"Unheard-of" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been performed upon you! Here have I been striving with unheard-of patience to teach you and you have not hitherto been able to say your letters even. And now, just as I had made up my mind not to waste any more trouble upon you, you suddenly are able to read a consecutive sentence properly and distinctly. How has ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... the woman disappeared, but in a few minutes more an unheard-of thing happened—among the servants in the hall, the same old woman appeared making her way with a hurried fretfulness, and she descended haltingly the stone steps and came to his side where he sat ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Emperor has seventy-two. This being the case, and granting also a widespread destruction of female children, it must follow that girls are born in an overwhelmingly large proportion to boys, utterly unheard-of in any other ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... written to Napoleon by the Emperor and Empress of Austria, and despatches from his ambassador at Vienna, Count Otto. This first study will carry us to the beginning of the Russian campaign, that glorious period when the unheard-of prosperity promised to be eternal. No darker night was ever preceded by a more brilliant sun. Napoleon said on the rock of Saint Helena: "Marie Louise had a short reign; but she must have enjoyed it; the ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Marsilly's execution), his secret, if secret he possessed, had ceased to be of importance. But he was now in the toils of the French red tape, the system of secrecy which rarely released its victim. He was guarded, we shall see, with such unheard-of rigour, that popular fancy at once took him for some ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... the long courtly train of knights errant and ladies-in-waiting passed the populace, they presented a regal spectacle, never equalled since the proud Cleopatra sailed down the perfumed lotus-bearing Nile in her gilded pageant to meet Marc Antony, while all the world stood agape at the unheard-of triumph. ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... of those who had agreed to a church covenant, to the authorities of the church. The civil magistrates he considered as only empowered to punish such violations of the law as interfered with the public peace. This unheard-of heresy against the principles by which the Bostoners were governed, was received with amazement and indignation: and, although they could not take any immediate measures to testify their displeasure, and to punish the offender, yet he thenceforth became the object of hatred and suspicion ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... inhabitant of the town who had an unknown past; no one knew more about him than that he had been connected with a university somewhere, and had travelled in unheard-of countries before he came to Plattville. A glamour of romance was thrown about him by the gossips, to whom he ever proved a fund of delightful speculation. There was a dark, portentous secret in his life, it was agreed; an opinion not too well confirmed by ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... aristocracy, while his were more with the humbler classes of landholders and cultivators who required to be protected from them, frequent misunderstandings arose, acts of just severity were made to appear to be acts of wanton oppression, and such as were really oppressive were exaggerated into unheard-of atrocities. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... knives, but she cared not for it; a sharper pang had pierced through her heart. She knew this was the last evening she should ever see the prince, for whom she had forsaken her kindred and her home; she had given up her beautiful voice, and suffered unheard-of pain daily for him, while he knew nothing of it. This was the last evening that she would breathe the same air with him, or gaze on the starry sky and the deep sea; an eternal night, without a thought or a dream, awaited her: she had no soul and now she could never win one. All was joy and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of her mind," the doctor added after a brief pause. "Ah! monsieur," he went on, grasping M. d'Albon's hand, "what a fearful life for a poor little thing, so young, so delicate! An unheard-of misfortune separated her from that grenadier of the Garde (Fleuriot by name), and for two years she was dragged on after the army, the laughing-stock of a rabble of outcasts. She went barefoot, I heard, ill-clad, neglected, and starved for months at a time; sometimes confined to a hospital, ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... tables of the stars. He gave his name Almost as one who told him, It is I; And yet unconscious that he told; a name Not famous yet, though truth had marked him out Already, by his exile, as her own,— The name of Johann Kepler. "It was strange," Wrote Kepler, not long after, "for I asked Unheard-of things, and yet he gave them to me As if I were his son. When first I saw him, We seemed to have known each other years ago In some forgotten world. I could not guess That Tycho Brahe was dying. He was quick Of temper, and we quarrelled now and then, Only to find ourselves more closely bound Than ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... evening rather ill at ease. Its pleasant habit was broken up. Had she been foolish? Was she not taking an unheard-of stand? Would it have been better to go along and conform her course to the popular conscience instead of her own, perhaps very silly, one? She should be laughed at, and it was miserable to be laughed at or thought eccentric. She tried to play the piano, but imagined strains from ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... elegant package of perfumed soap, directed to Miss Iris, as a delicate expression of a lively sentiment of admiration, and that, after having met with the unfortunate treatment referred to, it was picked up by Master Benjamin Franklin, who appropriated it, rejoicing, and indulged in most unheard-of and inordinate ablutions in consequence, so that his hands were a frequent subject of maternal congratulation, and he smelt like a civet-cat for weeks after ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Two hours later, after unheard-of efforts, the last men of the Forward were taken aboard the Danish whaler Hans Christian, which was sailing to Davis Strait. The captain received kindly these spectres who had lost their semblance to human beings; when he saw their sufferings he ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... consequence—the exact expression being "fritted out of their wits." If that young Micky ever did such a thing again, Uncle Mo said, the result would be a pretty how-do-you-do, involving possibly fatal consequences to Michael, and certainly local flagellation of unheard-of severity. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... dweller in the country must see one or more young cowbirds being fed by their foster-parents every season, yet no competent observer has ever reported any care of the young bird by its real parent. If this were true, it would make the cowbird only half parasitical—an unheard-of phenomenon. ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... an unheard-of geniality on the part of Jed Tighe, but two of the boys jumped at the offer. The last words that the Forecaster heard were in the farmer's ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... the actions of our predecessors with impartiality and justice, it would be indispensable to keep constantly before our eyes the list of unheard-of difficulties that the revolution had to surmount, and to remember the very restricted means of repression placed at the disposal of the authorities in ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... valley of the Araxes, and there he spent the winter and the spring, when the manifold cares of the state would permit him. He had been almost unceasingly at war with the numerous pretenders who set themselves up for petty kings in the provinces. With unheard-of rapidity, he moved from one quarter of his dominions to another, from east to west, from north to south; but each time that he returned, he found some little disturbance going on at the court, and he bent his brows and declared that a parcel of women were harder to govern than all Media, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... recreations. The painted Asan were, in all conscience, food for wonder: but over and above these dozen surprising pastimes, the books of Anaitis revealed to Jurgen, without disguise or reticence, every other far-fetched frolic of heathenry. Hitherto unheard-of forms of diversion were unveiled to him, and every recreation which ingenuity had been able to contrive, for the gratifying of the most subtle and the most strong-stomached tastes. No possible sort of amusement would seem to ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... unheard-of things express, Invent new words; we can indulge a muse, Until the licence rise to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... My lord, can you blame my brother Plyant if he refuse his daughter upon this provocation? The contract's void by this unheard-of impiety. ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... some one called at the wicket of the little fold, where my goats are penned. I arose, and saw a peasant of my acquaintance leading a female strangely muffled up, and casting her eyes on the ground. My heart misgave me. I thought this was the very maid who had been the cause of such unheard-of wickedness. Nor were my conjectures ill-founded. Regardless of the clown who stood by in stupid astonishment, she fell to the earth and bathed my hand with tears. Her trembling lips with difficulty inquired after the youth; and, as she spoke, a glow of conscious ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... go humbly forward with him, convinced that, as it was written, so and no otherwise should it be. Even when he deservedly failed to become a shining light in the literary firmament to which he aspired—an unheard-of piece of audacity on the part of his authoress—I did not rebel. Miss SHEILA KAYE SMITH has an essential clarity of visualisation, a deep and still reserve of unforced pathos and an exquisite sense of the haunting word, that combine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... led up to the water, but none could make him drink; there he took the bit in his teeth and went his own way. He would be invited to meet a girl at a dinner got up for his benefit, that he might meet her, and would spend the evening hanging over a little unheard-of country cousin with a low voice and soft eyes, entertaining her with stories of his country days or of his wanderings; or he would be put by some belle, and after five minutes' homage spend the time talking to some old lady about her grandchildren. "You must marry," they said to him. "When ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... opportunity of displaying his inward character, and he proved to be the most cruel of all men toward his subjects. For he plundered their property without excuse and ordained that they should pay an unheard-of tax of four centenaria[2]. But the Armenians, unable to bear him any longer, conspired together and slew Acacius and fled ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... the fire, and there, in sight of the city of Mexico, settled the character of a contest which was, from that time forward, to shake the whole social organization of the vice-kingdom—in which plantations were destroyed, and villages and cities sacked and burned, and the most unheard-of cruelties practiced by one party or the other on the defenseless, until the final triumph of the Creole, or white troops, in the time of the viceroy, Apaduer, over the insurgents, composed chiefly of Indians ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... Through unheard-of difficulties she reached the house, her clothes full of the dry, powdery snow, her eyes blinded, her hair a mass of white, and aching in every limb from her ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... brought up in what might be called a Republican atmosphere, yet he was without sympathy for the love of liberty which animated the people of Holland. The sturdy independence of the Netherlanders, their perpetual criticism of kings and established rules, their vulgar and unheard-of assumption that the good things of the world were free to all honest and hard-working citizens, and not merely the birthright of blue blood, did not appeal to Adrian. Also from childhood he had been a member of the dissenting Church, one of the New Religion. Yet, at heart, he rejected this faith ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... grammar of 1849, says, "Nobody would think of saying, 'He is being loved'—'This result is being desired.'"—Analyt. and Pract. Gram., p. 237. But, according to J. W. Wright, whose superiority in grammar has sixty-two titled vouchers, this unheard-of barbarism is, for the present passive, precisely and solely what one ought to say! Nor is it, in fact, any more barbarous, or more foreign from usage, than the spurious example which the Doctor himself takes for a model in the active voice: "I am loving. Thou art loving, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... comparison were too modest,) His especial favourite called me. Which high epithet of honour So enflamed my pride, as rival For his royal seat I plotted, Hoping soon my victor footsteps Would his golden thrones have trodden. It was an unheard-of daring, THAT, chastized I must acknowledge, I was mad; but then repentance Were a still insaner folly. Obstinate in my resistance, With my spirit yet unconquered, I preferred to fall with courage Than surrender with dishonour. If the attempt ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... corners of Mexico that afternoon, and at an unheard-of place, with an unpronounceable name, it found Cornelius McVeigh, the centre of a group of gentlemen. The party had just emerged from the yawning mouth of a mine, and were resting in the sunshine and expelling the ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... Constantinople. On arriving in camp, I was told off to share the tent of a Colonel-Doctor, by name Rali Bey, who received me most hospitably. He is a young Greek, who has served about eight years, having entered as a Major-Doctor. (Be not horrified, O Surgeon-Major, at so unheard-of a proceeding! Doubtless your privileges are far greater than his, save that you have the Major as an appendage in place of a prefix.) The aforesaid Rali Bey was far the best specimen of a Turkish military ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... Iliuem stand.) And now "Chains were prepar'd their captive arms to bind. "While yet unchain'd, those arms to heaven they rais'd, "O father Bacchus!—crying—grant thy aid.— "And aid the author of the gift bestow'd: "If them to lose by an unheard-of mode "Be aid bestowing. Then could I not know, "Nor now relate the order of the change "Which lost their shapes; the summit of my grief "I know; with plumage were they cloth'd; transform'd "To snowy doves, thy spouse's ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... called Birkebeins, came upon the scene. A strange enough figure in History, this Sverrir and his Birkebeins! At first a mere mockery and dismal laughing-stock to the enlightened Norway public. Nevertheless by unheard-of fighting, hungering, exertion, and endurance, Sverrir, after ten years of such a death-wrestle against men and things, got himself accepted as King; and by wonderful expenditure of ingenuity, common cunning, unctuous Parliamentary Eloquence or almost Popular Preaching, and (it ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... fiery red cloak so adroitly that the terrified bird dropped the root just where it could be easily seen. All Peter's plans had succeeded, and he actually held in his hand the magic root—that master-key which would unlock all doors, and bring its possessor unheard-of luck. His thoughts now turned to the mountain, and he secretly made preparations for his journey. He took with him only a staff, a strong sack, and a little box which his daughter Lucia had ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... distance, he thought the land lying ahead of him was an island, and that if he continued his course to the west he would be unable to get back to the north and reach Hispaniola. It was then that he came upon the mouth of a river whose depth was thirty cubits, with an unheard-of width which he described as twenty-eight leagues. A little farther on, always in a westerly direction though somewhat to the south, since he followed the line of the coast, the Admiral sailed into a sea of grass of which the seeds resemble those of ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... "What an unheard-of-name! I never met with anything like it! All-gone! whatever can it mean?" And shaking her head, she curled herself round and went to sleep. After that the cat was not ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... was thinking of the unheard-of coincidences, the accumulation of facts that bore down on Mme. Fauville from every side. And the decisive proof which would join all these different facts together and give to the accusation the grounds which it still lacked was one which Perenna was able to supply. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... after closely examining the picture, "you have done nothing else so wonderful as this. But by what unheard-of solicitations or secret interest have you obtained leave to copy Guido's Beatrice Cenci? It is an unexampled favor; and the impossibility of getting a genuine copy has filled the Roman picture shops with Beatrices, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... devil; God gave it, anyhow,—and we'll suppose He knew the compound of his handiwork. To-day the clouds are with him, but anon He'll out of 'em enough to shake the tree Of life itself and bring down fruit unheard-of,— And, throwing in the bruised and whole together, Prepare a wine to make us drunk with wonder; And if he live, there'll be a sunset spell Thrown over him as over a glassed lake That yesterday was all ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... York is a great colony—a very great colony, Miss; but it was once Dutch, as everybody knows, begging Mr. Follock's pardon; and it must be confessed Connecticut has, from the first, enjoyed almost unheard-of advantages, in the moral and religious character of her people, the excellence of her lands, and the purity"—Jason called this word "poority;" but that did not alter the sentiment—though I must say, once for all, it is out of my power to spell every word ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... illness I pray to Heaven I may never see again; sad complications producing unheard-of tortures, and bringing the sufferer again and again to ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... hideous, fit only to be huddled into its dishonorable grave. But the wrecks of precious virtues, which had been covered with the waves of prosperity, came up also. And all sorts of unexpected and unheard-of things, which had lain unseen during our national life of fourscore years, came up and are coming up daily, shaken from their bed by the concussions of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... society than companionship. It is considered an unheard-of waste of time to devote an entire evening to one guest, when, indeed, five, ten, or fifty might be warmed, lighted, and fed in the same time. The fashionable hostess invites her friends to pay off her social debts. If she can pay off fifty or five hundred—in the time that she ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... save him annoyance. What do you think? Should we not put up with a little inconvenience, and ask Sharnall to bring the Bishop here, and lunch himself? He must know perfectly well that entertaining a Bishop in a lodging-house is an unheard-of thing, and he would do to make up the sixth instead of old Noot. We could easily tell Noot he ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... The unheard-of and rough treatment, which, according to reliable information, has been accorded to civilian prisoners, and particularly German women and children who remain in England, has caused the withdrawal of all privileges formerly granted to English Prisoners ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... at once endeavoured to compass the overthrow of Arnold of Brescia, the leader of anti-papal sentiment in Rome. Disorders ending with the murder of a cardinal led Adrian shortly before Palm Sunday 1155 to take the previously-unheard-of step of putting Rome under the interdict. The senate thereupon exiled Arnold, and the pope, with the impolitic co-operation of Frederick I. Barbarossa, was instrumental in procuring his execution. Adrian crowned the emperor ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... between hedges and fields. For the first mile and a half all went well; she was a little tired, but rather pleased with her own pluck. According to Sicilian customs, which are almost eastern in their guardianship of signorinas, it was an unheard-of thing for a young lady in her position to take a country walk without an escort. The remembrance of the beggars and footpads that lurked about Sicilian roads gave her uneasy twinges, and though she had been told of the comparative safety of British highways, her ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... King of Great Britain as "father," and Brant was a British pensioner. British agents were in constant communication with the Indians at the councils, and they distributed gifts among them with a hitherto unheard-of lavishness. In every way they showed their resolution to remain in full touch with their red allies. [Footnote: Do., St. Clair to Knox, September 14, 1788; St. Clair to Jay, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... and brought dusty drovers and droughty stockmen in crowds to the town ship every Tuesday. These men were indiscreet and indiscriminate drinkers, and often a vagrant was left behind to finish a spree that surrounded him with unheard-of reptiles and strange kaleidoscopic animals unknown to the zoologist. It must be admitted, too, that Joel Ham, B.A., was in a measure responsible for the boys' unlawful knowledge. Twice at holiday times, when he was not restricted at the Drovers' Arms, he had continued his libations until it ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... music," said Betty, thinking of the hour's daily struggle with the Mikado and the Moonlight Sonata. "But three arts. What could the third one be?" Her thoughts played for an instant with unheard-of triumphs achieved behind footlights—rapturous applause, showers ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... that this elephant was mad; if so it may account in some measure for the unheard-of occurrence of an elephant devouring flesh. Both elephants and buffaloes attack man from malice alone, without the slightest idea of making a meal of him. This portion of the headman's story I cannot possibly believe, although he swears to it. The elephant may, perhaps, have cracked her head and ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... she painted, had a dark room where she took photographs—and photography in those days of "wet plates" was a mysterious and unheard-of accomplishment for an amateur; then there was a rifle-range where she set up a target, and, occasionally, when it was the cook's day out, she would make wonderful dishes, while odd moments were filled in at a sewing-machine ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... a proof of this the ease with which the insurrection of Wat Tyler and his followers, against the capitation tax, was suppressed by the promise of the king to redress their grievances. The subject of English taxation, indeed, both from the amount levied, and the acquiescence of the people in such unheard-of burdens, seems to have utterly bewildered the khan's comprehension.[4] "All classes, from the noble to the peasant, are alike oppressed; yet it is amusing to hear them expatiate on the institutions of their country, fancying it the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... were not in power, did not know any limits before the defeated; therefore, Danveld not only nodded his head at the bear-leader as a sign that he permitted the mockery, but he himself burst out with such unheard-of roughness that the faces of the younger ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... securely bound, but the unlucky Corporal had slipped his feet from the cords, and paid dearly for his folly. Julius had him down on the ground, daring him to move a limb or even turn his head on pain of unheard-of laceration. The wretched fellow had cursed a thousand times his own artfulness. For three hours he had lain thus, not daring to stir a muscle; and if ever a night's experiences are enough to turn the hair grey, Corporal should not have a single black lock ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... This was an unheard-of state of things, but all except the guest-master and Chris seemed to take it as a matter of course; and ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... more than once and I have heard from others. And even after paying those enormous fees, the inoffensive, righteous person is as like to suffer as the guilty. Here, for altogether harmless men to suffer punishment in place of rogues is quite unheard-of; though occasionally one notorious evildoer may be punished for another's crime when this is great and the real criminal cannot be found and there is call for an example to be made upon the instant. This ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... says Thierry, "united by force to the empire of the Franks, and over which in consequence of this union, the name of France had extended itself, made unheard-of efforts to reconquer their ancient names and places. Of all the Gallic provinces, none but the southern ones succeeded in this great enterprise; and after the wars of insurrection, which, under the sons of Charlemagne, succeeded the wars of ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... ambitious man without knowing it, because he has at last completely identified the revolutionary cause with his own person. But he is not an egoist in the worst sense of that word, because he risks his own person terribly and leads the life of a martyr, of privations, and of unheard-of work. He is a fanatic, and fanaticism draws him on, even to the point of becoming an accomplished Jesuit. At moments he becomes simply stupid. Most of his lies are sewn with white thread.... In spite of this relative naivete, he is very dangerous, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... of girandoles that stood on the narrow mantel-shelf in the front room, and finally got them for three dollars. Such an unheard-of price made the buyers look at her in pity, ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... his will that I was to marry the man (under the age of five-and-thirty, and of unimpeachable character and education) who should discover, and add to the museum, the most original and unheard-of natural variety, whether found in the Old or ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... the very familiar one of the great uniting principle which a common faith in Christ brought into action. Think of the profound clefts of separation between the Macedonian and the Jew, the antipathies of race, the differences of language, the dissimilarities of manner, and then think of what an unheard-of new thing it must have been that a Macedonian should 'serve' a Jew! We but feebly echo Paul's rapture when he thought that there was 'neither Barbarian or Scythian, bond or free, but all were one in Christ ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Roon shews the deep depression under which he laboured at this time, chiefly the result of ill-health. "It was," he said, "an unheard-of anomaly that the Foreign Minister of a great Empire should be responsible also for internal affairs." And yet he himself had arranged that it should be so. The desertion of the Conservative party had, he said, deprived him of his footing; he was dispirited by the loss of his old friends and the ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... afternoon the yellow envelope had been on the table, and more than once his mind had wandered from the lessons he was preparing to speculate on the possible tidings wrapped up in that sealed packet. Not that a telegram was an unheard-of event in the family. No, his father received many; most of them, however, went to the Boston office, and the boy could not imagine what this one was doing at ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... slightest severity. It will, indeed, cause great vexation to the ill-minded and even to the polite world, who attribute the musical position of my daughters in the artistic world to a tyranny used by me, to immoderate and unheard-of "practising," and to tortures of every kind; and who do not hesitate to invent and industriously to circulate the most absurd reports about it, instead of inquiring into what I have already published ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... mysteries, when an evil-doer, a bondsman of Satan, thrusting with accursed boldness a rod through the window, overturned the chalice, and sacrilegiously poured out on the altar the holy sacrifice. But the Lord instantly and terribly avenged this fearful wickedness, and in a new and unheard-of manner destroyed the impious man. For suddenly the earth, opening her mouth (as formerly on Dathan and Abiron), swallowed up this magician, and he descended alive into hell. And the earth, thus disjoined and rent asunder, closed on him again; but to this day ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... Ragged Pete, 'whoever offends you is sure to be punished in some dreadful and unheard-of manner. By thunder, I must try and keep in your ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... old king said. "Go to, you do but tell me these trifles to please me, and as if to give me hope that in such an unheard-of place we shall find him whom we have lost. Say no more, but go your ways on the morrow and search. And may you find your dream valley and what ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... her persuade him to walk, with her assistance, as far as the Cottage; and when she had established him in the most comfortable chair beside her mother, he was so content with the change that Maurice, coming home from Cacouna, was met by the unheard-of announcement, "Mr. ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... Recollect fathers made a raid through the lands of Silang, which they call Alipaopao, Oyaye, Malinta, etc.; and, trying to adjudge them to the ranch of Sarmiento, which they had recently bought through the agency of General Endaya, they committed unheard-of atrocities in the houses and grain-fields of the Indians—burning and ravaging them as furiously and horribly as if an army of Camucones had raided them. The Indians lost, as appears from a juridical statement that was drawn up, more ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... gentle and loving to each other, and so kind to me. What also surprised me much, was to find that Don Serrano regularly read the Bible and had prayers with his family. Such a thing was at that time probably unheard-of in South America. They did not speak unkindly of the nearest padre, who occasionally visited them, but they evidently held ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... with us, whilst my mother was thinking how to break so weighty an innovation to such valuable servants. They served him with alacrity, and approved of his brief orders and gracious thanks. The Colonel did unheard-of things with impunity—threw open his bedroom shutters at night, and more than once unbarred and unbolted the front door to go outside for a late cigar. Nothing puzzled Martha more than the nattiness ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... paraphernalia of paradise freshened up with a few new words such as 'immense, infinite, solitude, intelligence'; you have lakes, and the words of the Almighty, a kind of Christianized Pantheism, enriched with the most extraordinary and unheard-of rhymes. We are in quite another latitude, in fact; we have left the North for the East, but the darkness is just ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... enemies; this, and riding at anchor in a current by his cable-like appendage, constituting his main occupation in life. The pleasure of eating was denied him; nature had given him a mouth, but he used it only for purposes of offense and defense, absorbing his food in a most unheard-of manner—through the soft ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... miserable asylum in the cottage in Germany, where I discovered them. Felix soon learned that the treacherous Turk, for whom he and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering that his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and ruin, became a traitor to good feeling and honour and had quitted Italy with his daughter, insultingly sending Felix a ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... "Lands indiscoverable in the unheard-of west Round which the strong stream of a sacred sea Rolls without wind for ever, and the snow There shows not her white wings and windy feet, Nor thunder nor swift rain saith anything, Nor the sun burns, but all things ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... refilled from the pump, which was a crazy old appliance worked by hand. I may say that so far as we prisoners residing in the ill-famed avenue were concerned we had to depend upon water entirely for washing purposes—soap was an unheard-of luxury—while a towel was unknown. Under these circumstances it was impossible to keep clean. Shaving was another pleasure which we were denied, and I may say that the prisoners residing in the salubrious neighbourhood of the condemned cells had the most unkempt and ragged ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... binding and loosing in heaven and earth. On the strength of this, for the honor and glory of thy Church, in the name of Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I withdraw, through thy power and authority, from Henry the King, son of Henry the Emperor, who has risen against thy Church with unheard-of insolence, the rule over the whole kingdom of the Germans and over Italy. I absolve all Christians from the bonds of the oath which they have sworn, or may swear, to him; and I forbid anyone to serve him as ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... returned to their native shores in a worse condition than when they left them. In 1830, the great tide of emigration flowed westward. Canada became the great land-mark for the rich in hope and poor in purse. Public newspapers and private letters teemed with the unheard-of advantages to be derived from a ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... wish to say a few words to you," he began. "I have suffered—there was a catastrophe. I suffered without a trial; I had no trial. Nina Alexandrovna my wife, is an excellent woman, so is my daughter Varvara. We have to let lodgings because we are poor—a dreadful, unheard-of come-down for us—for me, who should have been a governor-general; but we are very glad to have YOU, at all events. Meanwhile there is a tragedy in ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... exclaimed Sancho; "unheard-of ingratitude! I can only say for myself that the very smallest loving word of hers would have subdued me and made a slave of me. The devil! What a heart of marble, what bowels of brass, what a soul of mortar! But I can't imagine ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... many noted teachers, scholars and politicians endorsing the French guillotine as a remedy for all political ills—men like Blau, Wedekind, Hoffmann, Foster, Stamm, Dorsch, not overlooking the spectacular John Mueller, who in the cause of the people committed unheard-of follies with his pen, as a necessary ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... of quiet conversation with her friend, and Honora made a point of being at Beauchamp twice or three times a week, as giving the only variety that could there be enjoyed. Of Mervyn nothing was heard, and house and property wanted a head. Matters came to poor Mrs. Fulmort for decision which were unheard-of mysteries and distresses to her, even when Phoebe, instructed by the steward, did her utmost to explain, and tell her what to do. It would end by feeble, bewildered looks, and tears starting on the pale cheeks, and 'I don't know, my dear. It goes through my head. Your poor ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... describe the fearful state of Philippe—both trembling, and clenching their hands convulsively, measured each other with their looks, and darted their eyes, like poniards, into each other. Mute, panting, bending forward, they appeared as if about to spring upon an enemy. The unheard-of resemblance of countenance, gesture, shape, height, even to the resemblance of costume, produced by chance—for Louis XIV. had been to the Louvre and put on a violet-colored dress—the perfect analogy of the two princes completed the consternation ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... to excuse him, with the mild injunction not to stay so long again. Anthony presumed upon this mode of treatment until it ceased to be amusing to me, when, with a good grace, I was enabled to administer a severe reproof, which he returned with the most unheard-of impudence. As soon as his master came in, I related the fact to him. In an instant, as Anthony was passing the dining-room door, my husband sprang at him—caught him by the collar, shook and twirled him around into the ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... all-powerful and undisputed authority of a leader. I sent for him and questioned him. Our conversation lasted fully three hours, for it was hard for me to understand his remarkable gibberish. As for him, poor devil, he made unheard-of efforts to make himself intelligible, invented words, gesticulated, perspired in his anxiety, mopping his forehead, puffing, stopping and abruptly beginning again when he thought he had found a new method of explaining ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... [The unheard-of foolhardiness of a single man rushing into the midst of a fanatical crowd of seven thousand people to seize before their eyes one whom they adored, proves, more than all that can be said on the subject the insolent contempt with which the Roman Catholics of the time looked down upon ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "flake" and seized the largest fish there—a huge, flat thing, nearly as big as herself. With a whoop she swooped down on the terrified Rilla, brandishing her weird missile. Rilla's courage gave way. To be lambasted with a dried codfish was such an unheard-of thing that Rilla could not face it. With a shriek she dropped her basket and fled. The beautiful berries, which Susan had so tenderly selected for the minister, rolled in a rosy torrent over the dusty road and were trodden on by the ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of the characteristics which distinguish the different schools from each other." There is, however, nothing new said upon this subject. Undoubtedly there is much truth in the following passage: "So much did the liberty which the Dutch had just recovered from the Spaniards, by unheard-of efforts, become fatal among them to the same class of art, the foundations of which they sapped by their resolution to banish their priests, and to substitute a religion that suffers neither pictures nor statues of saints in their churches. From that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... momentous of modern times—was to be waged by a people divided at home, unnerved by fifty years of peace, under a chief magistrate without experience and without reputation, whose every measure was sure to be cunningly hampered by a jealous and unscrupulous minority, and who, while dealing with unheard-of complications at home, must soothe a hostile neutrality abroad, waiting only a pretext to become war. All this was to be done without warning and without preparation, while at the same time a social revolution was to be accomplished in the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... suffered a stroke of apoplexy, which stroke was successful in reducing the blankets to two hundred and in cutting out the place by the fire—an unheard-of condition in the marriages of white men with the daughters of the soil. In the end, after three hours more of chaffering, they came to an agreement. For Lit-lit Snettishane was to receive one hundred ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... enough. But Hyde was under no delusionment as to the canker that was soon to wither all his hopes. He draws no flattering picture of the work in which his own part was so large. He recognizes that there "must have been some unheard-of defect of understanding in those who were trusted by the King with the administration of his affairs." [Footnote: Life, i. 315.] His disappointment is too great to permit him to waste words in any attempt to dissociate himself ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... near the door. Seven necks stretched simultaneously to accommodate him, and seven voices answered in the affirmative. The stranger calmly opened the box of matches, filled his silver match-safe, and then threw the box back on the counter, an unheard-of piece of profligacy in those parts. "Needn't mind wrapping up the bottle," ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall. How novel and fine the first drifts! The old, dilapidated fence is suddenly set off with the most fantastic ruffles, scalloped and fluted after an unheard-of fashion! Looking down a long line of decrepit stone wall, in the trimming of which the wind had fairly run riot, I saw, as for the first time, what a severe yet master artist old Winter is. Ah, a severe artist! How stern the woods look, dark and cold and ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... but saw her nowhere. Then he went sulkily back to his wife. He hardly noticed her, but said it was time to go home. All the way back, and after they had reached their lodgings, he kept the same moody silence, and she, frightened at some unheard-of calamity, forbore to question him. But when she was going to bed she could withhold her anxiety no ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... home, his voyage encountered an unheard-of difficulty. For the crowds of dead bodies, and likewise the fragments of shields and spears, bestrewed the entire gulf of the sea, and tossed on the tide, so that the harbours were not only straitened, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Homer, who, in mockery of commentators, past and to come, German and Greek, informed you that he was by birth a Babylonian? Yet, if you, who first wrote Dialogues of the Dead, could hear the prayer of an epistle wafted to "lands indiscoverable in the unheard-of West," you might visit once more a world so worthy of such a mocker, so like the world you knew so ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... promise thee better things than drunkenness crowned with flowers or the dreams of a brief night. I promise thee holy feasts and celestial suppers. The happiness that I bring thee will never end; it is unheard-of, it is ineffable, and such that if the happy of this world could only see a shadow of it they ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... large part of his living by the sale of under-garments whose every stitch was an untacking of the body from the soul of a seamstress. "Bah!" said some. "A hypocrite, by his own confession!" said others. "Exceedingly improper!" said Mrs. Ramshorn. "Unheard-of and most unclerical behaviour! And actually to confess such paganism!" For Helen, she waked up a little, began to listen, and wondered what he had been saying that a wind seemed to have blown rustling among ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... civilization are enough to make one shudder. When the despatches of Csar announcing his successes reached Rome, the senate, on motion of Cicero, though against the protestations of Cato, ordained that a grand public thanksgiving, lasting fifteen days, should be celebrated (B.C. 57). This was an unheard-of honor, the most ostentatious thanksgiving of the kind before—that given to Pompey, after the close of the war against Mithridates—having lasted but ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... afterwards. There would have been scenes of riot and bloodshed there that no pen could describe. I know that, because each man told what he would have done, individually; and such a medley of strange and unheard-of inventions of cruelty you could not conceive of. One man said he had calmly made up his mind to perish where he stood, if need be, but never yield an inch; he was going to wait, with deadly patience, till he could count the stripes upon the first Bedouin's jacket, and then count ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shouting and crying aloud the glad tidings of his marvelous cure, that all men might know what a great blessing had come to him. In spite of the injunction laid upon him, he began to sing aloud the praises of the Master who had manifested such an unheard-of power over the foul disease that had held him in its grasp until a few hours before. With wild gestures and gleaming eyes he told the story again and again, and it was taken up and repeated from person to person, until the whole town and countryside were familiar ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... fellow!" said Mr. Harry Ralston. "It is unheard-of generosity on your part. But we can't ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Chili, of Spaniards during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, and under the slender modification of Indian manners as yet effected by the Papal Christianization of those countries, and in the neighborhood of a river-system so awful, of a mountain-system so unheard-of in Europe, there would probably, by blind, unconscious sympathy, grow up a tendency to lawless and gigantesque ideals of adventurous life; under which, united with the duelling code of Europe, many things would ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... best to be silent. But after a while, just as a jury comes out of its room, the bigwigs who guided the Club's opinion reappeared, and everybody began speaking clearly and definitely. Reasons were found for the incredible, unheard-of, and impossible event of a Russian defeat, everything became clear, and in all corners of Moscow the same things began to be said. These reasons were the treachery of the Austrians, a defective commissariat, the treachery of the Pole Przebyszewski ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... less time than we have taken in telling it. Brancaleone by an unheard-of effort had freed himself from the hands of the young fisherman, and suddenly resuming his princely pride, said in a loud voice, "You shall not kill me ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... suspected of Atheism; and, if Edwards is to be believed, there was alive a certain John Boggis, an apprentice to an apothecary in London, who, though at present only a young Anabaptist preacher, and disciple of Captain Hobson, was to go within a year or two to such unheard-of lengths about Great Yarmouth that even Wrighter must have disowned him. [Footnote: Ibid. Part II. 133, 134; and Baillie's Dissuasive, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... secret he possessed, had ceased to be of importance. But he was now in the toils of the French red tape, the system of secrecy which rarely released its victim. He was guarded, we shall see with such unheard-of rigor that popular fancy at once took him for some great, ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... the Government proclaimed a state of siege in London,—a thing common enough amongst the absolutist governments on the Continent, but unheard-of in England in those days. They appointed the youngest and cleverest of their generals to command the proclaimed district; a man who had won a certain sort of reputation in the disgraceful wars in which the country had been ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... go another day," she consented. Then, looking up at the sky, she added, "I wonder if it is going to rain. I have a Reciprocity meeting on for to-day, and I'm a delegate to some little unheard-of place. It usually does rain when one goes into the ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... Phil, drawing his gaze reluctantly from the far horizon and letting it rest dreamily on his accuser. "May I be allowed to ask what intricate and devious chain of reasoning leads you to make so unheard-of a charge?" ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... Terror to Muttle Deeping home wood early enough; but owing to the matter of a young rabbit who met them on their way, they kept the princess waiting twenty minutes. This was, indeed, a new experience to her; but she did not complain to them of this unheard-of breach of etiquette. She was doubtful how the complaint would be received at any rate ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... incandescent inferno, a sight was revealed to their eyes such as man had never before been privileged to gaze upon. They were falling into a white dwarf star, could see everything visible during such an unheard-of journey, and would live to remember what they had seen! They saw the magnificent spectacle of solar prominences shooting hundreds of thousands of miles into space, and directly in their path they saw an immense sunspot, a combined volcanic ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... threatened, the culpable indifference of the Stockbridge townspeople, who could not be brought to see that their most vital interests hinged upon a junction with the Great East Anglian line; the spite of the local newspaper, and the unheard-of difficulties attending the Common question, were each and all laid before me with a circumstantiality that possessed the deepest interest for my excellent fellow-traveller, but none whatever for ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... noticeably absent. They were having too excellent a time to be drawn into the temptation of a recruiting meeting, in spite of the band and the fine afternoon and the promiscuity of attractive damsels. They were making unheard-of money at the circumjacent factories; their mothers were waxing fat on billeting-money. They never had so much money to spend on moving-picture-palaces and cheap jewellery for their inamoratas in their lives. As ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... famous year of 1811, when the grapes were gathered with unheard-of difficulty, Grandet resolved to give Nanon his old watch,—the first present he had made her during twenty years of service. Though he turned over to her his old shoes (which fitted her), it is impossible to consider that quarterly ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... that it is possible for men to receive? What! the head of our most noble Aga of the Janissaries to be placed upon the most ignoble part of a Jew! what are we come to? We alone are not insulted; the whole of Islam is insulted, degraded, debased! No: this is unheard-of insolence, a stain never to be wiped off, without the extermination of the whole race! And what dog has done this deed? How did the head get there? Is it that dog of a Vizier's work, or has the Reis Effendi and those traitors of Frank ambassadors been at work? Wallah, Billah, Tallah! ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... formal trade in Athens; and it is certainly no mere poetical fiction which represents such a parasite as expressly preparing himself for his work by means of his books of witticisms and anecdotes. Favourite parts, moreover, are those of the cook, who understands not only how to boast of unheard-of sauces, but also how to pilfer like a professional thief; the shameless -leno-, complacently confessing to the practice of every vice, of whom Ballio in the -Pseudolus- is a model specimen; the military braggadocio, in whom we trace a very distinct reflection of the free-lance habits that prevailed ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... silence slowly dissolved into murmurs of polite conversation as the party-goers adjusted to the presence of the newcomer. They seemed to be discussing the matter earnestly among themselves, as if Quinton had done something unheard-of by bringing a Spacer into ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg |
