FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • More 'Groundless' Quotes from Famous Books

... were aroused, however, soon after breakfast by the appearance of a sail in the offing. The more sanguine at once declared that she was standing towards us, and that our fears regarding a prolonged stay on the island were groundless; others thought that she would pass by and leave us to our fate. Every spyglass was in requisition, and numerous were the surmises as to the character ...

— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... would refuse. I know it. But I want you to know all I can tell you. I do not want any groundless excuses made for me. I will not accept any absolution from any one on a false pretence. You see ...

— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... relieved. "Old Elspeth Blackfell was but playing me with her groundless forewarnings of danger. Well, get me some meat and a bowl of milk, Duncan, while I go up and see this uncle of mine. He has seen much of the world, and methinks his discourse must be full of ...

— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... Her alarm was groundless. She found Raoul more tender and affectionate than he had ever been. He saw the necessity of reassuring her, and winning his old place in her forgiving heart, ...

— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... the Latin church. They deplored the hard condition of Athanasius, who, after enjoying so many years his seat, his reputation, and the seeming confidence of his sovereign, was again called upon to confute the most groundless and extravagant accusations. Their language was specious; their conduct was honorable: but in this long and obstinate contest, which fixed the eyes of the whole empire on a single bishop, the ecclesiastical factions ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... that nine out of ten people read what amuses them, rather than what instructs them, and proves also, that the last thing they read is something which tells them disagreeable truths or dispels groundless hopes. That popular education results in an extensive reading of publications which foster pleasant illusions rather than of those which insist on hard realities, is beyond question."—Spencer: ...

— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain

... had been watching for them somewhat anxiously, saw with relief that her fears were groundless. Toby's serene countenance told her that all was well. No, she had not hated it so very badly after all. It was nothing to make a fuss about anyhow. She would go again ...

— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... making good the above-mentioned conditional covenant, the board proceeded to unnecessary warmth, and found themselves involved still more and more in animosities, and those irregularities which naturally follow groundless controversy. He would therefore take upon himself the hazard and the power of the whole affair, accountable however to the board, as to the money part; and yet would bind himself to pay for three years to come, a profit ...

— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... of the people were smitten with fear, thinking that their entertainer had failed to enchain them longer with her spell, and that they were coming upon them with redoubled and remorseless fury. But they found they were mistaken, and that their fears were groundless; for, before they could well recover from their surprise, every rioter was gone, and not one was left on the grounds, or seen there again during the meeting. Sojourner was informed that as her audience reached the main road, some distance from the tents, a few of the rebellious ...

— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth

... are not groundless. Of those that have a basis, many are exaggerated. It has occurred to me to utilize as an antidote an appeal to the same great law that originally excited the instinctive involuntary reaction known as fear— ...

— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile

... and then, evoking a shout of groundless alarm from a cyclist, took a corner, and the rest of the wedding party was hidden from Mr. ...

— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... expressed the truth about this minority that this Government wishes to quote the very words of these Ministers, with the object of bringing the actual truth to the knowledge of Her Majesty's Government, as well as to that of the whole world, and not for the purpose of making groundless accusations." ...

— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz

... which, as will be hereafter mentioned, had been sent up to the mouth of the Licking; some Shawnees saw it, and thought Clark was preparing for an inroad.] They at once countermarched, but on reaching the threatened towns found that the alarm had been groundless. Most of the savages, with characteristic fickleness of temper, then declined to go farther; but a body of somewhat over three hundred Hurons and Lake Indians remained. With these, and their Detroit rangers, Caldwell and McKee crossed the Ohio and marched into Kentucky, to attack the small forts ...

— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... that women have spoilt me. And I am rather resentful when any one cries out against me for lack of respect to womanhood. I have been the victim of this groundless veneration for females. Now you shall hear the story; and bear in mind that you are the only person to whom I have ever told it. I never tried to defend myself when I was vilified on all hands. Probably the attempt would have been useless; and then it would certainly have increased ...

— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... once threw out a suggestion, which (if it is sound) exposes a motive in behalf of such a choice that would be likely to overrule the strong motives against it. That motive was, unless my whole speculation is groundless, the very same which led Dante, in an age of ignorance, to select Virgil as his guide in Hades. The seventh son of a seventh son has always traditionally been honored as the depositary of magical and other supernatural gifts. And the same traditional privilege attached ...

— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... extra-territoriality, and with it the foreign courts in Japan, met with a considerable amount of opposition from the foreign community there who believed that they would not be able to obtain justice in the Japanese courts. These fears have been shown to be groundless, and it is now generally recognised that the foreigner in Japan need have no fear of going into a Japanese court where he is, whether it be a civil or criminal matter, certain to obtain ...

— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... then the Bard sleep here indeed? Or is it but a groundless creed? What matters it?—I blame them not Whose Fancy in this lonely Spot 20 Was moved; and in such [1] way expressed Their notion of its perfect rest. A convent, even a hermit's cell, Would break the silence of this Dell: ...

— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless. ...

— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... I got near the door, a new change came over the patient. He moved towards me so quickly that for the moment I feared that he was about to make another homicidal attack. My fears, however, were groundless, for he held up his two hands imploringly, and made his petition in a moving manner. As he saw that the very excess of his emotion was militating against him, by restoring us more to our old relations, he became still more demonstrative. I glanced at Van Helsing, and saw my conviction ...

— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... must surely have left it behind." And she did her best to make the poor poet forget his groundless fears. She had been told that he preferred the city to ...

— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... course the Sabbath, when he began to preach, according to Luke iv: 18-20, and xvi: 16. And then in another place quote Col. ii: 8-17, for the same point of time. How could Christ annul any law twice. First, at his preaching and second at his death, three and a half years apart. Your argument is groundless and futile; therefore the uncalled for blasphemous language of yours, that the Jews were right in killing him (the Son of God) as a notorious Sabbath breaker, will fall on your guilty head. Hear the proof: "They that forsake ...

— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates

... full and ingenuous confession. He hesitated and evaded. "I cannot say any thing without the King's permission. His Majesty may be displeased if what ought to be known only to him should be divulged to others." He was told that his apprehensions were groundless. The King well knew that it was the right and the duty of his faithful Commons to inquire into whatever concerned the safety of his person and of his government. "I may be tried in a few days," said the prisoner. "I ought not to be asked to say any thing which may rise up ...

— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... fear he might have circled around the island merely for the sake of walking, and would come up in their rear; but this cause for alarm was soon found to be groundless. ...

— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis

... pompously, "your fears were quite groundless, after all. This Christmas shopping, if reduced to a system—" He paused suddenly. His wife had stopped her sewing and was looking straight ...

— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... was not there. He was not even invited; so you see how far they were from laying matchmaking plots, and how groundless were all ...

— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... not really had to complain of him before. Your suspicions may be groundless. And he has a good wife, I feel sure of that. The children are very clean and nicely dressed. She will help him to avoid drink in future. It is impossible for him to fail again, now that he knows how dreadful the results will be to his wife ...

— Demos • George Gissing

... be productive of serious results elsewhere, exercised a powerful influence on British public opinion at this period, although the best authorities on Eastern politics were at the time aware that the fears so generally entertained in this connection were either groundless or, at all events, greatly exaggerated.[58] Under these circumstances, it was decided to "smash the Mahdi," and accordingly a proclamation, giving effect to the declared policy of the British Government, was issued. Shortly afterwards, the Penjdeh incident occurred. Public ...

— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... dis-obedience to the law which must provoke disquiet and dislike in the minds of all who care for the good government of the country. I am not competent, because I have not shared in the experience of the history of the Ulster people, to decide whether or not their fears are groundless. All these things seem to me to be beside the point. If Ulster means to do what it says, then the results are certainly such as no citizen can contemplate without grave concern.... I admit, everyone must ...

— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... great guilt of corruption in office. We must not confound idle clamor with public opinion, or accept the accusations of scandal and malice instead of proof. But we shall make a worse mistake if, because of the multitude of false and groundless charges against men in high office, we fail to redress substantial grievances or to deal with cases of actual guilt. The worst evil resulting from the indiscriminate attack of an unscrupulous press upon ...

— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... and looked anxiously at her. When they had separated for the night, Dietrich went into his mother's room to have a talk with her. He told her what Veronica had said, and begged her to reason with the young girl and urge her to lay aside these groundless fears which had taken possession of her. He represented to his mother, that of course he sometimes had things to talk over with his companions, and that there surely was no harm in their going to the Rehbock together ...

— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri

... It was apprehended that this occurrence would excite the indignation of the Emperor of China, and, perhaps, induce him to stop their trade with his country; but when they sent deputies to apologise, their fears were shown to be groundless by his truly paternal reply,—to the effect that he was little solicitous for the fate of unworthy subjects, who, in the pursuit of lucre, had quitted their country, and abandoned ...

— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... in publishing this Translation, was to give those who are as yet unacquainted with it, a Taste of the Acumen and Genius of the Arabian Philosophers, and to excite young Scholars to the reading of those Authors, which, through a groundless Conceit of their Impertinence and Ignorance, have been too ...

— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail

... groundless. By some inexplicable means, the two waifs, thrown thus strangely upon the protection of Widow Hardyng, managed to exist without either the aid or sympathy of the rest of the town. And Clemence, as the days grew cooler, rallied, and became ...

— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... of these great reptiles that either Mr. Elmer or Mark had ever seen, they watched them with curiosity not unmixed with fear lest they should attack and upset the light canoe. They afterwards learned that their fears were groundless, and that cases of this kind are ...

— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... had not been slow to note the color in her friend's face, or to ascribe to it the one meaning she wished to ascribe to it. So sure, indeed, was she now that her fears had been groundless, that she flung caution to ...

— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... Mannering might have employed some other person in the transaction; he would not have wasted a moment's thought upon the want of confidence in himself which such a manoeuvre would have evinced. But this hope also was groundless. After a solemn pause, Mr. Glossin offered the upset price for the lands and barony of Ellangowan. No reply was made, and no competitor appeared; so, after a lapse of the usual interval by the running of a sand-glass, ...

— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Doctor Franklin, and laid before the King in council. After hearing it, the lords of the council reported "that the petition in question was founded upon false and erroneous allegations, and that the same is groundless, vexatious, and scandalous, and calculated only for the seditious purposes of keeping up a spirit of clamour and discontent in the provinces." This report, his ...

— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... no word or intimation from that rebel army, or from any of the men controlling it, in relation to any peace compromise, has ever come to my knowledge or belief. All charges and insinuations to the contrary are deceptive and groundless. And I promise you that if any such proposition shall hereafter come, it shall not be rejected and kept a secret from you. I freely acknowledge myself the servant of the people, according to the bond of service,—the United States Constitution,—and that, as ...

— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln

... at cheerful, light-hearted conversation, the false alarms when timid people rushed ashore, under the unfounded apprehension that they were about to be carried off across the seas, and the return to the ship to say goodbye yet once again when they found that their fears were groundless. He had seen all this, and was quite determined that his dear ones should not undergo such torture of waiting, he therefore so contrived that his good-bye was almost as brief and matter of fact as though he had been merely going up ...

— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... 'if I am surprized that while menaced by real woes you are capable of yielding to imaginary dangers. These terrors are puerile and groundless: Combat them, holy Sister; I have promised to guard you from the Rioters, but against the attacks of superstition you must depend for protection upon yourself. The idea of Ghosts is ridiculous in the extreme; And if you continue ...

— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... which was inhabited by her kinsmen or had belonged to them in bygone days. These motives were inconsistent with the mooting of the Bessarabian question, and the statement so often made in the Press that Roumania demanded, and still demands, that lost province from Russia are absolutely groundless. The subject was ...

— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... foolish fear is entirely groundless. Cold water is no more to be dreaded than the bogey man. It is one of our fundamental principles of treatment never to do anything that is painful to the patient. We always "temper the wind to the ...

— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... fleet to Africa, partly to keep up the connection which he had formed there, on his visit from Spain, with Syphax and Massinissa (for to the latter Scipio had sent back a nephew who had been taken prisoner in the battle of Baecula), and partly to show to his timid opponents at Rome how groundless their fears were. He himself employed his time in Sicily most actively, in preparing and ...

— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... movement and early predicted that the spirit then abroad in the North would not "die away of itself without a shock or convulsion." Yes, it was as he had prophesied, the anti-slavery reform was, at the very moment of Benton's groundless jubilation, rising and spreading with astonishing progress through the free States. It was gaining footholds in the pulpit, the school, and the press. It was a stalwart sower, scattering broadcast as he walked over the fields of the then coming generation ...

— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... matters worse; for here was I, a guest in the house, actually offering to purchase clothing—ready-made or to to order—from my host, who, for all I knew, might be one of the aristocracy of the country. My fears, however, proved quite groundless. ...

— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... I'm sore afraid he won't," cried Mary, consoled, nevertheless, by the woman's assertions, all groundless as she ...

— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... not be quietly submitted to. He had sought to inform against us in the stagecoach business; he had volunteered to carry Pettingil's "little bill" for twenty-four icecreams to Charley Marden's father; and now he had caused us to be arraigned before justice Clapham on a charge equally groundless and painful. After much noisy discussion, a plan of ...

— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... brute beasts in the open parks, exposed to the cold and the inclemency of winter. The gentry may neglect their duties in other respects: as regards the performance of charitable acts, they are faultless; the middleman may be exacting—but he is hospitable; and the men who make those groundless charges, would be not a little astonished did they see the multitudes that are still fed (poor-laws notwithstanding) at the BIG House of the Irish gentleman. We have said that failures of the crops, and scarcity, occur much ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... discountenanced by Pope Clement VI. in two bulls, in the first of which he ordered that the Jews should not be made the victims of groundless charges or injured in person or property without the sentence of a lawful judge. The second affirmed the innocence of the Jews in the persecution then going on and ordered the bishops to excommunicate all those ...

— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... important that we form just apprehends on this subject. Mistakes might inspire groundless expectations, and occasion practical errors, dishonorable to God, and mischievous to man. But those which are just, have a tendency to produce sentiments of rational respect and reverence for the supreme Governor and to point to the way of ...

— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee

... alone during the fourteenth century, was an accusation of this sort made, and that proved to be groundless. ...

— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... Frank's side again, fearing that one of the fallen men might arise and return to the fray. But these fears were groundless. All four were beyond human aid, as Lord Hastings found after gazing ...

— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake

... his solitary walk from Genoa over the Alps, and through the western part of Switzerland. The news of his safe arrival dissipated the anxiety we were beginning to feel, on account of his long silence, while it proved that our fears concerning the danger of such a journey were not altogether groundless. He met with a startling adventure on the Great St. Bernard, which will be best described by an extract ...

— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... time and this dress are sufficient wizards to secure me from a chance of discovery. I will keep a guard upon my words and tones, until, if my thought be verified, a moment fit for unmasking myself arrives. But would to God that the thought be groundless! In such circumstances, and after such an absence, to meet him! No; and yet—Well, this meeting ...

— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... report of his being a man of broken fortune, with astonishment. 'Ah!' said she to herself, 'if Valancourt could but see this mansion, what peace would it give him! He would then be convinced that the report was groundless.' ...

— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... him I lived in Rome and served abroad; and between us there was the most complete harmony in our tastes, our pursuits, and our sentiments, which is the true secret of friendship. It is not therefore in that reputation for wisdom mentioned just now by Fannius—especially as it happens to be groundless—that I find my happiness so much, as in the hope that the memory of our friendship will be lasting. What makes me care the more about this is the fact that in all history there are scarcely three or four pairs of ...

— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... Degonnor, "are great liars, but now and then they tell the truth." [Footnote: Relation du Pere Degonnor, Jesuite, Missionnaire des Sioux, adressee a M. le Marquis de Beauharnois.] It seemed to him likely that their stories of a western river flowing to a western sea were not totally groundless, and that the true way to the Pacific was not, as had been supposed, through the country of the Sioux, but farther northward, through that of the Cristineaux and Assinniboins, or, in other words, through the region now called Manitoba. In this view he was sustained ...

— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... that they could have enlisted their officers on their side in making complaints, while such officers could know nothing whatever of the circumstances beyond what the sipahees themselves told them, false and groundless complaints would have become endless, and the vexations thereby caused to Government and their neighbours would have become intolerable. These troops," said he, "will now be real soldiers; but if the privileges enjoyed by the Honourable Company's ...

— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... families together, and give one the power and means of evil which could in no other way be obtained. In view of all these circumstances, then, I feel that a calamity is in store for us. God grant that my fears and forebodings may prove groundless." ...

— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... new-comer made an eager half-turn. "He will want to embrace me," thought our young man with a deep recoil of all his being, while his limbs seemed too heavy to move. But it was a groundless alarm. He had to do now with a generation of conspirators who did not kiss each other on both cheeks; and raising an arm that felt like lead he dropped his hand into a largely-outstretched palm, fleshless and hot as if dried up by fever, giving a bony pressure, expressive, ...

— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... of them, and the possibility of a savage and unknown foe lurking there, kept them thoroughly on the alert. Once or twice Wulf and Osgod went forward to examine some bush that had seemed to the imagination of a sentry to have moved, but in each case the alarm was groundless. ...

— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... of what had been done at the works. Arthur's plan had succeeded. It might not be the last word, but at least it was on the road to the right end. The men had been brought into it and shared the management. And the disasters predicted had proved groundless. ...

— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... safely be said that both fears were groundless, though they were both fears which a reasonable man quite intelligibly entertains. Naturally, the South was sore; no community likes having to admit defeat. Also, no doubt, the majority of Southerners would have refused to ...

— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... indeed, had said that Mathew Kearney had once had matrimonial designs on Miss Betty, or rather, on that snug place and nice property called 'O'Shea's Barn,' of which she was sole heiress; but he most stoutly declared this story to be groundless, and in a forcible manner asseverated that had he been Robinson Crusoe and Miss Betty the only inhabitant of the island with him, he would have lived and died ...

— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... poor but not wholly groundless consolation for the enslavement of Italy then begun by the Spaniards, that the country was at least secured from the relapse into barbarism which would have awaited it under the Turkish rule. By itself, divided as it was, it could hardly ...

— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... he is not infallible. We should never get on in life if we gave way to groundless fears, dear wife. Besides, have we not the promise, 'Lo, ...

— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... not at all surprised at that, for it is the effect of philosophy, which is the medicine of our souls; it banishes all groundless apprehensions, frees us from desires, and drives away fears: but it has not the same influence over all men; it is of very great influence when it falls in with a disposition well adapted to it. For not only does Fortune, as the old proverb says, assist ...

— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... international law, have been proclaimed by officers in command, and though disavowed by the supreme authorities, the protection of our own commerce against them has been made cause of complaint and erroneous imputations against some of the most gallant officers of our Navy. Complaints equally groundless have been made by the commanders of the Spanish royal forces in those seas; but the most effective protection to our commerce has been the flag and the firmness of our ...

— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... envelopes us, the whole appearance of life alters. Passion and desire repress the judgment and pervert the conscience. Conclusions that are illogical, expectations that are irrational and confidences that are groundless to the most final and fatal absurdity seem as natural and reasonable ...

— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... to Strawn that the murderer had been given every chance to remove any betraying traces of his crime. Besides, his first excited hunch, after his own attempted murder, might very well be a wild, groundless one. In his—Dundee's case—the impossibility of the murder's being delayed or arranged so that the detective might be slain when the whole "crowd" was assembled was obvious. The murderer had read in a late ...

— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... seemed as if the white-haired physician's fears were groundless; for after the first few days when the slightest touch made the little sufferer whimper with pain, she seemed to get better. The soreness wore away, the drawn lines around the mouth smoothed themselves out, the rosy color came back to the round cheeks and the ...

— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown

... and Gifford; for of course, in so small a place, every one counted. She had wondered, sometimes, before the Forsythes came, with a self-consciousness which was a new experience, if any one thought she missed Gifford. But her anxiety was groundless,—Ashurst imagination never rose to any such height; and certainly, if the letters the young man wrote to her could have been seen, such a thought would not have been suggested. They were pleasant and friendly; very short, ...

— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... his eyes while he looked on the darkness. And yet it was the reverse of hope which kindled this light and inspired the momentary calm he experienced: it was despair exaggerating delusion, wilfully building up on a groundless basis. "For the tenacity of true passion is terrible," says The Pilgrim's Scrip: "it will stand against the hosts of heaven, God's great array of Facts, rather than surrender its aim, and must be crushed before it will succumb—sent to the lowest pit!" He knew she was ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... express to Pizarro, who then lay in the Rio Plata, with an account of our arrival at St Catharines, together with a most ample and circumstantial account of our force and condition. We then conceived, that Don Jose had raised this groundless clamour on purpose to prevent us from visiting the brigantine when she should go away again, lest we might have found proofs of his perfidy, and perhaps have discovered the secret of his smuggling correspondence with ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... military movements and preparations," Klinggraf is to say, "have caused anxiety in her Majesty's peaceable Neighbor of Prussia; who desires always to continue in peace; and who requests hereby a word of assurance from her Majesty, that these his anxieties are groundless." Friedrich himself hopes little or nothing from this; but he has done it to satisfy people about him, and put an end to all scruples in himself and others. The Answer may be expected ...

— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle

... in theory than practice. The wily Italian, as if aware of his intentions, skilfully eluded them; and as weeks passed without any recurrence of their secret attacks. Stanley, guided by his own frank and honorable feelings, believed his suspicions groundless, and dismissed them altogether. On the tumultuary entrance of the Spaniards, however, these suspicions were re-excited. Separated by the press of contending warriors from the main body of his men, Stanley plunged ...

— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... and shook the damp little hand which was offered him. Telyanin for some reason had been transferred from the Guards just before this campaign. He behaved very well in the regiment but was not liked; Rostov especially detested him and was unable to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy ...

— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... you mean by your groundless complaint? I found this portrait at my feet by accident. After you had stormed without telling me the cause of your rage, I saw this gentleman (pointing to Lelio)nearly fainting, asked him to come in, but did not even then ...

— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere

... Few of them require notice here. His early effort, 'The Virtuoso,' was merely an acknowledged and servile imitation of Spenser. The claim made by the poet's biographers that he preceded Thomson in reintroducing the Spenserian stanza is groundless. Pope preceded him, and Thomson renewed its popularity by being the first to use it in a poem of real merit, 'The Castle of Indolence.' Mr. Gosse calls the 'Hymn to the Naiads' "beautiful,"—"of transcendent merit,"—"perhaps the most elegant of his productions." The 'Epistle to Curio,' ...

— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... Deerbrook from Mrs Rowland's ostentation of confidence in his skill. He knew that Mr Rowland would have removed his family when the Greys departed, but that the lady had refused to go; and he felt how groundless was her confidence: not that he had pretended to more professional merit than he had believed himself to possess; but that, amidst this disease, he was like a willow-twig in the stream. He became so impressed with his responsibilities now, in the presence of the small and ...

— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... good one of these was the paper in which he replied, among other things, to the absurd supposition that the Americans could not make their own cloth, because American sheep had little wool, and that little of poor quality: "Dear sir, do not let us suffer ourselves to be amused with such groundless objections. The very tails of the American sheep are so laden with wool that each has a little car or wagon on four little wheels to support and keep it from trailing on the ground. Would they caulk their ships, would they even ...

— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... but with dismay. Then were thrown by her custom'd cheerfulness, Her pearls, her chaplets, and her gay attire, Her song, her laughter, and her mild address; Thus doubtingly I quitted her I love: Now dark ideas, dreams, and bodings dire Raise terrors, which Heaven grant may groundless prove! ...

— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... immediate vicinity of the capital—without the knowledge of himself, the head of the royal military establishment; while Chancellor de l'Hospital said that "it was a capital crime for any servant to alarm his prince with false intelligence, or give him groundless suspicions ...

— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... them." The disciples were called Christians, (nay, the saints are called the anointed ones, and the church is called Christ) (1 Cor 12:12). But note, That fervent prayer ends in faith and confidence in God. They called themselves by the name; they counted themselves not from a vain and groundless opinion, but through the faith they had in the mercy of God, The saints ...

— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... were groundless, for when they reached the hogshead, Master Spry was discovered at a feast of herrings and crackers. He was not a boy who indulged in any useless conversation; and when he saw who his visitors were, he welcomed them by passing to ...

— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis

... translation of "Wheaton." He subsequently complained bitterly that much of it was utterly unintelligible; and judging from our own limited experience of the translation, we think His Excellency's objection not altogether groundless. ...

— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... nearer, the ship increased its motion, and all our strength could not make her answer her rudder any other way. This put us under the apprehension of being dashed to pieces immediately, and in less than half an hour I verily thought my fears had not been groundless. Poor Adams told me he would try when the ship struck if he could leap upon the rock, and ran to the head for that purpose; but I was so fearful of seeing my danger that I ran under hatches, resolving to sink in the ship. We had ...

— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... O could I tell How to come at the templar, not betraying The motive of my curiosity - For if I tell it, and if my suspicion Be groundless, I have staked the father ...

— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

... hobgoblin, which a few minutes before I began to think was an aerial being, or sprite, and which must have gained admission either through the key-hole, or under the door, turned out to be my own garment. I smiled at my groundless fears, was pleased with any resolution, returned light-hearted to my bed, and moralized nearly the whole of the night on the simplicity of a great part of mankind in being so credulous as to believe every idle tale, or conceive every noise to be a spectre, ...

— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... the most ferocious type of Evangelicanism. When the ladies had retired I was left alone with this formidable person, whom I eyed much as a rabbit eyes a snake into whose cage he has been introduced. Nor were my fears groundless, for no sooner was the room empty than he peremptorily demanded of me whether I was saved. On hearing my trembling but perfectly truthful reply that I really did not know, he struck the table with his fist (I can see the ...

— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... proofs of a more than ordinary soundness and vigour of judgement. That his own diseased imagination should have so far deceived him, is strange; but it is stranger still that some of his friends should have given credit to his groundless opinion, when they had such undoubted proofs that it was totally fallacious; though it is by no means surprising that those who wish to depreciate him, should, since his death, have laid hold of this circumstance, and insisted upon it with ...

— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... so I guess I'll have to sleep in it. Joey, I'll have the laugh on you. You always said I was a crazy freak when I told you where I was going to end. Just you remember that, will you, when you read about me doing the groundless dance one of these fine days. My old man did it before me. He was seventeen minutes strangling, they say. Almost a record-breaking performance. To tell you the truth, Joey, I'd be downright disappointed if I should happen ...

— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... Rockingham. I have thought it necessary to state this outline of our determinations to your Excellency, to counteract any misrepresentation that may be made of the basis or purport of our junction with Lord North (to which I conceive it may be liable, from the very false and groundless accounts which are reported to have been transmitted to Ireland of Mr. Fox's speech on Mr. Townshend's motion for the Bill respecting the Irish Judicature, which I myself heard, and with which I was so satisfied, upon account of those whom it was intended ...

— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... Virtue, has not scrupled to assert that the affliction, to which I allude, was the mere consequence of paternal austerity. The Earth itself, though frequently accused of being eager to receive ideas that may abase the eminent, could hardly admit a calumny so groundless and irrational. In this purer spot it is utterly needless to prove the innocence of an exalted being, to whom we are only solicitous to pay that sincere tribute of praise and veneration which we are conscious he deserves. In truth, this admirable Character ...

— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley

... you that your fears are quite groundless. I am proud to belong to the Guard of Maasau, and they have so far shown no intention of rejecting me. As for duels, if there happened to be one—are not affairs common in Maasau? And afterwards, fewer funerals take place than one would suppose ...

— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... of escape before he can be put on trial for the charge against him: one by a discharge ordered by the committing magistrate, and one by the refusal of the grand jury to return "a true bill." A grand jury is more apt to throw out a charge as groundless than a single magistrate. He feels the full weight of undivided responsibility. If he err by discharging the prisoner, he knows that it may let a guilty man go free, untried. If he err by committing him for trial, he knows that, if innocent, ...

— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... seemed to me, some strange miracle all my inward fears and tremblings vanished. I did not feel afraid of Sir Peter in the least. I felt that here was a crisis. This meeting would show me whether my fears had been groundless, and my own vanity and self-consciousness of unparalleled proportions, or whether I had judged truly, and had good reason ...

— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... assure you, that the Indians had ever a just cause of raising War against the Spaniards, and the Spaniards on the contrary never raised a just was against them, but what was more injurious and groundless then any undertaken by the worst of Tyrants. All which I affirm of all their other Transactions ...

— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas

... directors of the South Sea and the directors of the Bank. A report which was circulated, that the latter had agreed to circulate six millions of the South Sea Company's bonds, caused the stock to rise to six hundred and seventy; but in the afternoon, as soon as the report was known to be groundless, the stock fell again to five hundred and eighty; the next day to five hundred and seventy, and so gradually to four hundred. [Gay (the poet), in that disastrous year, had a present from young Craggs of some South Sea stock, and once supposed himself ...

— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... if Hurlstone's fears had been groundless. For in the excitement of the succeeding days, and the mingling of the party from San Antonio with the new-comers, the recluse had been forgotten. So habitual, had been his isolation from the others, that, except for the words of praise and gratitude hesitatingly ...

— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... treasure, in a state of trepidation far greater than any the living highwaymen could have inspired. Even in his parents' dwelling, he dreaded, every moment, the arrival of an order for his arrest, and to appease his groundless anxiety his father shortly suggested that he should take refuge upon the Llanos,—the Sherwood of Venezuelan Robin Hoods. The youth was delighted with the idea, and engaged himself as herdsman in the service of Don Manuel Pulido, a wealthy proprietor, whom he served so well that he was very quickly ...

— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... taking the part of the Huguenots: He was therefore convinced that the only course to pursue was to get, his co-religionists to put an end to the struggle themselves, as the one way of pleasing His Majesty and of showing him how groundless were the suspicions aroused in the minds of men by ...

— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... was wealthy, and extensively connected with the first families of the State. Cheesboro was a young physician of great promise and extensive practice. Jealousy was the cause of the killing, and was evidently groundless. The deed was done in the house of Taylor, in the city of Columbia, and was premeditated murder. Mrs. Taylor was a lovely woman and highly connected. In her manners she was affable and cordial; she was a great favorite in society, ...

— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... had been groundless as to the consequences of her rashness, she renewed, though with less vehemence than before, her imprecations on my intermeddling and audacious folly. I listened till the storm was nearly exhausted, and then, declaring my intention ...

— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... silence remained unbroken—and I began to hope that our alarm was groundless—at least, so far as an ambuscade was concerned. Just where the shot had been fired from I could not tell, for the wind had quickly drifted the smoke away; but as I watched alertly I detected a slight movement in the evergreen-clad face of the hill on the left, at a point some ...

— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon

... she tried to convince herself that her fear was groundless, and over and over again the words came back to her, refusing to be forgotten or ignored—"the white man from Bowker Creek." Who was this white man whom Mercer had fought, this man who had tried to shoot him? She shuddered whenever she pictured the ...

— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... need hardly say that I myself hold the genuineness of the Greek recension. The reader who desires to see the false reasonings and groundless assumptions of the author of "Supernatural Religion" respecting the Ignatian epistles thoroughly exposed should read Professor Lightfoot's article in the "Contemporary Review" of February, 1875. In pages 341-345 of this article there is an examination of the nature and trustworthiness of the learning ...

— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler

... 17th of September. "For eight weeks," he wrote, "myself and all the officers lived upon salt beef; nor had the ship's company had a fresh meal since the 7th of April." The fears for his health that he had expressed before sailing from England had happily proved groundless, and a month's stay in port which now followed, at the most delightful and invigorating of the American seasons, wrought wonders for him. His letters to Locker state that the voyage agreed with him better than he had expected; while from the St. Lawrence he wrote to his father, ...

— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... foreign to that science. We find here a man who seeks only for censure, and knows not what he would have: he fights with his own shadow, and for the most part does not understand the thoughts of the author he attacks; and when he does understand them draws the most groundless consequences that ever were heard of. His gloomy and unhappily subtle mind cannot bear the light which Grotius presents to him. The embroiled ideas and distinctions of his Peripatetic philosophy form round him a thick cloud impenetrable ...

— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... says that Berriat Saint-Prix, in his "Jeanne d'Arc," proves, page 341 et seq., that the imputations against Brother Richard are groundless, and that he could exercise no ...

— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... that the deceased had been of a good county family, who had left his pretty young wife in a fit of groundless suspicion; that he had no enemies; and had withdrawn to the Silent House to save himself from the machinations of purely imaginary beings. The general opinion was that Vrain had been insane; but even this did not explain the reason of ...

— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... to man's ancestry, I shall quote him to prove that his hypothesis is not only groundless, but absurd and harmful to society. It is groundless because there is not a single fact in the universe that can be cited to prove that man is descended from the lower animals. Darwin does not use facts; he uses conclusions ...

— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... one who may convince him, and that one be you. You must hasten at once to the court of Ptarth, and by your presence there as well as by your words assure him that his suspicions are groundless. Bear with you the authority of the Warlord of Barsoom, and of the Jeddak of Helium to offer every resource of the allied powers to assist Thuvan Dihn to recover his daughter and punish her abductors, whomsoever ...

— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... attempting to do which, it was not a little remarkable that he could not repeat the word "art," but said "wert," in heaven. Inferring from every circumstance that their fate was extremely precarious, the minister resolved not to puff the fairies up with presumptuous, and, perhaps, groundless expectations. Accordingly, addressing himself to the unhappy fairy, who was all anxiety to know the nature of his sentiments, the reverend gentleman told him that he could not take it upon him to give them any hopes of pardon, as their crime was of so deep a hue as scarcely to admit of it. ...

— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... Titus having been called from Judaea to the seat of empire. The expectations entertained by the Jews, and naturally participated in and appropriated by the first converts to Christianity, having proved groundless, the prophecies were subsequently interpreted in a ...

— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... timid men? How was my presence regarded by the populace? and what effect did it produce? I will tell you. The fears of the loyal Governors who wished me excluded to propitiate the favor of the crowd, met with a signal reproof, their apprehensions were shown to be groundless, and they were compelled, as many of them confessed to me afterwards, to own themselves entirely mistaken. The people were more enlightened and had made more progress than their leaders had supposed. An act for ...

— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... hatred of his subjects, he kept from present terror alone, an anxious and precarious possession of the throne. His nobles fell every day the victims of his severity: he put to death several of his natural brothers, from groundless jealousy: each murder, by multiplying his enemies, became the occasion of fresh barbarities; and as he was not destitute of talents, his neighbors, no less than his own subjects, were alarmed at ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... When, by their malice taught, The judge this judgment brought: "Your characters, my friends, I long have known, As on this trial clearly shown; And hence I fine you both—the grounds at large To state would little profit— You wolf, in short, as bringing groundless charge, You fox, as ...

— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... his sister-in-law say that the maker of the tart brought by the eunuch must without doubt be Bedreddin, he was overjoyed; but reflecting that his joy might prove groundless, and in all likelihood the conjecture of Noureddin's widow be false, Madam, said he, why are you of that mind? Do you think there may not be a pastry-cook in the world who knows how to make cream-tarts as well as your son? I own, replied she, there may be pastry-cooks who can make as good tarts; ...

— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... and a look of amazement, of joyous surprise, shone through the tears that veiled her eyes. She could read nothing but filial love and confidence in those grave, manly features, and she saw in that moment that all her doubts had been groundless, that her long prayerful struggle had ...

— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... to be asked to meet strange ladies or girls after all, and his fears were groundless. What a goose he had been! Why should he be afraid of a girl anyhow? she wouldn't bite him. These and other similar thoughts flashed through Derrick's mind as he tried to listen to Mr. Jones, and to overcome a feeling of disappointment that in spite of his efforts ...

— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe

... childish suns and showers, Oh! girlish thorns and flowers, Oh! fruitless days and hours, Oh! groundless hopes and fears: The birds still chirp and twitter, And still the sunbeams glitter: Oh! barren years and ...

— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... impulse to apprehend and manifest self, and as God looks into and forms an image of himself, he divides into Father and Son. The Son is the eye with which the Father intuits himself, and the procession of this vision from the groundless is the Holy Ghost. Thus far God, who is one in three, is only understanding or wisdom, wherein the images of all the possible are contained; to the intuition of self must be added divisibility; it is only through the antithesis of the revealed ...

— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... was struck with terror, lest the power of a family, which had been raised by fortune, should now be carried to an immeasurable height by the wisdom and conduct of this monarch. But never were apprehensions found in the event to be more groundless. Slow without prudence, ambitious without enterprise, false without deceiving any body, and refined without any true judgment; such was the character of Philip, and such the character which, during his lifetime, and after his death, he impressed on the Spanish councils. ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... the head of the French explorer, before whom he humbled himself as before a god. Thus evidently did the people regard him, for they brought to him their blind, their lame, and their diseased folk that he might cure them. Touched with pity at the groundless confidence of these poor people, Cartier signed them with the sign of the cross. "He then opened a service book and read the passion of Christ in an audible voice, during which all the natives kept a profound silence, looking up to heaven and imitating all our gestures. ...

— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... auxiliaries. That the former part of these allegations against Mar was untrue, is shewn by the letter which has been given, explaining to the Prince the state of affairs; and rather discouraging him from his attempt.[138] That the whole report was groundless, was manifested by the favour and confidence which James long continued to extend to the ...

— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... I began to imagine that the landlord, being about to emigrate, might murder us to get our money, and lay it upon the soldiers in the barn. Such groundless fears will arise in the mind, before it has resumed its vigour after sleep! Dr. Johnson had had the same kind of ideas; for he told me afterwards, that he considered so many soldiers, having seen ...

— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... well express astonishment at the rash and groundless statement in "Blackwood" (Dec. 1839), that the third part of Christabel which Dr. Maginn sent to that magazine in 1820 "perplexed the public, and pleased even Coleridge." How far the "discerning public" were imposed upon I know not; ...

— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various

... is grateful to me, not because I ever supposed that we differed in our views of the great doctrines of the gospel, but because, for some reason or other, an impression has been made, to some extent, that I am unsound in the faith. This impression, I feel bound to say, in my own view, is wholly groundless and unauthorized. You think, however, that 'I owe it to myself, to the institution with which I am connected, and to the Christian community, to make a frank and full statement of my views of some of the leading doctrines of the gospel, and that this cannot fail ...

— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... that vain man, that when he read the dedication he made to him of his "Commentary on the Epistle to Augustus," he wrote to him with mock humility—"I will confess to you how much satisfaction the groundless part of it, that which relates to myself, gave me." When Dr. Jortin very properly spoke of Warburton with less of subserviency than the overbearing bishop desired, Hurd at once came forward to fight for Warburton ...

— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... fears are groundless:— Soon shall thy lord prefer thee to the rank Of his own consort; and unnumbered cares Befitting his imperial dignity Shall constantly engross thee. Then the bliss Of bearing him a son—a noble boy, Bright as the day-star—shall transport thy soul With new delights, and little shalt thou ...

— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... society to be afraid of. I do not suppose she ever in her life said a sharp thing. She was naturally shy and not given to talk much in company, and people fancied, knowing that she was clever, that she was on the watch for good material for books from their conversation. Her intimate friends knew how groundless was the apprehension and that it wronged her.' She was not only shy: she was also at times very grave. Her niece Anna is inclined to think that Cassandra was the more equably cheerful of the two sisters. There was, undoubtedly, a quiet intensity of nature in Jane for which ...

— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... unmeaning protestations, Which swell with nonsense, love orations. Our love is fix'd, I think we've prov'd it, Nor time, nor place, nor art, have mov'd it; Then wherefore should we sigh, and whine, With groundless jealousy repine. With silly whims, and fancies frantic, Merely to make our love romantic. Why should you weep like Lydia Languish, And fret with self-created anguish. Or doom the lover you have chosen, On winter ...

— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron

... long absent from Paris. I will now explain why. Some months ago, one of my colleagues engaged in the political department (which I am not) was sent to Lyons, in consequence of some suspicions conceived by the loyal authorities there of a plot against the emperor's life. The suspicions were groundless, the plot a mare's nest. But my colleague's attention was especially drawn towards a man not mixed up with the circumstances from which a plot had been inferred, but deemed in some way or other a dangerous enemy to the Government. Ostensibly, he exercised a ...

— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... I still say," said Winifred, sobbing. "Let us retire to rest, dear husband; your fears are groundless. I had hoped long since that your affliction would have passed away, and I still hope that it eventually will; so take heart, Peter, and let us retire to rest, for it ...

— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... robbers. Remember, too, that he would eat no salt with you; and what would you have more to persuade you of his wicked design? Before I saw him, I suspected him as soon as you told me you had such a guest. I knew him, and you now find that my suspicion was not groundless." ...

— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... case you should in after years feel anxious as to what had become of those letters, or should feel some compunction for groundless hopes excited and for causeless caprice, I undertook to tell you as a message from this young man, that, considering you to be completely under the dominion of your sister-in-law, he does not at all blame you, he does not admit that you are in fault; in one sense, now that he can look back on ...

— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... there during the preceding decade. When war broke out between Holland and England in 1652 it was rumored that these people were conspiring with the Indians to bring about another massacre in Virginia. Groundless as these suspicions were, they infuriated the English and caused grave fears for the safety of the Dutch planters. When the justices of the peace took precautions to protect the unfortunate foreigners their action caused discontent and bitterness against the new ...

— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... intellects are of queer kinks, unexplained turnings and groundless likes and dislikes, the bland contentment that buoys up the incompetent is the most difficult of all vagaries to account for. Rarely do twenty-four hours pass without examples of this exasperating weakness appearing on the surface of those ...

— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... doubting his wife and trusting his child, and he knew not what to do. He decided to go at once to his daughter and try to find out the truth. Comforting his wife and assuring her that her fears were groundless, he glided quietly to his ...

— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... well how groundless are their apprehensions, but we are not even allowed to say so to our fellow-citizens of the south. So wild is their apprehension, that even such statesmen as Stephens, Johnson, Hill, Botts and Pettigrew, when they say, 'wait, wait, till we ...

— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... romances of sir Thomas Moore, Harrington, and Hume, appeared to have been much read, and Ludlow had not been sparing of his marginal comments. In these writers he appeared to find nothing but error and absurdity; and his notes were introduced for no other end than to point out groundless principles and false conclusions..... The style of these remarks was already familiar to me. I saw nothing new in them, or different from the strain of those speculations with which Ludlow was accustomed to indulge himself in ...

— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown

... deaths, except perhaps among some of those who are sick already." On the next day there was but one dead, but three were reported dying from the sufferings of the first night. They now saw the Cleopatra once more, and the alarm of small-pox having been found groundless, the captain took on board ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... was all she could utter, for she hastened from him, lest his discerning eye should discover the cause of the weakness which thus overcame her. But her apprehensions were groundless; the rectitude of his own heart was a bar to the suspicion of her's. He once more kindly bade her adieu, and the ...

— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... sterling from the counterfeit, and by collating manuscripts, and by clearing difficult points, have rendered the path in this kind of literature smooth and secure. The merit of original authors hath been weighed; we have the advantage of most correct editions of their works; rash and groundless alterations of some modern critics, and the blunders of careless copiers or editors are redressed; interpolations foisted into the original writings are retrenched; and a mark hath been set on memoirs of inferior authority. Moreover, the value of ancient manuscripts, being ...

— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... erected at the Helder. Bitter complaints were raised among the Russian officers against York's conduct of the expedition. He was accused of sacrificing the Russian regiments in battle, and of courting a general defeat in order not to expose his own men. The accusation was groundless. Where York was, treachery or bad faith was superfluous. York in command, the feeblest enemy became invincible. Incompetence among the hereditary chiefs of the English army had become part of the order of nature. The Ministry, ...

— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... meet the situation to say that apprehension in regard to the future of our finances is groundless and that there is no reason for lack of confidence in the purposes or power of the Government in the premises. The very existence of this apprehension and lack of confidence, however caused, is a menace which ought not ...

— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... are as encouraging as the incidents of war. The discontent that existed toward the close of 1862—a discontent by no means groundless—led to the apparent defeat of the war-party in many States, and to the decrease of its strength in others. But it was an illogical conclusion that the people were dissatisfied with the war, when they only meant to express their dissatisfaction with the manner in which ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... the space that severs us is small, and all visible succour is distant. You believe yourself completely in my power; that you stand upon the brink of ruin. Such are your groundless fears. I cannot lift a finger to hurt you. Easier it would be to stop the moon in her course than to injure you. The power that protects you would crumble my sinews, and reduce me to a heap of ashes in a moment, if I were to harbour a thought hostile to your safety. Thus are appearances at ...

— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... fool talk is that? I only didn't want a scene. I kept away from Lisa for weeks so as not to vex you. Forget you! I think I have been very considerate of you under the circumstances. You have a dislike to Lisa, a most groundless dislike——" ...

— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis

... near the banks of the Thames, and the inhabitants of the whole region were seized with apprehensions and fears, which spread rapidly, increased by the influence of sympathy, and excited more and more every day by a thousand groundless rumors, until the whole region was thrown into a state of uncontrollable panic and confusion. The inhabitants abandoned their dwellings, and fled in dismay into the eastern part of the island, to seek refuge among the fens and marshes of Lincolnshire, and of the other counties ...

— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... the President, so that at least he would not feel the full weight of the blow on election night. His intimate friends had told me that they feared the effect of defeat upon his health; but these fears were groundless and never disturbed me in the least, for I had been with him in many a fight and I was sure that while he would feel the defeat deeply and that it would go to his heart, its effect ...

— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... and difficulties which he met in London I do not care to dwell. They all grew out of political jealousies, confused notions concerning connections of Church and State, or fears, which proved to be groundless, that the consecration sermon, to say nothing of the consecration itself, might somehow be disadvantageous to the Scottish Episcopate. One charge alleged is to us in this day simply amusing; namely, that the bishop had been "precipitate" in his application to Scotland. A precipitancy which patiently ...

— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut

... conjured up terrible possibilities, and Mr. Romanes wrote back in great alarm to ask the exact state of the case. The two following letters show that the alarm was groundless:—] ...

— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... was notably displayed several years later, when a lady incited him to quarrel with one of his best friends on account of a groundless pique of hers. He went to Washington for the purpose of challenging the gentleman, and it was only after ample explanation had been made, showing that his friend had behaved with entire honor, that Pierce and Cilley, who were his advisers, could persuade him to be satisfied without a fight." ...

— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... chagrined to see that, instigated by certain refractory men, people started a riot in Seoul and other places. Rumour was recently circulated that at the recent Peace Conference in Paris and other places, the independence of Chosen was recognized by foreign Powers, but the rumour is absolutely groundless. It need hardly be stated that the sovereignty of the Japanese Empire is irrevocably established in the past, and will never be broken in the future. During the ten years since annexation, the Imperial benevolence has gradually reached all parts of the country, and it is now recognized throughout ...

— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... that the conjecture of those that would interpret that Zacharias, who was slain "between the temple and the altar" several months before, B. IV. ch. 5. sect. 4, as if he were slain there by these zealots, is groundless, as I have ...

— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... malecontents; and gave them too much countenance and indulgence. But every principle of honour, duty and interest forbade such a connivance, and the upright and respectable character he maintained, rendered such suspicions groundless and unmerited. That he should join with a disaffected multitude in schemes of opposition, to divest himself of his government, was a thing scarcely to be supposed. That he should first wink at the subversion of the proprietary government, and afterwards ...

— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... of our neighbours; but we seemed destined to experience more annoyance from the great apprehension of being attacked which existed amongst our followers, than from any well-founded anticipation of it; their fears were not totally groundless, as it must be confessed that to a needy and disorganized population the bait of a lac of rupees ...

— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem

... in the following sentence, which I copy from the "London Queen," if I were not conscious that the monster who can write and print such a sentence would not hesitate to cable a thunderbolt at an offender on the slightest provocation. Judge, if my fears are groundless: "But some few people contract the ugly habit of making use of these expressions unconsciously and continuously, perpetually interlarding ...

— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... I do not suppose she ever in her life said a sharp thing. She was naturally shy and not given to talk much in company, and people fancied, knowing that she was clever, that she was on the watch for good material for books from their conversation. Her intimate friends knew how groundless was the apprehension and that it wronged her.' She was not only shy: she was also at times very grave. Her niece Anna is inclined to think that Cassandra was the more equably cheerful of the two sisters. ...

— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... a private interview with Phoenarete, during which she freely expressed her fears. The wife of Clinias, though connected by marriage with the house of Alcibiades, was far from resenting the imputation, or pretending that she considered it groundless. Her feelings were at once excited for the lonely orphan girl, whose beauty, vivacity, and gentleness, had won upon her heart; and she readily promised assistance in any plan for her relief, provided it met the approbation of ...

— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... But the groundless scare of the impecunious Major was a trifling affair compared with the grand scare that overtook the whole people along the lake in the autumn of 1812, at the time of Hull's surrender One day a fleet of vessels was seen bearing down upon the coast. It was first noticed in the vicinity ...

— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... the subject is taken. Our intercourse has been short, too short both for you and me; but the first time I saw you, the affinity of our spirits was revealed to me: [192] your culture proved that my hope was not groundless; and I found in a beautiful body a soul created for nobleness, gifted with the sense of beauty. My parting from you was therefore one of the most painful in my life; and that this feeling continues our common ...

— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... accomplished, proposed that Mr. Burnit accept the chair pro tem.—where he would be out of the way. The unanimous support which this motion received was quite gratifying to the feelings of Mr. Burnit, proving at once that his fears had been not only groundless but ungenerous, and, in accepting the chair, he made them what he considered a very neat little speech indeed, striving the while to escape that circular smile with its diameter of yellow teeth and its intersecting crescent of stiff mustache; for he disliked meanly ...

— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... than the contrary; yet I [8] cannot forbear to hint to this writer, and all others, the danger and weakness of trusting too readily to information. Nothing but experience could evince the frequency of false information, or enable any man to conceive, that so many groundless reports should be propagated, as every man of eminence may hear of himself. Some men relate what they think, as what they know; some men, of confused memories and habitual inaccuracy, ascribe to one man, what belongs to another; ...

— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... ascertain whether their suspicions were well founded, they mingled with the crowd on the day of prorogation, in order that they might watch the proceedings of the commissioners. They were satisfied that their suspicions were groundless; so that they went into the country in high spirits. About ten days previous to the Fifth of November, Catesby and Fawkes returned to the neighbourhood of London. Several of the traitors met together at White Webbs, on Enfield Chase. At this time, they were informed, ...

— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury

... Stefan had been playfully called Stefan Dushan II, with the hope that he would reign at Prizren—and he was dead. All hope of a child to Prince Danilo had been given up; much had died with Baby Stefan. Some even hinted at foul play, but this suspicion was quite groundless, for tuberculosis was rapidly spreading in the land; it is worth mentioning only as showing the mental state of ...

— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... the most amazing, presumptuous, groundless, and insane demand that one person could make upon another," interposed the ...

— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... authoritative, and those is which direct perception is regarded as more authoritative. In 5, the speaker refers to the atomic and other theories of the creation derived from Reason. Bhishma declares it as his opinion that all such theories are untenable or groundless. In the first line of 6, the word Ekam implies Brahma. The sense is, if thou thinkest that Brahma alone is the cause of the universe and in thinking so becomest landed on doubt. The reply to this is that ...

— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... years of age: and this I can assure you, that the Indians had ever a just cause of raising War against the Spaniards, and the Spaniards on the contrary never raised a just was against them, but what was more injurious and groundless then any undertaken by the worst of Tyrants. All which I affirm of all their other Transactions ...

— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas

... that there would be trouble in the vicinity of the rope-walk had been proven by this time to be groundless, for soldiers as well as citizens had, as if by common impulse, avoided the scene of the first serious outbreak, and at seven o'clock in the evening, when the city was more nearly in a state of repose than it had ...

— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis

... now. I was thinly clad, and as the wind, which was blowing quite hard, drove the falling showers against me, my teeth chattered, and I shivered to the bone. I passed many houses, and feared the barking of the dogs might betray me to watchers within; but my fears were groundless. The storm, which was then howling fearfully through the trees, served to keep most of those who sought our lives, within doors. Even the barking of the bloodhounds was heard but seldom, and then far in the distance. I seemed to have the lonely, fearful, stormy ...

— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger

... apologies to offer for trespassing so long on your patience; but I felt a natural desire, if possible, to correct what I conceive to be a groundless imputation on the memory of my ancestor, before it shall come to be considered as a matter of History. That he was a man of violent passions and singular temper, I do not pretend to deny, as many traditions ...

— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... broken arm had somehow changed Thayor's attitude toward his guest—so much so that the man's personality no longer jarred on him. He concluded that whatever suspicions he had had—and they were never definite—were groundless. Alice was simply bored in New York and Sperry amused her. That was the secret of his success with his women patients; she was bored here, and again Sperry amused her! Why not, then, give her all the pleasure she wanted? With this result fixed in his mind, his attitude ...

— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... that it had been uttered. The fortunes of the heir of Ravenswood were too low to brave the farther hostility which they imagined these open expressions of resentment must necessarily provoke. Their apprehensions, however, proved groundless, at least in the immediate consequences of ...

— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... Is this seeming goodness a fact?" It was the very essence of his perverted nature to doubt it. Now that his eyes were opened, and he closely observed Miss Walton, he saw that his prejudices against her were groundless. Although not a stylish, pretty woman, she was evidently far removed from the goodish, commonplace character that he could regard as part of the furniture of the house, useful in its place, but of no more interest ...

— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... nor can they be answered by any one else who separates the phenomenal from the real. To suppose that Plato, at a later period of his life, reached a point of view from which he was able to answer them, is a groundless assumption. The real progress of Plato's own mind has been partly concealed from us by the dogmatic statements of Aristotle, and also by the degeneracy of his own followers, with whom a doctrine of ...

— Parmenides • Plato

... in the "prayer before breakfast" some reference might be made to what he had attempted to do during the night; but his fears were groundless. The little woman asked that her Father's blessing might fall upon the homeless; but the words were spoken in the same fervent, kindly tone as on the evening previous, and again the boy thanked her in ...

— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis

... scarcely understand it. Surely, he thought, there must be some mistake. He was glad there was not a crowd of students about to witness the humiliation of Link—a humiliation none the less acute if the charge was groundless. ...

— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes

... resurrection of Christ, namely, that before that event the saints were not admitted into heaven. Although pressed forward with such unhesitating confidence in its validity, that argument is so singular in its nature, and so important in its consequences, and withal so utterly groundless, as to call for a separate examination, on which we will shortly enter: meanwhile, we are now inquiring into the ...

— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... circle of the World-Powers. The chief objections to the new departure were its novelty, and the likelihood of its embroiling us finally with Russia and France or Russia and Germany. These fears were groundless; for France and even Russia(!) expressed their satisfaction at the treaty. Lord Lansdowne's diplomatic coup not only ended the isolation of two Island States, which had been severally threatened by powerful ...

— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... behavior could never be gauged by accepted theories—then he had safeguarded Chilcote's interests and his own by his securing of Blessington's promise. Blessington he knew would be reliable and discreet. With a renewal of confidence—a pleasant feeling that his uneasiness had been groundless—he moved forward to ...

— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... I have said hard things about my loyal students in Chicago, New York, or any other place, is utterly false and groundless. I speak of them as I feel, [20] and I cannot find it in my heart not to love them. They are essentially dear to me, who are toiling and achieving success in unison with my own endeavors and prayers. If I correct mistakes which may be made in teaching or lecturing on ...

— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... chain extending both ways, so as to bind their respective families together, and give one the power and means of evil which could in no other way be obtained. In view of all these circumstances, then, I feel that a calamity is in store for us. God grant that my fears and forebodings may prove groundless." ...

— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... extent of casting aspersions upon her character, etc. The young man's father, without investigating this case, forbade his son to marry her. However, the two lovers would have frequent secret rendezvous, and his fiancee became depressed over this scandalous and groundless rumor and also because of the peculiar attitude her young man's father assumed. One evening the young man returned home late, and upon confessing to his father of his secret meetings with his fiancee, he was severely beaten and ...

— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... How groundless such fears, may be seen from the statistical record of the draft with relation to the Negro. His race furnished its quota uncomplainingly and cheerfully. History, indeed, will be unable to record the fullness and grandeur of his spirit ...

— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... irregularity of the breath, an obscure anxiety and suspense. This, however, would soon subside, and rarely recur during his stay. The phenomenon had been observable daily for nearly a score of years, yet nothing had meantime happened to explain or justify it. Had an original dread—groundless or not—prolonged its phantom existence precisely because it ...

— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... quarters would not permit it. I then realized that we were wrecked and that I was in a bad predicament. I felt that I had no bones broken, and my only fear was that the wreck would take fire. My fears were not groundless for I soon smelled smoke. I cried out as loudly as I could, but my berth had evidently become a "sound proof booth." Then I felt that my time had come, and had about given up all hope, and was trying ...

— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... by the colonists, as every one who knows how zeal tends to mislead the judgment of well-intentioned men will think it no less probable that there was some exaggeration on the part of the philanthropic friends of the blacks, and that some groundless charges were brought against the colonists. The missionaries, especially those of the London Society, had a certain influence with the Colonial Office, and were supposed to have much more than they had. Thus from 1820 to about 1860 there was a perpetual ...

— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... has seen from one end to the other, was as groundless as the dreams of philosophy: Yorick, no doubt, as Shakespeare said of his ancestor—'was a man of jest,' but it was temper'd with something which withheld him from that, and many other ungracious pranks, of which he as undeservedly bore the blame;—but ...

— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... mother died, leaving her the only woman at her father's ranch—with the exception of one or two half-breed women, who could not be much to her as companions—her life had been very lonely, and her spirit had been subjected to frequent, though hitherto groundless, alarms. ...

— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... still insisted that Hallock was the man who was planning the robberies and plotting the downfall of the Lidgerwood management, and he wanted to have the chief clerk systematically shadowed. And it was Lidgerwood's wholly groundless prepossession for Hallock that was still keeping him from turning the matter over to the company's legal department—this in spite of the growing accumulation of evidence all pointing to Hallock's treason. Subjected ...

— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... outward circumstances, but of his own fixed resolves. 'I will put my trust in Thee.' Nature says, 'Be afraid!' and the recoil from that natural fear, which comes from a discernment of threatening evil, is only possible by a strong effort of the will. Foolish confidence opposes to natural fear a groundless resolve not to be afraid, as if heedlessness were security, or facts could be altered by resolving not to think about them. True faith, by a mighty effort of the will, fixes its gaze on the divine Helper, and there finds it possible and wise to lose its fears. It is madness to say, ...

— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... The Revolution was just over when she made her application, and it was thought that some of the books had been taken away by a refugee. Still, there were a plenty of persons to supply traditions and conjecture; and so anxious were she and her husband to trace these groundless reports to their confirmation or refutation, that much money and time were thrown away in the fruitless attempts. At length, one of the old attendants of the children's department was discovered, who professed to know the whole history of the child brought from the stone-cutter's ...

— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... scientific career, which was crowned by the usual aegrotat in botany instead of a pass in history. The falling off in candidates for Holy Orders seriously alarmed some of our Bishops; and Darwin—the gentle, delightful Darwin—became what the Pope had been to our ancestors. I need not point out how groundless these fears happily proved to be. The younger intellects of the country simply became more interested for the moment in the cross-breeding of squirrels, than in the internecine difficulties of the Protestant church on Apostolic succession, the number of candles on the altar, and the ...

— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... abroad it is an ungracious task to reject the advances of one's countryman, otherwise I think I should have avoided his society—less upon my own account than because I am sure the acquaintance would be a source of continual though groundless uneasiness to my mother. I know, therefore, that you will not unnecessarily mention ...

— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... two men found themselves alone, Dunwody, for a time lost in moody silence, at length broke out into a peal of laughter. "Well, human nature is human nature, I suppose. I make no comment, further than to say that I consider all the lady's fears were groundless. She has been well treated. There was no need to call for my aid. The army is hard to defeat, ...

— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... latecomers, with the result that many of the tables were almost touching each other. Jerton was beckoned by a waiter to the only vacant table that was discernible, and took his seat with the uncomfortable and wholly groundless idea that nearly every one in the room was staring at him. He was a youngish man of ordinary appearance, quiet of dress and unobtrusive of manner, and he could never wholly rid himself of the idea that a fierce light of public scrutiny ...

— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... with Mr. C. M. Clisbee, and started to the opera house. Just as we turned the corner I heard a pistol shot, perhaps two, and turning my head saw Tom Davis fall to the sidewalk. I jumped from the buggy and ran towards my wife's phaeton, fearing her horse would take fright, but finding my fears groundless hastened to the scene of the shooting, and there found Tom Davis lying on the sidewalk, and assisted in carrying him into French's newsstand. I heard several shots fired after I saw Davis fall, but who fired them I am ...

— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... differing by one hour will cause numerous and insuperable difficulties. In railway business, in which time is more largely referred to than in any other, the experience of the past year has proved this fear to be groundless. It is true that the approximate local time of a number of cities near the boundary lines between the eastern and central sections in the United States is still retained. A curious chapter of incidents could be related which led to this retention, not affecting, however, the merits ...

— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various

... moment looking at it, tremulous with a great anticipation. He was divided between a conviction that she expected him and a fear that she did not.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} His fear proved groundless. ...

— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... minutes before I began to think was an aerial being, or sprite, and which must have gained admission either through the key-hole, or under the door, turned out to be my own garment. I smiled at my groundless fears, was pleased with any resolution, returned light-hearted to my bed, and moralized nearly the whole of the night on the simplicity of a great part of mankind in being so credulous as to believe every idle tale, or conceive every noise ...

— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... give to the same prophet new and more exalted themes in his progressive revelation of truth. It is a limitation of God himself to the critic's notion of what should, or should not be. This would eliminate the divine element of the book by a sweep of the critic's pen. It is an assumption too groundless to need a reply. ...

— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard

... herself is inimitable both in itself, and as it contrasts with Othello's groundless jealousy, and with the foul conspiracy of which she is the innocent victim. Her beauty and external graces are only indirectly glanced at; we see 'her visage in her mind'; her character everywhere predominates ...

— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... as it does, not for your sake, but the cause and reason of your existence, which, as in the symmetry of every artificial work, must of necessity concur with the general design of the artist, and be subservient to the whole of which it is a part. Your complaint therefore is ignorant and groundless; since, according to the various energy of creation, and the common laws of nature, there is a constant provision of that which is best at the same time for you and for the whole.—For the governing intelligence clearly beholding all the actions of animated and self-moving creatures, and ...

— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... girls received the information relative to the anonymous letters so calmly that Marion felt just a little bit foolish because of her groundless misjudgment of them. After the last group had read the letters and discussed the situation with the trio of informants, she ...

— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis

... noted also is that other trades used precisely similar marks and for a like object, so that the idea of their having a mystical meaning, or being utilized for any other object but the one named, seems groundless. ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... against him, and set him half naked in an open boat, with certain of his men who remained faithful to him, and ran away with the ship. Their principal motive for doing so was an idea, whether true or groundless the writer cannot say, that Bligh was "no better than themselves;" he was certainly neither a lord's illegitimate, nor possessed of twenty thousand pounds. The writer knows what he is writing about, having been acquainted in his early years with an individual who was turned adrift ...

— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... George's picture, which hung there as usual, with the portrait of the boy underneath. "It was cruel of him. If I had forgiven it, ought he to have spoken? No. And it is from his own lips that I know how wicked and groundless my jealousy was; and that you were pure—oh, yes, you were pure, my ...

— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... outbreak of hostilities would be in the interior of England, near the banks of the Thames, and the inhabitants of the whole region were seized with apprehensions and fears, which spread rapidly, increased by the influence of sympathy, and excited more and more every day by a thousand groundless rumors, until the whole region was thrown into a state of uncontrollable panic and confusion. The inhabitants abandoned their dwellings, and fled in dismay into the eastern part of the island, to seek refuge among the fens and marshes of Lincolnshire, and of the other counties around. ...

— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... the chapters giving information about what took place in the State of Mississippi during the period of Reconstruction. I detected so many statements and representations which to my own knowledge were absolutely groundless that I decided to read carefully the entire work. I regret to say that, so far as the Reconstruction period is concerned, it is not only inaccurate and unreliable but it is the most biased, partisan and prejudiced historical work I have ever read. In his preface ...

— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... "What thou hast promised shall be done." To gratify the lady's will, His father's promise to fulfil, He left his realm and all delight For Dandak wood, an anchorite. No cruel wretch, no senseless fool Is Rama, unrestrained by rule. This groundless charge has ne'er been heard, Nor shouldst thou speak the slanderous word. Rama in truth and goodness bold Is Virtue's self in human mould, The sovereign of the world confessed As Indra rules among the Blest. And dost thou plot from him to rend The darling whom his arms defend? ...

— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... amount of taxation imposed on Ireland, to prove that injustice is not perpetrated upon her under that most touching head;—we have exposed the fictitious grievances, and recounted the measures passed and promised by Sir Robert Peel, to show how groundless the complaints of the agitators are, and that if there be wrongs, there is, on his part, a sincere desire to redress them;—and we have adverted to the manner in which those beneficent acts and promises, so favourable to their views and injurious to his administration, have been received by those ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... him well, He cannot tell Untrue or groundless tales— He always tries To utter lies, And every time ...

— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... common lamentation of Spanish historiographers, that, for an obscure and melancholy space of time immediately succeeding the conquest of their country by the Moslems, its history is a mere wilderness of dubious facts, groundless fables, and rash exaggerations. Learned men, in cells and cloisters, have worn out their lives in vainly endeavoring to connect incongruous events, and to account for startling improbabilities, recorded of this period. The worthy ...

— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... the assumed parallel between Japan's rise as a military power and her predicted rise as an industrial power should be branded as the groundless non sequitur that it is. "All our present has its roots in the past," as my first Japanese acquaintance said to me, and we ignore fundamental facts when we forget that for centuries unnumbered Japan existed for the soldier, ...

— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... her! What's perjury to such a crime as this? Will she confess it then? O, groundless hope! But rest assur'd, she'll make this accusation, Or false or true, your ruin with the king; Such is her ...

— The Revenge - A Tragedy • Edward Young

... tales are groundless?" she asked, with a sudden lifting of the eyes, a sudden keen eagerness that did ...

— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... affection, all illuminated with hope and joy or to be clouded with grief and terror and loss and despair,—oh, glad, glad was she that the French invasion was but a figment,—a tissue of misconceptions and vague innuendoes and groundless assumptions. ...

— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... popular feeling at the moment, Mr. Wilde would not get a fair and impartial trial. Mr. Justice Charles, who was to try the case, heard the application and refused it peremptorily: "Any suggestion that the defendant would not have a fair trial was groundless," he declared; yet he knew better. In his summing up of the case on May 1st he stated that "for weeks it had been impossible to open a newspaper without reading some reference to the case," and when he asked the jury not to allow "preconceived opinions to weigh with ...

— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... construction nor with the needs of the times. Also, the clause seems always to have been interpreted on the basis of the assumption that the term "judicial proceedings" refers only to final judgments and does not include intermediate processes and writs; but the assumption would seem to be groundless, and if it is, then Congress has the power under the clause to provide for the service and execution throughout the United States of the judicial processes of ...

— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... Rowlands remained in Deerbrook from Mrs Rowland's ostentation of confidence in his skill. He knew that Mr Rowland would have removed his family when the Greys departed, but that the lady had refused to go; and he felt how groundless was her confidence: not that he had pretended to more professional merit than he had believed himself to possess; but that, amidst this disease, he was like a willow-twig in the stream. He became so impressed with his responsibilities now, in the presence of the small and sad-faced congregation, ...

— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... fears, hoping they were groundless, and looking to be quite reassured presently when she came ...

— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... the Moor, out of revenge, persuaded Alonzo that his wife and don Carlos still entertained for each other their former love, and out of jealousy Alonzo has his friend put to death, while Leonora makes away with herself. Zanga now informs Alonzo that his jealousy was groundless, and mad with grief he kills himself.—Edw. ...

— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... who is thus terrified with the imagination of ghosts and spectres, much more reasonable than one who, contrary to the reports of all historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the traditions of all nations, thinks the appearance of spirits fabulous and groundless: Could not I give myself up to this general testimony of mankind, I should to the relations of particular persons who are now living, and whom I cannot distrust in other matters of fact. I might here add, ...

— The Coverley Papers • Various

... quietly submitted to. He had sought to inform against us in the stagecoach business; he had volunteered to carry Pettingil's "little bill" for twenty-four icecreams to Charley Marden's father; and now he had caused us to be arraigned before justice Clapham on a charge equally groundless and painful. After much noisy discussion, a plan ...

— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Ambassador in Paris, as an excuse for declaring war. (French Yellow Book, No. 159.) It is possible that some Frenchmen may have incautiously believed the German Government. The report has been shown by German investigation to be entirely groundless. ...

— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... sloops were stationed to watch, yet Cameron landed.' Writing to Mann (April 27, 1753), Horace Walpole remarks: 'What you say you have heard of strange conspiracies fomented by OUR NEPHEW [Frederick] is not entirely groundless.' He adds that Cameron has been taken ...

— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... of 1863 are as encouraging as the incidents of war. The discontent that existed toward the close of 1862—a discontent by no means groundless—led to the apparent defeat of the war-party in many States, and to the decrease of its strength in others. But it was an illogical conclusion that the people were dissatisfied with the war, when they only meant to express ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... these reports, it was at one time resolved to fit out a strong squadron to go and take him and his men; and at another time it was proposed to invite him home with all his riches, by the offer of his Majesty's pardon. These reports, however, were soon discovered to be groundless, and he was actually starving without a shilling, while he was represented as in the possession of millions. Not to exhaust the patience, or lessen the curiosity of the reader, the facts in Avery's life shall ...

— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... of a more than ordinary soundness and vigour of judgement. That his own diseased imagination should have so far deceived him, is strange; but it is stranger still that some of his friends should have given credit to his groundless opinion, when they had such undoubted proofs that it was totally fallacious; though it is by no means surprising that those who wish to depreciate him, should, since his death, have laid hold of this circumstance, and insisted upon it with ...

— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... when I entered. In fact, he was furious at the doctor's efforts to restrain him. But I realized that my fear for his reason was groundless. His remarks were lucid and forceful as he raged at the interference with his work. As soon as he saw me he ...

— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... to have done otherwise. She had known ever since Miss Blake spoke that she was free to do as she pleased. That she was held by no promise; that she was compelled by no stronger claim than Miss Blake's disapproval, which might be, after all, only a groundless personal prejudice, she thought. She hardly realized why she felt bound to obey. And now along came Ruth to prove that there were other claims outside Miss Blake's. She remembered perfectly having said that Ruth could count on her. Here was ...

— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann

... there would be a protracted siege, and my spirits fell as I surveyed the prospect, for my pecuniary resources were limited, and it seemed very unlikely that I would again see the Columbia in the port. However, my fears were groundless. Little did I think that within three days the place would be in the hands of ...

— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... of Othello the Moor, who, in Shakespeare's play of that name, kills her on a groundless insinuation of ...

— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... that the present alarm, which has been excited by several circumstances of a suspicious nature, may prove groundless; and I feel very strongly that nothing can more probably contribute to make it so than every precaution being taken in time to prevent an evil, which experience has already proved to us, if suffered once to begin, is so ...

— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross

... was now dead within her, and cold. She had but to look at him to see how groundless it had been, how utterly unmoved he was by her distress. He waited patiently—that was all—seeming so very tall, a pillar of righteous strength, distinguished and at ease in his evening clothes: waiting, patient but cold, ...

— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... that your life lies in Louisiana, and not in Sicily, I beg of you to let things take their course and give up any idea of returning here. There is nothing that you can do, particularly since time has proved your fears for our safety to be groundless. It is kind and chivalrous of you to persist in offering to take that long journey from America, but nothing would be gained by it, absolutely nothing, I assure you, and it would entail a sacrifice on your part which ...

— The Net • Rex Beach

... he had never owned to himself, became a certainty. He defended his rival as strenuously as he would have defended himself, since it involved truth to himself. "I swear to you, Dorothy Fair," he said, "that Burr Gordon is innocent, and that your fear of him is groundless." ...

— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... subjects of gallantry in the article from hence, and no one point of nature is more proper to be considered by the company who frequent this place, than that of duels, it is worth our consideration to examine into this chimerical groundless humour, and to lay every other thought aside, till we have stripped it of all its false pretences to credit and reputation amongst men. But I must confess, when I consider what I am going about, and run over in my imagination all the endless crowd of men of honour who will be offended ...

— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... seeks only for censure, and knows not what he would have: he fights with his own shadow, and for the most part does not understand the thoughts of the author he attacks; and when he does understand them draws the most groundless consequences that ever were heard of. His gloomy and unhappily subtle mind cannot bear the light which Grotius presents to him. The embroiled ideas and distinctions of his Peripatetic philosophy form round him a thick cloud impenetrable by the strongest rays of truth. This is Barbeyrac's judgment ...

— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... soon after breakfast by the appearance of a sail in the offing. The more sanguine at once declared that she was standing towards us, and that our fears regarding a prolonged stay on the island were groundless; others thought that she would pass by and leave us to our fate. Every spyglass was in requisition, and numerous were the surmises as to the character ...

— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... sorely disgruntled at the time and so disconsolate later on that it required Zachariah's startling comment to lift him out of the slough of despond. Spurred by the desire to convince his servant that his speculations were groundless, he made a great to-do over the imposed task of hanging the pictures, jesting merrily about the possibility of their heads being snapped off by Mistress Viola if she popped in the next morning to find that ...

— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... alarm of the poor woman groundless; for, as she advanced into the battle-field, she found herself saluted upon the breast with an immense snow-ball, which, being of loose construction, adhered to the red broadcloth cloak of the pedestrian, forming a conspicuous and ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... see that, instigated by certain refractory men, people started a riot in Seoul and other places. Rumour was recently circulated that at the recent Peace Conference in Paris and other places, the independence of Chosen was recognized by foreign Powers, but the rumour is absolutely groundless. It need hardly be stated that the sovereignty of the Japanese Empire is irrevocably established in the past, and will never be broken in the future. During the ten years since annexation, the Imperial benevolence has gradually reached all parts of the country, and ...

— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... very uneasy and caused her to watch the fat-nosed man guardedly all through that tedious day. She constantly hoped he would leave the train at some station and thus prove her fears to be groundless, but always he remained in his seat, patiently eyeing the ...

— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... She had not been slow to note the color in her friend's face, or to ascribe to it the one meaning she wished to ascribe to it. So sure, indeed, was she now that her fears had been groundless, that she flung caution ...

— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... relations. And, if any of them did me the favour to come along with me, must that be called being in arms? Sure, when your Grace represents this to the Meeting of the States, they will discharge such a groundless pursuit, and think my appearance before them unnecessary. Besides, though it were necessary for me to go and attend the meeting, I cannot come with freedom and safety, because I am informed there are men-of-war and foreign troops in the passage; and till I know what they are and ...

— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... part in the Somme battle for the second time, and as we suddenly left Pommier on the 29th October—our final destination unknown—we naturally thought it probable that we, too, should soon be once more in the thick of the fighting. However, our fears were groundless, and we moved due West, not South. Our first night we spent in Mondicourt, and then moved the next day in pouring rain to Halloy, where we stayed two days. On the 1st November we marched 14 miles through Doullens to Villers L'Hopital, on the Auxi le Chateau road, where we found our new Padre ...

— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... glory of omniscience. With vision unsealed, we watch the gropings of purblind mortals after happiness, and smile at their stumblings, their blunders, their futile quests, their misplaced exultations, their groundless panics. To keep a secret from us is to reduce us to their level, and deprive us of our clairvoyant aloofness. There may be a pleasure in that too; we may join with zest in the game of blind-man's-buff; but the theatre is in its ...

— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... big collie noted this aloofness. And he came to an irresolute halt. For a moment, he stared after the two vanishing runaways; his plumed tail swaying ever so little, in groundless expectation of an invitingly glance or yelp from Lady. Then, tail and crest adroop, he turned ...

— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... of the coach had been groundless. He would spend a short time watching, and then, if nothing ...

— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes

... kingdom and his own family; and having incurred the universal hatred of his subjects, he kept from present terror alone, an anxious and precarious possession of the throne. His nobles fell every day the victims of his severity: he put to death several of his natural brothers, from groundless jealousy: each murder, by multiplying his enemies, became the occasion of fresh barbarities; and as he was not destitute of talents, his neighbors, no less than his own subjects, were alarmed at the ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... preachers, the hearts of the people were smitten with fear, thinking that their entertainer had failed to enchain them longer with her spell, and that they were coming upon them with redoubled and remorseless fury. But they found they were mistaken, and that their fears were groundless; for, before they could well recover from their surprise, every rioter was gone, and not one was left on the grounds, or seen there again during the meeting. Sojourner was informed that as her audience reached the main road, some distance ...

— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth

... prepared to be told that our anxieties are groundless, because "no one will ever draw such inferences as these." To this we reply, firstly, that these are the logical and legitimate inferences from the principles enunciated; and secondly, that we do not at all share the particular kind of optimism which trusts that good luck ...

— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... for his return. He was further informed, that we were much disappointed in not receiving any dried meat from him, an article indispensable for our summer voyage, and which, he had led us to believe there was no difficulty in procuring; and that, in fact, his complaints were so groundless, in comparison with the real injury we sustained from the want of supplies, that we were led to believe they were preferred solely for the purpose of cloaking his own want of attention to the terms of his engagement. He then shifted his ground, and stated, that if we endeavoured to make a voyage ...

— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin

... painless. The breaking down of the body under the ravages of disease may cause pain, but that belongs to physical life, not death. Distress may also be caused by groundless fear of death. But the dying person who does not know that death is upon him has no terror, and no pain, and sinks quietly to sleep. Very little observation will convince one that the distress about a death-bed ...

— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers

... exception of Mr. Short-Sight, a pig-headed man who reasoned falsely. So annoyed did the man who gave good advice become with Short-Sight, and so excited in his vexation, that he finally lost his self-control, and hit him as hard as he could on the head—after Short-Sight had repeated a groundless assertion for the seventh time—with ...

— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... that these fears were groundless, since the bell was ringing for five o'clock vespers when Helen came back. Betty was sitting at her desk pretending to write letters, but really trying to decide whether she should say anything to Eleanor apropos of her remarks ...

— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton

... the Schoolmaster or Schoolmistress is supposed to be omnipotent in the education of the boy or girl. And, unhappily, the Professor, unless he is a man of quite exceptional mental power for a Professor, shares this groundless opinion. The Schoolmaster is under-educated in regard to his work, and incapable of doing it neatly; the Professor is too often over-specialized and incapable of forming an intelligent, modest idea of his place ...

— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... was superior to groundless apprehensions. His daughters, however, partook in all the consternation which surrounded them. The eldest had, indeed, abundant reason for her terror. The youth to whom she was betrothed resided in the city. A year previous ...

— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... that the granting of equal rights to the Jews may deprive the peasant of his land, is perfectly groundless. There are many other means whereby the tiller of the soil may be assured the possession of a portion of land. In the West we have systems such as that of the homestead, based on the inalienability of ...

— The Shield • Various

... complaints used to sound through Antoinette's heart and seemed like to break it; the thought that he was suffering used to torture her and she used often to imagine that he was ill and would not say so. Frau Reinhart in her kindness had often had to rebuke her for her groundless fears, and she used to succeed in restoring her confidence for a moment. She had not been able to find out anything about Antoinette's family or position or her inner self. The girl was wildly shy and used to draw ...

— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... who may convince him, and that one be you. You must hasten at once to the court of Ptarth, and by your presence there as well as by your words assure him that his suspicions are groundless. Bear with you the authority of the Warlord of Barsoom, and of the Jeddak of Helium to offer every resource of the allied powers to assist Thuvan Dihn to recover his daughter and punish her abductors, whomsoever ...

— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... "Wheaton." He subsequently complained bitterly that much of it was utterly unintelligible; and judging from our own limited experience of the translation, we think His Excellency's objection not altogether groundless. ...

— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... behind him, and he felt a sharp twinge of conscience over the wan and desperate expression of her face. She had seen, and was staring down into her lap and slowly twirling her bloodless fingers. She had heard of Jim Cahews's engagement and knew that her transient hopes in that direction were groundless; and now this—this of all things—to see her hated rival in such a coveted position in the view of all before whom she had ...

— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... your fears are groundless as to the obstacles your new book ("Oldtown Folks") may find here from its thorough American character. Most readers who are likely to be really influenced by writing above the common order will find that special aspect an added reason for interest and study; and I dare say you have long seen, as ...

— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless. ...

— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... time to breathe his misgivings; but flung the door open, and sprang from his seat into the road. It was still three or four doors from Mrs. Vernon's house, and he prayed to God that his fears might be groundless. ...

— A Love Story • A Bushman

... actually and in possibility than it ever was in history, and where there is little poverty except that which is inevitably the accompaniment of human weakness and crime, the prevailing discontent seems groundless. But of course an agitation so widespread, so much in earnest, so capable of evoking sacrifice, even to the verge of starvation and the risk of life, must have some reason in human nature. Even an illusion—and ...

— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... me that complications may arise in Europe. But that is a groundless hope. Others may say that it is astonishing enough that we have been able to hold out till now, and that we still have the power of making our voices heard. Yes! that is very surprising; but shall we retain this power long? I heard some delegates say, 'We shall fight till ...

— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... THOMSON, BURNS, GRAY, etc., but with the exception perhaps of a passage in WILSON'S 'Isle of Palms,' there was not even the slightest pretext for a charge of plagiarism. She would thank the publisher, therefore, to discontinue in future his groundless hints upon the margins of the proof-sheets.' The initiated will understand that the 'insinuations' of which the poetess complained, were simply the names of the different compositors, indicating the lines at which they ...

— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... only protected the Jews at Avignon, as far as lay in his power, but also issued two bulls, in which he declared them innocent; and admonished all Christians, though without success, to cease from such groundless persecutions. The Emperor Charles IV. was also favourable to them, and sought to avert their destruction wherever he could; but he dared not draw the sword of justice, and even found himself obliged to yield to the selfishness of the Bohemian nobles, who were ...

— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... His prescient eye saw pressing behind the twelve in days to come. He had no dreams of swift success, but realised the long, hard fight to which He was summoning His disciples. And His frankness in telling them the worst that they had to expect was as suggestive as was His freedom from the rosy, groundless visions of at once capturing a world which enthusiasts are apt to cherish, till hard experience shatters the illusions. He knew the future in store for Himself, for His Gospel, for His disciples. And He knew that dangers and death itself will not appal a soul that is touched into ...

— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... hardihood, fully in keeping with the rest of the Alabama's career. The event indeed proved the full danger of the adventure; whilst, at the same time, nothing could have more clearly showed how utterly groundless were the dastardly imputations upon the courage and prowess of her crew, poured out daily from the foul-mouthed organs of the Northern press. There could be no question of the fighting qualities, ...

— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... one has persuaded you that I am eager to purchase your good-will at any sacrifice, and that in consideration of 'supposed advantages' hereafter to be derived from you—I shall be willing to endure unkindly language or groundless insinuations about my other relatives—then they have very seriously misled you as to my real character. This is really the only reply of which your letter admits. I shall always be ready, as in duty bound, to bestow on you such respect and affection as our relationship demands and ...

— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... seated in the bottom of the canoe, he endeavoured to start to his feet, which would inevitably have upset it. This rash movement was prevented by the bishop, who forcibly pulled him down into a sitting posture, exclaiming, as he did so, "Keep still, my good sir; if you, by your groundless fears, upset the canoe, your protestant friends will swear that the ...

— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... lived an exemplary life, but like many another good man he had a dread of dying; he feared he might not meet the last foe as worthily as a man of his character and reputation should. But this was a groundless fear. For when the last illness was upon him, he asked his physician to tell him plainly whether there was any hope of his recovery. The doctor first asked his patient whether he could hear the whole truth, ...

— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... a crash, that we were all about to share the fall of third-and fourth-century Rome—a respectable, but painfully overworked, comparison. The fears once expressed by the followers of Malthus as to the future of the world have proved groundless as regards the civilized portion of the world; it is strange indeed to look back at Carlyle's prophecies of some seventy years ago, and then think of the teeming life of achievement, the life of conquest of every kind, and of noble effort crowned by success, which has ...

— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... Kerr's evident expectation, seemed groundless as he stepped off the train almost directly in front of the waiting-room door, giving Kerr a hand down the steps. There was nobody in sight but the postmaster with the mail sack, the station agent, and the few citizens ...

— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... the new cartridges had been issued to the sepoys; and had this been promptly explained to the men, and the sepoys left to grease their own cartridges, the alarm might have died out. But the explanation was delayed until the whole of the Bengal army was smitten with the groundless fear; and then, when it was too late, the authorities protested too much, and the terror-stricken sepoys refused to ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... Groundless boastings of American orators and writers over the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, commanding but a small part of the British ...

— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... indeed, to equip his whole army, but purposed to place a guard in Carthage, and in person to lead the army against the enemy. Each day, therefore, he was destroying many men toward whom he felt any suspicion, even though groundless. And he gave orders to Pasiphilus, whom he was intending to appoint in charge of the garrison of Carthage, to kill all the Greeks[74] ...

— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius

... necessary to state this outline of our determinations to your Excellency, to counteract any misrepresentation that may be made of the basis or purport of our junction with Lord North (to which I conceive it may be liable, from the very false and groundless accounts which are reported to have been transmitted to Ireland of Mr. Fox's speech on Mr. Townshend's motion for the Bill respecting the Irish Judicature, which I myself heard, and with which I was so satisfied, upon account of those whom it was intended to support, of him whom it was intended ...

— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... taking every opportunity of finding out whether people reputed wise, and thinking themselves so, were wise in reality, and pointing out that they were not. And because of my exposing the ignorance of others, I have got this groundless reputation of having knowledge myself, and have been made the object of many other calumnies. And young gentlemen of position who have heard me follow my example, and annoy people by exposing their ignorance; and this is all visited on me; and I am called an ill-conditioned ...

— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... we are assured, even to three hundred and sixty and four hundred feet, and she has also pines and cedars of scarcely inferior dimensions. The public being now convinced of the importance of preserving these colossal trees, it is very probable that the fear of their total destruction may prove groundless, and we may still hope that some of them may survive even till that distant future when the skill of the forester shall have raised from their seeds a progeny as lofty and as majestic as those which now exist. [Footnote: California must ...

— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... respectively. Bavaria retains the administration of her own railways. At one time it was feared that the special privileges accorded the southern states would constitute a menace to the stability of the Empire. Such apprehension, however, has proved largely groundless.[296] In this connection it is worth pointing out that under the Imperial constitution the right to commission and despatch diplomatic (though not consular) agents is not withdrawn from the individual states. In most instances, however, ...

— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... mistress, at the least, a "letter of hope;" and the lady answered, that she could not come now, but would so soon as she might; at the same time "making him great feast," and swearing that she loved him best — "of which he found but bottomless behest [which he found but groundless promises]." Day by day increased the woe of Troilus; he laid himself in bed, neither eating, nor drinking, nor sleeping, nor speaking, almost distracted by the thought of Cressida's unkindness. He related his dream to his sister ...

— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... strangest of all, observe that in either case there is an after-process of approval or disapproval. The individual on recovering from his automatic start, at once contemplates the cause of his fright; and, according to the case, concludes that it was well he moved as he did, or condemns himself for his groundless alarm. In like manner, the deliberative powers of the State discuss, as soon as may be, the unauthorized acts of the executive powers; and, deciding that the reasons were or were not sufficient, grant or ...

— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... "to say that an agent that is acted upon cannot act, is as groundless as to say that a body acted upon cannot move." Again: "My actions are mine; but in what sense can they be properly called mine, if I be not the efficient cause of them?—Answer: my thoughts and all my perceptions and feelings are mine; yet it will not be pretended that I am ...

— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... save such as were couched in general terms: and on this wise she kept him dangling a long while. At last, having disclosed the whole affair to her lover, who evinced some resentment and jealousy, she, to convince him that his suspicions were groundless, and for that she was much importuned by the scholar, sent word to him by her maid, that never since he had assured her of his love, had occasion served her to do him pleasure, but that next Christmastide ...

— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... all, but the master-spirit, the bold, resolute woman, whose value others were able to appreciate, and who was ready and willing to assert her own independence. In the meantime poor Aunt Deborah had to be informed of what had taken place, and Cousin Amelia to be undeceived in her groundless expectations. That the latter would never forgive me I was well enough acquainted with my own sex to be assured; but the task required to be done, notwithstanding. Flushed with my triumph, with heightened colour and flashing eyes, I stalked off towards ...

— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... horror with which we entertain the thoughts of death, or indeed of any future evil, and the uncertainty of its approach, fill a melancholy mind with innumerable apprehensions and suspicions, and consequently dispose it to the observation of such groundless prodigies and predictions. For as it is the chief concern of wise men to retrench the evils of life by the reasonings of philosophy, it is the employment of fools to multiply them by ...

— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... very early. I began to imagine that the landlord, being about to emigrate, might murder us to get our money, and lay it upon the soldiers in the barn. Such groundless fears will arise in the mind, before it has resumed its vigour after sleep! Dr Johnson had had the same kind of ideas; for he told me afterwards, that he considered so many soldiers, having seen us, would be witnesses, should any harm be done, and that circumstance, I suppose, 'he considered ...

— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... diet affording only a deficient nutriment—notions which are countenanced by the language of Cullen and other great physicians—are wholly groundless. ...

— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... frequent notice of verbal inaccuracies; which Bentley, perhaps, better skilled in grammar than in poetry, has often found, though he sometimes made them, and which he imputed to the obtrusions of a reviser, whom the author's blindness obliged him to employ; a supposition rash and groundless, if he thought it true; and vile and pernicious, if, as is said, he, in private, allowed it to ...

— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... is no retribution behind it all—no atonement, I mean. Eyolf never did her any harm. He never called names after her; he never threw stones at her dog. Why, he had never set eyes either on her or her dog till yesterday. So there is no retribution; the whole thing is utterly groundless and meaningless, Asta.—And yet the order of the ...

— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen

... girl's safety. A great fear was upon him lest it be too late for the warning he had meant to give. He growled a curse on his own folly in not guarding against immediate attack by the outlaw. It was with small hope of finding his apprehensions groundless that he set forth at once, rifle in hand, for the cabin of the Widow Higgins. There, his fears were confirmed. The old woman had seen nothing of Plutina, since the short pause on the way to the post-office. Uncle Dick groaned aloud over the fate that might ...

— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... questions about everything that I have found it hard to find enough answers for them all. Then, when he has once learned a thing, he never forgets it, and he seems to want to put every bit of his knowledge into use. I'm sure your fears about his being dull are groundless, but he does need to be taught, and you will do well to give him a fair chance along ...

— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum

... Browning's birthplace; his immediate predecessors and contemporaries in literature, art, and music; born May 7th, 1812; origin of the Browning family; assertions as to its Semitic connection apparently groundless; the poet a putative descendant of the Captain Micaiah Browning mentioned by Macaulay; Robert Browning's mother of Scottish and German origin; his father a man of exceptional powers, artist, poet, critic, student; Mr. Browning's opinion of his son's writings; ...

— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... charge, could it be proved against the presbyterial government. Now for wiping off this black aspersion, consider two things, viz: I. The imputation itself, which is unjust and groundless; II. The pretended ground hereof, which is false ...

— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... be specially dangerous in this respect. Perhaps there is a certain foundation for this opinion, for men are naturally disposed to doubt the legitimacy of a power that systematically persecutes them. With regard to the Molokanye, I believe the accusation to be a groundless calumny. Political ideas seemed entirely foreign to their modes of thought. During my intercourse with them I often heard them refer to the police as "wolves which have to be fed," but I never heard them speak ...

— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... did not advance, fearful as he was of some such treachery as he himself might have been guilty of under like circumstances; nor were his suspicions groundless, for the Belgian, no sooner had he passed out of the range of the Arab's vision, halted behind the bole of a tree, where he still commanded an unobstructed view of his dead horse and the pouch, and raising his rifle covered the spot where ...

— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs