"Involuntary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... involuntary outburst of a traveled visitor, will be echoed by thousands who feel the magic of what the master artists and architects of America have done here in celebration of the Panama Canal. I put the "artists" first, ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... 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
... lady immediately got up and dropped a very quick and what was meant to be a very respect-shewing curtsey, 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 sight ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... 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
... involuntary tears that followed this communication, as speculators would pronounce them unreasonable. It now became necessary for Frances to visit the city to make arrangements, and take a last leave of her pleasant mansion. In justice, it must be said, ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... 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
... an involuntary cry, or what would have been a cry, had she not been so effectually gagged. The knowledge that she lay helpless, unable to protect herself from attack, frightened her. She turned her head, straining her eyes into the semi-darkness. ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... involuntary smile crossed Miss Axtell's face at the memory of her first sight of Mr. McKey. I watched her now. She changed the style of her narration, taking it on quickly, in nervous periods, with electric pauses, which she did ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • 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. |
