"Unforced" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... industry; she is in love, is rejected, she tries to drown herself, she dies. The sequence of ideas is in Dickens's vein; but read the tale, and I think you will see how little the thing is overdone, how simple and unforced it is, compared with analogous persons and scenes in the work of the English master. The idiotic yell of "plagiarism" has been raised, of course, by critical cretins. M. Daudet, as I understand what he says in "Trente ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... (Mrs. Curate) turns up, and many most unparochial events follow upon his arrival. The scene shifts to Naples, and we meet a villaful of men and women, all of them admirably original and human. Not for a great while have I read a story so unforced and appealing. It is indeed a sad thought that this graceful pen will give us nothing more of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... confusion of the tragedy. This is, at any rate, emphatically true of The Ring and the Book. The fulness and variety of creation, the amplitude of the play and shifting of characters and motive and mood, are absolutely unforced, absolutely uninterfered with by the artificial exigencies of ethical or philosophic purpose. There is the purpose, full-grown, clear in outline, unmistakeable in significance. But the just proprieties of place and season are rigorously observed, because Mr. Browning, like every other ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... signification to give to the word prone. Its primitive and translated senses are well known. The authour may, by a prone dialect, mean a dialect which men are prone to regard, or a dialect natural and unforced, as those actions seem to which we are prone. Either of these interpretations are sufficiently strained; but such distortion of words is not uncommon in our authour. For the sake of an ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... for Palmyra, for I know She will not need my prayers; but for myself: With a feigned tale I have abused your ears, And, therefore, merit death: but since, unforced, I first accuse myself, I hope ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... This unforced choice, this fond election of evil, would appear perfectly unaccountable, if we did not consider the composition of the National Assembly: I do not mean its formal constitution, which, as it now stands, is exceptionable enough, but the materials ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... so willingly, and exhorted him in the name of Jesus Christ, to complete his self accusation fully, to the end that he might experience the goodness and mercy which were used in that tribunal towards those who showed true repentance by a sincere and UNFORCED confession. The secretary read aloud the confession and exhortation, Dellon signed it, Don Fernando rang a silver bell, the alcayde walked in, and, in a few moments, the disappointed victim was again ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... in amazement, and Sahwah fancied she saw a great terror leap up in her eyes. Veronica looked at her a moment, the expression of astonishment frozen on her face, and then to Sahwah's great bewilderment she laughed aloud, a genuine, mirthful, unforced, ringing laugh. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... was merely like a plant that had grown in the shade, and to her the strong, healthful youth was sunshine. His smile warmed and vivified her chilled nature, his hearty words and manner were bracing to her over-sensitive and timid soul, and his unaffected, unforced kindness was so constant that she gradually came to regard it as one of the best certainties of her life. She soon learned, however, that behind his sunny good-nature was a fiery and impatient spirit, ready to ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... satire, general utility, united with great vivacity of composition, Gil Blas is unrivalled: but, as a merely agreeable book, the Memoirs of Grammont perhaps deserve that character more than any which was ever written: it is pleasantry throughout, pleasantry of the best sort, unforced, graceful, and engaging. Some French critic has justly observed, that, if any book were to be selected as affording the truest specimen of perfect French gaiety, the Memoirs of Grammont would be selected in preference ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... very gripping theme, but the play brings to us an acute character study of the typical managing woman of the small farmer class. We feel her tireless energy, her drive, her high pride, assets of worth in the fight to live. There is a little humor, natural and unforced, some picturesqueness of phrase, a revelation of knowledge of life in one corner of Ireland. There is nothing, however, in the play to make it comparable with the three that followed it on the stage of the Abbey Theatre, "The Crossroads" (1909); "Harvest" (1910); and ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... departing out of this world" in Lyonnesse and elsewhere corresponds to and completes the triumph of Sarras. From yet another point of view, the bringing into judgment of all the characters and their deeds is equally complete, equally natural and unforced. It is astonishing that men like Ascham,[59] unless blinded by a survival of mediaeval or a foreshadowing of Puritan prudery, should have failed to see that the morality of the Morte d'Arthur is as rigorous as it is unsqueamish. Guinevere in her cloister and Lancelot in his hermitage, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... His unforced geniality made Trent ashamed, for he had liked the man. They sat long over a meal, and Mr. Bunner talked. Trent listened to him, now that he was in for it, with genuine pleasure, now and then contributing a question or remark. Besides liking his companion, he enjoyed his conversation ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... spiky, dark-green things, and it made it very easy to remember one of Miss Eliza's earliest lessons that something must be left for the servants in the kitchen, and never to take everything on a dish, there being only three of these unknown objects on that platter, so she refused with unforced politeness when they came ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... to which we can, strictly speaking, attach the idea of merit, and is also the only one which is capable of rising to high efforts of continuous and heroic self-sacrifice; but on the other hand, there is a charm in the spontaneous action of the unforced desires which disciplined virtue can perhaps never attain. The man who is consistently generous through a sense of duty, when his natural temperament impels him to avarice, and when every exercise of benevolence causes him ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... looked after the transfers from the kitchen at critical moments, while Mousie and Winnie were our waitresses. A royal blaze crackled in the open fireplace, and seemed to share in the sparkle of our rustic wit and unforced mirth, which kept plump Mrs. Jones in a perpetual quiver, like ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... unforced; the description of character well limned; and the pictures of scenery forcible and felicitous. There is a natural conveyance of incidents to the denouement; and the reader closes the volume with an increased regard for the talents and spirit ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... texts are manifest, Numb: 35. 30. Deut: 17. 6. & 19. 15. 2^ly. Ther may be conviction by one witnes, & some thing y^t hath y^e force of another, as y^e evidencie of y^e fact done by such an one, & not an other; unforced confession when ther was no fear or danger of suffering for y^e fact, hand writings ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... Plain descriptions of the impending destruction of Jerusalem and of the Jewish state blend with no less apparent descriptions of the coming of Christ in his kingdom. It cannot be denied that the Orthodox interpreters are far less natural and unforced than the others, in their treatment of this passage. Their dogmatic views lead them to put apart from each other elements which are blended together by Matthew and by the other evangelists. For example, Schott says, that the description of Christ's ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... eighty thousand of her fellow Christians, who must accompany her to that death," answered Saladin sternly. "Know, Sir Balian, I swear it before Allah and for the last time, that if my niece Rosamund does not come, of her own free will, unforced by any, Jerusalem shall be ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... The dream had done its office when it had provided me with characters and materials for a more probable and less abstruse and difficult plot. All further dependence upon it should then have been relinquished, and the story allowed to work out its own natural and unforced conclusion. But it is easy to be wise after the event; and the event, at this time, was still ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... overlooked it in the casualties of a disadvantageous situation. I have seen him stand bare-headed—smile if you please—to a poor servant girl, while she has been inquiring of him the way to some street—in such a posture of unforced civility, as neither to embarrass her in the acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He was no dangler, in the common acceptation of the word, after women: but he reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came before him, womanhood. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... as would exclude all dramatized fiction from the stage. It is to be noted also that while the play thus divides itself into two parts, these are skilfully woven together by a happy stroke of art. The last scene of the third Act not only finishes the action of the first three, but by an apt and unforced transition begins that of the other two; the two parts of the drama being smoothly drawn into the unity of a continuous whole by the introduction of the old Shepherd and his son at the close of the one and the opening of the other. This natural arrangement ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the evening, and his cheerfulness seemed natural and unforced. His demeanour, his look, is not easily described; there was something in it peculiar, and, in its way, original. I read in it no common mastery of the passions, and a fund of deep and healthy strength which, without any exhausting effort, bore down Disappointment ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... opportunities to see her often, and glimmerings of the truth began to dawn upon him. He saw that she enjoyed the society of Alf and Johnnie almost as much as that of the other members of the family, that her delight at every new manifestation of spring was as unforced as that of the children, while at the same time it was an intelligent and questioning interest. The beauty of the world without impressed her deeply, as it did Johnnie, but to the latter it was a matter of ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... artificial requirements must be made to meet the artificial situation. Time and space, those temporal appearances, grow to be menacing monsters, take to themselves the chief realities. Nevertheless, so far as you are able, you surely want to do the natural, right, unforced thing. And with each successful effort will come fresh wisdom and fresh strength for ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... gift of writing naturally and simply, her pathos is true and unforced, and her conversations ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... discerning part of mankind. The glaring figures of discourse, the pointed antithesis, the unnatural conceit, the jingle of words; such false ornaments were not employed by early writers; not because they were rejected, but because they scarcely ever occurred to them. An easy, unforced strain of sentiment runs through their compositions; though at the same time we may observe, that, amidst the most elegant simplicity of thought and expression, one is sometimes surprised to meet with a poor conceit, which had presented itself unsought for, and which the author had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... attractive, and varied treasury. No one else among lyrists within the period defined, has such unfailing freshness: so much variety within the sphere prescribed to himself: such closeness to nature, whether in description or in feeling: such easy fitness in language: melody so unforced and delightful. His dull pages are much less frequent: he has more lines, in his own phrase, 'born ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... indeed, my father had been resolved to make a fool of himself by holding the wig stiff in his left hand—or by making some nonsensical angle or other at his elbow-joint, or armpit)—his whole attitude had been easy—natural—unforced: Reynolds himself, as great and gracefully as he paints, might have painted him ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... at once swaggering and yet shrugging his shoulders, as if to drop from them the mantle of the orator which he has confidently assumed. Lastly, no man ever used voice or gesture better for the purpose of expressing certainty; no man can say "I tell Mr. Jones he is totally wrong" with more air of unforced and ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... consideration of the processes of outcropping and acceptation has inevitably invested them with a false appearance of difficulty. Autosuggestion is above all things easy. Its greatest enemy is effort. The more simple and unforced the manner of its performance the more potently and profoundly it works. This is shown by the fact that its most remarkable results have been secured by children and by ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... near successor indeed to his "W. V.: Her Book," and to "The Invisible Playmate"; and W. V. again acts as guardian elf and guide to this new region of the child's earthly paradise. The Saints are here treated with a simplicity that is almost or altogether childlike, and with an unforced imagination which is only to be learnt by becoming as a child. And this is perhaps why, although comparatively a new book, it has the air of something pleasantly old, and written long ago; and thus wins its way into the children's ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... P. (interpreted with great relish and vigour by Mr. HUBERT HARBEN), remarked, "I call a spade a spade," she replied, "And I suppose you would call a dinner-napkin a serviette"—one of the pleasantest remarks in a play where the good things said were many and unforced. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... his beautiful essay upon that story, Mr. Pater has deliberately omitted this episode, which is indeed like a spot of blood-stained mud upon some perfect tissue of silver flowers on silver ground. It is a piece of cruellest realism, because quite quiet and unforced, in the midst of a kind of fairy-land idyl of almost childish love, the love of the beautiful son of the lord of Beaucaire for a beautiful Saracen slave girl. For, although Aucassin and Nicolette are often separated, and always disconsolate—she in her wonderfully frescoed vaulted room, he ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... pleasant and unforced can carry the name—is done at a window that overlooks this park. Were it not for several high buildings in my sight I might fancy that I lived in one of the older squares of London. There is a look of Thackeray about the place as though the Osbornes might be my neighbors. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... satisfaction; the appearance of the latter, like a lowering cloud or barren landscape, throws a melancholy damp over the imagination. And this concession being once made, the difficulty is over; and a natural unforced interpretation of the phenomena of human life will afterwards, we hope, prevail among all ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... is a perfectly unaffected, unpretentious, honest performance. Under its manly, sensible, straightforward vein of talk there is running at the same time a natural flow of sentiment never sentimental, of humor always easy and unforced, and of pathos for the most part dramatic or picturesque, under which lay the germ of what his mature genius took afterwards most delight in. Of course there are inequalities in it, and some things that would ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... as Dale noticed the freshness and unforced music of Norah's singing, and it was not long before she received an invitation to sing among the regularly trained ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... into the avenue, holding a tolerable rein. He clucked and lightly touched the horses with the lash. This was true sport; this was humor, genuine, initiative, unforced. He could imagine the girls and their fright when he finally slowed down, opened the door, and kissed them both. Wouldn't they let out a yell, though? His plan was to drive furiously for half a dozen blocks, zigzag from one side of the street to the other, taking the ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... concerned with the War. They are a little unequal, some being better than others, and others (naturally) being worse than some. They all reveal their author, Miss EVELYN ORCHARD, as possessed of a pleasantly unforced style, and perhaps rather more ease than imagination. One of them, my own favourite, the story of a parson who enlisted, is conspicuous as containing so admirable a recruiting speech that I can only hope it is transcribed from life. Having said so much, perhaps I may be forgiven by Miss ORCHARD ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... are clearly deducible from express commands in Scripture, by clear, unforced, infallible, and undeniable consequence. Now what things are commanded by necessary consequence, they are of divine right, as well as things in express terms prescribed: e.g. in the case of baptism, have the ordinary ministers of the New Testament any punctual express command to baptize? ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... gentlemen of the London press speak so of me. They canna understand, yon gentry, why all the fuss is made about Harry Lauder. They're a' for the Art Theatre, and this movement and that. But they're no looking for what's natural and unforced i' the theatre, or they'd be closer to-day to having a national theatre than they'll ever be the gait they're ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... HADDON CHAMBERS, is a real good play, thoroughly interesting from the rising to the setting of the Curtain. The parts are artistically adjusted, the dialogue unforced, the acting un-stagey, and the situations powerfully dramatic. The climax is reached at the "psychological moment," and the Curtain descends upon all that a sympathetic audience can possibly desire ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... dramatic, the dialogue being natural and flowing; trenchant and sprightly, but not too witty for a truthful reflex of actual conversation. The humour is genial and unforced; there is no smell of the lamp about it, no premeditated effort at dragging in jests, as in Congreve. As typical examples of Farquhar's vis comica I Would cite the description of Squire Sullen's home-coming, and his 'pot of ale' speech, Aimwell's speech respecting conduct at ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... have from the very beginning been on my guard against lies. There are passages in every work which will not yield immediately what one impatiently demands of them;—and then I have always waited, never tried; the thing has had to come itself unforced, and it is possible that what I have received has been a deception; but I have believed in it; to me it has been no deception. Before I finally conclude, I always, it is true, go over again what I have written (as in the case of Synnoeve, and A Happy Boy, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... image of the sage; but in that quiet meadow which he used to frequent on the banks of the Cheswell, when evening is gathering on the tops of the lofty elms and around the gray towers of Magdalen, how pleasing and unforced the effort which recalls him ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... hours. Sacobie Bear was a great gossip for one of his race. In fact, he had a Micmac nickname which, translated, meant "the man who deafens his friends with much talk." Archer, however, was pleased with his ready chatter and unforced humour. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various |
