"Undesigned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... probably not undesigned; but if we suppose them to have been thrown off without conscious notice of their tendencies, then, according to the superstition of the ancient Grecians, they would have been regarded as prefiguring words, prompted by the secret genius that accompanies every man, such ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Justice, be to lieges kind * For Justice ever guides thy generous mind; And, oh, who blamest love to him inclining! * Are lovers blamed for laches undesigned? By Him who gave thee rule, deign spare my life * For rule on earth He hath ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... concentrated on Jeanne, who was to them as their love itself. Sometimes when the coverlet was being pulled up, or the child's head was being raised, their hands met and rested together in sweet forgetfulness. This undesigned, stealthy caress was the only one ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... question in the present case," he said. "Only one alternative is possible: undesigned detection, supported by ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... His literature was Cowfold, the people, the animals, the inanimate objects of which it was made up, and his criticism on these was often just. He never could be persuaded to enter either church or chapel. Of the arguments for Christianity, of the undesigned coincidences in the Bible, of the evidence from prophecy, of the metaphysical necessity for an incarnation and atonement, he knew nothing, and it was a marvel to all respectable young persons how Fitchew, whose ignorance would ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... "My sisters saw us, you see. Well, of course they entertained an increased respect for me, which was all right, and a decreased respect for the governess, which was also all right. We met in the hour allotted to French lessons—by an undesigned ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... the two great religious revolutions I have mentioned has been more truly characterised by the spirit of this beautiful and striking text, but perhaps some of your readers will agree with me in thinking that the coincidence is at least a note-worthy one; and not the less so, because it was probably undesigned. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... importance than we allow should be attributed to the 'Internal evidence of Readings and Documents,' might have saved him from error upon a piece of composition which characteristically proclaimed its own origin. At all events, after this undesigned support, I am the less inclined to retire from our ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... sometimes led into mistakes by this undistinguishing benevolence; for she imagined that all which appeared wrong would prove right, if properly understood; that there must be some good reason for every thing that seemed to be bad; that every instance of unkindness or insolence was undesigned; and that every quarrel was only a misunderstanding. Possessed by this good-natured kind of wrong-headedness, she frequently did the most provoking, by way of doing ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... immediate successor of Hyginus, so that he wrote exactly at the time when, as appears from other evidences, the transition from presbytery to prelacy actually occurred. His words furnish a very strong, but an undesigned, attestation to the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... candour of Hazlewood, who persists in declaring, that with whatever intentions the person by whom he was wounded approached our party, he is convinced the gun went off in the struggle by accident, and that the injury he received was undesigned. The groom, on the other hand, maintains that the piece was wrenched out of Hazlewood's hands, and deliberately pointed at his body, and Lucy inclines to the same opinion—I do not suspect them of wilful exaggeration, yet such is the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... something red is tied round children's wrists as a safeguard against evil spirits. By the aid of comparative folk-lore it is interesting, as in this case, to trace the same notion in different countries, although it is by no means possible to account for such undesigned resemblance. The common ash (Fraxinus excelsior), too, is a lightning plant, and, according ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... destruction of their native city. Since then they had been driven to and fro at the mercy of the winds and waves, exposed to every conceivable degree of hardship and danger. Their landing finally in the dominions of Latinus in Italy, was not, they confessed, wholly undesigned, for Latium had been divinely indicated to them, on their way, as the place destined by the decrees of heaven for their final home. Following these indications, they had sought the shores of Italy and the ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... peculiar to himself, much after the haranguing way; he was no stranger to the rules of art, and knew well how to make his matter subservient to the subject he handled. His diction and language was easy and fluent, void of all affectation and bombast, and has a kind of undesigned negligent elegance which arrests the reader's attention. Considering the time he lived in, it might be said, that he carried the orator's prize from his contemporaries in Scotland, and was not at that time inferior ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... This gradual and undesigned Arabising of the country would lead to oppression of the Christians, to the "squeezing" of wealthy natives, and occasionally to the institution of humiliating distinctions of dress and other vexations, and even to the spoiling of Coptic churches. Then sometimes the Copts, as the Egyptian Christians ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... record the effect of an actual though undesigned experiment, which I prosecuted for upwards of twelve years among you. For the greater part of that time I could expatiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villany of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny; in a word, upon all those deformities of character ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... Geneva. It was of Tronchin Voltaire said, "He is a great physician, he knows the mind," and he must have formed a high idea of the Theory of Moral Sentiments to send his son so far to attend the lectures of its author. It was this young man who, on his way back from Glasgow, played a certain undesigned part in originating the famous quarrel between Rousseau and Hume, of which we shall have more to hear anon. He was living with Professor Rouet of Glasgow, at Miss Elliot's lodging-house in London, when Hume brought ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... forth (as a branch) thought in my behalf." (The English perfect best represents this aorist.) The phrase is unmistakably pictorial, poetical. If I read it aright, it is touched with a smile of gentle pleasantry; the warm heart comes out in a not undesigned ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... enough to violate this, as well as every other rule of grammar, yet no printer ever commits blunders of this sort. Consequently, the few erroneous examples which will be exhibited for correction under it, will not be undesigned mistakes. Among the errors of books, we do not find the printing of the words I and O in small characters; but the confounding of O with the other interjection oh, is not uncommon even among grammarians. The latter has no concern with this rule, nor is it equivalent to the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... wrongs his thoughts—they more himself upbraid Than her—though undesigned—the wretch he made; But speechless all, deep, dark, and unexprest, They bleed within that silent cell—his breast. Still onward, fair the breeze, nor rough the surge, The blue waves sport around the stern they urge; ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... evidently written by a person versed in astronomy and clever at introducing probable circumstances and undesigned coincidences.[700] It first appeared in a newspaper. It makes Sir J. Herschel discover men, animals, etc. in the moon, of which much detail is given. There seems to have been a French edition, the original, and English editions ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... made a signal to some of his comrades, who, in obedience to it, came up near him in a careless and apparently undesigned manner. Hargo then, by a sudden and unexpected movement, pulled the bow and arrow out of Hilbert's hand, and passed them instantly behind him to another sailor, who passed them to another, each standing in such a position as to conceal what they did entirely from Hilbert's sight. The ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... vain I no wish's sway Rebuilds the vanished yesterday; For plated wares of Sheffield stamp We gave the old Aladdin's lamp; 'Tis we are changed; ah, whither went 51 That undesigned abandonment, That wise, unquestioning content, Which could erect its microcosm Out of a weed's neglected blossom, Could call up Arthur and his peers By a low moss's clump of spears, Or, in its shingle trireme launched, Where Charles in some green inlet-branched, Could venture ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... what kind of imperfection is that which is involved in the idea of God creating a common progenitor, lying at the base of Darwin's series of evolution, possessing all the causes of all effects in nature, without designing those effects? What wonderful undesigned results! ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... novels announced for immediate publication is The Man in the Platinum Mask by Samson Wolf (Black and Crosswell). By a curious and wholly undesigned coincidence the name of the hero is ATTILA, while a further touch of actuality is lent to the romance by the fact that the author's aunt's first husband fought in the Italian War ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... understood that sudden pause—the undesigned allusion to Carmina's guiltless knowledge of her feeling towards Ovid. By unexpressed consent, on either side, they still preserved their former relations as if Mrs. Gallilee had not spoken. Miss Minerva looked at Carmina sadly ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... full-proportioned story under the warmth of the feeling it had inspired its writer with; its very incidents created a necessity at first not seen; and it was carried to a close only contemplated after a full half of it had been written. Yet, from the opening of the tale to that undesigned ending,—from the image of little Nell asleep amid the quaint grotesque figures of the old curiosity warehouse to that other final sleep she takes among the grim forms and carvings of the old church aisle,—the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... scriptures became necessary on the part of heathen opponents. The growingly critical character of Porphyry's statements, though partly attributable to the literary culture of his mind, is a slight undesigned evidence corroborative of the authoritative nature already attributed to the scriptures in doctrine and truthfulness. Porphyry seems accordingly to have directed his critical powers to show such traces of mistakes and ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... middle of his face, by way of bandage to his nose. He received his visitors with the most ridiculous solemnity, being still a stranger to the purport of their errand; but soon as the Westphalian declared they were come in consequence of his billet, in order to ask pardon for the undesigned offence they had given, his features retrieved their natural vivacity, and he professed himself perfectly satisfied with their polite acknowledgment. Then they condoled him upon the evil plight of his nose, and seeing some marks upon his shirt, asked with seeming concern, if he had ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... as an author, required some ornament for his person, he chose, upon that occasion, to decorate himself with a handsome waistcoat, and a gold-laced hat. The late Mr. Topham Beauclerc, who had a great deal of that humour, which pleases the more for seeming undesigned, used to give a pleasant description of this green-room finery, as related by the author himself; "But," said Johnson, with great gravity, "I soon laid aside my gold-laced hat, lest it should make me proud." The amount of the three benefit nights for the tragedy of Irene, it is ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... method of narration he had adopted, he has enriched it with an art and genius distinctly his own. In another tale,—which is provincial if not historical, and which was one of his earlier pieces,—"Roger Malvin's Burial," there is also a noticeable beginning in his art, for in this he uses undesigned coincidence to give that impression of a guided accomplishment of fate, which is so dramatically effective to the moral sense. From these few instances it will be observed that Hawthorne reached artistic consciousness, and a mastery of aim and method, slowly and along no one line of development; ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... of a clear right. If injury be produced by the exercise of a right, it would seem strange that it should be repaired, as if it had been the effect of a wrongful act. The general rule of law certainly is, that, in the proper and prudent exercise of his own right, no one is answerable for undesigned injuries. It may be said that the right is a qualified right; that it is a right to do certain acts of force at the risk of turning out to be wrong-doers, and of being made answerable for all damages. But such an argument ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... when, the Night before a Battle, desirous of some sincere Mark of the Esteem of his Legions for him, he is described by Tacitus listening in a Disguise to the Discourse of a Soldier, and wrapt up in the Fruition of his Glory, whilst with an undesigned Sincerity they praised his noble and majestick Mien, his Affability, his Valour, Conduct, and Success in War. How must a Man have his Heart full-blown with Joy in such an Article of Glory as this? ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele |
