"Involuntary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intellectual humility, Solomon, says, "Before honor is humility;" and humility is before wisdom, and even before learning. We ought not to be ashamed of involuntary ignorance. Franklin, when asked how he came to know so much, replied, "By never being ashamed ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... any immigrant family of our class and with our traditions and aspirations. It is part of the process of Americanization; an upheaval preceding the state of repose. It is the cross that the first and second generations must bear, an involuntary sacrifice for the sake of the future generations. These are the pains of adjustment, as racking as the pains of birth. And as the mother forgets her agonies in the bliss of clasping her babe to her breast, so the bent and heart-sore immigrant forgets exile and homesickness and ridicule ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... busy day, my lady. About an average day.' He now and then slided into my lady, instead of ma'am, as an involuntary acknowledgment of Mrs. Sparsit's personal dignity and claims ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... that the conversation had ceased. She looked up to see the tall, lithe form of Jonathan Zane as he strode across the porch. She could see that a certain constraint had momentarily fallen upon the company. It was an involuntary acknowledgment of the borderman's presence, of a presence that worked on all alike with a subtle, ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... anything but beds of roses whilst pursuing the diplomacy adopted to checkmate the Bond. They had to gain national support without divulging their own proceeding, and were at the same time reduced to a situation which imposed a spartan fortitude in concealing and repressing involuntary perturbation in the presence of an impending national crisis, and also the stoical endurance of bitter recriminations on the part of an opposition comprising a large and honourable but poorly informed ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... right eye had a narrow escape of being poked out by the tray of a brawny butcher's boy, who, when I civilly remonstrated, turned round, and said, "Vy, I say, who are you, I vonder, as is so partiklar about your hysight." I felt an involuntary shudder—to-day, thought I, I am John Ebenezer Scropps—two days ago I was Lord Mayor; and so the rencontre ended, evidently to the advantage of the bristly brute. It was however too much for me—the effect of contrast was too powerful, the change was too ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... me as I eagerly took in the comparatively purer atmosphere from above. 'You can't stand it five minutes; how do you suppose they do, year in and year out?' 'Even they don't stand it many years, I should think,' was my involuntary reply. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... and caught his guest's eyes directed straight upon his own. An involuntary shudder ran through him from head to foot. The face opposite him was deadly white and wore a dreadful expression of pain ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... will accomplish wonders, as one may see by observing people who have acquired this faculty, and who use it in their everyday life. But the following point should be remembered. Many persons have acquired the faculty of concentrating their attention, but have allowed it to become almost involuntary, and they become a slave to it, forgetting themselves and everything else, and often neglecting necessary affairs. This is the ignorant way of concentrating, and those addicted to it become slaves to their habits, instead of masters of their minds. They become day-dreamers, and absent-minded ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... though it be ever so idle. The drowning man does not voluntarily permit himself to sink below the surface. He still strives to keep afloat, though he may not have the slightest hope of being rescued. The effort is partly involuntary—it is the body that still continues to battle for life, after the mind has resigned all hope—the last stand that existence makes against annihilation. It may be a purely mechanical effort—perhaps it is so—but who ever saw ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... especially for the freedom it gave Negro women, and assuring him of their loyalty and support in this war for freedom. Their own immediate task, they decided, was to circulate petitions asking for an act of Congress to emancipate "all persons of African descent held in involuntary servitude." As Susan so tersely expressed it, they would "canvass the nation ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... them impatiently. Sykes and McGuire were silent. Then the young flyer took an involuntary step forward and looked squarely at the owner ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... 'companion' in War and Peace who inveigles the old Squire. And as for the mean and mercenary stepmothers of fiction, they can be collected by the score. That, no doubt, was how Pamela thought of her. So that, after her involuntary tears, Elizabeth ended in a laughter that was half ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The severe air of the Canadian spring seemed not pleasing to him, and he wore his coat hunched up about his neck, as though he were better used to milder climes. He accosted my young Englishman, and without hesitation the two started off together. As they did so I gave an involuntary exclamation. The taller man I had seen once before, the shorter, very ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... afternoon, to fly away with the Marechal de Luxembourg, which, on the stroke of five, he punctually did as per contract, taking with him the window and its stone framing into the bargain. The clothes and wig of the involuntary aeronaut were, in the handsomest manner, left upon the bed, as not included in the bill of sale. In this case also we have a copy of the articles of agreement, twenty-eight in number, by the last of which the Marechal ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... gentry whose titles date back to the Plantagenets. They look so strangely beside the brisk, dapper curtnesses in which metropolitan journals transact their daily squabbles! We never write one of them out without an involuntary addition of quotation-marks, as a New-Yorker puts to his introduction of his verdant cousin the supplementary, "From the Jerseys." Their etymological Herald's Office is kept by schoolmasters, and especially schoolma'ams, or, in the true heraldic tongue, "Preceptresses of Educational ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... to you that the sporty thing for you to do would be to return to Port Agnew from your involuntary exile and inspire me ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... and involuntary movement in navigation, wherein a ship, whilst scudding or sailing before the wind, unexpectedly turns her side to windward. It is generally occasioned by the difficulty of steering her, or by some disaster happening to ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... own will and on their own estimate; but this contribution threatening to fall infinitely short of their hopes, they soon made it compulsory, both in the rate and in the levy, beginning in fraud, and ending, as all the frauds of power end, in plain violence. All these devices to produce an involuntary will were under the pretext of relieving the more indigent classes; but the principle of voluntary contribution, however delusive, being once established, these lower classes first, and then all classes, were encouraged to throw off the regular, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... situation: Algeria is a transit country for men and women trafficked from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and involuntary servitude; Algerian children are trafficked internally for the purpose of domestic servitude or street vending tier rating: Tier 3 - Algeria did not report any serious law enforcement actions to punish traffickers who ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the judgment-warpers," Burris said. "Haenlingen's Mixture; it's more or less a new development, but the Russians probably know as much about it as we do. In large doses, the drug affects even the automatic nervous system and throws the involuntary functions out of whack; but it isn't usually ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... news for you, my dear. Our friend here has positively refused to leave. Oh—it's the air," he added as the doctor laughed, "and the charm of old nature. You know, doctor, it's contagious, this enchantment of the woods." Alice gave an involuntary start and the little ball of blue worsted in her lap dropped to the floor, and unravelled itself to the edge ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... side. But the menacing stillness of her visitors, and their bloody heads and blankets, now fully revealed by the blaze of the fire, seemed of such evil omen, that the good woman was evidently startled. Her step, at first quick and confident, began to falter, and with an involuntary shudder she approached her husband, who had resumed his seat. A minute passed in gloomy silence. Then the Indian again raised his head, but without looking up, and spoke ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... had moved on, too—down the dark passageway. Soon he came to a place so narrow that he squeezed through with difficulty. Here he stepped into a nest of rats, and one bit him in the ankle, causing him to give an involuntary cry of pain. The rats were all around, and he had to hiss quite loudly to ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... selecting for themselves—by anticipation—all the best reserved seats in heaven. When the Restoration took place, the inevitable reaction followed: society, having been condemned to a lengthened period of an involuntary piety—which sat anything but easily on it—rushed into the other extreme; all who wanted to be in the fashion professed but little morality, and it is to be feared that, for once in a way, their practice did not come short of their profession. ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... verge of crying out, "Can't you wait? I will come presently!" and my uncle looked up as if I had spoken. Perhaps he had as good as heard the words; he possessed what almost seemed a supernatural faculty of divining the thought of another—not, I was sure, by any effort to perceive it, but by involuntary intuition. He uttered no inquiring word, but a light sigh escaped him, which all but made me burst into tears. I was on one side of a widening gulf, ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... entitled "Poetic Spontaneity", wherein more arguments are advanced in her effort to prove the inferior importance of form and metre in poesy. According to Mrs. Renshaw, the essence of all genuine poetry is a certain spontaneous and involuntary spiritual or psychological perception and expression; incapable of rendition in any prescribed structure, and utterly destroyed by subsequent correction or alteration of any kind. That is, the bard must respond unconsciously to the noble impulse furnished ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... afternoon—she thought of her absent brother, who was still in the service of the Florentine Envoy to the Ottomon Porte, where that diplomatist was detained by the tardiness that marked the negotiations with which he was charged; and then she thought—thought too, with an involuntary sigh—of Francisco, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... "Aunt Woggles" was involuntary, I felt sure, and he had every right to visit a sad, tall Mr. Thomas. But I thought Diana ought to have told me that I was likely to meet him at—Well, a stranger's house; so how could she? The only thing that consoled me was that in ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... quickly at her from under his overhanging eyebrows, and met her bright upward look with an involuntary shake of the head and a slight sigh. Comfort was not for him, and he must not delude himself. But with a little laugh she put her hand on his arm, and as if administering reproof to a little child, she said ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... had much ado to suppress an involuntary cry of relief, which at this unexpected pronouncement had risen to ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... in that important locality, and repaired to his accustomed quarters at the house of Deacon Rumrill. That worthy person received him with a certain gravity of manner, caused by his recollection of the involuntary transgression into which Mr. Lindsay had led him by his present of Ivanhoe. He was, on the whole, glad to see him, for his finances were not yet wholly recovered from the injury inflicted on them by the devouring element. But he could not forget that his boarder had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... an involuntary shiver which he turned off as being from the temperature. "What are you going to show us? ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... business) and Miss Erskine, the first, or the first known to us, of those interesting correspondences with ladies which show him perhaps at his very best. For in them he plays neither jack-pudding, nor coxcomb, nor sentimentalist, nor any of the involuntary counterparts which men in such cases are too apt to play; and they form not the least of his titles to ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... exaltation as of one who looks from a desert into Paradise. He stood absorbed, unconscious of aught save the splendid vision above him. For a moment she stared at him in return, her eyes, held by his, slowly widening and the color quite gone from her face. With a slow, involuntary movement one white arm rose, and stiffened before her in a gesture of repulsion. The fan fell from her hand upon the floor with a click of breaking tortoise shell. The sound broke the spell, and with a strong shudder she turned ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... involuntary movement among the assembled multitude when Garcia prepared for the inevitable encounter. None knew, or could guess, who the knight might be. No device nor emblem, by which his identity would be discovered, could be traced on his helmet or on his shield! but the ease with which he surmounted ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... of the cook, footman, Jim, and myself, all the executive details were arranged; my aunt being, of course, kept in happy ignorance of our intentions. As soon as my respected relative uttered the preliminary snore of her afternoon siesta, Beauty made an involuntary exit out of the house, all the lower doors and windows having been carefully fastened. Then commenced a silent cat-hunt, a serio-comic drama in dumb show, with a crowded audience breathlessly gazing from the windows. The scenery was a series of dissolving ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... with a scuttle sufficiently suggestive of the animal she had mentioned, but the giddiness was all on the side of her involuntary hostesses. The restaurant seemed to be spinning round them; and the bill when it appeared did nothing to restore their composure. They were as nearly in tears as it is permissible to be during the luncheon hour in a really ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... be deceived in him. It was necessary to consider his actions to perceive the contradiction they bore to his words: it was necessary to be witness of certain moments, during which unforeseen and involuntary emotion forced him to give himself entirely up to his feelings; and whoever beheld him then, became aware of the stores of sensibility and goodness of which his noble ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... gazed in admiration, emitting exclamations of delight as the surgeon rapidly took one step after another. Then he was sent for something, and the head nurse, her chief duties performed, drew herself upright for a breath, and her keen, little black eyes noticed an involuntary tremble, a pause, an uncertainty at a critical moment in the doctor's tense arm. A wilful current of thought had disturbed his action. The sharp head nurse wondered if Dr. Sommers had had any wine that evening, but she dismissed this suspicion scornfully, as slander against the ornament ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the intelligence thus unwittingly conveyed to him, Paco forgot for a second the caution rendered imperative by his position. A half-smothered exclamation escaped him, and by an involuntary start he raised his head completely above the window-sill. As he did so, he fancied he saw Don Baltasar glance at the window, and in his turn slightly start; but the sun had already passed the horizon, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... he grasps his hand and counts slowly from zero to nine. After that he asks him to think of the second figure, and counts once more. Immediately after he will announce rightly the two digits. Again there is no mystery in it. He knows that the man who thinks of the figure five will make a slight involuntary movement when the five is reached in counting, and the same movement will occur at the seven in the second counting. If he is very well trained, he will not need the touching of the hand; he will perform the same experiment with ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... nothing, and Aurora dropped her outstretched arms, turned away with an involuntary, tremulous sigh, and after two or three hours ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... the University. Tutors came to give him lessons independently of myself, and I listened with envy and involuntary respect as he drew boldly on the blackboard with white chalk and talked about "functions," "sines," and so forth—all of which seemed to me terms pertaining to unattainable wisdom. At length, one Sunday before luncheon ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... An involuntary burst of applause testified how ardently the hearts of the patriots responded to these words. Some wrung Penn's hand again. Pomp meanwhile, erect, and proud as a prince, with his arms folded upon his massive and swelling chest, smiled with deep and quiet satisfaction ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... spite of a masculine air of superiority, joined with the Archbishops and Cabinet Ministers above referred to in their appreciation of his sister's judgment. After all, what business of his were the private affairs of his involuntary guest? He paid him a visit the next day, and found him lying on a couch by the sunny window, clad in dressing gown and slippers. Paul rose politely, though he winced ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... on Dan's lips, and one of his hands left the wheel in an involuntary gesture of resignation. Then he shut his teeth tight and talked ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... can never think fugitive while we are in life, because I KNOW, as to me, I could not willingly displease you,—while, as to you, your goodness and understanding will always see to the bottom of involuntary or ignorant faults—always help me to correct them. I have done now. If I thought you were like other women I have known, I should say so much!—but—(my first and last word—I believe in you!)—what you could and would give me, of your affection, you would give ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... pride by the kindness of Nina: she approached with involuntary reverence, and kissed the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... bad of George introducing you when he did;" and she placed her hand on her lover's shoulder, and looked in his face confidingly. In spite of the substance of her speech, and the circumstances under which Delme saw her, he could not avoid feeling an involuntary prepossession in her favour. Her manner had little of the polish of art, but much of nature's witching simplicity; and Sir Henry felt surprised at the ease and animation of the whole party. Acme ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... mysterious experiences; and I cannot say that I think that they are explicable upon any ordinary hypothesis; that one should thus create a sense of sympathy or misunderstanding by the exercise of involuntary imagination which should have a real power to affect one's relations with a person—here I feel myself on the threshold of a very ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... kilometers) of scattered fragments of land, but roaming over an ocean area of twenty-five million square miles, are not more at home in their palm-wreathed islets than on the encompassing deep. Migrations, voluntary and involuntary, make up their history. Their trained sense of locality, enabling them to make voyages several hundred miles from home, has been mentioned by various explorers in Polynesia. The Marshall Islanders set down their geographical knowledge in maps which are fairly correct as to ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... popular music, why, she wouldn't complain! Then she drank to their health, and Billy thought he saw the husband make a convulsive movement in his throat. It may have been caused by hysterical mortification—the woman was undeniably vulgar—but to the practical-minded Billy it was more like an envious involuntary swallowing at the sight of another's drinking. Then the pianist mounted his wooden throne, where, amid the dust and tramplings of low conquests and in the murky air, he began to toll out the bells of ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... from cold would die quickly when they had fallen to the frozen, ice-covered ground; the shaking due to the fall probably causing injury to the spinal cord, resulting in sudden general paralysis of the lower extremities, the bladder and the intestinal tract being affected to the extent of an involuntary voiding of ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... become cumulative as well as progressive; that, as despotism is striving to spread its raven wing over the earth, freedom must strengthen itself for the protection of the liberties of the world; that while three millions of Africans, only, are held to involuntary servitude for a time, to sustain the system of free trade, the freedom of hundreds of millions is involved in the preservation of the American Constitution; and that, as African emancipation, in ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... checked only an instant, for the top of the rock was knocked off by the force of the blow, and the ship passed swiftly on, but there could be no mistaking the significance of that shock. An involuntary shout of alarm from some,—a gasp, halt of surprise, half of horror, from others,—then a rush of active effort when the captain gave orders to man ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... as fresh and as brightly colored on the cheek-bone as a Nuremberg doll; her eyes were lively and bright; a closely-fitting bodice set off the slenderness of her waist. Her brow and temples were furrowed by a few involuntary wrinkles which, like Ninon, she would fain have banished from her head to her heel, but they persisted in tracing their zigzags in the more conspicuous place. The outlines of the nose had somewhat fallen away, and the tip had ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... could not have thus nourished a plan for retribution through the years unless, indeed, she had been insane, even as he had claimed—or innocent! The idea was appalling. He could not bear to admit the possibility of having been the involuntary inflicter of such wrong as to send the girl to prison for an offense she had not committed. He rejected the suggestion, but it persisted. He knew the clean, wholesome nature of his son. It seemed to him incredible that the boy could have thus given his heart to ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... Little Moccasin was compelled to proceed on his involuntary journey, which took him away from home ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... a lot and can help you." Only a turned back for an answer and the whip was already whistling down. It was time for the hard sell. "You had better hear me—because I know that what comes out first is best. Yeow!" This last was involuntary as ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... These involuntary reflections prompted him to watch the old man and the Baroness, whose meaning looks and certain sidelong glances cast at Adelaide displeased him. "Am I being duped?" was Hippolyte's last idea—horrible, scathing, for he believed it just enough to be tortured by it. He ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... and directing and ruling classes forced upon the working man. At first trade unionism was essentially defensive; it was the only possible defence of the workers, who were being steadily pressed over the margin of subsistence. It was a nearly involuntary resistance to class debasement. Mr. Vernon Hartshorn has expressed it as that in a recent article. But his paper, if one read it from beginning to end, displayed, compactly and completely, the unavoidable psychological development of the specialised labour case. He began in the mildest tones with ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Mademoiselle Godeau's heart was of a softer grain than her father's and he remembered distinctly that the young lady's face, when she crossed the drawing-room, had expressed an emotion the more true that it seemed involuntary. But was this emotion one of love, or only of sympathy? Or was it perhaps something of still less importance,—mere commonplace pity? Had Mademoiselle Godeau feared to see him die—him, Croisilles—or merely to be the cause of the death of a man, no matter ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... later day Irene discovered that this was a mark of supreme condescension. During the next six days the damsel lived amidst mortal terrors. Her companions envied her. The damsels of the harem do not love each other, they can only hate. Every day she beheld the Sultan, whose gentle face inspired involuntary respect, but the very idea of loving him filled her soul with horror. The Sultan spent the greater part of his time with his favourite wife, but it happened sometimes that he cast a handkerchief towards ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... all the others were in a dream. Prayer mastered them by main force. They did not bow, they were bent. There was something involuntary in their condition; they wavered as a sail flaps when the breeze fails. And the haggard group took by degrees, with clasping of hands and prostration of foreheads, attitudes various, yet of humiliation. Some strange reflection ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... yelping; that is, as a continuous sound akin to the bellowings or other cries of the various wild mammals. It is characteristic of all these primitive forms of utterance that they are, to a great extent, involuntary, and that when the outcry is begun it continues in a mechanical manner, with no trace of modulation arising from the conditions of the moment. In other words, these actions resemble, in a way, sneezing or hiccoughing in human kind; actions which are stimulated ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... well as commercial, interlocking to a degree that no disturbance of any part of the civilized globe can exist without seriously affecting the rest. A disturbance in one quarter must make quite innocent bystanders involuntary victims, to the serious detriment of spiritual peace and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... cynicism, except that ascribed to the priest—good easy man—who has lost a soul and gained an altar. A saint manque, whose legend is gruesome enough, but more pathetic than gruesome, becomes for the poet an involuntary witness of the Christian faith, and a type of the mystery of moral evil; but the psychological contrasts of the ambiguous creature, saint-sinner, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... After an involuntary pause for a few moments, owing to the deep emotion in the congregation, poor Josey was led forward. Minister and congregation seemed to make but slight impression upon him; Henry Ferguson was the charm throughout; he even turned his head, while the ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... themselves acknowledge that their customs, with regard to dying persons, occasion many involuntary murders; but their religion ordains that when the physician declares there is no hope left, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... We need seek no other origin for his bitterest satires in verse and prose. Great ugliness and physical defects certainly inspired him with great disgust, consequent upon his passion for the beautiful; but, at the same time, involuntary misfortunes excited his liveliest compassion, often testified by the most ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... second mate, the recipient of that almost involuntary mutter, could have told his captain that a man brought up in big ships may yet take a peculiar delight in what we should both then have called a small craft. Probably the captain of the big ship would not have understood ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... was involuntary. In an instant there had flashed upon Helen's mind a suspicion of the true state of things. The despondency of her cousin, the reflection upon the comfort of domesticity, connected themselves in her thought with trifling incidents which had before come under her observation; and his ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... such a thing would not be voluntary: thus the sailor does not will the casting of his cargo into the sea, considered universally and absolutely, but on account of the threatened danger of his life, he wills it. Wherefore this is voluntary rather than involuntary, as stated in the same passage. Therefore universally and absolutely speaking the angels do not will sin and the pains inflicted on its account: but they do will the fulfilment of the ordering of Divine justice in this matter, in respect of which some are ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Hop-Fields riot took place on Sunday afternoon, August 3, 1913. Growing discontent among the hop-pickers over wages, neglected camp-sanitation and absence of water in the fields had resulted in spasmodic meetings of protest on Saturday and Sunday morning, and finally by Sunday noon in a more or less involuntary strike. At five o'clock on Sunday about one thousand pickers gathered about a dance pavilion to listen to speakers. Two automobiles carrying a sheriff's posse drove up to this meeting, and officials armed with guns and revolvers attempted ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... January 21, 1868, the chief officer went at noon to take the sun's altitude. I climbed onto the platform, lit a cigar, and watched him at work. It seemed obvious to me that this man didn't understand French, because I made several remarks in a loud voice that were bound to provoke him to some involuntary show of interest had he understood them; but he ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... went alongside his vessel, and raised the screens at the port-holes, to look in on the deck. Before the captain had time to speak to them, the cook (either by accident or design) threw a ladleful of hot water over them, which causing an involuntary and sudden motion of their bodies to the other side of the boat, immediately upset, and all were immersed in the water. The confusion was then very great,—as those who at the time were under the stern, engaged in traffic, fearing some treachery, ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... enough, though at the time he perceived clearly that the shifting was accidental, as the days wore on, his memory became confused about it, until at last he was not sure—although he assured himself that he was sure—whether the movement had been absolutely involuntary. Then it is possible that Hill's dietary was conducive to morbid conscientiousness; a breakfast frequently eaten in a hurry, a midday bun, and, at such hours after five as chanced to be convenient, such meat as his means determined, usually in a chop-house in a back street ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... hand gently from mine, and with an involuntary modest shrinking turned towards Mrs. Ashleigh, drawing her mother towards herself, so that she became at ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and the residue of the territory not included in the State as it is now, was designated as Indiana Territory. William Henry Harrison was appointed governor. One of the earliest moves of the government of the new territory was to secure a modification of the ordinance of 1787 by which slavery or involuntary servitude was prohibited in the territory northwest of the Ohio River. It was ordered by a convention presided over by Gen. Harrison in 1802-3, that a memorial be sent to Congress urging a restriction of the ordinance of 1787. It was referred ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... words our little Delilah gave a slight, seemingly involuntary start, and her cheeks grew of as bright a red as her radishes. Ah, said I to myself; does that young girl understand French? It may be worth while to be careful what one says ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... have any; or in the paradoxical language of Rousseau,[71] declare that the only habit you have is the habit of having none: as all personal habits, if they have been of any long standing, must have become involuntary, the unconscious culprit may assert her innocence ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... but just so fallen as to half drape the dome from its very topmost point, and to pick out in perfect silver the great orb and the cross. When Syme saw it he suddenly straightened himself, and made with his sword-stick an involuntary salute. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... an ordinary way. He came up out of the water blowing and snorting like a porpoise with a cold in his head, and waded to the shore. 'Come down,' he shouted, which I did, not quite so far or fast as he did, but fast enough to make an involuntary plunge, head foremost, into the pool at the bottom. The occasion of his catastrophe was this: he had ascended so near the table rock, that his hands were upon it, and was lifting himself up, when, as his eyes came above the surface, the edge upon which his hands with most ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... getting nearer the point towards which she was making, without, however, pressing Evelyn to answer any direct question, leading her towards an involuntary decision. ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... gallantry has its conventions. There must be quite invaluable papers to be stolen and juggled with; an involuntary marriage either threatened or consummated; elopements, highwaymen, and despatch-boxes; and a continual indulgence in soliloquy and eavesdropping. Everybody must pretend to be somebody else, and young girls, in particular, must ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... beyond the ability of Master Jack, especially if he is old, it is to canter and at the same time preserve his equilibrium. It is evident that he is not built to make a rocking-chair of his back bone. So a little comedy was enacted, all involuntary on the part of the dramatis personae. Suddenly Turpentine—that was the name of the little gray burro ridden by my boy companion—took a header, sending his youthful rider sprawling to the ground, where he did not remain a moment longer than good manners demanded. ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... cover, and uttered an involuntary cry of delight, for before her there lay a great mass of finest tulle, made up into a bridal veil, and surmounted by a coronet of white ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... was loitering about the Charleston quays, my eye lighted on this vessel. There was something about the Chancellor that pleased me, and a kind of involuntary impulse took me on board, where I found the internal ar- rangements perfectly comfortable. Yielding to the idea that a voyage in a sailing vessel had certain charms beyond the transit in a steamer, and reckoning that with wind and wave in my favor there would be little material difference in time; ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... fun at him. In an instant, like a flash of light, he came at me. I saw his great claw over my head, and almost before I could jump back, a couple of heavy stones were driven violently off the top of the wall. To bolt and jump into the cart was almost an involuntary and instantaneous impulse on my part, though there was no need for haste, because the furious biped could ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... general a surplus of protection and care, immediately tend in the most marked way to develop variations, and are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities (also in monstrous vices). Now look at an aristocratic commonwealth, say an ancient Greek polis, or Venice, as a voluntary or involuntary contrivance for the purpose of REARING human beings; there are there men beside one another, thrown upon their own resources, who want to make their species prevail, chiefly because they MUST prevail, or else run the terrible ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Nevertheless, some topics have, if anything, become more indelicate than they were, and this is especially true of the discussion of income, of any discussion that tends, however remotely, to inquire, Who is it at the base of everything who really pays in blood and muscle and involuntary submissions for your freedom and magnificence? This, indeed, is almost the ultimate surviving indecency. So that it was with considerable private shame and discomfort that Lady Harman pursued even in her privacy the train ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... narrow pass. Huge rocks, hundreds of feet high, towered above and upon each side of us, their dark, moss-grown surface rendering the narrow passage so gloomy, that, in spite of myself, I felt a cold shiver run over me, that gave me an involuntary sensation of danger, which I ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... an impatient movement—quite involuntary—and Hafiz who was timid, sprang from Athalie's lap and retreated, tail waving, and ears flattened for expected ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... around, lo! there was the glorious old Atlantic stretching far before and around me! A shower was sweeping mistily along the horizon and I could trace the white line of the breakers that foamed at the foot of the cliffs. The scene came over me like a vivid electric shock, and I gave an involuntary shout, which might have been heard in all the valleys around. After a year and a half of wandering over the continent, that gray ocean was something to be revered and loved, for it clasped the shores ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... hermits—Dominican "dogs of the lord" from the gentle Umbrian plain—who obeyed the call. "Old men, and far from well, who have lived such a long time in their peace," they have made the laborious journey, and are now valiantly suppressing their homesickness, and unsaying their involuntary complaints. But not all the hermits summoned were equally docile. Visionary raptures could hardly be looked for in the streets of the metropolis: dear was the seclusion of wood and cell. Father William Flete, whom Catherine ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... to one of them, the other would seek to inspire me with loathing and contempt for her. In this manor-house, which they bought on the old doctor's death and to which they added the two wings, I was the involuntary torturer and their daily victim. Tormented as a child, and, as a young man, leading the most hideous of lives, I doubt if any one on earth ever suffered ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... execution of music is the abuse of the tremolo by both singers and instrumental performers. With singers, this quivering is often the result of a fatigued voice, in which case it is involuntary and is only to be deplored; but that is not the case with violin and violoncello players. It is a fashion with them born of a desire to make an effect at any cost, and is due to the depraved taste of the public for a passionate execution of music; but ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... until the moment when they fade away. The traits of childhood are accurately and humorously put in again and again: "Here John smiled, as much as to say, 'That would be foolish indeed.' " "Here little Alice spread her hands." "Here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted." "Here John expanded all his eyebrows, and tried to look courageous." "Here John slily deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes." "Here the ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... rays do not reach. At the moment when Kate joined her mother, a thick cloud passed above their heads, throwing a heavy shade over them, while a breeze sweeping up from the brook cast a sudden chill. With an involuntary shudder they pressed for a moment closer together. At the same time a servant ushered a tall, strange gentleman into the garden, "Mr Henry Meynell," he announced, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... Diaboliques, by my enemy Barbey d'Aurevilly. You will writhe with laughter. It is perhaps owing to the perversity of my mind, which likes unhealthy things, but the latter work seemed to me extremely amusing; it is the last word in the involuntary grotesque. In other respects, dead calm, France is sinking gently like a rotten hulk, and the hope of salvage, even for the staunchest, seems chimerical. You need to be here, in Paris, to have an idea of the ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... means masticating up to the point of involuntary swallowing. It does not mean forcibly holding the food in the mouth, counting the chews, or otherwise making a bore of eating. It merely means giving up the habit of forcing food down, and applies to all foods, even to liquid foods, which should ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... economy of means, render it more symbolical, more like the hieroglyph of its maker's mind, than any finished work can be. We may discover a greater mass of interesting objects in a painted picture or a carved statue; but we shall never find exactly the same thing, never the involuntary revelation of the artist's soul, the irrefutable witness to his mental and moral qualities, to the mysteries of his genius and to ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... of exercise knows that exercise develops a muscle; that repeated flexion and extension of the arm, for instance, will strengthen the muscles of that limb, not cause them to lose their contractibility. All muscle fibres are alike in structure, except that some are voluntary, others involuntary, but that difference is simply due to the difference in the source of nerve supply. There is no reason that can be shown why the muscles of the colon should lose their elasticity through exercise in contra-distinction to all the other muscles of the ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... the top of the hill, down which the road wound to the river, that the bridge was gone, and he paused for a moment with an involuntary feeling that it was useless to go forward; but remembering that his way led across, at all events, he walked down to the bank. There it ran, broad, rapid, and in places apparently deep. He looked up and down in vain: no lodged drift-wood; no fallen trees; no raft or ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... impression which his delicate regular little features would otherwise have conveyed. Indeed, I do not think he was quite of equal rank with the rest of the company, for his dress was inappropriate to the occasion (and he apparently was an invited, while I was an involuntary guest); and one or two of his gestures and actions were more like the tricks of an uneducated rustic than anything else. To explain what I mean: his boots had evidently seen much service, and had been re-topped, re-heeled, re-soled to the extent of cobbler's powers. Why should he have ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Voluntary and Involuntary. Deliberate Preference. Virtue and vice are voluntary. The virtues in detail:—Courage [Self-sacrifice implied ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... love for her many amiable qualities, he owned to having treated her very ill: and that at this time his life was one of profligacy, gambling, and poverty. She became with child of you; was cursed by her own parents at that discovery; though she never upbraided, except by her involuntary tears, and the misery depicted on her countenance, the author of her ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... departure from Elfinland; and the queen was not long in placing him upon Huntly Bank, where the birds were singing. She took leave of him, and to ensure his reputation bestowed on him the tongue which could not lie. Thomas in vain objected to this inconvenient and involuntary adhesion to veracity, which would make him, as he thought, unfit for church or for market, for king's court or for lady's bower. But all his remonstrances were disregarded by the lady; and Thomas the Rhymer, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... of the world have been drawn together in thought and involuntary co-operation by the stimulating power of trade. The exchange of goods always leads to the exchange of ideas. By commerce each nation may profit by the products of all others, and thus all may enjoy ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... of a canon of Christian writings by a process of selection[89] was, so to speak, a kind of involuntary undertaking of the Church in her conflict with Marcion and the Gnostics, as is most plainly proved by the warnings of the Fathers not to dispute with the heretics about the Holy Scriptures,[90] although the New Testament was already in existence. ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... juncture, to his astonishment, Maurice saw Schilsky and Louise. He uttered an involuntary exclamation, and Madeleine understood it. She stopped her gossip to say: "You thought she had gone, didn't you? Probably she has only changed her seat. They do that sometimes—he hates PARQUET." And, after a pause: "How cross ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... for him who speaks the truth is not to arouse indignation. That, at least, is a result, and however sad it may be, it bears witness to him who has spoken. Certain protests, despite their fury, are a sort of involuntary homage. The supreme trial for a voice is indifference. When John called himself a voice in the wilderness, he alluded to that external solitude where his voice was raised. But this solitude, on certain days was ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... may sometimes be impossible to recover one of them at the moment when wanted, by an act of voluntary recollection, some association may bring it unexpectedly and vividly before us. Memory plays us many strange tricks, both when we wake and when we dream. It revives, by an involuntary process, an infinite variety of past scenes, faces, events, ideas, emotions, passions, conversations, and written or printed pages, all of which we may have fancied had passed ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... War or it might have caused such a preponderance of slave commonwealths as to make the rebellion successful. The Ordinance of 1784 was antecedent to the more important Ordinance of 1787, which carried the famous sixth article that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime should exist in that territory. At first, it was generally deemed feasible to establish Negro colonies on that domain. Yet despite the assurance of the Ordinance of 1787 conditions were such that one could not determine exactly whether ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... his Anatolian sandjak, till, in the spring of 1656, we find him accompanying Egri-Mohammed on his way to the Porte to assume the vizirat: from which, in less than four months, he was removed to make way for his quondam protege, in whose elevation he had thus been an involuntary instrument. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Micky Maguire was not seen in his accustomed haunts. During his involuntary residence at the Island he often brooded over the treachery of Gilbert, to whom his present misfortune was due. He felt that he had been selfishly left to his fate by his equally guilty confederate. It had certainly ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... had brought the involuntary blood to his cheeks, which annoyed him. But he invited her to say why cheerfulness was a vice. She replied that no one should look success—as ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the last German submarine came through the lock-gates at Zeebrugge, with her crew fallen in on the fore superstructure, her captain called for three cheers,—'As that's the last you'll see of Flanders.' The cheers were given very heartily—an involuntary tribute to the four years' work of the ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... With an involuntary sigh of relief the people turned from the silent actors in the drama taking place under the Beautiful Gate, to learn who had spoken. A third time the shout rang out: "Thou art the King!" Now the people saw. It was a fisherman supported ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... time might have listened longer to his talk; but now I must be making some arrangement with Doctor Bainbridge regarding a possible interview with Peters; so I said to Arthur that he might take the volume of Poe and keep it for two or three days, which offer he gladly accepted; and with an involuntary wandering of the eye toward the brandy ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... she spurned. By one of those sublime movements, which history should recommend to imitation, and preserve in eternal memorial, she repelled her invaders. Though warmly attached to the cause of England, we have felt an involuntary movement of sympathy with that generous outburst of liberty, and we have no desire to conceal it. No doubt France is great, much greater than a good Englishman ought to wish, but that ought not to be a motive for violating solemn treaties. But because France ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... Morgan had half started from his seat, and was between rising and sitting. Then he rose with a slow, involuntary movement, while his face worked terribly between bewilderment and abandonment to illusion. He tottered forward a few steps to the edge of the moonlight, and stood peering at the approaching couple with a hand raised to shade his eyes and a dazed, unearthly smile on his face. The ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... Briefly, I continue to prefer the writer as a criminal, rather than a psychic, "Fat Boy." After all, once grant your ghost and anyone can conjure it, with appropriate circumstance, at the proper moments. Wyndfell Hall was full enough of ghosts, all ready to appear at the voluntary or involuntary instance of a young lady named Bubbles, who was one of the Christmas house-party and the owner of a rather uncomfortable gift of spook-raising. But beyond making themselves an occasional nuisance to the guests I couldn't find that the phantoms did anything ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... bright Minister on High, Command the throbbing Breast, and watry Eye, And, as our captive Spirits ebb and flow, Smile at the Tempests you have rais'd below: The Face of Guilt a Flush of Vertue wears, And sudden burst the involuntary Tears: Honour's sworn Foe, the Libertine with Shame, Descends to curse the sordid lawless Flame; The tender Maid here learns Man's various Wiles, Rash Youth, hence dread the Wanton's venal Smiles— Sure 'twas by brutal Force ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... might be out on some preaching errand, and perhaps she would have left Hetty at home. Adam could not help hoping this, and as he recognized the cottage by the roadside before him, there shone out in his face that involuntary smile which belongs to the expectation of ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... humbly," he answered, with intense contrition. "May I assure you that the act was wholly involuntary and that I am ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... Wilmet was perhaps the worst of it to Felix. True, she forbore to reprove or lament when she understood that the deed was actually accomplished, and saw that he was fatigued and out of spirits; but her 'Indeed! Oh! Felix!' and her involuntary gesture and attitude of dismay, went as far as a volume of reproach and evil augury. He was weary beyond vindicating himself or Edgar; but the next morning, when Wilmet and Angela had started for school, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on the point of entering, yielded to an involuntary sentiment of curiosity instead, and remained ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... ice, but the sky overcast and glooming, the clouds ever coming lower, and Evans' is now decidedly the slowest unit, though Bowers' is not much faster. We keep up and overhaul either without difficulty. It was an enormous relief yesterday to get steady going without involuntary stops, but yesterday and this morning, once the sledge was stopped, it was very difficult to start again—the runners got temporarily stuck. This afternoon for the first time we could start by giving one good heave ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... deeper selves, attribute the obvious effects of their action to their chance ideas; but when the process is wholly internal the real factors are more evenly represented in consciousness and the magical, involuntary nature of life is better perceived. My hand, guided by I know not what machinery, is at this moment adding syllable to syllable upon this paper, to the general fulfilment, perhaps, of my felt intent, yet giving that intent an articulation wholly unforeseen, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... like amazed Seven-sleepers awakening; awakening amazed at the noise they themselves make. So strangely is Freedom, as we say, environed in Necessity; such a singular Somnambulism, of Conscious and Unconscious, of Voluntary and Involuntary, is this life of man. If any where in the world there was astonishment that the Federation Oath went into grape-shot, surely of all persons the French, first swearers and then shooters, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... half as guard, half as maid-servant, Tara was generally Elza's only companion. And then, one evening when Tara's smouldering jealousy broke forth in Tarrano's presence and Elza uttered an involuntary cry of fear, Tara ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... English fleet, well officered and manned, rode idly at anchor in New York harbour. Inspiring as the spectacle was, however, it did not appreciably help matters. On the contrary, it created so much friction among the people that the conservative business men—resenting involuntary taxation, yet wanting, if possible with honour, reconciliation and peace with the mother country—organised, in May, 1774, a body of their own known as the Committee of Fifty-one, which thought the time had come to interrupt the assumed leadership of the Committee of Fifty. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... marriage and separation, binding and dividing, hope, expectation, disappointment, renunciation. Here were these two persons, at that time without prospect for the future, now standing before her, so near their wished-for happiness, and an involuntary sigh escaped out of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... dog created a surprise in the block. A woman watering plants in an opposite window gave an involuntary shout and dropped a flower- pot. A man in another window leaned perilously out to watch the flight of the dog. A woman who had been hanging out clothes in a yard began to caper wildly. Her mouth was filled with clothes-pins, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... indeed were the men when they staggered into Sydney, and "an involuntary tear started from the eye of friendship and compassion" when the Governor learnt how nearly Flinders and his friends had ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... Lieut. T. O. Nicholls and his team, who found themselves on a craft that dragged her anchors and was short of water and stores. Fourteen days elapsed before they were able to return to Anzac. Those who suffered from sea-sickness certainly did not enjoy these involuntary trips. ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... in the black eyes, an involuntary twist of the muscles of the face, were a sudden revelation to him. He clutched hold of Ambrose with a sudden grasp; Ambrose too looked and recoiled for a moment, while the colour ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quite right, Ware. I'll ask him about the matter. Humph!" The ex-detective stopped for a moment. "This involuntary ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... seemed resolved to defy every effort of the warrior to remove her. Not a word was uttered on either side; but in the fierce smile that curled the lip of the savage, there spoke a language even more terrible than the words that smile implied. Sir Everard could not suppress an involuntary shudder; and when at length Wacousta, after a short but violent struggle, succeeded in again securing and bearing off his prize, the wretchedness of soul of the former ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... up, and close his master's eyes in death. The poor faithful fellow was in the utmost distress; he reproached himself with his involuntary cry—"Count of Nideck—what are you doing?" and tore ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... was an involuntary raising of eyebrows to see, if possible, how he took it; it being his own immediate succession rather than his father's death. He was grave, of course, but there was a light in his eyes that Clare could not understand. Had he some premonition ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... within an hour, and Abbot was so greatly distressed by the event that he fell into a state of settled melancholy. His enemies maintained that the fatal issue of this accident disqualified him for his office, and argued that, though the homicide was involuntary, the sport of hunting which had led to it was one in which no clerical person could lawfully indulge. The king had to refer the matter to a commission of ten, though he said that "an angel might have miscarried after this sort.'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... use of the wings and knobs, like myrtle berries, is for the security of the internal parts, closing the orifice and neck of the bladder and by their swelling up, to cause titillation and pleasure in those parts, and also to obstruct the involuntary passage of ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... to mine. It was so much taller in its haunches than its shoulders—its fore legs were so disproportionately small—that in walking, its hind feet invariably took precedence. It was perpetually pitching forward over its pointed, inoffensive nose, and recovering itself always, after these involuntary somersaults, with the gravest astonishment. To add to its preposterous appearance, one of its hind feet was adorned by a shoe of Sylvester's, [Footnote: Sylvester: the author's friend in whose cabin ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... of such involuntary reflection with me has been the perception that London was and is and shall be, and New York is and shall be, but has hardly yet been. New York is therefore one-third less morally, as she is one-third less ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... frank and kind manner. She hoped that Algernon's death might have softened his heart. He sat and talked for some time, addressing Jane and Miss Mary, but, except the formal bow which he gave on entering, not noticing May, though he now and then turned an involuntary glance at ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... are observable in his effusions; and a less vigorous fancy, with more taste, would have produced more elegance and uniformity; but, as passages are softened or expunged during the cooler moments of reflection, the understanding is gratified at the expence of those involuntary sensations, which, like the beauteous tints of an evening sky, are so evanescent, that they melt into new forms before they can be analyzed. For however eloquently we may boast of our reason, man must often be delighted he cannot tell why, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... re-crossed his mind, bringing now an unwonted sting of anger, now the old cruel pain of last night. The thought of the hateful complication introduced into his already sufficiently involved affairs by the involuntary kidnapping of his friend's wife filled him with a sense of impotent irritation, very foreign to his temper; and as certain looks and words of the unwished-for prisoner flashed back upon him, a hot colour rose, even in his solitude, to his wholesome ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... debtor class to pay, beyond their contracts, the premium on gold at the date of their purchase, and would bring bankruptcy and ruin to thousands. Fluctuation, however, in the paper value of the measure of all values (gold) is detrimental to the interests of trade. It makes the man of business an involuntary gambler, for in all sales where future payment is to be made both parties speculate as to what will be the value of the currency to be paid and received. I earnestly recommend to you, then, such legislation as will insure a gradual return to specie ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... in another moment I was alone on the high-road. My thoughts turned long upon the young man I had left; mixed with a sort of instinctive compassionate foreboding of an ill future for one with such habits and in such companionship, I felt an involuntary admiration, less even for his good looks than his ease, audacity, and the careless superiority he assumed over a comrade ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... turned round, and Cherry uttered a little involuntary cry, whilst the name "Cuthbert" sprang to her lips so fast that she was not sure that she had not uttered it aloud. Her eyes were fixed upon the face of the dark-eyed girl who had ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... first involuntary start of surprise and indignation she stood quite still, but with a defiant chin well elevated and her shoulders back, and if she had in her turn grown pale, it was less with fright than with the contained exasperation that lighted the ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... intruder. Many of them now recognized her as the woman who had assaulted the governor with frightful language, as he passed by the window of her prison; they knew, also, that she was adjudged to suffer death, and had been preserved only by an involuntary banishment into the wilderness. The new outrage, by which she had provoked her fate, seemed to render further lenity impossible; and a gentleman in military dress, with a stout man of inferior rank, drew toward the door of the meeting-house, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... a quick, involuntary look at Chase's face. Browne's tall fellow-countryman was now leaning against the rail beside her chair. She saw a look of surprised amusement flit across his face, succeeded almost instantly by a hard, dark frown of displeasure. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... astonishment that my fellow-mortals should be so grievously distressed by the invisible powers of darkness. For certainly all considerate persons who beheld these things must needs be convinced, that their motions in their fits were preternatural and involuntary, both as to the manner, which was so strange as a well person could not (at least without great pain) screw their bodies into, and as to the violence also, they were preternatural motions, being much beyond the ordinary force of the same persons when they were in their ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... he's gone," said Amy, with an approving smile. The next minute her face fell as she glanced about the empty room, adding, with an involuntary sigh, "Yes, I am glad, but how ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... superstitious and as easily frightened as a child; she starts and gives an involuntary little cry as the lightning flashes before her eyes, and the thunder seems to shake her as she kneels. She turns paler and paler as the storm continues, and can scarcely hear the concluding psalms, prayers, and exhortation, for her fear of the ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... one on which Annie sat with her back towards them. If it was not the real object of his expedition, at least he took the opportunity to give Annie a spiteful dig with his elbow; which, operating even more powerfully than he had intended, forced from her an involuntary cry. Now the master indulged in an occasional refinement of the executive, which consisted in this: he threw the tawse at the offender, not so much for the sake of hurting—although that, being a not infrequent result, may be supposed to have had a share in the intention—as of ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... says he, what is there in thee, that can thus affect the Heart of such a Man as me against my Will!—Whence these involuntary Tremors, and fear of giving mortal Offence! What art thou that, acting in the Breast of a feeble Woman, canst strike so much awe into a Spirit so intrepid which never before, no, not in my first Attempt, young as I then was, and frighted at ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... had been sitting unnoticed with her back to the visitors, at the head of the child's cot in one corner of the room, stood up and slowly turned around. Marian and Esterbrook Elliott both started with involuntary surprise. Esterbrook caught his breath like a man suddenly awakened from sleep. In the name of all that was wonderful, who or what could this girl be, so little in harmony with ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... at it with eyes that suddenly contracted. Clever dissembler that he was, he could not prevent an involuntary start. He licked his lips, and Cleggett judged that perhaps his mouth felt a little dry. But these were the only signs he made. Indeed, when he spoke it was with something almost like an ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis |
