"Unerring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... encountering some desperate characters abroad. At every turn and angle, even where a deviation from the direct course might have been least expected, and could not possibly be seen until he was close upon it, he guided the bridle with an unerring hand, and kept the middle of the road. Thus he sped onward, raising himself in the stirrups, leaning his body forward until it almost touched the horse's neck, and flourishing his heavy whip above his head with the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... "raps," when these are genuine, but it was far louder and more rapid and decided than the usual seance rap. There was no hesitation, no gathering up of force. Any amount of vitality was evidently present, and the intelligence, from whatever source, was unerring. The Countess and I were the only two persons who held the alphabet and pointed, and when she held it the mediums could not have seen the letters from their position at the table with regard to hers. Yet the letters were banged out (I can use no other expression) ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... certain Famous Hunter, whose heart took pride in horns and heads and hides—the trophies won by his unerring rifle in all four corners of earth—found his way at last to the tumbled wilderness that lies about the headwaters of the Quah Davic, it was naturally one of the great New Brunswick moose that he was ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... give us a sound system of morals. And, indeed, it is remarkable, that so many writers, setting out from so many different premises, yet meet all in the same conclusions. This looks as if they were guided unconsciously, by the unerring-hand ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... picture, and repeat the oft-repeated words, and join in the old, old Hallelujahs of the shepherds with something of the zest and freshness of a first love. The story is so unlike all others, and touches with such unerring potency chords in the human soul which call it to a higher and nobler life, that, no matter who gazes upon the Babe of Bethlehem, he feels a kinship with all the world in hailing the Desire of all Nations. The manger, the silent companions of the stable, ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... organism, and the determination, during life, of morbid changes in them; anatomical and histological post-mortem investigations have supplied physicians with a clear basis upon which to rest the classification, of diseases, and with unerring tests of the accuracy ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... most populous town, I have been received with the utmost enthusiasm: in fact, in no part of England have I ever been more warmly greeted, or received more unequivocal marks of respect from all ranks and classes. I announce this fact with much satisfaction, as it is an unerring mark of the feelings with which the measures which I have adopted for the public good have been regarded by the great majority of the inhabitants of the two provinces." It is quite clear, however, that Lord Durham had not conciliated the great body of the people. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... they can load," cried Enoch, darting past me and leading a way on the open border of the swale, with long, unerring leaps from one raised point to another. The Indians raced beside him, crouching almost to a level with ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... not found westward of the mountains, they make a light spear of a reed, similar to that of which the natives of the southern islands form their arrows. These they use for distant combat, and not only carry in numbers, but throw with the boomerang to a great distance and with unerring precision, making them to all intents and purposes as efficient as the bow and arrow. They have a ponderous spear for close fight, and others of different sizes for the chase. With regard to their laws, I believe they are universally the same all over the known parts of ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... the dean of organized professional Base Ball, his wise counsel, his unerring judgment, his fighting qualities and withal his eminent fairness and integrity in all matters pertaining to the welfare of the national game will ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... of that sea of blackness, like the plummet of an engineer, like the lead of a storm-tossed sailor, shot a drop of rain. Down it came with unerring swiftness, right through one of the spectacled gentleman's improvised "sky-lights" in the roof, and splashed in the Cuban's face. Half-dreaming still, he sleepily rolled over out of range; he had been awakened before in that way, ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... what would be the course around Keweena Point, besides giving what is perhaps the most interesting part of the whole trip. So narrow is the opening of the river that no trace of it is to be seen till we are close upon it; yet swift as the dove from far Palmyra flying, unerring as an arrow from the bow, the great ship sweeps across the lake to exactly the right spot. The river is hardly the width of a canal, yet curves as no canal would ever curve, so that the captain in giving orders has to watch both ends of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... whatever it was, with the old woman at the Towers, whom Lady Gwen had nigh lost her wits about—so folks said. "But tha knowas what o'or Gwen be!" said Mrs. Keziah. Gwen's reputation with all the countryside was that of waywardness and wilfulness carried to excess, but always with an unerring nobility of object. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... discourse. Their subjects are, generally on friendship and benevolence, on order and economy; sometimes upon the visible operations of nature, or ancient traditions; upon the bounds and limits of virtue; upon the unerring rules of reason, or upon some determinations to be taken at the next great assembly: and often upon the various excellences of poetry. I may add, without vanity, that my presence often gave them sufficient matter for discourse, because ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... spectacle. But it was only for a moment! Recalling his manhood and her weakness, he stopped, and bracing his foot against a stone, with a graceful flourish of his lasso around his head, threw it in the air. It uncoiled slowly, sped forward with unerring precision, and missed! With the single cry of "Saved!" the fair stranger sank fainting in his arms! He held her closely until the color came back to her pale face. Then he quietly disentangled the lasso from ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... a magical token, A talisman, ever resistless and true, A charm that is never evaded or broken, A witchery certain the heart to subdue, 'T is this; and his armory never has furnished So keen and unerring, or polished a dart; Let beauty direct it, so polished and burnished, And oh! it is certain of touching the heart: The bright little needle, the swift-flying needle, The needle directed by ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... they be deficient in the external forms of politeness, they are infinitely more so in that politeness which may be called mental. The simple and unerring rule of never preferring one's self, is to them more difficult of comprehension than the most difficult problem in Euclid: in small things as well as great, their own interest, their own gratification, is their leading principle; and the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... seized the sword of fame, Young Laurens graced a father's patriot name; Moultrie and Sumter lead their banded powers, Morgan in front of his bold riflers towers, His host of keen-eyed marksmen, skill'd to pour Their slugs unerring from the twisted bore. No sword, no bayonet they learn to wield, They gall the flank, they skirt the battling field, Cull out the distant foe in full horse speed, Couch the long tube and eye the silver bead, Turn as he turns, dismiss the whizzing lead, And ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... were young, we understood all sweet things; and we could detect the sweets of a fairy story by an unerring science of our own. We never cared for such useless things as knowledge. We only cared for truth. And our unsophisticated little hearts knew well where the Crystal Palace of Truth lay and how to reach it. But to-day we are expected ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... mornings, he regaled me with them while he was being dressed. The air that I have heard him thus mutilate most frequently was that of The Marseillaise. The Emperor also whistled sometimes, but very rarely; and the air, 'Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre', whistled by his Majesty was an unerring announcement to me of his approaching departure for the army. I remember that he never whistled so much, and was never so gay, as just before he set out for the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... some planet, sometime and somehow, Your life will reflect all the thoughts of your now. The law is unerring; no blood can atone; The structure you rear you must live ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... fright, but as it then seemed to us, during our disappointment, much rather in frolic—nay, absolute derision—away bounced Master Rabbit to his burrow, without one particle of soft silvery wool on sward or bush, to bear witness to our unerring aim. As if the branch on which he had been sitting were broken, away then went the crashing Cushat through the intermingling sprays. The free flapping of his wings was soon heard in the air above the tree-tops, and ere we could recover from our almost bitter amazement, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... at the same time pray for your dead husband! He and poor Ferrari were close friends, you know; it will be pious and kind of you to join their names in one petition addressed to Him 'from whom no secrets are hid,' and who reads with unerring eyes the purity of your intentions. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... wonders when one realizes that in the higher classes there is an unerring instinct of what tends to maintain and of what tends to destroy the organization by virtue of which they enjoy their privileges. The fashionable lady had certainly not reasoned out that if there were no capitalists and no army to defend them, her husband ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... true, offerings of musk ox meat and walrus blubber when members fell ill. But that was the urge of necessity. Of late years Sipsu's conjurations for recovery had resulted in few cures; his heart was not in them; but with greater vehemence did he enter upon seances of malediction. With almost unerring exactness he prophesied many deaths. For this the tribe did not love him. Nor did Sipsu love the tribe; especially did he hate the youthful, and those who courted and were newly wed. When Maisanguaq touched his shoulder, he turned with ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... company continued to fall in appalling numbers before the riflemen's unerring aim. The Riverlawns pressed them with renewed zeal, and they fell back into the gap made by the flankers. In this manner the second platoon came into their proper position, while the first company, now re-enforced by the two companies of their regiment, marched ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... work, in his knowledge in this line that can only be gained by experience. His ancestors served the early fur companies from Montreal to McKenzie's river, from Hudson's bay to the Pacific, and knew how to take care of themselves with the unerring instinct of the cariboo and the moose, and the generation of them that I came in contact with ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... little domestic inconvenience. Now, however, in a single instant vanished every mode of accounting for their mistress's absence; and the consternation of our looks communicated contagiously, by the most unerring of all languages, from each to the other what thoughts were uppermost in our panic-stricken hearts. If to any person it should seem that our alarm was disproportioned to the occasion, and not justified at least by anything as yet made known to us, let that person consider ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... could almost see in their surfaces as in a mirror. Between those hung bunches of herbs and strings of bright-hued peppers, and in and out on the walls, and above, from the rafters, were Christmas greens, all arranged by the servants themselves, with that unerring eye for grace and color which is an attribute of the colored race. Aunt Dinah, the presiding genius of the kitchen, stood at one end of the room. Her large and portly person was clothed in a gay cotton print of many colors; and upon her head was ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... unknown ones may vary from it by a difference that we are not able to foresee or conjecture. Nevertheless, not only is it certain that these variations depend on causes, and follow their causes by laws of unerring uniformity; not only, therefore, is tidology a science, like meteorology, but it is, what hitherto at least meteorology is not, a science largely available in practice. General laws may be laid down respecting the tides, predictions may be ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... its head until the slim neck was in the form of a letter S, and when it again straightened out it was with the force of a released steel spring and the aim of the flat head was unerring. The stroke was so rapid that it was difficult for the eye to follow and the rabbit never knew what happened, for its body made a quick circle in the air and in less than a second all that was to be seen was one small paw protruding from the coiled ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... Scottish School to the English, and Herder and Jacobi to the German. He points us away from the cold sophistical inferences of the understanding to the immediate conviction of feeling; from the imaginations of science to the unerring voice of the heart and the conscience; from the artificial conditions of culture to healthy nature. The vaunted Illumination is not the lever of progress, but the source of all degeneration; morality does not rest on the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... drifting in the advance of winter, crossed the range, had been followed by the robbers. These game trails were certain to lead to the passes in the range. Thus, by the instinct given to the deer and elk against the winter's storm, the humblest of His creatures had blazed for these train robbers an unerring pathway to ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... for the soldier who so loved his queen! Him the kiss maddened! Measuring Pascal with his een, He thundered, "Peasant, you have filled my place most sly; Not so fast, churl!"—and brutally let fly With aim unerring one fierce blow, Straight in the other's eyes, doubling ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... accentuated her lack of youthful prettiness. With unerring instinct as a child, she had chosen her riding clothes to show off in. Now these same clothes formed the basis of her system. By day she was always in tailored frocks of the strictest simplicity. They were linen, or silk, or wool, made after the ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... wandered and struggled in terrible hardship. Every point of that terrible journey is indelibly fixed upon my memory and though seventy-three years of age on April 6th 1893 I can locate every camp, and if strong enough could follow that weary trail from Death Valley to Los Angeles with unerring accuracy. The brushy canon we have just described is now occupied by the Southern Pacific Railroad, and the steep and narrow ridge pierced by a tunnel, through which the trains pass. The beautiful meadow we so much admired has now upon its border a railroad station, Newhall, and at the proper ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... that a man, who, in other respects, made such booty of the world around him, whose observation of manners was so minute, and whose insight into character and motives, as if he had been one of God's spies, was so unerring that we accept it without question, as we do Nature herself, and find it more consoling to explain his confessedly immense superiority by attributing it to a happy instinct rather than to the conscientious perfecting of exceptional ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... address. I faintly heard this laconic speech, but not distinctly enough to offer any criticism upon the eloquence of the speaker. This exhibition had its intended effect, and displayed the genius of this extraordinary man, who, with unerring acuteness, knows so well to give to every public occurrence that dramatic hue and interest which are so gratifying to the minds of the people over whom he presides. After this ceremony, the several regiments, preceded by their bands of music, marched before him in open order, and dropped ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... would require a comparison of ancient and modern states: ships that were moved by human labour in the ancient world are transported by the winds; and a piece of steel, touched by the magnet, points to the mariner his unerring course from the old to the new world; and by the exertions of one man of genius, aided by the resources of chemistry, a power, which by the old philosophers could hardly have been imagined, has been generated and applied to almost all the machinery of active life; ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... opinion that in view of the outcry which had been raised on this point, the opportunity of an OEcumenical Council being held should not be allowed to pass without defining the belief of the Church in regard to the unerring nature of the decisions, in matters of doctrine and morals, of the successor of St. Peter. At their request, accordingly, it was ordered that the important subject should be introduced in the eleventh chapter of the schema on the Church, and prepared in ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... nature, training, or inclination in the art of politics; but through this tangled web of perplexity and uncertainty, when present and future were equally enveloped in obscurity, his singleness of aim supplied him with the unerring instinct with which through the whole of his life he met and unmasked the pitfalls that were spread before the unhappiest and the most cruelly betrayed of nations. Under the dictates of this pure patriotism he directed ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... special work and the peculiar triumph of Mr. Gallatin." His own correspondence shows how admirably he was constituted for the nice work of diplomatic negotiation. In the self-poise which he maintained in the most critical situations, the unerring sagacity with which he penetrated the purposes of his adversaries, the address with which he soothed the passions and guided the judgments of his colleagues, it is impossible to find a single fault. If he had a fault, says his biographer, it was that of using the razor when he ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... pierced with unerring skill the one joint in his armour he knew to be vulnerable, the judge took a minute in which to control his rage and then addressing the half- averted figure in ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... saw what Rose had seen some time ago, but had not taken it upon her to put in so many words for Annie's benefit. It was of this moment she had, by an unerring instinct, stood in mortal terror, from the first dawn of her acquaintance with Harry Ironside, to the afternoon when he had succeeded in getting an introduction to her in the matron's room at St. Ebbe's, soon after the scene in the operating theatre. Then he had bowed low, muttered a few words ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... are built upon cadence, and the subtlety of this little girl's cadences are a delight to those who can hear them. Doubtless her musical inheritance has all to do with this, for in poem after poem the instinct for rhythm is unerring. So constantly is this the case, that it is scarcely necessary to point out particular examples. I may, however, name, as two of her best for other qualities as well, "Gift," and "Poems." The latter contains ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling
... sneak off to California by night, after converting his property into cash, their knives have the inevitable duty of changing his destination to another state, and bringing back his goods into the Lord's treasury. Their bullets are the ones which find their unerring way through the brains of external enemies. They are the Heaven-elected assassins of Mormonism,—the butchers by divine right. Porter Rockwell has slain his forty men. This is historical. His probable private victims amount to as many ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... found, in one poem in its earliest edition, in another in its latest, and in a third in some intermediate edition. I cannot agree either with the statement that he always altered for the worse, or that he always altered for the better. His critical judgment was not nearly so unerring in this respect as Coleridge's was, or as Tennyson's has been. It may be difficult, therefore, to assign an altogether satisfactory reason for adopting either the earliest or the latest text; and at first sight, the remaining ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... in the annals of North America, and such a vital wound will be given to the peace of this great country, as time itself cannot cure or eradicate the remembrance of." Washington was not a political agitator like Sam Adams, planning with unerring intelligence to bring about independence. On the contrary, he rightly declared that independence was not desired. But although he believed in exhausting every argument and every peaceful remedy, it is evident that he felt that there now could be but one ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... one square of the place where the steamer is located. The object in locating a machine at any point is to protect that immediate vicinity; and it is therefore absolutely necessary to have it available in the shortest space of time, and that with unerring certainty. We think that reliability is of the greatest importance to the protection of a city from fire, as everything is dependent on the working of such apparatus in time; and for this reason no expense should be spared on this ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... of the minutiae of drill. But he had a singularly happy faculty for choosing men to do his work for him. He was a very close calculator of all his movements. He worked out his manoeuvres to the barest mathematical chances, and insisted upon the unerring execution of what he prescribed; and above all be believed in mystery. Of his entire command, he alone knew what work he had cut out for his corps to do. And this was carried so far that it is said ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... the new and strange. The close of the young man's song has found him won, enlisted, prepossessed. He calls the masters to halt. "Not every one shares in your opinion! The Knight's song struck me as novel, yet not confused; although he forsook the beaten track, he strode along with firm, unerring step...." Sachs nods to himself and beams at this reviewing of the intense pleasure he has just experienced. "When you find that you have been trying to measure by your own rules that which does not lie within the compass of your ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... and chance, which happen unto all men, since we should, in the one case, work out our own purposes to a certainty, by our own skill, and in the other, regulate our conduct according to the views of unerring prescience. But man is, while in this vale of tears, like an uninstructed bowler, so to speak, who thinks to attain the jack, by delivering his bowl straight forward upon it, being ignorant that there is a concealed bias within the spheroid, which will make it, in all probability, swerve away, and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Histories and historical anecdotes, analects, and acroamata, in which the names, when not used achronistically by the editor or copier, give unerring data for the earliest date a quo and which, by the mode of treatment, suggest ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... it less delight th' attentive sage, T' observe that instinct which unerring guides The brutal race, which mimics reason's lore, And ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... of the king's yacht manned the rail and levelled at their single assailant the squirt-guns, which were the principal weapons of warfare used in these "make-believe" naval engagements, the fun grew fast and furious; but none had so sure an aim or so strong an arm to send an unerring and staggering stream as young Arvid Horn. One by one he drove them back while as his boat drifted still nearer the yacht he made ready to spring to the force-chains and board his prize. But even ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Woman, with her unerring perception of the fitness of things, has already, it is whispered, marked Wadham for her own when the day of reckoning comes, and men will have to share with women not merely degrees but buildings and endowments. She has chosen well, for Tennyson could have imagined no fitter ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... no selection has been included that is not a masterpiece. This belief is based primarily on the fact that most of the specimens have been chosen and approved by generation after generation of children, culled out from the light and worthless as by an unerring hand, through the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... an orator in England and America; and having lifted over the tangled path of his fugitive brethren the unerring, friendly "North Star," he now turned his attention to debating. It was a matter of regret that two such powerful and accomplished orators as Frederick Douglass and Samuel Ringgold Ward should have taken up so much precious time in splitting hairs on ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... be circumstances over which Prince Frederick has no control. I suppose your sympathies are on the other side of the path. Youth is always quick and generous; it never stops to weigh causes or to reason why. And strange, its judgment is almost always unerring. I am going to share my dinner with you to-night. I'll try to ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... will, the highest executive energy (power), then may he, under the time-honoured rules, be taken in hand by one of the Initiates. He may then be shown the mysterious path at whose farther end is obtained the unerring discernment of Phala, or the fruits of causes produced, and given the means of reaching Apavarga—emancipation from the misery of repeated births, pretya-bhava, in whose determination the ignorant ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Henry was an unerring marksman, perhaps the finest on all the border. The target at that moment was good, a shaft of clear moonlight falling directly upon the broad chest, and yet the bullet clipped a bush three feet away. Henry was conscious that, at the supreme instant when ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... woman in the party. She had been a captive from an Idaho tribe of the Shoshones and was the only person who could speak the language of the Indians that would be met on the way or who had ever been over the route to be traveled. With her baby in her arms she was the unerring guide through the almost impenetrable mountain passes and on several occasions saved not only the equipment and documents but the lives of the party. In recognition of this service the women of Oregon formed the Sacajawea Association, with the following ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... happen in a year's time. The history of the few people involved in the making of this narrative presents but few new aspects, and yet there is now to be disclosed an unerring indication of great and perhaps enduring changes in the lives of ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... seems, had desired the King of Naples to begin, and promised that he would support him. At this interview, Mack said he would march in ten days; and, by his conversation and address, seems to have temporarily withdrawn our hero from the contemplation of his actions, that unerring criterion of character. The judgment which Lord Nelson had first formed of General Mack, on this principle, has since appeared to be just. With such a general as Mack, and such a minister as our hero describes the Marquis De Gallo to have been, in a letter to Earl Spencer, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... tumbling about without uttering a syllable. It was when the greater part of his body was exposed to view in a position more comical than dignified, so great were his exertions, that Bruin's stone, cast with unerring aim, descended upon the unfortunate frog. It hit him upon the softest and most projecting part of his back, and had the effect of raising him instantly into a perpendicular position, when looking round and observing the huge beast ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... He foresaw with unerring vision that the conflict was inevitable and irrepressible—that one or the other, the right or the wrong, freedom or slavery, must ultimately prevail and wholly prevail, throughout the country; and ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... patron saint for spiritual guidance and succor. San Miguel, in his wisdom, sent this young American heretic, as undoubtedly it was best to fight evil with evil. And when the devil, in the guise of a coyote, led the Indians to the attack, then he was sorely wounded by the unerring ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... little of what her mistress was aiming at; and reposed perfect trust in Annette's ability to do everything with skill and success. The beasts were tethered, and dark as was that prairie night, these two girls with skill as unerring as the instinct of a pair of night-hawks could come back and find them. Then they struck out through the long grass, and made for the bluff where lay the Stonies ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... efficiency, judgment, and energy in the execution of great works of public utility, than his realm had known for a thousand years; and his duty was done as diligently and conscientiously as if he had known that conscience was the voice of a supreme Sovereign, and duty the law of an unerring and unescapable Lawgiver. Alone among a race of utterly egotistical cowards, he had the courage of a soldier, and the principles, or at least the instincts, worthy of a Child of the Star. With him alone could I have felt a moment's security from savage attempts to ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... knowledge of character. Though himself the head and front of his enterprise, it was necessary that he should secure the services and co-operation of men of first-rate ability; and in the selection of such men his judgment was almost unerring. By his discernment and munificence, he collected round him some of the ablest writers of the age. These were frequently revealed to him in the communications of correspondents—the author of the letters signed "Vetus" being thus selected to write in ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... in the "Maclise Portrait Gallery," in which young Thackeray may easily be recognised—writing for "Fraser's Magazine." Be this, however, as it may, it seems tolerably certain that the rebuff he received from Dickens had no hand in turning him into the path of letters, towards which his genius and unerring judgment alone most fortunately ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the backwoodsman is met with at long intervals, would have marvelled at the zeal and promptitude with which these adventurous people, abandoning their homes, and disregarding their personal interests, flocked to the several rallying points. Armed and accoutred at their own expence, with the unerring rifle that provided them with game, and the faithful hatchet that had brought down the dark forest into ready subjection, their claim upon the public was for the mere sustenance they required on service. It is true that this partial ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... good order; their assortment of machine tools was admirable. Mr. Fawcett, who accompanied me, was full in his praises of my master, whom he regarded as the greatest pioneer in the substitution of the unerring accuracy of machine tools for the often untrustworthy results of ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... the measuring-bar, and there ascertain the precise number of hands and inches which he stands. How have I longed for the means of subjecting the mental stature of human beings to an analogous process of measurement! Oh for some recognized and unerring gauge of mental calibre! It would be a grand thing, if somewhere in a very conspicuous position—say on the site of the National Gallery at Charing Cross—there were a pillar erected, graduated by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... final assize," when beneath the one unerring Eye and Hand all the drosses of life and circumstance shall be melted away and all the films and disfigurements removed from action and intention,—there will be many things, we have reason to believe, shown in a widely different light from ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... once, with that unerring rapidity of hers: "Yes, certainly; on a few—the right persons. I, for one, am not afraid to ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... parts of Miss Edgeworth's earlier stories, and of Miss Mitford's sketches and descriptions, and not a little of Mrs. Opie's, that exhibit the same fine and penetrating spirit of observations, the same softness and delicacy of hand, and unerring truth of delineation, to which we have alluded as characterizing the purer specimens of female art. The same distinguishing traits of woman's spirit are visible through the grief and piety of Lady Russel, and the gayety, the spite, and the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... their aid, and to him, too, came death, swift and sure. The two youngest, even as they cried for mercy to an unknown god, were hurried after them by the unerring arrows of Apollo. The cries of those who watched this terrible slaying were not long in bringing Niobe to the place where her sons lay dead. Yet, even then, her pride was unconquered, and she defied the gods, and Latona, to whose jealousy she ascribed ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... under which the boy is to be classed. A few apparently trivial accidents of his first few weeks at school often decide his position in the general regard for the remainder of his boyhood. And yet these are not accidents; they are the slight indications which give an unerring proof of the general tendencies of his character and training. Hence much of the apparent cruelty with which new boys are treated is not exactly intentional. At first, of course, as they can have no friends worth speaking of; there ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... sharpen the vigilance which has always been one of the strong points in my character. Every suspicious circumstance which occurs in this house will be (so to speak) seized on by my pen, and will find itself (so to speak again) placed on its trial, before your unerring judgment! Let the wicked tremble! I ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... the dead. She was His best friend while He was here, and has been most devoted to His cause during His absence. Hence where Christianity goes woman's power is felt. The extent to which woman is honored marks to-day with unerring certainty the extent of a ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... given up anything—no, everything else in the world just then, for the sake of that knowledge—except, of course, your dear love. We didn't talk much, but he is one of those men to whom you don't need to talk. The silence was like that unerring kind of speech when you can't say the wrong thing if you try; and if Sir Lionel had said in the wind and darkness: "I have got to drive the car into the sea, and you and I must die together in five minutes," I should have answered: "Very well. With ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... proceeded over a surface of bare rock, and at others over large and loose stones, where no foot-print was visible to the eye of a white man, the natives never failed to discover the traces which they sought with unerring sagacity. After a ride of nearly two hours we observed one of the natives making signs to us to halt. "There they are!" passed in eager whispers from one to the other. Before us was a belt of wood, through which we could perceive about a dozen cattle ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... once. Promptness was, above all things, the essence of this enterprise, and the lumber merchants, coal dealers, machinery salesmen, and ship chandlers with whom they dealt vowed they never had met men who reached their decisions so quickly and labored not only with such consuming haste, but with such unerring certainty. There was no haggling over prices, no loss of time in seeking competitive bids; and because George always knew precisely what he wanted, their task of selection became comparatively easy. With every detail of the business he was familiar, from long experience. ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the street, but the fugitives had disappeared in the darkness; their gentle tread was not heard on the pavement, and no observer was near to indicate the course they had taken. The whole scheme of Cassier's bold disguise flashed with unerring conviction on the stranger's mind—the voice, the eye, the gait were Cassier's. He was familiar with the family, and in the hurried glance he got of the youths rushing by the saloon door he thought he recognized the contour of Alvira's beautiful face. He hastened to ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... hell may be said to begin on your side the grave. In the intermediate state conscience anticipates with unerring certainty the result of judgment. We, therefore, who have done well can have no fear for ourselves. But inasmuch as the world has any hold upon our affections we are liable to that anxiety which is ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... taking up lands in all directions. Before their unerring rifles, game was rapidly disappearing. The Indians became fully awake to their danger. The chiefs met in council, and a conspiracy was formed, to put, at an appointed hour, all the English to death, every man, woman and child. Every house was marked. Two or three Indians were appointed ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... indeed, to merit reprehension for disposing of the opium by private contract, as by that means the unerring standard of the public market cannot be applied to it. But they justified themselves by their success; and one of their members informed your Committee that their last sale had been a good one: and though he ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... contemplating the wisdom, goodness, and power of the creator, of trying to fathom the great and magnificent plans of his providence, who is in the habit of surveying all mankind with the philosophy of revealed religion, of tracing, through the same unerring channel, the uses and objects of their existence, the design of their different ranks and situations, the nature of their relative duties and the like, could never, in the opinion of the Quakers, have either any enjoyment, or be concerned in the invention, of dramatic exhibitions. To ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... feel his blessing. And if it fills them with joy unspeakable even now, when they so often feel how little they deserve it; if they delight still in being with God, and in living to him, let them be sure that they have in themselves the unerring witness of life eternal: God is the God of the living, and all who ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... Wyatt in the face was the thrown-away match. But for the unerring aim of the town marksman great events would never have happened. A tomato is a trivial thing (though it is possible that the man whom it hits may not think so), but in the present case, it was the direct ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... accumulation of verified knowledge, from which there have been deduced principles and laws which enable the electrician or the astronomer to predict the action of the electric current or the course of the stars with almost unerring accuracy. To be sure, these predictions do sometimes go wrong, but for the most part they are founded ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... intellect, acute perceptions, indefatigable industry, complete leisure, are among those things necessary to the pilot. These must be supplemented by a genius for research, a knowledge of ancient and modern languages, and an unerring faculty for separating the few precious grains of wheat from those mountains of chaff which he will have to sift with the utmost care. There are, however, subsidiary rivulets which feed the onward flow of events, and of such is the story of the Sea-wolves ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... I? To this heart, To this unerring heart, will I submit it, Will ask thy love, which has the power to bless 35 The happy man alone, averted ever From the disquieted and guilty—canst thou Still love me, if I stay? Say that thou canst, And I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a sudden whirring about their heads. A lariat, thrown with unerring accuracy, had gathered them both in its coil. With a jerk they were drawn close together, their hands pinned to their side. Two cowboys quickly disarmed them. Long Jim came sauntering round from the other side of the range wagon, tightening the ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... line which you will recall from one of the beautiful poems Wordsworth has addressed to her; and this seemed peculiarly the temper of her spirit—peace, the holy calmness of a heart to whom love had been an 'unerring light.' Surely we may pray, my friend, that in the brief season of separation which she has now to pass, she may ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... babblings of these nocturnal visitors, but, as he grew stronger, detached bits of conversation began to impress themselves upon him. These people had each some pet grievance and it remained for Storch to pick upon the strings of their discontents with unerring accuracy. At about eight o'clock every night the first stragglers would drift in, reinforced by a steady stream, until midnight saw a room stuffed with sweating humanity releasing their emotions in a biting flood of protests. They protested at everything under the sun—at custom, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the thicket, burying himself deep, and was careful not to break a twig or brush a leaf which to the unerring eyes of those who followed could mark where he was. Hidden well, but yet lying where he could see, he turned his gaze back to the bird. It was now pouring out an unbroken volume of song as it swayed on a twig, like a leaf shaken in the wind. Its voice was thrillingly sweet, and it seemed mad with ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Parthians, were a warlike People, famous for their Equestrian prowess, for the speed of their horses, and for the unerring aim of their arrows, shot when flying on full speed. Augustus obliged their King, Phraaetes, not only to restore the Roman Standards and Prisoners, taken many years before, but to ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... shielding him, as he supposed, from the other Rangers, was levelled at Woodburn, whose attention was too intently fixed on his chief foe to notice the movement. But before the finger of the assassin was permitted to tighten on the trigger, a bullet from the unerring rifle of the watchful Dunning had pierced his brain, and his gun, as he fell over backwards, exploded harmlessly into the air. Three of the tories, however, taking advantage of the momentary confusion ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... and his mandarin garments raised up under each arm, the miscreant Suchong Pollyhong Ka-te-tow reached the presence of the Great Khan. "O khan of Tartary," said he, "may thy sword be ever keen, thy lance unerring, and thy courser swift. I am thy slave. O thou who commandest an hundred thousand warriors—hath thy ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... as best we could with a doom we were unable to avert. Often afterwards it was a source of melancholy pleasure to some of his comrades that he had not been induced to incur what he regarded as guilt. The lofty consciousness of unerring rectitude which sustained his fortitude could not fail to be chequered by the recollection of acts which in his own estimation were not purely blameless. Had success attended the suggested proposals, they would receive the world's unqualified approval; while ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... of these operations in which nature is continually present, and going on before our eyes; this may be one reason that a very critical observance of it has escaped our attention. Fermentation brings us acquainted with this unerring axiom; that nothing in nature is lost; or that matter, of which all things are composed, is indestructible. For instance, the vinous process of fermentation, succeeded by distillation, produces ardent spirits, or alcohol, the elements of which are here described. If we pass ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... speaks with greater triumph, than that one word,—opportunity. Born in the primeval forest of man's first dwelling-place, it has marked the central path of civilization and hewn its way to the front with unerring stroke. The finger of destiny ever points back to this factor in human life as the primal element in all achievement, the forerunner of all success. Without it human genius would die, man's talent and skill waste away, and the hope ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... wheeled off to the sides, giving myself and Draw fair shots, by which we did not fail to profit; but I confess it was with absolute astonishment that I saw two of those turned over, which flew inward, killed by the marvelously quick and unerring aim of Archer, where a less thorough sportsman would have been quite unable to discharge a gun at all, so dense was the tangled jungle. Throughout the whole length of that skirt of coppice, a hundred and fifty yards, I should suppose at the utmost, the birds kept rising as it were incessantly—thirty-five, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... to them at the very outset. Everything, down to the very errors and weaknesses of that departed race of heroes who claimed their descent from the gods, was ennobled by the sanctity of legend. Those heroes were painted as beings endowed with more than human strength; but, so far from possessing unerring virtue and wisdom, they were even depicted as under the dominion of furious and unbridled passions. It was an age of wild effervescence; the hand of social order had not as yet brought the soil of morality into cultivation, and it yielded at the same time the most beneficent and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... class was silently composing, and he sat throned on his estrade, unoccupied. Conscious always of this basilisk attention, she would writhe under it, half-flattered, half-puzzled, and Monsieur would follow her sensations, sometimes looking appallingly acute; for in some cases, he had the terrible unerring penetration of instinct, and pierced in its hiding-place the last lurking thought of the heart, and discerned under florid veilings the bare; barren places of the spirit: yes, and its perverted tendencies, and its hidden false curves—all that men and women would not have known—the twisted spine, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... them to drink. Will the world learn that we never learn anything that we did not know before? The artist, the poet, painter, musician, and novelist go straight to the food they want, guided by an unerring and ineffable instinct; to teach them is to destroy the nerve of the artistic instinct. Art flees before the art school... "correct drawing," "solid painting." Is it impossible to teach people, to force it into their heads that there is no such thing ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... wonderful!" she exclaimed, unable to suppress her surprise at his unerring choice; "it's exactly right. Have you been to Stenton? however could ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... right)—caught sight of this group of combatants on the banks of the stream. He, with a party, had succeeded in forcing the bridge, and now uttering a shout of wild delight at the sight of his two greatest enemies within his power, as he thought, he rushed towards them, and darted his spear with unerring aim and terrible violence. The man's anger defeated his purpose; for the shout attracted the attention of Gascoyne, who saw the spear coming straight towards Henry's breast. He interposed the shovel instantly, and the spear fell ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... unaware. She looked into his eyes, then dropping hers Before that burning gaze, Softly turned and crept with sunlit shoulders Down among the boulders, To the sea. Secure within its covering depth She called to him to follow. She led him out along the tide, With swift unerring stroke, Nor paused till he was at her side. With conquering arm He seized her and from her brow Tossed back the dripping locks, and sought her lips- Her eyes closed,— As all her body yielded to his kiss. Then home he bore her to the shore, Within his heart a song of ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... comes fast. Unerring signs are seen In stars above us. There are gods who still Protect unhappy lovers: and our Queen Venus rains fire on all ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... dying hour the stamp of the culture of the Nicolai school. Utterly unsympathetic, narrow beyond the dreams of the narrowest of modern schoolmasters, they were frankly, virulently hostile to any one in whom they perceived—as they always did perceive with the unerring instinct of stupidity to detect cleverness—the smallest trace of originality of character, thought or outlook on life. As a rule they seem to have been successful in achieving their aim. An old German friend of mine told ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... in their ken. Already they saw their families brought to the gutter by this hunchback ruffian, who hit them below the belt in the most ungentlemanly fashion in preference to starving. But the simple manoeuvre of cutting down the prices of his rivals was only a taste of the unerring instinct for business that was later to make him as much feared as respected in the trade. By a single stroke he had shown his ability to play on the weakness as well as the needs of the public, coupled with a pitiless disregard for other interests than his ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... haste, the unerring precision of his movements, the absolute soundlessness of the operation, gave it something of the quality of a conjuring trick. And, the trick having been performed, Wang vanished from the scene, to materialize presently in front of the house. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... thought the poet jested. Pinchas saw his enthusiasm had carried him too far, but his tongue was the most reckless of organs and often slipped into the truth. He was a real poet with an extraordinary faculty for language and a gift of unerring rhythm. He wrote after the mediaeval model—with a profusion of acrostics and double rhyming—not with the bald duplications of primitive Hebrew poetry. Intellectually he divined things like a woman—with marvellous rapidity, shrewdness ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... this last is a victim of a sneak robbery, and, the unerring scent of the chief selecting him as the most profitable customer of the morning, he is the first visitor called to an audience. Large affairs are quickly despatched, and it is soon arranged how a part of the property can be recovered and justice cheated of its due. Very soon a handbill will be publicly ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... nothing whatever of the merits of the case, with that unerring instinct which invariably leads them to a right conclusion, sided unanimously with the seamen; while a few of the more timid among the male passengers regarded Carter as a sort of hero- martyr, Mr Dale being especially loud and indiscreet in his denunciations ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... preparations were made full as silently. When the peasantry emerged from Tullow Street, into an exposed space, a deadly fire was opened upon them from the houses on all sides. The regulars, in perfect security themselves, and abundantly supplied with ammunition, shot them down with deadly unerring aim. The people soon found there was nothing for it but retreat, and carrying off as best they could their killed and wounded, they retired sorely discomfited. For alleged complicity in this attack, Sir Edward Crosbie was shortly afterward ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... said Jerry, as he left the trail, and, plunging into the brush, led the way with unerring precision to where he had made his cache. Quickly they secured the food and with it made their way back to a position from which they could command a view of ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... his God? We are poor judges of what is best. We are under safe guidance with infallible wisdom. If we are tempted in a moment of rash presumption to say, "All these things are against me," let this "word" rebuke the hasty and unworthy surmise. Unerring wisdom and Fatherly love have pronounced all ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... financial faculty of the finest order, a gift as direct as a beautiful tenor voice, which had enabled him, without the aid of particular strength of will or keenness of ambition, to build up a large fortune while he was still of middle age. He had a genius for happy speculation, the quick unerring instinct of a "good thing"; and as he sat there idle amused contented, on the edge of the Parisian street, he might very well have passed for some rare performer who had sung his song or played his ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James |
