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More "Involuntary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... (to whom that small warm hand belonged), though she was the class beauty, and long established in the office. Now, all at once, a peculiar and heretofore entirely unfamiliar sensation suddenly became important in the upper part of his chest. For a moment he held his breath, an involuntary action;—he seemed to be standing in a shower ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... involuntary, but a time came when a tour in Palestine was almost as much the fashion as it is to-day. The conquests of Thothmes III. had made Syria an Egyptian province, and had introduced Syrians into the Egyptian bureaucracy. Good ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... needful &c (requisite) 630. fated; destined &c v.; elect; spellbound compulsory &c (compel) 744; uncontrollable, inevitable, unavoidable, irresistible, irrevocable, inexorable; avoidless^, resistless. involuntary, instinctive, automatic, blind, mechanical; unconscious, unwitting, unthinking; unintentional &c (undesigned) 621; impulsive &c 612. Adv. necessarily &c adv.; of necessity, of course; ex necessitate rei [Lat.]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of disposal. Such institutions must probably at one time have existed among the Italians; traces of them may perhaps be found in particular institutions of ritual, e. g. in the expiatory goat, which the involuntary homicide was obliged to give to the nearest of kin to the slain; but even at the earliest period of Rome which we can conceive this stage had long been transcended. The clan and the family doubtless were not annihilated in the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... hunting passionately. His time was passed in firing at a mark, instead of studying; and he spent the money extracted from the old doctor in buying powder and ball for a wretched pistol that old Gilet, the sabot-maker, had given him. During the autumn of 1806, Maxence, then seventeen, committed an involuntary murder, by frightening in the dusk a young woman who was pregnant, and who came upon him suddenly while stealing fruit in her garden. Threatened with the guillotine by Gilet, who doubtless wanted to get rid of him, Max fled to Bourges, met a regiment ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... that last sting of his vengeance; yet, as he saw the faces of the men on whom he flung the insult, he felt for the moment that he might pay for his temerity with his life. He put his hand above his eyes with a quick, involuntary movement, like a man ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... He gave one quick glance up at her, and a bright, boyish smile, as if telling her not to be afraid, which all the audience understood, and answered by an involuntary, long-drawn breath. I looked at Susy. The girl's colorless face was turned to George, and her hands were clasped as though she saw him already dead before her; but she could be trusted, I saw. She would utter no sound. I had only time to glance at her, and then turned to my work. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... stairway, and was already sinking into its trap-like entrance. His head and shoulders alone appeared above the line of wall, when some half-involuntary thought induced him to stop and look back. The coward had partly got over his fright now that he had arrived within reach of succour, and he glanced back from a feeling of curiosity, to see if the struggle between Garcia and the cibolero was yet over. He meant to stop ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... case of most of us, this tide of unconscious influence flowing from us without any deliberate or set purpose on our part, our involuntary contribution to the common life, is far more powerful for good or for evil than anything which we ever do by way of active purpose to influence another's life, and this because our unconscious influence is the reflex on the outer world of what we are in ourselves; it is ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... her with its secretive, elemental sheaths of rock, of tree, of cloud, of sunlight. Through her thrilling skin poured the multiple and nameless sensations of the living organism stirred to supreme sensitiveness. She could not lie still, but all her movements were gentle, involuntary. The slow reaching out of her hand, to grasp at nothing visible, was similar to the lazy stretching of her limbs, to the heave of her breast, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... contested in this manner); and old Jobst, then above seventy, was like to have given much trouble: but happily in three months he died; ["Jodocus BARBATUS," 21st July, 1411.] and Sigismund became indisputable. Jobst was the son of Maultasche's Nullity; him too, in an involuntary sort, she was the cause of. In his day Jobst made much noise in the world, but did little or no good in it. "He was thought a great man," says one satirical old Chronicler; "and there was nothing great about ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... had contrived to conceal his feelings. The boy was indeed braced to resolution, bat the resolution was equally visible with the agitation in the awe-stricken brow, varying colour, tightened breath, and involuntary shiver, as he took the oath. Again Leonard looked up with one of his clear bright glances, and perhaps a shade of anxiety; but Aubrey, for his own comfort, was too short-sighted for meeting of eyes from ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... venerated and immaculate Virginian who once bore the name of Marshall through a long career of judicial honor and usefulness. The general interest in this appeal to the past was impressive. The members of the house drew together around him; even his persecutors paid an involuntary tribute ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... exclamation was almost involuntary. She shrank back a little into the shadow. "It was a ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... keepers, who died within an hour, and Abbot was so greatly distressed by the event that he fell into a state of settled melancholy. His enemies maintained that the fatal issue of this accident disqualified him for his office, and argued that, though the homicide was involuntary, the sport of hunting which had led to it was one in which no clerical person could lawfully indulge. The king had to refer the matter to a commission of ten, though he said that "an angel might have miscarried after this sort.'' The commission was equally divided, and the king gave a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... is, I hope—he may find our housekeeping such as he can enjoy," she said, with an involuntary expression of surprise; for she had scarcely had a doubt that her husband would have preferred evading the visit of his fine ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... glanced from them to me, and read my cowardly mind; but she waited till they passed, as they did after an involuntary faltering in front of us, and were keeping on down the path, looking at the benches, which were filled on either hand. She ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... echoed the prayer which was so proper to the situation of both. But the tone of voice was so different from the harsh and dissonant sounds of the dwarf's enunciation, that Peveril was impressed with the certainty it could not proceed from Hudson. He was struck with involuntary terror, for which he could give no sufficient reason; and it was not without an effort that he was able to utter the question, "Sir ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... of the deputation sent to the king, spoke on the same side, but having inadvertently used the expression sovereign, in speaking of the king, and that the legislative power was vested in the Assembly and the king, this blasphemy and involuntary heresy raised a terrible storm in the chamber. Every word of this nature seemed to them to threaten a counter-revolution; for they were still so near despotism, that they feared at each step again to fall into its toils. The people was a slave, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... I have come about," she said, with an involuntary and shrinking glance at the sketches ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... therefore, to a fair trial, being certain that even if I should fail in my main purpose, and be unable to induce in my reader the confidence of judgment I desire, I shall at least receive his thanks for the suggestion of consistent reasons, which may determine hesitating choice, or justify involuntary preference. And if I should succeed, as I hope, in making the Stones of Venice touchstones, and detecting, by the mouldering of her marble, poison more subtle than ever was betrayed by the rending of her crystal; and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the train. Until she saw him, Ella had never known what it was to love—perchance she did not now—but at least she had experienced those fluttering sensations, those deep and strange emotions, those involuntary yearnings of the heart toward some object in his presence, that aching void in his absence, which the more experienced would doubtless put down to that cause, and which no other being had ever even for a moment awakened in her breast. For something like half an hour the two rode on ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... not to be considered without solicitude when, in a war which peculiarly appealed to patriotism, compulsion must be used to bring involuntary recruits to maintain the contest. Yet the relaxation of the patriotic temper was really not so great as this fact might seem to indicate. Besides many partial and obvious explanations, one which is less obvious should also be noted. During two years ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... father looked at each other in surprise, while the Colonel by a half involuntary movement stepped between his accuser and the door; and Ida noticed that his face was ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... This death made a deep impression on the child's mind, and for a while dwelt so constantly in his memory that, on one occasion, when Laure was being scolded by her mother for an offence which the culprit aggravated by a fit of involuntary tittering, he approached his sister and whispered in her ear, with a view to restoring her gravity: "Think of ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... jerk his head back, heard his involuntary cry of horror. Then she heard another cry: an excited warning shout. She whirled around in time to see a Ganymedan running toward them from behind. A deadly pencil-ray pointed straight at her companion. Without a moment's hesitation she sprang at Grant, pushed him violently so ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... has this young life been ruined for?" said the aunt. "What is especially painful to me is that I am the involuntary cause of it." ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... the regiments came upon the plateau. Not till then did they see the enemy, the awaited, the dreamed-of foe, the giant whose voice they had heard at Manassas. They saw him now, and they yelled recognition. From a thousand dusty throats came a cry, involuntary, individual, indescribably fierce, a high and shrill and wild expression of anger and personal opinion. There was the enemy. They saw him, they yelled,—without premeditation, without cooperation, each man for himself, Yaai, Yai ... Yaai, Yaai, Yai.... Yaai! ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... cried in a moment of involuntary enthusiasm, "What a spectacle, Uncle! Do you not admire these variegated shades of lava, which run through a whole series of colors, from reddish brown to pale yellow—by the most insensible degrees? And these crystals, they appear ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... what in my opinion might seem a better plea for these people than any they have made use of. If obscurity or poverty were to exempt a man from satire, much more should folly or dulness, which are still more involuntary; nay, as much so as personal deformity. But even this will not help them: deformity becomes an object of ridicule when a man sets up for being handsome; and so must dulness when he sets up for a wit. They are not ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... 1. In all the territory of the United States not embraced within the limits of the Cherokee treaty grant, north of a line from east to west on the parallel of 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude, involuntary servitude, except in punishment of crime, is prohibited whilst it shall be under a Territorial government; and in all the territory south of said line, the status of persons owing service or labor, as it now exists, shall not be changed by law while such ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... all the others were in a dream. Prayer mastered them by main force. They did not bow, they were bent. There was something involuntary in their condition; they wavered as a sail flaps when the breeze fails. And the haggard group took by degrees, with clasping of hands and prostration of foreheads, attitudes various, yet of humiliation. Some ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... nervous, involuntary deprecation. "Why should you suppose I would touch it roughly?" There was that in her voice which cried put that she would rather not touch it at all; but Lindsay, on the brink of his confidence, could not suppose it—did not hear it. He ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... his shoulders. "While you are drilling your soldiers," he said, "I am drilling myself. If a man yonder sneezes, I can name his tribe. A sneeze, being involuntary, cannot be artificial, and therefore it is the true index of race and character. Take the Oriental Express any night from Paris to Vienna. If you will sit up late enough and walk up and down the aisle, you may tell from the sneezes ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... her had always been dreams that had led him into strange byways, through dangerous, though flowery paths! To what end? To see her start, her eyes wide with involuntary dread, shrinking? Could he not thus interpret that look he had seen by the flare of a carriage lamp, when she had ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... which filled up our days in camp:—the duties of the guard, alternately roasted under the glaring sun of the parapet, and suffocated in the crowded guard-tent; the varied employments of the police,—the scavengers and involuntary retainers of the day,—now scrambling in irregular file down the bluff carrying pails and canteens for water, now bearing from the commissariat huge armfuls of bread, or boxes of hard tack, or quarters of ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... only to glance at Herbart's Aesthetics. The beautiful is distinguished from the agreeable and the desirable, which, like it, are the objects of preference and rejection, by the facts, first, that it arouses an involuntary and disinterested judgment of approval; and second, that it is a predicate which is ascribed to the object or is objective. To these is added, thirdly, that while desire seeks for that which is to come, taste possesses in the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... I shall do: I have no broken bones,—only a sprain;" and again he stood up and tried his foot, but the result extorted an involuntary "Ugh!" ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... to be virtuous it needs first of all to be done "knowingly," secondly to be done "by choice," and "for a due end," thirdly to be done "immovably." Now the first of these is included in the second, since "what is done through ignorance is involuntary" (Ethic. iii, 1). Hence the definition of justice mentions first the "will," in order to show that the act of justice must be voluntary; and mention is made afterwards of its "constancy" and "perpetuity" in order to indicate the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... most numerous and most needs protection, he is to all intents and purposes disfranchised. What will follow as the final outcome we do not know, but that is the beginning of his attempted re-enslavement. It is beyond any question that his return to involuntary servitude in some condition or conditions, the disarming him of the ballot being the initial step in the proceeding, is seriously contemplated, if not deliberately planned. Indeed, under the name of "peonage" the work of re-establishing a system of ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... With an involuntary jerk at the reins I brought my team to its haunches and reached for my revolver. Quite needless: with the quickest movement that I had ever seen in anything but a cat—almost before the words were out of the horseman's mouth—May ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... vomiting of dark coffee-ground material are often prominent features. Death is usually impending when the skin becomes cold and clammy, the mucous membranes livid, the pulse feeble and fluttering, the discharges involuntary, and when a low form of muttering ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... suppose it will make the will not stand!" cried Sylvia, with involuntary eagerness. Then she quailed before her husband's stern gaze. "Of course I know it won't make any difference," she said, feebly, and drew her darning-needle through ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ever have a child of mine.' 'Sure, father,' cried Moses, 'you are too severe in this; for heaven will never arraign him for what he thinks, but for what he does. Every man has a thousand vicious thoughts, which arise without his power to suppress. Thinking freely of religion, may be involuntary with this gentleman: so that allowing his sentiments to be wrong, yet as he is purely passive in his assent, he is no more to be blamed for his errors than the governor of a city without walls for the shelter he is obliged to afford an ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... when everybody's abroad!" Sarah Gailey added gloomily, with her involuntary small ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... a disappointment; the thrill, the pallor, the involuntary start, were totally absent; and the first act of the little play was a failure. But Mrs. Easterfield hoped for better things when the curtain rose again. She conducted Mr. Hemphill to the Foxes and let Olive go away with her book; and, ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... apt to reveal the heart's purpose or set of mind. Whatever you are most set upon, whatever your favorite fads or hobbies or inclinations or moods are, they are apt to appear in that involuntary train of thinking. Now this can be cultivated. It can be cultivated chiefly by the cultivation of the controlling purpose of your life, and then by trying to give directions to the undercurrent, and ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... embarrassing position at first for poor Malanya, but, after a while, she learnt to bear it, and grew used to her father-in-law. He, too, grew accustomed to her, and even fond of her, though he scarcely ever spoke to her, and a certain involuntary contempt was perceptible even in his signs of affection to her. Malanya Sergyevna had most to put up with from her sister-in-law. Even during her mother's lifetime, Glafira had succeeded by degrees in getting the whole household into her hands; every one from her father downwards, submitted ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... wished the morrow to come, that she might announce her happiness to the very involuntary and very unconscious accomplice of Marius, the worthy ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... from Pelliter. He looked at MacVeigh, his chief. He made an involuntary movement forward, but Billy was ahead of him. He had flung down his rifle, and in an instant was on his knees at Deane's side, supporting his emaciated figure ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... Even with organs where this is not the case, the action is slackened very materially at times, as in the case of the heart and lungs during sleep. They must continue to work, though more slowly, and the part of the nervous system which carries on their involuntary and mechanical action, has also then a partial relief. But the only rest for the thinking brain is to be found in normal sleep. From the instant when, in the morning, we become conscious of the external world, to the instant late at night, or, it may be, early ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... obedient to the laws." I must say that I found this to be true. The fares of all public conveyances are now fixed, and the attempts which drivers occasionally make to cheat you, seem to be rather the involuntary impulses of old habit than deliberate intentions to do you wrong. You pay what is due, and as your man merely rumbles internally when you turn away, you must be a very timid signorin, indeed, if you ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... were shrivelled up save one, which burst as he gazed. And beside, stern as a Druidess, sat his grandmother in her chair, feeding her eyes with grim satisfaction on the detestable sacrifice. At length the rigidity of Robert's whole being relaxed in an involuntary howl like that of a wild beast, and he turned and rushed from the house in a helpless agony of horror. Where he was going he knew not, only a blind instinct of modesty drove him to hide his passion from the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... sound escaped the organist. He had gazed at Mr. Rush till he seemed possessed of nightmare. So wild, so haggard, so awful, the man's face appeared to him, that the cry, an involuntary one, expressed better than any inquiry could have done, how much disturbed he was. The stranger heard, and seemed to understand, for at the sound he rose quickly, and laid the picture on the counter; not gently; at the same time he ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... her eyes were riveted on the agile and vigorous form of Eau-douce, as he stood erect in the stern of the light boat, governing its movements. As soon, however, as she reached a point where she got a view of the fall, she gave an involuntary but suppressed scream, and covered her eyes. At the next instant, the latter were again free, and the entranced girl stood immovable as a statue, a scarcely breathing observer of all that passed. The two Indians seated themselves passively on a log, hardly ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... raised his weary eyes to that heaven they had searched throughout long nights to read thereon one line of the universal law; they encountered a ray of that sun which he so well knew motionless amid the moving spheres. Remorse entered his heart: an involuntary cry burst from the believer's soul: Eppur si ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... This Involuntary stage of Creation is sometimes called the "Outpouring" of the Divine Energy, just as the Evolutionary state is called the "Indrawing." The extreme pole of the Creative process is considered to be the furthest ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... But involuntary errors of the copyists are insufficient to explain all the bewildering changes which disfigure many of the books of the Sacred Scriptures. The gradual evolution of the Hebrew religion from virtual polytheism to the strictest ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... same moment another stone hurled through the break sent the Voiceless Speech toppling; it lay crumpled in a pathetic feminine sort of heap, subject to ribald laughter, but Penny Evans' involuntary cry of protest was cut off by his partner's hand on his shoulder. "They're Noonan's men, Penny; it's a ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... humanity and civilization are now one big family, with interests, spiritual as well as commercial, interlocking to a degree that no disturbance of any part of the civilized globe can exist without seriously affecting the rest. A disturbance in one quarter must make quite innocent bystanders involuntary victims, to the serious detriment of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... once, but the ideas that enter our minds may be drawn from their receptacle in the memory and worked over again and again. Ideas have to be put side by side, separated, grouped, and arranged into connected series. There is, no doubt, some tendency in the mind toward involuntary assimilation, but it greatly needs culture and training. Many people never reach the thinking stage, never learn to survey and reflect. The tendency of the mind to work over and digest knowledge should receive ample culture in the schools. There is a mental inertia produced ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... would have been in keeping with the spirit of the times. Congress had recently rejected a proposition made to Washington by the Polish Order of Knights of Divine Providence that their order should be officially extended to the United States. The other eliminated provision, forbidding slavery and involuntary servitude in the territory after the year 1800 except as a punishment for crime, is important not only as the first attempted restriction of the slavery system by the National Government, but also as furnishing an interesting comparison with the later sentiment on this unfortunate controversy ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... and the mouth lost its expression of resolute endurance. She found Mr. Lindsay highly cultivated in his tastes, polished in his manners, and possessed of rare intellectual attainments, while the utter absence of egotism and pedantry impressed her with involuntary admiration. Extensive travel and long study had familiarized him with almost every branch of science and department of literature, and the ease and grace with which he imparted some information she desired respecting the European schools of art contrasted favorably ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... they magnetized him, so that he might not turn away from them: entranced him, that he would not break their charm, had he been able: and then the long tufted eyelashes droop so softly over those blazing suns—that I do not in the least wonder at Charles's impolite, perhaps, but still natural involuntary stare, and his mute abstracted admiration: the poor youth is caught at once, a most willing captive—the moth has burnt its wings, and flutters still happily around that pleasant warming radiance. How his heart yearned for something to love, some being ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... she was bound to fulfill all the duties of a mother—duties which, from the time when she insisted on having a "big doll," that she might dress it, not like a fine lady, but "like a baby," had always seemed to her the very sweetest in all the world. Her heart leaped with a sudden ecstasy, involuntary and uncontrollable. ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... kinds of love, social love and natural love; voluntary love and involuntary love. An accomplished and deserving young man loves a woman; he loves her, and deserves to be loved in return; she wishes to love him, and when alone thinks of him; if his name is mentioned, she blushes; if any one says in her presence, "Madame B. used ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... to the point of involuntary swallowing. It does not mean forcibly holding the food in the mouth, counting the chews, or otherwise making a bore of eating. It merely means giving up the habit of forcing food down, and applies to all foods, even to liquid foods, which should ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... saw her hand go to her pocket in a movement which must have been involuntary, for her countenance did not change, and she made the ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... suddenly became riveted upon the clawlike right hand of the hag. An involuntary muscle, following the half-ordained bidding of the brain, had moved perhaps three inches toward her breast. There, it stopped, and slipped ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... here a minute!" called the fat man. As they approached, the aviators with him turned from their work. One, a slender fellow with swarthy skin and a scrubby black mustache, scowled when he looked at John Ross, and as Bob Giddings and Tom Meeks got their eyes on him, they gave an involuntary start, for they recognized in the man the fellow they had seen hanging around the fair-grounds in Yonkers when their machine was ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... supposed that she, having been the slave and companion of Alexis, was a party with him in his treasonable designs; but in the course of the examinations it appeared very fully that whatever of connection with the affair, or participation in it, she may have had, was involuntary and innocent, and the testimony which she gave was of great service in unraveling the mystery of the whole transaction. In the end, the Czar expressed his satisfaction with her conduct in strong terms. He gave her a full pardon for the involuntary aid which she had rendered Alexis in carrying ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... conception which occurs towards the end of the book is the lie in the soul; this is connected with the Platonic and Socratic doctrine that involuntary ignorance is worse than voluntary. The lie in the soul is a true lie, the corruption of the highest truth, the deception of the highest part of the soul, from which he who is deceived has no power of delivering ...
— The Republic • Plato
... in a dilemma. Kenyon's words were so true, so apt, that they brought involuntary tears to her eyes. She could get rid of the lump in her throat only by working herself up into a rage: she could dissipate the tears only by making her eyes flash with anger. The melting mood was not to her taste. She chose the more ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... be restored by medicines and diet, and for this I have to thank my faithful servants! You will learn how constantly I am in the open air when I tell you that to-day for the first time I properly (or improperly, though it was involuntary) resumed my suit to my Muse. I must work, but do not wish it to be known. Nothing can be more tempting (to me at least) than the enjoyment of beautiful Nature at these baths, but nous sommes trop pauvres, et il faut ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... helping them, they flew forward. The wave rose higher and higher behind them—it looked almost as steep as a wall—and an involuntary cry broke from several of the men as the ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... our boots and putting on the slippers we had purchased. This done, we proceeded into the interior of the edifice, with which I confess myself greatly disappointed; as the tout ensemble displays no magnificence, and the impressions on the gazer's mind, partake of none of that involuntary admiration and religious awe, which the sight of an old English cathedral, or the splendid churches of Italy, never fails to produce. One of its greatest defects arises from want of loftiness in the dome, the diameter ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... other hand, the process that has been going on has been quite involuntary and is as ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... ceremony a sumptuous repast, served in the well-known style of Messrs. JENNINGS AND WILLARD, was discussed with universal gout. For the toasts regular and volunteer, and speeches voluntary and involuntary, we must refer the reader to the daily journals 'of that period;' while we simply add, that from soup to Paaes eggs, schnaaps, and pipes, every thing passed off with unwonted hilarity and spirit. May we live to see fifty kindred gatherings ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... now standing in another and far different relation to each other. Though AEnone musingly gazed upon his face and listened to his voice, until the realities of the present seemed to shrink away, and the fancies of other years stole softly back, and, with involuntary action, her hand gently toyed with his curls and parted them one side, as she had once been accustomed to do, it was with no love for him that she did it now. He was only her friend—her brother. He had been kind to her, and perhaps, if necessary, she might even now consent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... States and the people and States in the said territory." Freedom of worship, the usual rights of person and property, and the obligation of private contracts were guaranteed. Religion, morality, and education were to be forever encouraged. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude was to be permitted. In imposing these conditions Congress undoubtedly exceeded its powers under the Articles of Confederation, for that document nowhere confers upon Congress the power to make binding contracts, nor for that matter ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... sense of her own destinies, would have protected her. Flattered as she was to find herself surrounded by admirers, she saw no lover among them. No man here realized the poetical ideal which she and Anna Grossetete had been wont to sketch. When, stirred by the involuntary temptations suggested by the homage she received, she asked herself, "If I had to make a choice, who should it be?" she owned to a preference for Monsieur de Chargeboeuf, a gentleman of good family, whose appearance and manners she ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... was involuntary. Here, under his very hands, was the man who was the cause of their misfortunes—who had committed crimes, no telling how many, and who had perhaps shot one of their comrades. And yet Bud was risking his life to save this creature. Was it fair ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... continuing the strife, the Templar and the unknown knight at length encountered, hand to hand, with all the fury that mortal animosity, joined to rivalry of honour, could inspire. Such was the skill of each in parrying and striking that the spectators broke forth into a unanimous and involuntary shout of delight ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... in the west, mantling the heavens and the earth with a thousand gorgeous dyes, then all was calm, and silent, and magnificent. The late swelling sail hung lifelessly against the mast; the seamen, with folded arms, leaned against the shrouds, lost in that involuntary musing which the sober grandeur of nature commands in the rudest of her children. The vast bosom of the Hudson was like an unruffled mirror, reflecting the golden splendor of the heavens; excepting ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... 1865, Mr. Seward, then Secretary of State of the United States, made proclamation that the amendment had been ratified by twenty-seven of the thirty-six States then composing the Union, and that slavery and involuntary servitude were from that time and forever forth impossible within our limits. Such was then the universal opinion in all America. It was our example that wrought the abolition of slavery in Brazil, and in colonies of Spain and Portugal; it has led to the extermination ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... that I have greatly admired; the confessed imitators give me all the discomfort without the relieving admission of caricature; the parallel instances I have always wanted to rewrite; while, on the other hand, for many totally dissimilar workers I have had quite involuntary admirations. It isn't merely that I don't so clearly see how they are doing it, though that may certainly be a help; it is far more a matter of taste. As a writer I belong to one school and as a reader to another—as a man may like to make optical instruments and collect old china. Swift, Sterne, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... fault was an involuntary one. If an indiscretion on my part reduced me to a situation in which, during some time, I was deprived of the use of reason, so that it was no longer my guide, and allowed me to fall into a very gross mistake, the rest was the work of the cruelty of fate. My heart, overcome by your favours, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... on one side, and on the other, instinctively with a frightened girl's action, she let go Kells's arm and slipped her hand in his. He seemed startled. He bent to her ear, for the din made ordinary talk indistinguishable. That involuntary hand in his evidently had pleased and touched him, even hurt him, for ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... we believe, been the first to appreciate the importance of this element in our states of consciousness; and it is one of his merits that he shows how constant and large an element it is. Further, the relations of voluntary and involuntary movements are elucidated in a way that was not possible to writers unacquainted with the modern doctrine of reflex action. And beyond this, some of the analytical passages that here and ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... appear. Our actions are not the pure and unmingled results of our desires; they are the offspring of many various and mixed conditions. In that which seems to be the most voluntary decision there enters much that is altogether involuntary—more, perhaps, than we generally suppose. And, in like manner, those who are imagined to have exercised an irresponsible and spontaneous influence in determining public policy, and thereby fixing the fate ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... spoken with a sort of involuntary outburst. For a moment Captain Burnett turned his head aside. He felt rebuked by this crude, boyish enthusiasm, which had gone so straight to the heart of things. Why was he, the grown man, so selfish, so impatient, when this ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... efforts of the project had been centered on bringing the intact ship back into the present, chance had triggered controls set by the dead alien commander. A party of four, Ashe, Murdock, Fox, and a technician, had then made an involuntary voyage into space, touching three worlds on which the galactic civilization of the far past was now marked ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... for you; there's rue for you." Strange and involuntary is the law of association! I can never see the garnishing and seasoning herbs of the garden without thinking of the mad words of distraught Ophelia. I fancy, however, that we are all practical enough to remember the savory soups and dishes rendered far more appetizing ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... her representation. No feeling had yet reconciled her for a moment to any act, word, or look that would be a confession to the world: and what she most dreaded in herself was any violent impulse that would make an involuntary confession: it was the will to be silent in every other direction that had thrown the more impetuosity into her confidences toward Deronda, to whom her thought continually turned as a help against herself. Her riding, her hunting, her visiting and receiving of visits, were ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... an involuntary listener, felt the presence of a crisis, the chill of fate impending. But, as ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... lover, and the share he had borne in the mysterious occurrence, that now caused her to lapse from her wonted inaccessibility to impressions of the sort. As the climax of the narrative approached, her interest became deeper, and her absorption more profound. An involuntary shudder passed over her form, and a slight contraction of the nerves of her face was perceptible, when Gerald described to his attentive and shocked auditory, the raising of the arm of the assassin; and her emotion at length assumed ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... that the spirit thus closely affined with my own was enabled, through its innate potencies, or through some agency of which we are ignorant, to impress upon my bodily perceptions its uncontrollable emotions? That this manifestation was made through what physiologists call the unconscious or involuntary action of the mind was proved by the incredulity and surprise of Blanche when I told her of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... proceeded to utilize her naval superiority to appropriate what remaining French colonies most suited her purpose. In this way she possessed herself of Malta (1800), St. Lucia, Tobago (1803), and Mauritius (1810). Then, too, the dependence of Holland upon France, involuntary though it was most of the time, afforded her an opportunity to seize such valuable Dutch colonies as Ceylon (1795), Guiana (1803), and South Africa (1806). The sorry subservience of the Spanish Bourbons to Napoleon gave Great Britain a similar chance ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... softly to sentimentalise of loss. It was mere living nature that it should be so. He would be as always, a beloved wonder of dearness and beauty when his hour came and she would look on and watch and be so cleverly silent and delicately detached from his shy, aloof young moods, his funny, dear involuntary secrets and reserves. But at any moment—day or night—at ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... creates brilliant and novel results.... The value of the products of our imagination depends of course on the number, accuracy, and clearness of our impressions; on our judgment and taste in selecting or rejecting the involuntary combinations, and to a certain extent on our power of voluntarily combining them." As to religion, he says, "There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an omnipotent God." On the contrary, evidence proves that there are ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... within the portieres than someone caught her hand, and she saw Maximilian bending over it. There was an involuntary warmth in his formal courtier grace. The only other occupant of the hacienda sala was Bebello, the greyhound. He sprang up from a Hungarian bear rug, and frisked about her joyfully. Her greeting to him was equally sincere. Quietly releasing her hand, she patted him fondly, and cooed ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... replied that in a matter of so much importance, devolving questions of momentous interest, it would be obligatory on him to consult the Secretary of the Treasury. I said I trusted he would so facilitate affairs that I might at an early hour disembarrass myself of my involuntary prisoners. I returned on board, and the day passed without any answer. The next morning I determined to go at once to headquarters and find out the cause of the delay by ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... below him and then made an involuntary movement to regain the ship's deck. Far below him, or so at least it seemed, were mountains of tumbling green water, huge, relentless, irresistible, rushing on by thousands, to shatter themselves with dreadful force against the ship's side. It seemed simple madness ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... cadence of each separate performer—the human voice in every key which the extremes of youth and age might produce, there was a sensation effected which I cannot well describe—a terrible jarring of the brain. The fact that the involuntary tears rolled down the cheeks of those infants who sat passively on their mothers' shoulders, not appreciating the cause of lament, but merely as listeners, must prove that these sounds are calculated to ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... the sexes is exempt from the despotism of positive institution. Law pretends even to govern the indisciplinable wanderings of passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of reason, and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the involuntary affections of our nature. Love is inevitably consequent upon the perception of loveliness. Love withers under constraint: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear: it is there most pure, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and involuntary movement in navigation, wherein a ship, whilst scudding or sailing before the wind, unexpectedly turns her side to windward. It is generally occasioned by the difficulty of steering her, or by some disaster happening to the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... his heart beat regularly, like that of a man resolved upon a dangerous but inevitable undertaking. One o'clock in the morning struck; then two; and he heard the distant noise of carriage-wheels. An involuntary agitation took possession of him. The carriage drew near and stopped. He heard the sound of the carriage-steps being let down. All was bustle within the house. The servants were running hither and thither, there was a confusion of voices, and the rooms ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... lady immediately got up and dropped a very quick and what was meant to be a very respect-showing courtesy, saying at the same time, with much deference, and with one of her involuntary twitches, "I ' 'maun ' to know!" The sense of the ludicrous and the feeling of pity together, were painfully oppressive. Fleda turned away to the daughter, who came forward and shook hands with a frank look of pleasure at the ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... unusually well preserved, too, for, on being placed in the oratory of La Creche, both canvases had been covered with glass to protect them from candle-smoke. One of the subjects was the Nativity, the other the Adoration of the Magi. In reading with involuntary indignation and disgust of this barbarous instance of iconoclasm, one is reminded of what Thackeray wrote on the same scene and topic nearly thirty years ago. In his Journey from Cornhill to Cairo, speaking of the leading ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... they mounted their ponies and galloped away. I was glad enough to see them go. I knew that my life had hung by a thread while I had been their involuntary host. Only my friendship with the children of old Rain-in-the-Face ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... with an involuntary shiver, and a glance across the wall at a corroded weathercock on the top of the ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... similarly related, where they were sold on the auction block to the highest bidder. But in all candor it cannot but be supposed that in many instances the sale of the planter's own flesh and blood was involuntary. High living, neglect of the comparative relation of resource and expenditure, gambling for big stakes on steamboat and at Northern watering places, brought the evil day with attending results to the "chattel" subject to the baneful caprice ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... develops a muscle; that repeated flexion and extension of the arm, for instance, will strengthen the muscles of that limb, not cause them to lose their contractibility. All muscle fibres are alike in structure, except that some are voluntary, others involuntary, but that difference is simply due to the difference in the source of nerve supply. There is no reason that can be shown why the muscles of the colon should lose their elasticity through exercise in contra-distinction to all the other ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... the stomach. A cow chews her cud once, but the ideas that enter our minds may be drawn from their receptacle in the memory and worked over again and again. Ideas have to be put side by side, separated, grouped, and arranged into connected series. There is, no doubt, some tendency in the mind toward involuntary assimilation, but it greatly needs culture and training. Many people never reach the thinking stage, never learn to survey and reflect. The tendency of the mind to work over and digest knowledge should receive ample culture in the schools. There is a mental inertia ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... to a sensational stimulus differ, however, in many respects. The closure of the eye and the lachrymation are quite involuntary, and so is the disturbance of the heart. Such involuntary responses we know as 'reflex' acts. The motion of the arms to break the shock of falling may also be called reflex, since it occurs too quickly ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... and Weir entered the room. Dartmouth checked an involuntary exclamation and went forward to meet her. She had on a long white gown like that she had worn the morning he had asked her to marry him, but the similarity of dress only served to accentuate the change the intervening time had wrought. It was not merely that she had lost her color ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Slavery has long been the conqueror in the field of Federal politics. In the numerous and great conflicts between the two, Freedom has prevailed against Slavery only twice since the close of the Revolutionary War,—in prohibiting involuntary servitude in the North-west Territory in 1787, and in the abolition of the African Slave-trade in 1808. Her last triumph was forty-seven years ago,—nay, even that victory was really achieved twenty years before at the adoption ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... natural that he should take his tone from her? He would naturally watch to see how she bore herself to him, and, remembering Ullswater, he could not press for more than she seemed ready to give. Yet her reserve had been involuntary; assuredly she was not then moved with a longing to recover what she ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... ago one of the teams which founded the Institute learned enough about the relationship between the conscious, subconscious and involuntary minds to begin practical tests. Along with a few others I was a guinea pig. And ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... laughter! If a person gives audible expression to mirth, gayety, or good-humor, the simplest word to apply to what he does is laugh. But suppose a girl, with slight or insufficient provocation, engages in silly or foolish though perhaps involuntary laughter. We should say she giggles. Suppose a youngster is amused at an inappropriate moment and but partly suppresses his laughter; or suppose he wilfully permits the breaking forth of just enough laughter to indicate disrespect. He snickers. Suppose a person gives a little, light laugh; ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... fellow a heavy blow with my stick, he would not let go his hold. The consequence of the blow was nearly fatal to me, for the fellow with his other hand struck at me with a long glittering knife, and had not I pulled back my horse by an involuntary movement, he would have plunged it into my side—as it was, he cut my trousers and drew blood from my leg. Seeing things come to this pass, the doctor and Silva, who proved himself a brave fellow, began to lay about them, one with his stick and the other with a ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... little lake, and often over short stretches of flowering prairie-land,— while the firm, elastic turf sent up a muffled sound from the tramp of their mettlesome chargers. It was a scene of wild, luxuriant beauty, that might almost (one could fancy) have drawn involuntary homage to its bountiful Creator from the lips even of ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sources, and, on the other, held fast to the alternative common to all the deists, "Either divine or human, either an actual event or a fabrication," without any suspicion of that great intermediate region of religious myth, of the involuntary and pregnant inventions of the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... I will," he said emphatically; though how, or by what means he could not, in his present state of excitement, decide. Arrived at Dunwood, he stepped hastily from the car and walked rapidly down the street until he came opposite Locust Grove. Then, indeed, he paused, while an involuntary shudder ran through his frame as he thought of the many hours he had spent within those walls with one who had proved herself unworthy even of the ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... intense and eager was his involuntary sympathy—as though he himself were breathing fog, and gas, and the foul odors of an empty theatre. He went to the window and threw it open, and sat down there. The stars were no longer quivering white on the black surface of the water, for the moon had risen now in the ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... desirable. But alas! it is not compatible with a Church national, the congregations of which are therefore not gathered nor elected, or with a Church established by law; for law and discipline are mutually destructive of each other, being the same as involuntary ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... territory." Freedom of worship, the usual rights of person and property, and the obligation of private contracts were guaranteed. Religion, morality, and education were to be forever encouraged. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude was to be permitted. In imposing these conditions Congress undoubtedly exceeded its powers under the Articles of Confederation, for that document nowhere confers upon Congress the power to make binding contracts, nor for that matter to legislate in any wise for the ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... the sound of a step on the path. Betty turned, supposing it to be Tom; but it was not Tom, it was Carrington himself who stood before her, his face haggard and drawn. She uttered an involuntary exclamation and shrank away from him. Without a word he stepped to her side and took ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... a picture by Botticelli, before which, in walking up the corridor of the Florence Gallery, I used, day after day, to make an involuntary pause of admiration. The Virgin, seated in a chair of state, but seen only to the knees, sustains her divine Son with one arm; four angels are in attendance, one of whom presents an inkhorn, another holds before her an open book, and she is in the act of writing the Magnificat, "My soul doth ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... relates to the secret history of Matthew's life. They were written to the only creature amongst his kindred in whom he fully confided. This fact transpires more than once, as will be seen anon by the extracts I shall proceed to make; if my influenza—which causes me to shed involuntary tears that give me the appearance of a drivelling idiot, and which jerks me nearly out of my chair every now and then with a convulsive sneeze—will permit me to do anything ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... conscience, in embracing that religion which he believes most acceptable to God. Deplorable, indeed, must be the state of the man who lives in wilful error. For, however an all-wise God may hereafter dispose of those who err in their honesty, and whose error, is involuntary and invincible, surely no road can be right to the wretch who walks in it against conviction. A thorough conviction, then, that I am in the right road to eternal life, if my moral conduct corresponds with my speculative belief, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... the very Place where he had appointed to be upon a Business of Importance. You would often take him for every thing that he is not; for a Fellow quite stupid, for he hears nothing; for a Fool, for he talks to himself, and has an hundred Grimaces and Motions with his Head, which are altogether involuntary; for a proud Man, for he looks full upon you, and takes no notice of your saluting him: The Truth on't is, his Eyes are open, but he makes no use of them, and neither sees you, nor any Man, nor any thing else: He came once from his Country-house, and his own Footman undertook ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... rejection of the laws of his own being, liberty. The most righteous interference was insolence; his likings were his rights, and any devil that could whisper him a desire, might do with him as he pleased. From such a man every true nature shrinks with involuntary recoil, and a sick sense of the inhuman. But I have said more of him already than my history requires, and more than many a reader, partaking himself of his character to an unsuspected degree, will believe; for such men cannot know themselves. He had not yet in the eyes of ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... had stood firm as a rock to all the attacks of title and equipage, of finery and flattery, and which all the treasures of the universe could not have purchased, was yet a little softened by the plain, honest, modest, involuntary, delicate, heroic passion of this poor and humble swain; for whom, in spite of herself, she felt a momentary tenderness and complacence, at which Booth, if he had known it, would perhaps have ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... are disdained, for he is bent upon consigning me to bondage and disgrace. Thou art the redresser of grievances—direct the flight of this arrow into his eyes, but do not let me be punished for the involuntary deed." At this moment Isfendiyar shot an arrow with great force at Rustem, who dexterously eluded its point, and then, in return, instantly lodged the charmed weapon in the eyes of ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... ever of the sincerity and tenderness of my attachment to you, the involuntary hopes which a determination to live has revived are not sufficiently strong to dissipate the cloud that despair has spread over futurity. I have looked at the sea and at my child, hardly daring to own to myself ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... whatever is ordered by him whom the ordinance of God, and of our holy Order hath set over me, I may not only perform without sin, but that the same will redound to my salvation; and yet, in spite of fastings and prayers, do involuntary doubts sometimes creep into my mind, which I hasten to banish, as the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... which the most important were the least immediate. Whenever the Dorians forced a settlement, they dislodged such of the previous inhabitants as refused to succumb. Driven elsewhere to seek a home, the exiles found it often in yet fairer climes, and along more fertile soils. The example of these involuntary migrators became imitated wherever discontent prevailed or population was redundant: and hence, as I have already recorded, first arose those numerous colonies, which along the Asiatic shores, in the Grecian ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eyes, and inspires him with the greater horror from the fact that the love which she had sworn him probably inspired her with the foul act, to save his life and restore him to liberty. He accuses himself with having been the involuntary cause of it, and feels that his gratitude will be a torture; his former love for Gulnare an impossibility. We find Byron's own nature again in the ascetic rule of life to which Conrad has subjected himself, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... true, my pious friend, that there are those who can be absorbed by such small matters? I find these preoccupations to be so frivolous that I was pained at being even the involuntary recipient of them, and I splashed the water with my hands to announce my presence and put a stop to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... year 1800, of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any part of the said states, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the part shall have been ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... a slight involuntary movement; "unless I am mistaken, I have heard mention of you. ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... a single involuntary scream from her lips. And who can wonder! The thing thrust so unexpectedly before her eyes was hideous in the extreme. A great mountain of deformed flesh clothed in dirty, white cotton pajamas! Its face was of the ashen hue of a fresh ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Except for an involuntary hitch of his eyelids, Mr. Lind looked as if he believed perfectly in Douglas's respect for his parental claims. "Quite right," he said, "quite right. You have my best wishes. I have no doubt you will succeed: none. There are, of course, a few affairs to be settled—a few contingencies to be provided ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... were examining their prize, Johnny, having succeeded in stopping his frantic horse, was returning to the place from which he had started on his involuntary ride. As he was about to enter the woods at the base of the mountains, he saw a horse emerge from the trees, and come toward him at a rapid gallop. His bridle was flying loose in the wind, and Johnny at first thought he was running away; but a second glance ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... looking disconsolate and sad. Their hands were ready to labor; their skill was ready to produce all that their trade demanded. They were as honest and industrious as any man in this assembly, but no man hired them. They were in a state of involuntary idleness, and were driving fast to the point of pauperism. I have seen their wives, too, with three or four children about them—one in the cradle, one at the breast. I have seen their countenances, and I have seen the signs ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... pass each other Prue and the preacher fell into an involuntary tango step that delighted the witnesses. When Doctor Brearley had recovered his composure, and before he had adjusted his spectacles, he thought that Prue was ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... disposition, with a thin beard and a weazen face? On the other hand, show me a man with "royal locks," and I will trust his natural impulses in almost every vicissitude. When we see a genuine man, upon whom Nature has declined to set this seal of her approval, we cannot help an involuntary emotion of admiration for the virtuous and persevering energy with which he must have overcome ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... to bind together that which is scattered in the space before us. Everything must be shaded by attention and inattention. Whatever is focused by our attention wins emphasis and irradiates meaning over the course of events. In practical life we discriminate between voluntary and involuntary attention. We call it voluntary if we approach the impressions with an idea in our mind as to what we want to focus our attention on. We carry our personal interest, our own idea into the observation of the objects. Our attention has chosen ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... in raging at something so perfectly unimportant; nor did he enquire too closely into the motives that led him to search ceaselessly among the feminine passers-by and to turn his head to look down every side street. His search for a certain red-haired individual of the despised sex had become involuntary. ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... of travelling described, and the improvement a sensible mind may receive from it: with some hints to the censorious, not to be too severe on errors, the circumstances of which they are ignorant of, occasioned by a remarkable instance of an involuntary ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... is slackened very materially at times, as in the case of the heart and lungs during sleep. They must continue to work, though more slowly, and the part of the nervous system which carries on their involuntary and mechanical action, has also then a partial relief. But the only rest for the thinking brain is to be found in normal sleep. From the instant when, in the morning, we become conscious of the external world, to the instant late at night, or, it may be, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... in a tone of sympathy, but at the moment he saw Hagar looking up toward them from the abbey, and an involuntary but ulterior meaning crept into the words. He loved, and he could detect love, as he thought. He knew by the look that she swept from Hagar to him that she loved the artist. She was agitated now, and in her agitation began to pull off ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... more astutely and productively on this, held hers, and hers answered back, suddenly he saw a new knowledge dawn in their clear depths. She had somehow read him, underneath his evasions. She knew. And before she could turn that involuntary discovery of hers over in her mind and blur it with some of the discretions he was trying to maintain, she burst out, in the extremity of ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... honor able manhood, than the horrible hypothesis that a refined, cultivated, noble Christian woman, a devoted daughter, irreproachable in antecedent life, bearing the fiery ordeal of the past four months with a noble heroism that commands the involuntary admiration of all who have watched her—that such a perfect type of beautiful womanhood as the prisoner presents, could deliberately plan and execute the vile scheme of theft and murder? Gentlemen, she is guilty of but one sin against the peace and order of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... 2: This objection regards the resulting defect which is involuntary: whereas immoderate use of wine is voluntary, and it is in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Cecilia screamed with involuntary horror; a pang like remorse seized her mind, with the apprehension she had some share in this catastrophe, and innocent as she was either of his fall or his crimes, she no sooner heard he was no more, than she forgot he had offended her, and reproached herself with ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... another's will although in very truth I was, I cannot repeat too often that I realised to the full just what it was that I was being compelled to do—a fact which was very far from rendering my situation less distressful!—and every detail of my involuntary actions was projected upon my brain in a series of pictures, whose clear-cut outlines, so long as memory endures, will never fade. Certainly no professional burglar, nor, indeed, any creature in his senses, would have ventured to emulate my surprising rashness. The process of smashing the pane of ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... that the transition from this prosperous condition of our country to the scene which has for some time been distressing us is not chargeable on any unwarrantable views, nor, as I trust, on any involuntary errors in the public councils. Indulging no passions which trespass on the rights or the repose of other nations, it has been the true glory of the United States to cultivate peace by observing justice, and to entitle themselves ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... established basis of English diagnosis. He conceived the nervous mechanism as composed of three systems, arranged in the form of a hierarchy, the higher including the lower, and yet each having a certain degree of independence. The first level represents the type of simplest reflex and involuntary movement and is localized in the gray matter of the spinal cord, medulla, and pons. The second, or middle level, comprises those structures which receive sensory impulses from the cells of the lowest level instead of directly from the periphery or the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... that kept the boy in a state of perpetual motion, and he was disappointed when he found that the better James obeyed his rule, the slower progress he made. The fact that he had to think about the rule, and the effort he made to be still and attentive to one thing, retarded him more than any involuntary motions would have done. The teacher spoke to Mrs. Garfield about her boy's restlessness, and said that he feared he should not be able to make a scholar of James. She was so much grieved to hear this, that ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... she desired me to renew our old amour, but I was worn out with so much venery and slighted her advances. She was burning up with desire by this time, and threw her arms around me in a frenzied embrace, hugging me so tightly that I uttered an involuntary cry of pain. One of her maids rushed in at this and, thinking that I was attempting to force from her mistress the very favor which I had refused her, she sprang at us and tore us apart. Thoroughly enraged ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... sprang from Sweetwater, and were evidently involuntary. Dr. Heath paid no notice, but Mr. Gryce, in shifting his hands on his cane top, gave them a sidelong look which was not without a hint of fresh interest in a case concerning which he had believed himself to ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... at that time rather handsome, and conciliated general good will by his engaging manners,—was viewed by his father with an anxiety of love that sometimes became almost painful to witness. But this natural self-surrender to a first involuntary emotion Lord Altamont did not suffer to usurp any such lengthened expression as might too painfully have reminded me of being "one too many." One solitary half minute being paid down as a tribute to the sanctities of the case, his next care was to withdraw me, the stranger, from any oppressive ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... ordinary sleep. The brain, as you know, is a complicated organ, made up internally of nerve masses, or ganglia, of which the central and underlying masses are connected with the automatic functions and involuntary actions of the body (such as the action of the heart, lungs, stomach, bowels, etc.), while the investing surface shows a system of complicated convolutions rich in gray matter, thickly sown with microscopic cells, in which the nerve ends terminate. At the base of ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... that he had sinned against the deity. Within this circle of ideas the penitential psalms of Babylonia move. They do not pass wholly outside of the general Semitic view that sin is a 'missing of the mark,'—a failure, whether voluntary or involuntary, to comply with what was demanded by the deity under whose protection one stood. But one became conscious of having 'missed the mark' only when evil in some form—disease, ill luck, deluge, drought, defeat, destruction, storms, pecuniary losses, family discords, the death of dear ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... kissed my wrist one evening between the glove and the cuff. I said to myself, 'Ah! yes, he loves me—he loves me;' nevertheless, I was afraid of being assured of it. So charming was your reserve, that I felt myself the object, as it were, of an involuntary ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... than his predecessor. It is not our intention to characterise his excellences as a composer. The millions of mankind that he has delighted in one form or other, according to their opportunities and capacities, have spoken his best panegyric in the involuntary accents of open and enthusiastic admiration; and his name will for ever be sweet in the ear of every one who has music in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... card the girl watched her—her face was full of suspicion; and when she read the name, an involuntary 'Oh' escaped from her, and Mildred knew that Ralph had spoken of her. 'Probably,' she thought, 'she has been his mistress. She wouldn't be here nursing, if she ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... to read this opening paragraph without an involuntary feeling of religious awe; it breathes the very savor of Gospel antiquity. The sincerity of the author heightens his power of language. The band which to his eyes was a mere party of adventurers gone forth to seek their fortune beyond seas appears to the reader as the germ of a great nation wafted ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Conservatism still cumber themselves with the clumsy armor of a bygone age. On whirls the restless globe through unsounded time, with its cities and its silences, its births and funerals, half light, half shade, but never wholly dark, and sure to swing round into the happy morning at last. With an involuntary smile, one sees Mr. Calhoun letting slip his pack-thread cable with a crooked pin at the end of it to anchor South Carolina upon the bank and shoal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... dropped his sledge, turned sideways as he stooped to help Connie Myers, his face came into view—and, with an involuntary start, Jimmie Dale crouched farther back against the wall, as he stared at the other. It was Hagan! Mrs. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Madeira—P. had just finished dinner—and most undeniable claret, the past was soon buried in the present; and by the time I had knocked the first ash off one of his best "prensados," the stray luggage returned from the involuntary trip it had made on its own account. What a goodly cheery thing is hospitality, when it flows pure from a warm heart; nor does it lose aught in my estimation when viewed through the medium of a first-rate cellar ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Confederate Government except civil offices merely ministerial, or military office below the rank of colonel, shall vote for or be a member of the Legislature, or shall vote for or be elected governor. Second, Involuntary servitude shall be forever prohibited, and the freedom of all persons in the State guaranteed. Third, No debt, State or Confederate, created in aid of the rebellion shall ever be paid. In the event of a ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... ways. What is abnormal is to make many mistakes, to be always making them, in spite of the most persevering efforts to be exact. Probably this phenomenon is connected with weakness of the attention and excessive activity of the involuntary (or subconscious) imagination which the will of the patient, lacking strength and stability, is unable sufficiently to control. The involuntary imagination intrudes upon intellectual operations only to vitiate them; its part is to fill up the gaps of memory by conjecture, to magnify ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... two weeks after Miss Ainslie's involuntary flight from Red Wing that Nimbus, when he arose one morning, found a large pine board hung across his gateway. It was perhaps six feet long and some eighteen or twenty inches wide in the widest part, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... system adopted by their forefathers. A government retains its sway over a great number of citizens, far less by the voluntary and rational consent of the multitude, than by that instinctive and, to a certain extent, involuntary agreement, which results from similarity of feelings and resemblances of opinion. I will never admit that men constitute a social body, simply because they obey the same head and the same laws. Society ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... this involuntary embrace, Alric stepped back and opened his eyes wide with surprise, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... with a great war the question of our corn supply, so largely derived from abroad, will become a weighty matter. Happy for us that we have wheat-growing colonies! As persons, each of us, in our voluntary or involuntary struggle for money, is really striving for those little grains of wheat that lie so lightly in the palm of the hand. Corn is coin and coin is corn, and whether it be a labourer in the field, who no sooner receives his weekly wage than he exchanges ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... was facing him now, her head erect, her voice steady. Her dark, cavernous eyes were upon him; he experienced an odd, indescribable sensation,—as of shrinking,—and without being fully aware of what he was doing, replaced his hat upon the table, an act which signified involuntary surrender on his part. ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... himself for the nonce), as he monotonously recited his contradictory anecdotes of the "sullybrutted Dane," varied by times with an irrelative hiccough of his own, was no inapt type of the ordinary biographers of Swift. The skill with which long practice had enabled our cicerone to turn these involuntary hitches of his discourse into rhetorical flourishes, and well-nigh to make them seem a new kind of conjunction, would have been invaluable to the Dean's old servant Patrick, but in that sad presence his grotesqueness was as shocking as the clown in one of Shakespeare's tragedies to Chateaubriand. ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... ominous air that was skirling up on the hillside; and Mackenzie's face, as he heard it, grew wroth. "That teffle of a piper John!" he said with an involuntary stamp of his foot. "What for will he be playing Cha ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... came to light was a necklace of diamond solitaires. "These three stars of the first magnitude," said she, contemplating the centre stones, "are the involuntary contribution of the Princess Garampi I borrowed her bracelet for a model, giving my word that it should not pass from my hands. Nor has it done so, for I have kept her brilliants and returned her—mine. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... of the king, however harmless in itself, had in it for her something dismal and dreadful. It was the involuntary, instinctive touch of the headsman, who examines the neck of his victim, and searches on it for the place where he will make the stroke. Thus had Anne Boleyn once put her tender white hands about her ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... "unites, independently of the will, former images and ideas, and thus creates brilliant and novel results.... The value of the products of our imagination depends of course on the number, accuracy, and clearness of our impressions; on our judgment and taste in selecting or rejecting the involuntary combinations, and to a certain extent on our power of voluntarily combining them." As to religion, he says, "There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... of this universal inexperience among city dwellers of real life and real people is that it is really entirely enforced and involuntary. At heart they crave knowledge of real life and sympathy with their fellow-men as starving men do food. In Hillsboro we explain to ourselves the enormous amount of novel-reading and play-going in the great cities as due ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... brought Peter to the block." He adds: "We hesitate which to employ, the singular or the plural verb; that is to say, has or have. The meaning must be our guide. If we mean, that the act has been done by the Tyrant himself, and that the spy has been a mere involuntary agent, then we ought to use the singular; but if we believe that the spy has been a co-operator, an associate, an accomplice, then we must use the plural verb." Ay, truly; but must we not also, in the latter case, use and, and not with? After some ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... stiffening tastes is applicable to the earlier rather than the later middle life. We should say that the tastes if they stiffen at the one period limber at the other; their forbidding rigidity is succeeded by an acquiescent suppleness. One is aware of an involuntary hospitality toward a good many authors whom one would once have turned destitute from the door, or with a dole of Organized Charity meal-tickets at the best. But in that maturer time one hesitates, and possibly ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... time to time, he jotted down a name or date. Then, suddenly, as she turned a page, he gave an involuntary start. He was looking at a pictured face, evidently cut from ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... she said, giving to the exclamation the grace of an involuntary avowal, "when a woman attaches herself for life, think you she calculates? It is not question of refusal (how could I refuse you anything?), but the idea of what you may think of me if I speak. I would willingly ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... that he would not break their charm, had he been able: and then the long tufted eyelashes droop so softly over those blazing suns—that I do not in the least wonder at Charles's impolite, perhaps, but still natural involuntary stare, and his mute abstracted admiration: the poor youth is caught at once, a most willing captive—the moth has burnt its wings, and flutters still happily around that pleasant warming radiance. How his heart yearned for something to love, some being worthy of his own most pure affections: ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... morning of their departure they went to take leave of the sheikh, whom they found in his garden. He gave them a letter to the King of England, and a list of requests, and expressed himself very kindly. At parting he offered his hand, which excited an involuntary exclamation ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... moral habits consist in gradual impressions made in the molecules of the nerve-tissues—that these impressions come at length to determine our acts without the necessity of either purpose or conscious recognition, and that only when right action becomes thus involuntary can character strictly be said to exist.[210] But such theories certainly do not harmonize with the known facts of Christian conversion already alluded to. We do not refuse to recognize a certain degree of truth hidden in these speculations. We are ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... moment. No matter how he began a conversation, he habitually wound up by speaking of himself, and he did it in a charming, soft, confidential, almost involuntary way. ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... all admit (confess) the things which are offences against society. But in the case of most errors for this reason chiefly they are induced to confess them, because they imagine that there is something involuntary in them as in timidity and compassion; and if a man confess that he is in any respect intemperate, he alleges love (or passion) as an excuse for what is involuntary. But men do not imagine injustice ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... been so excited that he finds it necessary to wipe his forehead on his shirt-sleeve. Even while he whistles his impetuosity away with the national anthem, some involuntary shakings of his head and heavings of his chest still linger behind, not to mention an occasional hasty adjustment with both hands of his open shirt-collar, as if it were scarcely open enough to prevent his being troubled by a choking sensation. In short, Allan Woodcourt has not much ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... answer Agnes' letters when he first left home, she did not know where he was until a short time before, when she wrote apprising him of grandpa's death and Maddy's severe illness. This brought him, while Maddy's involuntary outburst when she met him in the graveyard, changed the whole current of his intentions. Let what would come, Maddy Clyde should be his wife and as such he watched over her, nursing her back to life, and by his manner effectually ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... kept you waiting for your supper, sir," replied Christy, falling in with the humor of his involuntary guest. "But that was the fault of my steward, who ought to have informed me that I was to have the pleasure of ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... able-bodied vagrant, it is well known that the old English laws had no mercy. When wages are low, and population has outgrown the work which can be provided for it, idleness may be involuntary and innocent; at a time when all industrious men could maintain themselves in comfort and prosperity, "when a fair day's wages for a fair day's work" was really and truly the law of the land, it was presumed that if strong capable men preferred to wander ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... taken up with ideas of unknown evil powers, of demons and spirits, and of being persecuted and possessed by the devil. Simultaneously they complain about all sorts of bodily sensations. In isolated cases one may observe convulsive twitchings of the voluntary and involuntary musculature. Finally severe motor excitements set in. The patient becomes noisy, screams, runs aimlessly about, destroys and ruins everything that comes his way. With this the disease has reached its height. At this stage ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... and Aurora dropped her outstretched arms, turned away with an involuntary, tremulous sigh, and after two or three hours of ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... in a moment of involuntary enthusiasm, "What a spectacle, Uncle! Do you not admire these variegated shades of lava, which run through a whole series of colors, from reddish brown to pale yellow—by the most insensible degrees? And these crystals, they appear ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... had been maintaining a desultory fire, fled up the sound, after setting fire to one schooner which had become hopelessly crippled in the battle. She blazed away far on into the night, and finally, when the flames reached her magazine, blew up with a tremendous report, seeming like a final involuntary salute paid by the defeated enemy to the prowess of the Union arms. When quiet finally settled down upon the scene, and Gen. Burnside and Commander Goldsborough counted up their gains, they found that six forts, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... up all the tea at once in one draught. This performance was invariably followed by a slight shudder and a low, involuntary "br-r-r-r," which was not covered by the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Lady Mary blandly curious. Pauline alone seemed as though by instinct to realize what lay beneath their hostess's words. Her face seemed suddenly to grow tense. She shrank back—a slight, involuntary movement, but significant enough under ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "Before tasting the water both man and wife had to drink first, and as this scene was repeated on innumerable occasions, it was delightful to observe the comic desperation with which the people took their involuntary 'water cure.'"[106] ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... pale blue silk. His thin, pointed face was deeply lined about the mouth and penciled with a thin black mustache. His eyes showed white all around the irises, and now and then his mouth would twitch in an involuntary grimace. Andray Dunnan; Trask wondered briefly how soon he would have to look at him from twenty-five meters over the sights of a pistol. The face of the slightly taller man who stood at his shoulder was paper-white, expressionless, with a black beard. His name was Nevil ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... But while paying the involuntary tribute of swift anger towards these astute tactics of his departmental chief, Caldew realized with satisfaction that he was in the possession of a piece of valuable information ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... An involuntary movement had passed through his body, an impulse to turn off into one of the side paths. But he conquered himself at once, and looked ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... mud, and their mouths with straw, while others lie extended in a puddle of water; here one man lying with his foot tied to his neck, another with a pot of fire on his breast, a third enveloped in a network of ropes; when, besides these self-inflicted torments, you think of the frightful amount of involuntary suffering and wretchedness arising from the exhaustion of toilsome pilgrimages, the cravings of famine, and the scourgings of pestilence; when you think of the day of the high festival—how the horrid king is dragged forth from ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry, and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.—Hazlitt. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... event—and especially on their own interests. Few words passed in conversation—here and there an exclamation wrung from grief was answered by some neighbouring grief—a word every quarter of an hour —sombre and haggard eyes—movements quite involuntary of the hands— immobility of all other parts of the body. Those who already looked upon the event as favourable in vain exaggerated their gravity so as to make it resemble chagrin and severity; the veil over their faces was transparent and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... head's solid!" sang out Charlie Brown heartily. "Now for it! Put your blankets over your heads, woman-fashion, and travel like a blue streak; and—Jupiter Pluvius! how cold this rain is!" His words ended in an involuntary chatter. ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... habit of "seeing off" some unaccompanied tourist known to have well-filled pockets. So you can suppose the rest. If I have a criticism for Mrs. LOWNDES' otherwise admirable handling of the affair it is that she depends too much on the involuntary eavesdropper; before long, indeed, I was forced to conclude either that Lily possessed a miraculous sense of overhearing, or that the acoustic properties of the lonely house rendered it conspicuously unsuited for the maturing of felonious little plans. But this is a trifle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... was not extra large, and it merely allowed him to keep his head and shoulders out of water. Fortunately the night was not cold, so he suffered little from his involuntary bath. But he realized the seriousness of his situation ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... laughing heartily at their distress, replied, "Your pardon is granted, for the insult was involuntary, though deserved, as I was an impertinent intruder on your privacy; make yourselves easy, and sit down; but you must each of you relate to me your adventures, or some story that you have heard." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
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