"Unconsciously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But the clown half unconsciously caught his breath as the lithe form of Zoraya shot over the trapeze bar, described a graceful "two-and-a-half" in the air, and, shooting downward, hit the net with a resounding smack that caused the spectators to ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Unconsciously Jacques had placed himself in an excellent position to hear and see all that was going on, as immediately beneath the bushes in which he had hidden himself there was a large block of granite on which the lovers sat down to await Hirzel, who ...
— Legend of Moulin Huet • Lizzie A. Freeth
... beliefs, and culture of this people that they may safely be considered as having been developed by them. They are doubtless much influenced by present day conditions, for each story teller must, even unconsciously, read into them some of his own experiences and the current beliefs of the tribe. At the same time these traditional accounts doubtless exercise a potent influence on the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of the people. In Tinguian society, where custom still holds undisputed sway, ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... the sky beyond. "There's ever so much more bravery in denying yourself what you want." The words rang in her head most annoyingly. Could Lucy have spoken them on purpose? No, Mona honestly did not think that, but she wished she had not uttered them. She tried to think of something else, and, unconsciously, her mother ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the Hindu "Nakshatra"; extensively used in meteorology even by Europeans unconsciously: thus they will speak of the Elephantina-storm without knowing anything of the lunar mansion so called. The names in the text are successively Sharatntwo horns of the Ram; (2) the Ram's belly; (3) the Pleiades; (4) Aldebaran; (5) three stars in Orion's ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Unconsciously she lean'd upon the other, Which play'd within the tangles of her hair: And to contend with thoughts she could not smother She seem'd by the distraction of her air. 'T was surely very wrong in Juan's mother To leave together this imprudent pair, She ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... left to spin. Some advocate the use of par-tail as a spinning bait; but as it is not right to kill par at all, we omit any directions for its use. We have drifted into the subject of LURES almost unconsciously. If you wish to use natural minnows, see that they are neither too large nor too small—about two inches long is a good size—and that the belly is silvery. It is better to instruct your boatman to have a supply ready against your arrival at the loch, as sometimes it is as ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... respects—that you are going, for I may now tell you that unconsciously you have been in some sort acting as hostages for my good behaviour, and I have been dreadfully afraid that some involuntary slip on my part might complicate matters for you. When once you are all safely out of the ship I shall feel more at liberty to take a few risks, if I can ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... refreshed, but neither spoke. It was as if they were unconsciously waiting for something—they knew not what, but something that was to happen before long—and in which they were to ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... himself. Night after night did the interest of his hearers arouse more and more spirit in himself, till he became aware that his sympathies with the Greeks in their struggles for liberty had hitherto been like those of the poet born blind, who delights in describing natural scenery—thus unconsciously enjoying the stir within him of powers whose appropriate exercise is forbidden. Amidst this survey of the regions of history, he felt, with humble wonder, that while his boys were like bright-eyed children sporting fearlessly in the fields, ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... lovely voice, and as she spoke she involuntarily bent and swirled her limp muslins in such a way that she fairly suggested a moral duster. There was the making of an actress in Susan. Nobody had ever been able to decide what her true individual self was. Quite unconsciously, like a chameleon, she took upon herself the characteristics of even inanimate things. Just now she was a duster, and a ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... verse, beginning softly, but unconsciously raising his voice as he went on, until, as he came to the second, he was singing very audibly indeed, and Rosamond, standing on the bank, looking uncertainly about her for the old boatman, was in time ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... astonishment at the excited being, who unconsciously pressed his companion's arm, as he drew this rapid sketch of the glories so ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... and the session ended without further events; Ginevra allowed her companions to depart, and seemed to intend to work later. But, unconsciously to herself, she betrayed her desire to be left alone by impatient glances, ill-disguised, at the pupils who were slow in leaving. Mademoiselle Thirion, a cruel enemy to the girl who excelled her in everything, guessed by the instinct of jealousy that ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... recognition of his former half-scornful, half-blase self. That woman must be his wife. She would save him from himself, this cynical, restless self, which never remained in one stay. The half-acknowledged weakness in his nature unconsciously flung itself upon her strength, a strength which had been tried. She would love him, and uphold him. There would be no more yielding to circumstances if that pure, strong soul were close beside him. He would lean upon her, and the ugly by-paths of these last years would know him no more. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... reward and punishment. Even now it is overtaking you. Your hour has struck. [FREDERIK takes up another letter and begins to read it; then, as though disturbed by a passing thought, he puts it down. As though perplexed by the condition of his own mind, he ponders, his eyes resting unconsciously on PETER.] Your ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... the great mystery of childbirth. My wife was there, fainting, overcame, and the little living creature, my own flesh, my own blood, was squalling and gesticulating in the hands of Jacques. I was overwhelmed, like a workman who had unconsciously produced a masterpiece. I felt myself quite small in presence of this quivering piece of my own handiwork, and, frankly, a little bit ashamed of having made it so well almost without troubling about it. I can not undertake to explain all this, I ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Almost unconsciously Stanton raised the page to his face. Unmistakably, up from the paper rose the strong, vivid scent—of a ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... more delightful. The matronly virtues of Christiana, and the maidenly qualities of Mercy, are alike pleasing and appropriate. There is a mixture of timidity and frankness in Mercy, which is as sweet in itself as it is artlessly and unconsciously drawn; and in Christiana we discover the very characteristics that can make the most lovely feminine counterpart, suitable to the stern and lofty qualities ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... habits of animals; the high steps of horses; the pointing of pointers; the sucking of calves, etc. It is difficult for us in falling to make opposite movements to stretching out the arms, even in bed; we draw on our gloves unconsciously. Gratiolet says: "Whoever energetically denies some point, etc., shuts his eyes; if he assents he nods and opens his eyes wide. Whoever describes a terrible thing shuts his eyes and shakes his head; whoever looks closely raises his eye-brows. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the last word singularly revived my hopes. It had slipped from his lips unconsciously, but it gave me reason to believe that the chateau ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... unconsciously toward a very important end. She found a language crude and inelegant, manners coarse and licentious, morals dissolute and vicious. Her influence was at its height in the age of Corneille and Descartes, and she lived almost to the culmination of the era of Racine and Moliere, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Unconsciously Dale had raised his voice to a high pitch. "That's what I ask. Let's ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... woman had carefully marked the poisoned bottle, but on coming into the room she had grown nervous, and pouring out the wine hurriedly had unconsciously given the poisoned cup to her own child. All this time she was anxiously watching the little Princess, but to her amazement no change whatever took place in the young girl's face. Suddenly the little boy screamed and threw himself on the floor, doubled ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... finding relief from depression and suffering from causes as transient as they were superficial. Chief of all, she had not realized as he had supposed the shadow of the awful crime that was resting upon her, and the need of God's forgiveness. Almost unconsciously the old man, wise and experienced in spiritual life, sighed deeply as she finished ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... said of Boston, our town is the hub of the universe. So, when we are content to allow our relations to remain as they are, we adapt ourselves to them, and they adapt themselves to us, and we constantly, unconsciously (because God made us so) work toward the perfecting of all the interests arising from those relations. But the moment we wish to sell a house, or remove from a town, how many defects we discover! The place has not the same appearance to us at all; we wish we ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... her. The incident of the person she had detected looking through the door took on a new significance as she related it. By her constant association of the eyes with the disliked face of her brother's servant, she had unconsciously reached the conclusion that she had all along recognized the eavesdropper ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... intuition. It is the flower of erudition, the flame from a full heart, or whatever dainty thing you choose to call it. It has its origin primarily in keen observation of the various important schools of design that have interested the world for centuries. We unconsciously augment it even in following the side-path of history in this modest volume. Our studies here are but those of a summer morn or a winter eve, yet they are in vain if they have not set up a measuring standard or two within ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... humankind. The play, "Geography and Love," which came between the two just described, is an amusing piece, in the vein of light and graceful comedy, which satirizes the man with a hobby, showing how he unconsciously comes to neglect his wife and family through absorption in his work. The author was, in a way, taking genial aim at himself in this piece, a fact which his son Bjorn, who played the principal part, ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... proprietorship in her at the Strattons'. It had pleased him to see how they all liked her, but pleased him most of all that she could talk as an equal with these people, to him so brilliant and clever. The faint thought of her which had been unconsciously with him for years began to take shape. How pleasant it would be to be like the Strattons, to live with Nellie always, and have friends to come and see them on a Saturday night! How a man would work for a home like that, so full of music, so full of song, so full of ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... bitterness by the feet of men. The gods have given him sleep. We never were Nor could be foes, although our followers, Who are distorted shadows of ourselves, Have striven to make us so; but each one worked Unconsciously upon the other's thought; Both giving and receiving. He perchance Caught strength from me, and I some greater sweetness And tenderness from his more gentle nature. I have but words of praise and admiration ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... to sketch me a plot, and he drew out that of my next novel, called Doctor Thorne. I mention this particularly, because it was the only occasion in which I have had recourse to some other source than my own brains for the thread of a story. How far I may unconsciously have adopted incidents from what I have read,—either from history or from works of imagination,—I do not know. It is beyond question that a man employed as I have been must do so. But when doing it I have not been aware that I have done it. I have never ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... and the acceptance of a new gospel. Thus demanding an act of will on the part of individuals, they are classed once more as "ethical" religions. To be sure, the new is built upon the old—in part unconsciously—and the rejection of the faith of the past, however violent, is never thoroughgoing. In consequence the old affects the new in various ways. Thus in Buddhism the presuppositions which Buddha uncritically took over work out their logical results in the Mah[a]y[a]na, so that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... undeservedly favoured or elevated slave, as in the case of St. Augustine, for instance, who lacks in an offensive manner, all nobility in bearing and desires. There is a feminine tenderness and sensuality in it, which modestly and unconsciously longs for a UNIO MYSTICA ET PHYSICA, as in the case of Madame de Guyon. In many cases it appears, curiously enough, as the disguise of a girl's or youth's puberty; here and there even as the hysteria of an old maid, also as her last ambition. The Church has frequently ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... body of knowledge and traditions with which his mind has become stored in the course of his personal experience. The influences to which he has been exposed, daily and hourly, from the time of his birth onward, provide the specific determinants of most of his beliefs and views. Consciously and unconsciously he imbibes certain definite ideas, not merely of religion, morals, and politics, but of what is the correct and what is the incorrect attitude to assume in most of the circumstances of his daily ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... much 'count of things." "Yes, unconsciously. You have a cowslip there stuck in your frock, though where you got it from I can't imagine. The flower is ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... must wear it to show who won. Miss Celia wouldn't like it. I don't mind not getting it; I did better than all the rest, and I guess I shouldn't like to beat you," answered Bab, unconsciously putting into childish words the sweet generosity which makes so many sisters glad to see their brothers carry off the prizes of life, while they are content to know that they have earned them and can do ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... image, saying, in resistless human tones, "Shall one creature endure and love and continually forgive another, and shall I, who am not loving, but Love, be weary of thy transgressions, O sinner?" And so does the silent and despairing life of many a woman weave unconsciously its golden garland of reward in the heavens above, and do the Lord's work in a strange land where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... circumstances, when a glance shewed me at once he had met with an adventure similar to mine near Santa Fe. In the canoe lay the skin of a large finely-spotted jaguar, and by it a young cub, playing unconsciously with the scalping-knife, yet reeking ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... state, he stood unflinchingly upright under whatever burden might be laid upon him. The French Revolutionists aped what was itself but a parody of the elder republic, with their hair a la Brutus and their pedantic moralities a la Cato Minor, but this man unconsciously was the antique Roman they laboriously went about to be. Others have filled places more conspicuous, few have made the place they filled so conspicuous by an exact ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... then forming myself, though all unconsciously. You know my poor father could not afford to send me to the university. I used to grumble in my ignorance at not having completed my education. That was the folly of youth, Salisbury; my university was Piccadilly. There I began to study the great ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... reputation for the firm of John St. John & Brothers, lawyers in Portland. He gave Aladdin leave to come and go, even smiled grimly as he did so, and, except at those moments when he met him face to face, forgot that Aladdin existed. Margaret enjoyed Aladdin hugely, and unconsciously sat for the heroine of every novel he began, and the inspiration of every verse that he wrote. When Aladdin reached his eighteenth year and Margaret her sixteenth there was such a delightful and strong friendship between them that the other young people of ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... Huxley was convinced of evolution because Darwin, by his theory of natural selection, brought forward an actual cause that could be seen in operation, and that was competent to produce new species. As soon as the "flash of light" came, it revealed to Huxley the vast store of evidence that he had unconsciously accumulated, and it set him at once to work collecting more evidence. If we bear in mind the distinction between evolution and natural selection, the well-known subsequent history of the relations between ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... was very busy and never forgot her aim. She was preparing herself to be a marryer of men and the leading marryer in the proud city of her birth. Every member of the household became her assistant in this noble industry. Many storekeepers had unconsciously joined her staff and 'charged it' until they were weary. All her papa's money had been invested in the business, and he began to borrow for a rainy day. Then there came a long spell of wet weather. At last ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... best appliances which modern surgery had invented at their hands, they could not have saved his life. He died literally in the arms of Irene, and they buried him in a little forest on the edge of a sluggish stream, and Cherry Bim unconsciously ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... on subtle interpretations, agreement was impossible. Natural life, denied and set aside at every point, gave place to the unnatural, and every colonist was, quite unconsciously, in a state of constant nervous tension and irritability. The questions that to us seem of even startling triviality, were discussed with a fervor and earnestness it is well nigh impossible to comprehend. ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... share the same pursuits are drawn in spite of themselves into sympathy and good-will. When they are in harmony in so large a part of their occupations, the points of remaining difference lose their venom. Those who thought they hated each other, unconsciously find themselves friends; and as far as it affects the world at large, the acrimony of controversy has ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... religion and love, who illustrate the dangers of juxtaposition even in things holy. "No physiologist can well doubt that the holy kiss of love in such cases owes all its warmth to the sexual feeling which consciously or unconsciously inspires it, or that the mystical union of the sexes lies very close to a union that is nowise mystical, when it does not lead to madness."[31] There is less, or certainly no more danger in having the sexes ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... willingly than I," said the disguised Prince, unconsciously assuming an importance which the character he personated scarce warranted; but Sir Henry, who had become fond of the supposed page, with all his peculiarities, imposed only a moderate rebuke upon his petulance. "Thou ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... sidewalks, no longer bothered; and, crossing into Madison Avenue, he turned down and began to walk rapidly toward that part of the city where there would be few people and little glare, and as he walked unconsciously he repeated over and over to himself: "Dorothea has just told ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... Suchan district; that under this American-Bolshevik agreement the small scattered Red Guard bands who were dispersed by the Allies at the battle of Dukoveskoie in August, have collected together and formed definite military units. In other words, that the American policy, unconsciously or otherwise, has produced a state of indecision amongst the Allies, and unrest and anarchy amongst the population of the Transbaikal and Ussurie Provinces, which may prove disastrous to the rapid establishment of ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... the presence of something new. It was as if each had said to him: "We love you, but you are not in our secrets—and you must not be, for you would try to destroy them." They showed no fear of him, but seemed to be pushing him unconsciously away, lest he should restrain or alter what was very dear to them. They were both fond of him, but their natures had set foot on definitely diverging paths. The closer the affection, the more watchful they were against ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... naturally and unconsciously as an oath, out of the same spirit that caused the destroyer to pick up the dog. The reports themselves, and tenfold more the stories not in the reports, are charged with it, but no words by any outsider can reproduce ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... isn't known, and by playing in the outer world with a crack football team he adds to his prestige here. "What du John say?" is often asked when it doesn't matter even what John thinks. Without gratitude for it, unconsciously perhaps, he exacts from others a sort of homage, which is certainly not rendered without protest. "There's more'n one real lady as John could ha' married if he'd a-been liked," I heard Granfer say over ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... pretty head aside, but unconsciously allowing him to retain her hand, she faintly asked how they ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... engaged at a friendly game; and when one party won they looked grave, and when the other party lost they smiled and looked happy. I walked away, as the chevalier did not return immediately to me; and then I saw a gentleman rise up from a table. He had evidently lost. I was standing by the seat, unconsciously holding the back in my hand. I sat down without thinking or without speaking, and found myself at the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... a poser for Jim; a shock to a deep-set prejudice. Notwithstanding the fact that his mother had been a woman of power, the unquestioned and able head in a community of men, he had unconsciously clung to the old idea of woman's mental inferiority. In college he had had that notion bolstered up with Scripture texts ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... burst of filial sorrow, she sunk down on the banquette which ran along the inside of the embattled parapet of the platform, and murmuring to herself, "He is gone for ever!" abandoned herself to the extremity of grief. One hand grasped unconsciously the weapon which she held, and served, at the same time, to prop her forehead, while the tears, by which she was now for the first time relieved, flowed in torrents from her eyes, and her sobs seemed so convulsive, that Rose almost feared her heart was bursting. Her affection and sympathy ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... from which only a great spiritual palingenesis can deliver civilization, is a charge on the sheet which Lord Northcliffe will have to answer at the seat of judgment. He has received the price of that condition in the multitudinous pence of the people; consciously or unconsciously he has traded on their ignorance, ministered to their vulgarities, and inflamed the lowest and most corrupting of their passions: if they had had another guide his ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... gazing about him. It seemed to him that something had taken place within him since he went to bed; that something had taken root within him ... something had taken possession of him. "But can that be possible?" he whispered unconsciously. "Can it be that such a ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... bowed it well might, and her own bowed in anticipation as her childish fears and imaginings ran on into the possible future. Of McGowan's tender mercies she had no hope. She had seen him once, and being unconsciously even more of a physiognomist than most children are, that one sight of him was enough to verify all Mr. Jolly had said. The remembrance of his hard sinister face sealed her fears. Nothing but evil ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... eliminated the final point of regard toward which, in the preceding set of experiments, the sight was strained; and the factor of refined visual adjustment ceases longer to play a part in the phenomenon. The result of this release is manifested in a tendency of the eyes to turn unconsciously upward. This is their natural position when closed in sleep. But this upward roll is not an uncomplicated movement. There takes place at the same time a relaxation of binocular convergence, which in sleep may be replaced by a slight divergence. This tendency of the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... of the gentle art. Here is the spirit of it embodied in a word and paying its respects to you with its native accent. Here you see its secret charms unconsciously disclosed. The attraction of angling for all the ages of man, from the cradle to the grave, lies in its uncertainty. ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... to his happiness. If he was better than the average of the boys employed like himself, it was in a considerable measure due to the fact that he had never been adrift in the streets, but even in the miserable home afforded by his step-father had been unconsciously influenced towards good by the presence of his mother, and latterly by his little sister Rose. He, in his turn, had gained a salutary influence among the street boys, who looked up to him as a leader, though that leadership ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... reasoning, reference, or classification, and, if this be wrongly conducted, there is no justification for the feeling which is consequent upon it. But, instead of our asking for the justification of the feeling in the rational process which has preceded it, we often unconsciously justify our reasoning by the feeling, and thus the whole process assumes the unreflective character which properly belongs only to the emotional part of it. It is the want of a clear distinction between the logical process which determines the character of an act,—the moral judgment,—and ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... fancies he is uttering a truth as eternal as it is original, he has only recorded the fact that the German bourgeoisie must capture the political power, that is, he is saying unconsciously what Engels says, in the brave belief that he is saying ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... I hear against anybody," said Beth, unconsciously quoting Ideala; "so please spare me the recital of all ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... of the second day Stair was finding himself unfit for human society, because he had not been able to shave since he left the prison. Of course he had brought nothing with him. There was no time. His hand went unconsciously every other minute to his scrubby chin. In truth, his Norse blondness did not allow it to show as much as he supposed. But that did not detract from the pervading ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... he turned to the south, the warm breezes that swayed his cowl reminded him that away behind those wooded hills in Ardstraw, prayed Eugene, destined to share with him the patronage of the diocese, and that farther up, St. Creggan, whose name the Presbyterian farmers unconsciously preserve in the designation of their townland, Magheracreggan, presided over Scarrabern, the daughter-house of Ardstraw. Then turning slowly northwards he would meet with the persons, or relics, of St. O'Heney in Banagher, St. ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... of this woman took shape. Principles! He had unconsciously been waiting for that word, than which none was more like a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... He had never read the "New Life." It is improbable that it would have made any impression on him if he had read it. He never associated words or books or poetry with feelings. What he felt he held sacred. He was unconsciously by nature that which others of the artistic temperament consciously are in a lesser degree, and are doomed to try to express. Michael never wanted to express anything, had no impulse of self-revelation, no interest in his own ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... boys looked up, and very soon every one in the room had noticed the trick except little Wright himself, who unconsciously wrote on at the letter he was ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... yet unconsciously soothed by its calm solace, he went briskly forward, and his blood, sluggish from inaction, leaped through his veins and coloured the shadowed pallor of his face with ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... actor-managers are by the spotlight. When we were doing our delicious motor run around Long Island, getting acquainted with the old whalers, and Indian chieftains, and golfers and millionairesses, it was sweet to see how Pat was unconsciously taming our Stormy Petrel to eat out of her hand. Even Jack saw it happening, so it must have been pretty obvious, because men never can see other people's love stories going on under their noses. I knew as well as if he'd told me, that Peter Storm would rather be torpedoed again than ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... he kept away from the Peloponnesus, supposing that the god meant the Nemea there; and coming to Oenoe in Locris, he stayed with Amphiphanes and Ganyetor the sons of Phegeus, thus unconsciously fulfilling the oracle; for all that region was called the sacred place of Nemean Zeus. He continued to stay a somewhat long time at Oenoe, until the young men, suspecting Hesiod of seducing their sister, killed him and cast his body into the sea which separates Achaea and Locris. ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... enough, and helped, if they did not cause, the ruin which eventually overtook the firm of Seacole and Day. The determination and zeal which besiegers and besieged showed with respect to a poor pig, which was quietly and unconsciously fattening in its sty, are worthy ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... condition of the Crusader who absently pulled at his forelock some hours after a Saracen scimitar had, unconsciously to him, passed through his neck, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... not a little alarmed by the approach of an Irish boy who came under the hotel to hunt chickens. While prowling around in the darkness he appeared to be making his way unconsciously to the very spot where Charles was reposing. How to meet the danger was to Charles' mind at first very puzzling, there was no time now to plan. As quick as thought he feigned the bark of a savage dog ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... our younger writers go into strange and novel places for the scenes of their stories; the important point to notice in the present connection is that, consciously or unconsciously to themselves, they have perceived the mighty influence of this Clash of Races, and have chosen the relations of the civilised people with their savage allies, or enemies, or subjects, as the chief theme of their handicraft. 'Tis a momentous theme, for it encloses in ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... very gravity of the speaker's voice was portentous, alarming. Mr. Slater hesitated, his gaze wavered, he scratched his chest unconsciously. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... instead of the soft, gentle, amiable female, all sweet charity and tender sympathy, formed to love and to be loved, he beheld one possessed and convulsed by an evil spirit—her beauty, if beauty it could be called, the beauty of a fiend. Some ejaculation, which he unconsciously uttered, made Lady Isabel start. She saw him—saw the expression of his countenance, and knew that all ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... place in the gay society of aristocratic Westmoreland. For this very reason, however, his journal and letters are interesting, for he dwells with especial emphasis upon what was new or strange to him and has thus unconsciously given an excellent account of all that was unique or distinctive ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... appeared in life ready to play. The music, of course, is reproduced mechanically, the mechanism being concealed from view behind the scenery. When you placed your hand upon the shoulder of the leader you unconsciously pressed the spring which set the machinery in motion, causing a reproduction of the same strains ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... was good enough at heart; and that I had at last resigned myself to my position, as something that could not be helped. My new friend lectured me on the necessity of attracting others by an agreeable exterior and courteous manners; and proved to me that I had unconsciously repelled them by my carelessness, even when trying the most to please. His words made a deep impression on me. I thanked him for every reproach, and strove to do my best to gain his approbation. Henceforth my hair ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... upon the floor, and the blind man opposite me did the same; and as I used the familiar phrases which I had learned unconsciously in my youth from many repetitions, a peace stole over the room, and Rupert's great sobs ceased to shake him, and the hand I held in my own grew very still and cold. And presently I looked up, and saw ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... slowly that it seemed as if they must have cheated gravitation in some subtle way to win such lightness and disregard of earth-pull. I heard no ugly murmur of long hours and low wages; the closest scrutiny revealed no strikes or internal clamorings about wrongs; and I unconsciously relaxed and breathed more deeply at the thought of this nature world, moving so smoothly, with directness and simplicity ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... It was hard at first to sleep with the head completely covered; there was such a sense of smothering, that I often ran the risk of the freezing rather than the smothering. One night, perhaps because of this suffocating sensation, I unconsciously uncovered my head. After a time I awoke suddenly to consciousness, to find that I was trying to pull off my now frozen nose which I thought was the end of ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... been working too hard lately,' he went on, 'and that my nerves are sadly shaken. It is possible, in the state I am in now, that I may have unconsciously misinterpreted, or distorted, the circumstances that really took place. You will do me a favor if you will test my recollection of what has happened by your own. If my fancy has exaggerated anything, if my memory is playing me false ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... appearance when convicted of his error; and thence, if too candid to add to the evidence of supernatural agency, is yet unwilling to stand convicted by cross-examination, of having been imposed on, and unconsciously becomes disposed rather to colour more highly than the truth, than acquiesce in an explanation resting on his having been too hasty a believer. Very often, too, the detection depends upon the combination of certain circumstances, which, apprehended, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... the precision with which it had been calculated added to its other phenomena the terrible circumstance of obtaining a glimpse into the future, I now began to perceive the immense difference between living consciously under a moral shadow, and living under it unconsciously. The latter was evidently a trifle compared with the former. Providence had most kindly provided for our happiness in denying the ability to see beyond ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of him than he had been wont to do of his own children in their babyhood. He had never been a playful or indulgent father, but he now watched with considerable interest the child who, all unconsciously, was bringing in so much "grist ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... quite sufficient. And Mr. Gibson was, she believed, a good man. And how better could she dispose of herself in life? And what was she that she should scorn the love of an honest gentleman? She would take him, she thought,—if she could. But then there came upon her, unconsciously, without work of thought, by instinct rather than by intelligence, a feeling of the closeness of a wife to her husband. Looking at it in general she could not deny that it would be very proper that she should ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... almost unconsciously arrived at the age of two years before there were any tidings of my father. All the information that my mother could obtain was, that the ship's company of the Druid had been turned over to another frigate called the Melpomene, the former having been declared ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... only of the life revealed to us by natural religion—after death. But as the embryonic and infant life of which we were unconscious was the most potent factor in our after life of consciousness, so the effect which we may unconsciously produce in others after death, and it may be even before it on those who have never seen us, is in all sober seriousness our truer and more abiding life, and the one which those who would make the best of their sojourn here will take most ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... did any thing that displeased Simon or his wife; and therefore he sought to escape this cruel treatment, confirming with his yes and no what Simon told the judges, and what the child in his innocence did not understand! And therefore he subscribed the paper without reluctance in which he unconsciously gave evidence ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... one unsettled manner, and going through one round of observances with his pipe and his negro-head and his jackknife and his pack of cards, and what not, as if it were all put down for him on a slate,—I say his chair remaining where it had stood, Herbert unconsciously took it, but next moment started out of it, pushed it away, and took another. He had no occasion to say after that that he had conceived an aversion for my patron, neither had I occasion to confess my own. We interchanged that confidence ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... meet them he moved slowly, and unconsciously drew himself up, as though preparing to meet a personage who compelled homage and was not to be approached without a degree of ceremony. She was entirely in black save for the roses in her hat. She might have retained the hat, he thought, for the sake of its shadow ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... wrote a "good" line in my life, but the moment after it was written it seemed a hundred years old. Very commonly I had a sudden conviction that I had seen it somewhere. Possibly I may have sometimes unconsciously stolen it, but I do not remember that I ever once detected any historical truth in these sudden convictions of the antiquity of my new thought or phrase. I have learned utterly to distrust them, and never allow them to bully me out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... The life, the raciness, the vigor of an adventurer and a wanderer, glow in every page. He has none of the defining disquisitions that are born of the closet. He paints history, rather than descants on it; he throws the colorings of a mind, unconsciously poetic, over all he describes. Now a soldier—now a priest—now a patriot—he is always a poet, if rarely a philosopher. He narrates like a witness, unlike Thucydides, who sums up like a judge. No writer ever ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... misgivings from the hour he parted company with his matchless steed. As the distance between him and the Nez Perce village lessened, it was hard for the dusky youth to suppress his nervousness. He was reserved, speaking only now and then when necessary, and unconsciously hurrying his footsteps, until the brothers were ready to drop from exhaustion. Had the village been a mile farther off they would have been obliged to ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... therefore to his quarters, and reclining on his couch, he silently communed with his own thoughts until he unconsciously became ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... wonderful that, even in the urgency of affection, a man of his almost morbid rectitude should have overlooked the restrictions of professional honour, should have implied the possibility of his friend's overlooking them. It seemed to make his sacrifice the more complete that it had, unconsciously, taken the ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... exclaimed Giovanni. "It shows how one may unconsciously furnish matter for mirth. I do not recollect having talked much to any one. It was ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... conditions, when every city lived apart from its neighbours with its own narrow interests and local cults and ceremonials. Greece was ceasing to be an unconnected crowd of little separate communities; unconsciously it was preparing itself for a larger destiny, that of conqueror and civiliser of East and West. This scepticism, utterly untenable and unworkable on the lines extravagantly laid down by its leading teachers, represented the birth of new conditions of ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... some time, and which her son had not dared to confess to her, was a heavy blow to old Madame Dupin. However, she schooled herself to forgive what was irrevocable, and to acknowledge this most unwelcome daughter-in-law, the infant Aurore helping unconsciously to effect the reconciliation. But for more than three years M. Dupin's mother and his wife scarcely ever met. Madame Dupin mere was living in a retired part of the country, in the very centre of France, on the little property ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... glad because they be quiet,'" said my father, as if unconsciously uttering his own reflections. But he was a little cunning, and would say things like that when, fearful of irreverence, he wanted to turn ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Geography of the Oxus Region (1872) received comparatively little public attention at home, it had yet made its mark once for all,[62] and from this time, if not earlier, Yule's high authority in all questions of Central Asian geography was generally recognised. He had long ere this, almost unconsciously, laid the broad foundations of that "Yule method," of which Baron von Richthofen has written so eloquently, declaring that not only in his own land, "but also in the literatures of France, Italy, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... hasty glance at the schoolmaster's face; then fixed her eyes on her desk and began singing in a delicate little voice, which vibrated with conflicting feelings; shyness, the solemnity of the occasion, and sorrow at the thought of Granny, who might now sit longing for her. Unconsciously she moved one foot up and down as she sang, as one who spins. One or two attempted to giggle, but one look from the ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... unconsciously, I daresay, founded upon my ideal of the French school of lovemaking. I am, even now, ashamed as I recall the bombast to which I treated the Countess ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... very beautiful now,—not that we yet see anything of the peas and potatoes which we have planted; but the grass blushes green on the slopes and hollows. I wrote that word "blush" almost unconsciously; so we will let it ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... as if it knew what my eyes were soon to look upon; yet I am not sure that I really believed it until it burst upon me, a vision of dazzling loveliness. Had I forgotten how beautiful she was? or was it that the fine Parisian hat and dress had added the transcendent touch? Unconsciously I drew Fatima to one side, so dazzled was I by her radiance; and so she did not see me, though she was looking eagerly from side to side, trying to take in at once all this wonderful Paris of which she had heard so much. ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... sat quietly for a few minutes, Lawrence watching him with a merry twinkle in his eye while Edestone was unconsciously fingering the note that General von Lichtenstein had given him. ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... thrilling glow gathering in the sky. He got to his feet, nimbly enough if not with suppleness; as he did so he felt a twinge in his thigh such as it had been subject to ever since a bad attack of rheumatism the winter before. He stood a moment watching the rising glow, then stretched himself. Unconsciously he was asking of limbs and muscles as to their fitness; as he drew in deep breaths of the soft air and let the tautened sinews relax again there was no alien note in the symphony of his being—all felt as sound and strong ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... science enable us to explain the mysterious appearance. It is probable that some Dutch vessel, proceeding slowly, quietly, and unconsciously on her voyage from Amsterdam to the New Netherlands, happened at the time to be passing through the Sound. At the moment the apparition was seen in the sky, she was so near, that her reflected image was painted or delineated, to the eyes of the observers, on the clouds, by laws ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... days of Martian life, direct work and thought and being. The music is quite audible for long distances, especially in the direction of the Hill of the Phosphori where the spirits land. Drawn by it they move unconsciously toward the singing centers. Now there are perhaps a hundred of these chorus halls about the City of Light grouped in the direction of the Hill of the Phosphori, and the music is quite different in them. There are four principal sorts, the grave, the gay, the romantic and the harmonic. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... unconsciously he despatched one entire layer of the box while she talked. She laughed heartily at his appetite, and at his solicitation began tasting the sweetmeats herself. She led him to ask where the box had come from and refused ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... to one chamber in the mansion of her confidence. As much to herself as to him, unconsciously dropping into English, she began to talk of her life ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... was so these words presently conveyed to me something that, as I afterwards knew, he had never uttered to any one. I've always done justice to the generous impulse that made him speak; it was simply compunction for a snub unconsciously administered to a man of letters in a position inferior to his own, a man of letters moreover in the very act of praising him. To make the thing right he talked to me exactly as an equal and on the ground of what we ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... machine on its compass course, and noting carefully the needle of his height-recorder, so that he is sure of maintaining altitude. A risk exists under such conditions, when there is no visible object by which to judge a course, that an airman may make leeway, unconsciously, under the pressure of a side-wind; and so he must be ready to note carefully, immediately that a view of the earth is vouchsafed him, whether he has actually been making leeway, either to one hand or the other, even while the bow of his machine has been held on ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... that day forward, he unconsciously borrowed from the spiders—if you can imagine a ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... Spirit—being thus brought into union and co-operation in the service of God, in due relative harmony and subordination. I cannot over-estimate the importance of this principle; it was on this that, consciously or unconsciously, Niccola himself worked—it has been by following it that Donatello and Ghiberti, Leonardo, Raphael, and Michael Angelo have risen to glory. The Sienese school and the Florentine, minds contemplative and dramatic, are alike beholden to it for whatever success has attended their efforts. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... minor difficulty, too trivial to take to Father Payne, it was natural to consult Barthrop; and he sometimes, too, would say a word of warning to a man, if a storm seemed to be brewing. It must not be denied that men occasionally got on Father Payne's nerves, quite unconsciously, through tactlessness or stupid mannerisms—and Barthrop was able to smooth the situation out by a word in season. He had a power of doing this without giving offence, from the obvious goodwill which permeated all ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... pluck this time, Burgess," said the skipper, taking out his revolver and unconsciously turning the chambers to see that all ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... vigorous caw, caw soon proclaimed my black gulls to be simply erratic specimens of Corvus Americanus. Why were they conducting thus strangely? Had they become so attached to their friends as to have taken to imitating them unconsciously? Or were they practicing upon the vanity of these useful allies of theirs, these master fishermen? Who can answer? The ways of shrewd people are hard to understand; and in all New England there is no ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... of confidence anciently existing between kings, and permeating the framework of every European nation, has, in a lessening and decreasing degree, come down to the present day. It exists now—unconsciously perhaps—but exists nevertheless, and must be taken into consideration whenever any European nation makes a proposition to other European nations for the settlement of any great international question. This condition ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various |
