"Unreasonable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... illusions taught in the elementary schools," laughed O'Neil. "We Alaskans have found that it does exactly the opposite! We have found it a harsh and unreasonable landlord. But I'm afraid I'm boring you." He wrapped her more snugly in her coverings, for a chill had descended with the darkness, then strove to enliven her with stories garnered from his rich experience—stories which gave her fascinating glimpses of great undertakings and made her ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... my dear Mr Cheveley, of course," said the baronet, rising; "although it did not strike me as anything unreasonable. Yet I am aware how you are situated with a numerous family and a comparatively small income; and, believe me, I will not lose an opportunity of forwarding the views of the young gentleman. Good morning, my dear Mr Cheveley, good morning," ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... down in its weakness and its false conclusions—when he saw the defenders of it wandering further and further from what he knew to be true, growing every moment, as if from a consciousness of the unsoundness of their standing ground, more violent, obstinate, and unreasonable, the scales fell more and more from his eyes—he had seen the fact that the wicked might prosper, and in learning to depend upon his innocency he had felt that the good man's support was there, if it was anywhere; and at last, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... in a very hot part of Spain, where they don't have much rain, and where it hardly ever snows or freezes. And this king had a beautiful wife, whom he loved very much. But, unluckily, this beautiful wife had one great fault. She was always wishing for the most unreasonable and impossible things, and though the king was always trying to get her what she wanted she was never satisfied, and every day she seemed to grow more and more discontented and exacting. At last, one day in the winter, a most extraordinary ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... divine justice. Therefore it is the most dangerous and damnable thing to disobey this. It is to refuse the very remedy of sin. Consider also what vanity and uselessness is in these debates. What an unreasonable and senseless thing is it to dispute against our own soul, and against our own happiness! All is wrapt up here, and we do no less than the highest act of self-murder that can be. He that hateth me, wrongs his own soul. What an unreasonable thing then is it, because ye are miserable, to refuse ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Archbishop of Canterbury was the chief man in the realm next to the king, and for three years since Lanfranc's death the see had been kept vacant that William Rufus might enjoy its revenues for his own pleasure. It was not unreasonable that men should look to the appointment of Anselm as the beginning of an amendment in Church and State. The trouble was that William stuck ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... was now prepared to take the field were such as might inspire him with no unreasonable confidence of victory. He had assembled an army of 120,000 foot-soldiers, armed and disciplined in the Roman manner, and 16,000 horse, besides a hundred scythed chariots. His fleet, also, was so far superior to any that the Romans could oppose to him as to give him the almost undisputed command ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... the police-station cell, the boy began to think. First of all, he was puzzled. He had fared forth peaceably, and spoken to no one except the storekeeper. To force a man into peace by denying him his gun, seemed as unreasonable as to prevent fisticuffs by cutting off hands. But, also, a deep sense of shame swept over him, and scalded him. Getting into trouble here was, somehow, different from getting into trouble at home—and, in ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... fasten us into, and don't find out until we are well toward middle life that we should have done a great deal better at something else. Our vocations are likely enough to be illy chosen, since few persons are fit to choose them for us, and we are at the most unreasonable stage of life when we choose them for ourselves. And what the Lord made some people for, nobody ever can understand; some of us are for use and more are for waste, like the flowers. I am in such a hurry to know what the next world is like that I can hardly wait ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... itself, unreasonable persons are not lacking to point out that it is of the busman's variety. It is true that we are no longer face to face with the foe, but we—or rather, the authorities—make believe that we are. We wage mimic warfare in full ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... the magic!" he said. "You have made a most unreasonable, unconventional and altogether foolish fence appear reasonable, proper and perfectly sane. Please explain your coming with Snip to ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... the nun herself. It depends on the punctuation which view we adopt; and in the structure of the passage, there is nothing to indicate that the stop should be made before or after "Buddha." And the one view is as reasonable, or rather as unreasonable, as the other. ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... with eyes that, while they appraised shrewdly, held a lurking hint of irony in their depths. And somehow, suddenly, self-proclaimed crook though she held him to be, she found herself seized with an absurd, unreasonable, but nevertheless passionate, desire to make ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... interested in maintaining these rights, in liberalizing them progressively with the progress of science and refinement of morality, and in relieving them from restrictions which the extension of the arts has long since rendered unreasonable and vexatious. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... antipathy seemed born in him. To be sure he had been prepared to dislike sheep, and that was why he was unreasonable. But on the other hand this band of sheep had left a broad bare swath, weedless, grassless, flowerless, in their wake. Where sheep grazed they destroyed. That was what ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... ill-requited by the cold words and sad glances of those whose happiness he was destroying. The idea that he should set matters straight by adjusting his life to meet their preconceived notions of right and wrong, would have appeared to him highly absurd; but he considered them unreasonable and himself ill-used when they refused to give their approbation to his proceedings, and this idea of ill- usage and unreasonableness he was willing to encourage, as it enabled him to shift the responsibility of their unhappiness from his own shoulders on to theirs, and to deaden ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... mason did not seem to enjoy the joke. He was one of those unreasonable people who care a great deal more for their own rights and privileges than for the convenience of all the rest of ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and scorn of the esteem and honour which all the country people showed the good king. Now when his holyday came, on which the mild monarch ended his life, and which all Northmen kept sacred, this unreasonable count would not observe it, but ordered his servant-girl to bake and put fire in the oven that day. She knew well the count's mad passion, and that he would revenge himself severely on her if she refused ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... ask me to swear, though I promise not to tell, if I can avoid it. But if he is missed, if inquiry is made for him, if he is traced here, and I am questioned, am put upon my oath, I cannot tell a lie, and maybe they would not hang you when they knew the circumstances. He was very unreasonable and aggravating, and called us both liars. I can testify to that. Oh, father, consider a moment! Would it not be better to go at once, and confess the truth to some one who has influence. Captain Grey is our friend. Tell him, and ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... added to her own family of several persons, she worked day and night in her usual self-forgetting manner. Her old father and mother were with her, and the mother, nearly a hundred years old and enfeebled in mind, was querulous and exacting, and most unreasonable in her temper, often reproaching this faithful daughter as the Israelites did Moses of old, for "bringing them up into the wilderness to die there ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... had filled her with horror, and yet she had hinted at his sister's dinner that the taking of human life was a small matter. That a girl so wholly charming and persuasive at a dinner table could be so stern and unreasonable at a chance meeting afterward, shook his confidence in her sex, which that memorable meeting had done much to establish upon firm ground. He had been wholly stupid and tactless in pouncing upon her with what he realized, under the calming influences ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... be still more unreasonable to invest the English judges with the right of resisting the decisions of the legislative body, since the parliament which makes the laws also makes the constitution; and consequently a law emanating from the three powers of the state can in ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... empirical science, has had assuredly, to check wholesomely the pretensions of one and of the other alike, its doubts.—"Their name is legion," says a modern writer. Reverent [195] and irreverent, reasonable and unreasonable, manly and unmanly, morbid and healthy, guilty and honest, wilful, inevitable—they have been called, indifferently, in an age which thirsts for intellectual security, but cannot make up its mind. Q'ue scais-je? it cries, in the words of Montaigne; but in the spirit also ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... matters. But, whether it would or would not have been better to postpone Licensing Reform to a Parliament elected to deal with it, as matters came to stand, there was no choice. The Ministry tried to deal with the question on progressive, yet not unreasonable, lines. A Local Option Bill was passed, therefore, and nearly every other important policy measure, except the Female Franchise Bill, went by the board—blocked or killed in one Chamber or the other. The hurried Government licensing measure of ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... one side, and, after expressing the satisfaction he had enjoyed in his company, told him he felt encouraged to ask of him a very great favor. "I shall take great pleasure in obliging you," replied the officer, "as I am certain you would not make an unreasonable request."—"Then," said Mr. Wesley, "as we are to travel together for some days, I beg that if I should so far forget myself as to use any profane language, you will kindly reprove me." The officer immediately perceived how faithfully and how delicately ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... And yet this very situation offered her that gleam of hope which had thrilled her; a hope so wild in its improbability, so degrading in its possibility, that at first she knew not whether despair was not preferable to its shame. And yet was it unreasonable? She was no longer passionate; she would be calm and think ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... fornication, and perjury are forbidden by the divine law, but the prohibition is ineffectual whenever the real sentiment of mankind is opposed to it. The divine law is set aside as soon as it conflicts with the popular opinion. In exceptional cases, indeed, the credit attached to unreasonable practices leads to fanaticism, asceticism, and even insanity; but superhuman terrors fail at once when they try to curb the action of genuine substantial motives. Hence we must admit that they are useless in the case even of 'secret crimes.' Religion, in short, prescribes ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... to be in want, and being afraid lest I should die and the sacrifices not be offered to my ancestors, I accept the grain as an alms. But the spirits and the dried flesh which you offer to me are the appliances of a feast. For a poor man to be feasting is certainly unreasonable. This is the ground of my refusing your gift. I have no thought of asserting my independence [3].' To the same effect is the account of Tsze-sze, which we have from Liu Hsiang. That scholar relates:— 'When Chi was living in Wei, he wore a tattered coat, ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... one of the piers, where he disposed himself for sleep. It was nothing new to him. Scores of times he had spent the night in similar places, and never found fault with the accommodations. They might be poor, but the best of it was there was nothing to pay, and he must be indeed unreasonable who could complain under such circumstances. He fell asleep, but the shadow of recent events was upon him. He dreamed that Marlowe had him by the throat, and woke up in terror to find a dock-hand shaking him by ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... you will pardon me for so freely tendering advice, to apply in the administration of our local affairs the principles of Constitutional Government frankly and fairly. Do not ask England to make unreasonable sacrifices for the Colonists, but such sacrifices as are reasonable, on the hypothesis that the Colony is an exposed part of the empire. Induce her if you can to make them generously and without appearing to grudge them. Let it be inferred from your language ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... so at least, whatever ill-feeling you may bear me, because I implore you not to refuse me this favor. It is a matter of life or death to one human being, of joy or misery to another. Do not refuse me.—I ask nothing unreasonable, Philippus. Do as I entreat you and leave ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to feel Viola was quite in the wrong, a tiresome, unreasonable, jealous person; but irresistibly my thoughts modified themselves, sobered by that sudden recollection that I was not bound to her nor she to me. Perhaps I should not have to complain of her tyranny very long. Waves of memory rolled over ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... this rogue were anatomized now, and dissected, he has his vessels of digestion and concoction, and so forth, large enough for the inside of a cardinal, this son of a cucumber.—These things are unaccountable and unreasonable. Body o' me, why was not I a bear, that my cubs might have lived upon sucking their paws? Nature has been provident only to bears and spiders; the one has its nutriment in his own hands; and t'other spins his habitation out ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... by which her cousin and guardian was animated towards her, intimated a wish to accept her sister Emily's invitation to pass two or three months with her. This brought the affair to a crisis. Buoying himself up with the illusions which people in such an unreasonable frame of mind create for themselves, he suddenly entered the sitting-room set apart for her private use, with the desperate purpose of making his beautiful cousin a formal offer of his hand. She was not in the apartment, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... knows my Barnacle-book, and appreciates it too highly. Lastly, he writes and thinks with quite uncommon force and clearness; and what is even still rarer, his writing is seasoned with most pleasant wit. We all laughed heartily over some of the sentences. I was charmed with those unreasonable mortals, who know anything, all thinking fit to range themselves on one side. (The reviewer proposes to pass by the orthodox view, according to which the phenomena of the organic world are "the immediate product of a creative fiat, and consequently are out of the domain of ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... to supply ourselves with a systematic method of handling our estimates and expenditures and bringing them to the point where they will not be an unnecessary strain upon our income or necessitate unreasonable taxation; in other words, a workable budget system. And I respectfully suggest that two elements are essential to such a system-namely, not only that the proposal of appropriations should be in the hands of a single body, such as a single appropriations ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... modesty, because it disappears during those crises in which almost all human sentiments are annihilated, is as unreasonable as to deny that life exists because death ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... ease for a little while. Look at its twenty-fifth page, and you will find, in the speech of Mr. Thomas, (carpenter,) this beautiful explanation of the admitted change in the general public mind, of which Mr. Thomas, for his part, highly approves, (the getting out of the unreasonable habit of paying respect to anybody.) There were many reasons to Mr. Thomas's mind why the working classes did not attend places of worship: one was, that "the parson was regarded as an object of reverence. In the little town he came from, if a poor man did not make a bow to the parson he ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... soldiers about, but maintained a discreet silence in their hearing. Which side Sher Singh took, Gerrard found it difficult to discover. He complained bitterly in private of the arrogance of the army, the supineness of the Durbar, and the unreasonable behaviour of his co-Regent, but he seemed not to be making any attempt to form a party of his own, that might work towards a healthier state of things. Gerrard himself was the butt for every one's ill-humour. The ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... comparing one thing with another. Now, in duels, where both parties shoot, it is generally the rule that a snap is a fire; and if such is the rule where the party has a right to fire back again, it seems to me unreasonable to say that a man may stand snapping at a defenceless turkey all day. I therefore am of the opinion that Nathaniel Bumppo has lost his chance, and must pay another shilling before ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... of by such as either have had no true relish and value for the things themselves that are discovered, or have had some prejudice against the persons by whom the discoveries were made. It would be vain therefore and unreasonable in me to expect to escape the censure of all, or to hope for better treatment than far worthier persons have met with before me. But this satisfaction I am sure of having, that the things themselves in the discovery ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... to ignore that. You have all you can reasonably want; and I don't—don't wish for any change. If you could bring anything against me—if I drank, or knocked about town, or expected too much of you. I'm not unreasonable in any way, that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the word advisedly, and repeat it—DELUDED into an imaginary happiness, though I am aware that as an agnostic and searcher after truth—truth absolute, truth positive—such a desire on my part seems even to myself inconsistent and unreasonable. Still I confess to having it; and therein, I know, I betray the weakness of my nature. It may be that I am tired "—and he passed his hand across his brow with a troubled gesture—"or puzzled by the infinite, incurable distress of all living things. Perhaps I ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... of the Renaissance did go, to Ibsen and M. Maeterlinck, like all the rest of the world. It is a matter of reproach, in the estimation of many patriotic Irishmen, that Mr. Martyn learned his art of Ibsen, and Mr. Yeats a part of his of M. Maeterlinck, but that attitude is as unreasonable as that which would reproach the Irish Industries Organization Society for studying Danish dairy farms or Belgian chickeries. It is only the technique of the foreigners, modern or ancient, Scandinavian ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... for the summer, what did the soft little creeter want to do but to go too. Her father was well off and wuz able to send her, and she had relatives there on her own side, some of the Pixleys, so her board wouldn't cost nothin'. So it didn't look nothin' unreasonable, though whether I could get her there and back without her mashin' all down on my hands, like a over ripe peach, she wuz that soft, wuz a question that hanted me, and so I ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... they would have been the most unreasonable crowd that ever assembled together, if they had been in the least respect disappointed with the tale he told them; for besides describing the Witches' Dance to the minutest motion of their legs, and ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... not absolutely unreasonable or unlawful, which ministereth harmless divertisement, and delight to conversation (harmless, I say, that is, not entrenching upon piety, not infringing charity or justice, not disturbing peace). For ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... illness of those I have loved, illness of my own, quarrels, misunderstandings, enmities, angers, disapprovals, losses; I have made bad mistakes, I have failed in my duty, I have done many things that I regret, I have been unreasonable, unkind, selfish. Many of these things have hurt and wounded me, have brought me into sorrow, and even into despair. But I do not feel that any of them have really injured me, and some of them have already benefited me. I have learned to be a little more patient ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Links with the Past; who grew up in the traditions of Luttrell and Mackintosh, and Lord Alvanley and Samuel Rogers; who have felt Sydney Smith's irresistible fun, and known the overwhelming fullness of Lord Macaulay. It is not unreasonable even in that later generation which can still recall the frank but high-bred gaiety of the great Lord Derby, the rollicking good-humour and animal spirits of Bishop Wilberforce, the saturnine epigrams of Lord Beaconsfield, the versatility ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... of things might have lasted no one knows how long, with Ippolita-Silvestro finding joy in unreasonable service, and Pilade both ease and reason. Where either partner was so admirably suited it might have been interesting to see what would have happened: whether Ippolita would have betrayed herself or Pilade found her out. She was over head and ears in love, but he was vastly well served; ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... with himself. Passionate, impulsive, and often unreasonable, his mind was singularly well-balanced and never before had it succumbed to obsession. He had taken the war as a normal episode in the history of a world dealing mainly in war; not as a strictly personal experience designed by a malignant fate to deprive youth ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... thought proper, or not to publish them at all. Had he continued of this mind the manuscript should have been most carefully preserved, and upon my decease restored to his family; but it never should have been published in my lifetime. When you have read it you will perhaps think it not unreasonable to consult some prudent friend about ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... isn't because I think little of what I've got already. Oh, no! It is because I think so much of this possession of mine that I can't have it complete enough. I know it's unreasonable. You can't hold ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... not over ecclesiastical differences, or theological discussion but over a question of morality among the young people of the town. It had to do with the impropriety of the young ladies entertaining their gentlemen friends on Sunday evenings and especially of their allowing them to remain to such unreasonable hours. And the issue which ultimately drove him from his pastorate, after twenty-five years of service, by an almost unanimous vote was not one of ecclesiasticism or theology, but of morals among the young people. He insisted upon vigorous action in relation ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... then proceeded on their way to the cadi, but they had not gone many yards, when the papouche-maker whispered to Yussuf, "Most valiant and powerful sir, I quarrelled with my wife last night, on account of her unreasonable jealousy. I did pronounce the divorce, but there was no one to hear. If we slept together once more, she would be pacified. Therefore, most humane sir, I ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... added, tapping him on the shoulder, "remember yonder lady only as the honoured Countess of Croye—forget her as a wandering and adventurous damsel. And her friends—one of them I can answer for—will remember, on their part, only the services you have done her, and forget the unreasonable reward which you have had the boldness to propose ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the check string and turned towards home. 'Resolved,' she said to herself; 'first, that Dane was extremely unreasonable to ask them. Second, that that is none of my business. Third, that I will do everything for them I can. If I keep them on the go, they won't know how I feel.' But there came ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... the box and its contents in lines which show not only tolerance but appreciation of tobacco, from which it is not unreasonable to infer that Cowper's first view of his friend's smoking-habit as a drawback—as shown in his letter to Unwin, quoted above—had been modified by neighbourhood and custom. It might have been well for the poet himself if he had learned ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... learn, above all, to study sympathetically institutions and beliefs that we are tempted at first to declare absurd and unreasonable. The aim of the historian is not to prove that a particular way of doing a thing is right or wrong, as, for instance, intrusting the whole government to a king or forbidding clergymen to marry. His object is to show as well as he can how a certain system came to be introduced, what was thought of ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... mood. These were times of discomfort throughout the house, and of great distress to her mother and Miss Mervyn, for with the best will in the world they could not make the rain stop nor the sun shine, nor time go quicker. Yet, if Philippa cried herself ill, as she often did for some such unreasonable whim, it was so very bad ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... the bill in both Houses. The Lords, back from brief holiday, protest against delay in introducing Amending Bill. In vigorous speech LANSDOWNE insists on early day being named. CREWE, wringing his hands over unreasonable ways of some people, promises Tuesday next. Adds that, if upon consideration of proposed amendments noble lords should require longer interval before Second Reading of parent measure than is provided by original fixture for 30th June, there will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... think it was impossible or unreasonable," he said. "I could have been ordained as curate there, and my mother would have gladly given land, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... But however unreasonable and absurd this Passion for Admiration may appear in such a Creature as Man, it is not wholly to be discouraged; since it often produces very good Effects, not only as it restrains him from doing any thing [which [1]] is mean and contemptible, but as it pushes him to Actions [which ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... steamer. I ask you to marry me; you won't; you admit you are fond of me; yet you tell me not to come with you. It is I who suggest a course which would prevent people from chattering—by the simple device of a wedding. It is YOU who refuse. And then you turn upon me like this! Admit that you are unreasonable." ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... to a strange master, and setting themselves on the opposite side to God, who gave these commands, are held in bondage to that other. For the soul that hath once rejected her own salvation, and given the reins to unreasonable lusts, is carried about hither and thither. Therefore saith the prophet, mourning the folly that encompasseth such souls, and lamenting the thick darkness that lieth on them, 'O ye sons of men, how long will ye be of heavy heart? Why love ye vanity, ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... "But it's so unreasonable," cried Melody, as she stood holding by the old man's hand, swaying lightly to and fro, as if the wind moved her with the vines and flowers. "Why can't I stay a little girl? A little girl is needed here, isn't she? And there is no need at all of another woman. I can't be ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... to the Mansion House ball. They mean that if you are the possessor of anything in the nature of a uniform—military, naval, diplomatic, consular, or what not—you are expected to appear in it. But, in any case, do not omit to put your card in your pocket, for it will be demanded at the door—a not unreasonable precaution against the influx of uninvited guests in such a crowd. And start Cityward betimes, not later than 10 or a quarter-past 10 P. M., if your home lies in Belgravian or Mayfair parts, for it's a terribly long journey to that spot where the Mansion House ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... allowed by his Majesty or officers to like persons in England." He annulled the grants of land made to the missionaries by certain Indian chiefs, which they affected to hold as the property of their order, and confirmed for his colony the law of mortmain. In his not unreasonable anxiety for the tenure of his estate, he went further still; he had the Jesuits removed from the charge of the missions, to be replaced by seculars, and only receded from this severe measure when the Jesuit order acceded ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... occurred in March, 1386, when it was unanimously resolved that danger would result to the city if Northampton was allowed to come within 100 miles of it.(670) The resolution caused much annoyance to the duke, who characterised it as unreasonable and outrageous, and led to some heated correspondence.(671) It had, however, the desired effect of at least postponing the release ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... dissatisfied, and insisted on having another wife, or threatened to leave the island in one of the Bounty's boats. Being useful as an armourer, the Europeans were unwilling to part with him, and he, still persisting in his unreasonable demand, had the injustice to compel one of the Otaheitans to give up his ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... "It's unreasonable of you people to expect Karin and Halvor to sell the farm for a mere song, just because you don't want the Company to have it!" said the manager. "It seems to me that it would be well to accept my offer ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... or of sisters. You are entirely to drop your feelings as Agatha, and to be pure Reason undefiled by mortal taint. You are to say, whether, were you, Reason, placed as I am now, you would marry this unreasonable young man as soon as he gets to Chatillon, which means tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that at the very latest. Now, Reason, speak, and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... of his importunities, and attempt by such means to force her to accept his hand, he was depraved enough for any other wickedness. So she plainly told him she could not and would not submit longer to his unreasonable conduct; that he must consider himself as finally, fully ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... almost anyone. I am even inclined to follow Miss M. Carey Thomas, the President of Bryn Mawr College, who attributes the industrial progress of the United States largely to the fact that the men of the country have such well-educated mothers. It seems to me a not unreasonable or extravagant suggestion. I am certainly of the opinion that the conversational fluency and mental alertness of the American woman, as well as in large measure her capacity for bearing her share in the civic labour, are largely the result of the fact that she has in most ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... of good business," said Mr. Saunderson, with effusive approval as he indicated two lordly armchairs placed ready for his visitors. Mr. Aston and Christopher had both a dim, unreasonable consciousness of dental trouble and ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... points that we shall lay stress upon at the meeting. The free and complete opening of the professions, the final abolition of the zenana I call it, and the franchise to all women who pay Queen's taxes above a certain sum. Surely there is nothing unreasonable in that. Nothing which could offend your principles. We shall have medicine, law, and the church all rallying that night for the protection of woman. Is the navy to ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which will be very greatly accelerated by the presence of electric power of low cost. The great majority of civilised people, as yet, have no idea of ventilation excepting that highly unreasonable kind which depends upon leaving their houses and other buildings partly open to the outside weather. One man is sitting in church under a down draught from an open window above him, while others, in different ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... thirty-five years of age, fat and freckled, was not so far out in her running to have got at last—they always put in "at last"—the owner of Ford House. It was more than she might have expected, looking at things all round; and Edgar was as unreasonable as proud men always are. With the redundancy of women as we have it in England, happy the head of the house who can get rid of his superfluous petticoats anyhow in honor and sufficiency. This was the verdict of society on the affair—the two extremities of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... a dear unreasonable little girl," he said. "Have you breath enough to tell me why ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... enable him do successfully gompede with the manufagdurers of other goundries, has been gombelled to glose his works and remove his gabidal and his energies to a spodt where he gan find workmen less unreasonable in their demands. There is no more capable or valuable workman in existence than the English artisan, if he gould only be induced to do his honest best for his embloyer; there is hardly any branch of industry in which he is nod ad leasd the equal, if not very greadly ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... entirely destitute of courage, who hath no spark of manliness, who is the slave of procrastination, who always acts with indiscretion, who is addicted to sensual pleasures, is seldom respected by his subjects. Benefited as thou has been, whence is this unreasonable grief of thine? Do not undo this graceful act done by the sons of Pritha, by indulging in such grief. When thou shouldst joy and reward the Pandavas, thou art grieving, O king? Indeed, this behaviour of thine ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... for dinner, being allowed twenty minutes for five courses and dessert. But hunger of a violent kind prevented any unreasonable grumbling, and we fortified ourselves for a long night's journey. Of course, when our dinner had digested, we thought of all the horrors of midnight railway journeys, and remembered seeing the poor Curate ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... river, and when he had baptized a certain individual he went up straightway out of the water, what idea would you form as to the mode of the baptism? Would you think it was a little water sprinkled on the head somewhere in a meeting-house? There is nothing in the account to convey such an idea. How unreasonable it would be for you to study to change the meaning of the plain account and mystify it because it was not ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... one of his most unhappy moods, for some reason or other, and so unreasonable was his frame of mind, that the movement, simple as it ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... spending a month or so at each alternately. So the days rolled on. Josephine fell into a state that almost defies description; her heart was full of deadly wounds, yet it seemed, by some mysterious, half-healing balm, to throb and ache, but bleed no more. Beams of strange, unreasonable complacency would shoot across her; the next moment reflection would come, she would droop her head, and sigh piteously. Then all would merge in a wild terror of detection. She seemed on the borders of a river of bliss, new, divine, and inexhaustible: and on the other bank mocking ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... delight in taking a bouquet to his parents' sick old housekeeper and sitting by her bedside to shorten the time for her with merry talk. She had gone to her unasked, while Iras had often been punished because she had made the lives of numerous slaves in her parents' household still harder by unreasonable harshness. This trait in her character had roused her uncle's anxiety and, in after-years, her treatment of her inferiors had been such that he could not number her among the excellent of her sex. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his sympathy would lead to love. She gave herself up more than ever to her dreams. She came near to believing with the beautiful presumption of youth that what you desire with all your being is always accomplished in the end. Besides, how was her desire unreasonable? Should not Christophe have been more sensible than any other of her goodness and her affectionate ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... which Beethoven made by his improvisations at the piano. And Wagner adds the following suggestive words: "The regrets that there was no way of writing down and preserving these instantaneous creations cannot be regarded as unreasonable, even in comparing these improvisations with the master's greatest works, if we bear in mind the fact, taught by experience, that even less gifted musicians, whose written compositions are not free from stiffness and inelegance, sometimes positively ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... could not have come to tell you I was not the monster of ingratitude I appeared to be. Not that a man can't get out of bed, if there is reason enough, and take himself somehow where he wants to be, but because of a sick man's unreasonable nerves, which can start him raving and make him a thing to laugh at. I had the common sense, thank Heaven! to see that I must wait. Then, as the days passed, it all quieted down. Vincent was with ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... of the Aeneid are so numerous and so splendid that the claim of its author to be the Roman Homer is not unreasonable, if it be made clear that the two poems are fundamentally disparate, and that no more is meant than that the one poet is as eminent in his own form and method as the other in his. In our haste to rest Virgil's claim to supremacy ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... relative to Newton's marriage, as detailed in a former chapter; but, as Mr John Forster truly observed, all the recompense which he had to expect for a life of exertion was to dispose of the fruits of his labour according to his own will. This he felt, and he considered it unreasonable that what he supposed a boyish attachment on the part of Newton was to overthrow all his preconcerted arrangements. Had Mr Forster been able to duly appreciate the feelings of his nephew, he probably would not have been so decided; but Love had never been able ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Shelldrake's as being equal, at least, to the symposia of Plato. Something in Mallory always repelled me. I detested the sight of his thick nose, with the flaring nostrils, and his coarse, half-formed lips, of the bluish color of raw corned-beef. But I looked upon these feelings as unreasonable prejudices, and strove to conquer them, seeing the admiration which he received from others. He was an oracle on the subject of 'Nature.' Having eaten nothing for two years, except Graham bread, vegetables ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Boswell's feeling that Johnson estimated the compositions of Richardson too highly and that he had an unreasonable prejudice against Fielding—since he was a man of magnificent biases—yet we may grant that the critic-god made a sound distinction here, that Fielding's method is inevitably more external and shallow than that of an analyst proper like Richardson; no doubt ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... been so fastidious, unreasonable about the fit, and generally difficult to please. The tailor walked round and round him, tugged at the waist, pulled the sleeve, pressed out the collar, and for the first time in his experience Boldwood was not bored. Times ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... should be given to some of his friends, who were not yet provided for; and that others, who had places already, should be removed to bigger stations. Fox, during the whole negotiation, behaved like a man of sense and a man of honour; very frank, very explicit, and not very unreasonable." ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... "8. They are unreasonable who disbelieve these things merely because they are most high things, and because it seems to them incredible that infinite Majesty humbles Himself to these loving relations with one of His creatures. It is written, God is love, and if He is love, then infinite love ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... a little cousin who is an adroit flatterer, and who is herself beautiful enough for a Hebe, and whose fascinations are sufficiently potent to captivate any reasonable or unreasonable man." ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... him, remembering with a pang that the place I had called home was mine no longer. Those among my friends who know the history of my boyhood understand to some extent my loathing for the cards and dice. It is perhaps unreasonable,—I might be the first to deem it so in any other man,—but when I count up the woe they brought my mother,—father and husband slaves to the same frenzy,—how they wrecked her life and embittered it, my passion rises in my throat to choke me. Never did I hate them ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... set of mere feelings in its stead, is one which deserves our most serious consideration. If it be just, it is decisive; for ours must be unquestionably "a reasonable service[28]." The Objector must mean, either, that these affections are unreasonable in themselves, or that they are misplaced in religion. He can scarcely however intend that the affections are in their own nature unreasonable. To suppose him to maintain this position, were to suppose him ignorant of what every schoolboy knows of the mechanism of the ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... the leaf of pencilled paper on the table. The next minute his rapid footsteps crunched on the gravel path. Even after he was gone and she was left quite alone in her old condition, the dead, nerveless sense of despair did not return. An unreasonable lightness of spirit buoyed her—a feeling that after a desolate winter a new season was coming, that her little world was growing larger, lighting indefinably ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... opinion, by showing that they were the produce of the country near the Black Sea. The gold mines to the south of Trebizond, which are still worked with sufficient profit, were a subject of national dispute between Justinian and Chozroes; and, as Gibbon remarks, "it is not unreasonable to believe that a vein of precious metal may be equally diffused through the circle of the hills." On what account these mines were shadowed out under the appellation of a Golden Fleece, it is not easy to explain. Pliny, and some other writers, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... how far from serious was the temper of the boy, and that it would be utterly unreasonable to expect from him anything like reverence. "Then how do you expect anybody to hold to the doctrine of implicit ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... us in our imperfect state. But why put into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, is remembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like a poisoned arrow? If a child be crying or a friend capricious, or a servant unreasonable, be careful what you say. Do not speak while you feel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say too much, to say more than your cooler judgment will approve, and to speak in a way that you will regret. Be silent until the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... How unjust and unreasonable is the human heart which finds it hard to be obliged to do in regard to one man what in some degree it were just to do to all men. For is it just ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... her that she was unreasonable—her aunt, Leon, M. and Mme. Renault, M. Martout, M. Bonnivet, and all the friends of the two families. At length she yielded, but, at almost the same instant, the door flew open, and M. Audret rushed into the ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... knowledge at all. It is sufficient not merely to guide our own thoughts and actions, but to make possible sympathy, friendship, love. Is it not so with our knowledge of God? The Gnosticism which forgets the immensity of the difference between the Divine Mind and the human is not less unreasonable—not {48} less opposed to the principles on which we conduct our thinking in every other department of life—than the Agnosticism which rejects probabilities because we cannot have immediate certainties, and insists on knowing nothing because we ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... that in my report of December, 1878, I stated that on the 1st of January following I would receive United States notes for customs duties. As these notes were redeemable in coin, it was unreasonable to require the holder of notes to go to one government officer to get coin for his notes to pay customs duties to another government officer. I held that the United States notes had become coin certificates by resumption, and should be treated as such. I informed them that I issued the order ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... walk in it." "I am the way," saith Christ, "enter at me, by believing in me." Now, once having found that you are unbelievers by nature, to suspend believing till you prove whether you be in the faith, is unreasonable and impossible, for certainly having once found yourselves void of it, you must first have it, before you know that you have it, you must first apply to action, and afterward your ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... declared that we had been traveling over and over the same ground all day, in a kind of circle. They demanded that our end of the rope be made fast to a tree, so as to halt the guide until we could overtake him and kill him. This was not an unreasonable requirement, so I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... year by Sganarelle ou le Cocu Imaginaire; in the beginning of 1661 appeared Don Garcie de Navarre, a heroic piece in five acts, intended to delineate the evils of passionate jealousy; and in the same year were produced L'Ecole des Maris, a satire on unreasonable jealousy, and Les Facheux, a court sketch of several kinds of bores; in 1662 L'Ecole des Femmes—an attempt to show the danger of bringing girls up in too strict a manner—with its sequel, the Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... been more unreasonable than usual, the king entered the countess's house with an anxious air, and seating himself before the card-table, began to play a game of Patience. It was his way of diverting his thoughts and forgetting for a few hours the ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... falsely, than that the miracles should be true[1312]. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, the great difficulty of proving miracles should make us very cautious in believing them. But let us consider; although GOD has made Nature to operate by certain fixed laws, yet it is not unreasonable to think that he may suspend those laws, in order to establish a system highly advantageous to mankind. Now the Christian religion is a most beneficial system, as it gives us light and certainty where we were before in darkness ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... companions upon allowance. The conflict which ensued with the stomach, when I announced this resolution, required great firmness to carry through. I tried wheedling and coaxing and promising; failing in these, I threatened to part company with a comrade so unreasonable, and he made ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... abused man, and thinks there never was such a sprite of a woman,—the most utterly unreasonable, provoking human being he ever met with. What he does not think of is, that it is his own inconsiderate, constant fault-finding that has made every nerve so sensitive and sore, that the mildest suggestion of advice or reproof on the most indifferent subject ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... occupied himself with the most petty details of his troops, his household, his mansions; would even instruct his cooks, who received, like novices, lessons they had known by heart for years. This vanity, this unmeasured and unreasonable love of admiration, was his ruin. His ministers, his generals, his mistresses, his courtiers, soon perceived his weakness. They praised him with emulation and spoiled him. Praises, or to say truth, flattery, pleased him to such an extent, that the coarsest was well received, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... running-down of most of the fashionable novels. Snap the mainspring of your watch, and none but an ass can expect you to tell by it what it is o'clock; snap the thread of your narrative in the same way, and he must be an unreasonable being who would expect a reasonable conclusion. Finish thus, in a case of delicate distress; say, "The Honourable Mr Augustus Bouverie was struck in a heap with horror. He rushed with a frantic grace, a deliberate haste, and a graceful awkwardness, and whispered ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... if unreasonable, hatred of the man thus brutally assailed. She knew what such hatred was and how it eats into an undeveloped mind. She had gone through its agonies herself when she was a young girl, and knew its every stage. With jealousy and personal distaste for a start, it was easy to trace the revolt of ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... that had elapsed since then, her romance had taken its place with the accepted things of life, and she revenged herself on Langham, for what she had come to consider his unreasonable exactions, by her recklessness, by her thirst for pleasure, and above all by ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... does it not appear a little unreasonable to imagine, that there is any creature, fish, flesh, or fowl, so little in love with life, as not to cherish hopes of a future state? Why does man believe in it? One reason, reckoned cogent, is, that he desires it. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... experienced Triboulet's duplicity and malice, yet in this instance was disposed to give credence to his story, because he doubted not that Louis of Hochfels would make all haste out of Francis' kingdom. Nor did it appear unreasonable that Triboulet should pine for the excitement of his former life; the pleasures and gaiety which prevailed at Fools' hall. If the hunchback's information were true, they need now have little fear of overtaking the free baron and his following, as not far beyond the chateau-town the main ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... is unreasonable, Mr. Montgomery. I am surprised that you should have made it. Consider, sir, how many thousands of medical students there are in this country. No doubt there are many of them who have a difficulty in finding their fees. Am I to provide for them all? Or why should I make an exception ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and a good deal irritated by his son's dark moods. My failure to fit into the store was unaccountable and unreasonable. "To my thinking," said he, "you have all the school you need. You ought to find it easy to make a living in a new, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... offer.... I'll treble it.... Hang it all, Pancaldi, you're unreasonable!... I suppose you want me to make it a round sum? All ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... live upon it in Bohemia," said the freiherr, laughing. "The people are so unreasonable! The noblest race-horse lives upon hay and grass; why should it not be good enough for a peasant of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... about through the good offices of a tutor. And to the prospective tutor (though he was to be her rival) she was magnanimously favourable, whilst I, for my part, warmly opposed the very thought of him. But neither her magnanimity nor my unreasonable objections were put to the test ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to furnish unlimited funds for finishing schools, music lessons, painting lessons, and every "extra" that the curriculum offered, and yet refuse to cultivate her one real talent, seemed to Eleanor the most unreasonable autocracy. She had no way of knowing that Madam's indomitable pride, still quivering with the memory of her oldest son's marriage to an unknown young actress, recoiled instinctively from the theatrical rock on which so many of her old hopes had ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... religion was a thing to take to church on Sunday, and life was restricted to the periods when people were not in church. When she laid up her Sunday gown in lavender, she put her religion in with it. Of course, nuns were religious every day, but nobody else ever thought of such an unreasonable thing. Clarice's new ideas, therefore, to her, ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... commotion, a rattling of pans, the clink of dishes as though some one hurried to the door. Straightening up and facing the door expectantly, I smiled in anticipation of a hospitable welcome. Then the sounds ceased. My courage oozed away—an unreasonable fear crept over me. I lost my desire for food and rest—I would as soon have ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... was finished while the author lay upon his deathbed, but, happily for the reader, no trace of his sufferings appears here. It was not granted that he should live to see his work in its present completed form, a consummation he most earnestly desired; but it seems not unreasonable to hope that the result of his labors will be appreciated, and that David Harum ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott |
