"Unwitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the two there in the shadow of the great oak, although unwitting that others were so near, and neither man dared to move. The moonlight, in softened silver, fell upon the faces of the lovers, disclosing all the beauty of the woman's and all the loftiness of the man's. Harley thought he had never seen ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... to work his will And secret wrong on some forspoken wight, Frames waxe, in forme to represent aright The poore unwitting wretch he meanes to kill, And prickes the image, framed by magick's skill, Whereby to vex the partie day and night." Son. 10; from Poems and Sonnets annexed to "Astrophil and ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... this third volume is that our heroes are no longer united. Though inseparable in their youth, now Aramis, with the unwitting Porthos in tow, is plotting against the king, who D'Artagnan has sworn with his life to defend. Athos, once the most upright defender of nobility, is now forced to break his sword before his monarch, and ...
— Dumas Commentary • John Bursey
... with jewels tore at the covering of her bosom and suddenly came away clutching a dagger, thin, long, and keen; and snarling she sprang toward the girl, to whose influence, however unwitting, she rightly ascribed the downfall of her scheme of empire. Rowan and Labertouche leaped forward and fell short, so lightning swift she moved; only Amber stood between her and her vengeance. Choking with horror, he put the girl behind him with a resistless ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... society by degrees. I hardly knew where the line was passed, between quiet conversaziones and brilliant and courtly assemblies. It was passed when I was unwitting of it, or when I felt unable to help it. My mother had been so much alienated by my behaviour toward Marshall and De Saussure, that I thought it needful to please her by every means in my power, short of downright violation of conscience. "Children, obey your parents in the Lord," ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Once, and unwitting that he did so or that I saw, he laughed aloud, mockingly and defiantly, at the advancing storm. I see him yet standing there like a pigmy out of the Arabian Nights before the huge front of some malignant genie. He was daring ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... put on the moccasins; and, in a trice, he was flitting away over the face of the green earth at ten times the speed of a wild goose chased by the winds. He ran and ran, nor ceased to run, even when come to the land he was in quest of. All unwitting where he was, or whither going, on—right through with might and main speed—on and on, until he had put the Land of Sunrise as far behind him as the Land of Sunset was before him; nor yet had found the object of his heart's ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... Hagen claims the ring, and stabs Gunther, who tries to prevent his taking it; but as he grasps at it, Siegfried's hand is raised threateningly, and Hagen sinks back abashed. Bruennhilde now comes in, sorrowful but calm. She understands the whole story of Siegfried's unwitting treachery, and has pardoned him in his death. She thrusts the weeping Gutrune aside, claiming for herself the sole right of a wife's tears. The vassals build a funeral pyre, and place the body ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... sometimes by the natives at the present time, who have not yet forgotten its former existence. In the processional festival of Abu'l Haggag, the patron saint of Luxor, whose mosque and tomb stand upon the ruins of the Temple of Amon, a boat is dragged over the ground in unwitting remembrance of the dragging of the boat of Amon in the processions of that god. Similarly in the Mouled el Nebi procession at Luxor, boats placed upon carts are drawn through the streets, just as one may see them in the ancient ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... of his efforts the President had the unwitting support of the segregationists, who treated the nation to another sordid racial spectacular. In February 1965 Alabama police jailed Martin Luther King, Jr., and some 2,000 members of his voting rights drive, and a generally outraged nation watched King's later clash with the police ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... Manydown had been sixteen months in 'Frisco, and her boys could easily have passed muster as Americans. They chewed sweet tobacco ("malassus kyake," they called it), and swore Spanish oaths with freedom and abandon. Their gig was by far the finest and smartest at the jetty, and woe betide the unwitting 'bow' who touched her glossy varnished side with his boat-hook. For him a wet swab was kept in readiness, and their stroke, a burly ruffian, was always willing to attend to the little affair if it went any farther. Our Captains came down ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... 'soo-vy-neer matches,' quickly and deftly metamorphosed to escape the unobservant or untrained eye, but the same, notwithstanding. And now my interest grew apace. I knew that at last we were in the presence of that powerful official who dispensed virgin two-dollar notes to the unwitting foreigner or native; and Adam Camp was about ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... went forward to the foot of the passage, and Boolp was there, following Ukleet, both of them under a weight of bags and boxes. So she welcomed the broker, and led him to the feast, he coughing and wheezing and blinking, unwitting the vexation of the Vizier, nor that one other than himself was there. When Boolp heard the voice of the Vizier, in astonishment, addressing him, he started back and fell upon his bags, and the task of coaxing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his deeds are among men, they are of a marvelous nature. Often his godlike nature is displayed by apparent sloth and indolence on his part, his followers performing miraculous feats while he remains inactive; hence he is reproached for idleness by the unwitting. Sometimes he acts as a transformer, changing the form of mountains and valleys with a step or stroke; sometimes as a culture hero bringing gifts to mankind and teaching them the arts learned from the gods, or supplying food by making great hauls of fish by means of a miraculous ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... Major's heart thumped painfully, then the confusion of the unwitting eavesdropper compelled him to make his presence known. He did so with that fine discrimination and artful delicacy he summoned in ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... seemed to Ford that it was clearly his duty to make this fight against the grafters in the Denver management. North deserved no consideration, and while Mr. Colbrith was honest enough, his blind prejudice and narrow mentality made him North's unwitting accessory. Three months earlier Ford would not have hesitated; but in the interval a woman had come between to obscure all the points of view. A fight to the death against the Colbrith administration meant the antagonizing of the Adairs—of ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Jiro with the death of Sir Alan Hume-Frazer, nor even with complicity in the crime. The Japanese had acted as the unwitting tool of a stronger personality, and the little man's brain was even at this moment considering fresh aspects of the affair not previously ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... be blest Full soon in the clear heavenly water, he Sleeps on unwitting of it, his little ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... am I to begin my congratulations! I did you and unwitting service when I sent your daughter to search among those musty old parchments. I knew my father believed in the existence of some such document, but I thought all those hoards in Delavie House were devoid of all legal ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... soul Unwitting I keep white and whole, Unlatched and lit, if Thou should'st care To enter or ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... Euripides, a further boon, It goes, I think, together with these rags: The little Mysian bonnet for my head; "For sooth to-day I must put on the beggar, And be still what I am, and yet not seem so." [6] The audience here may know me who I am, But like poor fools the chorus stand unwitting, While I trick them with my flowers ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... which he had had, at that first moment, a sudden helpless suspicion, was definitely there, almost within his grasp, before his eyes, in the full glare of the lamp-light, caught and kept there, an unwitting prisoner, in that room into which, when he would, he might force his way to surprise and seize it; or rather he would tap upon the shutters, as he had often done when he had come there very late, and by ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... mother, for she died in giving me birth; and my father, who adored her living, and revered her memory, was some years older before he fully forgave me for being the unwitting cause of her premature departure from this world. And in this I could sympathise with him as soon as I came to years of understanding, for she was not only, as everybody who had known her asserted, of a most amiable ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... down and Pee-wee could feel that it was turning into another road. His unwitting captors were evidently either nervous or sleepy, for ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... on his hat, accompanied Barker, all unwitting of the thunder-blow that his words had been.... Mrs. Wallace was at home. James went upstairs, forgetting everything but that the woman he loved was free—free! His heart beat so that he could scarcely breathe; he was afraid of betraying his agitation, and had to ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... he look so pityingly as you describe, and bless me as I was praying, unwitting of his presence?" repeated she, with a look that searched ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... a more consummate love-making, with all the base intent of betrayal, than this cavalier seduction of Michael by the elderly, six- quart ship's steward. When Michael, not entirely unwitting of the snub of the man's lack of interest, stirred restlessly with a threat to depart, he had flung ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... shade thy floor still darken? dost thou still, despairing, hearken To that deep sepulchral utterance like the oracles of yore? In the same place is he sitting? Does he give no sign of quitting? Is he conscious or unwitting when he answers "Nevermore?" Tell me truly, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... rashness which had led her to assume positively, on inadequate grounds, that her union with George Cannon had been fruitless. She must suffer, and he also must suffer. Rather than let him know, in any conceivable manner, that, all unwitting, she was bearing the child of another at the moment of her betrothal to himself, she preferred to be regarded as a jilt of the very worst kind. Strange that she should choose the role of deceiver ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Socialist sitting at a great Banquet of Men, Sitting with honored leaders of the blind, unwitting Multitude; I saw him there with the writers, editors, painters, men of letters, Legislators and judges, the Leaders of the People, Leaders flushed with the wines of price, eating costly and rare foods, Making loud talk, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... before it floated to her through the bars of the cage that this at last was the high reality, the bristling truth that she had hitherto only patched up and eked out—one of the creatures, in fine, in whom all the conditions for happiness actually met, and who, in the air they made, bloomed with an unwitting insolence. What came home to the girl was the way the insolence was tempered by something that was equally a part of the distinguished life, the custom of a flowerlike bend to the less fortunate—a ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... times his consciousness of distinction among men betrays something of that childlike, delighted vanity, half unwitting, which was afterward forced into exuberant growth and distasteful prominence, by the tawdry flatteries of Lady Hamilton and the Court of Naples. Now, expressed to one who had a right to all his confidence and to share all his honors, it challenges rather the sympathy than the criticism of the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... quite a hideous little mind, he was telling himself—fearful in its latter day casting aside of all such small matters as taste and feeling. People stripped the garments from things in these days. He laughed inwardly at himself and his unwitting "these days." Senile severity mouthed just such phrases. Were they not his own days and the outcome of a past which had considered itself so much more decorous? Had not boldly questionable attitudes been held in those other days? How long was ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that night, must have chuckled delightedly. Unhappily, there were other spirits brooding in the city, spirits before whose deathly scowls the prime mischief-maker would have fled in terror, and Curtis, all unwitting, brushed against one of them in the hall. His only acquaintance, the clerk, was momentarily absent, so he turned to a bookstall and cigar counter, and bought some stamps. A man who had been seated in a sort of cafe, which the news-stand and a flower-stall partially screened from the ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... my outstretched hands, clutching wildly in the air, came in contact with the identical rope whose sudden descent from the gangway above had been the unwitting cause of the disaster, the tail end of the "whip" Mr Triggs had ordered to be rigged up from the lee yardarm, in readiness to hoist in the powder when the hoy bringing the same ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... resemblance between infant lord and infant retainer, were the mother and the boy himself. In the privacy of home both had laid themselves upon the altar; the one his life,—the other her heart, yet without sign to the outer world. Unwitting of what had passed between them, it is the teacher ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... alacrity he [Sir Ferdinando] hastened to give to Pierce a patent in their behalf." The same biographer, clearly unconscious of the well-laid plot of Gorges and Warwick (as all other writers but Neill and Davis have been), bears testimony (all the stronger because the witness is unwitting of the intrigue), to the ardent interest Gorges had in its success. He says: "The warm desire of Sir Ferdinando Gorges to see a permanent colony founded within the domain of the Plymouth [or Second] Virginia ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... you, but really—if you will excuse me—I think I would prefer not to remain. I feel somewhat bouleversee. And I am so distressed to have been the unwitting cause ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... That if the Greeks their jeopardy should scape By wary craft, and win their ships a road. Each Persian captain shall his failure pay By forfeit of his head. So spake the king, Inspired at heart with over-confidence, Unwitting of the gods' predestined will. Thereon our crews, with no disordered haste, Did service to his bidding and purveyed The meal of afternoon: each rower then Over the fitted rowlock looped his oar. Then, when the splendour of the sun had set, And night drew on, each master of the oar And ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... were lame; Her long, sharp nose—but no, her nose none saw, Since it was hidden 'neath the hood she wore But from this hood she watched with glittering eye Four lusty men-at-arms who lolled hard by, Who, 'bove their armour, bore on back and breast A bloody hand—Lord Gui's well-hated crest, And who, unwitting of the hooded hag, On sundry matters let ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... very ignorance of what he had dared for her only confirmed his new sense of possession; and, if he could, he would not have marred the pleasure he felt by making her grateful yet, sweet as that might be in its time. Now he liked to keep his knowledge, to have had her unwitting compassion, to hear her pour out her unwitting relief in this laugh, ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... If that is your idea of unwitting, I should like to know how you would define deliberate intent! I'll forgive you this time, but let me catch you at any of your tricks again, and the fat will be in the fire! Sit down—sit down. It's not often an old bachelor like ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... all this vast good fortune, am I sad. And I am sad because John Barleycorn is with me. And John Barleycorn is with me because I was born in what future ages will call the dark ages before the ages of rational civilisation. John Barleycorn is with me because in all the unwitting days of my youth John Barleycorn was accessible, calling to me and inviting me on every corner and on every street between the corners. The pseudo-civilisation into which I was born permitted everywhere licensed shops for the sale of soul-poison. The system of life ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... catchwords, and lays his eggs of thought in the material that has been woven into consistency by others. It is a matter of natural taste, developed and strengthened by continual practice, to avoid being the unwitting slave of phrases. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... A thing of watery salt Held in cohesion by unresting cells Which work they know not why, which never halt, Myself unwitting where their master dwells. I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin; A world which uses me as I use them, Nor do I know which end or which begin, Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn. So, like a marvel in a marvel set, I answer to the vast, as wave ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... dost thou then, who only a few hours ago wert my willing vassal, now wish to break away from my gentle rule, because, forsooth, of the words of an old woman, who is no longer vassal of mine, as if, like her, thou art now unwitting of what delights I am the source? O most witless of women! forbear, and reflect whether thou shouldst not find befitting happiness in that which makes the happiness of Heaven and earth. All things that ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Unwitting perhaps of the fine time afforded by the feeble delays of Mr. Addington, and absorbed in the tissue of plot and counterplot now thickening fast in Paris—the arch-plotter in all of them being himself—the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Melbury had begun to suspect: Fitzpiers had mounted the mare which did not belong to him in mistake for his own—an oversight easily explicable, in a man ever unwitting in horse-flesh, by the darkness of the spot and the near similarity of the animals in appearance, though Melbury's was readily enough seen to be the grayer horse by day. He hastened back, and did what seemed best in the circumstances—got ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... streets that are Old Geneva, to and fro along the alleys that lead through balconied, leaning houses, up and down obscure and sudden flights of stone steps, Henry wandered under the September moon. All day he had, with the help of Charles Wilbraham's unwitting secretary, tracked Charles Wilbraham. He knew how Charles had begun the morning by dictating proud and ponderous documents in his proud and ponderous voice, and talking to people who came in and out of his room; how he had then gone ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... She had even befriended her nation's bitter foe, Deathwind. She had listened to the young missionary with rapture; she had been his savior. And now when she looked into the eyes of this young giant, whose fate had rested on her all unwitting words, she ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... looked out their train in last month's Bradshaw, unwitting of the autumn alterations, and was kept from you till the next day. You took the left instead of the right side of the square on your way home, or you stood for a minute gossiping at your neighbour's door, and there came by some one who ultimately altered and embittered your whole ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... knows who that poet was, and loves him. I knew and loved him then, when I had no thought that he was a poet. Even if it had been given me to make a wild guess at the authorship of these poems, and my guess had chanced all unwitting to be right, as would have been thereafter proved, I should have dismissed it from my fancy. For I conceived that my friend was so busy upon that new red-hot business of his of fitting himself to be a soldier and use arms, and answer the taunt of Simone ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... surpasses the ignorant man, who is driven only by his lusts. For the ignorant man is not only distracted in various ways by external causes without ever gaining, the true acquiescence of his spirit, but moreover lives, as it were unwitting of himself, and of God, and of things, and as soon as he ceases to ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... revolt, unwitting as it was, had fired the imaginations of the Earth people, who in their degradation and despair had come to believe the Mercutian overlords invulnerable. It had been the little spark that touched off a far-reaching train of events. In the few days that had elapsed Hilary had ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... strewn swords, axes, darts, and spears, Which all the Gods in sport had idly thrown At Balder, whom no weapon pierced or clove; But in his breast stood fixt the fatal bough Of mistletoe, which Lok the Accuser gave To Hoeder, and unwitting Hoeder threw— 'Gainst that alone had Balder's ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... darts and spears, Which all the Gods in sport had idly thrown At Balder, whom no weapon pierced or clave; But in his breast stood fixt the fatal bough Of mistletoe, which Lok the Accuser gave To Hoder, and unwitting Hoder threw; "Gainst that alone had Balder's life no charm. And all the Gods and all the heroes came And stood round Balder on the bloody floor Weeping and wailing; and Valhalla rang Up to its golden roof ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... Proud Ilium lay, and Neptune's Troy was smouldering on the ground, For diverse outlands of the earth and waste lands are we bound, Driven by omens of the Gods. Our fleet we built beneath Antandros, and the broken steeps of Phrygian Ida's heath, Unwitting whither Fate may drive, or where the Gods shall stay And there we draw together men. Now scarce upon the way Was summer when my father bade spread sails to Fate at last. Weeping I leave my fatherland, and out of haven passed 10 Away from fields where Troy-town was, an outcast o'er the deep, ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... corpulent with drinking nought but water, he did Fra Cipolla's bidding by going to the church door and ringing the bells amain. When all the people were gathered about the door, Fra Cipolla, all unwitting that aught of his was missing, began his sermon, and after much said in glorification of himself, caused the confiteor to be recited with great solemnity, and two torches to be lit by way of preliminary to ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... prepossessions so deeply rooted, he paused. Then, "Why?" he repeated. "Can you ask me when you know how many a life as young as yours—and I take you to be scarcely, sir, in your twenties—has been forfeit for a thoughtless word, an unwitting touch, a look; when you know how many a bride has been widowed as soon as wedded, how many a babe orphaned as soon as born? And for what? For ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... leisurely progress in the bright weather, or on his luncheon in a coppice of young firs, or on his thoughts which had returned to the idyllic. I take up the narrative at about three o'clock in the afternoon, when he is revealed seated on a milestone examining his map. For he had come, all unwitting, to a turning of the ways, and his choice is the cause ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... party set off at full speed, all unwitting that four disconsolate maidens were marooned on the farther side of the river, waiting for some faerie boat to ferry them across. For a long time no knight-errant arrived for their relief, but at last, as chance would have it, an urchin came down on to the wharf, with a string and a bent ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... slumber the moment he was alone. When he had taken his ticket, and they had asked him to where it should be, he had answered to their amaze, "to the farthest place it goes," and he was borne on now unwitting where it went; through the rich champaign and the barren plains; through the reddening vintage and over the dreary plateaux; through antique cities, and across broad, flowing rivers; through the cave of riven rocks, and above nestling, leafy valleys; on and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the early part of his missionary life, tells us that in a village the family room was given up to him for the night, and in the morning he found a little son had been born in the stable. He supposed that he had been the unwitting cause of such an event occurring there; but longer acquaintance with the people shows that woman almost invariably resorts to that place in her hour of sorrow, and there she often dies. The number who meet death in ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... world began gradually to penetrate to the sepulcher of Christophe's soul. At first he became dimly conscious of the different noises in the house and to take an unwitting interest in them. He marked the time of day when the front door opened and shut, and how often during the day, and the different ways in which it was opened for the various visitors. He knew Braun's step: he used to ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... citizens swarmed at the station to take the wounded to their homes, the hospitals being sadly unready. Jack instantly suspected the situation, the conversation in the ambulance coming back to him now distinctly. What should he do? He was in honor bound to undeceive the kind-hearted and unwitting accomplice of the fraud practiced on herself as well as on him. She came in presently with an officer. Jack was not familiar with the rebel insignia, and could not discover his rank or service, but he expected to hear himself denounced as a spy ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... sharing your literary glory on the sly, and without compunction. Indeed, the false role created in me a perverse mood. And I entered into a literary discussion with M—— that outraged his pedantic soul. It was my way of perjuring his judgment, in return for his unwitting approval of my reviews. Besides, the assumption of infallibility by dull, scholarly men who have neither imagination nor genius has always amused me. And this one danced now as frantically as if he had unintentionally grasped a live wire that hurt and burned, but would not let go! Finally ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... than pleasure, come to this mor- 212:9 tal sense? Because the memory of pain is more vivid than the memory of pleasure. I have seen an unwitting attempt to scratch the end of a finger which had been cut 212:12 off for months. When the nerve is gone, which we say was the occasion of pain, and the pain still remains, it proves sensation to be in the mortal mind, not in matter. 212:15 Reverse the process; take away this so-called ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... representatives of a number of humiliated nations—that greed of new markets was at the bottom of what purported to be a policy of pure humanitarianism. Some of the delegates were currently supposed to be the unwitting instruments of elusive capitalistic influences. Possibly they would have been astonished were they told this: Great Britain was suspected of working for complete control of the Baltic and its seaboard in order to oust the Germans from ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... enough for Lagardere, this, and to know that the woman was all unconsciously trusting to his honor, to his courage, to his truth. And it was with an unfamiliar exaltation of the spirit that Lagardere swore to himself that the unwitting confidence of Gabrielle de Caylus should not be misplaced, and that all his hand, his heart, his sword could do for her service should ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... out of order, no longer tells her of the shaking of the web. The captured prey is too far off for her to see it; she is all unwitting. A good hour passes, with the Locust still kicking, the Spider impassive, myself watching. Nevertheless, in the end, the Epeira wakes up: no longer feeling the signalling-thread, broken by my scissors, as taut as usual ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... the old fire-worshippers came with a very singular effect on the ear. When a boy, I have often passed through the fire myself on Midsummer eve, and such is still the custom. The higher the flame, the more daring the act is considered: hence there is a sort of emulation amongst the unwitting perpetrators of this Pagan rite. In many places cattle are driven through the fire; and this ceremony is firmly believed to have a powerful effect in preserving them from various harms. I need not ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... Unwitting boy! when, be it soon or late, What Pierrot ever has escaped his fate? What if I warned him! He might yet evade, Through the long windings of this verdant glade; Seek his companions in the blither way, Which, else, must be as lost ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... games of football, he knew how innately perverse an oval-shaped affair like the ball itself could be. Furthermore, there was Mrs. Jarley, who had disapproved of his purchase from the outset. If he wreaked vengeance upon poor little Jack for his unwitting offence, Jarley knew that he would in a measure weaken his position in the argument of the night before. So, instead of chastising Jack, as he really felt inclined to do, he picked up the ball, and repairing to the nursery, summoned the boy to him ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... Michael's passion of service for Fay would have been a great shock to Wentworth had he suspected it. It remained for the duke to perceive the latent power in Michael, and to be taken instantly into his confidence on the matter, while Wentworth, unwitting, had remained for life outside his ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... never even should have come to trial," the senator said. "He was a popular, buddy-buddy sort of guy who managed to get himself involved as an unwitting figurehead. Bossard simply wasn't—and isn't—very bright. But he was a friendly, outgoing, warm sort of man who was able to get elected through the auspices of the local city machine. Remember ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to his misguided efforts to escape from the toils of fate, are all things of the past; in the actual course of the tragedy he simply writhes under one revelation after another of bygone error and unwitting crime. It would be a mere play upon words to recognize as a dramatic "struggle" the writhing of a worm on a hook. And does not this description apply very closely to the part played by another great protagonist—Othello to wit? There is no struggle, no conflict, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Queen's cabinet may be seen the portrait of La Belle Terronniere, who was so much beloved by Francois I., and who was the unwitting cause of his death. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... applied. Upon seeing how chronology is deliberately and maliciously perverted in favour of "Greek influence," Christian interests and his own predetermined theories—another, and even a stronger term should be applied. What expression is too severe to signify one's feelings upon reading such an unwitting confession of disingenuous scholarship as Weber repeatedly makes ("Hist. Ind. Lit.") when urging the necessity of admitting that a passage "has been touched up by later interpellation," or forcing fanciful chronological ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... declamation, in which we feel that Marlowe and Hugo themselves—not the imaginary Tamburlaine and Hernani—are chanting the desires of their own hearts. Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustum," after finishing its tragic story of the son slain by the unwitting father, closes with a lyric description of the majestic Oxus stream flowing on to the Aral sea. Objective as it all seems, this close is intensely personal, permeated with the same tender stoicism which colors Arnold's "Dover Beach" and "A Summer Night." The device of using ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... no signs of shame nor guilt. He carried himself with pride, as though, forsooth, he had achieved a deed praiseworthy and meritorious. There was about him no consciousness of sin. The master's lips tightened as he faced the disagreeable task. Then he talked harshly to the unwitting culprit, and in his voice there was nothing but godlike wrath. Also, he held White Fang's nose down to the slain hens, and at the same time cuffed ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... stroke in the world, that every blest thing coming up for her in any connection was somehow matter for her general recreation. There she was again with the innocent egotism, the gilded and overflowing anarchism, really, of her doubtless quite unwitting but none the less rabid modern note. Her grace of ease was perfect, but it was all grace of ease, not a single shred of it grace of uncertainty or of difficulty—which meant, when you came to see, that, for its happy working, not a grain of provision was left ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... is your lyre?" The knight with both hands hid his changed, white face, Crying aloud, "Lost! lost! forever lost!" Then, gathering strength, he bared his face again Unto the frightened, wondering boy, and rose With hasty fear. "Ah, child, you bring me back Unwitting to remembrance of my grief, For which I donned eternal garb of woe; And yet I owe you thanks for one sweet hour Of healthy human intercourse and peace. 'T is not for me to tarry by the way. Farewell!" The impetuous, remorseful boy, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... the woman. In his eyes the gleam of hot desire commingled with a glitter of revenge as his thoughts flew swiftly to Wolf River—the Texan's open insult and the pilgrim's swift shot in the dark. Here, helpless, completely in his power to do with as he pleased, lay the woman who had been the unwitting cause of his undoing! Vengeance was his at last, and he licked his lips in wolfish anticipation of the wrecking of that vengeance. The thought of revenge was more sweet in that he never anticipated it. The Texan had disappeared altogether, and he had ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... imagined thousand emotions;—a rolling music within her, a wreath of cloudglory in her sky;—which had, as with virgins it may be, plighted her body to him for sheer urgency of soul; drawn her by a single unwitting-to-brain, conscious-in-blood, shy curl outward of the sheathing leaf to the flowering of woman to him; even to the shore of that strange sea, where the maid stands choosing this one man for her destiny, as in a trance. So are these young ones unfolded, shade ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... iniquity, but the purposes of the God of battles prevail nevertheless. The explosion that rends the rock and releases the toad confined and dormant for centuries, may not have been intended for that end by the unwitting miner, nor the civil convulsion that shatters a mighty nation to relieve an oppressed people and bestow upon it the blessings of civilization, may not have been started with that view by ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... finding of Jessamine Hynds, showed me her statement, told me, in short, the whole story? I was consumed with envy, malice, and all uncharitableness; to think that such a thing should or could happen right under my nose, and I all unwitting! And you, too, Sophy, went through such an experience! I'd give a year of my life to have ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... when, in all probability, the wife will be the one whose conduct will incite trouble because of the worries incident to her more or less monotonous, domestic existence, much care will have to be exercised so that an unwitting fretfulness may not cause quarrels. When a man comes home at night tired and hungry, longing for peace, and comfort, and pleasant conversation, it is worse than anarchy to not only get no greeting, but ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague |
