"Unforced" Quotes from Famous Books
... he never lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in the casualties of a disadvantageous situation. I have seen him stand bare-headed—smile if you please—to a poor servant girl, while she has been inquiring of him the way to some street—in such a posture of unforced civility, as neither to embarrass her in the acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He was no dangler, in the common acceptation of the word, after women: but he reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came before him, womanhood. I have seen him—nay, smile not—tenderly escorting ... — The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... which no one that has seen can easily forget. There is the stretch of human suffering to the utmost endurance, severe bodily pain brought on by strong mental agony, the frightful, obstinate laugh of madness,—yet all so unforced and natural, that those who never were witness to madness in real life, think they see nothing but what is familiar to them in this face. Here are no tricks of distortion, nothing but the natural face of agony. This is high tragic painting, and we might as well deny to Shakspeare ... — The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... and hurried there, and knew nothing of real social intimacies. As she told her aunt in her wickedness, she would almost have preferred a shoemaker,—if she could have become acquainted with a shoemaker in a manner that should be unforced and genuine. There was a savageness of antipathy in her to the mode of life which her circumstances had produced for her. It was that very savageness which made her ride so hard, and which forbade her to smile and be pleasant to people whom she could not like. And yet she ... — The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... that the possibly doomed liner had been filmed according to schedule. "Evviva l'Italia!" yelled the returning braves in the steerage—a very decent set of fellows, it struck me, to leave so cheerfully their vocations of teamster, waiter, fruit vender, and the like, and go, unforced, to wear the gray-green coats of Italy, the short feathers of the mountain climbers, the bersagliere's bunch of plumes, and to stand against their hereditary foes the Austrians, up ... — The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... far-shooting beams the moral confusion of the tragedy. This is, at any rate, emphatically true of The Ring and the Book. The fulness and variety of creation, the amplitude of the play and shifting of characters and motive and mood, are absolutely unforced, absolutely uninterfered with by the artificial exigencies of ethical or philosophic purpose. There is the purpose, full-grown, clear in outline, unmistakeable in significance. But the just proprieties of place and season are rigorously observed, because Mr. Browning, like every other ... — Studies in Literature • John Morley |