"Unerring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... &c v.; solid, well-founded. unqualified, absolute, positive, determinate, definite, clear, unequivocal, categorical, unmistakable, decisive, decided, ascertained. inevitable, unavoidable, avoidless^; ineluctable. unerring, infallible; unchangeable &c 150; to be depended on, trustworthy, reliable, bound. unimpeachable, undeniable, unquestionable; indisputable, incontestable, incontrovertible, indubitable; irrefutable &c (proven) 478; conclusive, without ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... trail is something that is stronger than anything else in Muller's mentality, and now and then it brings him into conflict with the department,... or with his own better nature. Sometimes his unerring instinct discovers secrets in high places, secrets which the Police Department is bidden to hush up and leave untouched. Muller is then taken off the case, and left idle for a while if he persists in his opinion as to the true facts. And at other ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... robbers named Thunderbolt and Lightfoot who lived in a cave in the mountains. They were bold, free, swearing men who rode beautiful horses at a wild gallop and carried guns and used them freely and with unerring skill, and helped themselves to what ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... before, the Players knew Will's handwriting, if he could write. If they received his copy in a hand not his own, and were not idiots, they could not praise him and his unerring speed and accuracy in penning his thoughts. If, on the other hand, Will could not write, in their long friendship with Will, the Players must have known the fact, and could not possibly believe, as they certainly did, "on Jonson's ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... had been in the minds of these two Indians during the last twenty minutes, while they had been running two or three miles, quickly left them, and there was a gleam of pride in their dark eyes to think that this cool, brave woman, whose unerring shot had thus killed the bear, was of their own race ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... trooping together with arched backs upon the pavement, following the little pony-cart, the cats' commissariat equipage, and each one, anxious for his daily allowance, contributing most musically his quota to the general concert. We do not know how it is, but the cats-meat man is the most unerring and punctual of all those peripatetic functionaries who undertake to cater for the consumption of the public. The baker, the butcher, the grocer, the butterman, the fishmonger, and the coster, occasionally forget your necessities, or omit to call ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... Society is one who, having in early life abdicated every claim to independent thought or action, is content to attach himself to the skirts and coat-tails of the great, and to exist for a long time as a mere appendage in mansions selected by the unerring instinct of a professional tuft-hunter. It is as common a mistake to suppose that all tuft-hunters are necessarily of lowly birth and of inferior social position, as it is to believe them all to be offensive in manner and shallow ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... when a minor object of suspicion comes into view and behaves meekly. And probably the majority of human sheep see themselves in imagination taking great parts in the world's more impressive dramas, forming swift, unerring decisions in moments of crisis, cowing mutinies, allaying panics, brave, strong, simple, but, in spite of their natural modesty, ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... always mount up to a climax, unless people are very well bred. We saw it coming. Naturally we did not expect such a transformation of brides: who could? If I had laid myself down on my back to think, I should have had it. I am unerring when I set to speculating on my back. One is cooler: ideas come; they have not to be forced. That is why I am brighter on a dull winter afternoon, on the sofa, beside my tea-service, than at any other season. However, your trouble is over. When did ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pronounced, calling into question the wisdom and even the good faith of the Union delegates; and although he had escaped himself through flush times and starvation times with a handsomely provided purse, he had so little faith in either man or master, and so profound a terror for the unerring Nemesis of mercantile affairs, that he could think of no hope for our country outside of a sudden and complete political subversion. Down must go Lords and Church and Army; and capital, by some happy direction, must change ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... comes under the sway of the "kingdom of conscience" and a solid moral character is formed, the inner guidance of the Word of God becomes more certain and more reliable. Only the good person has a sure and unerring perception of the truth, just as only the scientist sees the laws of the world, and as only the musician perceives the harmony of sounds. Not only must all spiritual experience be subject to the moral test, it must further ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... to conceive that a man, who, in other respects, made such booty of the world around him, whose observation of manners was so minute, and whose insight into character and motives, as if he had been one of God's spies, was so unerring that we accept it without question, as we do Nature herself, and find it more consoling to explain his confessedly immense superiority by attributing it to a happy instinct rather than to the conscientious perfecting of exceptional ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... imagine the wrath with which Rome would behold Commodus, under the eyes of four hundred thousand spectators, making himself a party to the contests of gladiators. In his earlier exhibitions as an archer, it is possible that his matchless dexterity, and his unerring eye, would avail to mitigate the censures: but when the Roman Imperator actually descended to the arena in the garb and equipments of a servile prize-fighter, and personally engaged in combat with such antagonists, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... heart, contentment of mind, and fluency of tongue. We kept company with him almost the whole day, wandering along the beautiful banks of the river, admiring the ease and elegant dexterity with which the old fellow managed his angle, throwing the fly with unerring certainty at a great distance and among overhanging bushes, and waving it gracefully in the air, to keep it from entangling, as he stumped with his staff and wooden leg from one bend of the river to another. He kept up a continual ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... of his adversary, who instantly dropped his bow. At the same moment it seemed as though the whole band of vikings had become suddenly convinced that they stood exposed to the shafts of a man who could use them with unerring certainty, for they turned with one consent and fled into the woods—each man seeking ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... Canadian always the best equipped for winter prairie work, in his knowledge in this line that can only be gained by experience. His ancestors served the early fur companies from Montreal to McKenzie's river, from Hudson's bay to the Pacific, and knew how to take care of themselves with the unerring instinct of the cariboo and the moose, and the generation of them that I came in contact with had inherited all ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... She ran to the table and blew out the flame of the green-shaded lamp. Black darkness shut down like the lid of a box. But she knew the room as she knew her own features. Straight and unerring, she found her way back ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... they saw before them only heaps of dead sailors lying about the guns which they had been serving. On the quarter-deck lay Capt. Whinyates and Lieut. Wintle, desperately wounded. All who were unhurt had fled below, to escape the pitiless fire of the American guns, and the unerring aim of the sailors stationed in the "Wasp's" tops. Only the old helmsman stood undaunted at his post, and held the ship on her course, even while the Americans were swarming over the nettings and clambering down the bowsprit. The colors were ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... folk poetry, begun a faint-twitter of song. To this love of the man and the woman who hope to marry, strong and tender, but still (as Coleridge remarked of several of the lesser Elizabethan playwrights) most outspokenly carnal, was united by the pure spirit of Spenser, by the unerring genius of Shakespeare, that vivifying drop of burning, spiritual love taken from out of the "Vita Nuova," which had floated, like some sovereign essential oil, on the top of Petrarch's rose-water. Henceforward the world possesses a new ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... middle age, and both in their appearances, furnished the strongest proofs of long exposure to the severity of climate, and to numberless tempests. They were dressed in the plain, weather-soiled, and tarred habiliments of common seamen, and bore about their several persons all the other unerring evidences of their peculiar profession. The former was of a short, thick-set powerful frame, in which, by a happy ordering of nature, a little confirmed perhaps by long habit, the strength was principally seated about the broad and brawny shoulders, and strong sinewy arms, as if, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... our days and bright And happy will our nature be When love is an unerring light, And joy its own security. And they a blissful course may hold Ev'n now who, not unwisely bold, Live in the spirit of this creed; Yet find that other ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... exception—when soldiers are billeted with them, is to learn who is the officer in charge, in order that they may lose no time in bringing their complaints to him. The Mother Superior of the Hospice selected Talbot with unerring zeal. His days were made miserable, until in self-defence he thought of formulating a new calendar of "crimes" for his men, in which would be included all the terrible offences which the Mother ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... romantic devotion. What Miss Mitford once said of herself was true, hers was the instinct of the bee sucking honey from the hedge flower. Whatever sweetness and happiness there was to find she turned to with unerring directness. ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... your eye, Mr. Jones, and you have the flock." So, likewise, Sheen and Gloss to THEIR Jones, in reference to knowing where to have the fashionable people and how to bring what they (Sheen and Gloss) choose into fashion. On similar unerring principles, Mr. Sladdery the librarian, and indeed the great farmer of gorgeous sheep, admits this very day, "Why yes, sir, there certainly ARE reports concerning Lady Dedlock, very current indeed ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the forward guns of the German craft belched forth a salvo of leaden hail that followed the path of the searchlight's rays directly upon the eyes of the Monitor. With unerring aim the German gunners had found their mark. A sharp crash; a roar as the water above the Monitor's conning tower was converted into a boiling maelstrom, and the impact of steel against steel betokened the fact that a shot had struck home in the superstructure ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... that the phalanx of capitalists scrambling forward to share in this carnival of plunder were not gifted with unerring judgment? From afar they sighted their quarry. Nearly all of them were the fifty per cent. "patriot" capitalists of the Civil War; and, just as in all extant biographies, they are represented as heroic, self-sacrificing figures during that crisis, when in historical fact, they were defrauding ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... I was irresolute what to do; and after watching Roland's countenance, and seeing on his brow so great a weight of care that I had no option but to postpone the confidence I pined to place in Iris strong understanding and unerring sense of honor, I wandered out, hoping that in the fresh air I might re-collect my thoughts and solve the problem that perplexed me. I had enough to do in sundry small orders for my voyage, and commissions for Bolding, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... manly countenance. It was his boast that, in his younger days, nothing could hurt or daunt him; but he had "lived too fast," and injured his constitution by his excesses. Still he was strong of hand, bold of heart, a prime woodman, and an almost unerring shot. He had the frank spirit of a Virginian, and the rough heroism of a pioneer of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... preceding night, that in the remote dark ages of his career he took some notes upon the various lectures, the which have long since been converted into pipe-lights or small darts, which, twisted up and propelled from between the forefingers of each hand, fly with unerring aim across the theatre at the lecturer's head, the slumbering student, or any other object worth aiming at—an amusing way of beguiling the hour's lecture, and only excelled by the sport produced, if he has the good luck to sit in a sunbeam, from making a tournament of "Jack-o'-lanthorns" on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... women experts in the fine art of interpreting countenance and character, and by a mysterious and unerring divination, Mrs. Singleton knew that her visitor desired no companion in his vigils; hence, after flitting about the room for ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... back cautiously, to avoid the shriek it gave when merely thrust open, and then lifted it to its former place. He mounted the stairs—there was not a nail in his boots which did not know each shred of fraying timber in them—thridded an unerring way through the outspread lumber on the floor to the stand at which he commonly worked, set the gas-bracket blazing there, and began to stack type as if for dear life, but without a copy. The clock at Trinity struck the hours half a mile away. The clock at Christ's followed a second or ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... had taken part in hundreds of similar events, had every confidence in his own endurance. Each leap brought him nearer, fiercer and more determined. The last effort of the Jack was to lose himself in the crowd, like a fish in muddy water; but the big dog made the one needed leap with unerring aim and his teeth flashed as he caught the rabbit in viselike jaws and held him limp in ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... from his place, pushed open the gate, laying a tender touch upon the latch that such dear hands had pressed in days gone by. So he made his way, going with unerring step, beneath the overbranching of copper-beech, lilac, and red may, to the flower-carpeted wilderness where, with bluebells about its roots and feathery foliage waving high around its trunk, stood that silver birch-tree upon whose smooth bark he had ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... for books, although she never admitted that fact, but she could read with her cold feminine astuteness the moods and souls of men, with unerring quickness. Those last were to her advantage or disadvantage, and in anything of that nature she was gifted by nature. Ida Edgham might have been, as her husband might have been, a poet, an adventuress, who could have made the success of her age ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... bent to their oars. The monster, unconscious of danger, was still above water. As the boat drew near, old Tom was standing up in the bow, harpoon in hand, ready to plunge it into the whale's side. Its flukes were just going up as, with unerring aim, he darted his weapon, which sunk deep into its side. With rapid strokes the boat was backed away, and old Tom returned aft to manage the line, now running rapidly out as the whale sounded. The second line was got ready ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... civic crown was given in Rome for preserving the life of one citizen, Mr. Boulton should be covered with garlands of oak! By this machinery four boys of ten or twelve years old are capable of striking thirty thousand guineas in an hour, and the machine itself keeps an unerring account ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... Holland's saintliness interfered with the free action of his genius. His insight, unerring in a moral or intellectual problem, seemed to fail him when he came to estimate a human character. His own life had always been lived on the highest plane, and he was in an extraordinary degree "unspotted from the world." His tendency was to think—or at ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... there goes weight of character with it. Why, there is an accomplished schoolmaster there, and the best blacksmith of the village, and a solid merchant, and a dexterous lawyer, and the handiest coachman of the stable, and a well known stage-driver on a prominent public route, and a butcher with an unerring cleaver, and a jolly tar whose vessel never missed stays with his hand at the wheel; do you suppose that these men are going to charge like so many nameless Hessians? Why, it is a personal matter with every one of them. They ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... mechanical office, as 'the pen of the Holy Ghost,' this, we hold, is an assumption for which we have no warrant.... All we need to know is that in the Holy Scriptures we have a complete, clear, and unerring record of revealed truth, that is made the standard, for all time, of religious teaching." (28.) Evidently, then, Drs. Jacobs and Haas do not believe that the Holy Scriptures everywhere are ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... dull. But dull pencils are easily sharpened on the whetstone of wit. Stifling acquired traits, I permitted myself to revert momentarily to a primitive expedient. I gnawed the wood quite from the pencil, leaving only the graphite core. With a bit of graphite a hand guided by the unerring insolence of elation may artistically damn all men and things. That I am inclined to believe I did; and I question whether Raphael or Michael Angelo—upon whom I then looked as mere predecessors—ever put more ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... eye and an unerring aim was leveled against it, and as they were watching its flight it suddenly turned over and over, its great wings going like the arms of a windmill as it dropped swiftly to the earth; and, as it disappeared in the trees and undergrowth, the crack of a rifle ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... the field, there seemed an inextricable mass of marching columns as far as the eye could see. Could order ever be gotten out of it? Yet, presto! the right of the line fell into position, a series of blue blocks, and then on down to the far left, block after block, came upon the line with unerring order and precision, as though it were a long curling whiplash straightening itself out to the tension of a giant hand. And so with each of the other two lines. All were formed simultaneously. Here was not only perfection of ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... human evidence can authenticate, that on the king's side all was grateful affection; and that on Buckingham's there was a most earnest desire to win the favours of parliament; and what are stronger than all human evidence, those unerring principles in human nature itself, which are the secret springs of the heart, were working in the breasts of the king and his minister; for neither were tyrannical. The king undoubtedly sighed to meet parliament with ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... God the Creator of earth and heaven, unerring in His wisdom, infinite in His love and omnipotent in His power. We preach Jesus Christ, God's only begotten Son, dying on Calvary for a world's transgressions, able to save to the uttermost "all those who come unto God by Him." We preach God the Holy Ghost, sanctifier and comforter of the souls ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... believed that no selection has been included that is not a masterpiece. This belief is based primarily on the fact that most of the specimens have been chosen and approved by generation after generation of children, culled out from the light and worthless as by an unerring hand, through the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... independent even of her desire. Durant could see that she had as little love for the game as he had. She played because she always had played, by habit, a second nature that had ousted the first. Her skill was so unerring that for Durant it robbed the game of its last lingering attraction, the divine element of chance. One tinge of consciousness, one touch of fire, and it would have been sheer devilry. As it was he could have been sorry for her, though in her infinite ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... he fully recognised the limits of his powers, he had great faith in his own critical judgment; and with good reason, for his perception of the beautiful in contour and attitude and grouping was almost unerring. All the drawings which Miss Thomson made for his "Three Sunsets" were submitted to his criticism, which descended to the smallest details. He concludes a letter to her, which contained the most elaborate and minute ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... training, or inclination in the art of politics; but through this tangled web of perplexity and uncertainty, when present and future were equally enveloped in obscurity, his singleness of aim supplied him with the unerring instinct with which through the whole of his life he met and unmasked the pitfalls that were spread before the unhappiest and the most cruelly betrayed of nations. Under the dictates of this pure patriotism he directed himself unfalteringly ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... up to sport from her earliest youth. As a child she had watched many of the finest shots in Europe. But she had never seen anything like this. Such unerring precision enthralled her. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... that he protected himself against the authorities of the time, partly by secreting himself in the depths of the woods of Barnesdale or of the forest of Sherwood, and partly by intimidating the public officers by the opinion which was abroad of his unerring bow, and his instant command of assistance from numerous comrades as skilled in archery as himself; that he supported himself by slaying the wild animals which were found in the forests, and by levying a species of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... invention of tales, ballads and poems, to be recited at their entertainments and feasts, they evinced the most admirable taste and skill;—a taste and skill which, as they resulted not from the operation and influence of artificial rules, but from the unerring instinct of genius, have never been surpassed. In fact, the poetical inventions of those early days, far from having been produced in conformity with rules, were entirely precedent to rules, in the order of time. Rules ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... it will rest with the wisdom of Congress to decide on the course best adapted to such a state of things; and bringing with them, as they do, from every part of the Union the sentiments of our constituents, my confidence is strengthened that in forming this decision they will, with an unerring regard to the essential rights and interests of the nation, weigh and compare the painful alternatives out of which a choice is to be made. Nor should I do justice to the virtues which on other occasions have marked ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... the day departing, and the air, Imbrown'd with shadows, from their toils releas'd All animals on earth; and I alone Prepar'd myself the conflict to sustain, Both of sad pity, and that perilous road, Which my unerring memory ...
— The Vision of Hell, Part 1, Illustrated by Gustave Dore - The Inferno • Dante Alighieri, Translated By The Rev. H. F. Cary
... justice takes, yet can they escape the penetrating eye of this deep-searching and all-powerful court? No. Unseen it sees, and unknown pries into such hidden guilt, that the detected villain, awe-struck, cries, "this is not man's but Heaven's unerring vengeance." ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... mechanics, are of the most marvellous kind, and to make them all distinct would require a comparison of ancient and modern states: ships that were moved by human labour in the ancient world are transported by the winds; and a piece of steel, touched by the magnet, points to the mariner his unerring course from the old to the new world; and by the exertions of one man of genius, aided by the resources of chemistry, a power, which by the old philosophers could hardly have been imagined, has been generated and applied to almost all the machinery of active life; the steam-engine ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... fulfil them. We feel how inevitable is their fate. They make their own tragedy. The Poet compresses a Life Tragedy into a few pages of manuscript. He, with the great sense and Idea of Human Life in him, has to choose what he will portray, and the greater an artist the more unerring is his selection. Then begins his own absorption in the characters. Conception and expression come to him and come nobly and spontaneously—and so spontaneous is his touch—so completely is he absorbed in, and one with his characters—that it makes our rush ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... This was true. The unerring ear of the blind girl never deceived her. Arthur was indeed coming. The gate opened. His rapid footstep was heard passing through the avenue, bounding up the steps, and there they were arrested by the welcoming trio, all ready to greet him. It was a happy moment for ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... history of the struggle in Utah for equal rights is full of interest and could be recounted with advantage. But, after all, the results which have been attained speak with such unerring logic, and vindicate so thoroughly the argument that woman should take part in the affairs of government which so vitally affect her, that I point to the actual conditions now existing as a complete vindication of the efforts of equal suffragists, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... thousand species of Compositae exist, and there can be no doubt that if the pollen of all these species could be, simultaneously or successively, placed on the stigma of any one species, this one would elect with unerring certainty its own pollen. This elective capacity is all the more wonderful, as it must have been acquired since the many species of this great group of plants branched off from a common progenitor. On any view of the nature of sexual reproduction, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... they struck out for the herd accompanied by Leloo who fairly slavered in anticipation of the coming slaughter. And a slaughter it was, as one by one the stricken brutes went down before the deadly onslaught. What impressed Connie more even than the unerring accuracy of the death stroke was the ominous silence with which the great wolf-dog worked. No whimper—no growl, nor whine, nor bark—simply a noiseless slipping upon the selected animal, and then the short silent rush and a caribou ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... the larger end, straightened by the teeth, and balanced with great nicety. The spearman, while poising the weapon, held others in his left hand, prepared for instant use: the spear, thus poised, seemed for a few seconds to spin, and it would strike at sixty yards, with an unerring aim. Labillardiere describes it well: the warrior grasped it in the middle; raised it as high as his head; drew it towards himself with a jerk, that gave a tremulous motion at the extremities, which ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... later he effected a junction with his second division, left in the Bohemian Forest, and stood at Cham with an effective fighting force of eighty thousand men. The result proved that Napoleon's judgment had been unerring; had he pursued, in spite of all remonstrance and in disregard of the fatigue of his men, he would have had no mighty foe to fight a few weeks later at Wagram. Some time thereafter he told an Austrian general that he had deliberated long, and ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... prey; without implements, without arms, save the ball of heavy flint, to which, that his sole possession and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long cord of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with deadly, unerring skill." ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... in any direction always have the habit of ignoring the nonessential more or less strongly developed. One reason—perhaps the chief reason—why Norman had got up to the high places of material success at so early an age was that he had an unerring instinct for the essential and wasted no time or energy upon the nonessential. In his present situation Dorothy's father, the abstracted man of science, was one of the factors that obviously fell into the nonessential class. Norman knew little ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... censure, Flattery's praise, With unmoved indifference view; Learn to tread life's dangerous maze, With unerring Virtue's clue. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... does so; then to work back again from the coin at which he stops (calling such coin one), this time, however, not returning down the tail, but continuing round the opposite side of the circle to the same number. During this process you retire, but on your return you indicate with unerring accuracy the coin at which he left off. In order to show (apparently) that the trick does not depend on any arithmetical principle, you reconstruct the Q, or invite the spectators to do so, with a different number of coins, but the ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... farther inland, until they grew to the height and density of a wood. Seen from the channel it had the appearance of a green cape or promontory thrust upon the Marsh. Passing through its tangled recesses, with the aid of some unerring instinct, the two companions emerged upon another and much larger level that seemed as illimitable as the bay. The strong breath of the ocean lying just beyond the bar and estuary they were now facing came to them salt and humid as another tide. The nearer expanse of open water reflected the after-glow, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... malvesti, senvestigi. Undulate ondolinii. Undulating ondolinia. Undulation ondolinio. Unearthly supernatura. Uneasiness maltrankvileco. Uneasy maltrankvila. Unemployed senokupa. Unendurable nesuferebla. Unequal neegala. Unerring neerara, certa. Uneven neebena, malglata. Unexpected neatendita. Unexpectedly neatendite. Unexpressed neesprimita. Unfair (dishonest) malhonesta, malrajta. Unfaithful malfidela. Unfasten malligi. Unfavourable malfavora. Unfeeling ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... a smile of singular fascination "I mean, consulting the unerring guides of the way to know where we are, and if we are sailing safely and happily in the right direction otherwise we are in danger of striking upon some rock, or of never making the harbour; and in ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... follow nature, and your judgment frame By her just standard, which is still the same, Unerring nature, still divinely blight, One clear, unchanged, and universal light, Life, force, and beauty must to all impart, At once the source, and end, and ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... we were sufficiently close to the main body to open our fire, and broadside after broadside were poured in, answered by the batteries on the coast, with unerring aim. Notwithstanding the unequal contest, I have the pleasure of informing you, that in less than half an hour we succeeded in capturing three of the vessels (named as per margin), and finding nothing ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... the most populous town, I have been received with the utmost enthusiasm: in fact, in no part of England have I ever been more warmly greeted, or received more unequivocal marks of respect from all ranks and classes. I announce this fact with much satisfaction, as it is an unerring mark of the feelings with which the measures which I have adopted for the public good have been regarded by the great majority of the inhabitants of the two provinces." It is quite clear, however, that Lord Durham had not conciliated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... fights he was never once wounded by any adversary nor did he ever deliver a second stroke, thrust or lunge against any: his defence was always impregnable, his attack always unerring; when he lunged his lunge never missed and was always fatal, unless he purposely ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... The unerring aim of our gunners paralysed, for a time, the initiative of the Turkish Staff. This tremendous reply was unexpected. And the British shells burst in their magazines, their supply depots, their headquarters ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... really a kind of inferior marriage, such as is still practised in Germany among the nobles; and may be regarded by the candid as an appeal from the tyranny of civil and ecclesiastical institutions, to the more virtuous and more unerring laws of nature. [FN [s] Padre Paolo, Hist. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... observation and his free appropriation of whatever might serve his purpose. He had not been, for instance, half an hour on English soil before he perceived that he was dressed like a rustic, and he had immediately reformed his toilet with the most unerring tact. His appetite for novelty was insatiable, and for everything characteristically foreign, as it presented itself, he had an extravagant greeting; but in half an hour the novelty had faded, he had ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... steadily higher as they stayed, or went out from them strong to labor, backed with a solid backing. The number of young firms whom they had started and made, and whose profit also afterward profited them, was more than had ever been counted. They were never deceived, for they had an unerring faculty for knowing their own kind. No firm was keener. Straight on the nail themselves, they exacted the same quality in others. What they traded in needed no other guaranty than the name ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... the meadows Are stained with it! Where'er I look, I see it! Away, thou horrible vision! Leave me! leave me! Alas! you winding stream, that gropes its way Through mist and shadow, doubling on itself, At length will find, by the unerring law Of nature, what it seeks. O soul of man, Groping through mist and shadow, and recoiling Back on thyself, are, too, thy devious ways Subject to law? and when thou seemest to wander The farthest from thy goal, art thou still drawing Nearer and nearer to it, till at length Thou ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and this Honourable Board please to give me leave, I would speak a Word or two upon this solemn Occasion. Altho the unerring Providence of God has brought you to the Chair of Government in a cloudy and tempestuous season, yet you have this for your Encouragement, that the people you Have to do with are a part of the Israel of God, and you may expect to have ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... recognize in Atma the highest ruler in the world of perceptions, and in the will, the highest executive energy (power), then may he, under the time-honoured rules, be taken in hand by one of the Initiates. He may then be shown the mysterious path at whose farther end is obtained the unerring discernment of Phala, or the fruits of causes produced, and given the means of reaching Apavarga—emancipation from the misery of repeated births, pretya-bhava, in whose determination the ignorant has ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Haemus chill, Where once the hurrying woods obey'd The minstrel's will, Who, by his mother's gift of song, Held the fleet stream, the rapid breeze, And led with blandishment along The listening trees? Whom praise we first? the Sire on high, Who gods and men unerring guides, Who rules the sea, the earth, the sky, Their times and tides. No mightier birth may He beget; No like, no second has He known; Yet nearest to her sire's is set Minerva's throne. Nor yet shall Bacchus ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... were his outstanding feature. They were of a deep, bright blue. They were both resolute and prone to twinkle. His mouth, that unerring index, matched the eyes in suggesting a combination of cheerfulness and firmness. It was the kind of mouth able to remain closed at need. He had thick, light-brown hair, just ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... back, all anxiety at rest. She was going to grandpa, with this tiny "Guardian" an unerring guide. Why should one fear aught while the sun shone so brightly, and over on the further shore she could see trees waving and green terraces rising one above the other? Surely, grandpa had done well to leave the dingy Lane for ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... a regular dealer, he went steadily on: his activity was incessant, and always productive. His energies seemed to have been shaped by an unerring and divining instinct. He found old sideboards, chests, wardrobes, brought from England two centuries ago, dropping to pieces in barns and cellars. He found an "almost priceless Elizabethan cabinet" serving as a hen-house in a farmer's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... bracken, and it had a sufficiently obvious ditch, of some three feet wide, on the nearer side. The grand effort was duly prepared for. The bank was solemnly exhibited to the filly; the dogs, who had with unerring instinct seated themselves on its most jumpable portion, were scattered with one threat of the whip to the horizon. Fanny tore away the last bit of bracken that might prove a discouragement, and Johnny ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... star Sirius; and to the Fravashis (guardian angels of the saints). If I have offended thee, oh thou greatest one, Ahura-Mazda, or if I have diminished ought of the sacrifices (Yasnas) due to thee, forgive me, O forgive me, thou unerring one. I declare myself to be a Mazdaist, a Zarathustrian, a sworn foe to the Daevas (2) and a ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... were a mystery to him: he had long since realized that unless a man's passions intervene, there is nothing more mysterious about women than about men. It was all humbug—all this mummery about intuitions and unerring perception and inscrutability. Women are all alike—all human—all susceptible to sheer, blatant flattery. The only difference in women is in the particular brand of flattery to which, as individuals, ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... sticklers for routine,' he sighed. 'They have no originality. They have a passion for commonplace, and in moments of emotion they fly with unerring instinct into ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... wilderness with no aid for miles and leagues about him, buffeting the rapid current and struggling through driving cakes of ice; when we behold the stealthy savage, whose aim against all other marks is unerring, pointing his rifle deliberately at him, and firing over and over again; when we see him riding through showers of bullets on Braddock's fatal field, and reflect that never, during his whole life, was he ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... "By thy unerring Spirit led, We shall not in the desert stray; We shall not full direction need; Nor miss our providential way; As far from danger as from fear, While love, almighty ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... howling mob of native insurgents; and how, when further resistance was hopeless, and that great black wave of angry humanity burst in upon them at last, the brave soldier had drawn his revolver, shot his wife and daughter with unerring aim, to prevent their falling alive into the hands of the natives, and then blown his own brains out with his last remaining cartridge. As his uncle had done at Jhansi, thirty years before, so he himself would do on that ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... formed the elite of the Persian infantry. They were trained to deliver their arrows with extreme rapidity, and with an aim that was almost unerring. The huge wattled shields, adopted by the Achaemenian Persians from the Assyrians, still remained in use; and from behind a row of these, rested upon the ground and forming a sort of loop-holed wall, the Sassanian bowmen shot their weapons with great effect; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... much," I admonished him. But he dismissed my caution with a laugh and an elated gesture. Pooh! Nothing, nothing could happen to the brig, he cried, as if the flame of his heart could light up the dark nights of uncharted seas, and the image of Freya serve for an unerring beacon amongst hidden shoals; as if the winds had to wait on his future, the stars fight for it in their courses; as if the magic of his passion had the power to float a ship on a drop of dew or sail her through the eye of a needle—simply because it was her magnificent lot to be the servant of ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... vol. i., p. 7. How do these hair-breadth escapes illustrate the unerring providence of God, and the short-sightedness of even pious Christians. It is easy to imagine the exclamations of a reflecting character when hearing of the marvelous escapes of this wicked youth. 'Dark providences! the good and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... she considered the "gentry," had toiled with the utmost disinterestedness to build up a feeling, or, as she called it, a "tone," which, among other things, should exclude her from equality. When she began she was, perhaps, the only person in town who had an unerring instinct for social differences; but, like a kindly, experienced actor of a minor role in theatricals, she had silently given so many professional tips to the amateur principals in the play, and had acted ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... world took on the stamp and impress of Rome. The East, indeed, remained Greek in language and feeling, but even there Roman law and government prevailed, Roman roads traced their unerring course, and Roman architects erected majestic monuments. The West became completely Roman. North Africa, Spain, Gaul, distant Dacia, and Britain were the seats of populous cities, where the Latin language was spoken and Roman customs were followed. From them ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... shouldn't have thought of using that word. But, he is bringing its gray hairs in sorrow to the grave—or will, if he remains in office, instead of turning it over to a well-balanced man of good judgment and unerring taste—say, like one ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... suppose a Being{224} with penetration sufficient to perceive differences in the outer and innermost organization quite imperceptible to man, and with forethought extending over future centuries to watch with unerring care and select for any object the offspring of an organism produced under the foregoing circumstances; I can see no conceivable reason why he could not form a new race (or several were he to separate the stock of the original organism and work on several islands) adapted to new ends. As ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... reflection they shall have retraced the origin and progress of the insurrection, let them determine whether it has not been fomented by combinations of men who, careless of consequences and disregarding the unerring truth that those who rouse can not always appease a civil convulsion, have disseminated, from an ignorance or perversion of facts, suspicions, jealousies, and accusations of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... had received it, there had been nothing further from his mind than to bury himself in the moors with Archie; but not even the most acute political heads are guided through the steps of life with unerring directness. That would require a gift of prophecy which has been denied to man. For instance, who could have imagined that, not a month after he had received the letter, and turned it into mockery, and put off answering ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... infant with both arms and aided by the knees, gives it a violent whirling motion, that would seem rather calculated to shake the child in pieces than to produce the effect of soft slumber; but the result was unerring, and in a few seconds the child was ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the case of a rolling ship," Kennedy continued, alternately covering and uncovering the mirror, "the beam of light which this mirror reflects always goes back, unerring, to its source. It would do so from an aeroplane, so high in the air that it could not be located. The returning beam is invisible to anyone not immediately in the path of the ray, and the ray always ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... Guided by unerring instinct, Ethel went straight to the chamber where her child lay dying—perhaps already dead. Outside the door she paused with her hand pressed ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... come into sight behind the next sand billow; but at its head a man rode on a horse, alone, with no one at his side. Already it was too dark to see his face, but Max knew who it was. He felt the man's identity with an instinct as unerring as Sanda's. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... other angel seek I? To this heart, To this unerring heart, will I submit it, Will ask thy love, which has the power to bless 35 The happy man alone, averted ever From the disquieted and guilty—canst thou Still love me, if I stay? Say that thou canst, And I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... or incense, softening oil, preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm: and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility or force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided wandering of feeble tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... west gate of the Shirakawa palace fell to Tametomo and his handful of followers. The duty of attacking it happened to devolve on his brother, Yoshitomo. To avert such an unnatural conflict, Tametomo, having proclaimed his identity, as was usual among bushi, drew his bow with such unerring aim that the arrow shore off an ornament from Yoshitomo's helmet without injuring him in any way. Yoshitomo withdrew, and the Taira took ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... parents were peasants, and Peter in early life became valet to Mr. Williamson, brother of Sir Hedworth Williamson. He afterwards became gamekeeper to the Marquis of Londonderry, and in that capacity acquired a reputation as an unerring shot, and a man of unusual physical strength and courage. He afterwards married, and became a publican at Whitburn, and in the course of few years purchased a little property, and occupied himself ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... and wrong; and yet he was not without his prejudices, which, though few, and colored by the character and usages of the individual, were deep-rooted, and almost formed a part of his nature. But the most striking feature about the moral organization of Pathfinder was his beautiful and unerring sense of justice. This noble trait—and without it no man can be truly great, with it no man other than respectable—probably had its unseen influence on all who associated with him; for the common and unprincipled brawler of the camp had been known to return from an expedition made in ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... the strong, self-respecting pride of her ancestry. She would never have stooped to buy the silence of a low knave like this Alexander; and her clear truthfulness of soul indicated at once the single, straight, unerring clew which could lead out of this ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... the chance of looking on while some one else did the work. She was intently conscious of her companion's presence, but he seemed to forget all about her, as wading slightly forward into the stream he cast his fly in slow, unerring circuit. How big he looked, how strong and masterful; how graceful were the lines of his tall lean figure! From where she sat Margot could see the dark profile beneath the deerstalker cap, the long straight nose, the firmly-closed ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey |
