"Unintentional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forgot completely how he had man[oe]uvred in the second place to marry Nelly to Robin Drummond. In fact, he didn't remember about it till he was going home, and then, after a momentary shamefacedness about his unintentional disingenuousness, he decided, like a sensible man, that there was no use ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... from a malady involving their very nature and being, have also been treated cruelly by their fellows, the writer fears that some names which ought to have been recorded and some institutions which ought to have been honourably mentioned, have been passed over in silence. Apart from unintentional oversight, it is not always easy to find in the Temple of Fame the precise niche in which to place the figure that would rightfully fill it, and the consequence is that the pedestal, as in some of our great public edifices, remains unoccupied. It may be said, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... re-election that they insisted on a four-year term. As so amended the matter went to the people and was adopted. At the following election Mayor James Rolph, Jr., was elected for four years, two of which were an unintentional ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... on the whole, though some whimpered that she had not taken them as far as she took Nancy or Grace or Dorothy, and others jagged her, but it was quite unintentional, and she was too much of a lady to cry out. So much walking tired her and she was anxious to be off to the ball, but she no longer felt afraid. The reason she felt no more fear was that it was now night-time, and in the dark, you ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... from seeking to "pettifogulize"—i.e., to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction—exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost every body's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations. Undesigned equivocation prevails every where; [10] and it is not the cavilling hair splitter, but, on the contrary, the single-eyed servant of truth, that is most likely to insist upon the limitation ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... not written to you for a long time, but it has not been unintentional. I could not write you frankly, and so I would not write at all. I can be frank with you now, but not by letter. It is a great deal to ask, but I wonder if you could come to New York to help me out? I have got into ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... position to appreciate the unintentional humor of Ashe's indignant outcry, cited at the beginning of this chapter, against those who calumniate these innocent people "by denying that there is anything but 'brutal passion' in their love-affairs." He admits, indeed, that "no expressions ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the task more or less foreign to every other medical inquiry is the intentional or unintentional effort of the patient to hide the sources of the trouble and to mislead as to their true character. Too often he is entirely unconscious of the sources of trouble or else he has social reasons to deceive the world and himself, and ultimately the ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... doors, if I don't know my family history," I said. "I know who I am, and something inside of me tells me where to go." And I pressed the button so hard I thought I'd broken it unintentional. ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... even more amusement than he, and had gone on smiling every now and then afterward, with a significance that at length drove Claude to bed disgusted with him and still more with himself. There had been one offsetting comfort; an unintentional implication had somehow slipped in between his words, that the haunting fantasy had blue eyes and ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... Review, Bentley jumped at the conclusion that it was written or inspired by Colebrooke. Hence arose his animosity, which lasted for many years, and vented itself from time to time in virulent abuse of Colebrooke, whom Bentley accused not only of unintentional error, but of willful misrepresentation and unfair suppression of the truth. Colebrooke ought to have known that in the republic of letters scholars are sometimes brought into strange society. Being what he was, he need not—nay, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... you, my dear girl," he replied soothingly; "we should perhaps make some allowance for unintentional exaggeration. There are always two sides to a story, and we have but ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... would cast him off. Probably I was mistaken, but in my despair the impulse to disclose it was almost irresistible. I struggled against it, however, and when she pressed me, I praised him and strove in my praise to be sincere. Whether it was something in my tone, quite unintentional, I know not, but she stopped me almost in the middle of a sentence and said she believed I had kept something back which I did not wish her to hear; that she was certain he had talked to me about her, and that ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... fault should become known. Still she yielded to the temptation, and allowed herself to be persuaded to remain with the stranger. She said afterward, when the facts were brought to light, that her meeting with this companion was wholly unintentional on her part. She saw a wolf in the grove, she said, and she ran terrified into a cave to escape from him, and that the man came to her there, to protect her, and then compelled her to remain with him. ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... signification is not discoverable, or, upon the other hand, if it can be pinned down to any definite statement, then that statement will be false.'[2] Mr. Ward in turn says of Mr. Bradley: 'I cannot even imagine the state of mind to which his description applies.... It reads like an unintentional travesty of Herbartian Psychology by one who has tried to improve upon it without being at the pains to master it.' Muensterberg excludes a view opposed to his own by saying that with any one who holds it a verstaendigung with him is ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... thoughts without order, and not perhaps in unintentional confusion; that is true order, which will always indicate my object by its very disorder. I should do too much honour to my subject, if I treated it with order, since I want to show that it is ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... the question by a memorable note of its Secretary of State, recognizing the absolute sovereignty of Peru over those islands and declaring that "he makes this avowal with the greater readiness, in consequence of the unintentional injustice done to Peru, under a transient want of information as to the ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... back to me. "You probably understand, Mr. Lyndon, that this unfortunate affair with the police alters our plans entirely. At present I am quite unable to see how they have found you out, unless you have betrayed yourself by some piece of unintentional carelessness. Anyhow, the fact remains that they know where you are, and that very probably they will be able to trace ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... to the place after his many years of Boston; but he had got used to the ugly grandeur, to the noise and the rush, and he had divined more and more the careless good-nature and friendly indifference of the vast, sprawling, ungainly metropolis. There were happy moments when he felt a poetry unintentional and unconscious in it, and he thought there was no point more favorable for the sense of this than Stuyvesant Square, where they had a flat. Their windows looked down into its tree-tops, and across them to the truncated towers of St. George's, and to the plain red-brick, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Philemon by a glance that meant far more than any words. Then she went to her room, only to lie for hours staringly awake, listening to the wild whirring and whistling of the wind as she bemoaned her unintentional treachery to the aide, and sought for ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... inviting of my soul is past, my soul has responded to my invitation. You remember Crisodd's Devilgrass Symphony? A horrible misconception if ever there was one, a personal insult to anyone who ever saw the Grass; a dull, unintentional joke; bad Schoenberg—if that isnt a tautology—combined with faint memories of the most vulgar Wagner—if that isnt another tautology—threaded together on Mighty Like a Rose and Alexander's Ragtime Band. But what am I saying, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... to say that a very large proportion of our modern great properties, tramway systems, railways, gas-works, bread companies, have been created for their present owners the debenture holders and mortgagers, the great capitalists, by the unintentional altruism of that voluntary martyr, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... origin of such peculiarities in the ritual of idolatry can now scarcely be expected; but it certainly need not excite surprise if the early Christians were impressed by them, and if they viewed them as so many unintentional testimonies to the truth of their religion. The disciples displayed, indeed, no little ingenuity in their attempts to discover the figure of a cross in almost every object around them. They could recognise it in the trees and the flowers, in the fishes and the fowls, in the sails of a ship and ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... entirely ignore their straight ball. When you find your ball at rest the aforementioned forty or fifty yards from the point to which you desired to send it, make up your mind, however unpleasant it may be to do so, that the trouble is due to an unintentional pull or slice, and you may get what consolation you can from the fact that the slightest of these variations from the ordinary drive is seized upon with delight by any wind, and its features exaggerated to an enormous extent. It is quite possible, therefore, that a slice which would ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... Then he broke into a laugh. "Called you Gertie, didn't I?" he said. "Beg pardon. Quite unintentional. It slipped out before I thought. But you don't mind, do you? It's a pretty name. Just a little bit less formal than Gertrude, ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of originality in the Calender is the attempt at linking the separate eclogues into a connected series. We have already seen how with Googe the same characters recur in a sort of shadowy story; but what was in his case vague and almost unintentional becomes with Spenser a central artistic motive of the piece. The eclogues are arranged with no small skill and care on somewhat of an architectural design, or perhaps we should rather say with somewhat of the symmetry of a geometrical pattern. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... trouble such as is described above. Despite your absolute assurance that you are making no mistake, do not be surprised to find that you are not following directions to the letter, and because of this unintentional mistake, your negligence is responsible for your baby's condition. Go over the instructions with your husband, and let him follow your method of preparation, as you repeat it. He may detect the mistake if any exists,—two heads are always better than one. So important is this matter ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... fact, the minister's calls were in the nature of a compromise, although an unintentional one. He dropped in on Zebedee Mayo, owner of the big house on the slope of the hill. Captain Zeb took him up into what he called his "cupoler," the observatory on the top of the house, and showed him ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... indeed so much impressed with the prevalence of falsehood, voluntary or unintentional, that I never knew any person who upon hearing an extraordinary circumstance told, discovered more of the incredulus odi. He would say, with a significant look and decisive tone, 'It is not so. Do not tell this again.' He inculcated upon all his friends the importance of perpetual vigilance ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... bull-terrier "Bill," a spotted dog of doubtful ancestry. He had been given to me as a bull-terrier when he was only a little white rat of a thing, and I had raised him at Bunji on tinned milk. He was a most uncanny dog (the joke is unintentional), and it was commonly believed in the force that his father was a tom cat. Poor Bill! Before he got to Laspur he was so snow blind that until we got to Mastuj I had to open his eyes for him every morning and bathe them with hot water before ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... unintentional speech and quite uncalled for; for nobody could be more regular, more punctual, than Warrender. It was the first thing she could find ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... bleeding face, and returned it with thanks. Seraphia kissed it, and put it under her cloak. The girl then timidly offered the wine, but the brutal soldiers would not allow Jesus to drink it. The suddenness of this courageous act of Seraphia had surprised the guards, and caused a momentary although unintentional halt, of which she had taken advantage to present the veil to her Divine Master. Both the Pharisees and the guards were greatly exasperated, not only by the sudden halt, but much more by the public testimony ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... to no one until he presented her to all. Fanchon Bareaud, indeed, made one hurried and embarrassed call, evading Miss Betty's reference to the chevalier of the kitten with a dexterity too nimble to be thought unintentional. Miss Carewe was forbidden to return her friend's visit until after her debut; and Mr. Carewe explained that there was always some worthless Young men hanging about the Bareaud's, where (he did not add) they interfered with a worthy oh one who desired ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... hours' sleep has —— had? and at what hours of the night?[34] "I have never closed my eyes all night," an answer as frequently made when the speaker has had several hours' sleep as when he has had none, would then be less often said. Lies, intentional and unintentional, are much seldomer told in answer to precise than to leading questions. Another frequent error is to inquire whether one cause remains, and not whether the effect which may be produced by a great many different causes, ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... benevolence, and reward it more, than a kind intention which fails of execution; that we judge and punish the purposed crime which is not carried out more leniently than the one which is completed; that we even ascribe a certain degree of accountability to an unintentional act of good or evil—although in these cases the moralist is compelled to see an ethically unjustifiable corruption of the judgment by external success or failure beyond the control of the agent. The first of these irregularities does not allow the man of good intentions to content ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... seemed to be equally her husband's wish to thwart any such intention of hers. He remained in the house-place, till after Philip had left, although he was evidently so much fatigued as to give some very distinct, though unintentional, hints to ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... weariness. In the opinion of the other the Fantaisie deserves the general enthusiasm which it has called forth, because the composer proves himself master of his language and thoughts, conducts himself like a man of the world, binds and loosens the threads with so much ease that it seems quite unintentional, and draws the audience with him wherever he wishes without either over-exciting or wearying it. The truth, no doubt, is rather with Schumann than with Liszt. Although Thalberg's compositions cannot ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... seem to be so good friends as formerly. If I have done anything to offend you, I know that you will believe me when I say that it was quite unintentional on my part and that I am very sorry for it, and hope ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... an unintentional, unconscious attraction in her, which won every one. Her notorious origin was not visited upon her, and even the rich girls in the village gladly made her their friend. While at work in the fields she sang in a ringing voice; in the spinning-room, in ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... the wealth of the province in the shape of new railway-lines and canals, fine stations, and public buildings, not to speak of the thousands of fruit-trees with which, in German fashion, they have lined the roads—a small, unintentional reparation for the murdered ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the skill with which he uses seemingly indifferent incidents and sayings to trick out and light up his pictures, the apparently unintentional and therefore most effective ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... thought the board did "not speak with the complete clarity necessary," but he considered the ambiguity unintentional. Experience showed, he reminded the secretary, "that we cannot get enforcement of policies that permit of any possibility of misconstruction." Directness, he said, was required in place of equivocation ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... the unintentional cause of his friend's disappointment, was equally well pleased. This pleasure, however, did not last; for, on seeing "the comrade," he received a most unpleasant impression. The man was tall and powerfully built, but the expression of his face ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... to return this bitter, but unintentional mockery of compliment. He bowed his head, and remained a moment silent; then, motioning to his train, four of his officers approached, and kneeling beside Ferdinand, proffered to him, upon a silver buckler, ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... he said, and then blushed very red, as it occurred to him he had made an unintentional pun. But we looked quite grave, and did not give any sign of having seen it, and that put him on ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... farm had sunk into the ground the parents could not have been more astonished than they were at hearing it thus despised, and Mildrid's silence showed that she agreed with Hans. There was something in this resolution of the young people, unintentional on their part, that, as it were, took away from the parents the right of decision; they ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... declined this office, I endeavoured to throw the game into your hands, and your conduct then, however unintentional, assisted me in ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... that each man, by helping himself, unintentionally helped his neighbours. The moral sense based upon sympathy was therefore not opposed to, but justified, the economic principles that each man should first attend to his own interest. The unintentional co-operation would thus become conscious and compatible with the established order. And, in the next place, so far from there being a want of humane feeling, the most marked characteristic of the eighteenth century ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... moment McIver gazed at the old basket maker as if estimating his peculiar strength, then he said with an unintentional touch of contempt in his heavy voice, ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... firm officials and stewards busy. One of the faithful employees was Richard McCraith, a newly arrived Irishman from Cork. He had that noted propensity of his race for getting orders twisted, but his endeavors to do right were so earnest and conscientious that his unintentional errors of judgment were condoned. One urgent order from a patron asked for delivery to bearer of two sacks of coarse salt. For its hauling the bearer had a cart. "Here, Richard, go with this man to the warehouse on High Street and see that his cart is backed up close to the door. The salt is stored ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... purpose, it's better than if loaded," Peter asserted complacently. "For purposes of intimidation—which is all you want of it—grand! And it can't go off by accident and make you an unintentional murderer." ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... as love, and which is so natural to man—this truth, in order to force a way to man's consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth. Such a hindrance and misrepresentation of the truth—which had ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy
... and her hasty compliance was a source of lifelong regret, because, as she affirmed, she did not sufficiently consult the will of God and her ecclesiastical superior. In fact she never forgave herself this unintentional error of judgment, as she called it, and attributed to it all the accidents that subsequently ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... by this unintentional eavesdropping on my part, was the source of much reflection—and as I lay on the bed without taking off my clothes, it occupied my thoughts till the day began to break. That I still retained the good opinion of Miss Trevannion was certain, and the mortification ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... must here acknowledge a close, though unintentional, resemblance in these twelve lines to a passage in an unpublished poem of Mr. Coleridge, called "Christabel." It was not till after these lines were written that I heard that wild and singularly original and beautiful poem recited; and the MS. ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... never conducted his Lohengrin better than Franz Lachner, appeared to me very droll. It is well known that Wagner has never heard this work, let alone conducted it!— Ignorance of this kind is, moreover, not the worst on the other side, where intentional and unintentional ignorance and lies (not to mince the matter) are continually being ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... the man was hanging limply, instead of standing against the post. He writhed and twisted in frenzied efforts to secure some relief while in this uncomfortable position, but each movement only caused further pain and the unintentional utterance of piercing shrieks. Upon the exhaustion of this spasm the upper part of his body dropped forward slightly so that his head ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... his mind was so thoroughly imbued, so saturated, with the preconceived notion of the Wild Man of the West being a huge, ferocious, ugly monster, all over red, or perhaps blue, hair, from the eyes to the toes, with canine teeth, and, very probably, a tail, that unintentional hints and suggestive facts were totally thrown away upon him. The fact is, that if Dick had at that moment looked him full in the face and said, "I'm the Wild Man of the West," March would have ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... ignorant of the world, the American people nursed its wrath and brooded over the causes of offence which have seemed so large to it, though so trivial or so unintentional on the part of England, till the minds of the majority of the people held nothing but ill-feeling and contempt in response to England's good-will towards them. And always the United States has had those at her elbow who were willing—nay, for their own interests, ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... and my happiness at your escape from the danger that threatened you is redoubled by the consciousness that I have been the unwilling and the unintentional cause of all the peril you have incurred. I yesterday purchased these horses of the baron; but as the baroness evidently regretted parting with them, I ventured to send them back to her, with a request that she would gratify me by accepting ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... whenever the subject was alluded to, there were confidential meetings with Adeline, and other symptoms which left little doubt to her friends that Jane's feelings were interested. Mrs. Graham was obliged to console herself with the idea, that the mischief had, at least, been unintentional on the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... been bestowed upon me as well for the working out of a labor problem here, but it is honor undeserved, for the thing began in the entirely unintentional manner which I have set down, and the working out of it came at a later date through Nancy's thinking and the zeal ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... and alike for all; and that is law, which all men ought to obey for many reasons, and especially because every law is an invention and gift of the Gods, a resolution of wise men, a corrective of errors intentional and unintentional, a compact of the whole state, according to which all who belong to the state ought to live." [Footnote: Demosth. in Aristogeit. Section 17.—Translation by ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... sacred ceremonies. Actions for homicide and wounding are heard, if the homicide or wounding be willful, in the Areopagus; so also in cases of killing by poison, and of arson. These are the only cases heard by that Council. Cases of unintentional homicide, or of intent to kill, or of killing a slave or a resident alien or a foreigner, are heard by the court of Palladium. When the homicide is acknowledged, but legal justification is pleaded, as when a man takes an ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... undersigned wishes to thank the membership for its kind reception of the Department's reports. It is ever the Chairman's design to render impartial judgment, and if harshness or captiousness may at any time have been noticed in the reports, it has in each case been unintentional. An ideal of sound conservatism has been followed, but in no instance has the critic sought to enforce upon others that peculiarly archaic style of which he is personally fond, and which he is accustomed to employ ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... possibility, or natural consequence of his silence, which had not occurred to him before. But he was learning to keep his feelings under control, to set his face and his teeth against the regular reactions of his coward conscience and his fickle will. And once again did Dr. Baumgartner atone for an unintentional minor by striking a rousing chord on the very heart-strings ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... I was the unintentional cause of making a quarrel between her and the nun of Chelles. At the commencement of the affair of the Duc du Maine, I received a letter from my daughter addressed to Madame d'Orleans; and not thinking that it was for the Abbess, who bears the same title with her mother, I sent it to the latter. ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... discovered her to be altogether sensible and agreeable. Apparently the young English Girl Guide had understood and accepted the circumstances. She not only failed to express any show of resentment at Tory's unintentional disregard of her, she appeared not to feel ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... of the universal disappointment, a hasty reflection of preceding events convinced Graydon that personally he had little ground for complaint against the late occupants of the convent. For unintentional as undoubtedly had been the act through which at the very point of death his existence had been preserved, there was no evidence to refute the hypothesis that the shot which had killed his assailant in the plaza had been fired by one of ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... Cyril, in great mental anguish, goes to Admiral Everard's house, and incidentally puts to a brother clergyman there a case of conscience: Should a man who has acted unwisely, and is guilty of unintentional homicide, imperil a useful and brilliant career by confession? Not if he had such great gifts and opportunities of doing good as Cyril has, he is told. By this pronouncement and a love scene with Marion, Cyril is ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... break on Master Tommy's part was entirely unintentional. Alice was telling me about it. She sends him to Sunday School and he has to memorize the Golden Text and repeat it to her ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... dowager afforded the world of high life perpetual amusement. Her whole life was an unintentional caricature of royalty. Beggarly beyond conception in her private affairs, she was as pompous in public as if she had the blood of all the thrones of Europe in her veins. She evidently regarded the Brunswicks as usurpers, and hated them; while she affected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... generally nothing more than a sense of one's own importance, decorously framed and glazed, is an immense factor in success. I myself cherish the heresy that effectiveness is very far from being the end of life, and that the only effectiveness that is worth anything is unintentional effectiveness. I believe that a man or woman who is humble and sincere, who loves and is loved, is higher on the steps of heaven than the adroitest lobbyist; but it may be that the world's criterion of what it admires and respects is the right one; ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "Why, you have brought me to the wrong room, you blundering villain. I thought you were conducting me to some worthy tradesman. You have mistaken the room, you blockhead; this is a gentleman. How do you do, sir? I hope you will excuse this intrusion; it is quite unintentional on my part; yet I am ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... try to do so, you will make me less unhappy. If you accept the sum I enclose you to meet the expenses of your journey, I shall be less miserable. By taking it you will prove that you pity and forgive me,—the unintentional cause of so much evil to you and your excellent mother." George enclosed a check for five hundred dollars, all he had saved from his earnings as a clerk for ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... for having a crosspiece, which, taken with the fact that the sheath itself is continued three parts up the hilt of the dagger (in a most inconvenient fashion), gives it the appearance of a cross. That this is not unintentional is shown by an engraving of the Christ crucified upon one side, whilst upon the other, in Latin, is the inscription: 'Vengeance is Mine, I will Repay.' A quaint and rather terrible conjunction of ideas. Upon the blade of the dagger ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... he have said had he known how much worse the record might have been—had all been revealed, had Seabrooke disclosed the drugging, the theft of his letter to his father, and the destruction, unintentional though it was, ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... eyes flashed angrily. He turned upon her suddenly, but on second thought did not utter the words forming on his lips. She realized the unintentional slur she had cast, and was about to explain. But on second thought she, too, remained silent; for she read him, and knew that it was perhaps the only way for her to gain her point. They stood there, bodies inclined to the storm in the manner of seamen on sloped decks, unyieldingly looking into ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... The unintentional irony of Mr. Jefferson's letter of credit now became apparent. The trading vessels that were used to making yearly visits to this part of the coast from abroad had gone away for the winter, and no white face ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... a porter." Poor Miss Reynolds, who tells this story, was another attraction to Reynolds' house. She was a shy, retiring maiden lady, who vexed her famous brother by following in his steps without his talents, and was deeply hurt by his annoyance at the unintentional mockery. Johnson was through life a kind and judicious friend to her; and had attracted her on their first meeting by a significant indication of his character. He said that when going home to his lodgings at one or two in the morning, he often saw poor children asleep on thresholds and stalls—the ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... sorry. I hope I haven't given any unintentional offence?" said the widow, again meekly appealing ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... disregarded, dried her eyes and set herself to fill the poor child's infrequent leisure with anti-toxin injections of the higher morality as conveyed in the poetry of TENNYSON. You now take my meaning when I speak of Mr. INGE as sufficiently single-minded to brave some danger of unintentional humour. Really my sketch has done less than justice to a story that will hold your interest, if only for the sincerity with which it is handled; for myself I was first impatient, then derisive, finally curious to know how it was going to end. I rather think ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... Meaning of Environment. We have seen that a community or social group sustains itself through continuous self-renewal, and that this renewal takes place by means of the educational growth of the immature members of the group. By various agencies, unintentional and designed, a society transforms uninitiated and seemingly alien beings into robust trustees of its own resources and ideals. Education is thus a fostering, a nurturing, a cultivating, process. All of these words mean that it implies attention ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... murmured the girl, "but yet they are better off, for without brains or souls there could be no happiness in life for them. My father did them a hideous wrong, but it was an unintentional wrong. His mind was crazed with dwelling upon the wonderful discovery he had made, and if he wronged them he contemplated a still more terrible wrong to be ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... them a boy of eleven or twelve, Samuel Lloyd Osbourne, to be much referred to later (a son of Mrs Stevenson by a former marriage), whose delight was to draw the oddest, but perhaps half intentional or unintentional caricatures, funny, in some cases, beyond expression. His room was designated the picture-gallery, and on entering I could scarce refrain from bursting into laughter, even at the general effect, and, noticing ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... species of trigger was arranged to let the bent bow fly, and a piece of fine cord passed from this across the opening about breast-high for a tiger. The intention was that the animal, in entering the enclosure, should become its own executioner—should commit unintentional suicide, if we may so ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... I will do all a man can to rectify the mischief, of which, God knows, I have been an innocent and entirely unintentional cause. Salome's course is unwomanly, and lowers her in my estimation; but she is so young I shall hope and pray that her preference for me is not sufficiently strong to prove more than an idle, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... mode, and not make it of too much importance; for I think you should consider the thing as a matter almost of course, and not place more importance upon it than that which of course belongs to the incivility of not answering your letter, and this really I cannot but think is unintentional. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... Van Pelt, his wrong to Mary had been unintentional, as he was ignorant of her connection with the eclipse-glass scheme. Though Mr. Ten Eyck had been honest in advising Miss Trigillgus to abandon her plans, under the persuasion that with her limited means and want of business training the result could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... Lennop had learned through his unintentional eavesdropping was something of a revelation. In his mild conjectures as to Crowheart's opinion of him it never had occurred to him that it considered him anything more interesting than an impecunious semi-invalid ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... she might not betray her position and purpose. The male speaker was very urgent; the voice seemed that of a stranger. That of the female was not so clearly distinguishable, yet it seemed more familiar to the unintentional listener. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... to wait. The services of the other were too valuable for the time to be thrown away, even though the man was under suspicion. Besides, there was one chance in a hundred that the mishap was unintentional. ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the first Sunday I spent in this prison. I was very nearly getting reported to the governor for a very unintentional violation of the prison rules. In accordance with these rules, convicts were not allowed to turn their heads in any direction in chapel, and if they did so they were taken by the attendant officer before the governor, who punished ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... parallel to this monstrous claim, that sedition may be unintentional and may consist in some action which the Government judges by its results, one would have to hark back to the days of Judge Jeffreys, whom indeed McQueen of Braxfield resembled in ferocity, cunning, and effrontery. The insolence of Margarot at the bar to some extent excused the chief judge ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... judgment may not be able to determine the extent of the disease-resisting powers of the tissues which are liable to be affected, or of what shall in every instance constitute an overexcitement, it is not strange that horse owners find themselves in trouble from unintentional transgression. If the disease were dependent upon specific causes, or if the stability of the tissues were of a fixed or more nearly determinate quality, some measures might be instituted that would prove generally preventive; but the predisposing ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... how to commence my answer to your letter after so long a delay which has been unintentional and unexpected, and in a great measure unavoidable. I might, indeed, and ought to have written to you when I first received it, but I then hoped it would be in my power to make you a short visit in compliance with your invitation. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... female—will have had new shades of colour or other differences to act on and accumulate; and as sexual selection is always at work, it would (from what we know of the results on domestic animals of man's unintentional selection), be surprising if animals inhabiting separate districts, which can never cross and thus blend their newly-acquired characters, were not, after a sufficient lapse of time, differently modified. These remarks likewise apply to the nuptial or summer plumage, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... and finally drowsed shut. He had no idea of going to sleep. In fact, he had declared he would not go to sleep. So of course what happened was quite unintentional on Mun Bun's part. While Mother Bunker thought he was with the other children, they had no idea Mun Bun had refused to take his usual nap and had ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... and unintentional signal, he smote himself upon the knee, giving utterance again to his feelings of triumph, and departed, considering himself a young man of perception and ability. His amiability lasted so long that his mother congratulated him upon it, and remarked that he must have had good news, but Prescott ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... alluded to, which have been raised by different breeders without any wish for such a result, and the unintentional modification of foreign breeds in their new homes, both afford excellent evidence of the power of unconscious selection. This form of selection has probably led to far more important results than methodical selection, and is likewise ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... to them is intensified. In the "Arabian Nights" the princess boasts that a rose petal bruises her skin, while her competitor in delicacy is made ill by a fiber of cotton in her silken garments. So with the hyperaesthetic; an unintentional overlooking is reacted to as a deadly insult; the thwarting of any desire robs life of its savor; sounds become noises; a bit of litter, dirt; a ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... reason of his calling he was well aware of the human tendency to unintentional mistake in identity. With women especially, the jump from an impression to a conclusion was sometimes as ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... heure!" cried Aristide, excitedly casting away his straw hat, which an unintentional twist of the wrist caused to skim horizontally and nearly decapitate a small and perspiring soldier who happened to pass by. "A la bonne heure! Let him divorce you. You are then free. You can be mine without any ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... send Herr M. some of the best cigars, bought with our own money, I wanted to send them for Christmas, but we don't know anything about cigars, and we did not want to tell anyone because one can never know whether one won't be betrayed and you will be told it is unintentional; but that is not true, for when one betrays anything one has always secretly intended to do so; and then one says it was a slip of the tongue; but one really knows all the time. I can't write down all the extra things that ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... subscription-monger. It has now become a truism that enormous mischief is done by the indiscriminate distribution of alms to beggars or paupers. It is no less true, though not so obvious, that much unintentional harm is often done by subscriptions for what are called public objects. People ought to have sufficient mental independence to ask themselves what will be the ultimate effects of subscribing their money, and, if they honestly believe that those effects will be pernicious ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... intent on confining herself to some position about the girl inferior to that which such a friend as Lady Cantrip might have occupied. But the girl's manner, and the girl's speech about her own mother, overcame her. It was the unintentional revelation of the Duchess's constant reference to her,—the way in which Lady Mary would assert that "Mamma used always to say this of you; mamma always knew that you would think so and so; mamma used ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... none who knows them well can perceive it." Instances are common of slight acquaintances mistaking members, and especially daughters of a family, for one another, between whom intimate friends can barely discover a resemblance. Still, making reasonable allowance for unintentional exaggeration, the impression that all this evidence leaves on the mind is one of some wonder whether nurture can do anything at all, beyond giving instruction and professional training. It emphatically corroborates and goes far beyond ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... won the assent of Napoleon to her views, and he regarded with great satisfaction the union of Hortense with Louis. The contemplated connection with Duroc was broken off. Two young hearts were thus crushed, with cruelty quite unintentional. Duroc was soon after married to an heiress, who brought him a large fortune, and, it is said, a haughty spirit and an irritable temper, which embittered all ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... is benignity. When men wish there were no such appointed event, they are deceived, and know not what they wish. Literature furnishes a strange and profound, though wholly unintentional, confirmation of this view. Every form in which literary genius has set forth the conception of an earthly immortality represents it as an evil. This is true even down to Swift's painful account of the Struldbrugs in the island of Laputa. The legend of the Wandering Jew,16 one of the most ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the easy-chair from the front room and placed it for her by the window. With a faint smile she thanked him and said: "You are very kind," but the smile hurt Guy cruelly, it was so sad, so full of unintentional reproach, while the eyes she lifted to his looked so grieved and weary that he insensibly murmured to himself: "Poor child!" as he left her, and with the doctor repaired to the house, where Agnes was impatiently waiting for them. Poor, poor little Madge! Let ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... you, baroness?" he asked. "I fear you sought this room for quiet, and my intrusion was unintentional, ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... knowledge of Herr v. Osten's method, which is essentially different from ordinary "training" and is copied from the system of instruction employed in primary schools. In the opinion of the undersigned, the collective results of these observations show that even unintentional signs of the kind at present known were excluded. It is their unanimous opinion that we have here to deal with a case that differs in principle from all former and apparently similar cases; that it has ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... current of Monsieur the Viscount's thoughts. No more selfish reflections now. He must comfort this poor creature, of whose death he was to be the unintentional cause. Antoine's first anxiety was that Monsieur the Viscount should bear witness that the gaoler had treated him kindly, and so earned the blessing and not the curse of Monsieur le Cure, whose powerful presence seemed to haunt him still. On this score he was soon set at rest, and ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... and thought. And it is not merely a question of the greater or lesser skill with which the objects of external nature are studied and copied, for, in certain stages of artistic consciousness and artistic activity, the misrepresentation and distortion of natural objects are not unintentional technical inexpertness and incapacity, but conscious alteration, which depends upon the content that is in consciousness, and is, in fact, demanded by it. We may thus speak of imperfect art, which, in its own proper sphere, may be quite perfect ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... cases some slight effect may possibly be attributed to natural selection, as cats in many cases have largely to support themselves and to escape diverse dangers. But man, owing to the difficulty of pairing cats, has done nothing by methodical selection; and probably very little by unintentional selection; though in each litter he generally saves the prettiest, and values most a good breed of mouse- or rat-catchers. Those cats which have a strong tendency to prowl after game, generally get destroyed by traps. As cats ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... a sin and hinder the fruit of his prayer. Against such S. Augustine says in his Rule[215]: "When you pray to God in Psalms and hymns, entertain your heart with what your lips are reciting." But that distraction of mind which is unintentional does not destroy ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... from the local dialect, applying to a slight mishap, careless accident or unintentional disaster in any department of Hut life. The fall of a dozen plates from the shelf to the floor, the fracture of a table-knife in frozen honey, the burning of the porridge or the explosion of a tin thawing in the oven brought down on the unfortunate cook ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... jet of flame stopped its words. Alas! the Phoenix had unconsciously warmed to its subject, and in the unintentional heat of the moment had set fire to the paraffin with which that morning the children had anointed the carpet. It burned merrily. The children tried in vain to stamp it out. They had to stand back and let it burn itself out. ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... appeals to his sympathy. Nevertheless this autobiography rivals in historic and poetic worth Rousseau's "Confessions" and Benvenuto Cellini's "Life." The absolute candor with which Andersen lays bare his soul, the complete intentional or unintentional self-revelation, gives a psychological value to the book which no mere literary graces could bestow. I confess, until I had the pleasure of making Andersen's acquaintance, "The Fairy Tale of My Life" impressed me unpleasantly. After I had by personal intercourse ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Venters balanced perpetually in mind this haunting conception of innocence over against the cold and sickening fact of an unintentional yet actual gift. How could it be possible for the two things to be true? He believed the latter to be true, and he would not relinquish his conviction of the former; and these conflicting thoughts augmented the mystery that appeared to be a part of Bess. In ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... purpose stumbled over the lime cask and spilled some of his salt into it. To conceal all traces of his mishap he stirred in the salt as quickly as possible. The circumstance came to my knowledge afterward, and this unintentional addition of salt to the lime excited my liveliest curiosity, for the whitewash was not only blameless, but hard as cement, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... about Turton appears the most difficult to settle; but if there is a will there will be a way, and it is easy enough to imagine the sort of civil, complimentary assurances from one to the other, that though there had been a great misunderstanding, it was no doubt unintentional, and all that sort of palaver which is so familiar to old stagers and ...
— 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
... construed into a compliment to a lady of distinction, whose marriage with the Duke of Cumberland had excited the strong disapprobation of the king as a mesalliance. Boswell, to draw Goldsmith out, pretended to think the compliment unintentional. The poet smiled and hesitated. The general came to his relief. "Monsieur Goldsmith," said he, "est comme la mer, qui jette des perles et beaucoup d'autres belles choses, sans s'en appercevoir" (Mr. Goldsmith is like the sea, which casts ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... was my fete-day; everybody wished me happiness but you. The little children of the third division gave each her knot of violets, lisped each her congratulation:—you—nothing. Not a bud, leaf, whisper—not a glance. Was this unintentional?" ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... cried Louis, touched by her paleness and emotion, and attributing it entirely to wounded feeling, "I am very sorry that I have been the indirect cause of giving you pain. It was certainly unintentional. Miss Thusa was in rather a savage mood this evening, I must acknowledge; but she is not malicious, Clinton. With all her eccentricities, she has some sterling virtues. If you could only see her inspired, and hear one ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... impression of a seal on wax, the wax receiving form only, but no substance or matter; that imagination arises from impressions thus made, which endure for a length of time, and that this is the origin of memory; that man alone possesses recollection, but animals share with him memory—memory being unintentional or spontaneous, but recollection implying voluntary exertion or a search; that recollection is necessary for acting with design. It is doubtful whether Aristotle believed in the immortality of the soul, no decisive passage to that effect occurring ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... merchant brig was at anchor. Our pilot observed, that this settlement was not in a flourishing condition, because it received no great "resistance" from the Colonization Society. Of course, he meant to say, "assistance;" but there was an unintentional philosophy in the remark. Many ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... circling about it, the mother accidentally brushed her shoulder under the port quarter of the Mary Turner, and the Mary Turner listed to starboard as her stern was lifted a yard or more. Nor was this unintentional, gentle impact all. The instant after her shoulder had touched, startled by the contact, she flailed out with her tail. The blow smote the rail just for'ard of the fore-shrouds, splintering a gap through it as if it were no more than a cigar-box ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... merchants in Manchester took part in this ceremony, and marched in an entirely superfluous manner through the city with their cigars in their mouths and thick truncheons in their hands). It gave the command to fire upon the crowd in Preston, so that the unintentional revolt of the people stood all at once face to face, not only with the whole military power of the Government, but with the whole property-holding class as well. The working-men, who had no especial aim, separated gradually, and ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... regarding Cyrenius as 'procurator' [Greek: epitropou] of Judaea. He instituted the census not in this capacity, but as proconsul of Syria. The first procurator of Judaea was Coponius. Some of Justin's peculiarities may quite fairly be explained as unintentional. General statements without the due qualifications, such as those in regard to the massacre of the children and the conduct of the disciples in Gethsemane, are met with frequently enough to this day, and in works of a more professedly critical ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... living room. His children—and this was easy as he himself did not trouble himself about them—had also been won over by his brother, by reprehensible means, of course. The reprehensible means were just those which he himself never applied: unintentional kindness and love that was wise in its severity. But even in his wife he began to see more and more one who was to some extent his brother's ally in the latter's conspiracy against him. He saw this long ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... pretty rough, Mr. Upton, to penalize him for an unintentional foul," said Morrill. "He'd have beaten Flack if they'd ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... Graham, in a plausible manner, "I went out to call on a friend, meaning to come back to breakfast; but he made me breakfast with him, and when I did return you were gone. I owe you an apology, Tom. I hope you will excuse my unintentional neglect." ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... in a cab of his own, and doing a great deal of damage to the posts at the street corners. Occasionally, he shot himself out of his equipage headforemost over the apron; and I saw him on one occasion deliver himself at the door of the Grove in this unintentional way—like coals. But here I anticipate a little, for I was not a Finch, and could not be, according to the sacred laws of the society, until ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... was not the least frightened member of the party. His plunge through space had been unintentional, and when he rolled off into one corner of the cabin he gave a ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... help. He trusts that he has in all cases candidly and fully acknowledged his obligations when he has borrowed their materials, or condensed their thoughts. If he has in any case, through inadvertence, failed to do so, he hopes that this acknowledgment will be allowed to compensate for the unintentional omission. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... literature. The early English period had always interested me, and we had not been together for two months before Field was inoculated with a ravenous taste for the English literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Its quaintness and the unintentional humor of its simplicity cast a spell over him, which he neither sought nor wished to escape. He began with the cycle of romances that treat of King Arthur and his knights, and followed them through their prose and metrical versions of the almost undecipherable Saxon English to ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... forced itself. This is Sancho's mission throughout the book; he is an unconscious Mephistopheles, always unwittingly making mockery of his master's aspirations, always exposing the fallacy of his ideas by some unintentional ad absurdum, always bringing him back to the world of fact and commonplace by force ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... mother's door. Her 'come in' was glad and eager, and a soft pink colour flushed into her cheeks when she saw it was really Johnnie. This good mother, so just and tender to all her sons, kept a special corner of her heart for the merry scapegrace who excelled the family cat in a talent for unintentional mischief, and almost equalled that luckless animal in a facility for getting into universal disgrace. In another minute Johnnie was squatted on a footstool by the side of her sofa, holding her thin white hands in his own, and sometimes kissing them with a pretty devotion, which, mother-like, ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... an anonymous novel, called Eustace Conway, in which "a prominent character, represented in no amiable colours, bore the name of Captain Marryat." The truth of the story seems to be that the Captain went in hot wrath to Bentley, and demanded an apology or a statement that the coincidence was unintentional. Maurice replied, through his publisher, that he had never heard of Captain Marryat. It may be questioned whether the apology was not more ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... saw the eyes sternly bent on him, he thought that his staring out of the window, past the lady's profile, might have offended her. So, with a cough which was meant to serve as an apology for the unintentional rudeness, he turned his face away, and continued his gloomy revery among the odd patterns of the oilcloth on the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Beaufort is sufficiently acquainted with the romance of Miss Euphemia's character to pardon the action, unintentional on my part, of having touched her hand? I declare I had no expectation of ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... the palace, I entered the chapel. To my surprise, I found Lady Helen there, I heard her pray for the happiness of Scotland, for the safety of her defenders; and my mind being in a frame to join in such petitions, I apologized for my unintentional intrusion, and begged permission to mingle my devotions with hers. Nay, impressed and privileged by the sacredness of the place, I presumed still further, and before the altar of purity poured forth my gratitude for the duties she had ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... wanted quite as little. What she had done to offend Mr. Reyes, Kate could not guess, except as to the matter of the credit; but then, in that, she only executed her instructions. Still Mr. Reyes was of opinion that there were two ways of executing orders: but the main offence was unintentional on Kate's part. Reyes, though as yet she did not know it, had himself been a candidate for the situation of clerk; and intended probably to keep the equation precisely as it was with respect to the allowance ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... season, indeed, interest in the game became a sort of midsummer madness which pervaded the two households, at Keokuk and at Quarry Farm. Howells wrote his approval of the idea of "learning history by the running foot," which was a pun, even if unintentional, for in its out-door form it was a game of speed as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... every winter into its sheltered valleys from the snow-covered mountains of Abruzzo. [4] There was more uncertainty to which of the parties the two other provinces were meant to be assigned. It is scarcely possible that language so loose, in a matter requiring mathematical precision, should have been unintentional. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... under very heavy obligations to Jethro Bass for many favors; in the second place, Mr. Merrill had a real affection for Jethro, which, strange as it may seem to some, was quite possible; and in the third place, Mr. Merrill had taken a fancy to Cynthia, and he had never forgotten the unintentional wrong he had done William Wetherell. Mr. Merrill was a man of impulses, and generally of good impulses. Had he not himself urged upon Jethro the arrangement, it would never have come about. Lastly, he had invited Cynthia to his house that his wife might inspect her, and Mrs. Merrill's verdict ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... this is an excellent, though unintentional, pun. "Pudor" is Spanish for "shame," but this meaning makes the sentence difficult to read (at best), although it does convey the intent. I think that the word intended is "powder," but left the original in case I ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... moon in time to prevent their captain's unintentional defection from being seen by his troops. They had, therefore, fought on against such antagonists as, in the darkness, they could keep located. The moon reappeared, and showed many of the Hessians making for ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... 90s. per pound?-I may be making a mistake the weight. I was guessing 4 cuts to the ounce; but perhaps I may be below the mark. The 7d. worsted I know is very fine; but never weighed it, and I may be making an unintentional mistake ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... as if to be revenged for his unintentional courtesy of the Monday before, placed his ill-kept feet on the seat in front of him, in alarming proximity to Mrs. Roberts' shoulders, and chewed his tobacco, and defiled the floor with its juice, and talked aloud, and was in every sense disgusting. Neither was Dirk Colson one whit behind him. The ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... one made in the real image of God suffer his natur' to be provoked by a mere effigy of reason?" he said in English, and in tones much louder than those in which Weucha had chosen to pitch the conversation. The latter profited by the unintentional offence of his captive, and, seizing him by the thin, grey locks, that fell from beneath his cap, was on the point of passing the blade of his knife in malignant triumph around their roots, when a long, shrill yell rent the air, and was instantly echoed ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... measures, necessary, but an unbiased, faithful, and full report of symptoms to the physician, when he visits his little patient, is of the first importance. An ignorant servant or nurse, unless great caution be exercised by the medical attendant, may, by an unintentional but erroneous report of symptoms, produce a very wrong impression upon his mind, as to the actual state of the disease. His judgment may, as a consequence, be biased in a wrong direction, and the result prove seriously injurious to the welldoing of the patient. ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... to over-inflect. Too much modulation produces an unpleasant effect of artificiality, like a mature matron trying to be kittenish. It is a short step between true expression and unintentional burlesque. Scrutinize your own tones. Take a single expression like "Oh, no!" or "Oh, I see," or "Indeed," and by patient self-examination see how many shades of meaning may be expressed by inflection. This ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... 'Please excuse this unintentional break.... I fancied the door creaked.... No, she's not coming yet, the heartless wretch! You will ask me how all this is going to end, and what I intend to do with myself, and whether I shall stay here long? I know nothing about it, my boy, and I don't want to. What ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... implies an unintentional or unavoidable action on our own part, or one that we cannot perform; or an action performed by another person which we cannot prevent. It accompanies such speeches as, "It was not my fault;" "It is impossible ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... your hearts by an unaccountable fascination, and being as miserable as the principals in the second last chapter of one of Conny's three volumes? or were you to atone to him in some mysterious, fantastic, supernatural fashion, for the unintentional wrong? Because if you have done so, I'm afraid it is all mist and moonshine, poor Jack, quite as much as ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... and avoided her fiery eye. Of course, it had been discovered that he had watched that girl bathing. Dash it all, his action was unintentional! ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy |
