"Unintentionally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the paper. "Your majesty has already broken the seal. You crushed it unintentionally. There remains but to unfold the paper, and every thing is explained. I will wage that it comes from the beautiful dancer Riccardo, whom the emperor admired so much last night in the ballet, and whom he declared to be the most bewitching ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... scepticism became practical, if large communities came to regard every question in politics and law as absolutely open, their institutions would dissolve, and science, among other things, would be buried in the ruin. Modern thought brings into vogue a speculative Nihilism ... but unintentionally it creates at the same time a practical Nihilism.... There is a mine under modern society which, if we consider it, has been the necessary result of the abeyance in recent times of the idea of the Church" (p. 208). In fact, as our author discerns, the ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Isaiah was the chapter read and commented upon. The attention with which the poor heard, the very humble manner in which they returned thanks, and the earnest hope they expressed that I would come again, made a deep impression in their favour. Under these circumstances I was led, as it were, unintentionally to the commencement of those lectures which continue to the present time (1819). The first effects of these lectures were seen in the observance of the sacred duties of the Sabbath-day; our congregations at Newland increased, and the aisles of the church became occupied, in which the Foresters ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... all sorts of wild paradoxes, which journalists maintain cleverly enough for their own amusement when there is nobody else at hand to mystify. I bring bad luck to our family. My heart is full of love for you, yet I behave like an enemy. The blow dealt unintentionally is the cruelest blow of all. While I was leading a bohemian life in Paris, a life made up of pleasure and misery; taking good fellowship for friendship, forsaking my true friends for those who wished to exploit me, and ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... beyond nature and beyond morality. And while they may look beyond, and take comfort in the vision, they cannot pass beyond. As M. Benda says, the most faithful Levite can return to the infinite only in his thought; in his life he must remain a lay creature. Yet nature, in forming the human soul, unintentionally unlocked for the mind the doors to truth and to essence, partly by obliging the soul to attend to things which are outside, and partly by endowing the soul with far greater potentialities of sensation and invention than daily life is likely to call forth. Our minds are therefore naturally ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... our lists.... But there is just another point we ought not to leave uninvestigated. Let us take the case of deceiving a friend to his detriment: which is the more wrongful—to do so voluntarily or unintentionally? ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... both the peaceable white man and the red; but at length, when the Indians showed feelings of hostility, they became a barrier between the savages and the industrious cultivators of the soil, and thus unintentionally contributed to the well-being ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... attitude, thinking it too cavalier altogether, and glowered at him. Unintentionally he followed the direction ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... general council, seven days before Mid-lent; and they outlawed Elgar the earl, because it was cast upon him that he was a traitor to the king and to all the people of the land. And he made a confession of it before all the men who were there gathered; though the word escaped him unintentionally. And the king gave the earldom to Tosty, son of Earl Godwin, which Siward the earl before held. And Elgar the earl sought Griffin's protection in North-Wales. And in this year Griffin and Elgar burned St. Ethelbert's minster, and all ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... Moses have done better to let them see that the glory of their leader was altogether dependent on the glory within the veil, whither they were not worthy to enter? Did that veil hide Moses's face only? Did he not, however unintentionally, lay it on their hearts? Did it not cling there, and help to hide God from them, so that they could not perceive that the greater than Moses was come, and stormed at the idea that the glory of their ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... repay us to examine the Diary more closely, since Humboldt only treated it shortly and in scattered extracts, and it has been partly falsified, unintentionally, by attempts to modernize the language instead of adhering to literal translation. What Peschel says, for instance, is pretty but ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... me outside—then spoke to me. Her first words were reproof for what I had unintentionally done, and sounded as an earnest of what I was to be cursed with as long as we both lived. I answered angrily; this tone of mine changed her complaints to irritation. She taunted me with a secret she had discovered, which concerned Miss ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... consequence that the old people are killed and their cottage burned to the ground. Thus Faust in his old age—by this time he is a hundred years old—has a fresh burden on his conscience. As he stands on the balcony of his palace at midnight, surveying the havoc he has unintentionally wrought, the smoke of the burning cottage is wafted toward him and takes the form of four gray old women. One of them, Dame Care, slips into the rich man's palace by way of the keyhole and croons in his ear her dismal litany of care. Faust replies ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... ground was unusually rough and rocky, with thick underwood. We got over it, however, and soon afterwards had to pass through a gorge in the only range of hills we had to cross. The path was narrow, so that we could not conveniently ride side by side. I therefore, as guide, took the lead, and had unintentionally got some way ahead of the dominie, when I heard him cry out, and turning round to see what was the matter I found my right arm seized by a fellow who had sprung out from behind a rock while another grasped my horse's rein, and the next ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... which they severally take on the question of causality. This remark is of practical importance, because in the debate between spiritualists and materialists it is often lost sight of: nay, in some cases, it is even expressly ignored. Obviously, when it is either intentionally or unintentionally disregarded, the debate ceases to be directed to the question under discussion, and may then wander aimlessly over the whole field of collateral speculation. Throughout the present essay, therefore, the discussion will be restricted to the only topic which ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... by the rivalry between her mother and sister, and conscious of a growing passion for the man who had, unintentionally, crept into the lives of three women in one household bound by the closest ties of blood, fled the place, and went down the broad river to a little town, where she found quiet and friendly shelter in the home of a relative. It was a curious place, very old, and in the heart ...
— A Few Short Sketches • Douglass Sherley
... and facing Pao-ch'ai he made a bow, now to the left and now to the right, observing the while: "My dear sister, forgive me this time. The fact is that I took some wine yesterday; I came back late, as I met a few friends on the way. On my return home, I hadn't as yet got over the fumes, so I unintentionally talked a lot of nonsense. But I don't so much as remember anything about all I said. It isn't worth your while, however, losing your temper over ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... from the simple removal of restrictions; but certainly they denounced the restrictions as unjust to all, not simply as hindrances to the wealth of the rich. Adam Smith's position is intelligible: it was, he thought, a proof of a providential order that each man, by helping himself, unintentionally helped his neighbours. The moral sense based upon sympathy was therefore not opposed to, but justified, the economic principles that each man should first attend to his own interest. The unintentional co-operation would thus become conscious ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... woman, whose lively advances he had met with frigid coolness; there was not a face there that did not reproach him with some wrong done, inexplicably to all appearance, but the real offence in every case lay in some mortification, some invisible hurt dealt to self-love. He had unintentionally jarred on all the small susceptibilities of ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... smiling easily and naturally; "I am unintentionally funny. And I really didn't know it—didn't ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... scampered away so fast that I must have been invisible in the dust I raised. Showing it to my father, I was told that I ought not to have taken it; but I explained how helpless I had been, and repeated word for word what the man had said, and, unintentionally, somewhat copied his tone and manner. The twinkle in my father's eye showed that he understood. That copper was my first-earned money; if it had only been put out at compound interest, I ought, if the mathematicians are right, to be now living in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... to rest awhile in Nairi, where he revictualled his troops at the expense of Ianzu of Khubushkia. He had, no doubt, hoped that Urzana of Muzazir, the last of the friends of Eusas to hold out against Assyria, would make good use of the respite thus, to all appearances unintentionally, afforded him, and would come to terms; but as the appeal to his clemency was delayed, Sargon suddenly determined to assume the aggressive. Muzazir, entrenched within its mountain ranges, was accessible only by one or two dangerous passes; Urzana had barricaded ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... hero with me, whose creator has unintentionally misrepresented him. It is he of "Comin' thro' the Rye," a gentleman whom the maidens of the nineteenth century will not willingly let die. He is grand, no doubt; and yet, the more one thinks about him, ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... almost unique Roman stronghold, since modernized by Gothic hands, dwelt his college-friend John Hall Stevenson, whose well-stocked library contained a choice but heterogeneous collection of books—old French "ana," and the learning of mediaeval doctors—books intentionally and books unintentionally comic, the former of which Sterne read with an only too retentive a memory for their jests, and the latter with an acutely humorous appreciation of their solemn trifling. Later on it will be time to note the extent ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... movements, and that lesions produce "apraxia," i.e., inability to perform, or clumsiness in voluntarily performing fine movements such as touching the nose with the finger, though such movements may be perfectly carried out unintentionally. This centre is probably situated in the superior and middle left frontal convolutions in right-handed people. The fibres from the centre to the right motor area cross in the anterior part of ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... other, the struggle is likewise between the individuals of the same sex, in order to excite or charm those of the opposite sex, generally the females, which no longer remain passive, but select the more agreeable partners. This latter kind of selection is closely analogous to that which man unintentionally, yet effectually, brings to bear on his domesticated productions, when he preserves during a long period the most pleasing or useful individuals, without any ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... mother and her brother had a high opinion of his integrity; but though the king also had from time to time given his cordial sanction to his different measures, it was not in the nature of Louis to withstand repeated pressure and solicitation. Necker, too, himself unintentionally played into the hands of his enemies. He had nominally only a subordinate position in the ministry. As he was a Protestant, Louis had feared to offend the clergy by giving him a seat in the council, or the title of comptroller-general; but had conferred that post on M. Taboureau des Reaux, making ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... thing about as big as a filbert nut with a loop for suspension and apparently of rock crystal, though so begrimed and dull its nature was difficult to speak of with certainty. The bead was of no seeming value and slipped unintentionally into my waistcoat pocket as I chatted for a few minutes more with the doctor, and then, shaking hands, I said goodbye, and went back to the cab which was still ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... however, of the importance of constructing a raft, which was my intention in going, and finishing it without a second trip, I determined to remain on board for the night, as the boys had, unintentionally, given me the chance of sending ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... delightful to his soul, and yet—so trying too! for, as a man of good principles, there seemed to be but one course left open to him—the course of self-denial! He loved the great heiress, and had unintentionally won her love! Therefore he must fly from her presence, trying to forget her, hoping that she ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... regret having thus unintentionally offended you, Miss Norvell," he explained at last, slowly. "Yet, surely, the occasion should bring you pleasure rather ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... there. I have—the strongest reason on earth." He paused and set his teeth, bracing himself to the final effort of confession. "What's more—I unintentionally stated it a minute ago, in plain terms." He faced Wyndham squarely now and a dull flush mounted to his temples. "Since the ice is broken at last, there can be nothing less than absolute truth between us," he said simply; ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... glove, brown in colour and garnished with three small oval silver buttons, the exact mate of one which Mr. Hargrove had noticed the previous evening, when the visitor held up the ring for his inspection. Exulting in the unanswerable logic of this latest fact, Hannah quite unintentionally gave the glove a scornful toss, which caused it to fall into the fireplace, and down between two oak logs, where it shrivelled instantaneously. Unfortunately science is not chivalric, and divulges the unamiable and ungraceful ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... did your father a wrong, unintentionally, but nevertheless a great wrong. For that reason and others I am going ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... small, with the expression which young ladies, eighty years back, strove to acquire by repeating the words prune and prism. He had a fat, full voice, with unctuous modulations not entirely under his control, so that sometimes, unintentionally, he would utter the most commonplace remark in a tone fitted for a benediction. Mr. Dryland was possessed by the laudable ambition to be all things to all men; and he tried, without conspicuous success, always to suit his conversation to his hearers. With old ladies he was bland; with ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... give it food on which it did not subsist in its natural state. It is an error to speak of man "tampering with nature" and causing variability. If organic beings had not possessed an inherent tendency to vary, man could have done nothing.[2] He unintentionally exposes his animals and plants to various conditions of life, and variability supervenes, which he cannot even prevent or check. Consider the simple case of a plant which has been cultivated during a long time in its native country, and which consequently has not ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... Quite unintentionally this voluble lady had enlisted the mutual sympathy of these young people; she had laid, so to speak, a match; whether a mutual liking would ignite it or not was uncertain—but ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... which place Mr. Dilke, being with the elder Dickens one day, had noticed him, and received, in return for the gift of a half-crown, a very low bow. He was silent for several minutes; I felt that I had unintentionally touched a painful place in his memory; and to Mr. Dilke I never spoke of the subject again. It was not, however, then, but some weeks later, that Dickens made further allusion to my thus having struck unconsciously upon a time of which he never could lose the remembrance ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... for the hero of this story, 'His One Fault' was absent-mindedness. He forgot to lock his uncle's stable door, and the horse was stolen. In seeking to recover the stolen horse, he unintentionally stole another. In trying to restore the wrong horse to his rightful owner, he was himself arrested. After no end of comic and dolorous adventures, he surmounted all his misfortunes by downright ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... exaggerating Grizel's feelings. She had too much self-respect and too little sentiment to be willing to marry any man because she had unintentionally wronged him. But this was how Tommy would have acted had he happened to be a lady. Remorse, pity, no one was so good at ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... make my life fit in with his. But that could not easily be, for his life was wedded to his business, and he did not believe in women. To him they were incapable of the real business of life, and were only meant to be housekeepers to men who make the world go round. So, unintentionally, he neglected me, and I was young and comely then, so the world said, and I was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... seemingly unable to make up his mind to leave that room, whose atmosphere was pervaded by the evil he had unintentionally done. The window, which had been closed for a moment, had been opened again, and from it the wounded man, lying on his bed, his head propped up by pillows, was looking out over the city, while the others, also, in the oppressive silence that ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... too evident that she looked upon herself as the prospective mistress of his household, and he did not feel called upon as a parent to fulfil any expectations which Dick's youthful cupboard love had unintentionally excited. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... of those girls who unintentionally and innocently render masculine minds uneasy through some delicate, indefinable attraction which ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... of Mr Escot, as he pronounced these words, rested very innocently and unintentionally on ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... Israel's wish. For the people said to God: "Lord of the world! Thou didst promise us a long course of life as a reward for fulfilling the commandments, but supposing now that a man hath slain another unintentionally, and the avenger of the blood slays him, he will die before his time." God then said to Moses: "As truly as thou livest, they speak wisely. Appoint therefore several cities for cities of refuge, 'that the manslayer might flee thither, which slayeth his neighbor unawares.'" ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... incarnation of the popular faith. Athanasius was a man of little learning but of great faith, and above all of popular faith, devoured by the hunger of immortality. And he opposed Arianism, which, like Unitarian and Socinian Protestantism, threatened, although unknowingly and unintentionally, the foundation of that belief. For the Arians, Christ was first and foremost a teacher—a teacher of morality, the wholly perfect man, and therefore the guarantee that we may all attain to supreme perfection; but Athanasius felt that Christ cannot make us gods if he has not ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... I understood this: the solution came to me suddenly, of its own accord, as all profound solutions always come, apparently by accident: like a "fluke" in a game of skill, where often unskilfulness unintentionally does something that could not be achieved by any degree of skill whatever, short of the divine.[1] And the two things that combined to produce my spark of illumination were, as it so fell out, the two things that mean most to me, a sunset and a child. ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... Southern ocean rolling round faster than the solid parts of our planets was not known. Smith in his Physical Geography, says, "The tidal wave flows from east to west, owing to the earth's daily rotation in a contrary direction." Here he is unintentionally correct, because the water striking these promontories of the two great capes, is hurled back, and not, as he assumes, that the great ocean wave is moving from east to west. The United States government sailing ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... does, when he's never there!" flashed Evadna, unintentionally revealing her real grievance. "He just eats and goes—and he isn't even there to eat, half the time. And when he's there, he's grumpy, like all the rest." She was saying the things she had told herself, on the ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... of battle. In the great body of legal functionaries, as in other departments of the administration, there was not wanting a certain hypocrisy, or rather that spirit of imitation which always leads France to model herself on the Court, and, quite unintentionally, to deceive the ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... "I'll look in again during the afternoon. I must be getting along for my grub." He was hoping that he had not unintentionally brought about ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... say." Helen and Rachel had become very silent. Having detected, as she thought, a secret, and judging that Rachel meant to keep it from her, Mrs. Ambrose respected it carefully, but from that cause, though unintentionally, a curious atmosphere of reserve grew up between them. Instead of sharing their views upon all subjects, and plunging after an idea wherever it might lead, they spoke chiefly in comment upon the people they saw, and the secret between them made itself felt in what ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... husband falls downstairs and breaks his neck, Mrs. A. calls, leaves her card with the upper right hand corner turned down, and then takes her departure; this corner means "Condolence." It is very necessary to get the corners right, else one may unintentionally condole with a friend on a wedding or congratulate her upon a funeral. If either lady is about to leave the city, she goes to the other's house and leaves her card with "P. P. C." engraved under the name—which signifies, "Pay Parting Call." But enough ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with so sorry a mental equipment, these two took something like half a million out of conservative New England! The ease with which money can be raised for such enterprises by the deliberately fraudulent or the unintentionally insane continues one of the wonders of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... resulting from the kaiser's jealousy and dislike of the very popular Sailor Prince. I do not believe for one moment that this supposed jealousy exists, although everything that can possibly be conceived has been done, unintentionally and intentionally, to create it, in a manner which I will describe a little ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... say that in overlooking the merits of such an officer as General Cox, the Government has, unintentionally of course, committed an act of great injustice, and one which must soon deprive the country of his services. An officer cannot exercise for three years a command which he is universally admitted to be eminently qualified for, and yet ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... must be admitted, has often departed from the solemn truth, both unintentionally and of malice aforethought. It was his common practice to put a straw into Lord Palmerston's mouth. Palmerston, of course, never did chew straws; but one was adopted as a symbol to show his cool and sportive nature. Many a time has that straw formed the topic of serious ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... manners, but etiquette was the very atmosphere she breathed; it was the soul of her existence. The slightest infringement of the rules of etiquette annoyed her almost beyond endurance. "One day," says Madame Campan, "I unintentionally threw the poor lady into a terrible agony. The queen was receiving, I know not whom—some persons just presented, I believe. The ladies of the bed-chamber were behind the queen. I was near the throne, with ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... but obedience, however, he slowly and reluctantly turned away, feeling in his bones, that if ever he came to the bliss and ecstasy of calling La Masque Mrs. Ormiston, the gray mare in his stable would be by long odds the better horse. Unintentionally his steps turned to the water-side, and he descended the flight of stairs, determined to get into a boat and watch the illumination from ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... the Iliad (v. 365) Ares is imprisoned by them, but delivered by Hermes. Apollodorus says that they succeeded in piling Pelion upon Ossa. Another story is that they were presumptuous enough to seek Artemis and Hera in marriage, and that Artemis caused them to slay each other unintentionally on the island of Naxos, where they were afterwards worshipped as heroes. In punishment for their offences they were bound back to back with snakes to a pillar in the lower world (Hyginus, Fab. 28). The Aloidae (here connected with aloe, threshing-floor) represent the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... subtly—though unintentionally—suggesting that the manor lord had returned and therefore the womenfolk must haste with ministering, greatly restored his self-esteem. Again the sword began to lose its tarnish; again it flashed in his hand with zest; again in imagination ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... the carpenter patted the cheek of the little object of his benevolent professions, and, in so doing, unintentionally aroused him from his slumbers. Opening a pair of large black eyes, the child fixed them for an instant upon Wood, and then, alarmed by the light, uttered a low and melancholy cry, which, however, was speedily stilled by the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... effect, unintentionally produced, a rather ludicrous circumstance some time after this occurred, that is, after Mr. C. had "mounted his Pegasus" for the last time, and, permitted, so long ago, "the lock and key to be turned ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... governments need only command, and the Teutons would hasten to obey. It is hardly credible that men of experience in foreign politics should build upon such insecure foundations as these. It is but fair to say the Conference rejected this singular program in theory while unintentionally carrying it out. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... but which had managed to escape from them in the night. She had done it mysteriously and impudently. Instead of her, there now toiled along, away behind them, a dingy-looking Brazilian coffee schooner, the skipper of which did not conceal his satisfaction over the idea that he had unintentionally aided some other sailor—he did not care who—to get away from all those war-sharks. Well to the westward, with every sail spread that she could carry, the Goshhawk sped along in apparent safety, but she was once more carrying the American flag, and Ned Crawford, busy below at his breakfast, ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends[1107].' Often have I reflected on this since; and, instead of being angry at many of those who have written against me, have smiled to think that they were unintentionally subservient to my fame, by using a battledoor to make me virum ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... indiscriminate, promiscuous; undirected; aimless, driftless[obs3], designless[obs3], purposeless, causeless; without purpose. possible &c. 470. unforeseeable, unpredictable, chancy, risky, speculative, dicey. Adv. randomly, by chance, fortuitously; unpredictably, unforeseeably; casually &c. 156; unintentionally &c. adj.; unwittingly. en passant[Fr], by the way, incidentally; as it may happen; at random, at a venture, at haphazard. Phr. acierta errando[Lat]; dextro tempore[Lat]; "fearful concatenation of circumstances" [D. Webster]; "fortuitous ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the Slavs, were actually crossing the Russian frontier, close to the national capital. All Russia rallied to the call for action. As a matter of fact, it was the Russian autocracy itself which presently began realizing that it had unintentionally and illogically arrayed itself on the side of the forces which it had always fought, as the revolutionary elements in Russia also presently began realizing that they had followed their truest instincts in supporting the war ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... accident that the empress unintentionally should have sent back her discharged favorite to the only woman whom he had ever loved. He was sent as ambassador extraordinary to Berlin, to press more urgently her claims on a Prussian banker, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... chance—can have so great an influence on all our to-morrows. It may ruin all our prospects or may make us the happiest of mortals. It may bring the saddest of morrows to those dearest to us, or it may shower blessing—unintentionally, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... to a close. Of late a cold hand had touched Baron Robert, at first considerately, then more and more imperiously, to rouse him. He could no longer shut his eyes and ears to the signs and warnings: for they daily became plainer and more frequent, not merely in his mirror, but also in the unintentionally cruel words of the world, that other still more inconsiderate mirror. The pretty ingenue of his theatre, one of his last conquests, had recently after a private supper, while sitting on his knee and stroking his face, said to ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... place at the Hotel Maritime, and one day as I was down on the quay the French Premier and several other notabilities arrived. "There's Mr. Asquith," said an R.T.O. to me. "That!" said I, in an unintentionally loud voice, eyeing his long hair, "I thought he was a 'cellist belonging to a Lena Ashwell Concert party!" He looked round, and ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... real sin. I am not wise, but, Dic, something tells me that certain things cannot occupy a middle ground. They must be holy and sacred, or they are sinful, and I—I did not want it to—to happen then, because—because—" there she stopped speaking. She had unintentionally used the word "then," with slight emphasis; but slight as it was, it sent Dic's soul soaring ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... mamma was living in the city of A——, and wanted to unite with a Christian church there. She made application for membership. She passed her examination as a candidate, and was received as a church member. When she was about to make her first communion, she unintentionally took her seat at the head of the column. The elder who was administering the communion gave her the bread in the order in which she sat, but before he gave her the wine some one touched him on the shoulder and whispered a word in his ear. He then passed mamma by, gave the cup to ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... Philip Avant, Vicar of Salcombe. The poem, originally written in Latin, and translated by the author, takes up almost the whole of his small and rather rare volume, Torbaia digna Camoensis. It is in parts unintentionally amusing, and is interesting as showing how far the frenzied fervour of bigotry may carry a naturally amiable person, for in the narrow intervals between his torrents of denunciation it is clear that Mr Avant was, in ordinary ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... good in proportion to the sparing use of the sentimental and the general. Some of the smaller epic poems, even of recognized masters, unintentionally produce, by the ill-timed introduction of mythological elements, an impression that is indescribably ludicrous. Such, for instance, is the lament of Ercole Strozzi on Cesare Borgia. We there listen to the complaint of Roma, who had set all her hopes on the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... departure, Emily relaxed once from the severe coldness she had shown since her return home. She had passed her time there with her music, in reading poetry, in solitary walks. But as the person who had been, however unintentionally, the means of making her so miserable, was further removed from her, she showed willingness to mingle again with the family, and see one ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Putnam and her husband both died within the seven years, as Dulcibel in her moment of spiritual exaltation had predicted. Her daughter Ann lived to make a public confession, asking pardon of those whom she had (she said unintentionally) injured, and died at the age of thirty-five—her grave being one that nobody wanted their loved ones ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... I expect it to teach only that. I take for granted, that that will be its primary object, the guarantee that all the rest is well done: but I know that much more than that must be done; that much more will be done, even unintentionally. ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... well as the manners of a man of birth. Their pity became progressively vehement the more they thought of, or at least the more they talked of, the business; till at last one old lady, the declared and intimate friend of Mrs. Germaine, unintentionally, and in the heat of tattle, made use of one phrase that led to another, and another, till she betrayed, in conversation with that lady, the gossiping ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... missed. He obtained his father's permission to go to the dinner (Mr Ffolliot was never difficult when his sons asked for permission to go from home), told his mother he would be late, obtained the key of the side door from Fusby, and quite unintentionally left his family under the impression that he was dining ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... unintentionally that I have placed religion and taste in one and the same class; the reason is that both one and the other have the merit, similar in effect, although dissimilar in principle and in value, to take the place of virtue properly so called, and to assure legality where there ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... advised caution for the next twelve hours, and saying good night to Helene Marie Louise Antoinette in an unintentionally complimentary whisper, took myself off down the stairs, pursued by an equally subdued bon soir which made me feel ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... talking our best, such as it was; the captain leaning over his side of the table, clasping his hands unintentionally preacher-like; we on our side supporting our chins on our fists, quick to be at him. Temple was brilliant; he wanted to convert the captain, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... they increased Bobbles' score and standing with the judges, increased Jaynes' temper; and finally he gave a vicious right swing, which Bobbles avoided unintentionally by slipping and falling. So he found himself on the floor, with Jaynes standing over him in expectant anticipation of landing him another ebonizing blow. He heard, also, the referee beginning to count slowly the seconds. His first impulse was to rise to his feet ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... masters and workmen, and of dispassionately discussing with the latter the influence of any proposed regulations connected with their trade, is well examplified by a mistake into which both parties unintentionally fell, and which was productive of very great misery in the lace trade. Its history is so well told by William Allen, a framework knitter, who was a party to it, that an extract from his evidence, as given before the Framework Knitters' Committee of ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... signal, which was perceived. I was taken on board the ship and there told my adventures. The captain was very kind to me. He said that he had some bales of goods which had belonged to a merchant who had unintentionally left him some time ago on an uninhabited island. As this man was undoubtedly dead, he intended to sell the goods for the benefit of his relatives, and I should have the profit of selling them. I now recollected ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... dependence upon the reluctant and presently insurgent toil of a wages-earning proletariat? Regarded as a project of social development, Syndicalism is ridiculous; regarded as an illuminating and unintentionally ironical complement to the implicit theories of our present social order, it is worthy of close attention. The dream of the Syndicalist is an impossible social fragmentation. The transport service ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... how I loved Margaret and how I came to marry her. Perhaps already unintentionally I have indicated the quality of the injustice our marriage did us both. There was no kindred between us and no understanding. We were drawn to one another by the unlikeness of our quality, by the things we misunderstood in each other. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... becomes the more grandiloquently is he praised and associated with other powers; while for lack of definite laudation general glory is ascribed to him. The true position of P[u]shan in the eyes of the warrior is given unintentionally by one who says,[30] "I do not scorn thee, O P[u]shan," i.e., as do most people, on account of thy ridiculous attributes. For P[u]shan does not drink soma like Indra, but eats mush. So another devout believer says: "P[u]shan is not described by them that call him an eater ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... of the arguments against the Faith of which he posed as a champion. By a weak and feeble defence, by foolish arguments and ridiculous reasoning, he secretly exposed the whole Christian religion to ridicule. But if any doubts were left whether this was done designedly or unintentionally, they were dispelled by his second work, De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis (Paris, 1616), which, published in the form of sixty dialogues, contained many profane statements. In this work also he adopted his previous ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... speaking as she had spoken, had, perhaps unintentionally, indulged in a sarcasm on life which the daughter certainly had not been intended to understand. "Yes;—it will always be like this for you, for you, unfortunate one that you are. There is no other further look-out in ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... could follow this melancholy catastrophe? and how could Charles de Haldimar, even if his bland nature should survive the shock, ever bear to look again upon the man who had, however innocently or unintentionally, deprived him of a brother whom ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... see the blunders I unintentionally make in history, in mathematics, in names, in rhetoric, in exegesis, and yet see that God uses even blunders to save men—I sink back into the humblest place before Him and say, 'If God can use such preaching as that, blunders and mistakes like these; if He can take them and use them for ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... castle walls—I cannot hope to convey to you the horror of it. Perhaps you may feel with me that Mr. Ross has been at times a little too confident that the undoubted thrill of his bogie would save it from being unintentionally funny. I confess I did laugh once in the wrong place. But everywhere else I shivered with the fearful joy that only the best in this kind ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... which this idea now bore me along I had entirely forgotten the existence of my companion, and as I now glanced at him I saw him standing with a curious look of astonishment and suspicion on his face. I saw that I had unintentionally gone a little too far. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... irritable, and finally sightless father would seem awful and forbidding. It is impossible to exaggerate the susceptibility of young minds to first impressions. The probability is that ere Mistress Milton departed this life, she had intentionally or unintentionally avenged all the injuries she could imagine herself to have received from her husband, and furnished him with a stronger argument than any that had found a place in the "Doctrine and Discipline ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... well-meant endeavours must have been made at a very early period 'to rectify' ([Greek: diorthoun]) the text thus unintentionally corrupted; and so, what began in inadvertence is sometimes found in the end to exhibit traces of design, and often becomes in a high degree perplexing. Thus, to cite a favourite example, it is clear to me that in the earliest age of all (A.D. 100?) some copyist of St. Luke ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... beseech you, therefore, my good sir, to afford a healing hand to the wound that, unintentionally, has been made. America esteems your virtues and your services, and admires the principles upon which you act; your countrymen, in our army, look up to you as their patron; the count and his officers ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... bit in the darkening room, sipping his coffee and smoking his fifteen-pfennig cigar, till the girl came in to light the oil lamps. He felt vexed with himself for his lapse from good manners, yet hardly able to account for it. Most likely, he reflected, he had been annoyed because the priest had unintentionally changed the pleasant character of his dream by introducing a jarring note. Later he must seek an opportunity to make amends. At present, however, he was too impatient for his walk to the school, and he took his stick and hat and passed out into ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... his mind than his monitor perhaps desired. Though the priest had not directly attributed the woman's insanity to her husband's death, Gilbert too clearly understood that such was the fact. His was too generous a heart, not to deplore bitterly so terrible a calamity, of which he was—however unintentionally—the cause. He felt no resentment for his misguided assailant—he would willingly have exposed himself to a second attack, could he have thus restored her reason. The memento of the crucifixion—that Catholic alphabet, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... quick," cried his sister, and I offended poor Walters again quite unintentionally by swinging one arm across his chest in my hurry and excitement to get to Mr Denning's help; and as I reached over the rail to get hold of the line, I felt sure that my messmate would think that I struck him. For the moment I felt vexed and sorry, then I could not help smiling to ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... inappropriate objects than the canvas. A shilling's-worth of gilding powder went such a long way that we had not only golden crowns and golden sceptres, and golden chains for our dungeon, and golden wings for our fairies, but the nursery furniture became irregularly and unintentionally gilded, as well as nurse's stuff dress, when she sat on a warrior's shield, which was drying in ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Cabalists resembles in a surprising manner the highest truths of Christianity."[65] It would appear, then, that certain remnants of the ancient secret tradition lingered on in the Cabala. The Jewish Encyclopaedia, perhaps unintentionally, endorses this opinion, since in deriding the sixteenth-century Christian Cabalists for asserting that the Cabala contained traces of Christianity, it goes on to say that what appears to be Christian in the Cabala is only ancient esoteric doctrine.[66] Here, then, we have it on the authority ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... down the slope, their packs and blankets securely slung about them and even tied fast with strings, to prevent them from catching among the fallen trees. Unintentionally they followed the dry bed of the stream. It led along a slight depression that ran diagonally down the mountainside. But quickly they realized that this was the most difficult path they could have chosen. For along the margins ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... and there was not one great man from Britain to the Euphrates. Having fulfilled its destiny—which seems to have been the introduction into the Western World of the ideas of unity, law, and order, though unintentionally on its part, for it was nothing but a military despotism—it perished as it deserved, and its language ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... I committed unintentionally this day what must have appeared to the natives a very wanton act of aggression: as we were passing the river, a dog, not of the Australian breed, came from a pass in the rocks on the opposite side, moving quietly ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... Lydgate, and such like. Some few yards off were the Britishers, provided with heaps of small books as missiles, with which they kept up a skirmishing cannonade against the foe. Imagine the tableau! Two elderly gentlemen enter hurriedly, paterfamilias receiving, quite unintentionally, the first edition of "Paradise Lost" in the pit of his stomach, his friend narrowly escaping a closer personal acquaintance with a quarto Hamlet than he had ever had before. Finale: great outburst of wrath, and rapid retreat of the combatants, many ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... The Empress of France unintentionally aggravated this fatal disposition. She was observed to eclipse her mother-in-law by the superior magnificence of her costume: if Napoleon required more reserve, she resisted, and even wept, till the emperor, either ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... in the city, and when she died her skin was stuffed, and placed in the arsenal as a curiosity. The sexton went mad with the fright he had sustained, and in a short time entered that bourn whence he had so unintentionally recovered the burgomaster's wife. ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... I had inflicted the wounds on Mademoiselle de Mauprat, about which he was beginning to feel very doubtful, I had at least inflicted them unintentionally; on this he was prepared to stake his honour ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... enemies of Napoleon were not the only objects, that met my indiscreet eyes. Sometimes I found myself unintentionally initiated into gentler mysteries and my pen, by mistake, traced the fatal Seen at the bottom of epistles, which should have charmed the sight only of the happy mortals, for ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... to Mrs. Bingle. He was introduced to all of the players and they were so uniformly polite that he fell into a fine fury the next morning on reading the newspaper review in which they were described as "unintentionally adequate." ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... his way to Paris, where he found the city in the throes of a civil war. Becoming unintentionally mixed up in a petty skirmish between the court party and the Frondes, he was badly wounded, and narrowly escaped hanging as an ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... fact: it was not an old woman, but an old man, whom I mentioned as having told me this.' I presumed to take an opportunity, in the presence of Johnson, of showing this lively lady how ready she was, unintentionally, to deviate from exact ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... sure Rosie may be trusted not to let the secret slip out unintentionally?" he asked, pinching ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... Twyford. The first was that of a humourist, and to this almost every other object was occasionally sacrificed. But he had likewise a large fund of good nature. He perceived, that in two successive instances, however unintentionally, his conduct had been the source of unhappiness to the most amiable of her sex. The victory of lord Martin had put it more than ever in his power to harrass Delia. She was incessantly importuned, now by her father, and ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... light only you had named him to me. Pray take no notice of it, though I could not help mentioning it, as it lies on my conscience to have been even undesignedly and indirectly unpolite to any body you recommend. I should not, I trust, have been so unintentionally to any body, nor with intention, unless provoked to it by great folly or ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole |
