"Random" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time we could find no indication of a house, until, at last, the barking of a dog gave us a clue. After some dispute as to which side of the road it was on, we struck off over a field. Our only guide were the random flashes of lightning that gave us a momentary view of the country around. The better to prosecute our search, we formed a line within hearing distance of each other, and thus swept around in all directions. At last we found a barn, but were so wet ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... decaying bronze, that were just bright enough to emphasise the solid whiteness of the snow. But right up against these dreary colours rose the black bulk of the cathedral; and upon the top of the cathedral was a random splash and great stain of snow, still clinging as to an Alpine peak. It had fallen accidentally, but just so fallen as to half drape the dome from its very topmost point, and to pick out in perfect silver the great orb and the cross. When ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... this random shaft as if he had been stung, and she saw that it had gone home, and repented the next moment. The silence became more and more embarrassing. By good luck, however, their party suddenly appeared strolling towards them from ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... press upon my very soul, and such as you shall never have seen nor felt; so that I did seem lost even from my self, and did appear as that I went presently in unreal fashion, and did pass onward for ever and for ever through everlasting night; so that odd whiles I did make to walk with random, as that I stept no more upon this earth; but did go offwards into the Void. Yet was this foolishness of the mind set straight and proper each time that it did come about; for lo! I did kick against an upjutting rock here, and fall upon a great and unseen boulder there, and so was shaken very quickly ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... Roman soldiers enter the field with more determined minds (so much had the enemy exasperated them by taunts on the one hand, and the consuls by delay on the other). The Etrurians had scarcely time to form their ranks, when the javelins having been thrown away at random, in the first hurry, rather than discharged with aim, the battle had now come to close fighting, even to swords, where the fury of war is most desperate. Among the foremost the Fabian family was distinguished for the sight it afforded and ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... willing to pay. The results of such a course of action may be seen on a large scale in India. In one of the colleges of an Indian University in a large manufacturing town, fourteen young men—very agreeable and frank, outspoken fellows—met at random in one of the hostels, were asked what, on completing their college course, they intended to do; twelve answered to become "pleaders," and two hoped for something in the Government service. None proposed to follow manufacturing industry, agriculture, or ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... was a random shaft. Lawyer Ball, a keen man, who had well weighed all points in the tale imparted to him by Richard, as well as other points, had colored them with his own deductions, and spoke ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the moments of hatching, but during the whole period of incubation. Under our present system of incubation, the chick is immediately subject to the changing evaporation of American weather conditions. The data for that fact, picked at random, will be of interest. The following table gives the vapor pressure at Buffalo, N. Y., for ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... far different and yet unborn poets. But it is only fair to Shelley to remember that the moral being of mankind is as yet in its childhood; all poets play with images not understood; they touch on emotions sharply, at random, as in a dream; they suffer each successive vision, each poignant sentiment, to evaporate into nothing, or to leave behind only a heart vaguely softened and fatigued, a gentle languor, or a tearful hope. Every modern ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... sent home happy. After the tragedy, the slap-stick or the loud guffaw; after "Romeo and Juliet," Cibber's "Hob in the Well"; after "King Lear," "The Irish Widow." (These two illustrations are taken at random from the programs of the Charleston theatre in 1773.) This custom persisted until comparatively recent times. The fathers and mothers of the present generation can remember when William Warren, at the Boston ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... drawbridge an introduce the enemy: everybody has lost his head, the besieged as well as the besiegers, the latter more completely because they are intoxicated with the sense of victory. Scarcely have they entered when they begin the work of destruction, and the latest arrivals shoot at random those that come earlier; "each one fires without heeding where or on whom his shot tells." Sudden omnipotence and the liberty to kill are a wine too strong for human nature; giddiness is the result; men see red, and their ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... inline in [brackets]. The random use of asterisks is as in the original. The 1653 text used brackets to supplement marginal quotation marks. These have been replaced by conventional "quotation marks". A handful of superscripts (w^{th}) have been "unpacked" ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... we live little if any better than Jasons, who have the County Trustee in three times a winter. I'm big and strong, you're almost a man, why don't we DO something? Why don't we have some decent clothes, some money for out work and"—Kate spoke at random—"a ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... aright should paint the old nailed boots, but also the new hats and the Waltham watches. Why do they not read? All have been taught, and curious as the inconsistency may seem, they all value the privilege of being able to read and write, and yet they do not exercise it, except in a casual, random way. I for one, when the public schools began all through the rural districts, thought that at last the printing-press was going to reach the country people. In a measure it has done so, but in a flickering, uncertain manner; they read odd bits which come drifting to their homes in ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... difficult business, for the coins were of all countries and sizes—doubloons, and louis d'ors, and guineas, and pieces of eight, and I know not what besides, all shaken together at random. The guineas, too, were about the scarcest, and it was with these only that my mother knew how to ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "My cousin Brant is not a person who speaks at random, so perhaps we have misinterpreted the passage." Then he went ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... sermon, at each year's expense, That never coxcomb reached magnificence! You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse, And pompous buildings once were things of use. Yet shall, my lord, your just, your noble rules Fill half the land with imitating fools; Who random drawings from your sheets shall take, And of one beauty many blunders make; Load some vain church with old theatric state, Turn arcs of triumph to a garden-gate; Reverse your ornaments, and hang them all On some patched dog-hole eked with ends of wall; Then clap four slices of pilaster on 't, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... questions to consider in taking such a step.[5] There is a growing tendency among physicians to give consumptives out-of-door treatment at their homes, if living out of cities, as careful personal supervision gives much better results than a random life in a ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... random, he had come to a spot where the companionship he hoped to find did not exist. The place languished after the war, slow to recover; the colony of resident English was scattered still; travellers preferred the coast of France with Mentone and Monte Carlo to enliven them. The country, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... day was nearly ended. The streets were deserted, save for a few random stragglers, and these hurried straight along, with the intent look of people who were only anxious to accomplish their errands as quickly as possible, and then snugly house themselves from the rising wind and the gathering ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of prurient schoolmates. I was unaware that there was such discussion between them—though it is, I suppose, not probable that our school was exempt. I was a great reader, and when about 12 or 13 I came across a reference to an illegitimate child which puzzled me. Ere long, however, in my random and extensive reading I hit on a book that touched on phallicism, and I learned that there were male and female organs of generation. I had neither shame nor curiosity; I jumped to the conclusion that during close caresses somehow a subtle aroma arose from the man to fertilize the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... as possible in the outline, from nature, instead of daubing down what they call "effects" with the brush, they would soon find there is more beauty about their forms than can be arrived at by any random felicity of invention, however brilliant, and more essential character than can be violated without incurring the charge of falsehood,—falsehood as direct and definite, though not as traceable as error in the less varied ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... a scattering fire of musketry at once opened, the men loading and firing as quickly as they could. The effect was immediate. Arrows still fell, but only occasionally; and evidently shot at random, for but few of them came ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... people sometimes called me a poet, and though they employed the term vaguely and at random, yet it was not wholly unjustified. For I am a destroyer of suggestion, a shatterer of the group, a wanderer from the herd, an idol-hater, but also a searcher for joy, beauty and bliss, a lover of reality; and all these are characteristics of ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... with the ears. They must have gone in "to hear" instead of out, and wasn't it lucky that they happened to go in on opposite sides of the head instead of cater-cornered or at random? Is it not easier to believe in a God who can make the eye, the ear, the fin, the wing, and the leg, as well as the light, the sound, the air, the ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... farmer who was riding home a cob he had bought that day at Launceston, and the farmer and he began to have a chat about horses suggested by that circumstance. Oddly enough, their random talk came ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... dared not say. And presently she went on, happily, and at random: "Of course I kept Hafiz and the first thing you ever gave me—the gun-metal wrist-watch. Here it is—" leaning across him and pulling out a drawer in her dresser. "I wear it every day when I am out. It keeps excellent time. Isn't it ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... untried, No sport of every random gust, Yet being to myself a guide, Too blindly have reposed my trust: And oft, when in my heart was heard Thy timely mandate, I deferr'd The task, in smoother walks to stray; But thee I now would serve more strictly, if ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... his eye Elizabeth capitulated. She felt quite overcome by the revulsion of feeling which swept through her. How she had misjudged him! She had taken him for an ordinary soulless purloiner of cats, a snapper-up of cats at random and without reason; and all the time he had been reluctantly compelled to the act by this deep and praiseworthy motive. All the unselfishness and love of sacrifice innate in good women stirred ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... in the list who were only sixteen and seventeen years. In this regiment, we find two captains only twenty-one years of age, and three lieutenants who were only twenty. This regiment was exceptional in regard to age, though we find that over twenty-five per cent of several companies, taken at random, were under age. Even boys of fourteen and fifteen were enlisted as musicians, "drummer boys," and served out their full term. It can, therefore, be truthfully said, that those who were literally "boys" did ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... set down his burden here, and having received orders to return in an hour's time, departed. The young gentleman sketched the willow and the brook in no very masterly fashion, but at a sort of hasty random, and tiring of his self-imposed task before half an hour was over, threw himself at length beside the brook, and there, lulled by the ripple of the water and the slumberous noise of insects, fell asleep. The valet's returning footsteps awoke him. He rolled over ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... knowledge may count on continued favor or not, the fundamental critical idea, that reflection upon the nature and range of our cognitive faculty is indispensable, retains its validity for all cases and makes an end of all philosophizing at random.[1] No ethical system will with impunity pass by the autonomous legislation of reason and the unconditional imperative (the admonition of conscience translated into conceptual language): the nature ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... face." I particularly like "practically unthinkable." I suppose we can think it in theory, but not in practice. I like almost everything Mr. Allen says or does; it is not necessary to go far in search of his good things; dredge up any bit of mud from him at random and we are pretty sure to find an oyster with a pearl in it, if we look it clearly in the face; I mean, there is sure to be something which will be at any rate "almost" practically unthinkable. But however this may be, when Mr. Allen wrote ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... from a random bow. The flies were buzzing in the sun, The bees were busy in the snow Of lilies, and the spider spun, And waited ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... the land; at the corral he sat on the fence and kept tally, frankly admitting that he could neither rope nor brand; in camp he did his share of the cooking and said little, listening attentively to the random talk. Only when sheep were mentioned did he show a marked interest, and even then it was noticed that he made no comment, whatever his thoughts were. But if he told no one what he was going to do, it was not entirely due to an overrated reticence, for he did not know himself. Not a man there but ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... a pilot's memory is about the most wonderful thing in the world. To know the Old and New Testaments by heart, and be able to recite them glibly, forward or backward, or begin at random anywhere in the book and recite both ways and never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant mass of knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot's massed knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous facility in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... everything," it is not merely the mixing of a little of this, some of that, and a few drops of the other, in the HOPE that SOMETHING will come of it. Nor is the spirit of the laboratory work represented in the following dialogue overheard between two alleged carpenters picked up at random to help on a ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... is certainly Smollett's best. I am rather divided between "Peregrine Pickle" and "Roderick Random," both extraordinarily good in their way, which is a way without tenderness; but you will have to read them both, and I send the first volume of "Peregrine" as the richer ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... the enchantment of beauty and the highest rank, and who makes of her secret and corrupt court the sanctuary of her pleasures and the focus of her vices, this prince, blinded on the one hand by the priests, and on the other by love, holds at random the loose reins of an empire which is escaping from his grasp. France, exhausted of men, does not give to him, either in Maurepas, Necker, or Calonne, a minister capable of supporting him. The aristocracy is barren, and produces nothing but ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... followed his injunction for many evenings. I could make up a new "Thousand and One Nights," in my own way, out of these pictures, but the number might be too great, after all. The pictures I have here given have not been chosen at random, but follow in their proper order, just as they were described to me. Some great gifted painter, or some poet or musician, may make something more of them if he likes; what I have given here are only hasty ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the cat howling and screeching somewhere around the house for two or three days, but they couldn't find her. Potts used to get up at night, fairly maddened with the noise, and heave things out the back window at random, hoping to hit her and discourage her. But she never seemed to mind them; and although eventually he fired off pretty nearly every movable thing in the house excepting the piano, she continued to shriek and scream in a manner that was simply appalling. At last, one day, Potts ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... the owner least of all, can explain what is in a growing boy's mind. It might have been the blind ferment of adolescence; Stalky's random remarks about virtue might have stirred him; like his betters he might have sought popularity by way of clowning; or, as the Head asserted years later, the only known jest of his serious life might have worked on him, as a sober-sided ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... drawn into a scowl not unlike Nancy's own, glowering first at his father and then at me. Sandy, who was, in his mind's eye, re-rigging a schooner, went on with his paper-and-pencil work, unconscious of his son's scrutiny. I dropped my eyes to the Allan Ramsay, which I had opened at random, but lost nothing of Danvers's conduct, and liked him for it. He had known but the women who needed protection, and his attitude to my mind bespoke the ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... practise such things as may be of use in your profession, by giving your eye good practice in judging accurately of the breadth and length of objects. Thus, to accustom your mind to such things, let one of you draw a straight line at random on a wall, and each of you, taking a blade of grass or of straw in his hand, try to cut it to the length that the line drawn appears to him to be, standing at a distance of 10 braccia; then each one may go up to the line to measure ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... being all in full bloom. We were received at the door by a middle-aged woman, with the ruddy glow of health on her cheeks, and dressed in coarse, plain, but remarkably neat and suitable, attire. As this was a cottage selected at random, and visited without previous intimation of our intention, I took particular notice of every thing I saw, because I regarded its appearance as a fair specimen of its constant and ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... this is not the least extraordinary feature of the case,) what vague and random statements those are which we have been listening to. The entire section (S. Mark xvi. 9-20,) "is not met with in all the copies:" at all events not "in the accurate" ones. Nay, it is "met with seldom." In fact, it is absent from "almost all" copies. But,—Which of these ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... occasionally visited and warned—sometimes with physical violence—to keep silent. On election day determined men with rifles or shotguns, ostensibly intending to go hunting after they had voted, gathered around the polls. An occasional random shot might kick up the dust near an approaching negro. Men actually or apparently the worse for liquor might stagger around, seeking an excuse for a fight. It is not surprising that among the negroes the impression ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... these, taken at random from among the present writer's own memories of pretty happenings at Fay House, will serve: During Duse's last tour in this country, the famous actress came out one afternoon, as many a famous personage does, to drink a cup of tea with Mrs. Agassiz in the stately old parlour, where ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... judgment, shall inflict upon them. O then they will cry, One dram of ease for my cursing, swearing, lying, jeering tongue. Some ease for my bragging, braving, flattering, threatening, dissembling tongue. Now men can let their tongues run at random, as we used to say; now they will be apt to say, Our tongues are our own, who shall control them? (Psa 12:4). But then they will be in another mind. Then, O that I might have a little ease for my deceitful tongue? Methinks sometimes to consider ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... pacing to and fro, he stopped before a shelf where, beside some coarse eating utensils and the heap of tobacco pegs, the cutting of which occupied his spare moments, lay a little worn book. It had been Godwyn's. He opened it at random, and read a few verses. With a heavy sigh he laid his arm along the shelf and rested his burning forehead upon it. "'Let not your heart be troubled,'" he said beneath his breath; and again, "'Let not your heart be troubled.'" He recommenced his ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... that time; next, he was sure he had heard it. They would call Sarah in, on a pretext, and watch her face; if she had been betraying them to Mr. Burgess, it would show in her manner. They asked her some questions—questions which were so random and incoherent and seemingly purposeless that the girl felt sure that the old people's minds had been affected by their sudden good fortune; the sharp and watchful gaze which they bent upon her frightened her, and that completed the business. ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... throwing a marble against the wall, which rebounds to a distance. Others then follow; and the boy whose marble strikes against any of the others is the winner. Some boys play the game in a random manner; but the boy who plays with skill judges nicely of the law of forces, that is, he calculates exactly the force of the rebound, and the ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... scarcely be estimated. But there is little choice between the two except on the score of the hopefulness of the latter. As examples of the mixture of types with which a large hospital is constantly dealing, I might offer the following at random, from my own recollections: A milkman came to a clinic one morning with an eruption all over his body and his mouth full of the most dangerously contagious patches. Two of us cornered him and explained to him in full why he should come in ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... individuals who were not absent more than five or six times within this period. In the course of the thirteen months, during which they had exercised this public trust, they had printed, and afterwards distributed, not at random, but judiciously, and through, respectable channels, (besides 26,526 reports, accounts of debates in parliament, and other small papers,) no less than ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... any temperature short of that its natural effect was disintegration. Audrey had some cause to congratulate herself on the result. It might or might not have been flattering to be called a "clever puss" or an "imaginative minx" (Ted chose his epithets at random), whenever she pointed out some novel effect of colour or picturesque grouping; but it was now July, and Ted had not done a stroke of work since he put the last touches to ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... so men who had gathered in Van Deventer's office went about among the gathering and simply selected men at random, ordering them to follow and begin work. This began to awaken the crowd, but they wakened to fear rather than resolution. They were city-bred, and unaccustomed to face the unusual or ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... tenements; to the dark stockaded wall of a house framed of corrugated iron, and its weird contiguity to a Swiss chalet, whose galleries were used only to bear the signs of the shops, and whose frame had been carried across seas in sections to be set up at random here. ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... upon the ground, and despite himself and the fight for life, he shuddered. Paul beside him was now in a state of wild excitement. The smaller boy's nerves were not so steady and he was loading and firing almost at random. Finally he lifted himself almost unconsciously to his full height, but he was dragged down the next instant, as if he had been seized ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sprinkled with it every part of the printing-office. They also scattered the sand and ashes all over the room upon the paved floor; and being provided with swords, the whole party began to strike at random right and left in every part of the room, to see if they could hit the ghost, and to observe if he left any foot-marks upon the sand or ashes which covered the floor. They perceived at last that he had perched himself ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... prudent disdain, the strength of Nisibis; but as he passed under the walls of Amida, he resolved to try whether the majesty of his presence would not awe the garrison into immediate submission. The sacrilegious insult of a random dart, which glanced against the royal tiara, convinced him of his error; and the indignant monarch listened with impatience to the advice of his ministers, who conjured him not to sacrifice the success of his ambition to the gratification of his resentment. The following day Grumbates advanced towards ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... At random I gave her lower eleven, and called a porter to help her with her luggage. I followed them leisurely to the train shed, and ten minutes more saw us ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "I have an idea that I want to try out the first chance I get. Save me a bunch of these ordinary admission tickets. Take them from the boxes at random and let me ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... such causes, that eloquence becomes only a sort of grave badinage, sparkling with spangles like the play of fireworks, though the heart of the discourse may contain nothing earnest; while the lightest raillery, thrown out apparently at random, may perhaps be most sadly serious. Bitter and intense thought follows closely upon the steps of the most tempestuous gayety; nothing indeed remains absolutely superficial, though nothing is presented without an artificial polish. In the discussions constantly occurring in this country, where conversation ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... stood on end. He darted behind a tree. Click! flash! bang! and a bullet came with a heavy thug into the tree. Bang! went another gun,—another,—and another; and the pickets all along the rebel lines, thinking that the Yankees were coming, blazed away at random. The Yankee pickets, thinking that the rebels were advancing, became uneasy and fired in return. Paul could hear the bullets spin through the air and strike into the trees. His first thought was to get ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... picked out at random, will serve to indicate what an intimate companion she made of her Bible, and with what loving patience and insight she studied it for the illumination and deepening of her ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... his endeavour in literature, nay more, it was the main passion of his life: and the instrument that should serve his purpose could not be forged in haste. Neither was it easy for this past master of the random, the unexpected, the brilliantly back-foremost and topsy-turvy in talk, to learn in writing the habit of orderly arrangement and organic sequence which even the lightest forms of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... work he undertook was, that it would give him scope for widely-ranging comment; and it is the inevitable, by no means inartistic or unhealthy discursiveness of the treatment which makes it difficult to do justice to it. But we will venture upon a point or two nearly at random. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... silence, and with an air of absence and abstraction, which could not give Miss Bradwardine a favourable opinion of his talents for conversation. He answered at random one or two observations which she ventured to make upon ordinary topics; so that feeling herself almost repulsed in her efforts at entertaining him, and secretly wondering that a scarlet coat should cover no better breeding, she left him to his mental amusement ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... divination specialties. Some caused the idols to speak, others derived their foreknowledge from words spoken by the dead, others predicted by leaves of tobacco or the grains and juice of cocoa, while to still other classes, the shapes of grains of maize taken at random, the appearance of animal excrement, the forms assumed by the smoke rising from burning victims, the entrails and viscera of animals, the course taken by a certain species of spider, the visions seen in drunkeness,[TN-16] the flights of birds, and the directions in which ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... encouraging, had an air of habit, for Mr. Beechtree added quickly, "What I have to tell you is most unusual. It implicates persons not usually implicated. Indeed, never before. I am not here to hurl random accusations against persons for whom I happen to feel a distaste. I am here with solid, documentary evidence. I have it in this case." He opened his shabby dispatch case, and showed it ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... was a mingled odor, not unpleasant, of drugs and disinfectants, tobacco and leather. Wade made himself comfortable in a big padded armchair, one of those genuinely comfortable chairs which modern furnishers have thrust into oblivion, picked up a magazine at random, slapped the dust off it and filled his pipe. He was disturbed by the sound of brisk footsteps on the bricks outside. Then a key was inserted in the lock and the Doctor entered from the little ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... divisions in each line, and you can fill up the fifteen divisions with any numbers running from one to ninety, that you may see fit. Ninety tickets, with numbers from one to ninety, are put in a revolving glass barrel, and after being well shaken up, some one draws out one number at random, (the slips of paper being rolled up in such manner that the numbers on them can not be seen.) It is passed to the judges, and is then read aloud, and exposed to view, in conspicuous figures, on a stand or stands; and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... furiously into the defile, attacked the cavalry in rear. Both sides were crowded in the narrow space. The wildest confusion followed, and the dust raised by the horses' hoofs hung over all like a yellow London fog, amid which the bewildered combatants discharged their pistols and thrust at random. The Egyptian cavalry, thus highly tried, showed at first no disposition to turn to meet the attack. The tumult drowned all words of command. A disaster appeared imminent. But the British officers, who had naturally been at the head of the column during its advance, were now at the rear ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... their heads in the clouds. They were but vaguely conscious of their surroundings; they saw all things dimly, as through a veil; they were steeped in dreams, often they did not hear when they were spoken to; they often did not understand when they heard; they answered confusedly or at random; Sally sold molasses by weight, sugar by the yard, and furnished soap when asked for candles, and Aleck put the cat in the wash and fed milk to the soiled linen. Everybody was stunned and amazed, and went about muttering, "What CAN be the ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... took down a book here and there at random from the shelves. From one or two, evidently old ones, the fly leaves had been neatly cut out; others had no mark of any kind. It came over me with a staggering certainty that here was no careless, makeshift impulse; a methodical, definite annihilation ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... the Emperor Alexander, from whom he was only distant half a horse's length. It is likely, that they perceived from the place this brilliant staff, and fired on it at random. Moreau alone was struck; a cannon-ball broke his right knee, and passing through the horse's side, carried off the flesh of his left leg. The generous Alexander shed tears. Colonel Rapatel rushed towards Moreau, who uttered a long ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... topics. Hazlitt thought that the soul of Rabelais had passed into Amory, while a more recent critic can see in his long-winded discussions naught but the "light-headed ramblings of delirium." If we try to read John Buncle consecutively, the result is boredom; but if we open the book at random, we are pretty sure to be interested and even sometimes ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... spoken of him as if you could not confidently. May he not have—I judge of him only from your report—some motive for his present conduct which we cannot penetrate? It is an unkind world, and the innocent and guileless are not safe from the schemes and contrivances of the wicked. I speak at random, but I am filled with alarm for you. You are safe now—but one step may be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... were the heart of the power system, converting the random wave fronts of noncoherent light received from the mirror into a tremendous beam of coherent infrared energy which could be bundled in such a pattern as to reach Earth's surface in a focal point adjustable from here to be something between twenty-two ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... at random: it might be nearer the hilt or nearer the point, according to the distance of the object aimed at. It may also be observed that the "draw" might continue during the entire sweep from B to F, but a very slight ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... main argument, that the acts of councils are irreversible. Next they recite the charges against Athanasius and Marcellus, and the doings of the Westerns at Sardica. Hereupon they denounce Hosius, Julius, and others as associates of heretics and patrons of the detestable errors of Marcellus. A few random charges of gross immorality are added, after the Eusebian custom. They end with a new creed, the fourth of Antioch, with some verbal changes, and seven ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... evening, Mr. Stoddard saw three persons before him on the way to Seir. Their horses went from one side of the road to the other, at random; and their own heads were uncovered to the cold March wind. At first he took them for dervishes; but on coming nearer he heard the voice of prayer, and found they were Nestorians. The eyes of all ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... regards the names of Cain's offspring, I believe that, in common with those of the holy patriarchs, they indicate not an absence of purpose or a random selection, but a definite purpose and a prophecy. Thus "Adam" signifies a man of, or taken out of, the red earth. "Eve" signifies the mother of life, or of the living. "Cain" signifies possession. "Abel" signifies vanity. And we ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... ease with which he caught the various kinds of fishes, which travelled from one sea to the other, through the narrow strait. He had but to cast his net into the water, and to draw it out full; his spear, thrown at random into the strait, might almost be said to be sure of attaching to it a good fat fish. Once upon a time, having constructed a weir to catch fish, such a vast quantity were caught, that the strait was choked up, and the water rose and ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... robbed the mining company that night and was probably responsible for the other holdups, created an immediate sensation among the few gamblers in the resort. Sautee added to the excitement by quoting rewards at random, and the forming of two posses to comb the trails to the mine and beyond was under way ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... the modes by which a given sound may be represented is not so great in all words as it is in these examples, though with respect to a vast number of the words in common use the above are fair specimens. They were not specially selected, but were taken almost at random. And there are very few words in the language the sound of which might not be represented by several ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... the main characteristic of the engravings on gems and cylinders, considered as works of mimetic art, is their quaintness and grotesqueness. A few specimens, taken almost at random from the admirable collection of M. Felix Lajard, will sufficiently illustrate this feature. In one the central position is occupied by a human figure whose left arm has two elbow-joints, while towards the right two sitting figures threaten one another with their ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... throwing, the priests were employed to interpret. Future events were frequently inquired into by an inquisitive person cutting the branch of a tree into small pieces, and distinguishing them by certain marks, and then scattering them at random on a white cloth. The searcher after knowledge having prayed to the gods, took up the slips three times, and interpreted according to the marks. Future events were often inquired into by reading the first line or passage which happened to turn up on opening ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... reached the ship, three men out of each boat's crew, selected at random to represent the rest, were tied up and flogged, the blows being well laid on by scoundrels very eager to be brutal, ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... take a sure aim from here," replied the other. "My eye does not reach so far; I could fire only at random ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... Genii—and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it.... I have been Tom Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of Voyages and Travels—I forget what, now—that were on those shelves; and for days and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house, armed with the center piece out of an ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... reptiles, which are the next higher class of backboned animals. Here very distinct developments of the process are discovered. The turtle, to use the best known illustration, may lay but twenty eggs. But she will not lay them at random in the water, as do the toads and the fish. Each egg is wonderfully fattened with yolk. This means that it is possible for the creature to develop to a far greater extent before leaving the egg than was possible in the case of the toad. Accordingly the little ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... many a shaft at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant And many a word, at random spoken. May soothe or wound ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... from the priest's house to the County Gaol, but was then in a condition of acknowledged insanity. That she had committed the murder no one who heard the story doubted, but of her guilt there was no evidence whatever beyond the random confession of a maniac. No detailed confession was ever made by her. "An eye for an eye," she would say when interrogated,—"Is not that justice? A tooth for a tooth!" Though she was for a while detained in prison it was impossible to prosecute her,—even with a view to an ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... could he expect me to feel as in the days when we were boy and girl, when we dreamed foolish dreams about each other, and were romantic, and young? I have changed since then, I have a thousand things to think about in which he doesn't sympathize; if I answered his words at random it was because I couldn't fix my mind upon them. I drew a long breath when he left me—when I escaped the tender, perplexed ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... us try these truths with closer eyes, And trace them through the prospect as it lies: 100 Here for a while my proper cares[12] resigned, Here let me sit in sorrow for mankind; Like yon neglected shrub at random cast, That shades the steep, and ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... poet or a vicious player; such surmises, however, the "Spectator" averred to be wholly without foundation, upholding the justice of his strokes and the reasonableness of his admonitions. "He does not deal about his blows at random, but always hits the right nail upon the head. The inexpressible force wherewith he lays them on sufficiently shows the strength of his convictions. His zeal for a good author is indeed outrageous, and breaks down every fence and partition, every board and plank, that stands ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... expectant Under-Secretary was destined to meet with a grievous disappointment, for out of Bottles came no good thing. For the most part of the dinner he sat silent, only speaking when directly addressed, and then answering so much at random that the Under-Secretary quickly came to the conclusion that Sir Eustace's brother was either a fool or that he had drunk ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... artist at her toil. The title of this particular word-picture is "Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia." As the portrait itself has a beginning, but no middle, and only a faintly indicated end, I believe—though in my ignorance of just what it all means I am not sure—that I can quote at random without offense to the impressions ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... others do," said Serge, simply. "I shall be led, and with pleasure. Think that I have lived for years without kindred, without ties—at random; and, believe me, any chain will be light and sweet which holds me to any one or anything. And then," frankly added he, changing his tone and looking at Madame Desvarennes with tenderness, "if I did not do everything to please you I should ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... nothing embarrassing to her in his silence: it was a part of her long European discipline that she had learned to manage pauses with ease. In her Frisbee days she might have packed this one with a random fluency; now she was content to let it widen slowly before them like the spacious prospect opening at their feet. The complicated beauty of this prospect, as they moved toward it between the symmetrically clipped limes of ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... and at many points along the Upper Sacramento and the mountain streams which fall into it, gold is mined profitably. One day, at the Soda Spring, several of us asked Mr. Fry whether he could find gold near the river. He took a pan, and digging at random in his orchard, washed out three or four specks of gold; and he related that when he was planting this orchard ten years ago he found gold in the holes he dug for his apple-trees. But he is an old ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff |
