"Unexpectedness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... start of dismay at the unexpectedness of his appearance, for he said hastily: 'I did not mean to come in to you like this—I thought you would have been in bed. How good you are, dear Barbara!' He put his arm round her, but he did not ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... had turned and was staring moodily at the decanter. "It comes so suddenly, Honor ... with such frightful unexpectedness. Remember, when we were youngsters, the World's Biggest Snake, 'Samson,'—exhibited in a vacant store on Main Street, and how keen we ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... slim hands locked behind her head, staring toward the window. Gone was the albatross from her young neck, melted the cloud from the azure round. Wisdom had come with such startling unexpectedness that she could not take in all that had happened to her just now. But all that mattered was as plain and bright as the sunshine waiting for her out there. She, and not papa whom she had so wronged in her thoughts, had made the bunching-room what it was; she, and nobody ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... farewell Sheds its last leaves,—thou once didst dwell With me year-long, and make intense To boyhood's wisely vacant days Their fleet but all-sufficing grace Of trustful inexperience, 10 While soul could still transfigure sense, And thrill, as with love's first caress, At life's mere unexpectedness. Days when my blood would leap and run As full of sunshine as a breeze, Or spray tossed up by Summer seas That doubts if it be sea or sun! Days that flew swiftly like the band That played in Grecian games at strife, And passed from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... camp, with their bare swords in their hands, they saluted him as Caesar; whereupon Martialis, the tribune in charge of the watch, who was, they say, noways privy to it, but was simply surprised at the unexpectedness of the thing, and afraid to refuse, permitted him entrance. And after this, no man made any resistance; for they that knew nothing of the design, being purposely encompassed by the conspirators, as they were straggling here and there, first submitted for fear, and afterwards were ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... fund, the story of the little girl. The man was not one of our church, nor in fact, was he a church-goer at all, but he listened attentively to the tale of the fifty-seven cents and simply said he was quite ready to go ahead and sell us that piece of land for ten thousand dollars, taking—and the unexpectedness of this deeply touched me taking a first payment of just fifty-seven cents and letting the entire balance stand on ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... the boy back," she answered instantly; and while he sat stunned by the unexpectedness of the retort, she went on: "Is it possible you never suspected? It has been our whole thought from the first. Everything was planned with ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... still a child, the haunted ruin chiefly attracted her thoughts as the scene and locality of uncanny occurrences that were fanciful and unusual rather than sombre or suggestive. It was the great haunted cheese in which the piskies burrowed, and out of which they hopped with amusing unexpectedness: it was the building to pass which you must always turn your stocking, if you wished to escape being pisky-ledden, or misguided: it was the place to which the "Little Folks"[P] conveyed stolen children: above all, it was the ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... were many walls to my room; I was faint; the windows seemed to appear and disappear, and in that sickness I reached my bed. Then I saw the door open, and John Graham came in, and closed the door behind him, and locked it. My room. He had come into my room! The unexpectedness of it—the horror—the insult roused me from my stupor. I sprang up to face him, and there he stood, within arm's reach of me, a look in his face which told me at last the truth which I had failed to suspect—or fear. His arms ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... to identify the emplacement of such and such a battery or the gully that had concealed the advance of such and such a troop, my glance perpetually returned to that word "VICTORY," sculptured by itself upon the stone. It was indeed a victory; it was a victory which, for its huge unexpectedness, for the noise of it, for the length of time during which it was in doubt, for its final success, there is no parallel, and yet it is by no means among the famous battles of the world. And though the French ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... isn't a question of the wisdom of your choice; it's the unexpectedness. We all saw that you were very unhappy when you were here before, and we ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... still laughing over the unexpectedness of the letter when Aunt Constance came in, and they ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... scattered personal experiences, and I have no philosophy of dreams to suggest. It is in my case an inherited power. My father was the most vivid and persistent dreamer I have ever met, and his dreams had a quality of unexpectedness and interest of which I have never known the like. The dream of his, which I have told in his biography, of the finding of the grave of the horse of Titus Oates, seems to me one of the most extraordinary pieces of invention I have ever heard, because of the conversation ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... breath, a rail at the top encircled a stone peninsula and gave you a resting-place and an outlook—an outlook startlingly beautiful by reason of its unexpectedness. For the promontory had hidden the valley's loveliness, and here you found a sudden glorious peep at it. And then your eyes looking down, down below the rail, saw that cascades had met and the water was plunging in a wide glistening ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... only wished to give you a little surprise. You have treated us to one by walking in with such delightful unexpectedness, and so should understand. I'll show you when ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... Winkelberg's worst habits to appear at unexpected moments. But perhaps any appearances poor Winkelberg might have made would have had this irritating quality of unexpectedness. One was never looking forward to Winkelberg, and thus the sight of his wan, determined smile, his lusterless eyes and his tenacious crawl was invariably ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Despite the unexpectedness of such a turn of the quarrel, nobody started laughing. Only Little White Manka oh'd in astonishment and clapped her hands. Jennie, with avid impatience, shifted her eyes ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... know I was angry, don't you?" she asked, out of a clear sky, with an unexpectedness that made me throw back my head ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... empty chair. He may not go if he be tagged by his guard. The object of the guards should be to avoid being the keeper of an empty chair, and therefore the one who has to wink. The players try to evade the vigilance of the guards by the quickness and unexpectedness of their movements. The guards may not keep their hands on their prisoners, but must have them hanging at their sides until they see their players winked at. They may not dash around the sides of the chairs which they guard, but must stay all ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... eh? I've known you a long time, Madgie, but I never can tell when you're going to break out in a brand-new spot. Didn't lose any of your unexpectedness ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Suddenly, with an unexpectedness that was shocking, there was a tremor in the air and the echo of a rumbling sound beneath the girl's feet. The crack of a distant explosion followed. Then another, and another, until the sound became a continual grumble of angry ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... eyes he found that evening had sunk to dusk in a strange manner of unexpectedness. The young girl with the remarkably pleasant lips and white teeth was beside him. More than this—astonishingly more—his head was upon her lap, his face and neck were disagreeably wet, and her fingers were unbuttoning ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... Every great work is the result of vast preparatory training. Facility comes by labor. Nothing seems easy, not even walking, that was not difficult at first. The orator whose eye flashes instantaneous fire, and whose lips pour out a flood of noble thoughts, startling by their unexpectedness and elevating by their wisdom and truth, has learned his secret by patient repetition, and after ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... very unexpectedness of the event that had been so unusual. The contestants in the Twenties needed undisturbed rest, therefore nights in the dormitories were as quiet as death. During the first few days, of course, the rule wasn't observed too closely. The men ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... Schmid says: "The punishment is by the law of retaliation. She had said, 'I will go to my lovers;' but God threatens, on the contrary, that He will obstruct the way so that she cannot go." The [Hebrew: hnni] points to the unexpectedness of the result. The wife imagined that she would be able to carry out her purpose with great safety and ease; it does not even occur to her to think of her husband, who had hitherto allowed her, from weakness, as she imagines, to go on her way undisturbed; ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... save the unexpectedness of it, Elsie's statement was received with surprise. They all looked at her, and some of them wondered, perhaps, why her smiling eyes had lost their mirth. Yet there was nothing unreasonable in the mere fact that a ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... remains for us in Venice a part of the company of the mind. The others are there in their obvious glory, but he is the only one for whom the imagination, in our expressive modern phrase, sits up. "The Marriage in Cana," at the Salute, has all his characteristic and fascinating unexpectedness—the sacrifice of the figure of our Lord, who is reduced to the mere final point of a clever perspective, and the free, joyous presentation of all the other elements of the feast. Why, in spite of this queer one-sidedness, does the picture give us no impression of a lack of what the critics ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... after Unc' Billy. It wasn't fear that caused Jimmy to hurry. No, indeed, it wasn't fear. He had been startled by the unexpectedness of Bowser's appearance. It was this that had caused him to struggle to be first through that hole under the henhouse. But once through, he had felt a bit ashamed that he had been so undignified. He wasn't afraid of Bowser. He was sorely tempted to turn around and ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... the shudder of joy, unexpectedness,—in short all the qualities peculiar to the Semitic race! I believe that the Jews approach Wagner's art with more understanding than ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... pleased with the novelty and unexpectedness of this turn of thought, that he gave her the life of her son in addition to that of her brother. All the rest of the family circle of relatives and friends, together with Intaphernes himself, he ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... blast from an abyss between herself and that man, followed by the brutal embrace of a satyr's claw. She saw a Jenkins totally unknown to her, wild-eyed, stammering, with brutish laugh and insulting hands. In the surprise, the unexpectedness of that outbreak of the animal instinct, any other than Felicia, any child of her years, but genuinely innocent, would have been lost. The thing that saved her, poor child, was her knowledge. She had heard so many stories at her father's table! And then ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... at me hopefully, as if I were a mine of ideas. Her voice was level, without a suggestion of fear in it. Women have the gift of being courageous at times when they might legitimately give way. It is part of their unexpectedness. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... that's it!" exclaimed the major, taken aback by the swift unexpectedness of the recovery. "Yes, by Jove, that's it," he continued, his face lighting up. He took the pipe and rubbed the bowl affectionately with the palm of ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap'; and whatever other crop we may hope to gather from our sins, we shall gather that bitter one which we did not expect. The inevitable connection of sin and judgment, the bitterness of its results, the unexpectedness of them, are all here, and to be laid to heart ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... on the gunwale and took a header into the lake, swimming vigorously for the shore close by. This was confession of an intense anxiety to escape and for the moment it did look as if his chances of getting away were excellent; the unexpectedness of the action made it necessary for Phil to make a wide parabola to bring his boat equally close inshore and to check its speed. Without a moment's hesitation, however, Kendrick also shut off his engine and dove overboard as he swept by. A strong swimmer, ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... solidity, the unexpectedness, the monumental rectitude of the whole thing leave you nothing to say—at the time—and make you stand gazing. You simply feel that it is noble and perfect, that it has the quality of greatness. A road, branching from the highway, descends to the level of the river and passes ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... letters in a position inferior to his own, a man of letters moreover in the very act of praising him. To make the thing right he talked to me exactly as an equal and on the ground of what we both loved best. The hour, the place, the unexpectedness deepened the impression: he couldn't have done anything more ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... There is danger in your path." The suddenness and unexpectedness of this warning, the tone of alarm with which it was given, and, above all, the persuasion that it was my wife who spoke, were enough to disconcert and make me pause. I turned and listened to assure myself that I ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... the rest of the sections; and the /Musa Stratonis/ has several which happily in no way belong to it. There is no doubt a certain charm to the very confusion of the order, which gives great variety and unexpectedness; but for practical purposes a ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... big motor had gone off with its trio to desert places Charmian suddenly realized the unexpectedness of her situation—alone above Algiers with a woman who was almost a stranger. This scarcely seemed like yachting. They had come up to the hotel because Mrs. Shiffney always stayed at an hotel, if there was a good one, when ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... explanation and request. He had so much gold with him—he showed the contents of the belt and purse—and he had funds with an agent in Paris and again funds in Amsterdam. Here were letters of indication. With a total unexpectedness there had come to him in this town a call that he could not ignore. He could not explain the nature of it, but a man of honor would feel it imperative. But it would take nicely all his gold and so many pieces besides. He asked the loan of these, together with ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... victors. The invitation he had so unsuspiciously accepted to visit them in their quarters afforded the best means for securing this desirable prize. Nor was the enterprise so desperate, considering the great advantages afforded by the character and weapons of the invaders, and the unexpectedness of the assault. The mere circumstance of acting on a concerted plan would alone make a small number more than a match for a much larger one. But it was not necessary to admit the whole of the Indian force into the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... welcomed an opportunity offering a prospect of excitement so novel. He had shown more flourishing gardens to other young ladies in his past years of service, but young ladies did not come to Stornham, and that one having, with such extraordinary unexpectedness arrived, should want to look over the desolation of these, was curious enough to rouse anyone to a sense of a break in accustomed monotony. The young lady herself mystified him by her difference from such others as he had seen. What the man in the shabby livery had felt, he ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in search of the things which always came as surprises however much he was looking for them. Many days were blanks and others would be crowded with incidents, for unexpectedness is above all the peculiar feature of hunting, and its lasting charm. One day he had gone far beyond the ridge in a new direction and passed through an open glade where lay the broken trunk of a huge basswood. The size impressed it on his memory. ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... morning and find you had grown a pair of wings?" Peter asked. "Because that's what the difference amounts to—you really soar. Moreover, you're an angel," he added, charmed with her unexpectedness, the good nature of her forbearance to reproach him for not having written to her. And it seemed to him privately that she was angelic when in answer to this she said ever ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... to Mr. Phillips, the dear friend of our revered Dr. Charming, I asked him if he remembered what recumbent statue it was of which Dr. Charming was wont to speak as of a sight that impressed him more than anything else in Rome. He said, indeed, his mood, and the unexpectedness in seeing this gentle, saintly figure lying there as if death had just struck her down, had no doubt much influence upon him; but still he believed the work had a peculiar holiness in its expression. I recognized at once the theme of his description (the name he himself had forgotten) ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the valley, from side to side, and ever so high in the air, stretch the three tiers of the tremendous bridge. They are unspeakably imposing, and nothing could well be more Roman. The hugeness, the soli- dity, the unexpectedness, the monumental rectitude of the whole thing leave you nothing to say - at the time - and make you stand gazing. You simply feel that it is noble and perfect, that it has the quality of greatness. A road, branching from the highway, de- scends to the level of the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James |
