"Unreasoning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he's incapable of driving a car. The very thought of being in control of a machine so much more powerful than he is would give him chills. Did you ever see what happens when you lock a claustrophobe up in a dark closet—the mad, unreasoning, uncontrollable panic of absolute terror? That's what would happen to Manny if you put him behind the wheel of a running automobile. It's worse than fear; fear is controllable. Blind ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... progress of China, and Japan in the adoption of Western science and educational methods have from time to time been noticed in these columns. To the popular mind the names of the two countries are synonymous with rigid, unreasoning conservatism and with rapid change, respectively. The grave, dignified Chinese, who maintains his own dress and habits even when isolated among strangers, and whose motto appears to be, Stare super mas antiquas, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... be viewed with a new and unreasoning skepticism, not through the wholesome political debates of honest and free men, but through the ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... the day after she received her husband's letter of remonstrance, six thousand pounds out of her father's estate was paid into her banking account. By this time she was in one of those states of excitement and unreasoning terror to which she had been liable from her childhood. She took the trust money in order to pay the debts, and then gambled again in order to replace the trust money. Her motive throughout was the motive of ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... egotism clear and unalloyed. Nevertheless, it is a strange truth that, to a man of cultivated mind, however perverted and vicious, there are vouchsafed gleams of brighter sentiments, irregular perceptions of moral beauty, denied to the brutal unreasoning wickedness of uneducated villany—which, perhaps ultimately serve as his punishment—according to the old thought of the satirist, that there is no greater curse than to perceive virtue, yet adopt vice. And as the solitary schemer ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... into which at the Revolution were collected the remains of the libraries of the religious houses of the district. France's Dissolution came at a time when many eyes were open to the possible value of ancient books, and strings could be pulled and influence exercised to stem the unreasoning fury that said: ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... heart. She had bitter memories connected with Mrs. Romaine. Since the day on which she had been reconciled to her husband, she had cast from her all suspicion of his past—cast it from her in much the same arbitrary and unreasoning manner as she had first embraced it. For, like most women, she was governed far more by her feelings and instincts than by the laws of evidence. As Rosalind had once told her brother, Lady Alice ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... not be inferred that tea as a beverage became naturalized in England without meeting with the unreasoning opposition that usually greets the advent of a stranger. The press and pamphlets of the day contained frequent attacks upon tea, and the violence of denunciation usually bore a fair proportion to the ignorance of the writer; ignorance of physiology, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... range, but you are thinking of something more fatal than bullets, Mr. Burke. You are thinking of love—of the first, great, absorbing, unreasoning passion that has ever shaken you, blinded you, seized you and dragged you out of the ordered path of life, to push you violently into the strange and unexplored! That is what stares out on the world through those haunted eyes of yours, when the smile ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... locks of the still bended head, and her compassion flowed through them to the more than orphaned heart. It was the same head, she thought, and the same heart, as had once been blessed by a mother's anguished hand, doomed, as that mother knew, to the world's unreasoning scorn. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... Mildred Carr possessed to an extraordinary degree that faculty for blind, unreasoning adoration which is so characteristic of the sex, an adoration that is at once magnificent in the entirety of its own self-sacrifice, and extremely selfish. When she thought that she could please Arthur, the state of Agatha's nerves became a matter of supreme indifference to her, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... at the thought. There was something horrible in the blind unreasoning distrust of the future which the mere passage of it through my mind seemed to imply. It was a welcome interruption to be roused by feeling Anne Catherick's hand laid on my shoulder. The touch was as stealthy and as sudden as that other touch which had petrified me from head to ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Rasmith, who had to be defied first, and then propitiated; certainly, when she saw him apparently breaking faith with her, she had a right to some sort of explanation, but certainly also she had no right to a blind and unreasoning submission from him. His embarrassment was heightened by her interest in Miss Kenton, whom, with an admirable show of now finding her safe from Breckon's attractions, she was always wishing to study from his observation. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... climbing beside it filled the room with its subtle, intoxicating perfume. It was so strong, and he felt himself so irresistibly overpowered and impelled towards a merely idle reverie, that, in order to think more clearly and shut out some strange and unreasoning enthrallment of his senses, he rose and sharply closed the window. Then ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... became more distinct. Her unreasoning fear increased. With the mystical attention of the great and hidden mind was now blent a crude human attention. She began to feel really terrified, and, seizing her oars, she pulled frantically towards the middle ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... whispering together. They saw that something was wrong. "Do you thus promise?" repeated the minister, after a pause. "Nod, if you can't speak," murmured the bridegroom. His words were the hiss of a serpent in her ears. Her will resisted no longer; her soul was wholly possessed by unreasoning terror of the man and horror of the marriage. "No! no! no!" she screamed in piercing tones, and snatching her hand from the bridegroom, she threw herself upon the breast of the astonished minister, sobbing wildly as she clung to ...
— At Pinney's Ranch - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... doctrines of the schools, excluding from its pages whatever differs from the prevalent scientific dogmatism, and while denouncing the dogmatism of theology, exhibiting itself a dogmatism equally blind, unreasoning and regardless of facts. Experimental demonstrations and scientific facts, which transcend the limits of their arbitrary theories, receive as little attention from the dogmatists trained in medical schools, as they would from a ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... almost laughable to the observer to hear the employer's side of the case. Invariably it was just as bitter, just as unreasoning, and just as violent, as the statement of their case by the workers. Parker would endeavor to find, in all this heap of words, the irritation points of the ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... he was talking with Irma and sullenly watching his future wife, he appeared to be quite sober, until a moment ago when unreasoning rage seized hold of him and he shouted to Elsa in a rough and peremptory manner. After that, his face, which usually was quite pallid, became hotly flushed, and his one seeing eye had a restless, quivering ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... generous impulse. He was a mere machine, educated up to a certain point, able to write a good hand, and express himself grammatically, but thinking more of his dress and his spurious English than of any learning or accomplishment, and the unreasoning tool of his official superiors. He had been checkmated by Coristine, and felt terribly disappointed at the failure of his mission; but the thought that he had been engaged in a most dishonest attempt did not trouble him in the least. Yet, had he been offered a large ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... of the Children of the King gave himself body and soul to free Beatrice Granmichele from a life's bondage. She wore mourning a whole year for her affianced husband, but the mourning in her heart was for the strong, brave, unreasoning man, who, utterly unloved, had given all for her sake, in this world ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... the physical conditions of existence cannot have been very materially different from what they are now;" (p. 216;) and that "thus much is clear, that Man's existence on Earth is brief, compared with the ages during which unreasoning creatures were the sole possessors of the globe:" (p. 217:)—these statements, I say, contain as much as one desires to see admitted. For really, since the fossil Flora, and the various races of animated creatures which Geologists have classified ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... the poet's friend. "Why not cease to think of conciliating your wife? Russians are unreasoning aborigines. Why not take up life in a simple poetic way with Tenise, and avoid ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... rocks on Croagh Patrick, the nun prostrate before the image of St. Mary, the Methodist in the spasmodic ecstasy of a revival, alike are conscious of emotions in themselves which correspond to their creed: the more passionate, or—as some would say—the more unreasoning the piety, the louder and more clear is the voice within. But these varieties are no embarrassment to the theologian. He finds no fault with the method which is identical in them all. Whatever the party to which he himself belongs, he is equally satisfied that he alone has the truth; ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... feelings toward him were not un-tinged with awe, since in the brief period of their association she had discovered in this handsome, godlike giant the attributes of the superman and the savage beast closely intermingled. At first she had felt only that unreasoning feminine terror which her unhappy ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... is to equip a child with ideals, and that this task should not be difficult, because the lower savages successfully subject all the members of their tribe to the most ruthless discipline. Their lives, he says, "are lived in fear, in restraint, in submission, in suffering, subject to galling, unreasoning, unnecessary, arbitrary prohibitions and taboos, and to customary duties equally galling, unreasoning, unnecessary, and arbitrary. They endure painful mutilations, they submit to painful sacrifices.... How are these wild, unstable, wayward, impulsive, ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... night. For a while, the unwholesome idea filled me, with a sensation of overbearing desolation; so that I could have cried like a child. In time, however, this feeling grew, almost insensibly, less, and an unreasoning hope possessed ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... generals afraid to fight." The insult, delivered in the snug personal safety which was suspected to be very dear to Stanton, was ridiculous as aimed at men who soon handled some of the most desperate battles of the war; but it is interesting as an expression of the unreasoning bitterness of the controversy then waging over the situation in Virginia, a controversy causing animosities vastly more fierce than any between Union soldiers and Confederates, animosities which have unfortunately lasted longer, and which can ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... the child for not being a child. The father's part has to come first, and teach the child's part. Now, if I might guess from what I know of the old lady, in whom probably it was much softened, her father was very possibly a hard, unreasoning, and unreasonable man—such that it scarcely ever came into the daughter's head that she had anything else to do with regard to him than beware of the consequences of letting him know that she had a ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... some time to convince Elodie of the necessity of returning to the old life. She repeated her cry that Generals do not perform on the music-hall stage. The decision outraged her sense of the fitness of things. She yielded as to an irresistible and unreasoning force. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... the huge menacing mass of New York defined itself far off across the waters, shrank back into her corner of the deck and sat listening with a kind of unreasoning terror to the steady ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... she was, with great masses of coppery-red hair and the loveliest pink-and-white complexion. She quickly adapted herself to the disagreeable features of life in the tropics—with one exception. The exception was that she could never overcome her inherent and unreasoning fear of snakes. The mere sight of one would send ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... need for some one to lay her trouble to, Margaret "laid it to" the Enemy. A sudden, bitter, unreasoning resentment took possession of her. If there hadn't been an Enemy, there wouldn't have been a trouble. Everything would have been beautiful and—and respectable, just as it was before. She would have been out there singing "Glory, ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... so long as they have only unreasoning animals to contend with, Frank; but when man, armed with the power, before which mere Instinct must at all times bow, attacks them, they are very easily overcome. Shall I tell you how ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... be borne in mind that Mrs. Dearman's Good Time was marred to some extent by her unreasoning dislike of all Indians, a dislike which grew into a loathing hatred, born and bred of her ignorance of the language, customs, beliefs and ideals of the people among whom she lived, and from whom her husband's great ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... too in that she was the kind of a girl that decent men instinctively love—not with one of these headlong, unreasoning loves, you understand. But with the kind of a deep-seated adoration for beauty and goodness and brain that gets a man where he lives and never leaves him. That's the way I got to caring for Charley and that's the way, in embryo, we all ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... as an unreasoning agitation, he began describing a circle with his leg, searching for the lost rope. It must be there, of course; why, of course it must! He had certainly not gone more than fifty or sixty feet, and they had said something about ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... steal near and study the picture or chat with me and with the little Margherita. On such occasions the child, usually merry and loving, would sulk and scowl unhandsomely, and though Maria Dovizio was sweet and generous to her, she showed an unreasoning prejudice amounting to discourtesy, for which at first I was at a loss to account. I mind me that she was present when I tied the bunch of orange blossoms to Raphael's mahl stick, and after the visitors had left the studio the child, believing ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... was another reason, too. Perhaps she could not bear to return to that silent house, where every room held some reminder of her loss. Certainly she remained at the Club, and perhaps she got some unreasoning comfort out of the rumors and reports that came to that spot from every side. It was but the idle talk that springs up and flies about on such occasions, but now and then it served as a straw for her drowning hope to clutch at. Word would come of a farmer who had seen a strange child ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... character. You will never solve Indian or Egyptian difficulties by a reliance on force and force alone. I believe that the deplorable, the scandalous condition to which the neighbouring island of Ireland has been reduced is largely due to the failure to recognise that by unrestricted unreasoning, and sometimes immoral force, you cannot reach the solution of the difficulties of ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... firm faith, almost as simple and unreasoning as that of the child, and which it sometimes seemed, God had specially sent this good man to teach her—her, who had hitherto had so little cause to trust or to reverence any body—Christian rested as completely and contentedly as Arthur. ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Maggie Whaley fled from the immediate vicinity of Adam Ward's estate, they were beside themselves with fear—blind, unreasoning, instinctive fear. ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... pale. She had hardly slept, night-long. Alarm at the inexplicable disappearance of St. George at dinner-time the day before and at the discovery that old Malakh was nowhere about had, by morning, deepened to unreasoning fear among them all. And then Olivia, knowing nothing of what had taken place in the room of the tombs, had resolved upon a desperate expedient, had bundled into an airship her almost prostrate aunt, Mr. Frothingham and his excited little daughter, and had borne ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... executed, if by a subsequent time the quotas of the various States should not be filled by volunteering, certain malcontents and Copperheads, inspired by agents and other friends of the Southern Conspirators, started and fomented, in the city of New York, a spirit of unreasoning opposition both to voluntary enlistment, and conscription under the Draft, that finally culminated, July 13th, in a terrible Riot, lasting several days, during which that great metropolis was in the hands, and completely at the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... to worry about. Weald was hysterically resolved to end what it considered the blueskin menace for once and for all. There were parallels to such unreasoning frenzy even in the ancient history of Earth. A word still remained in the dictionaries referring ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... through a rush of emotions, reddened. Reddened for an unreasoning, inexplicable shame no less than for a proud sort of joy that at last he had been able to do some small thing for John Harper Drennen, his ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... abnormal. Winterbourne wondered how she felt about all the cold shoulders that were turned toward her, and sometimes it annoyed him to suspect that she did not feel at all. He said to himself that she was too light and childish, too uncultivated and unreasoning, too provincial, to have reflected upon her ostracism, or even to have perceived it. Then at other moments he believed that she carried about in her elegant and irresponsible little organism a defiant, passionate, perfectly ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... and endurance in future generations. If a free German peasantry belongs only to modern times, it is to his ancestor who was a serf, and even, in the earliest times, a slave, that the peasant owes the foundation of his independence, namely, his capability of a settled existence—nay, his unreasoning persistency, which has its important function in ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... horses, an unreasoning element, which is not controllable, like men; and is therefore much more easily thrown into disorder than infantry. For this reason, when deployed, it should always be in two lines; the second behind the first; the first line deployed, and the second in columns of squadrons ...
— A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms: Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry • Francis J. Lippitt
... swelled up like whipcord. Had she waited? He remembered Bill's scoffing words. Could it be true of Laura? Was she false to him? The possibility of such a thing had never entered his head before, but now he was tortured with the agonies and doubts of insensate, unreasoning jealousy. Maybe she had found it harder than she anticipated. Compelled to economize, deprived of luxuries that had become necessities, perhaps she had repented her bargain and gone back to that scoundrel Brockton. Possibly at that very moment she ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... protruding wrist and hand, whiter than Alpine snow! I gazed at it wildly—the gleam of the jewels down there hurt my eyes—the shine of the silver crucifix clasped in those little waxen fingers dazzled my brain-and with a frantic cry of unreasoning terror, I rushed up the steps with a maniac speed—opened the iron gate through which SHE would pass no more, and stood at liberty in the free air, face to face with a wind as tempestuous as my own passions. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... so anxious about Berna? I did not know, but with every mile my anxiety increased. A dim unreasoning fear possessed me. I imagined that if anything happened to her I would forever blame myself. I saw her lying white and cold as the snow itself, her face peaceful in death. Why had I not thought more of her? I had not appreciated her enough, her precious sweetness and her tenderness. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... years ago, possibly worse off, for the original purpose of shoeing was only to protect the foot from attrition or chipping, and but little iron was used, but, as the utility of the operation became apparent, the smith boldly took the responsibility of altering the form of the hoof to suit his own unreasoning views, cutting away, as superfluous, the sole and bars, paring the frog to a shapely smoothness, and then nailing on a broad, heavy piece of iron, covering not only the wall but a portion of the sole also, thus putting it out of the power ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... actual settlers, instead of non-resident speculators; to develop the internal resources of the country, by opening new means of communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and to purify the administration of the government from the pernicious influences of jobs, contracts, and unreasoning party warfare. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... accounts given us by the Portuguese had not exceeded the truth; and that Mariano was quite as great a ruffian as they had described him. One expects slave-owners to treat their human chattels as well as men do other animals of value, but the slave-trade seems always to engender an unreasoning ferocity, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... mad chase, but pushed rapidly on, while I panted after him like a figure in some unreasoning nightmare. And, as I ran, it came upon me that he had been aware all the time, in his quiet, internal way, of many things that he had kept for his own secret consideration; he had been watching, waiting, ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Then came tears of bitter remorse, for she saw how his love had never left her, how he had been true as steel, while she, misled by appearances, had lost faith and lapsed into forgetfulness. A wild, unreasoning yearning superior to time and space and the service of railways got hold upon her. "Come to me," "Come to me," sounded in Joan's ears in the live voice she had loved and lost and found again. An hour's delay, a minute's, a moment's ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... over, and her hands were shaking. She had not felt so frightened as she felt now, even during the terrible moments which had preceded her being put in the witness-box at the inquest held on her husband's body; and with a feeling of acute, unreasoning terror, she asked herself how she could cope ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... stifled him, set his teeth chattering and his limbs quaking. He had heard nothing, seen nothing. The gun was in his hands as it had lain when last he remembered it; his father slept by his side, and near the wall lay the precious satchel. And yet he shook in absolute, unreasoning, unfounded terror. His eyes wandered from the lantern to the door—to the blanket hanging limply in the door; and there they stared and stayed as though held in the spell of a serpent. Subconsciously, certainly ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... least an intelligible working hypothesis of the rationale of the Bible Promises. The measurement of their fulfilment is exactly proportional to our belief in them, not from any unintelligible cause, and still less from any unreasoning feat of a capricious Deity, but by the working of an intelligible Law. If any of my readers happens to be an electrician, he will find an exact parallel in what is known as Ohm's Law. Such readers will be familiar with the ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... the yacht for more than an hour, and nothing, for him, had come of it but the birth of an unreasoning hate. To the unconscious demand of these people's presence, of their ignorance, of their faces, of their voices, of their eyes, he had nothing to give but a resentment that had in it a germ of reckless violence. He could tell them nothing because he had not ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... rich will share with the poor, and it will not be called charity, but it will be known as justice. And the man or woman who fails to do his duty, not as he sees it, but as society at large sees it, will be held up to the contempt of mankind. A generation or two ago, Gloria, this mad unreasoning scramble for wealth began. Men have fought, struggled and died, lured by the gleam of gold, and to what end? The so-called fortunate few that succeed in obtaining it, use it in divers ways. To some, lavish expenditure and display pleases their swollen ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... the ordinary person would laugh if I said it, but really, I believe I'm developing a distaste for money. It's simply another term for caste; and that word, with the unreasoning superiority it implies, has somehow become hateful to me." He looked up ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... please, is our special prerogative: it gives man the privilege, which is denied to all life below him, of deliberately choosing the worse and of making a fool of himself. The animals know what is good for them because they follow their unreasoning instincts and blindly repeat the racial course of action implanted within them, and the mere survival of the species proves that this particular response to the particular circumstance has been "tried out" by ages of experience. But a man blinds and smothers ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... have been kindly, thoughtless children. Now they are aroused. The pendulum has swung to the other extreme. They care little for their lives. They are still children—children who will go to their death unreasoning, fighting ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... want you to know now!" sobbed Betty, with all the unreasoning impatience of a sick child. "It is all in my 'Good times book.' I cut it out of an old Youth's Companion, just after I came, and the piece is inside the cover of that little white and gold book in the writing-desk. Read it, won't you? ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... twelvemonth after the peace with America, we ascertained that Henry Mason had been killed in the battle on Lake Champlain, where he had distinguished himself, as everywhere else, by the reckless daring and furious hate with which he fought against the country which, in his unreasoning frenzy, he accused of the murder of his wife. He was recognized by one of his former messmates in the "Active;" who, conveyed a prisoner on board the American commander Macdonough's ship, recognized him as he lay stretched on the deck, in the uniform of an ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... unreasoning hatred, so foreign to his gentle nature, seemed to stagger Arthur Agar as the sudden intimation of some mortal disease lurking in his own being would have done. He gripped the back of the spindle-legged chair, and could find no word to say. The stranger ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... presence shall not deter me from practising as I have always done.' And one afternoon I had sat down to the piano full of determination to practise without fear of him, without self-consciousness. But before my hands had touched the keys shame took me, unreasoning, terror-struck shame, and I knew in an instant that while he lived I should never more play the piano. He laughed lightly when I told him, and I called myself silly. Yet now, as I sat in the garden, I saw how right I had been. And I wondered that I should ever have ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... the Northern lines and then pandemonium—blind, unreasoning wolf-panic seized the army that had marched with songs and shouts to kill. They broke and fled. They cut the traces of their horses, left the guns, mounted and ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... prospect for many years, indeed, that he would be able to marry. Yet he went on seeking Cynthia's sweet company, listening to the music of her voice, basking in her sunshine, and feeding his passion in every possible way, just like an unreasoning child. He knew that it was folly—and yet he did it; and it was perhaps this that made him so sympathetic with Osborne. Roger racked his brains about Osborne's affairs much more frequently than Osborne ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... virulence of his language. In a sermon on the anniversary of the Restoration he had declared from his pulpit that the King's name should "stink while the world stands for treachery, tyranny, and lechery."[30] In this party all was confused, extravagant, fierce, unreasoning. What they wanted, what they were fighting to get, from whom they expected to get it, even their own historians are unable to explain, and probably they themselves had no very clear notions. They talked of liberty, by which ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... of silence. The drone of a bumble-bee near by seemed to make the silence swim drowsily in their ears; far off they heard the faint beat of a woodpecker. The suggestion of their kneeling figures in this magic mirror was vague, unreasoning, yet for the moment none the less irresistible. His arm instinctively crept around her little waist as he whispered,—he scarce knew what he said,—"Perhaps here is the treasure ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... horror as his eyes met those of a new pupil, a girl from Alford, who had only entered the school the day before. She was not well dressed. There was nothing coquettish about her, but in her eyes shone the awful, unreasoning hunger which he had seen before. Upon her shoulders, young as they were, was the same burden, the burden as old as creation, which she was required to bear by a hard destiny, perhaps of heredity. There was something horribly pathetic in the ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the Trades-Union leaders have succeeded in imposing themselves upon mining or manufacturing operatives, the results are the corruption of our politics, a lowering of the standard of intelligence and independence among the laborers, and an unreasoning and unreasonable discontent, which, in its extreme development, despises right, and seeks only changes degrading to its own class, at the cost of injury and ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... her principal attraction, they were forever startling, contrasted with the rest, not only remarkable in shade but, as well, in light; in her quick unreasoning tempers, the only perceptible flaw of her character, they sparkled with brilliancy. The tempers, Lee decided, descending the narrow stony road from the club- house to his gate, were an unavoidable part of her special qualities: her quick decisiveness, her ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... an unreasoning and ignorant jury to deal with, I thought they would at once see through so absurd a defence, and did not insult their common sense by ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... it with a start and a guilty tremor. He stopped stock-still, in an unreasoning state of semi-panic, arrested by a silly impulse to turn and fly; as if the bobby, whom he descried approaching him with measured stride, pausing new and again to try a door or flash his bull's-eye down an area, were to be expected to identify the man responsible for ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... departure. Sonya and the count tried to replace Natasha but could not. They saw that she alone was able to restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks Natasha remained constantly at her mother's side, sleeping on a lounge chair in her room, making her eat and drink, and talking to her incessantly because the mere sound of her tender, caressing tones soothed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... holiday-taking. In the first place, in fear of a case of illness he did not like to leave the island while its benefactress was away; and, secondly, it was reported that all visitors from The Cloud were ruthlessly shut out from the houses upon the other islands, because of the unreasoning terror which had grown concerning the disease. Whether he, who carried money in his pocket, would be shut out from these neighbouring islands also, he did not care to inquire. He felt too angry with the way the ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... she could only find herself thinking with anger. Yet it was not wholly anger, for she was also afraid and filled with longing. Her anger was even obliterated by her love, so much did she adore Toby's strength. His cruelty, his brutal indifference, were spurs to her unreasoning affection. Whatever Toby might do, Sally loved him. The love which she had believed herself indignantly to have cast out was still paramount. Finally, in all her fleeting considerations of the moment and the future, she could not ignore the baby which was ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... a Chinatec wife. He is little, but important. He ever carries a queer old sword. When he first appeared before us, he impressively said, "No tengas cuidado" (Have no care.) He told us that our comfort and our orders should be cared for, even though we were in a pueblo of mere brutes, unreasoning beings; he should charge himself and the officials with our needs. There were scarce three hours of daylight in the afternoon, and night set in chilly and damp. Meantime, the secretario, the segundo, the presidente and the topils, all had disappeared. ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... refuge in the drawing-room, where she locked herself in, inspired with an unreasoning terror, and a dread of seeing her brother handcuffed and carried out of the house. The rector and his wife stood face to face in the study, with the table ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... through indolence relapsed into a jungle of thorns and briars, quaking bogs, and sterile mountains; whisky, and the idle uncertain potato, combining with ignorance and priestcraft, to demoralise the excitable unreasoning race of modern Celts. Let us turn from the sad scenes of which my said diary is full, to my day at the spar caverns of Kingston. "At the bottom of a stone quarry, we clad ourselves in sack garments that mud wouldn't spoil, and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... everywhere they vigorously propagated their teaching. Of all enmities, the enmity of contending creeds is the bitterest. The Stoics became the first professional Jew-haters, and set themselves at the head of those who resented Jewish particularism, either from jealousy or from that unreasoning dislike which is universally felt against minorities that live differently from the mass ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... see the deterioration of popular architecture. Every line is rigid and without human feeling: the style, where any exists, is exotic, not national or local; classical, not vernacular. It is a learned importation, not a popular growth. The mason has dwindled into an unreasoning tool in the hands of the architect; hence the lack of personality, the absence of charm; and only in rare instances has the architect proved himself capable of supplying those qualities of design and proportion which to some ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... that the singer lifts up his voice against the terrors of war. It is thus that he protests against the struggle between brother and brother; and the effect of the protest is all the more potent that it is put into the mouth, not as Nekrassof puts it, of the singer, but into that of a dumb, unreasoning beast. ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... An unreasoning terror seized me, and with all my might I tried to think what I could do. Should I leave my partner and fly in pursuit, as I longed to do, the figure would be broken up, and should my fears prove unfounded I could never again hold up my ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... unreasoning anger came into my heart. I sprang back and seized Djama by the shoulders, and, looking with fierce, hot eyes into his, ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... radoter[obs3], dote; ramble &c (madness) 503; play the fool, play the monkey, monkey around, fool around; take leave of one's senses (insanity) 503; not see an inch beyond one's nose; stultify oneself &c. 699; talk nonsense &c. 497. Adj. unintelligent[Applied to persons], unintellectual, unreasoning; mindless, witless, reasoningless[obs3], brainless; halfbaked; having no head &c. 498; not -bright &c. 498; inapprehensible[obs3]. weak headed, addle headed, puzzle headed, blunder headed, muddle headed, muddy headed, pig headed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... offer an unreasoning opposition? Aunt Merce cried herself sick, fond as she was of Alice, and Temperance declared that if she hadn't married a widower herself, she would put in an oar. Anyhow, she hadn't married a man with ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... with a gravity that would befit the cares of empire, and think the smallest improvement worth accomplishing at any expense of time and industry. The book, the statue, the sonata, must be gone upon with the unreasoning good faith and the unflagging spirit of ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... reply that their social condition is the main cause of prejudice. They both act as reciprocal cause and effect, and a change in neither alone will bring the desired effect. Both must change, or neither can improve to any great extent. The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color-line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the excuse for further discrimination. Only by a union of intelligence and sympathy across ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... she did not move a step; but an unreasoning fear fell upon Ercole. He could not see her face, as the dark veil hung down. She was so motionless and fearless; only the dead could be as fearless of death and as still as she. Her breast was so white; her hands were like marble hands, ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... only agitated her still further. His evident determination terrified her. In that moment all her fear of her husband rose to towering proportions, a monster she dared not even contemplate. She clasped Bertrand's arm between her hands in wild, unreasoning supplication. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... our hero to savour of unreasoning contempt of danger, for the facing of a tropical squall in such an eggshell appeared to him the height of folly. He ventured to reply, therefore, in a ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... unsanitary procedure enforced by his religious ritual. So naturally he feels like a worm, and abhors himself, and cries out: "I know that Thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of Thine can be restrained." By which utter, unreasoning humility he succeeds in appeasing the Great Fear, and his friends make a sacrifice of seven bullocks and seven rams—a feast for a whole templeful of priests—and then "the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.... And after this ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... or not, it is certain that Fielding must have had superabundant material of his own from which to model this thoroughly representative, and at the same time, completely individual character. Western has all the rustic tastes, the narrow prejudices, the imperfect education, the unreasoning hatred to the court, which distinguished the Jacobite country gentleman of the Georgian era; but his divided love for his daughter and his horses, his good-humour and his shrewdness, his foaming impulses and his quick subsidings, his tears, his oaths, and his ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... Her protest was quick, eager, imperative. "You don't know how loyal they can be—how faithful. They are really just like children, so impulsive—so unreasoning." ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... this matter of religion from the race whose habits I have discovered and here describe. Nothing, perhaps, has done more to warp our own story than the hide-bound prejudice that a doctrine could not be both false and true at the same time, and the unreasoning certitude, inherited from the bad old days of clerical tyranny, that a thing either was ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... remain glacial before you, beneath your glance that fires my blood—I love you, and the recollection of Guy hindered me from telling you that all that is mine belongs to you—I am a ferocious creature, you know, capable of mad outbursts, senseless anger, and unreasoning flight—Yes, I have wished to escape from you again. Well! no, I remain with you; I love you, I love you!—You shall be my wife, do you hear? My wife!—Ah! what a moment of bliss! I have loved you for years! Have you not seen ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... cabinet. There were my own letters, carefully tied up with a ribbon; letters from her mother and father; from the children when we were away from them. I began to read, and was seized with a sharp, unreasoning pain, surprised by sudden tears. I seemed dumbly to resent this, and I put them all away again. Why should I disturb myself to no purpose? "There shall be no more sorrow nor crying, for the former things are passed away"—so runs the old verse, and I had almost grown to feel like ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... objections the following remarks may be made. The supposition of impiety arises from an entire misconception of what is implied by an aboriginal creation of insects. The experimentalist could never be considered as the author of the existence of these creatures, except by the most unreasoning ignorance. The utmost that can be claimed for, or imputed to him is that he arranged the natural conditions under which the true creative energy—that of the Divine Author of all things—was pleased to work in that instance. On ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... Louise did not think much about her one way or another, except at those times when Miss Amanda tried to be funny; then she quite hated her with unreasoning fierceness. ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... men of all races and colors alike. This great measure is sought as earnestly by loyal white men as by loyal blacks, and is needed alike by both. Let sound political prescience but take the place of an unreasoning prejudice, and this will ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... the drawing-room, bewildered and helpless as a starfish stranded by the tide, heard Honor's footsteps pass the door and die away in the distance. An unreasoning fear seized her that she might be going over to Mrs Conolly to stay there for good; and at the thought a sob rose in her throat. Flinging aside her parasol, which fell rattling to the floor, she sank into the nearest chair and buried her ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... themselves into a ringed barrier around me they presently succeeded in rearranging the contending elements and in restoring me to the society of my friends. To these persons they complained with somewhat unreasoning acrimony that I had been exciting the inmates into a state of rebellion with wild imaginings, and for the first time I then began to understand that an important error had been perpetrated by some one, and that instead of being a meeting-place ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... series of affectionate and light-hearted letters, which charmingly betray his own personality, and which are full of the most vivid pictures of Malta, Corfu, Albania, the Plains of Troy, Turkey—which was kind to his race when a cruel and unreasoning world showed it only malignant hate, and which he regarded with the gratitude that never forsakes a Jew; Cyprus, the advantage of whose possession he early recognized; Egypt, whose destinies were afterward in his hand; and Jerusalem, the holy city of his people, his impressions ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... it by the wild tingle of his nerves when she shuddered at the name of Thor. That is, he thought she had shuddered; but of course she hadn't! What had she to shudder at? He was brought up against that question every time the unreasoning fear of Thor possessed him. He knew the fear to be unreasoning. However possible it might be to suspect Rosie—and a man was always ready to suspect the woman he loved!—to suspect Thor was absurd. If in the matter of Rosie's dowry Thor was "acting queerly," there was an explanation of that ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... quietly. "I see no reason to suppose that Paul is unhappy. It is because you have taken this unreasoning dislike to her." ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... that would be in keeping with the melancholy at which he was aiming, and this he found in the word nevermore. He next invented a pretext for the frequent but varying use of nevermore. This word could not be spoken in the right tone by a human being; it must come from an unreasoning creature, hence the introduction of the raven, an ill-omened bird, in harmony with the main tone of the poem. He then considered what was the most melancholy subject of mankind, and found it was death, and that that melancholy theme was most poetical when allied to beauty. ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... life. It is not, as many people have wilfully or stupidly construed it, a bit of poetical advice to womankind to "barter the joys of Paradise" for "just one kiss." It is simply an illustration of a moment of turbulent anguish and vehement despair, such moments of unreasoning and overwhelming sorrow as the most moral people may experience ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... my boat for the last time. Placing thirty-six of the people in the boat, we floated down the river close to the bank along which the land-party marched. Day after day passed on and we found the natives increasing in wild rancour and unreasoning hate of strangers. At every curve and bend they 'telephoned' along the river warning signals; their huge wooden drums sounded the muster for fierce resistance; reed arrows tipped with poison were shot at us from the jungle as ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... charges preferred against her. But knowing her husband, and unwilling for her own part to give up her life of pleasure, she had practised concealment as long as possible. And now she was really very ill, haunted too by an unreasoning, irremovable fear that it would all end in her death. Mathieu, who had seen her but a few months previously looking so fair and fresh, was amazed to find her such a wreck. And on her side Valentine gazed, all astonishment, at Marianne, noticing with surprise how calm and strong the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... constrained. My heart was palpitating in my bosom; I could hear it beat. I was trembling so that I could scarcely stand. I was overwhelmed by a fresh flood of terror. I stared in front of me with eyes in which, had it been light, would have been seen the frenzy of unreasoning fear. My ears were strained so that I listened with an acuteness of tension ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... promise so much of woe to Mr. Johnson and to the country, is an inordinate, unscrupulous, and unreasoning ambition. To one theme the President is always constant,—to one idea he is always true,—"He has filled every office, from that of alderman of a village to the Presidency of the United States." He does not forget, nor does he permit the world to forget, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... window again, and looked down the street towards the transparency, where the opposition voters were cheering wildly at the first news so favorable to their side. Despite himself, Harley felt an unreasoning anger towards them. "You cheer about nothing," he said to himself. "This is only a few thousand votes among millions." Then he was ashamed of his ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... and so merciless then, that despite himself, the selfish adventurer, the careless self-seeking intriguer, shuddered with a quick wave of unreasoning terror. He turned away from Heron's piercing gaze, the gaze of a hyena whose prey is being snatched from beneath its nails. For a moment he stared thoughtfully ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... Unreasoning fear of one or another mode of conveyance is not rare. It is said that Rossini found it impossible to travel by rail, and that the attempt of a friend to accustom him to it resulted in ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... finer phrase, takes on, through the magic handling of the poet, an ideal beauty. Externally common and prosaic in all her ways, she is yet thoroughly poetic, transfigured in our conception by her perfect love. To that love, unreasoning, unsuspecting,—to the excess of that which in itself is no fault, but beautiful and good,—her fall and ruin are due. Her story is the tragedy of her sex in all time. As Schlegel said of the "Prometheus Bound,"—"It is not a single tragedy, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... unguessable circumstances: the tormenting mystery of it all had preyed insistently upon her mind. Since then Sonia Danidoff had never taken a bath without thinking of Fantomas; and every year when the anniversary of his aggression came round she suffered cruelly: she was seized with wild, unreasoning fears at the idea that she might see this terrifying bandit appear before her again, and that this time ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... took in at one confused glance. The thing that gave him unreasoning terror was the hundred-foot-high metal monster before him. It defied description. It was unlike any color known on Earth, a blinding color sinister with power and evil. Its shape was equally ambiguous—it rippled like quicksilver, now compact, ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... it was gradually borne in upon him that this, and this alone, was the thing that must be done. It was his job, forced upon him by an inexorable fate. Dick would probably be much more angry with him for doing it, but somehow in a vague, unreasoning fashion he realized that it had got ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... music-book. By the soiled vellum cover and the shape I perceived instantly that it was the book containing the "Areopagita." I had not seen it for near two years, and was not even aware that it was in the house, but I knew at once that he intended to play that suite. I entertained an unreasoning but profound aversion to its melodies, but at that moment I would have welcomed warmly that or any other music, so that he would only choose once more to show some thought for his neglected wife. He ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... called into the dread presence, unconfessed and unshrived, to-night; and we should bethink us of their souls, rather than indulge in this grief in behalf of one that, however faithful, ends but an unreasoning and ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... book (from which I propose to give extracts later on), proving that the machines were ultimately destined to supplant the race of man, and to become instinct with a vitality as different from, and superior to, that of animals, as animal to vegetable life. So convincing was his reasoning, or unreasoning, to this effect, that he carried the country with him; and they made a clean sweep of all machinery that had not been in use for more than two hundred and seventy-one years (which period was arrived at after a series of compromises), ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... Nor need you expatiate to me upon the obduracy of the Aylett pride. Surely, no one living has more reason than I to comprehend how unreasoning and implacable I find it is. I looked for injustice at Winston Aylett's hands. I read him truly in our only private interview. Insolent, vain, despotic—wedded to his dogmas, and intolerant of others' opinion, he disliked me because ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Sterne's humor, and he finds in Mittler in the "Wahlverwandtschaften" aunion of seriousness and the comic of caricature, reminiscent of Sterne and Hippel. Friedrich is mercurial, petulant, utterly irresponsible, acreature of mirth and laughter, subject to unreasoning fits of passion. One might, in thinking of another character in fiction, designate Friedrich as faun-like. In all of this one can, however, find little if any demonstrable likeness to Sterne or Sterne's creations. It is rather difficult ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... her monotonous face and timid attempts at reconciliation, and I with loathing of her in every fibre of my frame. Several times I could not avoid meeting her alone; and on each occasion her words were identically the same. Still the unreasoning wail that it was all a "mistake"; and still the hope of eventually "making friends." I might have seen had I cared to look, that that hope only was keeping her alive. She grew more wan and thin month by month. You will agree with me, at least, that such conduct would ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... from shore with his pole. It was arduous, but all sense of the cold, bleak weather was lost, and the interest and excitement of the task were refreshing. To many men, as to many dogs, there is an inexplicable and unreasoning pleasure in dealing with water that no operation upon land can yield. Bates was one of these; he would hardly have chosen his present lot if it had not been so; but, like many a dry character of his stamp, he did not give his more agreeable sensations the name of pleasure, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... Where once stood the steadfast pines, great, beautiful, sweet, my hand touched raw, moist stumps. All about lay broken branches, like the antlers of stricken deer. The fragrant, piled-up sawdust swirled and tumbled about me. An unreasoning resentment flashed through me at this ruthless destruction of the beauty that I love. But there is no anger, no resentment in nature. The air is equally charged with the odours of life and of destruction, for death ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... them—chose among the stock themes for their commonplaces, the character and exploits of Alexander. They had their followers in every age; and until a very recent period, all who wished to "point a moral or adorn a tale" about unreasoning ambition, extravagant pride, and the formidable frenzies of free will when leagued with free power, have never failed to blazon forth the so-called madman of Macedonia as one of the most glaring examples. Without doubt, many of these writers ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A. |
