"Unforced" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not romance. The interest is worked up to an inconceivable height; but it is by an infinite number of little things, by incessant labour and calls upon the attention, by a repetition of blows that have no rebound in them. The sympathy excited is not a voluntary contribution, but a tax. Nothing is unforced and spontaneous. There is a want of elasticity and motion. The story does not "give an echo to the seat where love is throned". The heart does not answer of itself like a chord in music. The fancy does not ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was nothing made that was made." The true explanation of these words, according to their undeniable historical and their unforced grammatical. There is an English translation of it, by Professor G. R. Noyes, in the numbers of the Christian Examiner for March and May, 1849, meaning, is as follows. Before the material creation, when God was yet the sole being, his first production, the Logos, was a Son, at once the image ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... a touch of pure poetic fancy in each of the tales, and the sunbeams here invested with life and tiny human forms, are lovable and mirth-provoking imps.... The children, too, are real children, and there is no mawkish sentimentality, but an unforced, tender pathos in the story of little Tom Riley, who was 'mos twelve,' but who had a heart big enough for a man, and so skilfully is it told that a child may read and miss much of the sadness of it. In and out and everywhere play the sunbeams, as merry, mischievous and kindly a set of sprites as ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... imbecile actor. She is poor, stunted, laborious, toiling at a small industry; she is in love, is rejected, she tries to drown herself, she dies. The sequence of ideas is in Dickens's vein; but read the tale, and I think you will see how little the thing is overdone, how simple and unforced it is, compared with analogous persons and scenes in the work of the English master. The idiotic yell of "plagiarism" has been raised, of course, by critical cretins. M. Daudet, as I understand what he says in "Trente Ans de Paris," had not ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... to his "W. V.: Her Book," and to "The Invisible Playmate"; and W. V. again acts as guardian elf and guide to this new region of the child's earthly paradise. The Saints are here treated with a simplicity that is almost or altogether childlike, and with an unforced imagination which is only to be learnt by becoming as a child. And this is perhaps why, although comparatively a new book, it has the air of something pleasantly old, and written long ago; and thus wins its way into the children's library of old ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... part in fostering the early evidences of vocation. The youth, under their influence, voluntarily moves nearer to the goal of his aspirations, unforced by the caprice of the thoughtless or over-enthusiastic parents. Numerous little incidents are associated with the life of Blessed Jean Baptist Vianney, which will help to develop the germ of ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... dramatic, the dialogue being natural and flowing; trenchant and sprightly, but not too witty for a truthful reflex of actual conversation. The humour is genial and unforced; there is no smell of the lamp about it, no premeditated effort at dragging in jests, as in Congreve. As typical examples of Farquhar's vis comica I Would cite the description of Squire Sullen's home-coming, and his 'pot of ale' ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... which Thackeray retorted to its notice of The Kickkburys on the Rhine (a thing hard to believe!) or whether it did not,—its report of Esmond was distinctly hostile. In three columns, it commended little but the character of Marlborough, and the writer's "incomparably easy and unforced style." Thackeray thought that it had "absolutely stopped" the sale. But this seems inconsistent with the fact that the publisher sent him a supplementary cheque for L250 on account of ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... mirror before her and she saw that the gold trinkets were shining in her hair, and the jewels which Demetrius had sent her were sparkling brightly at her throat, and realized that she was very fair to see,—then she laughed, the first real, unforced laugh for many a weary day, whereupon she laughed again and again, and grew the more pleased with her own face when she beheld a smile upon it. Then Fabia kissed her, and told her that no woman was ever more beautiful; and the dark Indian maids drew back, saying nothing, but admiring ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... content! To be at once secure and innocent. Windsor the next (where Mars with Venus dwells, Beauty with strength) above the valley swells 40 Into my eye, and doth itself present With such an easy and unforced ascent, That no stupendous precipice denies Access, no horror turns away our eyes: But such a rise as doth at once invite A pleasure and a rev'rence from the sight: Thy mighty master's emblem, in whose face Sate meekness, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... render her an easy victim to the vampire crowd into which she drifts. The "sensation" scenes, night club orgies, dope parties and the like will probably bring the book a boom of curiosity; but there are not wanting signs, in the author's easy unforced method, that with a larger theme she may one day write a considerably bigger book. The Laughter of Fools, one may say, ends tragically; Louise, after exhausting all her other activities, being left about to join a nursing expedition to Northern Russia. Which, judging by previous revelations ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... worst I suppose in their dark severity that men have ever come through alive, no single hasty or angry word passed their lips. When, later, we were sure, so far as we can be sure of anything, that we must die, they were cheerful, and so far as I can judge their songs and cheery words were quite unforced. Nor were they ever flurried, though always as quick as the conditions would allow in moments of emergency. It is hard that often such men must go first when others far less ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... noble man—no poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced aspiration.—De Quincey says, "Shelley would, from his earliest manhood, have sacrificed all that he possessed for any comprehensive purpose of good for the race of man. He dismissed all insults and injuries ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... should present the essential facts of history in due order, and in conformity to the best and latest researches; that it should point out clearly the connection of events and of successive eras with one another; that through the interest awakened by the natural, unforced view gained of this unity of history, and by such illustrative incidents as the brevity of the narrative would allow to be wrought into it, the dryness of a mere summary should be, as far as possible, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Rishyasring. But when they hear the monarch's speech, All these their master will beseech, With trembling hearts and looks of woe, To spare them, for they fear to go. And many a plan will they declare And crafty plots will frame, And promise fair to show him there, Unforced, with none to blame. On every word his lords shall say, The king will meditate, And on the third returning day Recall them to debate. Then this shall be the plan agreed, That damsels shall be sent Attired in holy hermits' weed, And skilled in blandishment, That they ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... converse over the stories of their youth, the young dancing to the pipe and tabor, or singing in little groupes, arranged on the green seats under their orchard trees, appear, without effort, to sink into that enviable state of unforced enjoyment, which falls upon their minds as easily and calmly as the sleep of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... the opening chapter in the title-tale the funniest thing in the collection, and that not forgetting the billiard match in the detective story, a contest that I defy anyone to follow without tears. To attempt analysis of such happily unforced humour would be a dark and dreadful task; but I incline to think that, more than most, the fun of Mr. LEACOCK (to be accurate one should, I suppose, say Dr. LEACOCK) depends upon the sudden tripping-up of the reader in his moment of fancied ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... pointed antithesis, the unnatural conceit, the jingle of words; such false ornaments were not employed by early writers; not because they were rejected, but because they scarcely ever occurred to them. An easy, unforced strain of sentiment runs through their compositions; though at the same time we may observe, that, amidst the most elegant simplicity of thought and expression, one is sometimes surprised to meet with a poor conceit, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... unforced; it was no more than a subtle discord naturally struck from the scene by a soul in contrast ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The passage occurs in the fifth book, chapter 31. [Benedict. lib. v. c. 32. Sec. 2. p, 331.] The principal and most important, though not the longest, part of {123} the passage is happily still found in the original Greek, preserved in the "Parallels" of Damascenus. In its plain, natural, and unforced sense, this passage is so decidedly conclusive on the question at issue, that various attempts have been made to explain away its meaning, so as not to represent Irenaeus as believing that the souls of departed ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler |
