"Unreasoning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one can give to a child. I am sure, that what was meant was ignorance of the wisdom that shall guide men and women. I hardly know what that is. But he—that is, my informant—spoke as if the masters would like their hands to be merely tall, large children—living in the present moment—with a blind unreasoning kind ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... who had but a vague idea of prosody, understood simply that she had again incurred the displeasure of D'Argenton. The fact is that he had begun to affect her in a manner quite beyond her own control, and which, in its unreasoning terror, was somewhat like the timid worship offered by the Japanese to their ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... recognized it as the ordinary fanciful appendage of a gentleman rider, used for tethering his horse on lonely plains, and always made the object of the most lavish expenditure of decoration and artistic skill. But he was as suddenly filled with a blind, unreasoning sense of repulsion and fury, and lifted his eyes to the man as he approached. What the stranger saw in Clarence's blazing eyes no one but himself knew, for his own became fixed and staring; his sallow cheeks grew lanker and livid; his careless, jaunty bearing stiffened into rigidity, and ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... ear-splitting outburst just in front of them. But on the instant piercing shrieks among the huddled cheerers—cries of death and agony—changed the paeans of triumph into wails of anguish and mortal pain. A panic—instant, unreasoning, irresistible—fell upon the mass, a breath before so confident. A third of the regiment seemed to wither away. The colors fell in the struggling group in the center. Hoarse shouts, indistinguishable and ominous, could be vaguely heard ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... people, the wealthy had oppressed the masses, and the latter had been designedly kept in ignorance and poverty. In such countries there was no intelligent popular class possessing influence enough to control the outbursts of furious and unreasoning hatred; cruelty and horrors of all kinds were perpetrated, the former oppressors slaughtered wholesale, and there would have been no means of staying the senseless and aimless bloodshed if, fortunately for these ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... away;' simply continue your voyage before it is unpleasantly interrupted," returned the other, with a smile. "If you remain until morning, your raft, with its contents, will certainly be destroyed by an unreasoning mob, at whose hands you and your companions may suffer bodily injury. In this case action would come first and inquiry afterwards. I am convinced you could easily prove your innocence, but doubt if you could obtain any redress for the losses you would have suffered in the mean time. Now I must ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... Manny go because he's incapable of driving a car. The very thought of being in control of a machine so much more powerful than he is would give him chills. Did you ever see what happens when you lock a claustrophobe up in a dark closet—the mad, unreasoning, uncontrollable panic of absolute terror? That's what would happen to Manny if you put him behind the wheel of a running automobile. It's worse than fear; fear is controllable. Blind ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... had gone the first time to fetch some water for Sirona he had found the dog by the side of the spring, and he could not help thinking, "The unreasoning brute has found the water without a guide while his mistress is dying of thirst. Which is the wiser—the man or the brute?" The little dog on his part strove to merit the anchorite's good feelings towards him, for, though at first he had barked at him, he now was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Donald had come to Thornwood, and on both occasions Miss Lady had been seized with an unreasoning fear, not only of him, but of herself. She had received him under the depressing chaperonage of Mr. Gooch and Mrs. Ivy, and she remembered now how Connie had taken possession of him on both occasions. But even if Connie's transitory affections were temporarily engaged, surely ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... times so nearly approach the classical—as to render the same entirely different from the minstrel performances so common a few years ago. It is found that a public rapidly becoming enlightened, and freed from the influences of an unreasoning and cruel race-hatred, no longer enjoys with its former relish the "plantation act," so called, with all its extravagant and offensive accompaniments. Compelled to recognize this change of sentiment and taste, the best troupes now frequently give, instead of the "act" just mentioned, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... gracious, no! You don't think I am going to run after the man? I am disgusted with Hugh. His duplicity and, worse still, his obstinate, foolish, unreasoning behaviour, have annoyed me more than anything I ever remember. But there, my dear child, it is nothing to do with you. I have quite altered my opinion of Hugh Alston. You were right and I was wrong. Tom Arundel will make you a better husband, and you will be as happy as the ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... turned back, puzzled and with his heart jumping. For some reason Marian had taken this means of getting a message into his hands. What it could be he did not conjecture; but he had a vague, unreasoning hope that she trusted him and was asking him to help her somehow. He did not think that it concerned the race, so he did not risk opening the note then, with so ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... was unreasoning, hasty, impulsive—in a word, often thinking and acting very foolishly—yet, somehow, either from some quality in his character, or from the loyalty of nature in those with whom he had to deal in his every-day life, he had made his place and position clear as the arbiter and law-giver ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... gradually borne in upon him that this, and this alone, was the thing that must be done. It was his job, forced upon him by an inexorable fate. Dick would probably be much more angry with him for doing it, but somehow in a vague, unreasoning fashion he realized that it had ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... attractive, he might have been satisfied with the approbation of demure maidens and a comradeship with his fellows. But being one who could hope for nothing of this kind, not even for a decent return to the unreasoning heart-worship he felt himself capable of paying, and which he had once paid for a few short days till warned of his presumption by the insolence of the recipient, he had fixed his hope and his ambition on doing something which would rouse the admiration of those about him and ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... in the actual state of the exchequer. But the nation invariably shows itself sensitive to the loss of honour implied in such a cession, and is glad to have a victim on which to wreak its irritation. It was on Clarendon that its unreasoning vengeance fell, and at a later day the blame for an arrangement which he did not initiate, and which at first he earnestly opposed, aggravated his growing unpopularity. Once more he had had to content himself, not with the policy he most approved, but ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... bad, and publish a book to satisfy my truly candid but mistaken friends at the North as to the real truth on this subject. But I have in mind the way in which similar works have already been received and treated by an unreasoning, passionate North. I have amused myself sometimes in imagining what certain writers would say to some of the incidents which I have related in this letter. Let me attempt to show you the spirit and manner of our Northern reviewers when one ventures to state favorable things relating to slavery. ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... It was the first day of June,—and such a day! Trees and shrubs were in that loveliest of all states,—that of a half-fulfilled promise of loveliness. Rosamond felt the spell, and, in spite of all that was in her heart, an unreasoning gladness took possession of her. She danced down the path of the long garden behind the seminary and danced back again, stopping to pick a handful of the first June roses. It was early morning, and the professor stopped—as he often did—for a moment's sight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... motionless in the expression which even he knew was death; and at the table, writing rapidly with manuscript all about, a man whose eyes shone with the brilliancy of disease, and with a face as pale as the face on the pillow. In the blank, unreasoning terror of superstition, he fled until Nature rebelled and would carry him no farther. Next day to all he saw, he told the tale of supernatural things which lingers yet around a prairie ruin, in whose dooryard are mounds ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... ask nor care for reasons. There is in fact an element of illusion in feeling; passion is non-rational; and when the spirit of the time is intellectual, men are seldom devout, however religious they may be. The scientific habit of mind is not favorable to childlike and unreasoning faith; and the new views of the physical universe which the modern mind is forced to take, bring us face to face with new problems in religion and ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... matters not whether the Russians take Manchuria or the Japanese Korea, provided only that Canton is left in peace. Ancestor worship may be said, indeed, to be the true religion of the Chinese. For the rest they are filled with an unreasoning fear of spirits, and have recourse to many different gods who, they believe, can control these influences for good and evil. They are very superstitious. If any one falls sick of fever and becomes delirious, his relations believe that his soul has gone astray. They carry his clothes ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... first word of vehement, unreasoning passion, the mysterious prince dragged the girl over that threshold into womanhood. He gave her no time to think, no time to analyze her feelings; he rushed her into a torrent of ardor and of excitement in which she never could pause in order ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... improvement brings about a feeling of relief, the unreasoning fear of failure seems for the time to have left almost entirely; the mental strain under which the sufferer ordinarily labors seems to be no longer present; there is but little worry about either present condition or future prospects; the nervous condition seems ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... correspondingly desperate. They are a peculiar people. Throughout the whole history of the race they have been kindly, thoughtless children. Now they are aroused. The pendulum has swung to the other extreme. They care little for their lives. They are still children—children who will go to their death unreasoning, fighting ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... increase the happiness of the rest of our race, their destruction is a virtue, especially if we dispose of them in a quiet and painless way, so as to spare them the fears and agonies of death!" But here again my heart prevailed. My natural, unreasoning, instinctive horror of injustice and murder rendered the specious pleadings of Atheistic utilitarianism powerless. And so on moral ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... interest in the thousand political questions ever arising to be settled by the vote. They very soon weary of such questions. On great occasions they can work themselves up to a state of frenzied excitement over some one political question. At such times they can parade a degree of unreasoning prejudice, of passionate hatred, of blind fury, even beyond what man can boast of. But, in their natural condition, in everyday life, they do not take instinctively to politics as men do. Men are born politicians; just as they are born ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... does not claim a phenomenally low mortality, nor does he claim specially brilliant results. He has to contend with unreasoning fear on the part of the patients for hospital surgeons, and also most of his cases had been in the hands of quacks, and had subjected themselves to remedies prescribed by old women. Many cases came after the family physician had exhausted ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... in the progress of China, and Japan in the adoption of Western science and educational methods have from time to time been noticed in these columns. To the popular mind the names of the two countries are synonymous with rigid, unreasoning conservatism and with rapid change, respectively. The grave, dignified Chinese, who maintains his own dress and habits even when isolated among strangers, and whose motto appears to be, Stare super mas antiquas, is popularly believed to be animated by a sullen, obstinate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... which contains all that is best and greatest in human nature—nevertheless it seems to me impossible to deny that the sentiment in question is as unreasonable as the frame of mind which harbours it must be unreasoning. If there is no God, where can be the harm in our examining the spurious evidence of his existence? If there is a God, surely our first duty towards him must be to exert to our utmost, in our attempts to find him, the most noble faculty with which he has endowed us—as carefully ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... exceeded the truth; and that Mariano was quite as great a ruffian as they had described him. One expects slave-owners to treat their human chattels as well as men do other animals of value, but the slave-trade seems always to engender an unreasoning ferocity, if ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... spoke the same mother tongue. When such crimes are perpetrated the public mind is apt to fall into gloom and perplexity, for it is ignorant alike of the causes and the consequences of such deeds. But it is one of our duties to reassure them under unreasoning panic and despondency. Assassination has never changed the history of the world. I will not refer to the remote past, though an accident has made the most memorable instance of antiquity at this moment fresh in the minds and memory of all around me. But even the costly sacrifice of a Caesar did not ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... master of his fate. The great difference between ancient and modern literature is this: the old dramatists seem to believe that somewhere there is a power above and beyond the control of man, a blind, unreasoning force that seems to play with man as the football of chance. Whatever may be done by man will prove unavailing if Fate or Destiny has decreed otherwise. Out of such a philosophy of life comes the ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... now, this unreasoning, unreasonable girl, and she was laughing more at Farwell's perplexity than at her own glibness. She must soon go, her time was growing short, but she ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... Unreasoning fear of one or another mode of conveyance is not rare. It is said that Rossini found it impossible to travel by rail, and that the attempt of a friend to accustom him to it resulted in an ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... mob. Instantly a crowd from outside gathered, and a free-for-all fight began. Hundreds flocked in from the adjacent streets. The affair quickly assumed the proportions of a riot. Knives and revolvers were brought into play. It was every man against his neighbor, and an unreasoning wave of frenzy and blood seemed to sweep over the crowd. The police rushed in from all quarters, but their efforts seemed powerless. My new acquaintance and myself, the innocent cause of all the trouble, managed to escape from the thick of the fray—he with the loss of a hat ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... by the ironical observance of Miss Rasmith, who had to be defied first, and then propitiated; certainly, when she saw him apparently breaking faith with her, she had a right to some sort of explanation, but certainly also she had no right to a blind and unreasoning submission from him. His embarrassment was heightened by her interest in Miss Kenton, whom, with an admirable show of now finding her safe from Breckon's attractions, she was always wishing to study from his observation. What was she really like? ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a flash of teeth as she spoke, and a quiver through her body. Terry had never seen such passion, such unreasoning, wild passion, as that which had leaped on the girl. Though her face was not contorted, danger spoke from every line of it. He made himself tense, prepared for a similar outbreak from the father, but the latter relaxed as suddenly as his ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... like leopards. Sylvestre ran after them, although he had two wounds—a lance-thrust in the thigh and a deep gash in his arm; but feeling nothing save the intoxication of battle, that unreasoning fever that comes of vigorous blood, gives lofty courage to simple souls, and ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... Catholicism done, what else is it doing in its prohibition of reading the Gospel, and in its demand for unreasoning submission to Church authorities and to an infallible Pope? Is the religion of Catholicism any other than that of the Russian Church? There is the same external ritual, the same relics, miracles, and wonder-working images of Notre Dame, and the same processions; the ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... had an unreasoning and ignorant jury to deal with, I thought they would at once see through so absurd a defence, and did not insult their common sense by ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... of drums, out of the idler and the weakling comes The hero valiant with self-sacrifice, ready to pay the price War asks of men, to help a suffering world. And out of the arms of pleasure, where they whirled In wild unreasoning mirth, behold the splendid women of the earth Living new selfless lives—the toiling mothers, sister, daughters, wives Of men gone forth as ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... he had an unreasoning aversion to facing this opponent. Of late, the Canadian had caused him trouble at almost every turn, and it looked as if he could not even indulge in a morning's amusement without being plagued with him. He was conscious of a most uncharitable ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... his manner of speaking to Molly that annoyed him. Jimmy objected strongly to any one addressing her as if there existed between them some secret understanding. Already the mood of the old New York days was strong upon him. His instinct then had been to hate all her male acquaintances with an unreasoning hatred. He found himself in much the same frame ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... understand, and, thank God, I believe I am able to reciprocate your love with one as chastened and pure. When I left The Pines last fall I did so because I could not any longer endure to be near you, loving you as I did. I felt in some blind, unreasoning way that it was wrong, and yet I knew that to cease to love you was an impossibility. But in the solitude of the mountains God showed me a better way. He showed me the true meaning of those words, 'In the resurrection ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... unreasoning tumult of joy which surged up within her. He could not possibly marry Andrew ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... always to be heard in a wood at night assailed their ears, and mingled with the quick beating of their own hearts; whilst from time to time a long unearthly wail, which seemed to proceed from the interior of the house itself, filled them with an unreasoning sense of terror that they would not ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... with sick and unreasoning fear. As she gazed wide-eyed at the living confirmation of the statement that "Gum Shoe Tim" was "as cross as a bear," the gentle-hearted Principal took the ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... heroes in their domestic circle, should remember that the smallest modicum of common-sense on the part of the worshipper will inevitably mar a happiness, the very existence of which depends entirely on a blind unreasoning devotion. In middle life the absence of reason begins perhaps to be felt; but why in youth take thought ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... shall we 'give the reason of the South a chance to assert itself'? By withdrawing our support from our friends, and the friends of America, and of man, in the South, and turning them over, like sheep to the wolves, to their unreasoning and vindictive enemies; or by standing by them in the weakness of their first essay to depend on reason and justice in the place of force or fraud; by developing, in fine, the reason of the South, which has been for a century overridden ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... just as we may please, is our special prerogative: it gives man the privilege, which is denied to all life below him, of deliberately choosing the worse and of making a fool of himself. The animals know what is good for them because they follow their unreasoning instincts and blindly repeat the racial course of action implanted within them, and the mere survival of the species proves that this particular response to the particular circumstance has been "tried out" by ages of experience. But a man blinds and smothers his ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... against the revolutionary impiety which ignores her rights and would fain steal her patrimony. I protest, in the name of good sense and honor, indignant at beholding an Italian Sovereign Power become the accomplice of insurrection and revolt, and at the conspiracy of so many blind and unreasoning passions against the principles proclaimed and professed throughout the world by all great statesmen and politicians. I protest, in the name of common decency and European law, against this profanation of all that is most august, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... foolish enough to let it affect his actions or guide his conduct he would straightway cease to be a philosopher, and become instead a sort of human shuttlecock, for ever tossing here and there, from pillar to post, under the unreasoning blows of that battledore which had been his mind. Nay, rather the strappado for me, at any time, than abandonment to foolishness so crass as this ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... suppose, some one he was once in love with. The page once turned, I had a wild, unreasoning desire to look at the Michael again and examine the face more closely. Was it merely ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... vicious, upward thrust, the clergyman fell upon his hands and knees, and the horde poured over him to seize their unresisting victims. Knives glimmered before their eyes, rude hands clutched at their wrists and at their throats, and then, with brutal and unreasoning violence, they were hauled and pushed down the steep winding path to where the camels were waiting below. The Frenchman waved his unwounded hand as he walked. "Vive le Khalifa! Vive le Madhi!" he shouted, until a blow from ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ultimately destined to supplant the race of man, and to become instinct with a vitality as different from, and superior to, that of animals, as animal to vegetable life. So convincing was his reasoning, or unreasoning, to this effect, that he carried the country with him; and they made a clean sweep of all machinery that had not been in use for more than two hundred and seventy-one years (which period was arrived at after a series of compromises), and strictly ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... feeling which pervades the whole book is chastened, serious, and full of reverence for the strength ordained out of the lips of infant Art—accepting on its own terms its simplest teaching, sympathizing with all kindness in its unreasoning faith; the writer evidently looking back with most joy and thankfulness to hours passed in gazing upon the faded and faint touches of feeble hands, and listening through the stillness of uninvaded cloisters for fall of voices now almost spent; yet he ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... actually happened; it occurred to me even then that a perfectly sane father does not rage causelessly at his son, nor trump up false accusations against him. Persons were not wanting who detected incipient madness; it was the warning and precursor of a stroke which would fall before long—this unreasoning dislike, this harsh conduct, this fluent abuse, this malignant prosecution, all this violence, passion, and general ill temper. Yes, gentlemen, I saw that the time might come when Medicine would serve ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... strange, even to her, who was so well accustomed to the unreasoning, exaggerated rhapsody of a lover, to hear him; his rage against himself, his entire hopelessness; and as for her, she knew not how to stop him, or how to help him; she could ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... unfolding knowledge of the things necessary for the requirements of his life. We call this Instinct. But, pray remember, by Instinct we do not mean the still higher something that is really rudimentary Intellect that we notice in the higher animals. We are speaking now of the unreasoning instinct observed in the lower animals, and to a certain degree in man. This Instinctive plane of mentality causes the bird to build its nest before its eggs are laid, which instructs the animal mother how to care for its young when born, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... fully, and in nowise did it conflict with the evidence of La Flitche and John. He acknowledged the wash-tub incident, caused, he explained, by an act of simple courtesy on his part and by John Borg's unreasoning anger. He acknowledged that Bella had been killed by his own pistol, but stated that the pistol had been borrowed by Borg several days previously and not returned. Concerning Bella's accusation he could say nothing. He could not see why she should die with a lie ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... no blind and unreasoning opponent of all change, he had a deep and lively veneration for the past. Institutions, doctrines, ceremonies, dignities, even social customs, which had descended from old time, had for him a fascination and an awe. In his high sense of the privileges and the duties of ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... ye blind, unreasoning elements! Must ye, in punishing one guilty head, Destroy the ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... This sudden unreasoning hatred, so foreign to his gentle nature, seemed to stagger Arthur Agar as the sudden intimation of some mortal disease lurking in his own being would have done. He gripped the back of the spindle-legged chair, ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... Edward Cossey offered no exception to them, indeed it illustrated them well. He had never been in love with Mrs. Quest; to begin with she had shown herself too much in love with him to necessitate any display of emotion on his part. Her violent and unreasoning passion wearied and alarmed him, he never knew what she would do next and was kept in a continual condition of anxiety and irritation as to what the morrow might bring forth. Too sure of her unaltering attachment to have any pretext for jealousy, he found it exceedingly ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... David and Goliath—the modern professor might be justified in criticising with considerable severity his draughtsmanship and many salient points in his design. The effect produced is tremendous of its kind. The power suggested is, however, brutal, unreasoning, not nobly dominating force; and this not alone in the Cain and Abel, where such an impression is rightly conveyed, but also in the other pieces. It is as if Titian, in striving to go beyond anything that had hitherto been done of the same kind, had also gone beyond his own artistic ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... Lord's name be praised! The dead pain in the semilunar ganglion (which I must remind my reader is a kind of stupid, unreasoning brain, beneath the pit of the stomach, common to man and beast, which aches in the supreme moments of life, as when the dam loses her young ones, or the wild horse is lassoed) stopped short. There was a feeling as if I had slipped off a tight boot, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... of what had almost become an unreasoning mob, George and Ralph tried by their strength to resist the impulsive dash forward, at the same time that they shouted at the full strength of their lungs the reason why the work nearer the town ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... though he had begun his story with the intention of leading up to this. They parted with polite thanks from Mary for his information, thanks which seemed banal, a strange anti-climax coming after the story of the lovers. Yet they went away from one another with an aftermath of their first unreasoning happiness still lingering in their hearts. That night at dinner they bowed to each other slightly; and during the week that followed before Christmas eve, sometimes Vanno almost believed in the girl; sometimes he lost hope of her, and was plunged from his unreasoning happiness to the dark depths ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the stupendous results of which he was fond of talking had diminished to a series of domestic quarrels, in which he was not always victorious. His hatred of the church was practically reduced to the detestation of his brother, and to an unreasoning jealousy of his brother's influence in his home. His horror of social distinctions, which speculated freely upon the destruction of the monarchy, amounted in practice to nothing more offensive than a somewhat studious rudeness ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... was I to sit and grieve over it? Under the same circumstances ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have chosen precisely the same course; but then to me Lisbeth had always seemed the one exempt—the hundredth woman; moreover, there be times when love, unreasoning and illogical, is infinitely more beautiful ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... I do not give you the casket," said she, holding out the little crucifix round her neck, and devouring him with the wild eyes of passionate unreasoning tropic love. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... him of being in the wrong. Balder resigned the helm of his vessel, laden as she was with the fruits of years of thought and speculation, at the critical moment of her voyage,—resigned her to the guidance of a woman's unreasoning intuition. He might almost as well have averred that the highest reach of intellect is to a perception of the better worth and wisdom of an ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... bang that impoverished invective—for volumes may be spoken—in the banging of a door. The moment was inauspicious for the entrance of Harriet Penny. At best, Chloe merely endured the little spinster, with her whining, hysterical outbursts, and abject, unreasoning fear of God, man, the devil, and everything else. "Oh, my dear, I am so glad!" piped the little woman, rushing to the girl's side: "we need never ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... I have had a variety of hair-breadth escapes from drowning. The very element which I loved so dearly, seemed the most desirous of making a victim of me; and I should have deemed it ungrateful, had I not known that the wild billows were unreasoning, irresponsible creatures; and I had too recklessly laid "my ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... summer. But the painting of it involved him in difficulties entirely foreign to him—difficulties born of technical timidity of the increasing and inexplicable lack of self-confidence. And deeply worried, he laid it aside, A dull, unreasoning anxiety possessed him. Those who had given him commissions to execute were commencing to importune him for results. He had never before disappointed any client. Valerie could be of very little service to him in the big mural decorations which, almost in despair, ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... change the course of eventual creek and river. The pebble fell near the source in Grant Harlson's case, for never before in his life had he studied much the moral problem. His had been the conventional training, which is to-day the training which asks one to accept, unreasoning, the belief of yielding predecessors, and, until he felt the prick of conscience, he had never cared to question the inheritance. Now he wanted proof. If he could not plead not guilty, might he not, at least, find weakness in the law? Then fell ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... now, though overwhelming, had changed from its old vehemence. This change had been wrought in Zillah—the old, unreasoning passion had left her. A real affliction had brought out, by its gradual renovating and creative force, all the good that was in her. That the uses of adversity are sweet, is a hackneyed Shakspeareanism, but it is forever true, and nowhere was its truth more fully displayed than ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... control—a nature that either sprung from a God, or grew out of an unconscious Fate? If from the latter, how was such as he to encounter and reduce to a constrained and self-rejecting reason a Self unreasonable, being an issue of the Unreasoning, which Self was yet greater than he, its vagaries the source of his intensest consciousness and brightest glimpses of the ideal and all-desirable. If on the other hand it was born of a God, then let that God look to it, for, sure, that which belonged ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... rather sullenly agreed to be more careful in future, and did not go to work till the afternoon. But though circumstances compelled him to submit, it put him in bad humor, and made him more disposed to sneer than ever. He had an unreasoning prejudice against Harry, which was stimulated by Luke Harrison, who had this very sufficient reason for hating our hero, that he had succeeded in injuring him. As an old proverb has it "We are slow to forgive ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... succeeded to the fierce fighting spirit of the previous days a certain lassitude and disappointment. What their faces told in the House their lips more freely uttered in the lobbies. For a time, indeed, there was a feeling of almost unreasoning despair, and that full, frank, unsparing criticism to which every Government is subject from its friends when the winds blow and the waves are high. It was said that the Government had committed the mistake of making too many targets at once; that they had first infuriated the Church ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... be thorough. They must not expect miraculous results in a few days. Their diseased condition is the growth of months, perhaps years, and it is the height of unreasoning folly to expect to be cured in a few weeks. A merchant whose business has been crippled and who starts in to rebuild it, will consider himself an extremely fortunate man if, by watchful and untiring endeavor, ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... and put some hay in the bottom, though he insisted Hanny should sit on the seat with him. They stopped at Fordham, and took in another relay; and the children were wild with the unreasoning gladness of youth. Mr. Odell was in an uncommon good-humour, and took them down the river quite a distance, to High Bridge, and then up again, when they espied the boys and baskets and the net, which had a long handle and looked to Hanny ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... then satisfied the heart with its mystic dogmas and symbolic representations, is proved by the fact that the masses did not care how obscure and squalid their own hovels might be, provided the temple was great and magnificent. It was the temple of simple, unreasoning, unquestioning faith, but decorated with the highest marvels of art; it was always thrown open to the people, and in it they passed nearly half their days. Man brought what he held to be his best to the temple in which he came to worship God, and in it was concentrated ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... wish to get near a man only because he had been kind to her, and had admired her pretty face, and had given her flowers, to nourish a passion all the more because of its hopeless impracticability, were things to dream of, not to tell. Picotee was quite an unreasoning animal. Her sister arranged situations for her, told her how to conduct herself in them, how to make up anew, in unobtrusive shapes, the valuable wearing apparel she sent from time to time—so as to provoke neither exasperation in the little gentry, nor superciliousness in the great. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... animals, and by inclination, as well as because it brought more lasting and satisfactory results, I was always kind and humane in my dealings with the lower orders. I could take a human life, if necessary, with far less compunction than that of a poor, unreasoning, irresponsible brute. ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... faith of those who hold, In foreign lands beyond the Eastern sea, The shares in your concern—a simple, blind, Unreasoning belief in dividends, Still stimulated by assessments which, When the skies fall, ensnaring all the larks, Will bring, no doubt, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... to him. The unreasoning rush through the underbrush. The nightmare creature lumbering swiftly after him. The fall over the cliff into ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... prisons could once feel the horror of the dark cell when the overwrought nerves bring in the distorted messages, and the whole body writhes in the grip of fear,—choking, unreasoning, panicky ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... between the Roman ideal of a healthy state, and that of the ancient world which was embodied in the town of Carthage. The Romans counted upon the cheerful and hearty co-operation between a number of "equal citizens." The Carthaginians, following the example of Egypt and western Asia, insisted upon the unreasoning (and therefore unwilling) obedience of "Subjects" and when these failed they hired professional soldiers to ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... must, at times, especially in the trial of capital cases, be held popularly responsible for the acquittal of men whom the public has prejudged to be guilty. This unreasoning, impulsive, and irresponsible public never stops to inform itself; never discriminates between legal acumen and pettifogging trickery, between doing one's full duty to his client and interposing or misrepresenting his own personal opinions; and never remembers that the functions of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... conscious of a slight noise behind him. He turned, and at the same moment a form hurled itself upon him. In the frenzied movement of the hands for his throat, in the spasmodic clutch of the arms which clung animal-like about him he recognized the same mad, unreasoning passion with which young Arsdale had before attacked him. He could not see his face, and the man uttered no cry. The fellow's arms seemed stronger than before and even longer. But he himself was stronger also, and so while the madman from behind ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... he was still filled with a desire to escape, though his efforts were not as frantic and unreasoning as they had been. Experience had taught him that it was futile to jump and tug at the end of his leash, and now he fell to chewing at the rope. Had he gnawed in one place he would probably have won freedom before morning, but when his jaws became tired he rested, ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... command; she held fast to her assurance with the same dogged unreasoning faith with which Ephraim's mother had of old held her belief that this Smith must be an arch-villain; she had put the whole power of her volitionary nature upon the side of faith in the ideal marriage, although she ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... hearts of the inhabitants and command obedience; and if they knew they could not take it they would smash it to cripple the enemy that much! We of the Allies desire respect and loyalty that come from reason. The Germans demand unreasoning obedience and denied that, they destroy. One philosophy is Christian; the other Babylonian. But the devilish strength of the German philosophy came to us more forcibly in Italy than it came elsewhere because of certain contrasts. They were contrasts in what might be called public wisdom. ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... graduates of the promenade and ball-room could march steadily, even gaily, into the fiery belching of a battery, but they could not learn the practice of unreasoning blindness; and the staunch, hard-fisted countryman felt there was no use in it—the thing was over if the fighting was done—and this was a waste of time. Nostalgia—that scourge of camps—began to creep among the latter class; discontent ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... glacial before you, beneath your glance that fires my blood—I love you, and the recollection of Guy hindered me from telling you that all that is mine belongs to you—I am a ferocious creature, you know, capable of mad outbursts, senseless anger, and unreasoning flight—Yes, I have wished to escape from you again. Well! no, I remain with you; I love you, I love you!—You shall be my wife, do you hear? My wife!—Ah! what a moment of bliss! I have loved you for years! Have you ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... I have ceased to wonder that old men amuse themselves with growing flowers and planting trees; the events of life have taught them disbelief in all human affection; and I grew old within a few days. I will no longer attach myself to any creature but to unreasoning animals, or plants, or superficial things. I think more of Taglioni's grace than of all human feeling. I abhor life and the world in which I live alone. Nothing, nothing," he went on, in a tone that startled the younger man, "no, nothing can ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... Maggie Whaley fled from the immediate vicinity of Adam Ward's estate, they were beside themselves with fear—blind, unreasoning, instinctive fear. ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... my gown from his trembling fingers, and looked down upon him with contempt in my heart, and contempt in my face. The flickering firelight cast a faint glow upon his blanched, wan features, and their utter humility filled me with an unreasoning and unreasonable loathing. I did not try to soften my words. I spoke out just as I felt, and watched him rise slowly to his feet, like a hunted and stricken animal, without a pitying word or glance. As he rose upright, his head dropped. He did not look at me; he did not speak a single word. ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... such a miracle come from? All faith, all hope, dissolved before his view in these few moments when the whole crushing weight of his guilt, the whole labyrinth of his failure in life, came clearly to his consciousness. An unreasoning terror, a fear of himself and a feeling of helplessness conquered the man, who at other times had never surrendered to untoward conditions, who had never hesitated to stamp down all obstacles in his path. Borgert was not capable ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... through bleared eyes, tried to remember if he had ever seen that marble-faced avenger before. Lucy, peering fearfully through the front window behind locked doors, hardly knew which to dread the more, her passionate unreasoning father, or this new and strange edition of ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... from the social point of view, to be left to private caprice. There is, indeed, a tendency, in some quarters, to fear that some day society may rush to the opposite extreme, and bow before medicine with the same unreasoning deference that it once bowed before theology. That danger is still very remote, nor is it likely, indeed, that medicine will ever claim any authority of this kind. The spirit of medicine has, notoriously, been rather towards the assertion of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Blind, unreasoning panic seized the army of the North. They broke and fled. Brave officers cursed and swore in vain. The panic grew. Men rushed pell mell over one another, white with terror. They threw down their muskets, their knapsacks, their haversacks and ran for their lives, every man for himself, ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... Pacific, or drilling for hours each day on the bleak slopes of the Presidio Heights, they had been praying for something to break the monotony of the routine. They were envious of the comrades who had been shipped to Manila, emulous of those who had stormed Santiago, and would have welcomed with unreasoning enthusiasm any mandate that bore promise of change of scene—or duty. The afternoon was raw and chilly; the wet wind blew salt and strong from the westward sea, and the mist rolled in, thick and fleecy, hiding from view the familiar landmarks of the neighborhood and forcing a display ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... His dislike of the Union and plan for separating the nation, it is well known, had been the besetting sin of his brain for twenty years. How, then, he could have engaged in this gigantic rebellion with green spectacles on, I cannot just exactly see. It was the ignorant, unreasoning masses of the South who were led into the rebellion with green spectacles on, not men like Mr. Davis. But, my son, never strike a man when he is down; that is the work of cowards. Let us give Mr. Davis credit for such virtues as he had, and for ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... punish a child. It only was necessary to reason with it. In the old phraseology a child meet to be punished was a naughty child. In the terminology of Miss Prescott such a child was a sick child or an unreasoning child: a case presenting an adverse symptom. But take the older term,—a naughty child. A naughty child was an unhappy child. The treatment went like this, "I am here to be happy. I am not happy. Why am I not happy? Because I have done so and so ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... presently when I was all fixed for triumph I was confronted by a bitter disappointment; there was no guide tied to the rope, it was only a very indignant old black ram. The fury of the baffled Expedition exceeded all bounds. They even wanted to wreak their unreasoning vengeance on this innocent dumb brute. But I stood between them and their prey, menaced by a bristling wall of ice-axes and alpenstocks, and proclaimed that there was but one road to this murder, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... confines the servants to a regular orbit. They come here feeling that this is somehow a land of liberty, and with very dim and confused notions of what liberty is. They are for the most part the raw, untrained Irish peasantry, and the wonder is, that, with all the unreasoning heats and prejudices of the Celtic blood, all the necessary ignorance and rawness, there should be the measure of comfort and success there is in our domestic arrangements. But, so long as things are so, there will be constant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... had sensed the hypnotic spell of unseen eyes. Visible, they held him in a rigid, unreasoning terror. Unreal, unthinkable, this serpentlike horror, tremendous and ghastly in its loathsome whiteness. A dweller in the dark, used by the priests as a symbol and a threat for the ignorant folk who trusted and believed them. And it held him, stilled ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... return journey, told me that many years ago while in charge of Fort Chimo he had seen the caribou passing steadily for three days just as I saw them on this 8th of August, not in thousands, but hundreds of thousands. The depletion of the great herds of former days is attributed to the unreasoning slaughter of the animals at the time of migration by Indians in the interior and Eskimo of the coast, not only at Ungava, but on the east coast as well, for the caribou sometimes find their way to the Atlantic. The fires also which ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... could be uttered was the Parliament. All power was from the people; but to the Parliament the whole power of the people had been delegated. No Oxonian divine had ever, even in the years which immediately followed the Restoration, demanded for the King so abject, so unreasoning a homage, as Grenville, on what he considered as the purest Whig principles, demanded for the Parliament. As he wished to see the Parliament despotic over the nation, so he wished to see it also despotic over the Court. In his view the Prime Minister, possessed of the confidence ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ever know anything more appalling than this soul-crushing unreasoning obedience which Mrs. Lippett so insistently fostered? It's the orphan asylum attitude toward life, and somehow I must crush it out. Initiative, responsibility, curiosity, inventiveness, fight—oh ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... propositions are presented to the mind, the safest way is to thank Heaven that we are not like the unreasoning brutes, and ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... said the doctor, "you must bear this bravely. It is hard, I know, but Mrs. Spencer is by far the greatest sufferer. Here she is, with two children to look after, and her husband shut out from his home, and her servants in a state of unreasoning terror. I think you two girls should brace up, and help ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... was necessary between any two of its own members, promptly punished with death the traitor who had assaulted anyone within. An anarchistic attack against an official thus furnishes an accredited basis both for unreasoning hatred and for prompt punishment. Both the hatred and the determination to punish reached the highest pitch in Chicago after the assassination of President McKinley, and the group of wretched men detained in the old-fashioned, scarcely habitable cells, had not the least idea of their ultimate ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... short, impressive silence. Then piercing through the profound gloom came the clamorous cries and shrieks of frightened women, . . the horrible, selfish scrambling, pushing and struggling of a bewildered, panic-stricken crowd, . . the helpless, nerveless, unreasoning distraction that human beings exhibit when striving together for escape from some imminent deadly peril,—and though the King's stentorian voice could be heard above all the tumult loudly commanding order, his alternate ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... unhappily for the person at the other end of the wire, the Doctor himself answered the ring. It had been a hard day, following other hard days, and he was feeling intense fatigue, devastating depression, and that unreasoning irritability which is born of physical weariness and ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... the father to the son as to be looked upon almost as a certain inheritance. In agriculture, then, it must be expected that the effects of inherited instincts and ideas should be very plainly shown. From this cause arises the persistent and unreasoning Conservatism of the mass of agriculturists. Out of a list of one hundred farmers, I find that one resides upon a farm which has been in the occupation of members of the same family for three hundred years. He possessed a series of documents, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... delightful, and the cove seemed to the child her home, of which the dugout was a sort of cellar. Concerning the stone retreat in the crevice she knew nothing. Willock did not know why he kept the secret, since he trusted Lahoma with all his treasures, but the unreasoning reticence of the man of great loneliness still rested on him. Some day, he would tell—but ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... of pistol range, but you are thinking of something more fatal than bullets, Mr. Burke. You are thinking of love—of the first, great, absorbing, unreasoning passion that has ever shaken you, blinded you, seized you and dragged you out of the ordered path of life, to push you violently into the strange and unexplored! That is what stares out on the world through those haunted eyes of yours, when the smile dies out and ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... men—to laugh at, this silly woman striving to regain a vanished frugality of waist. Yes, I suppose it is amusing—but it is also pitiful. And it is more pitiful still if she has ever loved a man in the unreasoning way these shallow women sometimes do. Men age so slowly; the men a girl first knows are young long after she has reached middle-age—yes, they go on dancing cotillions and talking nonsense in the ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell |
