. Sharp possessed by nature the qualities expressed by her name and made herself unpopular to the good women of Windsor, Althea, without premeditation or effort, was a universal favorite. Thornton Rush was well aware of this advantage, and he ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... of January arrives. We are convened in the senate. Dolabella inveighed against him with much more fluency and premeditation than I am doing now. And what things were they which he said in his anger, O ye good gods! First of all, after Caesar had declared that before he departed he would order Dolabella to be made consul, (and they deny that he was a king who was always doing and saying something of this sort,)—but ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... IRRITABILITY OF CROWDS. The crowd is at the mercy of all exterior exciting causes, and reflects their incessant variations—The impulses which the crowd obeys are so imperious as to annihilate the feeling of personal interest— Premeditation is absent from crowds—Racial influence. 2. CROWDS ARE CREDULOUS AND READILY INFLUENCED BY SUGGESTION. The obedience of crowds to suggestions—The images evoked in the mind of crowds are accepted by them as realities—Why these images are identical for all ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... policy, his mission considered. Soon or late he would have to adopt every form and observance of Christian worship. In this performance, however, there was no premeditation, no calculation. In his exaltation of soul he fancied he heard a voice passing with the tempestuous jubilation of the singers: "On thy knees, O apostate! On ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... take the part of that doomed minority in the city government, which, for resisting her own demands, were to be terribly punished on that fourth-of- July night. "A conspiracy so base," said the generous Talon, "never stained the soil of France." By deliberate premeditation, an assault was made by five hundred disguised soldiers on the Parliament assembled in the Hotel de Ville; the tumult spread; the night rang with a civil conflict more terrible than that of the day. Conde and Gaston were vainly summoned; the one cared not, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... mock one's sentiment, matter-of-fact people who dislike one's fancies. But one can talk in a book without gene or restraint. It is like talking to a perfectly sympathetic listener when no third person is by. I wrote the book without premeditation and without calculation, just as the thoughts rose to my mind, as I should like to speak to the people I met, if I had the art and the courage. Well, it found its way, I am glad to think, to the right people; ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... excepting at the Italiens. You can there watch at your leisure the studied deliberateness of her movements. The enchanting deceiver plays off all the little political artifices of her sex so naturally as to exclude all idea of art or premeditation. If she has a royally beautiful hand, the most perspicacious beholder will believe that it is absolutely necessary that she should twist, or refix, or push aside the ringlet or curl she plays with. If she has some dignity of profile, you will be persuaded that she is giving ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... counselled his coming forward and facing his trial, as he himself was anxious to do; but, viewed in conjunction with the relief the man's death must have been to both of them, that loaded revolver was too suggestive of premeditation. The isolation of the house, that conveniently near pond, would look as if thought of beforehand. Even if pleading extreme provocation, Michael escaped the rope, a long term of penal servitude would ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... circumstances under which it was given. A handful of large-hearted, brave men, anonymous fugitives belonging to the little Church in Jerusalem, had come down to Antioch; and there, without premeditation, without authority, almost without consciousness— certainly without knowing what a great thing they were doing—they took, all at once, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, a great step by preaching the Gospel to pure heathen Greeks; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... fragment of lace, a flower, a few bars of a song, do more to link the broken chain of memory than scores of more laboured recollections; and then these little paths that lead you back are so simple, so free from all premeditation. Don't you think ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... premeditation that this establishment had received the name of one of the gambling dens of Europe? Perhaps the following information may serve to answer the question. The Hotel de Homburg was one of those flash hostelries frequented by adventurers ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Professor Webster denied all premeditation. Dr. Putnam asked him solemnly whether he had not, immediately before the crime, meditated at any time on the advantages that would accrue to him from Parkman's death. Webster replied "Never, before God!" He had, he protested, no idea of doing Parkman ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... collection of Major Skinner, before alluded to, brought together without premeditation, the naturalist will be struck by the preponderance of those genera which are adapted by nature to endure, a temporary privation of moisture; and this, taken in connection with the vicissitudes affecting the waters they ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... work Dr. Hale seems always to be doing and saying what he does and says extempore, without premeditation. Where he gets the time to acquire his vast stores of knowledge, or to think the thoughts we all like to hear, nobody can tell. When he speaks or preaches or writes, he opens his intellectual box and takes the first appropriate ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... rage—under provocation, be it remembered, which the witnesses proved—she might have been convicted of manslaughter, and might have received a light sentence. But the evidence so undeniably revealed deliberate and merciless premeditation, that the only defense attempted by her counsel was madness, and the only alternative left to a righteous jury was a verdict which condemned the woman to death. Those mischievous members of the community, whose topsy-turvy sympathies feel for the living criminal and forget the dead victim, ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... failed. I had answered the first two questions truthfully because I had reasoned about them. The third took me unawares. And, such is the result of trifling with conscience, I had lost the knack of doing right without premeditation. "We must have time to think," Radley had said bitterly, "or else we lie." Obliged to answer without delay, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the prisoner's admission that the idea of adding the 'ty' and the nought did come into his mind at the moment when the cheque was handed to him; and also to the alteration of the counterfoil, and to his subsequent conduct generally. The bearing of all this on the question of premeditation [and premeditation will imply sanity] is very obvious. You must not allow any considerations of age or temptation to weigh with you in the finding of your verdict. Before you can come to a verdict of guilty but insane you must be well and thoroughly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... this fact puts all premeditation out of question. A man does not load his gun with small-shot ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... for us is uncertain, let us everywhere look for him. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; who has learnt to die, has forgot to serve. There is nothing of evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that death is no evil; to know how to die delivers us from ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... from the hotel would pass unnoticed. That was pure luck, due to Mrs. Pendleton's chance visit to Flint House. It was just chance that the girl did not encounter her aunt there. She must have got away from Flint House shortly before Mrs. Pendleton arrived. But the strongest proof that there was no premeditation is to be found in the fact that Miss Turold made the journey openly, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... legislatures in all the states except in South Carolina, and even there the popular feeling was entirely opposed to any favour or justice being shown to the beaten party. The sixth article of the treaty, a solemn obligation, was violated with malice and premeditation. The Loyalists, many of whom had returned from Great Britain with the hope of receiving back their estates, or of being allowed to remain in the country, soon found they could expect no generous treatment from ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... "I would believe him guilty if it were not for the use of aconitine—that shows premeditation on ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... a friend of the other sex. In his very heart Greystock despised this woman; he had told himself over and over again that were there no Lucy in the case he would not marry her; that she was affected, unreal,—and, in fact, a liar in every word and look and motion which came from her with premeditation. Judging, not from her own account, but from circumstances as he saw them and such evidence as had reached him, he did not condemn her in reference to the diamonds. He had never for a moment conceived that she ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... some happy chance that the Captain found her arrayed in such finery, as is so often the case with heroines of romance, but the result of much premeditation and studied effect. Ever since her meeting with Blanch she had dressed herself daily with terrible deliberation and nicety of precision, the same as every woman of flesh and blood would have done under the circumstances, ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... voice broke into a wail and rose again in a half- chant. Evidently the storekeeper was absent, perhaps across the way for his dinner. The building was left to the blacks. Without premeditation, those present had dropped into one of those "meetings" which white men of ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... from anger, which is of two kinds—either arising out of a sudden impulse, and attended with remorse; or committed with premeditation, and unattended with remorse. The cause of both is anger, and both are intermediate between voluntary and involuntary. The one which is committed from sudden impulse, though not wholly involuntary, bears the image of the involuntary, and is therefore the more excusable of ...
— Laws • Plato
... was thus that John Gordon had thought of it as he had turned Mr Whittlestaff's letter over in his mind. The appeal had been made readily enough. The making of it had been easy; the words to be spoken had come quickly, and without the necessity for a moment's premeditation. He had known it all, and from a full heart the mouth speaks. But was it to have been expected that a man so placed as had been Mr Whittlestaff, should be able to give his reply with equal celerity? ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... after his death, and Gabriel had hastened to break it, so as to destroy, to the best of his power, the traces of his crime. Bastiano's evidence did not receive a minute's consideration: he, to destroy the idea of premeditation, declared that the young fisherman had left him only at the moment when the storm broke over the island; but, in the first place, the young diver was known to be Gabriel's most devoted friend and his sister's warmest admirer, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... negro tribes with unpronounceable names; and he had thought of them in much the same way. To him they had been something known to exist, but with which it was but remotely probable he would ever come in contact. Now, without preparation or premeditation, thrown face to face with the reality, it brought upon him a sickening feeling, a sort of mental nausea. Ben was not a philanthropist or a social reformer; the inspiring thought of the inexhaustible field for usefulness therein ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... time he should go, but could not leave the joy of his eyes and ears. At last his thoughts, like a vase too full, ran over into speech. It was without premeditation, almost without conscious intention. The under-tone simply became dominant and overwhelmed the frivolous surface talk. She had been talking of her mother's plans of summer travel, and he suddenly interrupted her by saying in the most natural tone in the world: "I must ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... Danglars, whose weak mind was at first quite overwhelmed with the weight of this pitiless logic, marking evident premeditation and force of will, "what is your reason for this refusal, Eugenie? ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... an insidious mass hypnosis minions from that other dimension ... or was it one supreme intelligence ... had deliberately sown the seeds of dissension. The reduction of the world's mental power had been carefully planned with diabolic premeditation. ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... hearty sigh, and considered Molly with anxiety. He had not dared to say a word to her of what her entertainer was, or what her part should be. Premeditation might throw her out of balance, conscious art might exhibit her a scheming courtesan; just in her artlessness lay all her magic. No, no; he trusted her. She was still adorably English—witness her on the ship! He could see how she would do, how the sight would ravish him, lover as he was; for ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... life wasn't really coordination and premeditation so much as it was coincident. Trivials. Nothing was absolute and dependable but death; between birth and death a series of accidents and incidents and coincidents which ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... the forest along shore. The gangway door on the opposite side of the boat was open, and as I looked out I could see the long white arms of the giant snag reaching alongside. Without much plan or premeditation I sprang out, and making good my hold upon the nearest limb as I plunged, found myself, to my surprise, standing in not more than four feet of water, the foot of the bar evidently running down well ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... good-natured self, that she moved closer to him and unconsciously put her hand upon his arm. It was too much for him in view of the way she looked, and, suddenly emboldened, he did a thing the mere thought of which, under premeditation, would have scared him into a frapped perspiration. He placed his hands upon her shoulders, and, drawing her toward him, bent swiftly down to kiss her. For a fleeting instant she drew back, and then Bobby had the surprise ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... his wife's cousin down at the door of this house, saying, "Good-night, Cousin," an elegant-looking woman, young, small, slender, pretty, beautifully dressed, and redolent of some delicate perfume, passed between the wall and the carriage to go in. This lady, without any premeditation, glanced up at the Baron merely to see the lodger's cousin, and the libertine at once felt the swift impression which all Parisians know on meeting a pretty woman, realizing, as entomologists have it, their desiderata; so he waited to put on one of his ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... long and careful premeditation on the part of the French crown and its ministers, for the relations between England and her American colonies had been carefully and acutely considered by the statesmen of Versailles long before the point of open revolt was reached. Even when France concluded to throw ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... Van Allen must have secured the knife some little time before it was used, as Luigi was in the pantry just previously," observed Fenn. "That shows premeditation. It wasn't done with a weapon picked ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... "What are you doing, Giles Winterborne!" she exclaimed, with a look of severe surprise. The evident absence of all premeditation from the act, however, speedily led her to think that it was not necessary to stand upon her dignity here and now. "You must bear in mind, Giles," she said, kindly, "that we are not as we were; and some people ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... presenting his case, said: "I propose to show that the prisoner murdered his friend and fellow-lodger, Mr. Arthur Constant, in cold blood, and with the most careful premeditation; premeditation so studied, as to leave the circumstances of the death an impenetrable mystery for weeks to all the world, though, fortunately, without altogether baffling the almost superhuman ingenuity of Mr. Edward Wimp, of the Scotland Yard Detective Department. I propose ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... which are not founded on that authority. Moral philosophy has, indeed, this peculiar disadvantage, which is not found in natural, that in collecting its experiments, it cannot make them purposely, with premeditation, and after such a manner as to satisfy itself concerning every particular difficulty which may arise. When I am at a loss to know the effects of one body upon another in any situation, I need only put them in that situation, and observe what results from ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... the celebrated firm of Tutt & Tutt appearing as counsel in the case of The People against Kasheed Hassoun, charged with the crime of murder in the first degree for having taken the life of Sardi Babu with deliberation and premeditation and malice aforethought and against the peace of the People of the State ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... ham is a matter of grace no less premeditation. It must be cut from a wether at least four years old, grass fed, grain finished, neither too fat, nor too lean, scientifically butchered in clear, frosty, but not freezing weather, and hung unsalted in clean, cold air for a matter of three days. Saw ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... the very moment when he had made up his mind that it would be utterly useless even to indulge in hope for some years to come, he spoke. It came about suddenly, and entirely without premeditation. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... the suspension of spontaneity, that is, of the free activity of the soul. Spontaneity and reflection are the two modes in which the spirit manifests its activity. Spontaneity is the living power which it possesses of acting without premeditation, without contingent ideas, of being influenced or determined by some power from without, the action thus produced blending the two primary elements of feeling and thought. This is the distinctive mode of woman's being. Reflection is that operation of the mind by which it turns its gaze in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... solemn premeditation, which tends, as Madame de Stael says, to bring more poetry into life, some women, in whom virtuous mothers either from considerations of worldly advantage of duty or sentiment, or through sheer hypocrisy, have inculcated steadfast principles, take the overwhelming ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... must be judged rather by the rules of taste and propriety, than, by those which apply to him officially. If a man's official acts are all right, it is unjust to let them go for nothing, and bring into prominence a short address made without premeditation in the front of an excited, promiscuous assembly, moved by different motives. That it was open to criticism in some respects, is true. It should have been imbued more with the spirit of determination ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... For it cannot have been a sudden impulse on her part. She had been playing with him—leading him on. His visits to the Old Town, at that quiet hour of the day. . . . No. She had carried out her infamous plan after ample premeditation. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... who knew Buonaparte well, have always asserted that this undignified scene was got up with calm premeditation, and that the ferocity of passion on the occasion was a mere piece of acting. Lord Whitworth, however, was an excellent judge of men and manners, and he never doubted that the haughty soldier yielded ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... trembling for her safety. This certainty of mine has been quoted to prove premeditation on the Nor'-Westers' part; but I meant nothing of the sort. I only felt there was unrest on both sides, and that she must ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... death to him; he would bring all the resources of torrid eloquence into play; he would cry that he had lost his head, that he could not think, could not write a line. The horror that some women feel for premeditation does honor to their delicacy; they would rather surrender upon the impulse of passion, than in fulfilment of a contract. In general, prescribed happiness is not the kind that ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... result of premeditation; Maurice, politely opening the front door for his wife, had realized, as he stood on the threshold and a biting wind flung a handful of powdery snow in his face,—the sparkling coldness of the day; and he thought to himself, "this is about the ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland |
