"Inadvertent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail, That crawls at evening in the public path; But he that has humanity, forewarned, Will tread aside, ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... without sparing over what looked at first unspotted light. And in all the ways of it the lovely thing is more like the spring frock of some prudent little maid of fourteen, than a flower;—frock with some little spotty pattern on it to keep it from showing an unintended and inadvertent spot,—if Fate should ever inflict such a thing! Undeveloped, thinks Mr. Darwin,—the poor {129} short-coming, ill-blanched thorn blossom—going to be a Rose, some day soon; and, what next?—who ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... inconsistent with the regard we owe to objects of real dignity and excellence. I answer, the practice fairly managed can never be dangerous; men may be dishonest in obtruding circumstances foreign to the object, and we may be inadvertent in allowing those circumstances to impose upon us: but the sense of ridicule always judges right. The Socrates of Aristophanes is as truly ridiculous a character as ever was drawn: —true; but it is not the character of Socrates, the divine moralist ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... did he pursue his object, that, before he was aware of what he was saying, he had revealed the secret of his heart. She received his remarks in respectful silence, but gave no indication by which he could judge whether the inadvertent disclosure was pleasing or otherwise, except what might be gathered from her increased cordiality on other subjects, to which she now adroitly turned the conversation. This was just enough to encourage him, and at the same time leave him in ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... said. 'I doubt not your valor. It was but in forgetfulness that I spoke. I meant it not for a taunt.' And in truth she had not so meant it. It was but the inadvertent expression of a feeling which the sight of his feeble and boyish figure unwittingly made upon her—an incapacity to connect deeds of valor with apparent physical weakness. But this very inability to judge of his true nature by ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and lunch with me?' said Mr. Tom (he had recovered himself after the inadvertent blush). 'We can walk ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... had just the same 'naivete', but in Falstaff it was the 'naivete' of conscious humour. In Pepys it was quite different, for Pepys's 'naivete' was the inoffensive vanity of a man who loved to see himself in the glass. Falstaff had a sense, too, of inadvertent humour, but it was questionable whether Pepys could have had any sense of humour at all, and yet permitted himself to be so delightful. There was probably, however, more involuntary humour in Pepys's Diary than there was in any other book extant. When ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys |
