"Spontaneous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and, after rest, it contains but a very small portion of any thing that could prove pernicious, or impede any manufacture. It is also excellently fitted for sea-store; but it then undergoes a remarkable spontaneous change, when preserved in wooden casks. No water carried to sea becomes putrid sooner than that of the Thames. But the mode now adopted in the navy of substituting iron tanks for wooden casks, tends ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... never consorted with sech ez skellingtons. He lit out straight! He made tracks! He never stopped till he reached Colbury, an' thar he told his tale. Then the sheriff he tuk a hand in the game. Skellingtons, he said, didn't grow on trees spontaneous, an' he hed an official interes' in human relics out o' place. So he kem,—the tree is 'twixt hyar an' my house thar on the rise,—an', folks! the tale war plain. Some man chased off 'n the face of the yearth, hid out from the law,—that's the ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... however, is that men also are able, by applying a means in their power, to produce milk from grass and herbs; for when they wish to procure a more abundant supply of milk they feed the cow more plentifully and thus obtain more milk from her.—For these reasons the spontaneous modification of the pradhana cannot be proved from the instance of grass ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... were merely full. The chief characteristic of his expression was its mobility, but it was the mobility of an actor who knows every emotion that the muscles of a face can command. Sansevero's face, also changeable as an April day, was the spontaneous expression of unconscious mood. Giovanni was of a type to smile sweetly when most angry, or to assume an air of sulkiness when at heart he might be well content. Just now, with an assumption of extreme indifference, he turned ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... that we should have a consciousness of God's presence with us; I still believe and teach it; but I must admit that the most spiritual ofttimes can not perceive God on either hand. They may fear that they are lifeless, because there is not a fresh and sweet spontaneous feeling in their souls. It seems to them that they merely go through the form of worshiping God instead of being in the Spirit. They pray, but their prayers seem to have no depth of heart. In consequence they may ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... to the Son of David! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!" Writers who have cited the choice of Barabbas in the place of Christ as an instance of misguided popular judgement, overlook the fact that this choice was not spontaneous; it was the Chief Priests who delivered Christ "from envy" and who "moved the people that Pilate should rather release unto them Barabbas." Then the people obediently cried out, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... of them, which, with my own recollections, leads me to adopt the opinion of Heinrich von Sybel concerning the much discussed and still unanswered question, whether the Berlin revolution was the result of a long-prepared conspiracy or the spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm for liberty among the citizens. He says: "Both these views are equally well founded, for only the united effort of the two forces could insure a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... FRIEND BLISS,—I have been received in a sort of tremendous way, tonight, by the brains of London, assembled at the annual dinner of the Sheriffs of London—mine being (between you and me) a name which was received with a flattering outburst of spontaneous applause when the long list ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... spontaneous gallantry, retorted that she was justified in such parsimony, since her daughter's eyes supplied such fairy illumination, and upon her cheeks was a bloom brighter than many geraniums. But this compliment she unhappily mistook as an insinuation that her complexion ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... theory of poetry are contained in the notion that the poet is inspired. Genius is often said to be unconscious, or spontaneous, or a gift of nature: that 'genius is akin to madness' is a popular aphorism of modern times. The greatest strength is observed to have an element of limitation. Sense or passion are too much for the 'dry light' of intelligence which mingles with them and becomes discoloured ...
— Ion • Plato
... Katherine to her needlework, and advanced to meet him. At her spontaneous act of welcome a light came into his eyes. He removed from his lips the short corn-cob ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... a fatal distrust in the minds of the people. The indulgence which has been so liberally imputed to her as a merit was, in truth, extorted from her weakness and timidity by the courageous opposition of the nation; she had never departed from the strict letter of the royal commands by her own spontaneous resolution; never did the gentle feelings of innate humanity lead her to misinterpret the cruel purport of her instructions. Even the few concessions to which necessity compelled her were granted with an uncertain and shrinking hand, as if fearing ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... minutes, and fell gently in a vineyard at a distance of about a mile and a half from the place of its ascension. So memorable a feat lighted up the glow of national vanity, and the two Montgolfiers were hailed and exalted by the spontaneous impulse of their fellow-citizens." ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... fault-finding with their lot in life, or their daily surroundings and circumstances. Their conversation was joyous, cheerful, and helpful to one another. Nor was it forced and out of place, but rather it was the natural, spontaneous outflow of loving, humble, glad hearts filled with the Spirit, in union with Jesus, and in love and sympathy with ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... the smile played over her countenance like the sickly gleam of a wintry clay through clouds, and seemed rather to chill than to warm what before was cold. It was a formal tribute to the customs of society, not the spontaneous outburst of joy. She presented the tips of her fingers with all the grace of an accomplished lady, to Holden, and meant that her reception of him should be kind, but the hand was cold, and apparently as unfeeling as marble, and the Solitary dropped it as ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... world of ready wealth, Our minds and hearts to bless— Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Truth ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... same unaffected, spontaneous Tim as of yore, and hugely embarrassed by any reference to his winning of the Military Cross, firmly refusing to discuss the manner ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... been martyrs more exalted above the circumstances of their fate than Jeanne. She was no abstract heroine. She felt every pang to the depth of her natural, spontaneous being, and the humiliation and the deep distress of having been abandoned in the sight of men, perhaps the profoundest pang of which nature is capable. "He trusted in God that he would deliver him: let him deliver him if he will have him." That ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... others yet unknown or unregarded. The principal articles obtained by the traders are sarsaparilla, Peruvian bark, annatto, and other dyes, vanilla, Brazil nuts, Tonka beans, hammocks, palm fibre, and several other kinds of spontaneous vegetable productions. Monkeys, toucans, macaws, parrots, and other beautiful birds, also enter into the list of Amazonian exports; while the imports consist of such manufactured articles as may tempt the cupidity of the savage, or the weapons necessary to him either in war ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... law and public opinion are more nearly the spontaneous outcome of the life of a community, they may with more justice be taken as expressions of the social will of that community as it is at the time. Yet, even here, we ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... way into the moral codes of nations, have arisen from the arbitrary disposition of certain individuals happening to be in authority at particular junctures. Even the general community, acting in a spontaneous manner, imposes needless restraints upon itself, delighting more in the exercise of power, than in the freedom of ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... present in a state of equilibrium, which cannot have been attained until all the spontaneous combustions or oxygenations possible in an ordinary degree of temperature had taken place.... To illustrate this abstract view of the matter by example: Let us suppose the usual temperature of the earth a little changed, and it is raised only to the degree of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... carried away by his genius, or delivering passionate utterances from the Delphic tripod, but the master of all his powers, the conscious and skillful ruler of his own inspirations. If the sense of spontaneous freshness is sometimes lost, perhaps there is a gain in breadth and finish. If Schubert has unequaled melody and dramatic force, Schumann drastic and pointed intensity, Robert Franz deserves the palm for the finish and symmetry of ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... kitchen-gardens is a semi-artificial plant, the produce of our agricultural ingenuity quite as much as of the niggardly gifts of nature. Spontaneous vegetation supplied us with the long-stalked, scanty-leaved, ill-smelling wilding, as found, according to the botanists, on the ocean cliffs. He had need of a rare inspiration who first showed faith in this rustic clown and proposed to improve it ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... about duck shooting and legal history, about the Roman occupation of Lincoln and the relations of country gentlemen with their wives, when, from all this disconnected rambling, there suddenly formed itself in his mind the idea that he would ask Mary to marry him. The idea was so spontaneous that it seemed to shape itself of its own accord before his eyes. It was then that he turned round and made use of ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... elsewhere in the master's own work, who can fail to admire the natural and unstudied grouping of the figures, the artlessness of the whole, the loving simplicity with which the painter has done his work? All is spontaneous; the spirit is not that of a laborious imitator, painfully seeking "effects" from another's inspiration; sincerity and naivete are too apparent for this to be the work of any but a quite young artist, and one whose style is so thoroughly ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... spring of 1897 I gave a glass ball to a young lady, previously a stranger to me, who was entirely unacquainted with crystal gazing, even by report. She had, however, not infrequent experience of spontaneous visions, which were fulfilled, including a vision of the Derby (Persimmon's year), which enriched her friends. In using the ball she, time after time, succeeded in seeing and correctly describing persons and ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... missionary's abode." They would take no denial; and forthwith forming themselves into gangs, some set to work to clear away the ruins, while others went off to cut fresh uprights and rafters to replace those that were broken. It was gratifying, as being so purely spontaneous, and showing the high estimation in which they held their missionary for his work's sake. Thus, aided by zealous ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... is in the contrary direction. The larger the scale on which manufacturing operations are carried on, the more cheaply they can in general be performed. As manufactures, however, depend for their materials either upon agriculture, or mining, or the spontaneous produce of the earth, manufacturing industry is subject, in respect of one of its essentials, to the same law as agriculture. But the crude material generally forms so small a portion of the total cost that any tendency ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... of the Church with its antiquated methods; a new, a creative epoch was dawning; the civilisation of Europe, opposed to all barbarism and orientalism, rose like a brilliant star on the horizon of the world. Spontaneous feeling for the race, for nature and for the divine verities ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... Testing Machines.—VII., Lubricating Greases. Rosin Oil, Anthracene Oil, Making Greases, Testing and Analysis of Greases.—VIII., Lubrication. Friction and Lubrication, Lubricant, Lubrication of Ordinary Machinery, Spontaneous Combustion of Oils, Stainless Oils, Lubrication of Engine Cylinders, Cylinder Oils.—Appendices. A. Table of Baume's Hydrometer—B. Table of Thermometric Degrees—C. Table ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... notable lack of unconsciousness—of pure singing quality. Such things as Pinkney's "Health" and Holmes's "Old Ironsides" are the exception. The poems are composed cleverly, but they do not quite sing themselves to their own music. The best American verse, while not insincere, is seldom wholly spontaneous. This is not saying that much spontaneous verse has not been written in this country; much has been, but the singer's voice has too often been uncultivated, and ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... mode of conception may seem incompatible with the systematic adherence to a fixed class of subjects referred to in an earlier chapter. But it by no means is so. With Mr. Browning the spontaneous creative impulse conforms to ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the fatal facility for self-advertisement. Things he did, no matter how adventitious or spontaneous, struck the popular imagination as remarkable. And the latest thing he had done was always on men's lips, whether it was being first in the heartbreaking stampede to Danish Creek, in killing the record baldface ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... proved capable. Without undue confidence, I can say that I achieved a triumph, and put to rout the various uncomplimentary conjectures that the world had hazarded in regard to me. Society opened its arms to me as a returning prodigal, and my revulsion of feeling was all the more spontaneous from the fact, that, if some of my former acquaintances were as frivolous as ever, they had learned to conceal their emptiness by an adaptability which made them agreeable companions. There was a keen satisfaction, too, in the consciousness which became mine, ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... their invitations for me to go to the Assembly to hear an interesting discussion, which was to be brought forward upon the King's spontaneous ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... "Good heavens! do you make no account of the spontaneous tendencies of genius? Is Nature a mere vulgar cook, turning out men, like soups, from one common stock, with only a dash of flavoring here and there to give them variety? No—Nature is a subtle chemist, and her workshop, depend on it, is stored with ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... have said it must be quite evident that the principle of knightly honor has no essential and spontaneous origin in human nature. It is an artificial product, and its source is not hard to find. Its existence obviously dates from the time when people used their fists more than their heads, when priestcraft had enchained the human intellect, the much bepraised ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... imprecations which were none the less fervid for being slowly and haltingly uttered. The dark-skinned, unwholesome-looking Bread-winner found a singular delight in tormenting the powerful young fellow. He felt a spontaneous hatred for him, for many reasons. His shapely build, his curly blond hair and beard, his frank blue eye, first attracted his envious notice; his steady, contented industry excited in him a desire to pervert a workman whose daily life was a practical argument ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... greenbacks. There is no doubt that the ideal principle of democratic progress demands the absolute non-interference of Government in all enterprises whose benefit accrues to a part of its citizens, or which can be stimulated into life by the spontaneous operation of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... men once lived on the spontaneous fruits of the earth, just as other animals do. In that stage of existence a man was just like the brutes. His existence was at the sport of Nature. He got what he could by way of food, and ate what he could get, but he depended on finding what Nature gave. He could wrest nothing from ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... on the victorious side. I was, no matter whether deservedly so or not, a representative of that side of the controversy. It is a significant and gratifying fact that Confederates should have joined heartily in this spontaneous move. I hope the good feeling inaugurated may continue to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... self-division. There are, in fact, types of animals, as the Zooephyta, where these appear the normal modes of reproduction, and the egg only an exceptional process. From this he thinks it but a slight step to admit the possibility of spontaneous generation, and he accordingly does admit it. Touching the development theory, his conclusion is that the barriers between the five great divisions of the animal world are insurmountable, but "that, by the multiplication and intensifying of individual ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... bright effusion with all her spontaneous enthusiasm. Bostwick supplied her with the address, and presently took the letter in his hand. He had much to do at the bank, he informed her, by way of preparing for the deal. He promised ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... trifling though it was, served rather to increase than to diminish my nervousness; but upon my entering the assembly hall, where my young friends were gathered together awaiting my coming, all sense of trepidation vanished, so spontaneous and uproarious was their greeting. The chorus of lusty young voices raised in instantaneous cheering was to me sufficient reward for all the pains to which I had been put. One and all, they manifested the deepest interest in the ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... New York and embraced her rapturously. Patsy was really fond of Beth; but it was her nature to be fond of everyone, and her cousin, escaping from her smacking and enthusiastic kisses, told herself that Patsy would have embraced a cat with the same spontaneous ecstacy. That was not strictly true, but there was nothing half hearted or halfway about Miss Doyle. If she loved you, there would never be an occasion for you to doubt the fact. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... names, this is teaching superstition. It is unfortunate to use the word; so few people have read history, and so many have dipped into little atheistic manuals, that the majority will rush to a conclusion, and suppose the labour lost. And far from that: These semi-spontaneous superstitions, varying with the sect of the original evangelist and the customs of the island, are found in practice to be highly fructifying; and in particular those who have learned and who go forth again to teach them offer an example to the world. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... active life, leading to the free use of the limbs and lungs, affects the shape and proportions of the whole body. It is probable that some breeds, such as the semi-monstrous niata cattle, and some peculiarities, such as being hornless, &c., have appeared suddenly from what we may call a spontaneous variation; but even in this case a rude kind of selection is necessary, and the animals thus characterized must be at least partially separated from others. This degree of care, however, has sometimes been taken even in little-civilized districts, where we should least have expected ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... my life; yet I could not prevail upon myself to shake off a being who seemed to hang upon me for support. In truth, the generous traits of character that beamed through all this gloom had penetrated to my heart. His bounty was lavish and open-handed. His charity melting and spontaneous. Not confined to mere donations, which often humiliate as much as they relieve. The tone of his voice, the beam of his eye, enhanced every gift, and surprised the poor suppliant with that rarest and sweetest of charities, the charity not merely of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... vociferous, so spontaneous and hearty, that nothing approaching it ever had been heard at The Colonial. But it stopped as suddenly, for in the middle of it Pinkey gathered himself and sprang through the air like a flying-squirrel, to bowl the Smith boy over. "You said you wouldn't tell about that 'Craw de gare,' ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... possible she would have detained her daughter forever in the physique of a child; she feared the time when Mary would become too evidently a woman, when all kinds of equalities would come to hinder her spontaneous and active affection. A woman might object to be nursed, while a girl would not; Mrs. Makebelieve feared that objection, and, indeed, Mary, under the stimulus of an awakening body and a new, strange warmth, was ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... all sharks, save me from the ghastly White Shark. For though we should hate naught, yet some dislikes are spontaneous; and disliking is not hating. And never yet could I bring myself to be loving, or even sociable, with a White Shark. He is not the sort of creature to enlist ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... would be jolly decent of you." The wistfulness vanished in a laugh that was quick and musical, wholly spontaneous. ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... as it contemplated the Cross of Christ, has been rapt itself into a passion of gratitude, an ecstasy of wonder and of love, which is beautiful, honourable, just, and in the deepest sense most rational, whenever it is spontaneous ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... Australians and South African soldiers on leave to cheer on the new-coming Americans with such spontaneous expressions as "Come on, you Yanks," "Now let's get 'em," and "Eat 'em up, ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... in a change of expression, produced one knew not how, one phase melting into another like flitting lights upon a stream in woodland. It was a subtly morbid physiognomy, and impressed one with a sense of vague trouble. There was none of the spontaneous pleasure in life which gave Lydia's face such wholesome brightness; no impulse of activity, no resolve; all tended to preoccupation, to emotional reverie. She had not yet completed her seventeenth year, and ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... whisky. But he believed that he would not find them as bad as he had pictured them at first, even though the Nest was a horrible place for the girl. Her running away was the most natural thing in the world—for her. She was an amazingly spontaneous little creature, full of courage and a fierce determination to fight some one, but probably to-day or to-morrow she would have been forced to turn homeward, quite exhausted with her adventure, and nibbling roots along with Tara to keep herself alive. The thought of her hunger and of ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... certainly marvellously agreeable. His talk (for conversation is not the word for it) is totally unlike that of anybody else I ever heard. It comes forth without the slightest effort, provided he is in spirits and disposed to talk at all. It is the spontaneous outpouring of one of the most fertile and restless of minds, easy, familiar, abundant, and discursive. The qualities and peculiarities of mind which mar his oratorical, give zest and effect to his conversational, powers; ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... from his defense of the Revolution, in its historical development, to a bare faith in the abstract idea. He clung to theories, the free and joyous movement of his sympathies ceased; opinions stifled the spontaneous life of the spirit, these opinions were tested and retested by the intellect, till, in the end, exhausted by inward debate, he yielded up moral questions in despair ... by process of the understanding alone Wordsworth could attain no vital body of truth. Rather ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... Constitution), while the importation of slaves into the South continued to be carried on by Northern merchants and Northern ships, without interference in the traffic from any quarter, until it was prohibited by the spontaneous action of the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... each Osmia in the right half had bored to the right, without touching the partition on the left. The shape of the orifices and the surface condition of the partition showed this, if proof were necessary. There had been a spontaneous decision, one half in favour of the left, one half in favour of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... well in a pair o' trousers as in them," she continued in the same unimpassioned voice, so that the unfriendly criticism of the Dewy family seemed to have been more normal than spontaneous. "Such a cheap pair as 'twas too. As big as any man could wish to have, and lined inside, and double-lined in the lower parts, and an extra piece of stiffening at the bottom. And 'tis a nice high cut that comes up right under your armpits, and there's enough turned down inside ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... in calling upon him was oratorically voiced from available platforms and landings, in the halls and stairways, until it was pretty well known throughout the Golden Gate Hotel that the Hon. Mr. Paul Hathaway had arrived from Sacramento and had received a "spontaneous ovation." ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... between the Christian era and the tenth century. The second was the particular work of the old French school, the Netherlanders, and of all who composed music between about 1100 A.D. and the epoch of Palestrina, about 1600. The third, the spontaneous application of musical material to the expression of feeling, had in it another element, that of tonality, concerning which it is proper to say something ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... is rare with the average girl. She either heartily approves or frankly disapproves of those things that cross her path or claim her attention. But with the coming of the teens those closely associated with the girl often become conscious of the loss of that spontaneous response which has made her such a delight. The teacher is puzzled by this change, wonders if she has offended the girl, redoubles her efforts to make the lesson interesting and seeks to win the girl's confidence. Sometimes her efforts ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... books which suddenly became vital at the time of the Renaissance, had long lain neglected on the shores of the dead sea which we call the Middle Ages. It was not their discovery which caused the Renaissance. But it was the intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them. The force then generated still continues, vital and expansive, in the spirit ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... pledge of fraternity at parting. There was no material substance to promise. I took it to mean that he would stand by any generous impulses I might have; that he would be, as it were, a patron of spontaneous as opposed to organized charity; a patron of those who are never too poor to give to some one poorer; of those who have no scientific reasons for giving, no statistics, only compassion and pity; of those who want to aid not only the promising but the hopeless cases; of those whose ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... a sensitive and generous nature, the spontaneous expression of one spirited, affectionate, ardently ambitious, and blessed with ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... nothing special to do but talk. Nothing is more tedious than to be in a company assembled for no particular reason, and every host, if he asks more than two persons at the outside, ought to provide some entertainment. Talking is worth nothing unless it is perfectly spontaneous, and it cannot be spontaneous if there are sudden and blank silences, and nobody can think of a fresh departure. The master of the house is bound to do something. He ought to hire a Punch and Judy show, or get ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... caught fire during the night, and so rapidly did the flames extend, that no efforts availed to put them out, and upwards of 250 souls, among whom were two merchants and two women passengers, perished. It was supposed that the fire was caused by the spontaneous combustion of some coals stowed ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... and associate them with vocal sounds, he had obtained possession of a symbol by which he was able to deliberately communicate his desires and his intentions to other men in a more precise and definite way than he had been able to do through the medium of spontaneous emotional expression. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Stories occupy the place of books, and tales of the marvellous furnish a substitute for the evening papers. Not that there should be any set rule or system, in regard to the ordering of the matter, but a sort of spontaneous movement, an implied understanding, growing out of the necessities of the position of isolation occupied by those who are away from the resources of civilization. The doctor had a genius for story telling, or rather a genius for invention, which required only a moderate development ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... other hand, many instincts—indeed, probably the greater number—are not perfect, but "imperfect." Imperfect instincts are those which do not fully equip the animal with the function in question, but only take him part way to the goal. He has a spontaneous tendency to do certain things, such as building a nest, singing, etc.; but he is not able to do these things adequately or perfectly if left to himself from birth. This sort of endowment with imperfect instincts has been the field of some of the most interesting ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... lyrics are likely to be, these early rhymes of Daudet's have a flavor of their own, a faintly recognizable note of individuality. He is more naturally a poet than most modern literators who possess the accomplishment of verse as part of their equipment for the literary life, but who lack a spontaneous impulse toward rhythm. It may even be suggested that his little poems are less artificial than most French verse; they are the result of a less obvious effort. He lisped in numbers; and with him it was rather prose that had to be consciously acquired. His lyric note, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... sometimes he does not shrink from diluting them with clear water)—Christophe was too young and too sure of himself not to despise such contemptible practices. He dreamed impossibly of producing nothing that was not absolutely spontaneous. If he had not been deliberately blind he would certainly have seen the absurdity of his aims. Ho doubt he was at that time in a period of inward abundance in which there was no gap, no chink, through which ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... him, her eyes fastened eagerly upon a great bunch of crimson roses in a blue china bowl, which Noel had gotten in honor of her coming. She did not, of course, suspect this, but he saw that here, at least, was a vivid and spontaneous feeling apart from her child, as she bent above the mass ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... time he had started his cigars, De Marsay began to see the events of the night in a singular light. Like many men of great intelligence, his perspicuity was not spontaneous, as it did not at once penetrate to the heart of things. As with all natures endowed with the faculty of living greatly in the present, of extracting, so to speak, the essence of it and assimilating it, his second-sight had need of a sort of slumber before it could ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... is a Sulphite? Ah, that is harder to define. A Sulphite is a person who does his own thinking, he is a person who has surprises up his sleeve. He is explosive. One can never foresee what he will do, except that it will be a direct and spontaneous manifestation ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... fair lady, may I presume to inquire your mission in this land of magnificent wastes?" Chloe's laughter was genuine as it was spontaneous. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... picture, which will always make it enchanting, even to those who cannot make their way through any other letter in the New Heloisa.[56] Such qualities place it as an idyllic piece far above such pieces in Goethe's two famous romances. They have a clearness and spontaneous freshness which are not among the bountiful gifts of Goethe. There are other admirable landscapes in the New Heloisa, though not too many of them, and the minute and careful way in which Rousseau made their features real to himself, is accidentally shown in his urgent prayer for exactitude in the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... for your sisters from nature and habit; but friendship is voluntary, spontaneous, and a much stronger feeling—friendship ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... earliest discourses the Buddha argues that the Skandhas, including mental states, cannot be the Self because we have not free will to make them exactly what we choose[71]. But throughout his ethical teaching it is I think assumed that, subject to the law of karma, conscious action is equivalent to spontaneous action. Good mental states can be made to grow and bad mental states to decrease until the stage is reached when the saint knows that he is free. It may perhaps be thought that the early Buddhists did not realize the consequences of applying their doctrine ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... these things are not human trifles, but the commandments of the Divine Majesty, who insists upon them with such earnestness, is angry with, and punishes those who despise them, and, on the other hand, abundantly rewards those who keep them, there will be a spontaneous impulse and a desire gladly to do the will of God. Therefore it is not in vain that it is commanded in the Old Testament to write the Ten Commandments on all walls and corners, yes, even on the garments, not for the ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... without being persuaded that the idea of their being printed, even in part, never was present to his mind; and I should not feel myself justified in laying them before the public if it were not that their unlaboured and spontaneous character adds to their biographical value all, and perhaps more than all, that it detracts from their ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... me you said that beauty was my curse." Charley laughed a curt, distant little laugh which was no more the spontaneous humour lying for ever behind his thoughts than his eye-glass was the real sight of his eyes, though since childhood this laugh and his eye-glass were as natural to all expression of himself as John Brown's outward and showy frankness did not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... much vexed about all this. I am calmer now. My handwriting shows it. The spontaneous burst of indignation is a little quieted. It is soothing to write or ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... graceful as could be. And when she shook hands with me a short while afterwards through the carriage window, she thanked me for our long-sufferance with more spontaneous cordiality than she had ever before exhibited. I returned to my roses, feeling that, after all, we had done something to help the poor little lady on her way. If I had been a cat, I should have purred. After an hour or so, Barbara summoned me from ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... the Romanticists, who followed close upon Fichte, were dissatisfied with so hard and exclusive a conception of spiritual being. Life, they said, is not all duty. Indeed, the true spiritual life is quite other, not harsh and constrained, but free and spontaneous—a wealth of feeling playing about a constantly shifting centre. Spirit is not consecutive and law-abiding, but capricious and wanton, seeking the beautiful in no orderly progression, but in a refined and versatile sensibility. ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... It was a spontaneous tribute of working-men to a fellow-workman; and, gladly as Peveril would have modified the form of the ovation, he was more proud of it than of any ever tendered him for having stroked the Oxford 'varsity eight ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... conferred by the "codicils" may have been, it is not easy to discover.[110] But there is no doubt that the authority which Clovis up to this time had exercised by the mere right of the stronger, over great part of Gaul, was confirmed and legitimised by this spontaneous act of the Augustus at Constantinople, nor that this eager recognition of the royalty of the slayer of Alaric was meant in some degree as a demonstration of hostility against Alaric's father-in-law, with whom Anastasius had not then ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the other hand, he supposes that all the congruities of which we have spoken, were the effect not of fraudulent design, but of happy accident,—that they arranged themselves in spontaneous harmony—he must believe that chance has done what even the most prodigious powers of invention could not do. And lastly, he must believe that these same illiterate men, who were capable of so much, were also capable ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... is the Spanish-bayonet; to the utilitarian, who values a thing only as it is of use to him, it is the soap-weed—ignoble name, referring to certain qualities pertaining to its roots. When we remember that this flower is not the careful product of the garden, but of spontaneous growth in the most barren and hopeless-looking plains, we may well regard it as a type of Colorado's luxuriance in these loveliest ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... direction, of already-existing breeds of micro-organisms, or whether they are new, absolutely new, breeds themselves just spontaneously generated. The latter hypothesis is tenable, for we theorise that if spontaneous generation still occurs on the earth, it is far more likely to occur in the form of simple ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... man; but the answer was not spontaneous, and Louis's eyes rolled around with an expression of fear. I was watching him closely myself, and I could not help seeing that against his will his glance sought always Florence Lloyd, and though he quickly averted it, he was unable to refrain ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... relied upon for special pleading when sentence was about to be passed on the dimple by those who disapproved of dimples, drooped with disappointment. But the light-brown hair continued to curl facetiously—it was the sort of hair whose spontaneous rippling conveys to the seeing eye a sense ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... fascinated her—his audacious, often witty way of putting things, and the irrepressible bubble of laughter that would keep breaking from him. He disclosed his past, such as it was, freely—public-school and college life, efforts at the bar, ambitions, tastes, even his scrapes. And in this spontaneous unfolding there was perpetual flattery; Gyp felt through it all, as pretty women will, a sort of subtle admiration. Presently he asked her if ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "natural" to put it was originally suggested to Bergson by his study of the important work on amnesia carried out by Charcot and his pupils, and also by such evidence as was to be had at the time when he wrote on the curious memory phenomena revealed by the use of hypnotism and by cases of spontaneous dissociation. It is impossible to prove experimentally that no experience is ever destroyed but it is becoming more and more firmly established that enormous numbers of past experiences, which are inaccessible to ordinary memory and which therefore ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... a company of "Noelites"—those vast organizations of boys and girls in France—singing the Laudate Mariam to my Ave Maria; now in the middle of a group of shop-girls who exchanged remarks with one another whenever they could fetch breath. I think it was all the most joyous and the most spontaneous (as it was certainly the largest) human function in which I have ever taken part. I have no idea whether there were any organizers of it all—at least I saw none. Once or twice a solitary priest in the midst, walking backward and waving his arms, attempted ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... that the father and mother of Lady Jane, anticipating that she might one day become a queen, watched and guarded her incessantly, subjected her to a thousand unwelcome restraints, and repressed all the spontaneous and natural gayety and sprightliness which belongs properly to ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... absolute stillness; then spontaneous applause broke out from Nancy's friends, which was instantly ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's; in each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory. Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal—and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, which can be named by that large name—Supreme. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose approach fires the whole land with a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his woes indignant told, Melanthius, master of the bearded fold, The goodliest goats of all the royal herd Spontaneous to the suitors' feast preferr'd; Two grooms assistant bore the victims bound; With quavering cries the vaulted roofs resound; And to the chief austere aloud began The wretch unfriendly to the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... recovery of the equipoise, sustains them and bears them along. With them flying is a luxury, a fine art; not merely a quicker and safer means of transit from one point to another, but a gift so free and spontaneous that work becomes leisure and movement rest. They are not so much going somewhere, from this perch to that, as they are abandoning themselves to the mere pleasure ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... commencement of their acquaintance he had not done justice to her merits; but he was also aware that, until he had explained to her the nature of his sentiments, she must naturally regard his attentions with suspicion, and consider them rather as acts of duty towards his mother than as the spontaneous expression of his own attachment. He therefore, in the most simple and candid manner, laid open to her the secret of his heart, and in all the eloquence of real passion, poured forth those feelings of love and admiration with which ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... unexpected and so forcible that at first Babbacombe stared at the man in amazement. Then, with that spontaneous kindness of heart that made him what he was, he grabbed ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... have enough out-of-door exercise to keep him sturdy and strong, his mother superintended his lessons, as well as those of his sister, Therese. Although Marie Antoinette was young and pleasure-loving and was often called frivolous because of the spontaneous gaiety into which her nature often led her, yet she was a devoted mother, and every morning at ten o'clock, Therese, the Dauphin, and their teachers went to the queen's rooms, and there learned and ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... had invited the bishop to settle in his country near Magomero, adding that there was room enough for both. This spontaneous invitation seemed to decide the bishop ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Is it not the birthright of every Italian to have a voice? I began to realize I had a voice which might be cultivated. I had always sung a little—every one does; song is the natural, spontaneous expression of our people. But I wished to do more—to express myself in song. So I began to teach myself by singing scales and vocalizes between my piano lessons. Meanwhile I studied all the books on singing I could lay hands on, and then tried to put the principles I learned ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... person or body, but mentally. It matters little whether the body is sitting, kneeling, or standing; riding, walking, or lying down; the throne of grace is equally accessible, if the spirit is prostrate before it—the spontaneous effusions of the soul in sighs or groans, or joyful exclamations, or the pouring forth of heart-felt words; but all must be under a sense of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... object and the aim of civilization—to encourage and to compel each individual to be frankly himself—herself. That is the profound meaning of freedom. The world owes more to bad morals and to bad taste that are spontaneous than to all the docile conformity to the standards of morals and of taste, however good. Truth—which simply means an increase of harmony, a decrease of discord, between the internal man and his environment—truth is a product, usually a byproduct, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... up even beside the most dusty highways of life—a creature not to be shaped into a merely useful instrument, but bound by one law with the blue sky, the dew, and the frolic birds. Of all persons whom I have known, she had in her most of the angelic,—of that spontaneous love for every living thing, for man, and beast, and tree, which ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... hour Poppy was an enchanting companion, wholly womanly, gentle and delicate; eager, too, with the pretty spontaneous eagerness of a child, at the recital of stories and exhibition of treasures beloved by her companion. The lonely cedar tree, lamenting its exile as the wind swept through the labyrinth of its dry branches, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... hand, took his place at the altar, and a few minutes later Bill Carmody entered with Sheridan and strode rapidly up the aisle. At the sight of the boss the crew rose as one man and the room rang with a loud, spontaneous cheer. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... division of labor, which the English carry into mechanical and commercial affairs, the French also apply to the economy of life and to Art; but, as these latter interests are more spontaneous and unlimited, the result is often a perfection in detail, and a like deficiency in general effect. Thus, there are schools of painting in France more distinct and apart than exist elsewhere; usually the followers of such are distinguished for excellence in the mechanical aptitudes of their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... very wide one, was certainly not a narrow critic, just as he certainly was not a feeble one. In the before-mentioned Peter's Letters (which, with all its faults, is one of his best, and particularly one of his most spontaneous and characteristic works) the denunciation of the "facetious and rejoicing ignorance" which enabled contemporary critics to pooh-pooh Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, and Coleridge is excellent. And it must be remembered that in 1819, whatever might be the case with ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... general, if a man's small actions impress us as minutely planned, we turn from him. It is not the self-reflecting persons, cautious of all they do, say, or think, who are popular. It is rather those instinctively spontaneous creatures characterized by abandon—men and women who let themselves go, and with all the wealth of the world in them, allow it to come out of itself—that we take to our hearts. We prize them for their want ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... transition are equally significant. Amongst the modifications of habit slowly proceeding in the village to-day, there are some which should be regarded rather as a final relinquishment of old ways than as a spontaneous forward movement into new ones. Thus, although the people comply more and more willingly with the by-laws of the sanitary authority, I could not say with conviction that this is anything more than a compliance. As they grow less used to squalor, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... bear's condition. He was undecided whether to skate with his right leg, or with his left leg, or with both his legs. He tried his right leg, and immediately it glided off at right angles with his body, while his left leg performed a similar and spontaneous movement in the contrary direction. Having captured his left leg, he put it cautiously forwards, and immediately it twisted under him, while his right leg amused itself by describing an altogether unnecessary circle. Obtaining ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the mother, and the heavy water-jug were in the centre of that narrowing ring, and the natural and spontaneous thing to do was to run in the direction away from the careening harvester. They ran, but only for a few yards, for by the time they thought that they were nearing a point of safety at the circumference of the circle, the horses were nearing that point also, and to ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... the book again, but found that his brain had reached the limit of spontaneous mental effort. He looked for Old Mizzou and the cribbage game. The miner had gone to visit Arthur again. Bennington ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... so full of passionate abandon, and yet shaded with such delicacy. At the conclusion of the act, where the orchestra adds its overpowering tour de force to the singers', the audience burst into applause that lasted for several minutes. It was the spontaneous gratitude of hundreds of war-tired souls whose bonds had been relaxed for an hour by ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... popular author in the world. In a sense not easily misunderstood, Mark Twain has a place in the minds and hearts of the great mass of humanity throughout the civilized world, which, if measured in terms of affection, sympathy, and spontaneous enjoyment, is without a parallel. The robust nationalism of Kipling challenges the defiant opposition of foreigners; whilst his reportorial realism offends many an inviolable canon of European taste. With all his incandescent wit and comic irony, Bernard Shaw makes his most ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... of immortality so unhesitatingly avowed (?) affects me as nothing from Theodore Parker on the same subject ever did. The love and joy in God flowing out of it is so spontaneous and kindling as to make me long to say,—I now no longer hope only, but I am sure. In any case I do rejoice that others can so believe, and I pray that if this be a mere cloud over my eyes, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... images and personifications, and a carefully sustained atmosphere of delicate unreality, all unite to impart a characteristic beauty to the lines. This beauty, searchingly analysed, reveals itself as something more sylvan and spontaneous than studied and bookish; indeed, all of Mrs. Jordan's verse is ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... would try to repress it, to hide it, to overcome it, so that it would eventually become paler and less acute and its consequences would be less significant, less disastrous for both the victim and for the persons concerned. Feelings, let us bear in mind, are not spontaneous things uninfluenced by any environmental factors. Feelings are like plants; under one environment you may foster their growth and make them develop luxuriantly; under another environment you may dwarf ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... stately phrases are used when simpler ones were at hand, and would have rendered the meaning of the original better. The entire version has the appearance of being hammered out with great labor, and as a whole it is cold and constrained; scarce any thing seems spontaneous; it is only now and then that the translator has caught the fervor of his author. Homer, of course, wrote in idiomatic Greek, and, in order to produce either a true copy of the original, or an agreeable poem, should have been translated into ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... Mussulmans were slain, the survivors were inspired with a desperation which the mandarins had never contemplated. From one end of Yunnan to the other the Mohammedans, in face of great personal peril, rose by a common and spontaneous impulse, and the Chinese population was compelled to take a hasty refuge in the towns. At Talifoo, where the Mohammedans formed a considerable portion of the population, the most desperate fighting occurred, and ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Andrea's sight as he hugged Chico close and with reiterated expressions of gratitude made his way down the hospital steps. The heart within his soldier's coat was pulsating with joy at the spontaneous words of praise and the assurance that Chico would not die. Anything ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... It gives me a sense of freedom to know that a deed of deliberate courage is still possible in this world,—a deed of spontaneous beauty. ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... and at its close the had been almost taken by an English squadron. Under these circumstances, how rapturously we inhaled the balmy, air of Provence! Such was our joy, that we were scarcely sensible of the disheartening news which arrived from all quarters. At the first moment of our arrival, by a spontaneous impulse, we all repeated, with tears in our eyes, the beautiful lines which Voltaire has put into the mouth ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... was calmly enjoying the beauty of the morning, the freshness of the air, the warmth of the dancing beam, and not least, perhaps, his own peaceful thoughts,—the spontaneous children of a contemplative spirit and a quiet conscience. His was the age when we most sensitively enjoy the mere sense of existence,—when the face of Nature and a passive conviction of the benevolence of our Great Father suffice to create ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book V • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... no mistake, accidentally, spontaneous-like, as you might say. Do you know, I planned the rigging-out of that boat so that she might go up big rivers ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... before. It seemed as though she were making every effort consistent with her integrity and self-respect to please me. Outwardly she conformed to the mould; but I had long been aware that inwardly a person had developed. It had not been a spontaneous development, but one in resistance to pressure; and was probably all the stronger for that reason. At times her will revealed itself in astonishing and unexpected flashes, as when once she announced that she was going to change ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... good both with regard to us men and to the highest Lord of all; there however is that difference between the two cases that the representations of the Veda which the supreme Person forms in his own mind are spontaneous, not dependent on an ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... meant. This spontaneous, warm-hearted person with—oh, horror,—a white satin tie, and a low, turned-down collar, filled her with the gentlest and most affectionate amusement. And as he was to be her father-in-law, why not enjoy him? "It is kind of you to be so pleased," she ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... daughter's spontaneous hospitality, and pleased with the friendly acceptance it had met with, was quite ready to second the invitation. Erica was delighted; she carried off the cat and the toast into the next room, eager to tell her ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... idiot became intelligent and spoke during spontaneous somnambulism (Steinbach's Der Dichter ein Seher). This is a case which appears to us difficult to explain fully; indeed, if the impression of the higher vibration on that portion of the brain which presides over intelligence ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... hold its own against any blood with which it mingles, had dowered him well with Celtic characteristics. A trace of the brogue still lingered in his speech, along with the slurred r's and the soft drawl of his southern tongue, while his spontaneous rebellion under restraint and his brilliant disregard of the consequences of his behavior were as truly Celtic as was the honey-sweet persuasiveness with which he could convince his friends that whatever ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... in great numbers crowded around the platform to see Mr. Maxwell and to bring him the promise of their consecration to the pledge to do as Jesus would do. It was a voluntary, spontaneous movement that broke upon his soul with a result he could not measure. But had he not been praying for is very thing? It was an answer that more than met ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... occupying a rectangle on the black mixture before my eyes. It was not a known and familiar scene, but a brilliant sketch, made out of materials I remembered, but could not by a deliberate effort have combined so effectively. It was a spontaneous throe of the imagination, which had force to overpersuade the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various |
