"Unheard-of" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soulless invaders from across the wide Pacific—men who stifled gambling and scorned all bribes. "Your chief of police is no gentleman," declared certain prominent merchants, arrested for smuggling opium, and naturally aggrieved and indignant at such unheard-of treatment. "He did not tell us how much he wanted! He did not even ask us to pay!" Retained in responsible positions in the office of the collector of customs, two Spanish officers of rank were presently found to have embezzled some twelve thousand dollars in some six weeks of opportunity. ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... products is not a revelation that we pretend to offer to the world, or a novelty that we bring into science, any more than the division of labor was an unheard-of thing when Adam Smith explained its marvels. The proportionality of products is, as we might prove easily by innumerable quotations, a common idea running through the works on political economy, but to which no one as yet has dreamed of attributing its rightful importance: and this is the task ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... entreated Maximus not to shed the blood of these unfortunates, for the bishops could meet the difficulty by driving the heretics from the churches. He asserted that to make the State judge in a matter of doctrine was a cruel, unheard-of violation ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... made by a wounded man when the cup of cool water for which he has long agonised is brought suddenly before his eyes? Such a sound, with all that goes to make it eloquent, did I hear from one of the two girls who leaned over my shoulder. Can you understand this amazing, this unheard-of circumstance? Can you name the woman—can you name the grief capable of making either of these seemingly happy and innocent girls hail the sight of such a doubtful panacea, with an unconscious ebullition of joy? You would clear my wedding-eve of a great dread if you could, for ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... condition than when they left them. In 1830, the great tide of emigration flowed westward. Canada became the great land-mark for the rich in hope and poor in purse. Public newspapers and private letters teemed with the unheard-of advantages to be derived from a settlement ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... blue heron is a sight good for the soul—an unheard-of motion these days, so moderate, unhurried, and time-contemning! The wing-beats of this one, as he came dangling down upon the meadow opposite me, have often given me pause since. If I could have the wings of the ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... not, therefore, unnatural that Maude's answer should have been,—"But, Master Calverley! so saying you should have no need of our Lady." She expected Hugh to reply by an indignant denial; and it astounded her no little to hear him quietly accept the unheard-of alternative. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... pursue this subject on a pagan or poetical basis. We are dealing with two young Christians, Missis Dinnett—a man and a woman of good nurture and high principle. I will never believe—not if he said it himself—that Raymond Ironsyde would commit any such unheard-of outrage. You say that he has promised to marry her. That is enough for me. The son of Henry Ironsyde will keep his promise. Be sure of that. For the moment leave the rest in my hands. Exercise discretion, and pray, pray keep ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... services, as informers, of those men whom the Galilean today has injured so deeply in the sight of all the people, driving them with a scourge out of the temple. From of old they were zealous of the law, but now they are thirsting for revenge against him who has made so unheard-of an ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... however, the emperor made a move indicating treachery. Godfrey at once sounded the trumpets and prepared to assault the city; but when Alexius quickly sought peace, the placable duke accepted his explanations and assurances of friendship. Then Alexius entertained Godfrey with unheard-of splendor, and soon thought so highly of the knight as to adopt him as a ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... is an unheard-of thing, except where some degrading sentence has been pronounced; and banishment ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... and cultivators who required to be protected from them, frequent misunderstandings arose, acts of just severity were made to appear to be acts of wanton oppression, and such as were really oppressive were exaggerated into unheard-of atrocities. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... Yarraman sale-yards for cattle and sheep were near Waddy too, and brought dusty drovers and droughty stockmen in crowds to the town ship every Tuesday. These men were indiscreet and indiscriminate drinkers, and often a vagrant was left behind to finish a spree that surrounded him with unheard-of reptiles and strange kaleidoscopic animals unknown to the zoologist. It must be admitted, too, that Joel Ham, B.A., was in a measure responsible for the boys' unlawful knowledge. Twice at holiday times, when he was not restricted ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... be guilty of horrible sacrilege and unheard-of cruelty to the settlers and poor natives, if you throw these precious relics into the sea, and deprive them of the benefits they ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... walkers both of the slack-rope and tight-rope Many of the Fathers of the Church have pronounced against the dangers of these exercises. Among others, St. John Chrysostom speaks of men who execute movements on inclined ropes at unheard-of heights. In the ruins of Herculaneum there is still visible a picture representing an equilibrist executing several different exercises, especially one in which he dances on a rope to the tune of a double flute, played by himself. The Romans particularly liked to witness ascensions on ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... 'ran with indescribable gladness to view the corpse. Men could not satiate their eyes with feeding on the carcass of a serpent who, by his unbounded ambition and pestiferous perfidy, by every demonstration of horrible cruelty, monstrous lust, and unheard-of avarice, selling without distinction things sacred and profane, had filled the world with venom.' Cesare languished for some days on a sick bed; but in the end, by the aid of a powerful constitution, he recovered, to find his claws cut ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... outcry raised when the first genuine university which admitted women, allowed them to pursue precisely the same studies as young men. It was predicted that almost unheard-of evils would ensue. Woman, if they succeeded, would be unfitted for her "sphere," and become unwilling to soothe, with tender hand, the suffering and the distressed, etc. The wail was terrific. The experiment, however, ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... those who had been mutilated at the hands of the cruel Gallas. Day after day the crowd of patients increased; those who had met with refusal remained in the hope that on another day the "Hakeem's" boxes of unheard-of medicine might be opened, for them also. New ones daily poured in. The many cures of simple cases that I had been able to accomplish spread my fame far and wide, and even reached my countrymen at Magdala, who heard that an English Hakeem had arrived, who could break bones and instantly set them, ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... 2795.—DECLARATIVE NOTICE.—From the Times, August 15, 1851.' The contents are a circular, handsomely printed on three crowded sides of royal quarto glazed post, and containing a list of articles for peremptory disposal, under unheard-of advantages, on the premises of Mr Gobblemadam, at No. 541 New Ruin Street. Without disguising anything more than the addresses of these puffing worthies, we shall quote verbatim a few paragraphs from their productions. The catalogue of bargains in the one before us comprises ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... Sir, I must refuse your bounty, till I know By what strange turn of Fate I came thus blest. To you, my Prince, I've done unheard-of injuries, And though your Mercy do afford me life, With this rich present too; Till I could know I might deserve them both, That Life will prove a Plague, and this great Gift Turn to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... threading its way between the noisy groups. They agreed that it was time they heard from the shield-maiden. For her to take advantage of her womanhood, and turn the forecastle into a woman's-house, and forbid their approach, was something unheard-of ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Admiral is the great champion since he beat the French and English officers in the tournament last winter. Well, you also know that the conventional openings at chess are scientifically and accurately determined. To the utter disgust of Du Brey, Mason opened the game with an unheard-of attack from the extremes of the board. The old Admiral stopped and, in a kindly patronizing way, pointed out the weak and absurd folly of his move and asked him to begin again with some one of the safe openings. Mason smiled and answered that if one had a head ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... breaker made a similar opening, I was still, for a considerable length of time, in the same situation: but I lost hope no more. The tide was turned: it could rise therefore no higher; the danger was over of so unheard-of an end; of vanishing no one knew how or where—of leaving to my kind, deploring friends an unremitting uncertainty of my fate—of my re-appearance or dissolution. I now wanted nothing but time, and caution, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... forever driving him. Was there no achievement that would satisfy him, she wondered. Yes, yes, he must be satisfied now! Moreover, he should have all the credit. To have found the origin of life, though only in a voiceless creature,—a reptile,—was not that an unheard-of victory? She would claim no credit; for without him and his daring to inspire her she would not have dreamed of ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... caught his breath. Such dispatch was unheard-of in Clarendon. But Nichols, a keen-eyed mulatto, was a man of thrift and good sense. He would have liked to consult his wife and children about the sale, but to lose an opportunity to make a good profit was to fly in the face of Providence. The house was very old. It needed shingling ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... union, I forgot all my forebodings and began to think the unforeseen fatal something would not happen, and that we could conquer fortune whether she would or no, and by any method on which we chose to enter. But, as will be seen in the sequel, when reveling in an unheard-of success, literally loaded down with wealth, Nemesis appeared and by means even more simple than our error in Rio stripped us of our wealth and dignity and left us naked ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... myself I fear they weighed heavily, and augmented the feeling of closeness and gloom which had been creeping upon me since I entered the house. Scattered about the room in most admired disorder were some outlandish and unheard-of books, and all kinds of antiquarian and Oriental oddities, which books and oddities I afterwards learnt had been picked up at various times by the occupant in his ramblings about Chelsea and elsewhere, and never yet taken ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the east. A dreamer once more gone to find the end of his particular rainbow, I told myself, as I watched him out of sight. I must admit that I hoped, down deep in the heart of me, that Casey would fall into some other unheard-of experience such as had been his portion in the past. I felt much more certain that he would get into some scrape than I did that he would find the Injun Jim, and I was grinning inside when I went back to town; though there was a bit of envy in the smile,—one must always envy the ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... shouted, 'Oh, is Madame an American?' And to the dismay of the two bourgeois, put first one long leg and then another through the window and came in noisily to sit down (they were standing on the running-board all this time with the train going forty miles an hour...a thing which was simply unheard-of in France before the war...one of the 'privileges' which the poilu take!). Well, they shook hands with me two or three times over and assured me they had never seen an American before...and indeed the two bourgeois looked at me curiously. Then one ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... to find that everyone drank wine with him, and that everybody at the captain's table appeared to be on an equality. Before the dessert had been on the table five minutes, Jack became loquacious on his favourite topic. All the company stared with surprise at such an unheard-of doctrine being broached on board of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... bow, from which he would shoot ten arrows at once, every one invariably bringing down a foe. Odin was also supposed to inspire his favourite warriors with the renowned "Berserker rage" (bare sark or shirt), which enabled them, although naked, weaponless, and sore beset, to perform unheard-of feats of valour and strength, and move ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... thoughts, no daring prow Hath ever ploughed before,—espies the cliffs Of fallen Albion.—To the land unknown He journeys joyful; and perhaps descries Some vestige of her ancient stateliness: Then he, with vain conjecture, fills his mind Of the unheard-of race, which had arrived At science in that solitary nook, Far from the civil world; and sagely sighs, And moralizes on ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... into the kingdom of nature, on the other hand, he carries nature into the region of fancy, which lies beyond the confines of reality. We are lost in astonishment at the close intimacy he brings us into with the extraordinary, the wonderful, and the unheard-of." ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... key, where he could not get at them; for he was understood, good as he was, to have concealed in him all the thriftless and pernicious inconsiderateness of the male nature, ready at any moment to break out into unheard-of improprieties. But the good man submitted himself to Miss Emily's rule, and suffered himself to be led about by her with an air ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... vassals of the crown, many of whom were called upon at the coronation to perform certain peculiar services. According to the ancient City records, "these served in order in that most elegant and unheard-of feast: the Bishop of Chichester, the Chancellor, with the cup of precious stones, which was one of the ancient regalia of the king, clothed in his pontificals, preceded the king, who was clad in royal attire, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... the point of his spear and thought rapidly. Anak's act constituted unheard-of rebellion against his authority. On the other hand, the Chief Hunter was the cleverest tracker of the tribe and a mighty warrior in battle. The tribe of Ugar had lost most of its warriors in their long six-month march north from the fertile valley where the Mediterranean ...
— B. C. 30,000 • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... power in the eyes of the Romans. Caracallus in the summer of A.D. 215, having transferred his residence from Nicomedia to Antioch, sent ambassadors from the last-named place to Artabanus, who were to present the Parthian monarch with presents of unusual magnificence, and to make him an unheard-of proposition. "The Roman Emperor," said the despatch with which they were intrusted, "could not fitly wed the daughter of a subject or accept the position of son-in-law to a private person. No one could be a suitable ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... to the bedside at once after this communication. It was with altered eyes that she must look on the poor girl, the victim of such an unheard-of fatality. All was explained to her now. But it opened such depths of solemn thought in her awakened consciousness, that it seemed as if the whole mystery of human life were coming up again before her for trial and judgment. "Oh," she thought, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... left the other eager shipmasters out of his count. The Captain of the Drumeltan raised the 'blood-money' to an unheard-of sum, and two days later towed out to sea, though the wind was W.S.W. ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... that is to say, he did his best to conceal his consternation at the unheard-of proposition. Sainte Maintenon at a ball! What would she do in so unrighteous a place? And worse— still worse: what would his other charmer say when she heard of it? What outbreak of indignation might not be expected, when De Montespan was told that her ex-governess ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Columbia spoke first. He had come thirty miles since dawn. He seemed unnerved and fearful, like one about to announce some unheard-of calamity. The most stoical bent ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... the advisability of revealing his plans to Anguish, fearing the latter's ridicule with all the cowardice of a man who knows that scoffing is, in a large measure, justifiable. Growing impatient to begin the search for the unheard-of country, its capital and at least one of its inhabitants, he was at last compelled to inform Anguish, to a certain extent, of his plans for the future. He began by telling him of his intention to take a run over toward Vienna, Buda-Pesth ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... jail, on complaint of riotous Herstal; thereupon a Prussian Officer of rank (Colonel Kreutzen, worthy old Malplaquet gentleman) coming as Royal Messenger, not admitted to audience, nay laid hold of by the Liege bailiff instead; and other unheard-of procedures. [Helden-Geschichte, ii. 63-73.] So that Friedrich Wilhelm had nothing but trouble with this petty Herstal, and must have thought his neighbor Bishop a very contentious high-flying gentleman, who took great liberties with the Lion's whiskers, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... forces:[1]— "the managers of several factories agreed that the occupation of the territory was the best thing that could have happened. On the other side of the Rhine, labour refused to work, and demanded unheard-of pay—everything was topsy-turvy. In fact, before the Allied armies arrived, revolutionary notions were growing rapidly along the Rhine. One director of a well-known chemical plant is said to have escaped ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... John wrote a letter to Edward III., in which he declares that the object of Pope Adrian's Bull had been entirely neglected, and that the "most unheard-of miseries and persecutions had been inflicted on the Irish." He recommends that monarch to adopt a very different policy, and to remove the causes of complaint, "lest it might be too late hereafter to apply a remedy, when the spirit ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... as a dragon who was originally one of the wicked ministers of the tyrant Chou, and could walk with unheard-of swiftness. Both he and his son O Lai, who was so strong that he could tear a tiger or rhinoceros to pieces with his hands, were killed when in the service of Chou Wang. Fei Lien is also said to have the body of a stag, about the size of a leopard, with a bird's head, horns, and a serpent's ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... the Terror to Muttle Deeping home wood early enough; but owing to the matter of a young rabbit who met them on their way, they kept the princess waiting twenty minutes. This was, indeed, a new experience to her; but she did not complain to them of this unheard-of breach of etiquette. She was doubtful how the complaint would be received at ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... that simplified both the dressing and the labor of busy Monday mornings; her sleek black hair arranged fashionably in a "turban swirl." She ran out to the cart with a little cry of welcome, a smile on her thin, brown face that well concealed the trepidation this unheard-of circumstance caused her. "Lord, make me say the right thing!" prayed Johnnie, fervently. Mrs. Waters saw her coming, stopped the big horse, and sat waiting. Her eyes were wild with a sort of savage terror, and ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... deep, sweet heaven, full of the tenderest tints and softliest creeping shadows; the tree-fringes stood up against it; the gentle winds swept through, as if creatures winged, invisible, went by; touched, one by one, with glory, the stars burned on the blue; we watched as if any new, unheard-of wonder might appear; we looked out into great depths that narrow daylight shut us in from. Daylight was ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... which every Sunday had sounded the Choral of Luther, awoke those sleeping in the first-class cabins with the most unheard-of serenade. Desnoyers rubbed his eyes believing himself under the hallucinations of a dream. The German horns were playing the Marseillaise through the corridors and decks. The steward, smiling at his astonishment, said, "The fourteenth of July!" On the German steamers they celebrate as their ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... forward, "I object to such an unheard-of proceeding! You have no right to hang a ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... plundered as mercilessly as the Black Prince had done in time of war. Worn down with oppression, the French peasants broke into a rebellion known as the Jacquerie, from the nickname of Jacques-Bonhomme, which the gentry gave to them. After committing unheard-of cruelties the peasants were repressed and slaughtered. An attempt of the States-General—a sort of French Parliament which occasionally met—to improve the government failed. Peace with England was talked of, but Edward's terms ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... you a passport," said Mr. Ferris, somewhat more gently. "You know," he explained, "that no government can give passports to foreign subjects. That would be an unheard-of thing." ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... ears the plainest word may ring Fantastic and unheard-of, and as false And out of tune as ever to our own Did ring the prayers of man-made maniacs; But if that word be the plain word of Truth, It leaves an echo that begets itself, Persistent in itself and of ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... a duel between the member, Dr. Wolff, and the Premier, and the occurrence has raised a storm throughout the country, for that a Prime Minister should fight a duel with another member of the Government is an unheard-of thing. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 49, October 14, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... historical fact, the Church is not of human origin. The Church is a Divine Institution. That a Priest of the Church, charged with a cure of souls, should desire her annihilation,—the reversal of the facts of her past History,—her reconstruction on an unheard-of basis, without even Creeds as terms of communion with her,—and so forth; all this may suggest some very painful doubts as to the objector's honesty in continuing to employ the formularies of that Church, and in professing to teach her doctrines;—but it can hardly be ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... force? It was that, and it was also, perhaps, even less than that. Let us say it simply, it was not he who stole; it was not the man; it was the beast, who, by habit and instinct, had simply placed his foot upon that money, while the intelligence was struggling amid so many novel and hitherto unheard-of thoughts ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... (Dugdale says, "upon the mountain called Brynglas, near Knighton in Melenyth,") in Radnorshire. The whole array of Herefordshire was routed on that field. More than one thousand (p. 130) Englishmen were slain, on whom the Welsh were guilty of savage, unheard-of indignities. The women especially gave vent to their rage and fury by actions too disgraceful to be credible were they not recorded as uncontradicted facts. For the honour of the sex, we wish to ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... about the "School Commission 1765," the subjects taught, the methods of teaching devised by Busching and others, and the King's continual exertions, under deficient funds, in this province of his affairs. Busching had unheard-of difficulty to rebuild the old Gymnasium at Berlin into a new. Tried everybody; tried the King thrice over, but nobody would. "One of the persons I applied to was Lieutenant-General von Ramin, Governor of Berlin [surliest of mankind, of whose truculent incivility there ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Barry's a defiant glare, in Bob's mingled pity and contempt. The rest of the brokers hushed their own bids and offers until it could have truthfully been said that the floor of the Stock Exchange was quiet, an almost unheard-of thing in like circumstances. Again Barry Conant's voice, "25 for 5,000." "Sold." "25 for 5,000." "Sold." Barry Conant had met his master. Whether it was that for the first time in all his wonderful career he realised that the ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... was not the German Army, nor yet the German people, that began the Revolution, but the German Fleet, which knew that a second Jutland could only mean the death of every German there. In its own turn the Revolution brought on the great surrender, a thing unheard-of in ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... things that I naturally, as the big sister, did most of the training, and it wasn't easy. When I read to him on Sunday Tales of the Covenanters, he at once made up his mind that he much preferred Claverhouse to John Brown of Priesthill, an unheard-of heresy, and yawning vigorously, announced that he was as dull as a bull and as sick as a daisy. One night when I went to hear him say his ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... is sure upon thee: And thou wert born for yet unheard-of wonders. Oh! thou wert either born to save or damn me. By all the power that's given me o'er thy soul, By thy resistless tears and conquering smiles, By the victorious love that still waits on thee. Fly to thy cruel father, save my friend, Or ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... visits had said: "Some other time, perhaps," or "If we should have room for another man we will be glad to remember you," or "We know Mr. Cobb, and shall be pleased," etc., etc., when he chanced to espy a strange sign tacked outside a warehouse door, a sign which bore the unheard-of-announcement—unheard of to Oliver, especially the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... only a slight greeting, and did not stop for a little merry banter, as usual. The young fellow was becoming very unhappy, and he felt that his position was growing intolerable. That Amy should be cold toward him, or, indeed, toward any one, was an unheard-of thing, and he knew that she must feel that there was good reason for her manner. "And is there not?" he asked himself, bitterly. "What are she and Miss ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... had a singularly annoying, mirthless laugh, as if he begrudged himself such an unheard-of indulgence. "Mr. Peck says," he informed Cappy, "that he'll be delighted to attend to the matter for you. He wants to know whom you want killed and where you wish the body delivered. Hah-hah! Hah! Peck, Mr. Ricks will speak ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... mantle, should I be made a beggar by it." Immediately he began to count out his gold pieces. I was in a great dilemma; I had exposed the mantle, in order thereby to get a sight of my unknown friend, and now came a young simpleton to give the unheard-of price. Nevertheless, what remained for me? I complied, for on the other hand the reflection consoled me, that my night adventure would be so well rewarded. The young man put on the cloak and departed; ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... time, the apoplectic butler was nearly in fits, in consequence of the unheard-of postponement of dinner. Nicholas, who had been engaged in a manner in which every reader may imagine for himself or herself, was hurrying downstairs in obedience to his angry summons, when he encountered a ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... seen, and if they had it at Stunnin'tun, instead of using it as a street at all, they would fence it up at each end, and turn it into a hog-lot." Here Brigadier Downright betrayed unequivocal signs of alarm. Drawing us aside, he vehemently demanded of the captain if he were mad, to berate in this unheard-of manner the touchstone of Bivouac sentiment, nationality, taste, and elegance! This street was never spoken of except by the use of superlatives; a usage, by the way, that Noah himself had by no ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... see how we can ask them, and do it naturally," said Dr. Everett. "It is such an unheard-of thing, you know; and I am afraid, do our best, it will present itself to them as a patronage, and that will be fatal. The people who are low enough to need patronage are the very ones who ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... little what fate befel a pestilent fellow from the Chersonese, who had involved the Macedonians in endless wars and troubles, but that it was not to be borne that the bravest of the soldiers of Philip and Alexander, after their unheard-of exploits, should in their old age be deprived of the fruits of their toils and be forced to depend upon charity, or that their wives should pass a third night in the enemy's camp. They at once hurried him away. When he reached the enemy's ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... countries are exorbitant, as you yourself have told me more than once and I have heard from others. And even after paying those enormous fees, the inoffensive, righteous person is as like to suffer as the guilty. Here, for altogether harmless men to suffer punishment in place of rogues is quite unheard-of; though occasionally one notorious evildoer may be punished for another's crime when this is great and the real criminal cannot be found and there is call for an example to be made upon the instant. This generally happens when a foreign consul interferes, demanding vengeance ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... time I pulled him through; but two years after he had a relapse; in spite of the utmost care, in spite of the greatest exertions of science, he succumbed. No king was ever nursed as he was. Yes, Bianchon, to snatch that man from death I tried unheard-of things. I wanted him to live long enough to show him his work accomplished, to realize all his hopes, to give expression to the only need for gratitude that ever filled my heart, to quench a fire that burns ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... when women had little to say in public, and she meant to make a speech, and to ask to be allowed to do an unheard-of thing. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights, though made in the name of the whole people, belongs to those gentlemen and their faction only. The body of the people of England have no share in it. They utterly disclaim it. They will resist the practical assertion of it with ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Roon shews the deep depression under which he laboured at this time, chiefly the result of ill-health. "It was," he said, "an unheard-of anomaly that the Foreign Minister of a great Empire should be responsible also for internal affairs." And yet he himself had arranged that it should be so. The desertion of the Conservative party had, he said, deprived him of his footing; he was dispirited ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... fled to the mountains, they sent out dogs to capture them and get them in their power—in the meantime burning houses and churches and outraging the images. They overtook the good father Juan del Carpio, [31] whom they cut into pieces and killed with inhuman and unheard-of cruelty. Before this they had captured our good old man and father, Domingo Vilanzio, [32] a holy man who died from the ill-treatment which they inflicted upon him. In short, without detailing at length the glorious ministries of the Society ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... reared up, day by day, a monstrously-distorted figure, as quite a different person from the other innocent man whom the defending advocate described in flowery, pathetic sentences as a martyr and the victim of an unheard-of combination of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... was the one inhabitant of the town who had an unknown past; no one knew more about him than that he had been connected with a university somewhere, and had travelled in unheard-of countries before he came to Plattville. A glamour of romance was thrown about him by the gossips, to whom he ever proved a fund of delightful speculation. There was a dark, portentous secret in his life, it was agreed; an opinion not too well confirmed ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the hand either of Dayelle, Queen Mary's woman, or into that of the queen-mother; but the footmen took the poor man's money and carried the letters, according to the general order of the cardinal, to the provost-marshal. By displaying such unheard-of cruelty the Guises knew that they incurred great dangers from revenge, and never did they take such precautions for their safety as they did while the court was at Amboise; consequently, neither ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... politics. All three of them expressed vast problems, financial, intellectual, or natural, by the brief arithmetic of a joke. Mr. Barnum was fearfully busy in those days; what with buying elephants, wooing two- headed girls for his Grand Combination, laying out towns, chartering banks, and inventing unheard-of wonders for the unrivalled collection of one hundred and fifty million unparalleled moral marvels; but he always found time to act as unpaid contributor to a column of humorous items which I always published. I have said that I had no assistant; I forgot that I always had ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... This is an unheard-of example; a man and woman who declared themselves to be a sorcerer and sorceress. Louis Gaufredi, Cure of the parish of Accouls, at Marseilles,[218] was accused of magic, and arrested at the beginning of the year 1611. Christopher Gaufredi, his ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Cape every one's movements were well known to all and commented on, and no one was better aware of it than Uncle Terry. But go to Boston he must, and to do so right in the dead of winter, when to take such a trip was an unheard-of thing, and not excite a small tempest of curious gossip, taxed his ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... know when she had had enough of a good thing. Even those who were in the same plight with herself threw a stone at poor Sophy when they heard that their pleasant-spoken, affable, popular rector, as he used to be, was about to flee his country. Very few sympathized with him. He was taking an unheard-of, preposterous, fanatical course. How could a man in his senses give up a living of L400 a year, with a pretty rectory and glebe-land, for ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... knowledge that was not known in the village; but the advantage ended there. I doubt if a single member of the class had begun to use his brain in a scientific way, reasoning from cause to effect; I doubt if it dawned upon one of them that there was such an unheard-of accomplishment to be acquired. They were trying—if they were trying anything at all—to pick up modern science in the folk manner, by rote, as though it were a thing to be handed down by tradition. So at least I infer, not only from watching this particular class then and on other occasions, but ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... almost know he will," declared Jasper, eagerly feeling this minute as if the most unheard-of things were possible. ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... with casks, bales, and packages, some of which we were able to secure. Our captain chartered a small fishing-vessel, which landed us at last safely at Quebec. And now, you see, after enduring almost unheard-of sufferings, I am again prostrated ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... went to Italy his heart was broken down with real and not imaginary sorrows. These were not of that kind which create perfection, but were the result of an unheard-of persecution on account of a family difference in which he was much more the victim than ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Ceremony was an unheard-of quality at the "Geneva House," and the railway porter performed the multifarious duties of night clerk, porter, hall boy and hostler. As they entered the hotel, the porter lighted a small lamp with the aid ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... speculation was afloat in regard to his probable course of conduct. And, indeed, for the space of three days, the behavior of the heir out-heroded Herod, and fairly surpassed the expectations of his most enthusiastic admirers. Shameful debaucheries—flagrant treacheries—unheard-of atrocities—gave his trembling vassals quickly to understand that no servile submission on their part—no punctilios of conscience on his own—were thenceforward to prove any security against the remorseless fangs of a petty ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... over the speakership of the House, and the equally orthodox wrangle over contested seats, the State Assembly had settled down to routine business, despatching it with such unheard-of celerity as to win columns of approval from the State press as a whole; though there were not wanting a few radical editors to raise the ante-election cry of reform, and to ask pointedly when ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... that overrule all common efforts. New York is a great colony—a very great colony, Miss; but it was once Dutch, as everybody knows, begging Mr. Follock's pardon; and it must be confessed Connecticut has, from the first, enjoyed almost unheard-of advantages, in the moral and religious character of her people, the excellence of her lands, and the purity"—Jason called this word "poority;" but that did not alter the sentiment—though I must say, once for all, it is out of my power to spell every word as this man saw fit to pronounce it—"of ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... description, with which it was next to an impossibility for any foreign power to hold amicable relations, as it invariably acted with bad faith, and set at nought the most solemn treaties. That British property and interests were every day subjected to ruin and spoliation, and British subjects exposed to unheard-of vexations, without the slightest hope of redress being afforded, save recourse was had to force, the only argument to which the Moors were accessible. He added, that towards the end of the preceding year an atrocious murder had been perpetrated in Tangier: a Genoese family of three individuals ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... fortune I have found for sale a clean suite of furniture, charming for this country, but which a French peasant would not have. Unheard-of trouble was required to get a stove, wood, linen, and who knows what else. Though for a month I have believed myself established, I am always on the eve of being so. Here a cart takes five hours to go three leagues; judge of the rest. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... magnificent, at any rate the most delightful in detail—is the anthem, "Thy way, O God, is holy." The picture-painting is prepared for with astonishing artistic foresight, and when it begins the effect is tremendous. I advise everyone who wishes to realise Purcell's unheard-of fertility of great and powerful themes to look at "The clouds poured out water," the fugue subject "The voice of Thy thunders," the biting emphasis of the passage "the lightnings shone upon the ground," and the irresistible ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... happened to the old boy when he took that unheard-of vacation of his last fall, or where he went, but one thing's very sure, since his return Cortright's grown pudgy and he's waked bang up. Wonder if he's finished that Colonial History, that's to be his monument, he's been working on ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... This unheard-of proposition, and the man's cool impudence in making it, so astonished me that I could hardly speak. At last, however, I found words to inform him that none of our party were in the habit of sleeping with each other, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Migwan failed to recite in English class for two days in succession, which was an unheard-of thing. Nyoda thought that Migwan had her head so full of the coming party that she was neglecting her lessons, and said so, half banteringly, as Migwan lingered after class to pick up some papers she had dropped on the floor. That was the last straw, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... was taken in kind, of a million and a half of artabas, or about five millions of bushels. To this we may add a mass of gold, silver, and other valuable stores in the treasury, which were boastfully reckoned at the unheard-of sum of seven hundred and forty thousand talents, or above ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... the run of their careers, they seem to play the role of the moment, and when that is passed they just as quickly retire into obscurity or into a quiet private life, and often end their days in the most unusual or unheard-of places. ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... were being "enclosed" by local potentates. Monopolies of the natural resources of all wealth, the inalienable dower of the people at large, were working their inevitable consequences. Below the wealthy class, which was rising to the top of society, there was forming at the bottom a new and unheard-of social stratum, the settlings of the struggle for existence; a deposit of the feebleness and ignorance and innocence of the people. In the loss of the old sense of a commonwealth, the nation was breaking up into classes, alienated, unsympathetic, hostile. Selfishness ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... "Extraordinary Diseases," marvellous indeed in the eyes of the sceptical barbarian, is not enough for the hungry native mind; and nothing less than a whole section of the most miraculous remedies and antidotes, for and against all kinds of unheard-of diseases and poisons, would suffice to stamp the author as a man of genius, and his work as the offspring of successful toil in the fields of therapeutic science. Thus it comes about that the author of the "New Collection of Tried Prescriptions" gathers ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... he was indeed an enormous sinner, who deserved nothing but hell; but that if she would help him with her prayers, he would go that very day to confession, and begin a new life; and with this promise he left her. For eight days Dominica continued in very earnest prayer for him, in spite of unheard-of troubles and persecutions of the devils; but on the eighth she knew that her prayers had been heard, for she saw his soul white and clean like that of a newly-baptised child; and he himself came to thank her for the grace she had obtained for him, and by means of which he had ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... have inexplicably failed to isolate the Supreme Power in your test tubes!" Master's gaze was stern. "I recommend an unheard-of experiment. Examine your thoughts unremittingly for twenty-four hours. Then wonder ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Romans, or your "Confessions," or your "Private Devotions," or your "Grace Abounding," could ever venture to be all honestly and wholly written and published, your name would, far and away, eclipse them all. You do not know what a singular and what an original and what an unheard-of experience your experience is destined to be; if only you do not break down under it; as you must ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... you would unheard-of things express, Invent new words; we can indulge a muse, Until the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of this unheard-of combination of news, gossip, and essay was instantaneous. Not a club or a coffeehouse in London could afford to be without it, and over it's pages began the first general interest in contemporary English life as expressed ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... fancy swimming, shooting, or any other unheard-of pursuit, Kate would be obliged to swim and shoot with you. But I will not laugh any more. Study, if you will, Alice; you will learn fast enough, and, in this age of fast-advancing civilization, when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... ugly, homely face, withered and gnarled hands; and she was dressed that day in a little old bonnet of unheard-of age, and in dingy, frowsy black clothes, shiny and creased, that came out of their box perhaps half-a-dozen times ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... coming at Christmas for five days. There had never been such preparations. Paul and Arthur scoured the land for holly and evergreens. Annie made the pretty paper hoops in the old-fashioned way. And there was unheard-of extravagance in the larder. Mrs. Morel made a big and magnificent cake. Then, feeling queenly, she showed Paul how to blanch almonds. He skinned the long nuts reverently, counting them all, to see not one was lost. It was said that eggs whisked better ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... passing between hedges and fields. For the first mile and a half all went well; she was a little tired, but rather pleased with her own pluck. According to Sicilian customs, which are almost eastern in their guardianship of signorinas, it was an unheard-of thing for a young lady in her position to take a country walk without an escort. The remembrance of the beggars and footpads that lurked about Sicilian roads gave her uneasy twinges, and though she had been told of ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... Tetzel, he was astonished at the enormous excitement which they caused in Germany, at the venomous hatred of his enemies, and at the signs of joyful recognition which he received from many sides. Had he, then, done such an unheard-of thing? What he had expressed was, he knew, the belief of all the best men of the Church. When the Bishop of Brandenburg had sent the Abbot of Lehnin to him, with the request that Luther would suppress the printed edition of his German sermon on indulgences and grace, however near the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... a raid through the lands of Silang, which they call Alipaopao, Oyaye, Malinta, etc.; and, trying to adjudge them to the ranch of Sarmiento, which they had recently bought through the agency of General Endaya, they committed unheard-of atrocities in the houses and grain-fields of the Indians—burning and ravaging them as furiously and horribly as if an army of Camucones had raided them. The Indians lost, as appears from a juridical statement that was drawn up, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... men dragged nearly four hundred strikers from their homes or boarding houses, herded them into waiting boxcars, sealed up the doors and were about to deport them en masse. The sheriff, getting wind of this unheard-of proceeding, stopped it at the last moment. Many men were badly scarred by beatings they received. One logger was crippled for life by the brutal ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... hankering after. I heard him bellowing about her the other day in chambers, as I was dressing. What the deuce does the boy want with a wife at all?" And Rosey's song being by this time finished, Warrington went up with a blushing face and absolutely paid a compliment to Miss Mackenzie—an almost unheard-of effort on ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and very much awake. It was awake ever since the early break of day, when Mahmat Banjer, in a fit of unheard-of energy, arose and, taking up his hatchet, stepped over the sleeping forms of his two wives and walked shivering to the water's edge to make sure that the new house he was building had not floated ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... is! There is now in the sky only the soft vaporous color of pale citron—the last reflection of the sun which plunges into the dark blue of the night, going from green tones to a pale turquoise of an unheard-of fineness and a fluid delicacy quite indescribable.... The fields lose their color, the trees form but gray or brown masses.... the dark waters reflect the bland tones of the sky. We are losing sight of things—but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... had such a scene been witnessed within its walls. The monks themselves seemed for an instant to be infected by this spirit of daring revolt. Their own lifelong fetters hung more loosely as they viewed this unheard-of defiance of authority. They broke from their seats on either side and huddled half-scared, half-fascinated, in a large half-circle round the defiant captive, chattering, pointing, grimacing, a scandal for all time. Scourges should fall and penance be done for ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of an establishment, but of a neighborhood. I am about to make Courbevoie the fashion. The sun of Asnieres, of Montmorency, of Enghien has set—the sun of Courbevoie is about to rise. My sketches will produce an unheard-of effect. All Paris will throng to your fetes next Sunday and Monday—all Paris, with its inexhaustible appetite for bifteck aux pommes frites—all Paris with its unquenchable thirst for absinthe and Bavarian beer! Now, Monsieur ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... advantage of this invisibility to scale the walls of the fortress unseen, and hurled down the ponderous machines used to throw stones, arrows, boiling pitch, and oil. Thus he greatly helped Ortnit, who, in the mean while, was performing unheard-of deeds of valor, which excited the admiration of Princess Sidrat, watching him from ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... pinned in the cheap sea-green wall-paper. These consisted of nine pen-and-ink illustrations for Le Solitaire. The work had attained to such an unheard-of European popularity, that journalists evidently were tired of it.—"The Solitary makes his first appearance in the provinces; sensation among the women.—The Solitary perused at a chateau.—Effect of the Solitary on domestic animals. —The Solitary explained to savage tribes, with the most brilliant ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... at the impetuous little figure kneeling beside the big trunk. Diana's dark-grey eyes shone like stars, her oval face, if not exactly pretty, was piquant and interesting, her light-brown hair curled at the tips. It was, of course, an unheard-of liberty for a new girl, and an intermediate to boot, thus to address a senior, but the greeting was spontaneous and decidedly flattering. The grey eyes, in fact, expressed open admiration. On the whole, Loveday decided to waive ceremony and ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... terrified bird dropped the root just where it could be easily seen. All Peter's plans had succeeded, and he actually held in his hand the magic root—that master-key which would unlock all doors, and bring its possessor unheard-of luck. His thoughts now turned to the mountain, and he secretly made preparations for his journey. He took with him only a staff, a strong sack, and a little box which his daughter Lucia had ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various |
