"Causeless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and was seized with sudden spasm of seemingly causeless merriment. For looking up as M'Adam was speaking, he had caught a glimpse of a boy's fair head, peering cautiously round the cow-shed, and, behind, the flutter of short petticoats. They disappeared as silently ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... made an imperious sign which abashed her and inspired respect for her neighbor. She sat down beside me. The old man did not choose to leave the charming creature, to whom he clung capriciously with the silent and apparently causeless obstinacy to which very old persons are subject, and which makes them resemble children. In order to sit down beside the young lady he needed a folding-chair. His slightest movements were marked by the inert heaviness, the stupid hesitancy, which characterize ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... change created by the Thirteenth Amendment might be practically set aside by State legislation. In this belief they exhibited their policy towards the Negro. Considering all the circumstances, it would be hard to find in history a more causeless and cruel oppression of a whole race than was embodied in the legislation of those revived and reconstructed State governments. Their membership was composed wholly of the 'ruling class,' as they termed it, and, in no small degree, of Confederate officers ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... by side with this extravagant, apparently causeless merriment, there was also an extravagant, apparently causeless terror. The drug produced the laughter, I knew; but what brought in the terror I could not imagine. Everywhere behind the fun lay the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... a rebellious rebel. Yes,' she added, rising, 'I detest with all my heart this wicked, causeless rebellion. I detest the very names of the leaders of it. And yet I am compelled to go about with lies upon my lips, and to act lies, till I detest myself more than all else! I have consoled myself somewhat ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... of the radiations of a crystal of hoarfrost or of sapphire, concerning any of which matters men, so called of science, are necessarily and forever silent, because the distribution of colors in spectra and the relation of planes in crystals are final and causeless facts, orders, that is to say, not laws. And more than this, the infidel temper which is incapable of perceiving this spiritual beauty has an instant and constant tendency to delight in the reverse of it, so that practically its investigation is always, by preference, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... womanly gentleness and sympathy, and, above all, a wise forbearance from probing into his still open wounds, might have won a certain amount of gratitude and affection from him. But Helen was unequal to this. She only drove him wild with causeless and senseless jealousy, and goaded him almost to madness by endless ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... observers strike, That such fair sisters should be so unlike; That still another and another comes, And at the matron's tables smiles and blooms; That all appear as if they meant to stay Time undefined, nor name a parting day; And yet, though all are valued, all are dear, Causeless, they go, and seldom more appear. Yet let Suspicion hide her odious head, And Scandal vengeance from a burgess dread; A pious friend, who with the ancient dame At sober cribbage takes an evening game; His cup beside him, through their play ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... it as a most causeless one," once said an Austrian officer to me, "for had the Federals stood but half an hour longer—which, with their position and supports, there was no earthly reason for their not doing—there could have been but one result. Smith's ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... frequently to see me during those weary days. Her engagement to Mr. Bainrothe was never by her acknowledged, or by me alluded to, and she seemed to have taken up the impression in some way that I was the victim of an unfortunate attachment to that subtle person, which had degenerated into a morbid and causeless hatred on ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... Kembal testified, that Susanna Martin, upon a Causeless Disgust, had threatned him, about a certain Cow of his, That she should never do him any more Good: and it came to pass accordingly. For soon after the Cow was found stark dead on the dry Ground, without any Distemper to be discerned upon her. Upon which he was followed with a strange ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... of excellent hope. But besides the sorrows which he heaped upon the fatherless and widows at home: and besides the vain enterprises abroad, wherein it is thought that he consumed more treasure than all our victorious kings did in their several conquests; what causeless and cruel wars did he make upon his own nephew King James the First? What laws and wills did he devise to cut off, and cut down those branches, which sprang from the same root that himself did? And in the end (notwithstanding these his so many irreligious provisions) it pleased God to ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... aggrandizement and for conquering the Mysians and Pisidians[28]—as Cyrus had experienced while he was alive. Klearchus concluded his protest by requesting to be informed, what malicious reporter had been filling the mind of Tissaphernes with causeless suspicions against the Greeks. ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... on went this noble maid, Until the presence of the king she gained, Nor for he swelled with ire was she afraid, But his fierce wrath with fearless grace sustained, "I come," quoth she, "but be thine anger stayed, And causeless rage 'gainst faultless souls restrained — I come to show thee, and to bring thee both, The wight whose fact hath ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... influences of the tepid air, the mysterious dimness, the wands of gold, the floating brief dust-motes. He wanted to touch Celia; and he found himself diffident. He wanted to hear her voice; and he suddenly discovered in himself an embarrassment in addressing her which was causeless and foolish. He wanted to look at her; and he did so; but it was not frankly and openly, as he had always looked at people before. His shy side-glances delighted in the clear curve of her cheeks; the soft wheat-colour of her curls; the dense black of ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... grant; and not a short reprieve, But length of certain life, to Turnus give? Now speedy death attends the guiltless youth, If my presaging soul divines with truth; Which, O! I wish, might err thro' causeless fears, And you (for you have pow'r) prolong ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... and the latter sets before our eyes the venerable figures of a Soranus and a Thrasea, intrepid in their fate, and only moved by the melting sorrows of their friends and kindred. What sympathy then touches every human heart! What indignation against the tyrant, whose causeless fear or unprovoked malice gave rise ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... of menstruation seems to be troubling several of you. I am sorry that you did not all have the advantage of having this explained at an early age. You might have been saved a great deal of suffering and causeless worry. ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... shall become of me, where shall I hide my head? O, what a death is it to live for him that would be dead? But since it chanceth so, whatever wight thou be, That findeth me here in heavy plight, go, tell her this from me. Causeless I perish here, and cause to curse I have. The time that erst I lived to love, and now must die her slave, The match was over-much for me, she understood, Alas, why hath she this delight to lap in guiltless blood? How did I give her cause to show me this despite, To match me where she ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... adjusting difficulties of Constitutional interpretation. Yet, as it was almost universally asserted, of course, by the Northern partisan presses, and by Northern Congressmen, that the Rebellion was utterly causeless, and as the writer was therefore exceedingly anxious to obtain, concerning their grievances, the latest opinions of the Southern leaders, as stated by themselves, he ventured to propose, in a pause of Mr. Toombs's somewhat rapid rhetoric, a question which, at that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... I desire, Suspicion you pretend, Causeless you yourself retire Whilst I in vain attend, Thus a lover, as you say, Still made more eager by delay. Is this fair excusing? ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... the tragedy—whether Bisesa had, in a fit of causeless despair, told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and she tortured to tell; whether Durga Charan knew his name and what became of Bisesa—Trejago does not know to this day. Something horrible had happened, and the thought of what it must have been, comes upon Trejago ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the author has written for himself the favourable notice, or that pecuniary bribes have made the honest editor his tool? Verily, my public, thou art not generous here; ay, and thou art grievously deceived, as well as sordid: for by careless praise, causeless censure, credit given for corrupt bribery, and no allowance made for unamiable criticisms, poor maltreated authors speak to many wrongs: ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... see, back of the warfare of the elements, an inscrutable malevolent intelligence which took this method to express its displeasure. But every other line of scientific observation leads equally, following back a sequence of events, to seemingly causeless beginnings. Modern science can explain the lightning, as it can explain a great number of the mysteries which the primeval intelligence could not penetrate. But the primordial man could not wait for the revelations of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... and my Lord—Clementina, Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the Master is all I know of the devil; I have known hints of him, in the world, but always cowards: he is as bold as a lion, but with the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much surprise in my two cowards. 'Tis true, I saw a hint of the same nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to attend to; the Master has nothing ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... vengeance or retribution from a superhuman power upon the person against whom they are uttered. Anathema is a solemn ecclesiastical condemnation of a person or of a proposition. Curse may be just and authoritative; as, the curse of God; or, it may be wanton and powerless: "so the curse causeless shall not come," Prov. xxvi, 2. Execration expresses most of personal bitterness and hatred; imprecation refers especially to the coming of the desired evil upon the person against whom it is uttered. Malediction is a general ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... earth asleep, So our extinguished passions too, should rest. Dust are those relics also; let us keep Our hands from violence to their ashes blest. Why, in this story of keen pain, my friend, Wilt thou refuse naught but a dream to see? Does Nature causeless act, to no wise end? Think'st thou a heedless God afflicted thee? Mayhap the blow thou weepest was to save. Child, it has oped thy heart to seek relief; Sorrow is lord to man, and man a slave, None knows himself till he has walked with grief,— A cruel law, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... fanaticism, agonizing in the effort to distort nature, the biographical record of religious aspiration serves to show how nearly multitudes may approach the boundary line of insanity in their protracted periods of causeless mental agony and in their fierce hostility to heresy and to science. Alike in Brahmin, Buddhist, Mohammedan, and Christian nations have we seen the vast expenditure of spiritual energy in the blind struggle of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... your company, old boy." Presently he said, "Do you know what it is to feel sad? I suppose not. I don't mean troubled about anything in particular—there's nothing to be troubled about—but simply sad, in a causeless, listless way?" ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and appertaining to human feelings, and entering into the soul.'—The 13th Sonnet for exquisite delicacy of painting; the 19th for tender simplicity; and the 25th for manly pathos, are compositions of, perhaps, unrivalled merit. Yet while I am selecting these, I almost accuse myself of causeless partiality; for surely never was a writer so equal in excellence!—S. T. C. [In this note as it first appeared in the Morning Chronicle a Greek sentence preceded the supposed English translation. It is not to be found in the Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius, but the following ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... only weapon which could be employed against her; but in that he and his partisans had long been adept. Every old libel and pretext for detraction was diligently revived. The old nickname of "The Austrian" was repeated with pertinacity as spiteful as causeless; even the king's aunts lending their aid to swell the clamor on that ground, and often saying, with all the malice of their inveterate jealousy, that it was not to be expected that she should have the same feelings as their father or Louis XIV., since she was not of their blood, though ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... contented himself with pointing out, quietly and courteously, how failure might have been avoided. "But if he believed," says his chief of the staff, "that his subordinates were self-indulgent or contumacious, he became a stern and exacting master; ...and during his career a causeless friction was produced in the working of his government over several gallant and meritorious officers who served under him. This was almost the sole fault of his military character: that by this jealousy of intentional inefficiency he ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... counsels, and not in positions and oppositions. But men are now over-ready to usurp the style, non ego, sed dominus; and not so only, but to bind it with the thunder and denunciation of curses and anathemas, to the terror of those which have not sufficiently learned out of Solomon that "The causeless curse shall ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... shoes, but all this does not prevent you from passing two months in bed. But when spring returns, with its leaves and flowers, its warm, soft breezes and its smell of the fields, all of which causes you vague disquiet and causeless emotion, nobody ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... shrilling Of the knife in the killing That ends, when it must, (O the throb and the thrust!) In a death, in the dust, The silence, the stillness, of satiate lust, The solemn pause When the veil withdraws And man looks on his god, on the Causeless Cause. Still, still, Under the hill! The hunter is dead - this is ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, 15 Lord of thy house and hospitality; And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest But when she sate within the touch of thee. O too industrious folly! O vain and causeless melancholy! 20 Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast thou to do with sorrow, 25 Or the injuries of to-morrow? ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... man of her choice, and that in penance her ghost is condemned to haunt the Old Palace of Berlin and that of Bayreuth. It is believed by some that this apparition of "the White Lady" appears to a member of the Hohenzollern family as a sure forerunner of death; and Carlyle's picture of the causeless fright of one of the royal rulers when he thought he had seen this ghost, will recur to all who have read "Frederick the Great." We have heard of no visitor so fortunate as to get a sight of the apparition. One enters through an inner court; and parties who wish to see the interior are taken ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... effect of her words; the chief HATED causeless killing; and to hear a lady talk of shooting a high-soaring creature of the air as coolly as of putting on her gloves, was nauseous to him. Ian gave him praise afterwards for his unusual self-restraint. But it was a moment or two ere ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... gentleman, "mind you, I do not approve of petty jealousies and quarrelings, nor of causeless assaults. But, when any person is assailed, it is his peculiar privilege, sir, to hit back. And when he hits he should hit hard. He should use both strategy and force. He should see to it, sir, that his enemy is punished. Have your two hostile bodies yet met ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... without cause," you would not have understood him, although the correctness of 386:30 the assertion might afterwards be proved to you. So, when our friends pass from our sight and we lament, that lamentation is needless and causeless. We shall 387:1 perceive this to be true when we grow into the under- standing of Life, and know that ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the Count's rhodomontade, acknowledged himself obliged to me, and allowed that at that time my fears were not wholly causeless. He behaved with ease and good humour, and left me without appearing to have taken any offence. I shall be with thee on Tuesday. I know it will be a day of feasting to the family, and I will do my best endeavour not to cast a damp on the hilarity ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... sooner left with the Chieftain and Waverley, the rest of his attendants being at some distance, than he said, 'If I owed less to your disinterested friendship, I could be most seriously angry with both of you for this very extraordinary and causeless broil, at a moment when my father's service so decidedly demands the most perfect unanimity. But the worst of my situation is, that my very best friends hold they have liberty to ruin themselves, as well as the cause they are engaged in, upon the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... said Lois, driving back the tears at this causeless injury. "Mr. Leverich said it was best not to. Nobody knows about your being away at all. You're not going ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... I refused, by fear and awe restrain'd, Lest thou should'st feel displeasure at that sight 380 Thyself; for we are all, in ev'ry clime, Suspicious, and to worst constructions prone. So spake Ulysses, to whom thus the King. I bear not, stranger! in my breast an heart Causeless irascible; for at all times A temp'rate equanimity is best. And oh, I would to heav'n, that, being such As now thou art, and of one mind with me, Thou would'st accept my daughter, would'st become My son-in-law, and dwell contented here! ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... that the morrow would be her birthday. James felt uneasy. He had never given birthday presents, but he well knew that presents were the correct things on birthdays. He went to bed in a state of the most absurd and causeless mental disturbance. He did not know what to do. Whereas it was enormously obvious what ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... are mines of treasure in your breast, Seen by that jealous sun, but not possest. He, like a devil, among the blest above, Can take no pleasure in your heaven of love. Go, take her; and thy causeless fears remove; [To the King. Love her so well, that I with rage may die: Dull husbands have no right to jealousy: If that's allowed, it ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... of Frank Osbaldistone, who carried the portmanteau. Osbaldistone says, concerning him, "Of all the propensities which teach mankind to torment themselves, that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, painful, pitiable."—Sir W. Scott, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... condition—a not unpleasant one—when suddenly the now well-known symptoms of the visitation to which I had become subject suddenly seized upon me,—the leap of the heart; the sudden, causeless, overwhelming physical excitement, which I could neither ignore nor allay. I was terrified beyond description, beyond reason, when I became conscious that this was about to begin over again: what purpose ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... as coolly as if he had been chatting about an every-day concern, and concluded that all depended upon my coolness and steadiness of nerve when the final struggle came, and resolved to sell my life dearly if it must be sacrificed to the fury of a causeless persecution. To my proposition to escape then, having a fleet horse, he would not assent, as he had pledged his honor to take me to the Vigilance Committee. Honor is as essential among lynchers as among thieves, and all I could ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... without a cause, in many places alleges the die and the balance, and several other things, which cannot fall or incline either one way or the other without some cause or difference, either wholly within them or coming to them from without; for that what is causeless (he says) is wholly insubsistent, as also what is fortuitous; and in those motions devised by some and called adventitious, there occur certain obscure causes, which, being concealed from us, move our inclinations to one side or other. These are some of those things which ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... world of nations free to work out their several destinies, self-determining, not subject any more to the threat of causeless war at the hands of a government steeled to barbarity. A world cemented by the blood the monster itself had caused to be shed; by the memory of brave sons fallen that others might live; by the tears of countless women and children made widows and orphans; by a new understanding between all ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... passage, knowing the ground better than I do—tamn her, I will have amends on her, if there be whipping-post, or ducking-stool, or a pair of stocks in the parish!" And so saying, the Captain trudged off, his spirits ever and anon agitated by recollection of the causeless aggression of Meg Dods, and again composed to a state of happy serenity by the recollection of the agreeable arrangement which he had made between Mr. Tyrrel, and ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of the Empire is tremendous. I have no pity for the melodramatic villain who ends as he began, in causeless and wanton blood." Lord Coleridge, Life, ii., ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... then, my dear friend, embark our happiness and our affections on the ocean of slander, of falsehood, and of malice, on which our credulous friends are floating. If you have been made to believe that I ever did, said, or thought a thing unfriendly to your fame and feelings, you do me injury as causeless as it is afflicting to me. In the present contest in which you are concerned, I feel no passion, I take no part, I express no sentiment. Whichever of my friends is called to the supreme cares of the nation, I know that they will be wisely and faithfully administered, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... at sea. I recapitulated the elements of mystery, counting them on my fingers: the pavilion secretly prepared for guests; the guests landed at the risk of their lives and to the imminent peril of the yacht; the guests, or at least one of them, in undisguised and seemingly causeless terror; Northmour with a naked weapon; Northmour stabbing his most intimate acquaintance at a word; last, and not least strange, Northmour fleeing from the man whom he had sought to murder, and barricading ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with every thing that exists or has existed. Thus the whole universe co-operates to produce the minutest stroke of every letter, save only that I myself, and I alone, have nothing to do with it, but merely the causeless and effectless beholding of it when it is done. Yet scarcely can it be called a beholding; for it is neither an act nor an effect; but an impossible creation of a something nothing out of its very contrary! It is the mere quick-silver plating behind a looking-glass; and in this alone consists ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... with me,—though a certain tremulous key, into which her usually sweet and steady voice broke while she declared he had never spoken to her of love, it was only friendship, witnessed against her that she was apprehensive, sad, perhaps visited with a tinge of that causeless shame which even in a pure and good woman conventionality constrains, when she has loved a man before he says in plain English, "I love you," though every act and look and tone of his may have carried that significance unmistakably for years. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... influence over her mind. It was impossible for her any longer to resist the conviction that she had distrusted appearances without the slightest reason, and that she had permitted purely visionary suspicions to fill her with purely causeless alarm. In the firm belief that she was in danger, she had watched through the night—and nothing had happened. In the confident anticipation that Geoffrey had promised what he was resolved not to perform, she had waited to see what excuse he would find for keeping ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... march false alarms had been given and the soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and abused each other for their causeless panic. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... entreating her to give him a meeting," and many others in which both the proper names and the situations suggest the artificial romances. None of the missives reveals emotions of any but the most tawdry romantic kind, warm desires extravagantly uttered, conventional doubts, causeless jealousies, and petty quarrels. Like Mrs. Behn's correspondence with the amorous Van Bruin these epistles have nothing to distinguish them except their excessive hyperbole. There is one series of twenty-four ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... for me. I gave way to a, seemingly, quite causeless impulse of curiosity, I went out into the street, just as I was, to see for myself. It was, perhaps, not the most sensible thing I could have done, and papa would have been shocked; but I am always shocking papa. It had been raining in the night, and the shoes which I had on were not so ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... seen the mark of death upon his face," Mannering answered. "The men who are traitors to their country to-day are those who, healthy enough themselves, talk causeless and shallow optimism which is fed alone by their own prosperity. The doctrine of Christ is the care of others. If you do not believe, the sick-room is open also to you; go there unprejudiced, and with an open mind, and you will come away as ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tranquillity and order of a State in which talent and action and industry are a certain capital,—why, Messrs. Coutts, the great bankers, had better encourage a theory to upset the system of banking! Whatever disturbs society, yea, even by a causeless panic, much more by an actual struggle, falls first upon the market of labour, and thence affects prejudicially every department of intelligence. In such times the arts are arrested; literature is neglected; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... than from rational conviction. He was as superstitious as Herodotus, but in a way far more offensive. The very peculiarities which charm us in an infant, the toothless mumbling, the stammering, the tottering, the helplessness, the causeless tears and laughter, are disgusting in old age. In the same manner, the absurdity which precedes a period of general intelligence is often pleasing; that which follows it is contemptible. The nonsense of Herodotus ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of days long past I sing, When Pride gave place to mirth without a sting; Ere tyrant customs strength sufficient bore To violate the feelings of the poor; To leave them distanc'd in the mad'ning race, Where'er Refinement shews its hated face: Nor causeless hated;... 'tis the peasant's curse, That hourly makes his wretched station worse; Destroys life's intercourse; the social plan That rank to rank cements, as man to man: Wealth flows around him, fashion lordly reigns; Yet poverty ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... in solitude, with her hands folded and her heart filled with unutterable tender woe, that so much causeless cloud had settled upon the home of her refuge. She could not experience that relief many of us feel in deep adversity, that it is all illusion, and will in a moment float away like other dreams. Brought to this house an orphan, and twice deprived of a ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... the child again in some of her moods. She was always wayward and capricious, but as gay and happy as the day was long—as full of sunshine as a May morning. Whence come, then, all these vapours and reveries and bursts of causeless weeping? I have found her in tears more oft these last three months than in all the years of her life before; and though she strives to efface the impression by wild outbreaks of mirth, such as we used of old to know, there is something hollow and forced about these merry ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Collège de France. Returning home he loaded two pistols, one for the first student who should again insult him, and the other to blow out his own brains. It was no idle threat. The man Guizot had nicknamed ‘Werther’ was capable of executing his plan, for this causeless unpopularity was anguish to him. After his death, I found those two pistols loaded in his bedroom, but justice had been done another way. All opposition had vanished. Every student in the ‘Quarter’ ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... services at a Mission which then happened to be proceeding which, instead of inspiring him with hope, convinced him that his case was past recovery. For some weeks he tasted, day by day, the dreary bitterness of the cup of dark and causeless depression, and laboured under an agonising dejection of spirit. This intensity of suffering seemed to shake his whole life to its foundation. It made havoc of his work, of his friendships, of the easy philosophy of his life. He began ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... head and listened. In the ancient woodwork of the manse, somewhere in the crumbling wainscoting, the little boring creature called a death-watch ticked like the ticking of an old verge watch. Mr. Welsh broke off with a sudden causeless auger very appalling in one so sage and sober ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... encounters, the Blackfeet have much that is common to many Plains tribes, and also some customs that are peculiar to themselves. Like most Indians, they are subject to sudden, apparently causeless, panics, while at other times they display a courage that is heroic. They are firm believers in luck, and will follow a leader who is fortunate in his expeditions into almost any danger. On the other hand, if the leader of a war party loses his young men, or any of them, the people ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... emotionality. One person suffers this explosion in a periodic lawsuit—a rare action for the Hill; another in an almost insane family quarrel, another in an occasional fury of futile violence, another in periods, increasing in frequency as he grows older, of causeless and uncontrolled anger, or extravagant grief; and when weightier occasion is lacking, in torrents of language poured forth from the treasuries of an exhaustless memory. The very serenity and placidity which Quaker worship and industry produce in the true Quaker have resulted in the ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... insane. Her sweet mind lies in fragments before us—a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies; her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to sadness—each equally purposeless and causeless; her snatches of old ballads, such as perhaps her nurse sung her to sleep with in her infancy—are all so true to the life, that we forget to wonder, and can only weep. It belonged to Shakspeare alone so to temper such a picture that we can ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... eve," provided a flask of Gascon wine, or a stoup of good English ale, remained on the board. It may be remembered that De Walton, when he dismissed the minstrel from the dungeon, was sensible that he owed him some compensation for the causeless suspicion which had dictated his imprisonment, more particularly as he was a valued servant, and had shown himself the faithful confidant of the Lady Augusta de Berkely, and the person who was moreover likely to know all the motives and circumstances ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... industrious folly! Oh! vain and causeless melancholy! 20 Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young Lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast Thou to do with sorrow, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... not be awakened by the seizure, but pass into deeper sleep. Intermittent wetting of the bed, occasional temporary mental stupor in the morning, irritability, temporary but well-marked lapses of memory, sleep-walking, and causeless outbursts of ungovernable temper all suggest ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... control; but, after one of his fierce, volcanic bursts of ill-humour, he would be acutely miserable and angry with himself for days, particularly if the object of it had been Jim or Sam, his two especial favourites. On one occasion, after a causeless fit of anger with Jim, while the three were at Major Buckley's together, he got his pony and rode away home, secretly speaking to no one. The other two lamented all the afternoon that he had taken the matter ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... weep; I would not weep; Our mother needs no tears: Dry thine eyes, too; 'tis vain to keep This causeless ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... for all those idle words and actions which have inflicted on any of our fellow-creatures pains we have no right to bestow, or tempted them to sins they had no inclination to follow; the petty tyrannies of our whims, changes, and fancies—of our scoldings, complainings, peremptory orders, and causeless contradictions, will all one day swell that awful list of sins, of which it may be truly said, 'we cannot answer one ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... ties of amity and brotherhood, to form a blessed league against the marauders of the road. I see amongst you, my Lords, many of the boasts and pillars of the state; but, alas! I think with grief and dismay on the causeless and idle hatred that has grown up between you!—a scandal to our city, and reflecting, let me add, my Lords, no honour on your faith as Christians, nor on your dignity ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and wider. Each man smote down his brother, and was himself smitten down before he had time to exult in his victory. The trumpeters, all the while, blew their blasts shriller and shriller; each soldier shouted a battle cry and often fell with it on his lips. It was the strangest spectacle of causeless wrath, and of mischief for no good end, that had ever been witnessed; but, after all, it was neither more foolish nor more wicked than a thousand battles that have since been fought, in which men have slain their ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... extremity of Shakespeare's suffering. It is not to be called a work of art, it is hardly even a tragedy; it is the causeless ruin of a soul, a ruin insufficiently motived by complete trust in men and spendthrift generosity. If there was ever a man who gave so lavishly as Timon, if there was ever one so senseless blind in trusting, then he deserved ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... fatal event. But I give my free and hearty consent, providing the settlements are drawn in such an irrevocable form as may secure my child from suffering by that state of dependence, and that sudden and causeless revocation of allowances, of which I have so much reason to complain. Of Sir Frederick Langley, I augur, you will hear no more. He is not likely to claim the hand of a dowerless maiden. I therefore commit you, my dear Isabella, to the wisdom of Providence and to your ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... De Lacy, "I am sorry for thee—sorry, from my soul, to see such a predominating and causeless jealousy occupy the brain of a gallant old soldier. Here, in this last misfortune, to recall no more ancient proofs of his fidelity, could he mean otherwise than well with us, when, thrown by shipwreck ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... I wrote, when thus my life had no commerce with the outside, when I was engrossed in the contemplation of my own heart, when my imaginings wandered in many a disguise amidst causeless emotions and aimless longings, has been left out of that edition; only a few of the poems originally published in the volume entitled Evening Songs finding a place there, in ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... the rebellion, yet they checked it considerably for some time, and prevented many thousands from plunging into it who otherwise would certainly have done so. . . . The present rebellion is certainly one of the most causeless, unprovoked and unnatural that ever disgraced any country; a rebellion marked with peculiarly aggravated circumstances of guilt and ingratitude. . . . About the middle of April, Mr. Washington—commander-in-chief of the rebel forces, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... one of those characters of self-will and passion which deteriorate in later life, and in which no new moral beauties spring up to replace the impulsive graces of youth. Regarding Aurore now as the work of another's hands, she made her the victim of ceaseless and causeless petulance. Her gross abuse of her mother-in-law gave Aurore many tears to shed in private, while her persecution of poor Deschartres drove her daughter to the expedient of shielding him—with a lie. The poor tutor had administered the affairs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... with its inner soul, and he discerns the opposition, and knows not with which to sympathize. Such contrarieties argue want of power or want of freedom in the poet, who should never suffer the clanking of his rhythmical chains to be heard. Such causeless breaks proceed from want of truth to the subject, and prove a lack of the careful rendering of love in the author. The poet must listen to the naive voice of nature as he moulds his rhythms, for the ingenious and elaborate constructions of the intellect alone will never touch the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... Erbprinz's fainting fits were more frequent than ever, and the Erbprincessin sank into a deep and brooding melancholy, which was varied by attacks of painful excitement and sudden bursts of causeless anger. It was whispered at Ludwigsburg that ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... that, good Sir? O there are women The world deem mad, or worse, whose life but seems One vile caprice, a freakish thing of whims And restless nothingness; yet if we pierce The soul, may be we'll touch some cause profound For what seems causeless. Early love despised, Or baffled, which is worse; a faith betrayed, For vanity or lucre; chill regards, Where to gain constant glances we have paid Some fearful forfeit: here are many springs, Unmarked by shallow eyes, and some, or all Of these, or none, ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... wrathful if they still think themselves right. Meanwhile, let them learn that Occultism differs from Magic and other secret Sciences as the glorious Sun does from a rush-light, as the immutable and immortal Spirit of Man—the reflection of the absolute, causeless, and unknowable all,—differs from ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... regretfully, "was an exceedingly proud woman, belonging to a family of social prominence in the East. She felt deeply the causeless gossip connecting her name with the case, as well as the open disgrace of her husband's conviction. She refused to receive her former friends, and even failed in loyalty to your father in his time of ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... one of them, saying "dos, dos, go, go," when she reminded him of the terms on which she consented to marry him, and warned him to be more cautious in the future, as he had now given her one causeless blow. ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... brown beach with a sound as of kisses and whispers. To one who found himself alone, beyond the limits of the village and beyond the hearing of its voices,—the vast silence, the vast light, seemed full of weirdness. And these hushes, these transparencies, do not always inspire a causeless apprehension: they are omens sometimes—omens of coming tempest. Nature,—incomprehensible Sphinx!—before her mightiest bursts of rage, ever puts forth her divinest witchery, makes more manifest ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... to the brief interview with Stewart and dwelt upon it. Little things which had at the time made no impression upon him began to recur and to take on significance. He remembered the elder man's odd and strained manner at the beginning, his sudden and causeless change to ease and to something that was almost like a triumphant excitement, and then his absurd story about Ste. Marie's flirtation with a lady. Hartley thought of these things; he thought also of the fact that Ste. Marie had disappeared immediately after hearing ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... free to loaf, but I worked harder than ever. I was either in an exalted state of mind or pining away under a spell of yearning and melancholy—of causeless, meaningless melancholy. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... her pupils. At the sixth there was a momentary rigor. At the seventh her lids began to droop. At the tenth her eyes were closed, and her breathing was slower and fuller than usual. I tried as I watched to preserve my scientific calm, but a foolish, causeless agitation convulsed me. I trust that I hid it, but I felt as a child feels in the dark. I could not have believed that I was still open ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... terror, this downfall into ruin of the loftiest bravery which ever astounded history,—is that causeless? No. The shadow of an enormous right is projected athwart Waterloo. It is the day of destiny. The force which is mightier than man produced that day. Hence the terrified wrinkle of those brows; hence ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Dry should be the hero. And then we ran on, jointly planning a succession of ridiculous scenes;—he lashing himself pretty freely though not half so freely, or so much to the purpose, as I lashed him; for I attacked him, through the channel of Mr, Dry, upon his ennui, his causeless melancholy, his complaining languors, his yawning inattention, and his restless discontent. You may easily imagine I was in pretty high spirits to go so far: in truth, nothing else could either have prompted or excused my facetiousness : and his ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... two or three days and then marched on in the track of the army. While at Shelbyville, the first and only causeless stampede of our pickets and false alarm to the camps which occurred during our squadron organization, took place. Ten or fifteen men were posted on picket some eight miles from the town toward Nashville, near a small bridge, at the southern end of which the extreme outpost vidette stood. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... however, in her bosom, amidst the rapture that made up her life, a vague feeling of sorrow, of some weight that made her heart bleed despite herself. At times, when she was plunged in one of those causeless transports which made her melt with tenderness, an anxious thought would come to her—she imagined that some misfortune was hovering behind her. She turned round, however, and then smiled. People are ever in a tremble when they are too happy. There was nothing ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... flattering speeches won renown By these two sisters here; The third had causeless banishment, Yet was her love more dear: For poor Cordelia patiently Went wand'ring up and down, Unhelp'd, unpitied, gentle maid, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... reached my hands by chance, and by mistake, and should have accounted to you (as I am told) for my son's not answering some other note of yours. God forbid, Miss Haredale,' said the good gentleman, with great emotion, 'that there should be in your gentle breast one causeless ground of quarrel with him. You should know, and you will see, that he was in ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things, supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors; ensconcing ourselves in a seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to an ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... fears For what may be thy lot in future years. I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, Lord of thy house and hospitality; And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest But when she sate within the touch of thee. O too industrious folly! O vain and causeless melancholy! Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast thou to do with sorrow, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... in wordes few, That men have an ill use (To their own shame) women to blame, And causeless them ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... later with corroboration, or actually to be present in the turret, and then escape. Or perhaps the King told his man-in-the-turret tale merely 'in the air;' and then Henderson, having run away in causeless panic, later 'sees money in it,' and appears, with a string of falsehoods. 'Chance loves Art,' says Aristotle, and chance might well befriend an artist so capable and conscientious as his Majesty. To be sure Mr. Hill Burton says 'the theory that the whole was ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... uncle's will. I do not come to make you offers; you would not accept them: I do not come to vindicate myself, it is beneath me; and we have never been as brothers, and we know not their language: but I do come to demand you to retract the dark and causeless suspicions you have vented against me, and also to assure you that, if you have doubts of the authenticity of the will, so far from throwing obstacles in your way, I myself will join in the inquiries you institute and the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dampness, and the cold; she engenders the miasmatic poisons that rack our bones; she conceals in her mantle the foe who takes us unawares; she rules those vague shapes which fright us in the dim light; the causeless sounds of night or its more oppressive silence are familiar to her; she it is who sends dreams wherein gods and devils have their sport with man, and slumber, the twin brother of the grave." [377] So farther south, "the Brazilian mother carefully shielded ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, harkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me—to certain low and indefinite ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... chapel; this eager nosing out and tracking down of every scent of Popery; this fanatical satisfaction in such a kindred soul as that of Elizabeth Mason. Some mild Ritualism at Whinthorpe had given him occupation for years; and as for Bannisdale, he and the Masons between them had raised the most causeless of storms about Mr. Helbeck and his doings, from the beginning; they had kept up for years the most rancorous memory of the Williams affair; they had made the owner of the old Hall the bogey of ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... me I was not so happy: and I looked back fondly to the days of the greenwood and the fellowship of the Dry Tree, and the days before that, of my flight with my lord. And moreover with the wearing of the years those murmurs against me and the blind causeless hatred began to grow again, and chiefly methinks because I was the king, and my lord the king's cloak: but therewith tales concerning me began to spring up, how that I was not only a sorceress, but even one ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... insult. Christine, fully aware of the obloquy that pressed upon her race, had only consented to adopt this unusual mode of changing her condition, under a sensitive, apprehension that any other would have necessarily led to the exposure of her origin. This fear, though exaggerated, and indeed causeless, was the result of too much brooding of late over her own situation, and of that morbid sensibility in which the most pure and innocent are, unhappily, the most likely to indulge. The concealment, as has already been explained, was that of her intended husband, who, with the subterfuge of an interested ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the enterprise that his master had in hand, saying that he would rather die than do what he had promised. For (he told her) just as there was no living man whom he would not venture to attack in anger, although he would rather die than commit a causeless and wilful murder unless his honour compelled him to it; even so, unless driven by extreme love, such as may serve to blind virtuous men, he would rather die than break his marriage vow to ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... to freedom, Spinoza means by this not caprice, nor the monstrous miracle of causeless action, but independence of external force or of any disproportionate and illegitimate passion. The freedom to which he aspires is the freedom of God, who eternally acts in accordance with the mutual harmony of the whole attributes of His nature, not one of which clashes with another. So ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... morning the sun shone, and Mercy was herself again. Her depression of the evening before seemed to her so causeless, so inexplicable, that she recalled it almost with terror, as one might a temporary insanity. She blushed to think of her unreasonable sensitiveness to the words and tones of Stephen White. "As ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... get, there were others whose minds could not conceive a country without a king, or a subject with inalienable rights. The best of the Tories honestly believed the Whig agitation to be "unnatural, causeless, wanton, and wicked."[10] Such Americans were, in the inevitable struggle, truly martyrs to ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... touch of the morbus eruditorum, to which I am as little subject as most folks, and have it less now than when young. It is a tremor of the heart, the pulsation of which becomes painfully sensible—a disposition to causeless alarm—much lassitude—and decay of vigour of mind and activity of intellect. The reins feel weary and painful, and the mind is apt to receive and encourage gloomy apprehensions and causeless fears. Fighting with this fiend ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Absolute of Western philosophers, the Parabrahm of the Hindus, the Tao of the ancient sages of China, the causeless Cause of all that has been or ever will be manifested in concrete time ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... jealous rage inspir'd, Before the gods, while curling incense blaz'd, His suppliant hands to Jove almighty rais'd. "All potent Jove! those eyes that view the Moor 260 From painted coaches full libations pour, See they not this? Or when thy thunder rolls Do causeless fears, O Father, shake our souls? Is there no vengeance in the bolt you poise? Is all but fancied horror, empty noise? 265 A woman, wand'ring outcast on our shore, Bargains a petty spot and owns no more, Accepts a portion of our coast to till, ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire |
