"Unreasonable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... posted up scathing denunciations of the same—and of course we declared that we were going to come again, like King Arthur; but I think most of us realised in our hearts that the great British Public, having decided in its ponderous but not altogether unreasonable way that any change of government must be for the better, was now going to pull us down from the eminence to which we had been precariously clinging for five years, and set up another row of legislative ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... measure to Giorgione in painting. It would show want of critical acumen to expect from Keats the consistency of Milton, or that Schubert should keep the unvarying high level of Beethoven, and it is equally unreasonable to exact from Giorgione the uniform excellence which characterises Titian. I do not propose at this point to work out the comparison between the painter, the musician, and the poet; this must be reserved until the final summing-up of Giorgione as artist, when we have examined all ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... came to see her she would greet me kindly; then we would sit down facing each other, both of us preoccupied, hardly exchanging a word. The third day she spoke, overwhelmed me with bitter reproaches, told me that my conduct was unreasonable, that she could not account for it except on the supposition that I had ceased to love her; but she could not endure this life and would resort to anything rather than submit to my caprices and coldness. Her eyes were full of tears, and I was about to ask her pardon when ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... king, how do we suffer them to forbid us all our trade? Why do they bar us from Maluco, Sian, Camboja, Cochinchina, China, and all the rest of this archipelago? What are we to do then, if they wish to seize everything? Surely this is a very unreasonable proceeding. I have dwelt on this matter in order to express my feelings. Not until our departure shall I write to your Grace about the fertility and nature of the country, and of its greatness. Then I shall endeavor to give a full account of the land, and to mark out this ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... obtain committee appointments of their own choice soon find they are not what they had expected, and they also join the clamor against the Speaker. There are, however, only a small number out of the whole who are unreasonable or dissatisfied. This small number, by their wailing, give the appearance of a general discontent. Complaint was made by the disappointed that I gave preference on committees to personal and party friends ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... partly by flattery, partly by force, to the black vault of Denure, a strong fortalice, built on a rock overhanging the Irish channel, where to execute leases and conveyances of the whole churches and parsonages belonging to the Abbey of Crossraguel, which he utterly refused as an unreasonable demand, and the more so that he had already conveyed them to John Stewart of Cardonah, by whose interest he had been made Commendator. The complainant proceeds to state, that he was, after many menaces, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... here is greatly on the decrease; for, owing to all sorts of unreasonable regulations, and to the vexatious mode of their application, cultivators now prefer making their ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... have not been able to retrieve it; King Philip having often declared that war, besides his Armada for invading England, had cost him 370,000,000 of ducats, and 4,000,000 of the best soldiers in Europe; whereof, by an unreasonable Spanish obstinacy, above 60,000 lost their lives before Ostend, a town not worth a sixth part either of the blood or money it cost in a siege of three years; and which at last he had never taken, but that Prince Maurice thought it not worth the charge ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... child, if I should disclose my suspicions, and they should prove unreasonable, I shall have done a grievous wrong to him I suspect. Although you cannot save me from the misery of doubting in my last hour, you can save me from injuring another in your good opinion. If I have wronged him, let the injury die with me. If my suspicions are not groundless, I offer ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... settlement of the Home Rule question; secondly, that it must be of reasonable character; and thirdly, not inconsistent with the fundamental principle of national self-government. Ulster's present proposal, if accepted, carried with it no promise of a settlement; it was unreasonable as proposing to strike out of Ireland five counties with Nationalist majorities. But finally, on a broader ground, it destroyed the ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... lover of them all; a man of only two or three ideas, this one of cruel, hopeless, unattainable passion for herself would easily dominate him and render him, fresh to the emotions and therefore ignorant of how to control and deal with them, utterly unreasonable, even it might be violent and offensive. What wonder then if her thoughts like her eyes turned toward the loft above her. Despite her flighty tendencies, her town and theatre friendships and quarrels, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... and dried vegetables because they do not taste like fresh ones. This seems rather unreasonable, as we want a variety of flavors in our diet and might welcome the change which comes from this way of treating food as well as that which comes from different methods of cooking. Nobody expects a stew to ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... called the officer to one side, and, after expressing the satisfaction he had enjoyed in his company, told him he felt encouraged to ask of him a very great favor. "I shall take great pleasure in obliging you," replied the officer, "as I am certain you would not make an unreasonable request."—"Then," said Mr. Wesley, "as we are to travel together for some days, I beg that if I should so far forget myself as to use any profane language, you will kindly reprove me." The officer immediately perceived how faithfully and how ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... is not necessary to make this supposition. Though the discourse was delivered some time after March 15, 1559, when the first bill "against Conjurations, Prophecies, etc.," was brought before the Commons (see Journal of the House of Commons, I, 57), it is not unreasonable to believe that there was some connection between the discourse and the fortunes of this bill. That connection seems the more probable on a careful reading of the Commons Journals for the first sessions of ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... was raised whether he ought not to go down and address convocation in person. The dean of Christ Church, however, thought it very doubtful whether he would get a hearing. 'Those,' he told Mr. Gladstone, 'who remember Sir Robert Peel's election testify that there never was a more unreasonable and ferocious mob than convocation was at that time. If you were heard, it is doubtful whether you would gain any votes at that last moment, while it is believed you would lose some. You would be questioned as to the ecclesiastical policy of the cabinet. Either you would not be able to answer ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... that that would be so, Herrara; and as she has a nice fortune from her father, you may be sure that she will not trouble about the estates here, and her mother would be welcome to do as she likes with them, which is, after all, not unreasonable, as they are her property and descended to her from her father. Still, I should be glad to learn, if it does not give any great trouble, whether if, as is almost certain—for the people from all the country round took refuge there long before the ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... should go about to wrong me, make me a cuckold downwards to the very breech, disgrace me otherwise, steal my goods from me, yea, and lay violently her hands upon me;—she nevertheless should fail of her attempts and not attain to the proposed end of her unreasonable undertakings. The reason which induceth me hereto is grounded totally on this last point, which is extracted from the profoundest privacies of a monastic pantheology, as good Friar Arthur Wagtail told me once upon a Monday morning, as we were (if I have not forgot) ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... is very largely a matter of will power. Some women simply will not exert any effort in their own behalf. They are perverse, obstinate, and unreasonable. The measures which ordinarily effect a cure, they refuse to employ. It is useless to argue with them; drugs should never be employed; censure and affection are apparently wasted on them; they cannot even be shamed into obedience. The maternal duty they owe to the unborn child does not seem to ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... an unreasonable patient you are!" cried Roberts. "How can you expect the strength to come till ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... alone men, shared the views of Mary Wollstonecraft; I never heard that millions of believers flocked to the religion tentatively founded by Miss Frances Power Cobbe. They did, undoubtedly, flock to Mrs. Eddy; but it will not be unfair to that lady to call her following a sect, and not altogether unreasonable to say that such insane exceptions prove the rule. Nor can I at this moment think of a single modern woman writing on politics or abstract things, whose work is of undisputed importance; except perhaps Mrs. Sidney Webb, who settles ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... the elopement of this remarkable couple one must remember that they were no longer giddy and rash youth. Browning was thirty-four and the romantic Juliet was three years older. Again it must be remembered that the objecting father was a most unreasonable and selfish man. The climax of his selfishness was reached when in opposition to the advice of the physicians Mr. Barrett refused to allow his daughter to go to Italy. "In the summer of 1846," writes Mr. Chesterton, "Elizabeth Barrett was still living under the ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... philosopher—my attempt at calm contemplation of this dismal and far from improbable combination of evil circumstances had no other effect upon me than to throw me into a most violent rage. It seemed to me so stupidly unreasonable that some mere common brute of an Indian, by the crude process of splitting my skull open, might deprive me, and through me the scientific world, of the priceless knowledge that with much effort I had stored ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... the unreasonable people, come away from the men who can give no account of their attitude. Come away from those who pay benefits by carelessness, and a Love that died by an indifference that will not cast an eye upon that miracle ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... made by St. Thomas was not very important in its special claims, and was probably (taken as an isolated action) unreasonable. But he soon gets to see, as he reads and as he notes the rapid and profound transformation of all civilization which was taking place in that generation, that St. Thomas was standing out for a principle, ill clothed in his particular plea, but absolute in its general appreciation: ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... master.[263] The manner in which men are brought into this condition; its continuance, and the means adopted for securing the authority and claim of masters, are all incidental and variable. They may be reasonable or unreasonable, just or unjust, at different times and places. The question, therefore, which the abolitionists have undertaken to decide, is not whether the laws enacted in the slaveholding States in relation ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... answer to a child's question, does him a real injury; but can we expect, that those who have no interest in education, should have the patience to correct their whole conversation, and to adapt it precisely to the capacity of children? This would indeed be unreasonable; all we can do, is to keep our pupils out of the way of those who can do them no good, and who may do them a great deal of harm. We must prefer the permanent advantage of our pupils, to the transient vanity of exhibiting ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... formal as that which would be made to a place besieged. The answer was truly heroic, being rendered into the vernacular, "I won't." An old woman advanced from the crowd to reason with the sergeant, but she could get no farther than "Ecoutez, Mons. le Sergeant"—for, like all in authority, he was unreasonable and impatient when his power was called in question. He returned to the battalion, and tried to get a party to arrest the delinquent, but this was easier said than done. The troops evidently had no mind to disturb a neighbour who had just done the state good service, and who ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... can't have everything! If he'd asked for peace and quiet, he should have had it. But he didn't: he asked for a Dead March. Don't trouble about Fugler. He's not an unreasonable man. The only question is, if the Doctor here can keep him going until you're perfect with ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... are reprobated all the world over, for their unlawful depredations; and stigmatized as pirates, for their unreasonable exactions from foreign nations. But, the Algerines are no greater pirates than the Americans; nor are they a race more destructive to the happiness to mankind. The depredations of the latter on the coast of Africa, and upon the Indians' Territory make the truth of this ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... that she would sooner cut off her right hand than ask the ballot for the black man and not for woman. After Phillips had left, she overheard Tilton say to Mrs. Stanton, "What does ail Susan? She acts like one possessed." Mrs. Stanton replied, "I can not imagine; I never before saw her so unreasonable ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... among them Matthias Darley, who produced papers in the Chinese style; Thomas Bromwich, who was patronized by Walpole; and Robert Dunbar, Jr., of Aldermanbury, who in addition sold Jackson's papers. They lacked both Jackson's gifts and his unreasonable standards but they produced more generally acceptable wallpaper with greater facility. These competitors did not work in oil colors, like Jackson. Transparent tints were too difficult to control, especially when applied with inking balls (composition rollers did ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... think I ever experienced a cowardly feeling afterwards; that night perfectly satisfied me that superstition was the most unreasonable torture that could be inflicted on oneself; and I was ever afterwards celebrated for my bravery. Even my father praised my conduct, and said that it was pretty well for a girl of ten years, under such circumstances—at the same time representing to me how much more ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... again. Sometimes he had dreamed of a great sunny plain, with armies marching; sometimes he had awakened at hearing the chimes, and fancied sleepily that it was infinite music; sometimes, in the country in the early morning, he had had an unreasonable, unaccountable moment of perfect happiness: and now the fugitive element of them all seemed to have been crystallized and made his own in that floating walk down the wooded terraces of this unknown world. And yet he could not have told whether ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... she cherished the irritating belief that he stayed at home on purpose to watch her—to keep her from going away. It was her theory that she herself was perpetually at home—that few women were more domestic, more glued to the fireside and absorbed in the duties belonging to it; and unreasonable as she was she recognised the fact that for her to establish this theory she must make her husband sometimes see her at Mellows. It was not enough for her to maintain that he would see her if he were sometimes there himself. Therefore she ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... terrible campaignings against the Turk, in old times; and always such a stock of quarrels, at home, as must have been still worse to bear. A life of perpetual arguing, squabbling and battling,—one's neighbors being such an unreasonable set! Brabbles about Heidelberg Catechism, and Church of the Holy Ghost, so that foreign Kings interfered, shaking their whips upon us. Then brabbles about boundaries; about inheritances, and detached properties very many,—clearly mine, were the neighbors reasonable! In ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... or promise of which the offering is the fulfilment. But in the majority of inscriptions of late date the familiar letters V.S.L.M. (votum solvit lubens merito) betray the nature of the transaction, and it is not unreasonable to guess that there was usually a previous undertaking of some kind, to be carried out if the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... of sale were, for a hundred acres of land, forty shillings purchase money, and one shilling as an annual quit-rent. This latter stipulation, made in perfect fairness, not unreasonable in itself, and ratified by all who of their own accord acceded to it, was, as we shall see, an immediate cause of disaffection, and has ever since been the basis of a calumny against the honored and most estimable ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... but of useful, reasonable Activity, essential to the former as Food to Hunger, nothing granted: till at length, in this wild Pilgrimage, he must forcibly seize for himself an Activity, though useless, unreasonable. Alas, his cup of bitterness, which had been filling drop by drop, ever since that first 'ruddy morning' in the Hinterschlag Gymnasium, was at the very lip; and then with that poison-drop, of the Towgood-and-Blumine business, it runs over, and even hisses over ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... you, captain. She can have no fault to find with your action after I have told her how loyal you are and how—how—well, how unreasonable I am," said ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... we ought to do for ourselves as a collective interest. We need more constructive thinking in public service. We need a kind of "universal training" in economic facts. The over-reaching ambitions of speculative capital, as well as the unreasonable demands of irresponsible labour, are due to ignorance of the economic basis of life. Nobody can get more out of life than life can produce—yet nearly everybody thinks he can. Speculative capital wants more; labour wants more; the source of raw material wants more; and the purchasing ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... be such an unreasonable child," he remonstrated, feebly. "I do not love you with the wild, irrational passion of former years; but I have the tenderest regard for you, and my heart warms at the sight of your sweet face, and I shall do all in ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... was the original subject of the questions, though I must confess that he didn't remain long so, I don't think it altogether unreasonable to wonder what he will think about ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... impossible. None such being known at present, we conclude that we stand on the topmost pinnacle of life on this earth; but this belief, after all, is by no means infallible. I am not assuming that when our actions are unreasonable, or contemptible, we merely fall into the snares that such a creature has laid; though it is not inconceivable that this should one day be proved true. On the other hand, it cannot be wise to deny intelligence to the bee because it has not yet succeeded in distinguishing us from the great ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... founder of this dynasty of new critics, now murmured at the want of that salt and acidity by which they had relished the fugitive collation. They were not satisfied with having the most beautiful, or the most curious parts of a new work brought together; they wished for the unreasonable entertainment of railing and raillery. At length another objection was conjured up against the review; mathematicians complained that they were neglected to make room for experiments in natural philosophy; the historian sickened over works of natural history; the antiquaries would have nothing ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... very unreasonable in Surja Mukhi if she wants her husband's brother-in-law only that he may look after the luggage. I can find some one else to perform that office for ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... happy but virtuous as well.[3332] On this principle the attack begins: there is none that is pushed further, nor conducted with more bitter hostility. Thus far existing institutions are described simply as oppressive and unreasonable; but now they are now they are accused of being unjust and corrupting as well. Reason and the natural desires were the only insurgents; conscience and pride are now in rebellion. With Voltaire and Montesquieu all I might hope for is that fewer evils might be anticipated. With Diderot ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... it. Only think of the impossibility of keeping our eye, for five minutes, on a bee that is flying about, after it has left its sting. Yet there are some persons so very particular about what they receive as facts, that they would require this very unreasonable thing of watching a bee till it died, before they could be positively sure that the loss of its sting caused its death. (It is much easier to guess.) They might even take analogy, and say that other insects possess ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... are the effects of vanity: when a man has formed a design of excelling others in merit, he is disquieted by their advances, and leaves nothing unattempted, that he may step before them: this occasions a thousand unreasonable emotions, which justly bring their ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... was an abnormal being, none of his keepers thought him normal. His entire appearance, his excited way of speaking, his gestures and play of features were all striking to a high degree. His method of going about begging was unreasonable; he gained so little by it. His tendency to untruthfulness stood out everywhere. He imitated the pious as he chattered without aim. The man had lived himself into the role of a cloister brother so completely ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... there are at least three ways in which cover-crops are valuable in the vineyard. Thus, it is patent to all who have tried cover-crops in the vineyard that the land is in much better tilth and more easily worked when some green crop is turned under in fall or spring; it is not unreasonable to assume, though it is impossible to secure reliable experimental data to confirm the belief, that cover-crops protect the roots of grapes from winter-killing; certainly it may be expected that a cover-crop sowed in midsummer will cause ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... determined from the standpoint of the Rational Social Will, we can easily understand that some occupations and their accompanying pleasures should be rated higher than others, however satisfactory the latter may seem to certain individuals. It is not unreasonable to rate the pleasure of scientific discovery as higher than the pleasure of swallowing an oyster; and that, without following Bentham in falling back upon a quantitative standard, or following Mill in maintaining that pleasures, as pleasures, differ ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... be so unreasonable as to blame a live person for living! No woman's head is so small as to be filled for life by a memory of a few months. Four years have passed since I last saw my boy- husband. We were mere children; see how I have altered since in mind, substance, and outline—I have even ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... actual words. But her manner betrayed her suspicions. You must not wonder if this girl is unreasonable. Her father's miserable fate must have been ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... confesses that she never likes what she has, but always craves what she has not—that she hates everything useful and prosaic and likes everything which people declare she ought to renounce. She is unreasonable, and he loves her unreason—it bewitches him: she is obstinate, and he loves to feel the strength of her tiny will, as if it were the manifestation of some phenomenal force in her nature. Her scorn for common things, her fastidiousness, her indifference to the little obligations ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... the trouble of bargaining for my animals by Geir Zoega, who agreed to furnish me with the necessary number at five Danish dollars apiece the round trip; that is, about two dollars and a half American, which was not at all unreasonable. For his own services he only charged a dollar a day, with whatever buono mano I might choose to give him. These items I mention for the benefit of my friends at home who may take a ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... saw what a prodigious quantity of work you had put into the finery I was quite ashamed of my unreasonable request, I will never serve you so again, but I do dearly ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... definite brothers, or fathers, or sweethearts they had lost. People didn't do that after forty years; here was Fifi only dead a year, and he never saw anybody crying for her. No, they were weeping over an idea; it was sentiment, and a vague, misty, unreasonable sentiment at that. And yet he could not say that Miss Weyland appeared simply foolish with those tears in her eyes. No, the girl somehow managed to give the effect of seeing farther into things than he himself.... Her tears evidently were in the nature of ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Sir George proposed that the Missionaries should hold the same rank and receive the same allowance as the wintering partners, or commissioned officers; and that canoes, or other means of conveyance, should be furnished to the Missionaries for their expeditions; nor did it seem unreasonable to stipulate that in return for these substantial benefits, they should say or do nothing prejudicial to the Company's interests either among the natives, or in their Reports to the Conference in England, to whose jurisdiction ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... appealed to me at all was in itself the evidence of her profound distress. "By Jove she's desperate too," I thought. This discovery was followed by a movement of instinctive shrinking from this unreasonable and unmasculine affair. They were all alike, with their supreme interest aroused only by fighting with each other about some man: a lover, ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... understand that this was an entirely different set of people, not known to those at Harmony, and with whom they had had no dealings. It was no credit to Hansie that she and her mother were not on the list of the betrayed. She remembered with humility and shame her unreasonable fit of temper when her mother refused to harbour the traitor, and determined to give ear to her wise counsel ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... my brother officers may be; and certainly, should I again take the command of a ship, I shall use every exertion, and take advantage of every opportunity, to encourage the men and officers to acquire this invaluable accomplishment. Would it be unreasonable to refuse the rating of A.B. (able seaman) on the ship's books to any man who could not swim? If it be our duty to ascertain that a sailor can "hand, reef, and steer," before we place against his name these mystical letters, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... caricaturist—the representation of it in the picture is a bad one. We never find in the paintings of Vandyke, Velasquez, Gainsborough, or other great artists, however difficult the period of fashion with which they had to deal, anything preposterous—always something beautiful, however unreasonable in ornamentation and clothes. Sometimes it is said that beauty and simplicity are the same. But we have to remember that complexity remains simple whilst unconsciousness of complexity remains. There were several periods of dress that retained beauty and complexity side ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... to my remembrance) he has made a statement to this effect—That the custom prevalent among children in that age of asking their parents' blessing was probably first brought into disuse by the Puritans. Is it possible to imagine a perversity of prejudice more unreasonable? The unamiable side of the patriotic character in the seventeenth century was unquestionably its religious bigotry; which, however, had its ground in a real fervor of religious feeling and a real strength of religious principle ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... had elapsed since then, her romance had taken its place with the accepted things of life, and she revenged herself on Langham, for what she had come to consider his unreasonable exactions, by her recklessness, by her thirst for pleasure, and above ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... interested Harriet Martineau more passionately than any other events of her time. In 1834 she had finished her series of illustrations of political economy; her domestic life was fretted by the unreasonable exigences of her mother; London society had perhaps begun to weary her, and she felt the need of a change of scene. The United States, with the old European institutions placed amid new conditions, were then as now ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... love you, David, dear. You know that you are all I have, of my very own," she said. "I am unreasonable—I know that well enough; but I couldn't help being hurt at your injustice to William. ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... college career had, from the beginning, seemed to him to interpose an insurmountable barrier to parental guidance in that direction. His wife's attitude in these new circumstances of the return of her aunt's protegee struck him as wholly unjustified and unreasonable. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... grievances he'd been nursing, his wife's sudden rebellion seemed almost too unreasonable to be credited. She'd joined his enemies! She was making common cause with her notorious brother and the squatters! Very well, he'd use her the ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... mild remonstrance to the Marquis. "For the welfare of the parish generally," said the Bishop, "I venture to make this suggestion to your lordship, feeling sure that you will do anything that may not be unreasonable to promote the comfort of the parishioners." In this letter he made no allusion to his late correspondence with the Marquis as to the sins of the Vicar. Nor did the Marquis in his reply allude to the former correspondence. He expressed an opinion that the erection of a place of Christian ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... "It's unreasonable to blame Lisle," Gladwyne went on; "though he did make some unpleasantness with Batley; but I have had so many annoyances and troubles since he arrived. Everything has been going wrong and I can't disassociate him from the ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... herself to the nature of the emotions by which her cousin and guardian was animated towards her, intimated a wish to accept her sister Emily's invitation to pass two or three months with her. This brought the affair to a crisis. Buoying himself up with the illusions which people in such an unreasonable frame of mind create for themselves, he suddenly entered the sitting-room set apart for her private use, with the desperate purpose of making his beautiful cousin a formal offer of his hand. She was not in the apartment, but her opened ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... her judgment was at fault; and her anger was perhaps unreasonable. All anger is said to be unreasonable by some wise people, which makes one wonder why this absurd, perverse, and superfluous affection was ever thrust into our souls. But the feeling in her was natural, for ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... go to bed at ten, unreasonable though that seemed to Nancy. She would understand that, whilst they were in a sort of half mourning for Florence, she ought not to be seen at public places, like the Casino; but she could not see why she should not accompany her uncle upon his evening strolls though the park. I don't ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... man forget all else beside! Colonel Verney, I wish you, as lieutenant of this shire, to ride with me to this Chickahominy village where I have promised an audience to the half king of the tribe. Plague on the unreasonable vermin! Why can they not give way peaceably? If the colony needs and takes their lands, it leaves them a plenty elsewhere. Let them fall back towards the South Sea. Sir Charles, I grieve for the necessity, but we must leave the court and come back to the wilderness. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... settling in their country is so old that one cannot tell when it began. But in 1900 the Boxer rising proved that the anti-foreign feeling is strong as ever, and perhaps more unreasonable, and the whole civilized world was horror-stricken by the news of the massacre of men, women and children, who had been slaughtered, not only because they were Christians, but because they ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... do not imagine that I think you extremely absurd, or even altogether unreasonable. And if I were to compare your life with mine, I could not say which is preferable in itself. I shall presently go and take the bath which Crobyle and Myrtale have prepared for me; I shall eat the wing ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... Committee I stated the object for which the Board was convened. The church had hitherto paid $1,200 salary. It was quite inadequate. No one doubted that. It was unreasonable to expect that Maurice Mapleson would come for less than we had offered Mr. Uncannon-$1,500 a year and a parsonage. But in the call, by a strange omission, the church had neglected to mention any salary. The ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... yield to some of their demands, which are utterly impossible and unreasonable. First, they demand an increase of wages that would force us into a receivership sooner or later and again they demand the adoption of a cooperative plan which eventually would make them owners of the mines, if there were any possibility of it working, ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... all teaching is the same, viz., to impart knowledge; but the means of arriving at that end are multiple, and the manner of communicating instruction is very often personal. To imagine that the same mode of procedure, or "method," is applicable to all voices, is as unreasonable as to expect that the same medicament will apply to all maladies. In imparting a correct emission of voice, science has not infrequently to efface the results of a previous defective use, inherent or acquired, ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... the cabin and requested me to make for him eight of the handsomest bead baskets before we landed; and, seeing an amused and incredulous smile upon my face, he said: "You work so dexterously and so rapidly that I did not realize that my demand was unreasonable." Explaining to him that it would require eight hours of the closest application to accomplish that amount of work, he apologized and left me. Nor did this specimen of the "genus homo" evince any unusual ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... the most unreasonable people alive," growled Captain Wright. But he pocketed both his pride and his pistols, entered the post-chaise at the door, and was soon rolling forth for other parts. In spite of this order—he continued to reside in Italy, with the true ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... building or managing the same adopt or establish regulations concerning traffic therein, as are contrary to the spirit and intention of this convention, either by unfair discrimination, in favor of the commerce of one contracting party over the other, or by imposing oppressive exactions or unreasonable tolls upon passengers, vessels, goods, wares, merchandise, or other articles,—neither party to withdraw such protection and guaranty without first giving six ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... tribunals. Next year (656) a law brought in by the two consuls made the usual four-and-twenty days' interval between the introduction and the passing of a project of law obligatory, and forbade the combination of several enactments different in their nature in one proposal; by which means the unreasonable extension of the initiative in legislation was at least somewhat restricted, and the government was prevented from being openly taken by surprise with new laws. It became daily more evident that the Gracchan constitution, which ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... that I am entirely wrong. I do not know. But I do know that it seems utterly unreasonable to force me to abstain from wine if I wish it, just because there are a few heavy imbibers of whiskey in the world. I think it is a far more serious matter to have practically all of us law-breakers than to have one-half of one per cent ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... difference between the neurotic and sound subject in respect to the presence of unreasonable fears, compulsions and obsessions. Stress of circumstances causes even the normal man to show objectionable traits. Mental disease-phenomena, like physical, indicate natural reactions, or "attempts at repair" such as are found in the organic and ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... of pencilled paper on the table. The next minute his rapid footsteps crunched on the gravel path. Even after he was gone and she was left quite alone in her old condition, the dead, nerveless sense of despair did not return. An unreasonable lightness of spirit buoyed her—a feeling that after a desolate winter a new season was coming, that her little world was growing larger, lighting ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... oxygen, dilution of such a body of water for quality improvement appears to decrease in unit effectiveness as the volume of dilution is stepped up, which means that past a certain minimal point of improvement it gets expensive and requires unreasonable amounts of storage. In terms of nutrients, one authority has calculated that about 20,000 cubic feet per second would be required to reduce the nutrient level in the upper estuary to a point where it would be only twice that of a normal and healthily "rich" section of the upper Chesapeake ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... in my heart of hearts I had no objection to meeting that examiner once more when the third and last ordeal became due in another year or so. I even hoped I should. I knew the worst of him now, and forty minutes is not an unreasonable time. Yes, I distinctly hoped. ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... reverse of the style of a fanatic, who wants to force people to believe. The reader is never scorned for any amount of doubt which he may be imagined to feel, and his scepticism is treated with patient respect. A sceptical reader, or perhaps even an unreasonable reader, seems to have been generally present to his thoughts. It was in consequence of this feeling, perhaps, that he took much trouble over points which he imagined would strike the reader, or save him trouble, and so tempt ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... difference; there was nothing else to be done. Honest Maggie, giggling and rubicund, put aside her complacent nursling (who thereupon became anything but complacent) and took to her kind bosom this strapping and unreasonable young gentleman, who had already got many of his second teeth. That did not prevent him from making an unconscionably good supper, and thenceforth the only person likely to be disturbed by his new ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... this unreasonable custom of swaddling children? From an unnatural custom. Since the time when mothers, despising their first duty, no longer wish to nurse their own children at the breast, it has been necessary to intrust the ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... balusters; a dormer-window with hook and tackle, beside an Oriental-shaped pavilion with a shining tin dome,—a picturesque confusion of forms which had been, apparently, added from time to time without design, and yet were full of harmony. The unreasonable succession of roofs had lifted the top far above the level of the surrounding houses, into the heart of the morning light, and some white doves circled about the pavilion, or nestled cooing upon the window-sill, where a young girl ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... the rainy season of 1867 he had a more serious attack. This time Samuel, being able to visit him at night, was our medium, and being a very intelligent man could give us a correct account of his condition. For a while his health improved; but he was even more unreasonable than formerly: hardly was he convalescent than several times a day he sent to inquire if he could drink some arrack, take a little opium, or indulge in some of his more favourite dishes. It is not astonishing that relapse quickly followed: though I showed him ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... governor, it seems, with true Gallic insolence, had the audacity to require, among other unreasonable conditions, that they should embark horses for France, as well as carry away all the pillaged property; but Lord Nelson was not thus to be trifled with. "The greatest care," said his lordship, in a letter of the 3d of August, to Captain Darby, "is to be taken ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... generation. Thus Arnold objects to his time because it is aesthetically dead. [Footnote: See Persistency of Poetry.] But elsewhere he objects because it shows signs of coming to life, [Footnote: See Bacchanalia.] so it is hard to determine how our grandfathers could have pleased him. Similarly unreasonable discontent has been expressed by later poets with our own time. [Footnote: See William Ernest Henley, The Gods are Dead; Edmund Gosse, On Certain Critics; Samuel Waddington, The Death of Song; John ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... shyness, proposed the health of the sister Conservatoire of St. Petersburg, which was loyally drank. Afterwards, the same young professor, who had unconsciously been the cause of the abandonment of the proposed concert after the banquet—owing to Nicholas' unreasonable anger at the rejection of his symphony—himself triumphantly saved the situation and snatched the evening from the bonds of awkwardness already tightening upon the guests, who knew that music in some form there must be, but had no idea of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... moment she dragged her mind for some word, some look in which she might have found a shadow of excuse for the dislike she felt. "No, he said nothing foolish," she confessed at last, "he was only kind and friendly and it is I who have offended—I who have allowed myself to feel an unreasonable aversion." All at once an irritation against herself pervaded her thoughts, and she determined that if she met him again she would be more cordial—that she would force herself to show a particular friendliness. The recollection of his love for Madame Alta came ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... a case of this kind, or explain, but Tomlin is not ordinary. He is fiery. Seizing the back of his property, he hitches it up, and, with a deft movement worthy of a juggler, deposits the unreasonable Sopkin abruptly on the deck! Sopkin leaps up with doubled fists. Tomlin stands on guard. Rumkin, a presumptuous man, who thinks it his special mission in life to set everything wrong right, rushes between them, and is told by both to "mind his own business." The interruption, however, gives ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... be as headstrong as he was unreasonable. I have seen him around here several times, but I cannot make out what he is doing here. He asked me about the ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... had no visible one. It is thus we are all believers. We carry about with us, in the sanctuary of our own bosoms, our image of the great and almighty God whom we serve; and before that, and that only, do we bow down and worship. Were we indeed atheists, it were not unreasonable that you dealt with us as you now do, nay and much more severely; for, where belief in a God does not exist, it is not easy to see how any state can long hold together. The necessary bond is wanting, and, as a sheaf of wheat when the band ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... Favre and Count Bismarck in negotiations begun at Versailles the latter part of January. The convention was a large body, chosen from all parts of France, and was unquestionably the most noisy, unruly and unreasonable set of beings that I ever saw in a legislative assembly. The frequent efforts of Thiers, Jules Favre, and other leading men to restrain the more impetuous were of little avail. When at the sittings a delegate arose to speak on some question, he was often violently pulled to his seat and then surrounded ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... which, though usually half-closed from near-sightedness, shot piercing glances at those with whom she conversed, and, most of all, by the very peculiar and graceful carriage of her head and neck.' In conversation she was already distinguished, though addicted to 'quizzing'—the not unreasonable ground of unpopularity with her female friends. Emerson alludes to her dangerous reputation for satire, which, in addition to her great scholarship, made the women dislike one who despised them, and the men cavil ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... it was a coincidence. Sunrise and daybreak are coincidences. But one is because of t'other. Irene believed my poison turned her stone red, or she would never have refused to wear it a minute longer, from an unreasonable dislike of the Evil One, whose influence she discerned in this simple, natural phenomenon. I considered myself justified in boning the ring for my own use, so I had it enlarged to go on my finger, and there it is, on! I shall never see it again, unless Septimius ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... while she and Sir Philip were alighting from their sledge—and in the same breath had told them of Thelma's dangerous illness. What wonder, then, that Britta sobbed hysterically, and refused to be comforted,—what wonder that she turned upon Ulrika as that personage approached, in a burst of unreasonable anger. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... well. "No moral lectures!" he said, with a nervous laugh. "I was anxious to know if you had pulled it off—and you have reassured me. That's enough. I was in a funk this afternoon to know how things were going-one of those sudden, unreasonable funks. But now that I see you"—he cut himself short and laughed once more "now that I see you, I'm hanged if I don't ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... rich banquet ungratefully enjoyed by the lonely bachelor. I resumed my place at the table; but the dinner was finished, and the wine had no further relish. I was haunted by the vision at the window, and began, with an unreasonable irritation at the interruption, to repeat with fresh warmth my detestation of holidays. One couldn't even dine alone on a holiday with any sort of comfort, I declared. On holidays one was tormented by too much pleasure on one side, and ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... which was quite comfortable, and no bother about "Nicht Rauchen" signs. His unreasonable cheerfulness persisted as far as Gloggnitz. There, with the increasing ruggedness of the scenery and his first view of the Raxalpe, came recollection of the urgency of Stewart's last message, of Marie Jedlicka, of the sordid ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... some truth in this system,—some vital, experimental truth,—for the sake of which the Orthodox cling to these immense and incredible inconsistencies. Let us take an inside view of Orthodoxy, and see why, being unreasonable, it yet commends itself to so many minds of the highest order ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... have less hair than when I ran away from Sandhurst that exciting July night and met you in the Strand!), and look upon the picture of the man, John Henry Smith, "before and after using," I admit the birth of an unreasonable belief that there may be something in it ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... agree; but by some kind of compulsion, with the owners of six merchant ships, to serve the King as men-of-war. But, Lord! to see how against the hair it is with these men and every body to trust us and the King; and how unreasonable it is to expect they should be willing to lend their ships, and lay out 2 or L300 a man to fit their ships for new voyages, when we have not paid them half of what we owe them for their old services! I did write so to Sir W. Coventry this night. At night my wife and I to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... time, which is far enough away now, I have often thought that few people know what secrecy there is in the young under terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be terror. I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the iron leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had been ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... their pranks, as judging it incredible and strange, they have only to think that they have been asleep and dreaming, and that all these adventures were visions which they saw in their sleep: and I hope none of my readers will be so unreasonable as to be offended with a pretty ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... silly, childish, unreasonable, that I should speak sharply to Bettina, and equally unreasonable that fear and horror and sickening suspicion should possess me, but possessed I was by sensations hitherto unexperienced, and for a moment the gaslight from the lamp on the opposite street corner wavered and circled in a confusing, ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... work is therefore addressed primarily to Christian believers who still remain perplexed as to what they ought to believe; and its aim is to prevent, if may be, an unreasonable alarm at, and a useless opposition to, the conclusions of modern science; while, at the same time, it tells them in simple language how far those conclusions really go, and how very groundless is the fear that ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... off at once to the general, and implored him to give me a battalion of soldiers, and let me march on Belogorsk; but the general only shook his head, and said the expedition was unreasonable. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... could have cut my throat, but I could not have come to tell you I was not the monster of ingratitude I appeared to be. Not that a man can't get out of bed, if there is reason enough, and take himself somehow where he wants to be, but because of a sick man's unreasonable nerves, which can start him raving and make him a thing to laugh at. I had the common sense, thank Heaven! to see that I must wait. Then, as the days passed, it all quieted down. Vincent was with me, ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... assisted us in our greatest dangeris: He hath strikin fear in the hartis of our ennemeis, when thai supposed thame selffis most assured of victorie: our case is nocht yit sa disperat that we nead to grant to thingis unreasonable and ungodlie; whiche, yf we do, it is to be feared that thingis sall nocht so prosperouslie succeid as thai ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... to kill the debtor who has been specially kind to her. She says she will send for Uncle Allan McLane, and is more unreasonable than ever. Papa, your feelings are unjust. Something we do not know of has happened to Mr. Milburn. He was not himself all the while at the church. Now that I recollect, he was not ardent for the marriage to be so soon. It was I who hastened the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... but if I had refused M. Reverchon at first sight, point-blank, you would have said I was unreasonable, mad, senseless. I fancy I can hear mamma now on the subject. Whereas, as things were, what is there to reproach me with? I saw M. Reverchon once, and I saw him again, I had plenty of time to judge him and I knew that I disliked him. It is very silly, ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... He was driven to the wall. Between his promise to her, and the Syndic's demand, he found himself helpless. And the demand was not so unreasonable. For it was true that he loved her, and that he had access to the house; and if the plan suggested seemed unusual, if it was not the course most obvious or most natural, it was hardly for him to cavil at a scheme ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... she has asked me whether I have seen you. To avoid unpleasant discussions I haven't gone to see you. But I am going to as soon as this unreasonable ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... the miniatori caligrafi at their labors; and, as the art of caligraphy was well known at Bologna, so learned a man as Thomas de Pisan must have been acquainted with it, and would have caused his talented daughter to be instructed in so rare an accomplishment. It is not therefore unreasonable to believe that, in the beautiful volume now in the British Museum, the work of Christine's hand, as well as the result of her genius, is preserved. The next picture shows us Christine presenting her book ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... around the earth seemed to be what the human eye beheld, as anyone watched sunrise and sunset. But what the senses thus presented, reason, in its ponderings, was led to contradict. For the notion of a huge mechanism like the celestial sphere, spinning round the terraqueous globe as its pivot looked unreasonable. To explain it in any way on mathematical principles needed a most complicated array of cycles and epicycles. Symmetry and simplicity were wanting in the theory. A priori objections started up against it. If the senses pointed to the earth as a centre, reason pointed to a ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... How unjust and unreasonable is the human heart which finds it hard to be obliged to do in regard to one man what in some degree it were just to do to all men. For is it just that we ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... of colliers; and from the unavoidable irregularity in the arrivals of coal-ships, the employment of the greater part of them is necessarily very inconstant. If colliers, therefore, commonly earn double and triple the wages of common labor, it ought not to seem unreasonable that coal-heavers should sometimes earn four or five times those wages. In the inquiry made into their condition a few years ago, it was found that, at the rate at which they were then paid, they could earn about four times the wages of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... marine debil-debil," not known to entire satisfaction by the best-informed black boy, and quite beyond the comprehension of the dull-witted white man. Having thus conclusively to their minds set at naught the theory that a shark was responsible, it was absolutely unreasonable to fear sharks generally. Why should they blame a shark when it was established beyond doubt that nothing but a "debil-debil" could have killed "Jimmy"? Their opinion was founded on this invincible ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... his wares ad a cost which will enable him do successfully gompede with the manufagdurers of other goundries, has been gombelled to glose his works and remove his gabidal and his energies to a spodt where he gan find workmen less unreasonable in their demands. There is no more capable or valuable workman in existence than the English artisan, if he gould only be induced to do his honest best for his embloyer; there is hardly any branch of industry in which he is nod ad leasd the equal, if not ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... permitted us to use for the good purpose of lifting the soul of a sinner to contemplate something better than himself. Women and little children enter the Church as well as men,—would you have THEM find no comfort? Must a woman with a broken heart take her sorrows to the vast Silence of an unreasonable God among universes of star systems? Or shall she find hope, and a gleam of comfort in a prayer to a woman of the same clay as herself in the person of the Virgin Mary? And remember, there is something very beautiful in the symbol of the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... "Who's unreasonable?" grumbled Esau; "I ain't: only a bit wild at having to go across that precious bit o' solid slide. What do you think my mother would say if she saw me coming here and going to start over that place? Why, it ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... Karakoram range, and another which runs by the Terek Pass to Sarhadd, and thence over the Baroghil into Kashmir; but these routes have justly, and by almost universal consent, been set aside as involving difficulties of such obvious magnitude that it would be unreasonable to suppose that any army under competent leadership could be committed to them. The same might surely be said of the route by the Nuksan Pass into the valley of Chitral and the Kunar, which joins the Khyber route not far from Jelalabad. Its length and intricacy alone, independently ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... time to time, until it was broken down, in August, 1855, when the President left both office and the country, and has since resided abroad. The new revolution favored Federalism. Alvarez was chosen President, but he was too liberal for the Church party, being so unreasonable as to require that the property of the Church should be taxed. Plots and conspiracies were formed against him, and it being discovered that the climate of the capital did not agree with him, he resigned, and was succeeded by General ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... his playing the man in the battle of life. I have tried to make you feel your responsibilities and act independently as early as possible—but, once for all, remember that I am not only your father but your nearest friend, ready to help you in all things reasonable, and perhaps in a few unreasonable. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... feel that collective bargaining has been very practical about human nature so far. The moment that it is, the public and all manner of powerful and important persons, who are suspicious or offish or unreasonable about collective bargaining now, are going ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... disapprove, I will gladly accept your hospitality, Mr. Gordon," and after a glance at Lord Ralles that had a challenging "I'll do as I please" in it, she went to get her hat and coat. The whole incident had not taken ten seconds, yet it puzzled me beyond measure, even while my heart beat with an unreasonable hope; for my better sense told me that it simply meant that Lord Ralles disapproved, and Miss Cullen, like any girl of spirit, was giving him notice that he was not yet privileged to control her actions. Whatever the scene ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... was in a dangerous mood when he read this letter. He had been up half the night. The captain had been cross-grained and unreasonable. Even the mildest of us has his moments of clear-sightedness when he sees the world and the hollowness thereof. Luke saw this and more when he had read Mrs. Harrington's evil communication. He seemed to have reached the end of things, when his present life became no longer ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... prices, which, indeed, would be absolutely prohibitory of the circulation of the books in the United States. And since the great literary market of the United States has been created at the public expense, by the maintenance of the system of universal education, it is perhaps not unreasonable that our legislators should insist upon preserving, by the competition among publishers, the advantages of low prices of books, in pursuance of a policy which looks to a wide circulation. In Great Britain the publishers follow a different ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... Ariel. She did not meet his glance, but, turning instead to Ladew, the clergyman, began, with a barely perceptible blush, to talk of something he had said in a sermon two weeks ago. The two fell into a thoughtful and amiable discussion, during which there stole into Joe's heart a strange and unreasonable pain. The young minister had lived in Canaan only a few months, and Joe had never seen him until that morning; but he liked the short, honest talk he had made; liked his cadenceless voice and keen, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... his revenge; for if a stubborn father proved unreasonable and refused to give a cause for not allowing a courtship, the young man could bring the older one into court, and there compel him to allow love to take its own way, or state excellent reasons for objecting. Thus, in 1646 "Richard Taylor complained to the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday |
