"Unheard-of" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and cultivators who required to be protected from them, frequent misunderstandings arose, acts of just severity were made to appear to be acts of wanton oppression, and such as were really oppressive were exaggerated into unheard-of atrocities. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... clergy, and the necessity of auricular confession. The denial of the first article, with regard to the real presence, subjected the person to death by fire, and to the same forfeiture as in cases of treason; and admitted not the privilege of abjuring: an unheard-of severity, and unknown to the inquisition itself The denial of any of the other five articles, even though recanted, was punishable by the forfeiture of goods and chattels, and imprisonment during the king's pleasure: an obstinate adherence to error, or ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... champion since he beat the French and English officers in the tournament last winter. Well, you also know that the conventional openings at chess are scientifically and accurately determined. To the utter disgust of Du Brey, Mason opened the game with an unheard-of attack from the extremes of the board. The old Admiral stopped and, in a kindly patronizing way, pointed out the weak and absurd folly of his move and asked him to begin again with some one of the safe openings. Mason ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... freshened up with a few new words such as 'immense, infinite, solitude, intelligence'; you have lakes, and the words of the Almighty, a kind of Christianized Pantheism, enriched with the most extraordinary and unheard-of rhymes. We are in quite another latitude, in fact; we have left the North for the East, but the darkness is just as thick ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... brave act preceded him, it gained so remarkably in passing from mouth to mouth that, by the time it reached Mrs. Trefethen, she received a confused impression that by some unheard-of bravery the young man had saved all in the mine, including her Mark and her Tom, from instant destruction. Her information having come direct from her dearest friend, Mrs. Penny, she could not doubt its truth, nor had she time to do so before the triumphal procession of ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... and very much awake. It was awake ever since the early break of day, when Mahmat Banjer, in a fit of unheard-of energy, arose and, taking up his hatchet, stepped over the sleeping forms of his two wives and walked shivering to the water's edge to make sure that the new house he was building had not floated ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... less than two minutes to dispose of his stock of merchandise. The men came crowding about him with chaff and laughter: a reasonable fellow, that; he didn't rob poor chaps of their money! The Prussians themselves were attracted by such unheard-of bargains, and he was compelled to trade with them. He had all the time been working his way toward the edge of the enceinte, and his last two cigars went to a big sergeant with an immense beard, who could not speak a word ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... night. It seems to me it would have saved him such a long walk if he had asked Colonel McMillan. He sat down, though, and got talking in the moonlight, and people passing, some citizens, some officers, looked wonderingly at this unheard-of occurrence. I won't be rude to any one in my own house, Yankee or Southern, say what they will. He talked a great deal, and was very entertaining; what tempted him, I cannot imagine. It was two hours before he thought of ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... airship shall start with a band of happy argonauts to land beyond the sunrise for the first time in history, we shall feature it and emblazon it with pictures in the Sunday papers, and weeklies, and in the magazines.—[The Quaker City idea was so unheard-of that in some of the foreign ports visited, the officials could not believe that the vessel was simply a pleasure-craft, and were suspicious of some ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Perhaps it was because this particular panhandler had the honour of his profession—in moments of confidence he might have told you, with some pride, that he was no thief. Or possibly the possession of such unheard-of wealth crippled his powers of imagination. There are people who are made financially embarrassed by having no money at all, but more who are made so by having too much. Our most expensive hotels are full of whole families who, having become ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... not, therefore, unnatural that Maude's answer should have been,—"But, Master Calverley! so saying you should have no need of our Lady." She expected Hugh to reply by an indignant denial; and it astounded her no little to hear him quietly accept the unheard-of alternative. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... were prepar'd their captive arms to bind. "While yet unchain'd, those arms to heaven they rais'd, "O father Bacchus!—crying—grant thy aid.— "And aid the author of the gift bestow'd: "If them to lose by an unheard-of mode "Be aid bestowing. Then could I not know, "Nor now relate the order of the change "Which lost their shapes; the summit of my grief "I know; with plumage were they cloth'd; transform'd "To snowy doves, thy ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... parents alone once more. Then the wife, who was a strong woman and of an enterprising temper, found an opening for herself at a distance from home where she could start a little business. Caleb indignantly refused to give up shepherding in his place to take part in so unheard-of an adventure; but after a year or more of life in his lonely hut among the hills and cold, empty cottage in the village, he at length tore himself away from that beloved spot and set forth on the ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... not at that time an unheard-of procedure in social relations. "Whatever would become of us if poets had no shoulders!" was the brutal remark of the Bishop of Blois, M. de Caumartin. But the customs of society did not admit a poet to the honor of obtaining satisfaction from whoever insulted him. The great lords, friends of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... also had changed, for then I was great in my own fashion, who now had become but a wanderer, welcomed indeed in this glittering new world of which yonder we knew nothing, because I was strange and different, also full of unheard-of learning and skilled in war, but still nothing but an outcast wanderer, and so doomed to live and die. And as I thought, so thought Kari, for our glances met, and I read ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... existence of some mysterious knowledge that was not known in the village; but the advantage ended there. I doubt if a single member of the class had begun to use his brain in a scientific way, reasoning from cause to effect; I doubt if it dawned upon one of them that there was such an unheard-of accomplishment to be acquired. They were trying—if they were trying anything at all—to pick up modern science in the folk manner, by rote, as though it were a thing to be handed down by tradition. So at least I infer, not ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... to pay in advance unheard-of wages, ten times the usual amount earned by laborers in this vicinity, that we added offers of the precious coca leaves, the greatly-to-be-desired "fire-water," the rarely seen tobacco, and other good things usually coveted ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... simultaneously to accommodate him, and seven voices answered in the affirmative. The stranger calmly opened the box of matches, filled his silver match-safe, and then threw the box back on the counter, an unheard-of piece of profligacy in those parts. "Needn't mind wrapping up the bottle," ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... not think it! I might have forgotten the oath made on my father's crossed arms, but I will never forget the immeasurable griefs of these past months or the humiliation they have brought me. My own weakness is to be avenged—my unheard-of, my intolerable weakness. Remember Evelyn? Remember Felix! ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... head-mistress of every boarding-school, were treated to a variation upon the theme of Pons' illness. A single scene, which took place in the Illustrious Gaudissart's private room, will give a sufficient idea of the rest. La Cibot met with unheard-of difficulties, but she succeeded in penetrating at last to the presence. Kings and cabinet ministers are less difficult of access than the manager of a theatre in Paris; nor is it hard to understand why such prodigious barriers are raised between them and ordinary mortals: ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... a girl, and even a young married woman. There was one fire and one lamp in the drawing-room. Any one who wanted to be warm, or to work, was obliged to come into that room. No fires nor lamps allowed anywhere else in the house; a cup of tea in the afternoon an unheard-of luxury. If you were ill, a doctor was sent for and he ordered a tisane; if you were merely tired or cold, you waited ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... Phil, drawing his gaze reluctantly from the far horizon and letting it rest dreamily on his accuser. "May I be allowed to ask what intricate and devious chain of reasoning leads you to make so unheard-of a charge?" ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... should not be out of the actor's mind for a moment. The restless and sanguinary Richard is not a man striving to be great, but to be greater than he is; conscious of his strength of will, his power of intellect, his daring courage, his elevated station; and making use of these advantages to commit unheard-of crimes, and to shield himself from remorse ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... not to his advantage (pointing at CHREMES). How say you? (addressing CHREMES). When you've been doing abroad just as you pleased, and have had no regard for this excellent lady {here}, but on the contrary, have been injuring her in an unheard-of manner, would you be coming to me with prayers to wash away your offenses? On telling her of this, I'll make her so incensed with you, that you sha'n't quench her, though you should ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... letter received here within a few days of the outbreak of the war and originating from a particularly authoritative source in Vienna, Austria entirely failed to realize the portentous significance and the inevitable consequences of her unheard-of ultimatum to Serbia. ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... did not know whether to tell the girls or not, but then, of course they knew, for after they were alone, what unheard-of capers they did go through with, such winks, and sighs, and groans, and tragic acting. So Bea sat over in the shadow where they couldn't see her face, and said ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... On land the tax rate is from thirty to fifty per cent; the income tax is not merely, as one would suppose, levied on a legitimate income derived from a man's possessions, but is levied on salaries, ranging from ten to twenty per cent of these, and also, not content with this unheard-of extortion, the tax is levied on the nature and source of his salary, and even the smallest wage is thus subject to an income tax. Again, there is a most absurd tax on salt, which, like sugar and ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... of Rennepont, Duke of Cardoville), is quite in the interest, and almost in the dependence, of the young lady's aunt. We count, with reason, upon this worthy and respectable relative, and on the Baron Tripeaud, to oppose and repress the singular, unheard-of designs which this young person, as resolute as independent, does not fear to avow—and which, unfortunately, cannot be turned to account in the interest of the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... at the impetuous little figure kneeling beside the big trunk. Diana's dark-grey eyes shone like stars, her oval face, if not exactly pretty, was piquant and interesting, her light-brown hair curled at the tips. It was, of course, an unheard-of liberty for a new girl, and an intermediate to boot, thus to address a senior, but the greeting was spontaneous and decidedly flattering. The grey eyes, in fact, expressed open admiration. On the whole, Loveday decided to waive ceremony ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... Bertram's prediction came true; they never heard another word about the action for trespass or the threatened prosecution for assault and battery. Sir Lionel found out that the person who had committed the gross and unheard-of outrage of lifting an elderly and respectable English landowner like a baby in arms on his own estate, was a lodger at Brackenhurst, variously regarded by those who knew him best as an escaped lunatic, and as ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... who fought the climate, hunger, and the enemy on the battle-field which has shed so much undying glory on the American arms. They are the men who have accomplished unheard-of feats of endurance and performed incredible feats of valor on the same ground—not for Cuba, but at the call of duty. They are citizens. They are brave soldiers who have done their full duty because it ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... looked back at her, faintly smiling. "I wonder you have not heard, dear. I thought you were in correspondence with his people. But perhaps they also are in the dark. It is a most unheard-of thing—quite irrevocable I am told. But I always felt that he was a man to do unusual things. There was always to my mind something uncanny, abnormal, something ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... had been much in the newspapers. Rohan was a Slovak, apparently well educated in Europe. When he first attracted attention to himself, he was foreman in a steel plant at Birmingham, Alabama. He was popular as an orator, and drew unheard-of crowds ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... number of the Leigh bawleys go down to Harwich and fish off that port for two or three months. The absence of Jack was always a great trial to her. When he was with her she felt that he was safe, for it is an almost unheard-of thing for a bawley to meet with an accident when fishing in the mouth of the Thames; but off Harwich the seas are heavy, and although even there accidents are rare—for the boats are safe and staunch and the fishermen handle them splendidly—still the risk is greater than when working ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... remembrance from midsummer till January. One idle evening last winter, confident that he would be found in the snuggest corner of the bar-room, I resolved to pay him another visit, hoping to deserve well of my country by snatching from oblivion some else unheard-of fact of history. The night was chill and raw, and rendered boisterous by almost a gale of wind which whistled along Washington street, causing the gaslights to flare ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the unbridled passions of Ibrahim, who at length ventured to seize in the public baths the daughter of the mufti, and, after detaining her for some days in the palace, sent her back with ignominy to her father. This unheard-of outrage at once kindled the smouldering discontent into a flame; the Moslem population rose in instant and universal revolt; and a scene ensued almost without parallel in history—the deposition of an absolute sovereign by form of law. The grand-vizir Ahmed, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... of meal ground in the banal mills of the seigniories for the people's bread, but the old tinettes of yellow butter, the pride of the good wives of Beauport and Lauzon, were rarely to be seen, and commanded unheard-of prices. The hungry children who used to eat tartines of bread buttered on both sides were now accustomed to the cry of their frugal mother as she spread it thin as if it were gold-leaf: "Mes enfants, take care ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... persons occupied themselves in the business of women's bonnets; these bonnets never came to their shop but in the bags of the retailer, after the most singular changes, the most extraordinary transformations, the most unheard-of discolorations. To prevent the merchandise taking up too much room in a shop usually of the size of a large box, they folded these bonnets in two, after which they smoothed them and pressed them down excessively tight—saving the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... for a walk on her wedding-morning, when there was scarcely time to prepare for the ceremony! I wish I could even believe it possible that she would do such an unheard-of thing," said Mrs. Mencke, in a tone of despair, and feeling nearly paralyzed by ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... elephantiasis, the epileptic, the scrofulous, or those who had been mutilated at the hands of the cruel Gallas. Day after day the crowd of patients increased; those who had met with refusal remained in the hope that on another day the "Hakeem's" boxes of unheard-of medicine might be opened, for them also. New ones daily poured in. The many cures of simple cases that I had been able to accomplish spread my fame far and wide, and even reached my countrymen at Magdala, who heard that an English Hakeem had arrived, who could break bones and instantly ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... had to stop and explain much about beaver tails, and the rest of beavers, to the Frenchman, who was interested like a boy in this new, almost unheard-of beast. ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... jewellery, plate, and precious stones, and informers were encouraged to make search for offenders, by the promise of one-half the amount they might discover. The whole country sent up a cry of distress at this unheard-of tyranny. The most odious persecution daily took place. The privacy of families was violated by the intrusion of informers and their agents. The most virtuous and honest were denounced for the crime of having been seen with a louis d'or in their possession. Servants ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... owner of a hemp factory, who had walked forward and felt the vagrant's arm, laughing, but coloring up also as the eyes of all were quickly turned upon him. In those days it was not an unheard-of thing for the muscles of a human being to be thus examined when being sold into servitude to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Anglo-Chinese College, who had spent some thirty years in Singapore, and was well acquainted with its localities and objects of interest. He was like a complete volume with illustrations on everything pertaining to the East, could answer all manner of unheard-of questions about things that everybody else had forgotten, and had always ready an appropriate anecdote or story just to the point. His very dress was characteristic. It consisted of loose trousers of gray linen, and an old-fashioned white hunting-coat with Quaker collar, and huge pockets that would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... inclined cord have been found. The Romans had walkers both of the slack-rope and tight-rope Many of the Fathers of the Church have pronounced against the dangers of these exercises. Among others, St. John Chrysostom speaks of men who execute movements on inclined ropes at unheard-of heights. In the ruins of Herculaneum there is still visible a picture representing an equilibrist executing several different exercises, especially one in which he dances on a rope to the tune of a double ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... profound! Thomson redeemed his pledge; and that great pawnbroker, the public, returned to him his poem at the end of a year and a day. Now, what is the "mighty stream of tendency" of that remark? Were the public, or the people, or the world, gulled by this unheard-of pledge of Thomson, to regard his work with that "wonder which is the natural product of ignorance!" If they were so in his case, why not in every other? All poets pledge themselves to be poetical, but too many of them are wretchedly ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... salvation he can commit any violence: burn men and women at the stake, make them perish under indescribable tortures, plunge whole provinces into the most abject misery. Nor did they fail to give object lessons to this effect on a grand scale, and with an unheard-of cruelty, wherever the king's sword and the Church's fire, or both at once, could reach. By these teachings and examples, continually repeated and enforced upon public attention, the very minds of the citizens had been shaped into a new mould. They began ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... offered to pay my passage. Our voyage was prosperous, and after visiting many lands, and collecting in each place great store of goodly merchandise, I found myself at last in Bagdad once more with unheard-of riches of every description. Again I gave large sums of money to the poor, and enriched all the mosques in the city, after which I gave myself up to my friends and relations, with whom I passed my time ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... for detecting a brother letter-sorter appropriating the contents of a penny letter to his own uses, at the precise time that the said Josiah Claypole had his eye on it, for reasons best known to himself. The twopenny-postmen are highly incensed at this unheard-of and unprecedented passing them over; and great fears are entertained ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... settled the character of a contest which was, from that time forward, to shake the whole social organization of the vice-kingdom—in which plantations were destroyed, and villages and cities sacked and burned, and the most unheard-of cruelties practiced by one party or the other on the defenseless, until the final triumph of the Creole, or white troops, in the time of the viceroy, Apaduer, over the insurgents, composed chiefly of Indians and those ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... of the people, and turned to his pupil who begged food for him. Now this pupil was proud and arrogant. And the hermit said: "My boy, what is this wailing we hear? Go outside and find out, then return and tell me why this unheard-of commotion is taking place." ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... doctors Boehmer and Stamm, Dorsch of Strasburg, etc., chiefly men who had formerly been Illuminati, was formed in imitation of the revolutionary Jacobin club at Paris.[5] These people committed unheard-of follies. At first, notwithstanding their doctrine of equality, they were distinguished by a particular ribbon; the women, insensible to shame, wore girdles with long ends, on which the word "liberty" was worked in front, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... any thing, evidence that the other, committed at a time nearly coincident, was not so committed. It would have been a miracle indeed, if, while a gang of ruffians were perpetrating, at a given locality, a most unheard-of wrong, there should have been another similar gang, in a similar locality, in the same city, under the same circumstances, with the same means and appliances, engaged in a wrong of precisely the same aspect, at precisely the same ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... were near Waddy too, and brought dusty drovers and droughty stockmen in crowds to the town ship every Tuesday. These men were indiscreet and indiscriminate drinkers, and often a vagrant was left behind to finish a spree that surrounded him with unheard-of reptiles and strange kaleidoscopic animals unknown to the zoologist. It must be admitted, too, that Joel Ham, B.A., was in a measure responsible for the boys' unlawful knowledge. Twice at holiday times, when ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... back of Peter's head now that interests me, and the droop of his shoulders. They always remind me of Leech's sketch of Old Scrooge waiting for Marly's ghost, whenever I come upon him thus unobserved. To-night he not only wears his calico dressing-gown—unheard-of garment in these days—but a red velvet cap pulled over his scalp. Most bald men would have the cap black—but then most bald men have not Peter's eye ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... shores of this wild, desolate lake, I was conscious of a slight thrill of expectation, as if some secret of Nature might here be revealed, or some rare and unheard-of game disturbed. There is ever a lurking suspicion that the beginning of things is in some way associated with water, and one may notice that in his private walks he is led by a curious attraction to fetch all the springs and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... are a puzzle to history, and none is more so than that of Robespierre. According to popular belief, this personage was a blood-thirsty monster, a vulgar tyrant, who committed the most unheard-of enormities, with the basely selfish object of raising himself to supreme power—of becoming the Cromwell of the Revolution. Considering that Robespierre was for five years—1789 to 1794—a prime leader in the political movements in France; that for a length of time he ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... filled with slender racers, spirited carriage horses, fiery out-riders with plaited manes, and riding horses from the Don. The breakfast, dinner, and supper-hours were all in confusion and disorder; in the words of the neighbours, "unheard-of ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... of the bloody theater where war had been kindled at her behest, despatched expeditions on her own behalf to seize Egypt and to attack Buenos Ayres. After all this the Czar had still offered his mediation, but in vain: Great Britain had replied by an act of unheard-of violence, despoiling an ancient and dignified monarchy. Could the Czar apologize for such a deed? It was insulting to expect it. After reciting these grievances and asserting the principles of the armed neutrality, the paper announced a rupture of all diplomatic ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... to us! But it was a great, an unheard-of thing in those days. And for this cause, maybe, Giovanni proposed to remain with the monks, to be received as a novice among them, and to forsake the world for ever. And they received him. Now when Gualberto heard it, he was first very ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... there were on board, from unheard-of far places, and when the white man spoke to them, they tore the long feather from Mauki's hair, cut that same hair short, and wrapped about his waist a lava-lava of bright ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... fairy," the use to which he would at that moment have applied it would have been to furnish himself with a pair, not of "beautiful wings"—for that was a secondary consideration—but of strong and long ones, such as would have enabled him to overhaul those churk falcons, and punish them for their unheard-of audacity. ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... answers to our call! We do not ask for more. A sturdy fellow, after all, This latest Ruddigore! All perish in unheard-of woe Who dare our wills defy; We want your pardon, ere we go, For having agonized you so— So pardon us— So pardon us— ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... lady arrived with a trembling sense of escape from unknown perils at Mrs Hadwin's garden-door. For Miss Dora was of opinion, like some few other ladies, that to walk alone down the quietest of streets was to lay herself open to unheard-of dangers. She put out her trembling hand to ring the bell, thinking her perils over—for of course Frank would walk home with her—when the door suddenly opened, and a terrible apparition, quite unconscious of anybody standing there, marched straight ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... envelope had been on the table, and more than once his mind had wandered from the lessons he was preparing to speculate on the possible tidings wrapped up in that sealed packet. Not that a telegram was an unheard-of event in the family. No, his father received many; most of them, however, went to the Boston office, and the boy could not imagine what this one was doing ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... for 5,000." "Sold." Their eyes were fixed upon each other, in Barry's a defiant glare, in Bob's mingled pity and contempt. The rest of the brokers hushed their own bids and offers until it could have truthfully been said that the floor of the Stock Exchange was quiet, an almost unheard-of thing in like circumstances. Again Barry Conant's voice, "25 for 5,000." "Sold." "25 for 5,000." "Sold." Barry Conant had met his master. Whether it was that for the first time in all his wonderful career he realised that ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... serious indisposition and the depressed mood it left behind were strange things to you, and have affected me very much. For my comfort I assume that your illness is quite gone; but was I not right, dear friend, when I warned you and expressed to you my anxiety for your health, because I knew what unheard-of exertions you had made for my sake? Please set my fear at rest soon and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... been insolent to Francis Lingen, with his "Ha, Lingen, you here?" He was markedly polite to Jimmy Urquhart, much more so than his habit was. He used to accompany him to the door when he left, an unheard-of attention. But that may have been ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... daughter" in England—as, "A young lady, the daughter of a clergyman, is desirous to teach," &c. "A clergyman's widow receives into her house a few select," and so forth. "Appeal to the benevolent.—By a series of unheard-of calamities, a young lady, daughter of a clergyman in the west of England, has been plunged," &c. &c. The difference is curious, as indicating the standard ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and the woman disappeared, but in a few minutes more an unheard-of thing happened—among the servants in the hall, the same old woman appeared making her way with a hurried fretfulness, and she descended haltingly the stone steps and came to his side where he sat on ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... prettily situated at the bend of a river, I was made very welcome. The Casa Real, another name for the building generally designated as La Comunidad, had been swept and looked clean and cool, and I accepted the invitation to lodge there. It was furnished with the unheard-of luxury of a bedstead, or rather the framework of one, made of a network of strong strips of hide. As the room was dark, I moved this contrivance out on the veranda, where I also stored my baggage, while my aparejos ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... do you fellows want?" he exclaimed angrily. "How dare you intrude upon me, in my private office, in this unheard-of fashion, like ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... give you a passport," said Mr. Ferris, somewhat more gently. "You know," he explained, "that no government can give passports to foreign subjects. That would be an unheard-of thing." ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... that is to be found in all Spain, and among his books he passed long hours of the day and of the night, compiling, classifying, taking notes, and selecting various sorts of precious information, or composing, perhaps, some hitherto unheard-of and undreamed-of work, worthy of so great a mind. His habits were patriarchal; he ate little, drank less, and his only dissipations consisted of a luncheon in the Alamillos on very great occasions, and daily walks to a place called Mundogrande, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... had settled themselves with elaborate impudence on the back seat, the singing began. Just as they were singing the last verse, every individual voice wavered and all but died out in astonishment to see William Bacon come in—an unheard-of thing! And with a clean shirt, too! Bacon, to tell the truth, was feeling as much out of place as a cat in a bath-tub, and looked uncomfortable, even shamefaced, as he sidled in, his shapeless hat gripped nervously in both hands; coatless and collarless, his shirt open at his massive throat. The ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... thrift, but after all It may be thrift that saves him from the devil; God gave it, anyhow,—and we'll suppose He knew the compound of his handiwork. To-day the clouds are with him, but anon He'll out of 'em enough to shake the tree Of life itself and bring down fruit unheard-of,— And, throwing in the bruised and whole together, Prepare a wine to make us drunk with wonder; And if he live, there'll be a sunset spell Thrown over him as over a glassed lake That yesterday was all a black ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... Margravine of Rippau during the extreme heat of the afternoon by precipitating himself headlong into forty fathoms, either attached or unattached. His art in baffling Mr. Peterborough's attempts to treat the unheard-of request as a jest was extraordinary. The ingenuity of his successive pleas for pressing such a request pertinaciously upon Mr. Peterborough in particular, his fixed eye, yet cordial deferential manner, and the stretch ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... learning, of material for the history of dogma, the establishing of the consensus patrum et doctorum, the exhibition of the necessity of a continuous explication of dogma, and the description of the history of heresies pressing in from without, regarded now as unheard-of novelties, and again as old enemies in new masks. The modern Jesuit-Catholic historian indeed exhibits, in certain circumstances, a manifest indifference to the task of establishing the semper idem in the faith of the Church, but this indifference is at present regarded with disfavour, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... find that everyone drank wine with him, and that everybody at the captain's table appeared to be on an equality. Before the dessert had been on the table five minutes, Jack became loquacious on his favourite topic; all the company stared with surprise at such an unheard-of doctrine being broached on board of a man-of-war; the captain argued the point, so as to controvert, without too much offending, Jack's notions, laughing the whole time that ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... divine mysteries, when an evil-doer, a bondsman of Satan, thrusting with accursed boldness a rod through the window, overturned the chalice, and sacrilegiously poured out on the altar the holy sacrifice. But the Lord instantly and terribly avenged this fearful wickedness, and in a new and unheard-of manner destroyed the impious man. For suddenly the earth, opening her mouth (as formerly on Dathan and Abiron), swallowed up this magician, and he descended alive into hell. And the earth, thus disjoined and rent asunder, ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... the Heart: But then I found out Bonvile, my only dearest Friend. Bonvile no sooner heard of my Engagement, but flew unto my Succour with as much Bravery, as a great General hastned by Alarms, marches to meet the Foe: You left your Nuptial Bed perhaps to meet your Death. O unheard-of Friendship! My Father gave me Life, 'tis true; but you, my Friend, support my Honour. All this for me, while I, ungrateful Man, thus seek your Life: For to my eternal Horror be it spoke, you are the Man whom I ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... always been dear to humankind because of the dangers they run and because of the pluck they show in storms and fires, and the unending fights they make against wind and wave. But of late they had had unheard-of enemies to meet, the submarine and the infernal machine placed inside ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... hadn't really believed his own hunch. But, of course, if it hadn't been an unheard-of outside force that plucked the Queen out of normspace and threw her into this elsewhere, then it must be something Maulbow had put on board. And that something had to be a ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... sooner pronounced these words, than the hall shook as if ready to fall; and the genie said in a loud and terrible voice, "Is it not enough that I and the other slaves of the lamp have done everything for you, but you, by an unheard-of ingratitude, must command me to bring my master, and hang him up in the midst of this dome? This attempt deserves that you, the princess, and the palace, should be immediately reduced to ashes; but you are spared because this request does not come from ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... commons were being "enclosed" by local potentates. Monopolies of the natural resources of all wealth, the inalienable dower of the people at large, were working their inevitable consequences. Below the wealthy class, which was rising to the top of society, there was forming at the bottom a new and unheard-of social stratum, the settlings of the struggle for existence; a deposit of the feebleness and ignorance and innocence of the people. In the loss of the old sense of a commonwealth, the nation was breaking up into classes, alienated, unsympathetic, hostile. ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... of much use as yet but to make debts for Warburton to pay—one of the most precious privileges of an elder brother. "I don't think I shall pay any more," said her friend; "he lives a monstrous deal better than I do, enjoys unheard-of luxuries and thinks himself a much finer gentleman than I. As I'm a consistent radical I go in only for equality; I don't go in for the superiority of the younger brothers." Two of his four sisters, the second and fourth, were married, one of them having done very well, as they said, the other ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... down beside me, her eyes shining and wet, Sally entered the room in time to see her cousin bend to kiss me gratefully with sisterly fervor. Yet it was a woman's kiss, given for its own sake. Sally could not comprehend; it was too sudden, too unheard-of, that Diane Sampson should kiss me, the man she did not love. Sally's white, sad face changed, and in the flaming wave of scarlet that dyed neck and cheek and brow I read with mighty pound of heart that, despite the dark stain between ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... in point. Theoretically I should have here the innocuous union of three harmless chemicals; as a matter of fact I had occasion to experiment with it and learned that I had innocently produced a vicious and unheard-of poison. The stuff is of no use. It is one of those things a man occasionally stumbles upon in this work,—better forgotten. How do I account for it? I don't. Even in science there is always the unknown element which comes in and plays the devil ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... he drove down the avenue as fast as the horse could go, and the animal was a famous trotter, carefully chosen by Sir Thorn, who understood horse-flesh better than any one else in Paris. But Daniel was agile; and the hope of being able to avenge himself at once gave him unheard-of strength. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... unbeliever. I will accord you twenty-four hours wherein to accomplish this. But, oh, if I lay hands upon either of you within the twenty-fifth hour I will not kill my prisoner at once. For first I must devise unheard-of torments—" ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... Several unheard-of insolences which this excellent prince was forced to submit to before that odious judicatory, his majestic behaviour, the pronouncing that horrible sentence upon the most innocent person in the world, the execution of that sentence by the most ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... absent. They were having too excellent a time to be drawn into the temptation of a recruiting meeting, in spite of the band and the fine afternoon and the promiscuity of attractive damsels. They were making unheard-of money at the circumjacent factories; their mothers were waxing fat on billeting-money. They never had so much money to spend on moving-picture-palaces and cheap jewellery for their inamoratas in their lives. As our beautiful ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... never be made, on account of circumstances that overrule all common efforts. New York is a great colony—a very great colony, Miss; but it was once Dutch, as everybody knows, begging Mr. Follock's pardon; and it must be confessed Connecticut has, from the first, enjoyed almost unheard-of advantages, in the moral and religious character of her people, the excellence of her lands, and the purity"—Jason called this word "poority;" but that did not alter the sentiment—though I must say, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... converting one poor woman in England who immediately recanted. It was in other directions that the energies of the people found their exercise. If Englishmen were heedless of foreign philosophers, they were quick to notice that the fruit of the vine had failed, and forthwith the unheard-of novelty of taverns where beer and mead were sold sprang up in France, probably by the help of those English traders whose beer was the marvel ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... maintenance of the Edict of Nantes was guaranteed, all the places of worship were to be restored to the Reformers, and a general amnesty granted to himself and his partisans. Furthermore, he obtained what was an unheard-of thing until then, an indemnity of 300,000 livres for his expenses during the rebellion; of which sum he allotted 240,000 livres to his co-religionists—that is to say, more than three-quarters of the entire amount—and kept, for the purpose ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... French Government seemed bent upon driving our Government to that point, the anti-British Pashas and the Gallic set in Egypt were jubilant. The Turkish Pashas and Beys were openly chuckling and romancing about unheard-of things. It is in Egypt, as it is in Armenia and was in the Balkans: the Turk is the enemy of good government and freedom for the people. A check to British policy and rule meant to them a possible return of the old ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... changeable, hustling, ragtime age. Coon songs are almost as popular with the best of them as grand opera, and more readily appreciated. If we don't surprise and amuse them I shall be very much disappointed. A tent show in staid, fashionable old Newport is an unheard-of undertaking, and we will have the honor, and, I may add, the profit of inaugurating the fashion. There's the rub. The very novelty and the boldness of the undertaking cannot, in my humble judgment, fail to appeal to these pleasure-seekers. ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... fancy swimming, shooting, or any other unheard-of pursuit, Kate would be obliged to swim and shoot with you. But I will not laugh any more. Study, if you will, Alice; you will learn fast enough, and, in this age of fast-advancing civilization, when the chances of eligible ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... be able to deny it, madame, that this decline in manners, which has been engendered by this love of finery, proceeds from you, and from you alone; that not only your love of finery is to blame, but also your coquetry, your joviality, and these unheard-of indescribable orgies to which the Queen of France surrenders herself, and to which she even allures her own husband, the King of France, the oldest ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... an unheard-of thing, except where some degrading sentence has been pronounced; and ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... consequence—the exact expression being "fritted out of their wits." If that young Micky ever did such a thing again, Uncle Mo said, the result would be a pretty how-do-you-do, involving possibly fatal consequences to Michael, and certainly local flagellation of unheard-of severity. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... has been, and probably still is, one of the most troublesome factors arising from the development of the timber industry. In the earlier days, before power machinery for the working-up of timber products came into general use, dry kilns were unheard-of, air-drying or seasoning was then relied upon solely to furnish the craftsman with dry stock from which to manufacture his product. Even after machinery had made rapid and startling strides on its way to perfection, the dry kiln remained ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... Colonel to come and see him that night, when Mrs. Crawley would be at a soiree, and when they could meet alone. He found his brother-in-law in a condition of pitiable infirmity—and dreadfully afraid of Rebecca, though eager in his praises of her. She tended him through a series of unheard-of illnesses with a fidelity most admirable. She had been a daughter to him. "But—but—oh, for God's sake, do come and live near me, and—and—see me sometimes," whimpered out ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hiding could have freed me. I dared not face Honora, and I dared not subject Edwin Urquhart to the consequences of a public recognition of our perfidy, and so I let my opportunity go by, and became the sharer, as I was already the instigator, of the unheard-of crime by which I became, in the eyes of the world, ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... thy women-folk have been shopping! A most unheard-of event for us. We have Li-ti to thank for this great pleasure, because, but for her, the merchants would have brought their goods to the courtyard for us to make our choice. Li-ti would not hear of that; she wanted to ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... Conscience or the Government, one may think bad Verses bad Verses, and have full right to be tir'd with reading a silly Book. But since these Gentlemen have spoken of the liberty I have taken of Naming them, as an Attempt unheard-of, and without Example, and since Examples can't well be put into Rhyme; 'tis proper to say one word to inform 'em of a thing of which they alone wou'd gladly be ignorant, and to make them know, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... policy, to act the most treacherous, inhuman, and insidiuous part. They fell upon the British troops as they marched out, despoiled them of their few remaining effects, dragged the Indians in the English service out of their ranks, and assassinated them with circumstances of unheard-of barbarity. Some British soldiers, with their wives and children, are said to have been savagely murdered by those brutal Indians, whose ferocity the French commander could not effectually restrain. The greater part of the English ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Prince Albert, Lieutenant Haven, commander of the Rescue, called it Grinnell Land in honour of the American merchant who had fitted out the expedition from New York at his own expense. Whilst the brig was coasting it, she experienced a series of unheard-of difficulties, navigating sometimes under sail, sometimes by steam. On the 18th of August they sighted Britannia Mountain, scarcely visible through the mist, and the Forward weighed anchor the next day in Northumberland Bay. She was hemmed in ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... crimson'd o'er With blood of its own lord.—Dreadful attempt! Just reeking from self-slaughter, in a rage 410 To rush into the presence of our Judge; As if we challenged him to do his worst, And matter'd not his wrath!—Unheard-of tortures Must be reserved for such: these herd together; The common damn'd shun their society, And look upon themselves as fiends less foul. Our time is fix'd; and all our days are number'd; How long, how short, we know not:—this we know, Duty ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... loss, or suffered degradation. All, from the king to the day-labourer, were improved in their condition. Everything was kept in its place and order; but in that place and order everything was betterd. To add to this happy wonder (this unheard-of conjunction of wisdom and fortune), not one drop of blood was spilled; no treachery; no outrage; no system of slander more cruel than the sword; no studied insults on religion, morals, or manners; no spoil; no confiscation; no citizen beggared; none imprisoned; none exiled: the whole was effected ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... big to make a successful fete of. Morrison was silent and appreciatively observant, his eyes sometimes on Sylvia, sometimes on Judith; Mr. Sommerville, continuing doggedly to make talk, descended to unheard-of trivialities in reporting the iniquities of his chauffeur; Molly stirred an untasted cup, did not raise her eyes at all, and spoke only once or twice, addressing to Sylvia a disconnected question or two, in the answers to which she had obviously no interest. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... good cheer during earlier epochs was provincial enough. It was simply barbaric before the Greeks showed the Romans a thing or two in cookery. The methods of fattening fowl introduced from Greece was something unheard-of! It was outrageous, sacrilegious! Senators, orators and other self-appointed saviors of humanity thundered against the vile methods of tickling the human palate, deftly employing all the picturesque tam-tam and elan still the ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... close study of the swells made by steamboats when under way. When the boat was being built in the famous shipyards at Elizabeth, on the Monongahela, the wheel beams were set twenty feet farther back than was customary. Converse was struck with this unheard-of radicalism in design, and balked; King was a man given to few words; he was resolved to throw convention to the winds and trust his judgment; he refused to build the boat on other lines. Converse felt compelled to let Chouteau pass on ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... of an embargo had an unexpected effect upon American shipmasters. To avoid being shut up in port, fleets of ships put out to sea half-manned, half-laden, and often without clearance papers. With freight rates soaring to unheard-of altitudes, ship-owners were willing to assume all the risks of the sea—British frigates included. So little did they appreciate the protection offered by a benevolent government that they assumed an attitude of hostility to authority and evaded the exactions of the ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... Unheard-of epicure, without a fellow, Thou must render up thy dead, And with high ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... Alymer from me, that is your affair. Rather than estrange him myself, I will bind him closer. That is my answer to you, and to the lady," with fine scorn, " who sat down yesterday and penned that unheard-of letter to a fellow-woman she knew nothing whatever against. Yet I think I could have charged that to her evident ignorance concerning theatrical matters, and forgiven her, if a monstrous irony had not sent you to ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... took her second marriage quite as she had taken her first—a solemn fact which contained no possibility of mental alteration. As for himself, however, he was bustling about in a world which, financially at least, seemed all alteration—there were so many sudden and almost unheard-of changes. He began to look at her at times, with a speculative eye—not very critically, for he liked her—but with an attempt to weigh her personality. He had known her five years and more now. What did he know about her? The vigor of youth—those first years—had made ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... naturally, as the big sister, did most of the training, and it wasn't easy. When I read to him on Sunday Tales of the Covenanters, he at once made up his mind that he much preferred Claverhouse to John Brown of Priesthill, an unheard-of heresy, and yawning vigorously, announced that he was as dull as a bull and as sick as a daisy. One night when I went to hear him say ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... purification. He would load himself of his own will with so many anxieties and so much work that he would have no time left to listen to the insidious voice of his "old friends." Could he manage to silence them at once? This unheard-of grace—would it be granted to him? Or would not rather the struggle continue in the depths of his conscience? What comes out as certain is that those terrible passions which turned his youth upside down, nevermore play any part in his life. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... rising steadily, moving swiftly, shut off the noonday glare. The shadows deepened below this strange un-cloud-like cloud, not dark, but dense. The few chickens in the settlement mistook the clock and went to roost. At every settler's house, wondering eyes watched the unheard-of phenomenon, so like, yet ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... her; his appearance, never impressive, was then, by reason of obtrusive boyishness, still less so; she found occasion to put him in the wrong by correcting a false quantity; and when Mr. Austin, after doing his visitor the almost unheard-of honour of accompanying him to the door, announced 'That was what young men were like in my time' - she could only reply, looking on her handsome father, 'I thought they ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pierced through her heart. She knew this was the last evening she should ever see the prince, for whom she had forsaken her kindred and her home; she had given up her beautiful voice, and suffered unheard-of pain daily for him, while he knew nothing of it. This was the last evening that she would breathe the same air with him, or gaze on the starry sky and the deep sea; an eternal night, without a thought or a dream, awaited her: she had no soul and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... how we can ask them, and do it naturally," said Dr. Everett. "It is such an unheard-of thing, you know; and I am afraid, do our best, it will present itself to them as a patronage, and that will be fatal. The people who are low enough to need patronage are the very ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... in his grammar of 1849, says, "Nobody would think of saying, 'He is being loved'—'This result is being desired.'"—Analyt. and Pract. Gram., p. 237. But, according to J. W. Wright, whose superiority in grammar has sixty-two titled vouchers, this unheard-of barbarism is, for the present passive, precisely and solely what one ought to say! Nor is it, in fact, any more barbarous, or more foreign from usage, than the spurious example which the Doctor himself takes for a model in the active ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown |
