"Unread" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... derision than what claims respect. He's not my friend who hawks in every place A waxwork parody of my poor face; Nor were I flattered if some silly wight A stupid poem in my praise should write: The gift would make me blush, and I should dread To travel with my poet, all unread, Down to the street where spice and pepper's sold, And all the wares ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... was left in such a way that I was to receive the entire income for twenty-five years, when the principal was to become mine. His further instructions related to this manuscript which I was to retain sealed and unread, just as I found it, for eleven years; nor was I to divulge its contents until twenty-one ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... disclosed to them, the depravity of evil conduct would appear no less clearly. The Emperor who, when the head of his rebellious general was brought to him, grieved because that general had not lived to be forgiven; the ruler who burned unread all treasonable correspondence, would not, nay, could not believe in the existence of such an inhuman monster as Commodus proved himself to be. The appointment of Commodus was a calamity of the most terrific character; but it testifies ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... unreadable. There is only one way of dramatizing an idea; and that is by putting on the stage a human being possessed by that idea, yet none the less a human being with all the human impulses which make him akin and therefore interesting to us. Bunyan, in his Pilgrim's Progress, does not, like his unread imitators, attempt to personify Christianity and Valour: he dramatizes for you the life of the Christian and the Valiant Man. Just so, though I have shown that Wotan is Godhead and Kingship, and Loki Logic and Imagination without living Will (Brain without ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... moment before had beat audibly to my own ear, sank like a stone in my breast, and I sat for a time holding the letter mutely, uncertain how to proceed. Should I return it unread, and thus hurl the gauntlet in the traitor's face, or be governed by expedience (word ever so despised by me of old), and trace the venom of the viper, by his trail, back to ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... to your idle discourses!" I cry, "What's knowledge, indeed, unattended by might?" If you offered me, knowledge and wisdom and all, with my inkhorn and papers, in pawn for a mite, To buy one day's victual, the pledge they'd reject And cast, like an unread petition, from sight. Sorry, indeed, is the case of the poor, And his life, what a load of chagrin and despite! In summer, he's pinched for a living and cowers O'er the fire-pot in winter, for warmth and for light. The curs of ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... Johnson's fortress, and rescue the imprisoned volume; but after the Doctor's death, two years later, Cradock made a formal application to the executors; and Lord Harborough's property was discovered under the inkstand, unopened, unread, and consequently, as ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... dead In that hour, but surely When this book, unread, Rots to earth obscurely, And no more to any breast, Close against the clamorous swelling Of the thing there is no telling, ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... off the table, gathered up her unread letters, and went into the nursery. She felt as though she were dreadfully asleep and couldn't awake to realise the wholesome everyday world ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... only relief consists in going over and over again in my mind the tale of my miseries. This time I will write it, writing only to tear up, to throw the manuscript unread into the fire. And yet, who knows? As the last charred pages shall crackle and slowly sink into the red embers, perhaps the spell may be broken, and I may possess once more my long-lost ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... word or tone seemed to her to convey a rebuke. But he was never rough. She loved to be caressed by those who were dear and near and close to her, and his manner was always caressing. She often loved, if the truth is to be spoken, to be idle, and to spend hours with an unread book in her hand under the shade of the deanery trees, and among the flowers of the deanery garden. The Dean never questioned her as to those idle hours. But at Cross Hall not a half-hour would be allowed to pass without enquiry as to its purpose. At Cross Hall there would ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... and saw them disappear. He walked up the drive, and met the boy coming down, who handed him the note, with some words, which he did not hear. He watched the boy out of sight. Then he tore the note unread into tiny fragments, stamped them furiously into the mould of the nearest bed, and, flying into his armoury, threw himself into a chair and cursed the day ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... have fought, and sorrowed, and fretted, beneath the dim inscription in an unknown tongue; and no eye has looked at it, nor any heart responded. It is but too sad a symbol of the reception which Christ's offers meet amongst men, and—blessed be His name!—its prominence there, though unread and unbelieved, is a symbol of the patient forbearance with which rejected blessings are once and again pressed upon us, and He stretches out His hand though no man regards, and calls though none do hear. My text is Christ's ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... he brought out the paper that he had sealed up in the dark days of August; he reminded his ministers of how they had endorsed it unread, and he read it them. Its contents ran thus: "This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration, as ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... were newspapers by the score, thrown about tumultuously. Mr. Malcolm would seize a paper from the unread heap, whirl it open and send his glance and his long pointed nose tearing down one column and up another, and so from page to page. It took less than a minute for him to finish and filing away great sixteen page dailies. A few seconds sufficed for the smaller papers. Occasionally he took ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... perhaps my translation of Book Alpha of the Iliad, quite literal and in its original metre of hexameters: hitherto I have failed to find a publisher kind enough to lose by it; for there are already at least twelve English versions of Homer unread, perhaps unreadable. Still, some day I don't despair to gain an enterprising Sosius; for my literal and hexametrical translation is almost what Carthusians used to call "a crib," and perhaps some day the School Board ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... There, if anywhere, was some deserted creature, author of the unread message that had sparked across the sea. There, and there only—and between Eric and that deck-house lay the stretch of red-hot deck, a glowing barrier to ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Among my unread letters was one, Aug. 28th, from a Mr. Myer and Mr. Cocke, of Washington, District of Columbia, who propose to establish a periodical to be called "The Potomac Magazine," and solicit contributions. These abortive attempts to establish ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... how foolishly do the wisest men deport themselves when they first begin to love. Their little starts of passion, their petty angers and their sweet repentances—all were unexplored by me, for Love to me was yet an unread book. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... sitting out under the blossoming trees on the old Worden seat, her book lying, unread, in her lap, and her eyes having a dreamy, far-away look in them, when, from the balcony overhead, ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... said—a mere nonsense word; but the humor of such things has an absurd valuation and persistency in camps, and for months afterward, "Ah-r?—indeed!" was the battery's gay response to every startling sound. He had luck in catchwords, this Hilary. He fought the scrimmage through with those unread pages folded slim between a thumb and forefinger, often using them to point out things, and when after it he had reopened them and read them through—and through again—to their dizzying close, the battery ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... everyone else Goethe aired his opinions with the "frank confidingness" which he notes as a trait of his own character, and which gave Herder frequent opportunities for scathing criticism. Herder gibed at his youthful tastes—at his collection of seals, at his elegantly-bound volumes which stood unread on his shelves, at his enthusiasms for Italian art, for the writings of the Cabbalists, for ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... Newmarket Plain. Rough with his elders, with his equals rash, Civil to sharpers, prodigal of cash; Constant to nought—save hazard and a whore, [xxxviii] Yet cursing both—for both have made him sore: Unread (unless since books beguile disease, The P——x becomes his passage to Degrees); Fooled, pillaged, dunned, he wastes his terms away, [xxxix] And unexpelled, perhaps, retires M.A.; 240 Master of Arts! as hells and clubs [20] proclaim, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... you will, in reading this letter, make allowance for extenuating circumstances. If you only knew, I think you do, what these letters mean, the self-denied slumbers and washes, fatigues shirked, books and papers unread, and other little treats which comrades have indulged in when the rare and short opportunities have occurred—you would forgive much. On Tuesday (August 21st) we had five Sussex men and three Somerset in the ranks of our ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... few minutes before the sacrifice, she had received her first letter from Egypt. It lay unread on her dressing-table, and came into her mind whenever she attempted to pray. She could not help wondering what news it might bring her. How were her parents? and how had Tachot borne the parting from herself, and from the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... her gesture, and saw under her pillows the edges of two more copybooks like the one I had. "Do not look at them—my poor dead children!" she said tenderly. "Let them depart with me—unread, as I have been." ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... throw the letter into the fire, unread. There could be little doubt, after the time that had passed, of the information that it would contain. Could he endure to be told of the marriage of Iris, by the man who was her husband? Never! There was something humiliating in the very idea ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... circumstanced) where it would be clearly desirable. This I do not take to be the case of France, or of any other great country. Until now, we have seen no examples of considerable democracies. The ancients were better acquainted with them. Not being wholly unread in the authors, who had seen the most of those constitutions, and who best understood them, I cannot help concurring with their opinion, that an absolute democracy, no more than absolute monarchy, is to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... manuscripts sent to the magazines of to-day are, in every case, read, and frequently more carefully read than the author imagines. Editors know that, from the standpoint of good business alone, it is unwise to return a manuscript unread. Literary talent has been found in many instances where it ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... gossip, he yearned to fathom the secret of its source, even at the cost of opening it. During all the years which had elapsed since Slaughter first came upon the scene the struggle had gone on, and still the mystery was unsolved and the riddle unread. Never had an occasion offered itself when anything could be learned from an outside source, and Slaughter himself was too cold and isolated an individual ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... encouraged and helped in the building of his own library of religious books, but this can hardly be done as long as his church-school material comes to him in temporary form, much of it less attractive on the mechanical side than the average advertising leaflet which so freely finds its unread way to the ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... sore need of repose besides. So he rose just in time to swallow his coffee and array himself carefully for his aunt's early dinner, leaving his two Sunday papers—the theatrical and the general organs—unread on his table. ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... Nouvelles," and in the "Berceau" of La Fontaine. Horne's removal from the tale of everything that would offend a modern reader was designed to enable thousands to find pleasure in an old farcical piece that would otherwise be left unread. ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... of a shipwrecked sailor, with not a tenth part of the style nor a thousandth part of the wisdom, exploring none of the arcana of humanity and deprived of the perennial interest of love, goes on from edition to edition, ever young, while "Clarissa" lies upon the shelves unread. A friend of mine, a Welsh blacksmith, was twenty-five years old and could neither read nor write, when he heard a chapter of "Robinson" read aloud in a farm kitchen. Up to that moment he had sat content, huddled in his ignorance, but he left that farm another man. There were day-dreams, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... soul he conquered, you would have said, "This, which he thinks is degradation,—this is heroism." Oh, strange human heart! no epic ever written achieves the Sublime and the Beautiful which are graven, unread by human eye, in thy ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... place the letter within the breast of his "soutane," unread. The two lay-brethren were ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... o'clock he got back to his quarters, after an exciting meeting of an hour, after lunch at the rectory, after seeing the bishop off on the 2.45 to New York, he locked his door first, and then hurriedly drew out the letter lying all this time unread. He tore untidily at the flap, and with that suddenly he stopped, and the luminous eyes took on an odd, sarcastic expression. "What a fool!" he spoke, half aloud, and put the letter down and strolled across the room and gazed out of the window. ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... to clear Hale of that charge, but she saw such a terrified appeal in her step-mother's face that she kept her peace, let Hale suffer for that, too, and walked out into her garden. Never once had her piano been opened, her books had lain unread, and from her lips, during those days, came no song. When she was not at work, she was brooding in her room, or she would walk down to Uncle Billy's and sit at the mill with him while the old man would talk in tender helplessness, or under the honeysuckle vines ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... in every other possible place, the letter could not be found; and though Mrs. Kaye assured them that there was probably very little of importance in it, her children could not help imagining something quite to the contrary; and to learn the unread message became the great ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... of the time, from the mordant satire of Swift to the learned and elaborate diagnosis of Arthur Young, laid bare the hideous ravages wrought by misrule in Ireland; but they had little or no effect upon English statesmen, and were unread by the only classes from which, if they had had knowledge, proper practical sympathy might have come. Until Townshend's Viceroyalty (1767-1772) most of the Irish Viceroys were absentees for the greater part of ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... proclaiming Murillo and Velasquez. These things he had forsaken because he believed he was ambitious; and behold into what a cul-de-sac his ambition had led him! A comic-opera country that was not comic, but dead and buried from the world; a savage people, unread, unenlightened, unclean; and for society of his countrymen, pitiful derelicts in hiding from the law. In his soul he rebelled. In words he ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... when Matthew appeared at his bedside with his cup of tea at nine o'clock, tidings were brought him. He took in the Buntingford Gazette, which came twice a week, and as Matthew laid it, opened and unread, in its accustomed place, he gave the information, which he had no doubt gotten from the paper. "You haven't heard it, sir, I suppose, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the riddle was unread. The old problem, Given the Greek alphabet, to find an Iliad, differs from this rather in degree than in kind. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... shadowy, with only shaded lights here and there. It had such tempting crannies. I loved its deep quiet, so pleasantly broken now and then by a step, a whisper, the sound of a book being moved from its shelf where perhaps it had stood unread for years, or occasional voices passing outside or snatches of song from the campus. And here I thought I was finding myself. That French prof had introduced me to Voltaire, Hugo, Balzac, Maupassant and others who were becoming my new idols. This was art, this was beauty and ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... the Prophet, with sudden fierce energy. "For mercy's sake—I mean, grannie, dear; that none will come. If they should"—his ordinary gentle eyes flamed almost furiously—"Mr. Ferdinand is to burn them unread—yes, to ashes. I will tell him." And he escorted Lady Enid tumultuously downstairs, missing his footing at ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... impressed on the feed-in tape of the computer. Sections of the tape are chosen at random by someone who is blindfolded. They are fed unread into the computer, together with instructions to multiply, subtract, extract roots, et cetera, which are similarly chosen at random and not known to anyone. Once in twenty times or so, Schweeringen predicts the result of this meaningless computation ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... it to go back to her home in Hampshire; but she could not say whether the mother and daughter had ever returned, or had ever been heard of afterwards. No further search, on Miss Halcombe's part, through the few letters of Mrs. Fairlie's writing which she had left unread, assisted in clearing up the uncertainties still left to perplex us. We had identified the unhappy woman whom I had met in the night-time with Anne Catherick—we had made some advance, at least, towards connecting the probably defective condition of the poor creature's intellect ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... slowly slid the unread letter back into the envelope and tucked it into his shirt. "You bet we'll find that cow if we have to comb every draw on the ranch! Hello, pardner! Here's her ole head. She was sure enough ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... He lived to himself, and his old haunts and his old friends saw nothing of him. Evelyn Langham, whom he had known before she married his friend Marshall, was fortunately absent from town. Her letters to him remained unanswered; the last one he had burned unread. He was sick of the devious crooked paths he had trodden; he might not be just the stuff of which saints are made, but there was the hope in his heart of better things than he had ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... glance of an eye, in which one may easily read—who knows the character—treachery, lying, and deception, just as in the letter Beth was originally easily discerned the effigies of a house, may very easily pass unread by the multitude. The language, or rather the alphabet, is much less complicated than the cuneiform of the Medes and Persians, yet no one studies it, except women, most of whom are profoundly skilled ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... do not receive a check for your story within a week after sending it out. The largest magazines usually require three months and sometimes longer to report on a MS. If you attempt to hurry the editorial decision you will probably receive your MS. by return mail, unread. ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... Lactantius who would now condemn Copernicus unread, and produce authorities of the Scripture, of divines, and of councils in support of their condemnation. I hold these authorities in reverence, but I hold that in this instance they are used for personal ends ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Sir Peregrine's opinion as to Lady Mason's innocence or to express his own. These three days had been dreadful to Sir Peregrine. He had not left the house, but had crept about from room to room, ever and again taking up some book or paper and putting it down unread, as his mind reverted to the one subject which now for him bore any interest. On the second of these three days a note had been brought to him from his old friend Lord Alston. "Dear Orme," the note had run, "I ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... hard-wood staircase, unused fireplace with tiles which resembled brown linoleum, cut-glass vases standing upon doilies, and the barred, shut, forbidding unit bookcases that were half filled with swashbuckler novels and unread-looking sets of Dickens, Kipling, O. Henry, and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... in front of Mary Cahill as though to shield her. His eyes stole stealthily towards Cahill's confession. Still unread and still unsigned, it lay unopened upon the table. Cahill was gazing upon Ranson ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... visions that were not so much false as simply impossible. They were also the result of vague and unconfessed fears, and that made their strength. For myself, with a very definite dread in my heart, I was careful not to allude to their character because I did not want the Note to be thrown away unread. And then I had to remember that the impossible has sometimes the trick of coming to pass to the confusion of minds and often to ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... desk and idly read the titles of the books; there were a logger's manual, a few text-books on surveying and timber estimating, several of the latest novels, apparently unread and a ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... probably, on the very different mind of a very different person, who had no other connection whatever with the affair than what her heart gave him with every thing that passed, Elinor forgot the immediate distress of her sister, forgot that she had three letters on her lap yet unread, and so entirely forgot how long she had been in the room, that when on hearing a carriage drive up to the door, she went to the window to see who could be coming so unreasonably early, she was all astonishment to perceive Mrs. Jennings's chariot, which she knew had not been ordered ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... etc., etc. Commenced Jan. 1, 1895. Finished March 6, 1896. Copied out (three times) December, 1896. Submitted to Messrs. Kesteven, Sydney; but they say they are publishing very little at present, as times are depressed. To James & James, Melbourne; returned. And unread, I am sure; the package had hardly been touched. To Brown & McMahon, Melbourne. A most polite note, but they do not care to publish so long a story. Shortened it, and copied again (July, 1898). Sent again ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... he continued in the same calm, slow voice, "there is within this envelope some lie, some plot. I will not even know what it is. I will not ask you a single question, and I will throw these letters, unread, into the fire; but swear to me, that, whatever this Menko, or any other, may write to me, whatever any one may say, is an infamy and a calumny. ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... had been opened and read; but as he unfolded it, there appeared another—unopened, unread; its dainty seal unbroken, and on the back in fair tracery, the words, "Miss Faith Derrick." As Faith read them and saw the hand, her eye glanced first up at Mr. Linden with its mute burden of surprise, and then the roses bloomed out over her cheeks and even ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... sensation about the heart, and an eagerness of interest I have rarely experienced. I had no idea what a mere letter—a mere unopened unread letter—would mean to ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... by ancient shelves upon hard chairs, I had sneezed with the ancient dust, and I had not put my finger upon a trace of the right Fanning. I should have given it up, left unexplored the territory that remained staring at me through the backs of unread volumes, had it not been for my Aunt Carola. To her I owed constancy and diligence, and so I kept at it; and the hermit hours I spent at Court and Chancel streets grew worse as I knew better what rarely good company was ready to receive me. This Kings Port, this little city ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... himself on the divan and gave way to his feelings. When somewhat recovered, he recollected that a portion of the letter remained unread, and, taking it up, he resumed the reading. "Thou wilt remember," the missive ran, "what thou didst with the mother and sister of the malefactor; yet, if now I yield to a desire to learn if they be living or dead"—Ben-Hur started, and read again, and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... manner it is done that benefits us, for as Poor Richard says: "The used key is always bright," so the well-read book always shows the handling. A small well chosen library carefully read is of vastly more benefit than the large, poorly chosen, unread volumes that adorn the shelves of many homes. Yet I am not sure but that poorly chosen books are better not read than read. A learned doctor once said: "It is not what we eat that sustains life, ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... persecution and injury. She informs the world that Lord Byron wrote his Autobiography with the purpose of giving a fair statement of the exact truth in the whole matter; and that Lady Byron bought up the manuscript of the publisher, and insisted on its being destroyed, unread; thus inflexibly depriving her husband of his last chance of a hearing before the tribunal ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... paradox only to the unthinking, and it is a fact that none but the unread in history will deny, that, in periods of popular tumult and innovation, the more abstract a notion is, the more readily has it been found to combine, the closer has appeared its affinity, with the feelings of a people, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... occasion sometimes required an immediate utterance. The new book must be reviewed before other journals had thoroughly dissected and discussed it, else the ablest critique would command no general attention, and perhaps be, by the greater number, unread. That the writer should wait the flow of inspiration, or at least the recurrence of elasticity of spirits and relative health of body, will not seem unreasonable to the general reader; but to the inveterate hack-horse of the daily press, accustomed to write at any time, on any subject, and ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... arms with jewels of rare cost, that they might alone have sufficed to indicate the rank of the evident owner, even if his own gorgeous vestments had not betrayed it. An open manuscript, on a silver table, lay unread before the Moor: as, leaning his face upon his hand, he looked with abstracted eyes along the mountain summits dimly distinguished from the cloudless and ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not without the thought that, possibly, it might be of farther use than for the entertainment of the Writer: Yet so little express Intention was there of Publishing the Product of those leisure Hours it employ'd, that these Papers lay by for above two Years unread, and almost forgotten. After which time, being perus'd and Corrected, they were communicated to some Friends of the Authors, who judging them capable to be useful, they are now sent into the World in ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... in this chapter must seem meaningless and wearisome to all but those who belong to the great Secret Society of Sorrow, it were no doubt just as well that those who have known nothing but joy should follow their natural impulse and leave it unread. I confess, too, that I should feel the more comfortable without the regard of ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... with me," she said, "Into regions yet untrod; And read what is still unread In the ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... free institutions, to set the first precedent of this kind? Our city councils, our courts of justice, every department of Government are approached by petition, however unanswerable, or absurd, so that its terms are respectful. None go away unread, or unheard. The life of every individual is a perfect illustration of the subject of petitioning. Petition is the language of want, of pain, of sorrow, of man in all his sad variety of woes, imploring relief, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... every secret meeting of those affected to the invaders, each conspirator ran to save himself by denouncing all others. One Cuban, of large fortune and small reputation, being implicated in these matters, brought General Concha a list of all his confederates, which Concha burned before his face, unread. Piteous, laughable spectacle! Better be monkeys than such men; yet such work does Absolutism in government and religion make of the noble human creature! God preserve us ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... animosity was deplorable, but not unnatural. A man imbued with the idea of a chosen people, and unread in any book save the one which cultivates this very idea, could not be expected to have learned the historical lessons of the advantages which a State reaps from a liberal policy. To him it was as if the Ammonites and Moabites had demanded admission into the twelve tribes. He mistook ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he has refinement, foresight, understanding. She is but an infant,—open and impressible, warm and sanguine! He isolates her from sight and reach. He pries into her nature with keenest delicacy,—no leaf is unread. Being learnt, he works upon it; touches each budding trait with gentlest impulse. No violence! he seems to leave her to her own development; yet nothing goes against his will. More than half is left to nature, but his scarce perceptible touches bias nature. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... pas le francais," said Captain Mulcaster, at Elizabeth Castle, as he put the letter into his pocket unread. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... write. If they were to part he could not trust himself to see her. He called a waiter, asked for pen and paper, and pushed aside a pile of unread newspapers on the corner of the table where his coffee had been served. As he did so, his eye lit on a Daily Mail of two days before. As a pretext for postponing his letter, he took up the paper and glanced down the first ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... not stop until the exact word is hunted out. For upon words, at last, we are dependent for the expression of our observation and thought. He is most entirely master of his thoughts who can accurately express them: clearly, that he cannot be misunderstood; forcefully, that he will not be unread; and elegantly, that he give the reader joy. And this mastery he evinces in a finely discriminating ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... of talking in words of not more than three syllables had begun to tell on me. I bade the artist good-bye, wandered away up the half-dozen steps to the Parade, sat down on a bench, and opened the morning paper that I had brought out unread. During the War one felt it a duty to know the worst before breakfast; now that the English polity is threatened merely from within, one is apt to dally.... Merely from within? Is that a right phrase when the nerves of unrestful Labour in any one land are interplicated ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... on the porch sitting with Richard Hall's letter in my hand, still unread, Nell herself came down the front walk and sat ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... escorting his lady-love home through the muddy, ill-lighted streets of little Christchurch. A light of some sort was needed at an especially miry crossing. The devoted squire did not spread out his cloak, as did Sir Walter Raleigh. He had no cloak to spread. But he deftly made a torch of his unread English letters, and, bending down, lighted the way across the mud. His sacrifice, it is believed, did not ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... upon the signature, a shudder of repulsion ran through her frame, and the letter dropped from her hands to the floor. As if possessed by a spirit whose influence over her she could not control, she caught up the unread sheet and threw it into the fire. As the flames seized upon and consumed it, she drew a long breath ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... scenes it so glowingly describes, it is well to remember that it was, indeed, one of the first attempts to entice the city dweller "back to nature." Published in 1859, it followed Thoreau's at that time unread "Walden" by only five years, while it preceded Murray's "Adventures in the Wilderness," and the earliest of John Burroughs' delightful volumes, by a full generation. It was in every way a commendable, if ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... ages, Soul-ransomed, and spirit-free, I'll read all being's pages, Unread by mortal sages, With thee, dear Wife! ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... efforts of the new reformation, and had succeeded in preventing any great mischief. His plans for the pursual of his ideas and feelings upon this subject had been communicated to his late ward in an urgent and important paper, which his Grace had never seen, but one day, unread, pushed into a certain black cabinet, which perhaps the reader may remember. His Grace's miscellaneous debts had also been called in, and amounted to a greater sum than they had anticipated, which debts always do. One hundred and ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... was again silent, and still she sat motionless, with the letter in her hand. "Mamma," she said at last, "if you tell me not to read it, I will give it back unread. If you bid me exercise my own judgment, I shall take it ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... of the University was given to understand, that the public Hebrew Lecture was not read according to the Statutes; nor could be, by reason of a distemper, that had then seized the brain of Mr. Kingsmill, who was to read it; so that it lay long unread, to the great detriment of those that were studious of that language. Therefore the Chancellor writ to his Vice-Chancellor, and the University, that he had heard such commendations of the excellent knowledge of Mr. Richard Hooker in that tongue, that he desired ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... and thrived purely on literature. He published many novels—gone where the bad novels go, and unread in the present day, unless in some remote country town, which boasts only a very meagre circulating library. Improbability took the place of natural painting in them; punning supplied that of better wit; and personal portraiture was so freely used, that his most intimate friends—old ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... some time watching her from behind his newspaper, while she, with an unread book upon her lap, had, in fact, been thinking deeply and putting to herself ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... modern literary success. Not to reach the moderate competence in literature is, for a professional man of letters of all work, something like failure. But in poetry to-day a man may succeed, as far as his art goes, and yet may be unread, and may publish at his own expense, or not publish at all. He pleases himself, and a very tiny audience: I do not call that failure. I regard failure as the goal of ignorance, incompetence, lack of common sense, conceited dulness, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... your creed—and bless you as his daughter indeed, as his son's wife,—may the remembrance of that just man so far prevail over your indignant and outraged soul that these words from the most wretched man on earth, for that am I, Paula, may not be left unread. Grant me the last favor I have to ask of you—I demand ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Morris and Katherine sat together on the sunny side of the ship looking at the Welsh coast. Their books lay unread on the rug, and there were long periods of ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... to the Committee room, There gleams of light conflict with gloom, While unread rheams in chaos lye, Our water ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... having his Diary read at any date he chose to name after his death. But no allusion to it was left, and if it had not been for the ingenuity and perseverance of a single scholar the dusty volumes would still lie unread in some top shelf of the Pepysian Library. Publicity, then, was not his object. What could it have been? The only alternative is reference and self-information. You will observe in his character a curious vein of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a week in his house he was able to talk with comparative ease. He seemed to enjoy my companionship, and I spent most of my time in his library, conversing with him or conning the musty books that had long lain unread. To me this room was a fascinating and restful place. Somehow it reminded me of an old cemetery. The time-worn books upon its shelves stood in solemn rows, like headstones, sacred to the memory of the men who wrote them—their titles like inscriptions ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... like a man forced at birth into some iron mould of circumstance, and whose own proper muscles and soul had never had a chance of air to grow. A homely, saddened, uncouthly shaped face,—one that would be sure to go snubbed and unread through the world, to find at last some woman who would know its latent meaning, and worship it with the heat of passion which this country-girl had given. Withal, a cheerful, quizzical smile on the lips. Poor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... himself. On the way we may look to criticism to guide us to those works which are meant for us. In art as in the complex details of living, there is need of selection; and criticism helps toward that. In literature alone, to name but a single art, there is so much to be left unread which the length of our life would not otherwise permit us to escape, that we are grateful to the critic who aids us to omit gracefully and with success. But the most serviceable criticism is positive and not destructive. The lesser works ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... brought on melancholia, and he began to see visions; and later on, while still in this depressed state of mind, he turned his attention to some Christian tracts which had been given to him on his first appearance at the examination, but which he had so far allowed to remain unread. In these he discovered what he thought were interpretations of his earlier dreams, and soon managed to persuade himself that he had been divinely chosen to bring to his countrymen a knowledge of ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... change in the sky, but the mercurial column remained uncommonly steady. Arrangements for a concentrated party engrossed my attention so fully this day, with the insertion also of our late work on the general map, that even the newspapers from the colony lay unread. Mr. Kennedy took a ride across the river in a S. S. E. direction, and found a fine grazing country with open forest, as far as he went, which was about twelve miles. On the banks of the Balonne, during ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... poems of the Elder Edda, the romances of "Amis et Amile" and "Aucassin et Nicolete," the writings of Villon, the "De Imitatione Christi" ascribed to Thomas a Kempis. Dante was a great name and fame, but he was virtually unread. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... which formed Major Pendennis's budget for that morning there was only one unread, and which lay solitary and apart from all the fashionable London letters, with a country postmark and a homely seal. The superscription was in a pretty delicate female hand, and though marked 'Immediate' by the fair writer, with a strong dash of anxiety under the word, yet the Major ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... book of life upon her knee, Fate sits! the unread page of love's delight By her firm hand is half concealed from me, And half revealed to sight. Ah Fate! be kind! so well I learned love's sorrow, Give me its full delight to ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... handkerchief from his inner pocket, and as he did so a whiff of violets came remindingly, but he paid no heed. Gila's letter lay in his pocket, still unread. The antiseptics were at work upon his senses and the ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... on her coat and hat and off she went with Ulrich, leaving still unread in the pocket of the big apron the letter which Bruce McKenzie ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... it had not been written for her eyes; and it struck her, as she brooded over it, that there would be positive disloyalty in thus stealing in upon the secrets of Kemper's past. No, she would place it in his hands, she determined finally, still unread; and in so doing she would not only defeat the purpose of the sender, but would prove to him as well as to herself that her faith in him was as unalterable as her love. After all to trust was easier than to distrust, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... are gracious and serene By gift of God, in human lore unread, May pluck these holy blooms and grasses green That now I wreathe for thine immortal head, I that may walk with thee, thyself unseen, And by ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... came about was never quite understood by the ladies, but the true and formal note of a Ladies' Home Study Club was never once struck that afternoon. Madam the President did not call the meeting to order, the minutes of the last meeting are unread to this day, and a motion ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... into the hands of Henry, presents in every line transactions stained with so much of falsehood and baseness, such revolting treachery and deceit, such wilful deliberate perjury, that we would gladly pass it over unread, or throw upon it the most cursory glance compatible with a bare knowledge of the facts. But whilst the desperate wickedness of the human heart is made to stand out through these transactions in most ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... Stevenson's friends, and he gave the Conservative party scores of lively ballades, villanelles, and rondeaux. They were brilliant. Stevenson would not tell me the author's name; he proved to be Mr. Henley, who came to town, and, on the death of Mr. Brown, edited this unread periodical. There were "Society" notes, although Mr. Henley's haunts were not those of that kind of society, and one occasional contributor ventured to remonstrate about the chatter on the "professional beauties" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... It was the very dead hours of the Muses. The great Mr Murray had ceased, as one despairing of song, to publish poetry. Bulwer Lytton, in the preface to Paul Clifford (1830), announced that poetry, with every other form of literature except the Novel, was unremunerative and unread. Coleridge and Scott were silent: indeed Sir Walter was near his death; Wordsworth had shot his bolt, though an arrow or two were left in the quiver. Keats, Shelley, and Byron were dead; Milman's brief vogue was departing. It seemed as if novels alone ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... sudden bounds and flights of his intellect and of his imagination he was immeasurably above the intel-lects of his neighbours and knew that he was immeasurably above them. Therefore, and in both moods, he commonly hated and despised them. "Fools, fools! Unread, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... companion to that work—not a direct translation, but a very minute abstract from a similar dissertation by Hartmann, (weeded of the wordiness which has made the original unreadable, and in consequence unread,) on the toilette and the wardrobe of the ladies of ancient Palestine. Hartmann was a respectable Oriental scholar, and he published his researches, which occupy three thick octavos, making in all one thousand four hundred and eighty-eight pages, under the title of Die Hebraerin am ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... one is seventy years old one's brain may be good for work. It drives me mad, and I know it does you too, that one has no time for reading anything beyond what must be read: my room is encumbered with unread books. I agree about Wallace's wonderful cleverness, but he is not cautious enough in my opinion. I find I must (and I always distrust myself when I differ from him) separate rather widely from him all about birds' nests and protection; he is riding that ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... long, and which we owe entirely to you, for Edward owns that nothing but your personal representations would have brought him, and, as I suppose you already know—he so much hated the whole subject of Maddox's treachery that he had flung aside, unread, all that he saw related to it. Dear Colin, whatever else you have done, you have filled a famished heart. Could you but have seen Ailie's face all last evening as she sat by his side, you would have felt your reward—it was as if the worn, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... course, full well one frequent consequence of the broad-mindedness which results. I realize how promptly the unread man, filled to the lips with the frothy spirit of his own infallibility, will condemn him whose knowledge of men and motives makes him pause and suspend his judgment. But what of that? Some one has said that thinking makes you wise but weak, while action makes you narrow but ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... and always felt the best and most personal kind of admiration, came into his life, and along with him Gladstone and Francis Palgrave. There began to crowd in upon him those honours whereby a man is to some extent made a classic in his lifetime, so that he is honoured even if he is unread. He was made a Fellow of Balliol in 1867, and the homage of the great universities continued thenceforth unceasingly until his death, despite many refusals on his part. He was unanimously elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University in 1875. He declined, owing to his deep ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... praise. At first Linda made an effort to preserve these; but soon their similarity, her inability to find, among sonorous periods, any trace of Dodge's spirit—in reality she knew so blindingly much more than the most penetrating critical intellect—caused her to leave the reviews unread. No one else living had understood Pleydon; and when descriptions of his life spoke of the austerity in his later years, his fanatical aversion to women, Linda thought of the brittle glove ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... so frequently mentioned by him, which appeared afterwards in the Liberal, and which, though thus rescued from the fate of remaining unpublished, roust for ever, I fear, submit to the doom of being unread.] ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... came faint and far away across the gleaming tossing water from where that red glow burned in the west. The fishermen were on the look out at once, a hail in those days might mean something serious; but their passenger sat with the letter unread in his hand, unheeding anything, reading instead a page out of the ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... whence the telegram came; and he dreaded to make sure. For an instant, he was tempted to put the folded bit of paper in his pocket, unread until Touggourt, or even Biskra. "Why shouldn't I keep these few days unspoiled by thoughts of what's to come, since they're the only happy days I shall ever have?" he asked himself. But it would be weak to put off the evil moment, and he would not ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... He is quite unread, totally unlearned and ignorant of all except the teachings of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... it make? It would never be published. Probably it would be filed with a Department of Defense code number as Research Report DDNE-42 dash-dash-dash. And there it would remain, top-secret, guarded, unread, useless. Somewhere in the desk drawers was the directive worded in the stiff military manner describing the procedures for clearing papers for publication. When he had first come here, he ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... found his secret correspondence, implicating persons, perhaps, whom Caesar had never suspected, revealing the mysteries of the past three years. Curiosity and even prudence might have tempted him to look into it. His only wish was that the past should be forgotten: he burnt the whole mass of papers unread. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... peculiar animation to every handsome woman who appeared in the circle, and complimented her in the florid style of Gascony on the bloom of her cheeks and the lustre of her eyes. When he had enjoyed the fear and anxiety of his suppliants he dismissed them, and flung all their memorials unread into the fire. This was the best way, he conceived, to prevent arrears of business from accumulating. Here he was only an imitator. Cardinal Dubois had been in the habit of clearing his table of papers in the same way. Nor was this the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... preliminary contact starts their knowledge. And therefore a favorite volume, even if unopened in the pocket, does nevertheless by its proximity color and enhance the enjoyment of the day. I have carried Howell, who wrote the "Familiar Letters," unread along the countryside. A small volume of Boswell has grown dingy in my pocket. I have gone about with a copy of Addison with long S's, but I read it chiefly at home when my ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... Muse, the cause of thy decline; Why reign no more the once-triumphant Nine? Alas! new charms the wavering many gain, And rival sheets the reader's eye detain; A daily swarm, that banish every Muse, Come flying forth, and mortals call them NEWS: For these, unread, the noblest volumes lie; For these, in sheets unsoil'd, the Muses die; Unbought, unblest, the virgin copies wait In vain for fame, and sink, unseen, to fate. Since, then, the Town forsakes us for our foes, The smoothest numbers for the harshest prose; Let us, with generous scorn, the taste deride, ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... unread. If Pelle laid down his work a moment in order to glance at it, there was Ellen nipping his ear with her lips; his free time belonged to her, and it was a glorious distraction in work-time, to frolic as carelessly as a couple of puppies, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... teacher, Dr. J. W. Ballantyne of Edinburgh. He contributed an important paper on this subject to our first National Conference on Infantile Mortality held in 1906.[22] I only wish it were possible to reproduce in full here Dr. Ballantyne's paper on the Ante-Natal Causes of Infantile Mortality. The unread critic who is so ready with the word fanatic whenever alcohol is attacked might begin to derive from it some faint idea of the quality and massiveness of the evidence upon which our case is based. Here it ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... all its adventures, having been found, we shall never know where, by a gentleman in the days of Queen Elizabeth, having lain on his bookshelves unknown and unread for a hundred years and more, having been nearly destroyed by fire, having been still further destroyed by neglect, Beowulf at last came to its own, and is now carefully treasured in a glass case in the British Museum, where any one who ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... into my pocket unread," and Doctor Dick now glanced over the note as he rode along. "I fear he is too far gone, Larry, for if he had been able he would have come into the camp. I will ride still faster, for every moment counts with a badly wounded man, and you ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... be put up for auction an unread and unsoiled copy of yesterday's Times. The donor of this superb gift desires to remain anonymous, but his incredible generosity is expected to benefit charity to the ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... Dante lay unread, as well as the other books which Eleanor placed insidiously in her cousin's room. Letters lay unanswered—among them several relating to the proposed new chapel at Bartles. How did Miriam employ herself during the hours ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... ridiculous, or disgusting themes, such as the making of gold, the game of chess, the management of silkworms, astrology, and venereal diseases (morbus gallicus), to say nothing of many long Italian poems of the same kind. Nowadays this class of poem is condemned unread, and how far, as a matter of fact, they are really worth the reading, we are unable to say. One thing is certain: epochs far above our own in the sense of beauty—the Renaissance and the Greco-Roman world—could not dispense with this form of poetry. It may be urged in reply, that it is ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... unplowed his furrow, He leaves his books unread For a life of tented freedom By lure of danger led. He's first in the hour of peril, He's gayest in the dance, Like the guardsman of old England Or the ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... October I wrote a short novel, called The Golden Lion of Granpere, which was intended also for Blackwood,—with a view of being published anonymously; but Mr. Blackwood did not find the arrangement to be profitable, and the story remained on my hands, unread and unthought of, for a few years. It appeared subsequently in Good Words. It was written on the model of Nina Balatka and Linda Tressel, but is very inferior to either of them. In November of the ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... proverb warning the unwary never to drink water in the dark or sign a paper unread. And Marcos made Juanita read everything she signed. She was quick enough, and only laughed when he protested that she had not taken in the full ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... the place, then made his way out to the street, and went to the postoffice, where he found a letter from Glenmore Kent. Intent upon securing the needed funds from Beth with the smallest possible delay, he dropped the letter, unread, in his pocket and headed for the house where Beth was living. He walked, however, no more than half a block before he altered his mind. Pausing for a moment on the sidewalk, he turned on his heel and went briskly to his own apartments, where ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... urged it is said by the Guises, signed away the independence of her country, to which her husband, by these deeds, was to succeed if she died without issue. Young as she was, Mary was perfectly able to understand the infamy of the transaction, and probably was not so careless as to sign the deeds unread. ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... mechanically took up her letter; until, remembering how long she had been upstairs, and how all that time Emma's transparent disposition and love of talk might have laid her and her whole affairs open before the Iansons, she quickly put the epistle in her pocket unread, and went ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... and for a moment it crossed his mind in self-reproach that the part he chose to play was that of a bully. A second he hesitated. Should he surrender the letter unread, and fight on without the aid of the information it might bring him? Then the thought of Ashburn and of his own deep wrongs that cried out for vengeance, overcame and stifled the generous impulse. His manner grew yet more frozen ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... him of the unread letter lying on her dressing-table upstairs, and not till long after he had gone did she pick up the envelope and turn it over and over in her fingers. Then, at last, she ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... victims signified, Of its appearances which pleased the gods, How shaped, how streaked each part behoved to be, And the burnt offerings on the altar laid, Thighs wrapped in fat and chine. I read the signs Of sacrificial flames unread before. More yet I did; the wealth that lurks for man In earth's dark womb,—gold, silver, iron, brass,— Who was it brought all this to light but I? All others lie who would the honour claim. In one ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... when I am of course at your service)—you had better not send me any works of real merit; for I am infallibly prepared to show that there is not any merit in them. I have not been one of the great unread for forty-three years, without turning my misfortunes to some account. Sir, I know how to make use of my adversity. I have been accused, and rightfully too, of swindling, forgery, and slander. I have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... coming movements of international politics. He was a striking, handsome, indomitable figure, and aggressively American. When he went away, he left with my father a book which he had written, with an engraved portrait of the author for frontispiece. This volume, faded and shelf-worn, but apparently unread, bound in the execrable taste of a generation and a half ago, I recently found among my father's volumes. It bore on the title-page the dashing signature of George Francis Train. Train saw things in the large—in their cosmic relations; from us ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... works And call them shames, which are, indeed, nought else But the protractive trials of great Jove To find persistive constancy in men; The fineness of which metal is not found In fortune's love? For then the bold and coward, The wise and fool, the artist and unread, The hard and soft, seem all affin'd and kin. But in the wind and tempest of her frown Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan, Puffing at all, winnows the light away; And what hath mass or matter by itself Lies rich ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... stress he would shake hands with people and turn away to hide his emotion. And it wasn't only in gestures, he became dramatic in conduct. When compromising letters came into his hands, he used to burn them unread and without any one looking on, which is manifestly absurd. I forget what happened to him in the end, but I expect he was charged with something he hadn't done to save the husband of the woman he wanted ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... bored by the task she had undertaken. She was subject to these nervous reactions, and I was prepared for them even when they seized her so spasmodically. I remember that she was in the very act of glancing over an old letter when she rose impatiently, tossed it into the fire unread, and picked up a magazine she had thrown down ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of being, murmurs; she, Allurement; she, fulfilment; she, The stream within us urged to flood; Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent; O she, Maid, woman and divinity; Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit Untasted; she our written fate Unread; Life's flowering, Life's root: Unread, divined; unseen, beheld; The evanescent, ever-present she, Great Nature's stern necessity In radiance clothed, to softness quelled; With a sword's edge of sweetness keen to take Our breath for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... written? no literary morsel is more delicious. Is the author inveterately dull? it is a kind of preparatory information, which may be very useful. It argues a deficiency in taste to turn over an elaborate preface unread; for it is the attar of the author's roses; every drop distilled at an immense cost. It is the reason of the reasoning, and the folly of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... since Lowell rashly characterized him as "the greatest imaginative genius since Shakespeare" our critics commonly speak of him in superlatives. Meanwhile most European critics (who acclaim such unequal writers as Cooper and Poe, Whitman and Mark Twain) either leave Hawthorne unread or else wonder what Americans find in him ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... brings about its revenges. Problems settled in a rough and ready way by rude men, absorbed in action, demand renewed attention and show themselves to be still unread riddles when men have time to think. The beneficent demon, doubt, whose name is Legion and who dwells amongst the tombs of old faiths, enters into mankind and thenceforth refuses to be cast out. Sacred ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... one of these was signed by Lyveden, Valerie tossed them aside unread. Then she propped herself on her elbow and poured out a cup ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... growth to its present colossal, mammoth-like, and almost unwieldy grandeur. We do not, however, whilst re-establishing facts in their purity, dream the practical impossibility of confounding and disarming the ignorance of men unfortunately so ill educated and unread, and with intellect so incapable, apparently, of appreciating instruction, if not wilfully perverse, as the Cobdens, or of restraining the less coarse but more fluent flippancy and equally unscrupulous assurance of friend Bright, from resort to that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... that hyena face, Softening as backwards, through the waves of time, Receded generations more remote. It was a square of tombs—of old, grey tombs, (The oldest of an immemorial date,) Deserted quite—and rusty gratings black, Along the yawning mouths of dreary vaults— And epitaphs unread—and mouldering bones. Alone, forlorn, the only breathing thing In that unknown, forgotten cemetery, Reeling, I strove to stand, and all things round Flicker'd, and wavering, seem'd to wane away, And earth became a blank; the tide of life Ebbing, as backward ebbs the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... the world" shuddered. Immoral, in the sense that it advocates immoral tenets, or prefers evil to good, it is not, but it is unquestionably a dangerous book, which (to quote Kingsley's words used in another connection) "the young and innocent will do well to leave altogether unread." It is dangerous because it ignores resistance and presumes submission to passion; it is dangerous because, as Byron admitted, it is "now and then voluptuous;" and it is dangerous, in a lesser degree, because, here and there, the purport of the quips and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... will suffice. It should be written clearly and simply; for young minds will spend little time in difficult investigation. It should have a good moral. It should be interesting; or it will generally be left unread, and thus any other excellence that it may possess will be useless. Some writers seem to have a fourth rule,—that it should be instructive; but, really, it is no great matter, if a child should have some books without wisdom. Moreover, this maxim is eminently perilous in its practical application, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... copy to his own university; two or three college libraries would purchase copies out of respect to the learned professor; and Litton would give away a few more. The rest would stand in an undisturbed stack of increasing dust, there to remain unread as long perhaps as the myriads of Babylonian classics that Assurbani-pal had copied in brick volumes for his great ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes |
