"Unprecedented" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never knew how it happened—his mind might have been running on an illustrated edition of the cash accounts of Messrs. Pigott & Co.—but at last Ted made an arithmetical blunder so unprecedented, so astounding, that a commercial career was closed to him for ever. "Stupidity is excusable," said Uncle James. "If you had been stupid, I would have forgiven you; but you have ability enough, sir, and it follows that you are ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... breakfast," he advised. "It is unusual to see you noticing business affairs, Dick; I might say unprecedented. I am glad if Bailey's new man is capable of his work, at least. I suppose for the rest, that he could scarcely do less than take an injured person to the hospital. Why are you putting sugar in my ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... say, David did not "go to smash." To the intense chagrin of the wiseacres he prospered despite an unprecedented disregard for the teachings of his father and his grandfather before him. The wolf stayed a long way off from his door, the prophetic mortgage failed to lay its blight upon his lands, his crops were bountiful, his acreage spread as the years went by,—and so his ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... That telegram has been delayed by an unprecedented fall of snow that interrupts the operation of the wires, and it is dated three days ago. Last night I telegraphed to learn Mr. Lindsay's condition, but up to the time of our leaving home, the wires were not working through to San Francisco; and the trains on the Union Pacific are completely ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... week, let alone dusting of it every day of her life! which is not mentioning that the flowers has been exchanged every day likewise, and fresh put in place of them, by reason that the old shouldn't fade; which is a fact unprecedented, and unbeknown in my experience, which have been in this house nine year come ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... perfect freedom is allowed in arguing against the institution. The consequence of this freedom has been that Missouri has already determined to abolish it; Maryland and Delaware have put declared emancipationists in places of their highest trusts by unprecedented majorities; and Kentucky is visibly casting about to see how she can best ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of this English gentleman is truly incredible, and produced, about twenty-five years ago, an unprecedented scandal in the records of the British army in India. Captain Seymour, a wealthy and well-educated officer, accepted the Brahmanical creed and became a Yogi. Of course he was proclaimed mad, and, having been caught, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... to express its concurrence with him in these designs. Two subsidies were granted on the spot, and the resolution was carried into effect during the continuance of the debates, a step which was altogether unprecedented. The King thanked the Parliament for this extraordinary readiness, which would, he said, increase his importance both at home ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... instance of Lord Cadurcis; he was the periodical victim, the scapegoat of English morality, sent into the wilderness with all the crimes and curses of the multitude on his head. Lord Cadurcis had certainly committed a great crime: not his intrigue with Lady Monteagle, for that surely was not an unprecedented offence; not his duel with her husband, for after all it was a duel in self-defence; and, at all events, divorces and duels, under any circumstances, would scarcely have excited or authorised the storm which was now about to ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... should induce him to sell another. Other persons of his profession must, however, have been less scrupulous; for the book was read in city, town, village, and hamlet, steamboat, and stage-coach, and a sort of war-whoop was sent forth perfectly unprecedented in my recollection ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for non-rigid airships. Even the first ship of the class, despite the unsatisfactory power units, so long ago as in the summer of 1917 completed a flight of 49 hours 22 minutes, which at the time was the record flight of any British airship. Since that date numerous flights of quite unprecedented duration have been achieved, one of 61 1/2 hours being particularly noteworthy, and those of upwards of 30 hours have become ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... hardly left after Kate's unprecedented fainting attack, when the girl confessed: "Mother, I think you ought to know that I myself wrote to Dr. Benoix advising him not to come to this house. I told him that if he did so ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... in British sovereigns, locked up in three strong safes, besides paper-money and securities to the amount of 2,000,000l. It was the Rosario branch of this bank which was recently robbed of 15,000l. by an armed government force; an unprecedented proceeding in the history of nations, and one that might have led to the interference ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Marxist government was overthrown in 1973 by a dictatorial military regime led by Augusto PINOCHET, which ruled until a freely elected president was installed in 1990. Sound economic policies, first implemented by the PINOCHET dictatorship, led to unprecedented growth in 1991-97 and have helped secure the country's commitment to democratic and representative government. Growth slowed in 1998-99, but recovered ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to his feet and gazed in astonishment, consternation and indignant inquiry upon the renderer of this unprecedented vote. ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... science. This occurred in the course of the eighteenth century as the result of the pioneer work of Hales, Duhamel, Ingenhousz, Senebier and others. In the nineteenth century, particularly in the second half, physiology experienced an unprecedented development in that it began to concern itself with the experimental study of nutrition and growth, and with the phenomena associated with stimulus and movement; on the other hand, physiology neglected phenomena ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... ever heard of such a man. I had to laugh all alone while reading it, which was not a little provoking. We are having very nice times here indeed. Breakfast at eight, dinner at half-past twelve, and tea at half-past six, giving us an afternoon of unprecedented length for such lounging, strawberrying or egg-hunting as happens to be on the carpet. The air is perfectly loaded with the fragrance of clover blossoms and fresh hay. I never saw such clover in my life; roses are nothing ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... telegram Paula had been frequently silent; she frequently stayed in alone, and sometimes she became quite gloomy—an altogether unprecedented phase for her. This was the case on the morning after the incident in the Trink-halle. Not to intrude on her, Charlotte walked about the landings of the sunny white hotel in which they had taken up their quarters, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... their hands and besought the populace by signs, as no voice could be heard in such an uproar. At last the friends and relations of the tribunes, seeing that it was impossible to carry out their sentence on Marcius without much bloodshed, persuaded them to alter the cruel and unprecedented part of the sentence, and not to put him to death by violence, or without a trial, but to refer the matter to the people, to be voted upon by them. Upon this Sicinnius, turning to the patricians, demanded what they meant by rescuing Marcius from the people when they intended to ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... hour came for him to take his departure from the galleys, when Jean Valjean heard in his ear the strange words, Thou art free! the moment seemed improbable and unprecedented; a ray of vivid light, a ray of the true light of the living, suddenly penetrated within him. But it was not long before this ray paled. Jean Valjean had been dazzled by the idea of liberty. He had believed in a new life. He very speedily ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the sports, by such persons as were not entitled by their rank to appointed and special seats. And the intense curiosity which the trial and sentence of two criminals so remarkable had occasioned, increased the crowd on this day to an extent wholly unprecedented. ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Upton-on-the-Wold. After luncheon they invaded the Towers, personally conducted by Mr. Bulkin, a very learned historian. Bulkin had nearly plucked me in Modern History, and when I heard his voice afar off I arose and fled swiftly. Unluckily the Duchess chanced, by an unprecedented accident, to be in the library, a room which the family never used, and which was, therefore, exhibited to curious strangers. Into this library Bulkin precipitated himself, followed by his admirers, and began to lecture on the family portraits. Beginning with the Crusaders (painted by Lorenzo ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... minister to fill up his outline, and prepare the sermon for publication, to which he had consented. He wished to ascertain from me, as a publisher, the expense of printing five thousand copies, being sure that the sale of it would be unprecedented, not only throughout the kingdom, but as far as the English language was spoken. In about a week, the copy fairly written was left with me. The text was Hebrews 12:1, 'Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.' After the introduction that all men ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Pass, following up the course of the Fountain, was an old Indian trail into the parks and mountains higher up. Later on, in the gold excitement of 1859, when the rush was made to Pike's Peak, and later still, after the unprecedented excitement and the settlement of Leadville, before the railroad was built, the Pass was thronged with camp-trains pushing their way into the mountains. Now the tourist, the pleasure-seeker and the invalid go leisurely over a good road to pass a ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... Moorsom give his "young friend" to understand the state of his feelings toward the lost man. It was evident that the father of Miss Moorsom wished him to remain lost. Perhaps the unprecedented heat of the season made him long for the cool spaces of the Pacific, the sweep of the ocean's free wind along the promenade decks, cumbered with long chairs, of a ship steaming towards the Californian coast. To Renouard the philosopher appeared simply the most ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... to correct this with the dice, but the innovation was so heart-breaking to the loser, and so perpetual a menace to the best-laid plans, that it had perforce to be given up. After two or three dice-box panics our heroes were permitted to resume their normal and unprecedented devotion to their cause, and their generals breathed afresh. There was another defect in our "Kriegspiel": I was so much the better shot that my marksmanship often frustrated the most admirable strategy and the most elaborate of military schemes. It was in vain that we—or ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mean is that human nature doesn't change itself. But conditions change it. They've been changing it very rapidly these last few years. Science—steam, electricity, a thousand inventions and discoveries, crowding one upon another—science has brought about entirely new and unprecedented conditions so rapidly that the changes in human nature now making and that must be made in the next few years are resulting in a series of convulsions. You old-fashioned fellows—and the political parties and the politicians—are in danger of ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... messenger of Christ to hold his peace, but to declare with new zeal and fidelity his ministry of reconciliation. To leave the field to the politician, the soldier and the trader would be to dishonour Christ, to fail to utilize an unprecedented opportunity, to abandon the Chinese Christians in their hour of special need and to prejudice missionary influence at home and abroad for ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... brought out, and received with unprecedented favour. The newspapers were filled with its praises, and the beauties of the opera were spoken of by every one. A friend lauded it with more than usual enthusiasm, on the day it was advertised for a ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... relief from the horrid din on deck, I made my way to the cabin. It was a place well named, being cabined, cribbed, confined, in quite an unprecedented degree. It was then and there that I first saw the subject of this sketch,—the Peptic Martyr. Unknowingly, I was face to face with my Man of Destiny. Shipmate, Philosopher, Martyr, Rhapsodist, Mentor, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... people of God. That a people who could, according to their legitimate records, number more than eight hundred thousand fighting men, should slip from the records of men, hide themselves from human observation, and inhabit limits beyond geographical research, is a phenomenon unprecedented in the world's history; and that they should remain in this state more than two thousand years, among the vast discoveries which travellers have made, is still more surprising. Such is the wonderful government of Him whose ways are past finding ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Californian gully, was perhaps ignorant of his own father and mother, and had tumbled up in the world on the strength of his own audacity. But, such as he was, he had sufficed to give the necessary impetus for rolling Augustus Melmotte onwards into almost unprecedented commercial greatness. When Mr Melmotte took his offices in Abchurch Lane, he was undoubtedly a great man, but nothing so great as when the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway had become not only an established ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... pecuniary sacrifices, and it certainly will require a constancy in just purpose which is supposed, and not without reason, to be specially difficult to a democracy. The difficulties on the other hand which meet us are not unprecedented, though some of them have assumed a new form. We have some advantages unknown to our forefathers: we can, more easily than they could, remodel the practices of the Constitution, modify the rules of party government, or, incredible as it may ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... soldiers plundered on a small, scale. Friendly peoples were subjected to the most shameful suspicions: for instance, the blame of the disgraceful defeat at Larisa was imputed to the pretended treachery of the Aetolian cavalry, and, what was hitherto unprecedented, its officers were sent to be criminally tried at Rome; and the Molossians in Epirus were forced by false suspicions into actual revolt. The allied states had war- contributions imposed upon them as ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... unprecedented that so large a sum should have been collected in so poor a district. The mayor however was prepared for the event. After a touching address to the poet, he presented him with a ring of honour, with the arms of the town, and the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... house he had lived before the troubles; and in this good man's charge Angela was permitted to depart, on a long and weary journey by way of Antwerp and the Scheldt. They were five days at sea, the voyage lengthened by the almost unprecedented calm which had prevailed all that fatal summer—a weary voyage in a small trading vessel, on board which Angela had to suffer every hardship that a delicate woman can be subjected to on board ship: a wretched berth in a floating cellar called a cabin, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... himself in the square, looked at his watch. It was four o'clock. He made his way under the maples to the house in Hanover Street, halted for a moment contemplatively before the familiar classic pillars of its porch, took a key from his pocket, and (unprecedented action!) entered by the front door. Climbing to the attic, he found two valises—one of which he had brought back from Pepper County—and took them to his own room. They held, with a little crowding, most of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... by 47%; the total public sector borrowing requirement likely reached 10%-12% of GDP, rather than 8.5% called for in the program; and the Turkish lira's value fell 5% to 7% more than expected. The unprecedented effort by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to raise the economic costs of its insurgency against the Turkish state is adding to Turkey's economic problems. Attacks against tourists have jeopardized tourist revenues, which account for about 3% of GDP, while economic ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... on by our friends in Brazil. It is more than likely that the Andros-y-Mela is now lying under the guns of some coast fortress, since the presence of troops and cannon on this side of the island is unprecedented." ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... the last century, owing to his remarkable and perhaps unprecedented supremacy combined with the liberality of his treatment and the chivalry and enthusiasm of his opponents, tended to create an entirely new era in chess and its support. An interest became aroused of a most important character, ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... experiments with food, such as cooking spiders, blackbeetles, rats, cats, mice, and other things not in common use; and, it is said, was wont to play off tricks upon unsuspecting strangers by placing banquets before them that were quite unexpected and unprecedented in the nature and ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... possession nearly of all the reviews and periodical publications; established a general intercourse, by means of hawkers and pedlars, with the distant provinces; and instituted an office to supply all schools with teachers; and thus did they acquire unprecedented dominion over every species of literature, over the minds of all ranks of people, and the education of the youth, without giving any alarm to the world. The lovers of wit and polite literature were caught by ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... than are usually touched upon, even tacitly, in such a relation. It produced for Pemberton an embarrassment; it raised in a shadowy form a question—this was the first glimpse of it—destined to play a singular and, as he imagined, owing to the altogether peculiar conditions, an unprecedented part in his intercourse with his little companion. Later, when he found himself talking with the youngster in a way in which few youngsters could ever have been talked with, he thought of that clumsy moment on the bench at Nice as the dawn of an understanding that had broadened. What ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... the midst of such a large family; and if Mrs Rendell's surmises were correct, surely—surely! But Ned did not even rise from his seat beside the hammock: he only waved his hand and nodded an unclouded farewell. The twelve mischievous little boys behaved with unprecedented decorum that afternoon; for, in spite of their elfish ways, they were devoted to Maud, and the ringleader sent round an imperative message to the effect that "Teacher was bad, and must ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... championed the weak against the strong; he gave courage to the faint, and hope to the weary in heart; and in the love which the public gave him in return he found his best reward. Here is the secret of Dickens's unprecedented popular success, and we may note here a very significant parallel with Shakespeare. The great different in the genius and work of the two men does not change the fact that each won success largely because he ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... reigned. For miles in both directions Rabbit-Ear Creek became one huge, long watering trough. Temporary camps were made; chuck wagons rattled up to them, loaded with supplies for the cowboys, and rattled back to distant ranches for more. There had been other droughts, but this one was unexpected—unprecedented. There had always been a little water everywhere. Now Rabbit-Ear ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... could look at these little fellows without an inexplicable feeling coming over me; and though there was nothing so very remarkable or unprecedented about them, except the singular coincidence of two sisters simultaneously making the world such a generous present; yet, the mere fact of there being twins always seemed curious; in fact, to me at least, all twins are prodigies; and still I hardly know why ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... nowise parallel to his. He was in the bustle of the city as of old, but the crowd swept by and saw him not; he was, we may figuratively say, always beside his wife and at his hearth, yet must never feel the warmth of the one nor the affection of the other. It was Wakefield's unprecedented fate to retain his original share of human sympathies and to be still involved in human interests, while he had lost his reciprocal influence on them. It would be a most curious speculation to trace out the effect of such circumstances on his ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... opposite Mr. Lander, a fat, sly-looking man whose eyes twinkled with a look of mysterious inner amusement, caused, probably, by astonishment at his own respectability. He had behind him a career of unprecedented villainy, and that he should end here at Rusty as the solid and well-considered keeper of the roadhouse was, no doubt, a perpetual tickle to his consciousness. Down either side of the table were silent and impressive figures busy with their food. Courteous and ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... toward the village, which lay, as it were, at the feet of Houghton Castle, like a spaniel crouching at the foot of its mistress. At the station and all along the road she had observed an unusual commotion. Carriages in an unprecedented number were waiting for special trains, which came in more than once that ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... to hear Admiralty secrets. We sat there in respectful silence while the train rattled on its way; but the large seaman only went on smiling peacefully to himself, as if he were ruminating in immense satisfaction upon unprecedented bags of submarines. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... with Graham? Or had she been playing with him? Such conduct, for her, was unprecedented and incomprehensible. As he groped for a solution, he saw her again in the moonlight, clinging to Graham with upturned lips, drawing Graham's lips down ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... foggy evening in January that Max, for the first time in three weeks (an unprecedented interval), knocked at the door of Dudley ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... captain continued, a little drily, "had a more definite object. It is my duty to explain to you that the circumstances of this voyage are unprecedented. We are going to take liberties with our passengers which in normal times would not ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... object of all this outlay? It must be first borne in mind that we have in the South a peculiar and unprecedented state of things. The cardinal needs among the eight million coloured people in the South, most of whom are to be found on the plantations, may be stated as food, clothing, shelter, education, proper habits, and a settlement ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... impertinence and irreverence. If ever he kissed Mary, he thought,—and then all the powers of his mind galloped off like wild horses let loose on a sun-baked ranch—if ever he kissed Mary! What a dream!—what a boldness unprecedented! But again—if ever he kissed her, it must be with the kiss of a lover, for whom such a token of endearment was the sign of a sacred betrothal. And he became so lost and abstracted in his musings ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... a fussy, elderly gentleman, and in the two years of his service at Attu-Attu had never encountered so unprecedented a case as that laid before him by Boyd Duncan. The latter, with his wife, had been landed there by the Annapolis, which had promptly gone on with its cargo of ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... was most irregular, unprecedented, a disgrace to a gentlemen's meeting. The major roared like a bull. If a man would not fight, would not defend his actions, how could a gentleman get at him except by street brawling or assassination, and both of these were repugnant to finer feelings. A dozen fire-eaters felt themselves personally ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... crop had been got in, much ploughing for the next year had been done already, and where the ploughing was finished the work of sowing by drill was going steadily forward, in the faith that such an unprecedented summer as was now passing would return another year. At all these pleasant labors, of course, the rooks were helping, or ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... the wall they had obtained a foothold, and the crescent was proudly unfurled to the breeze. The feeble garrison, worn out with toil and perishing with famine, were in the last stages of despair. Hunniades came down upon the Turkish flotilla like an inundation; both parties fought with almost unprecedented ferocity, but the Christians drove every thing before them, sinking, dispersing, and capturing the boats, which were by no means prepared for so sudden and terrible an assault. The immense reinforcement, with arms and ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... the first overt acts of war. Men who were millionaires at nightfall awoke the next morning to find themselves bankrupt through depreciation of their stock-holdings. Prosperous firms of importers were put out of business. International commerce was dislocated to an extent unprecedented ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... unceasingly with his woman companion. Both were generally much the worse for drink. One particularly sultry afternoon, when the whole world seemed like the steam room of a Turkish bath, their voices rose to an unprecedented pitch of violence. Through the thin panels of the door came the sound of scuffling feet. Some heavy article of furniture went over with a crash. Then came the thud of ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... world's largest producer of opium; cultivation of opium poppy reached unprecedented level of 206,700 hectares in 2004; counterdrug efforts largely unsuccessful; potential opium production of 4,950 metric tons; potential heroin production of 582 metric tons if all opium was processed; source of hashish; many narcotics-processing labs throughout the country; drug trade ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... termination of our journey westward, were the only considerable pieces of water we had yet seen; and I now estimated that the river, from the place where it was first made by Mr. Evans, had run a course, including all its windings, of upwards of one thousand two hundred miles; a length altogether unprecedented, when the single nature of the river is considered, and that its original source constitutes its only supply of ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... will, because he was arrested while picking the pockets of a lady at Tottenham Court Road Station, because he refused to pay for the upkeep of his seven illegitimate children, because he was involved in a flamboyant scandal of unmentionable nature and unprecedented dimensions, because he was detected while trying to poison the rhinoceros at the Zoo with an arsenical bun, because he strangled his mistress, because he addressed an almost disrespectful letter to the Primate of England beginning "My good Owl"—or for any suchlike reason; and that ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... items of news with which Effie's letter was nearly filled. There was the coming and going of the neighbours, a visit from blind Alice, and her delight in her canary. There was an account of Jennie's unprecedented success in chicken-raising, and of little Will's triumphant conquest of compound division; and many more items of the same kind. There were a few words—a very few—about the day Christie had spent in the cemetery with John Nesbitt, ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... and a subject. But this arrangement, though much might doubtless be said for it in argument, shocked the general feeling even of those Englishmen who were most attached to the Prince. His wife had given an unprecedented proof of conjugal submission and affection; and the very least return that could be made to her would be to bestow on her the dignity of Queen Regnant. William Herbert, one of the most zealous of the Prince's adherents, was so much exasperated that he sprang out of the bed to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... perturbations which had great influence on the march of events. Every one is aware, that the excessively rigorous winter of 1788-89 was the cause of severe sufferings to the people. But it may not be so generally known, that on the 13th of July, 1788, a fall of hail of unprecedented size and quantity, in a few hours completely ravaged the two parallel zones lying between the department of the Charente and the frontiers of the Pays-Bas, and that in consequence of this frightful hail, the wheat partly failed, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... States has been very patient. At every stage of this distressing experience of tragedy after tragedy it has sought to be governed by the most thoughtful consideration of the extraordinary circumstances of an unprecedented war, and to be guided by sentiments of very genuine friendship for the people and Government of Germany. It has accepted the successive explanations and assurances of the Imperial Government as of course given in entire sincerity and good faith, and has hoped, even against hope, that it would ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... army. None but those who expressed sympathy with the National Covenant were eligible to places of trust. Here was an unparalleled state of civil affairs; the world had never seen the like. This was a marvelous stride toward the Millennium. The fathers are worthy of all praise for this unprecedented effort to build the national government upon the true foundation of God's will, and administer it by men in Covenant with Jesus Christ, the KING OF KINGS. This was the first attempt to erect a Christian government, in ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... generous protection he had given me, and on parting said, if my commission or the mode of introducing the subject were out of the usual course, I must rely on his goodness to make allowances for a new formed people, in circumstances altogether unprecedented, and for their agent wholly unacquainted with courts. To which he replied, that the people and their cause were very respectable in the eyes of all disinterested persons, and that the interview had ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... adventures that subsequently befell us, strange and varied as they were, I have, after deliberation, determined not to record them here. In these pages I have only tried to give a short and clear account of an occurrence which I believe to be unprecedented, and this I have done, not with a view to immediate publication, but merely to put on paper while they are yet fresh in our memories the details of our journey and its result, which will, I believe, prove interesting to the world if ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... princesses in gorgeous apparel; terraced gardens, with springing fountains and antique statues, are in the background; or at least an ancestral castle, with long galleries filled with the armour borne by our ancestors to the Holy Land, rises in cheery state, waiting to be restored on a scale of unprecedented magnificence by the dower of our affianced brides. And, of course, the passion is suitable to such accessories. 'There is no love but at first sight,'[5] says Disraeli; and, indeed, love at first sight is alone natural to such beings, on whom beauty and talent have been poured out as lavishly ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... and almost anonymous, the windows of which, at hours of highest pressure, never seemed, for starers and wonderers, perceptibly to glow, must in fact have been during certain years the scene of an unprecedented, a miraculous white-heat, the receipt for producing which it was practically felt that the master of the forge could not have communicated even with ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... of Mr. Hayes, though it began amid exciting scenes and an unprecedented situation which threatened disasters, was rather marked by moderation and a sympathy with what he considered true reform. Some of his vetoes are highly interesting, and indicate independence of character and that he was not ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... of hostilities in the field thus developed a politico-economic problem which had never before confronted any nation in such magnitude and gravity. The situation was at once novel, unprecedented, and in more senses than one, alarming. Without its due and timely solution there was danger of still farther disturbance of a far different and more alarming character than that of arms but lately ceased; ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... only that Slingsby was permitted to penetrate into the housekeeper's room and tell his story to his social superiors there, though that was an absolutely unprecedented occurrence; what was really extraordinary was that mere menials discussed the affair with the personal ladies and gentlemen of the castle guests, and were allowed to do so uncrushed. James, the footman—that pushing ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... country stand opposed in serious controversy. Each party claims success for its candidate and insists that he and he alone shall be declared by the two houses of Congress entitled to exercise the executive power of this government for the next four years. The canvass was prolonged and unprecedented in its excitement and even bitterness. The period of advocacy of either candidate has passed, and the time for judgment has almost come. How shall we who purpose to make laws for others do better than to exhibit our own reverence for law and set the example here of subordination ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... the extreme of South America, or parched by the heats of North Australia; under every vicissitude, from the grave to the gay, I have struggled along with her; and after wandering together for eighteen years, a fact unprecedented in the service, I naturally parted from her with regret. Her movements, latterly, have been anxiously watched, and the chances are that her ribs will separate, and that she will perish in the river* where she was first put together. She has made herself as ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... were taking up the artistic traditions of the first half of the century. Millais, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and their associates, count to us, to-day, as the representatives of an earlier generation; in 1855 they still stood for all that was daring, unprecedented, and adventurous ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... this same year the lascivia broke out again with unprecedented force. The cause was not only, as Livy explains it, the dreary continuance of the war with varying success; if we read between the lines we may guess that the break-up of family life occasioned by the deaths of so many heads of ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... war and by their laws from all states and from all forms of government, determined to widen the separation. By an unprecedented revolution they established an entirely new era; they changed the divisions of the year, the names of the months and days; they substituted a republican for the Christian calendar, the decade for the week, and fixed the day of rest not on ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... justice as tortures men first and tries them afterwards—might be administered to them. "The police considered the precaution necessary," urged the magistrate, in reply to the scathing denunciations of the unprecedented outrage which fell from the lips of Mr. Ernest Jones, one of the prisoners' counsel. The police considered it necessary, though within the courthouse no friend of the accused could dare to show his face—though the whole building bristled with military and ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... successfully appealed to the Rajputs for support against his rebel son Khusru, he was so pleased with the zeal of the Rathor prince, Raja Gaj Singh, that he not only took the latter's hand, but kissed it, [564] perhaps an unprecedented honour. But the constant absence from his home on service in distant parts of the empire was so distasteful to Raja Sur Singh that, when dying in the Deccan, he ordered a pillar to be erected on his grave containing his curse upon any ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... of annoyance, flatteringly agreeable: which can come to us only of our having done the right thing, young men will think. He felt at once warmly with the world, enjoyed the world's kind shelter, and in return for its eulogy of his unprecedented attachment to the pledge of his word, admitted an understanding of its laughter at the burlesque edition of a noble lady in the person of the Whitechapel Countess. The ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... have always been noted as a man of fine perceptions, and I was aware instinctively that such a state of the atmosphere must mean something more than was apparent on the surface. But, as the danger was of an entirely unprecedented character, it is not to be wondered at that I should be completely at a loss to divine what its meaning was. It was a blight some people said; and many were of opinion that it was caused by clouds of animalculae coming, as is described ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... had made the amazing journey from the prairies over the mountains to the Pacific Coast. We looked with something like awe and wonder at the site of the old fort near the famous Peace River Crossing, from which, after wintering there in 1792, he had started out on that unprecedented expedition, and we followed up the majestic Peace to Fort Dunvegan, past whose present location Mackenzie had gone his adventurous way. And during our trip we came across a little frontier encampment building itself into a primitive wooden town in view of the advent ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... accusation."—"What, in all respects?"—"Yes, in all respects." The girls were struck with dumbness; and Ann Putnam, re-affirming that he was the man that hurt her, "was taken with a fit." Mary Walcot began to waver in her confidence, and Mercy Lewis said, "It is not the man." This unprecedented variance in the testimony of the girls brought matters to a stand; and he was sent out for a time, while others ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... was one of unprecedented success. Never had the young orator been so brilliant. All the faculties of his mind seemed wrought up to their highest pitch and all its resources under perfect control. The boisterous crowd laughed itself hoarse at his ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... and when we consider the few brief years that have elapsed since the Upper Province was reclaimed from the wilderness, our progress in mechanical arts, and all the comforts which pertain to modern civilization, is unprecedented in the history ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... an unprecedented sequence of luck, was a boys' school, that came whooping up the stairway like a tribe of young Indians, in charge of a venerable sachem in spectacles. In the rush and excitement of the moment, several of them ran toll—a circumstance of which the old gentleman did not take cognizance when ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Cimon, to go into temporary exile. The continuance of the truce is identical with the palmy days of Athens, and the glory of Pericles, during which the vast improvements to the city were made, and art and literature flourished to a degree unprecedented in the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... a sudden apprehension in his face and voice. For the moment the crisis was past he had realized with dismay that he had issued the unprecedented order for the burning of the station ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... and their movements were accelerated by prods from the pick and presently the whole mass was going at a run across the field, the Chinese in front, flying, as they thought, for their lives, the whites following, and the howls of the pursued and the yells of the pursuers united to make an uproar unprecedented on Simpson's Ranges. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... the night before, after breaking their forks. They have been retaken, and treated with unprecedented cruelty. The soldiers' and ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... single year for the relief of Irish suffering. Magnificent subscriptions, from the throne downwards, have attested the sympathy of the British heart with the tale of Irish and Highland suffering. But, notwithstanding all these astonishing exertions, and notwithstanding the existence of an unprecedented demand for labour in most parts of the country, in consequence of vast railway undertakings being on foot, on which at least L30,000,000 a-year must be expended for three or four years to come, distress is in many places most acute, in all severely felt. And what is very remarkable, and may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... after a considerable interval, pale, languid, but convalescent, on a sofa in his own room under his uncle's roof. He is only now beginning to understand that he has been dangerously ill; that according to his doctor nothing but a "splendid constitution" and unprecedented medical skill have brought him back from the threshold of that grim portal known as death's door. This he does not quite believe, but is aware, nevertheless, that he is much enfeebled, and that his system ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... first-rate abilities, great diligence, and unvarying good conduct. Two years afterwards, viz. in the spring of 1823, he gained a king's scholarship, without the assistance of a "help," a thing which it is believed was unprecedented. In the College, however, he could not escape fagging; but such was his independent spirit, that he refused to submit to it, and immediately resigned his hard-won scholarship, with all its prospects. His ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... of the United States, exposing and reprobating the language and conduct of Genet, the minister from the French republic, whose repeated insults upon the first magistrate of the American Union, and upon the national government, had been as public and as shameless as they had been unprecedented. For, after Washington, supported by the highest judicial authority of the country, had, as President of the United States, denied publicly Genet's authority to establish consular courts within them, and to issue letters of marque and reprisal ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... now feeling the direct stimulus which came from the passage of the last revenue bill, and under the assurance of a reasonable system of taxation there is every prospect of an era of prosperity of unprecedented proportions. But it would be idle to expect any such results unless business can continue free from excess profits taxation and be accorded a system of surtaxes at rates which have for their object not the punishment of success or the discouragement of business, but the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... public did not demand the accomplishment of this promise at the time fixed, and the banks, led on by the thirst of gain, issued an unprecedented amount of bank notes. The general approbation brought about a still further increase in their number: the bank notes of the Bank of Philadelphia were at a discount of 80 per cent.; the others at 75 per cent, and 50 per cent., and metallic money disappeared ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... enjoyed in Frascati had really originated. Probably our horse's distinguishing trait was known to everybody in Frascati except his driver. He, at least, showed the greatest surprise at the horse's behavior, as unprecedented in their acquaintance, which he owned was brief, for he had bought him in Rome only the week before. With successive retreats to level ground he put him again and again at the incline, but as soon as the horse felt ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... lectures to Joey on the absurdity of things in general, and the special ridiculousness of such a mighty combination of circumstances centering on one poor ship as had fore-gathered to crush the Kansas. Ever since he was aroused from sleep by the stopping of the screw, his mind had dwelt on the unprecedented nature of the break-down. Even before he discovered its cause he was wondering what evil chance bad contrived to cripple the engine at such a moment—in the worst possible place ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... its moral aridity, was the absolute negation. But by what extraordinary process of the heart—through what mysterious intermission of that moral instinct which may keep pace with the heart even when this organ is making unprecedented time—had she fixed her affections on an insolently frivolous Frenchman? Longmore needed no telling; he knew that M. de Mauves was both cynical and shallow; these things were stamped on his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his voice, his gesture, ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... so unprecedented a situation, it occurred to Samuel Adams that perhaps Mr. Hutchinson himself might be induced to come to his assistance. Late in 1772 he accordingly got the Boston town meeting to present to the Governor an address expressing great alarm at ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... Raffaelle, yielding in value to only two or three of his larger masterpieces, like the Dresden Madonna. Charles the Fifth stooped to pick up the pencil of Titian, saying "it becomes Caesar to serve Titian!" True enough; but this unprecedented compliment from the imperial successor of Charlemagne attests the glory of the portrait-painter. The female figures of Titian, so much admired under the names of Flora, La Bella, his daughter, his mistress, and even his Venus, were portraits ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it. What has been said of Louisiana will apply generally to other States. So new and unprecedented," he ended, "is the whole case that no exclusive and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed as to details and collaterals. Such exclusive and inflexible plan would surely become a new entanglement. Important principles may and must be inflexible. In the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... hard saying, at any rate he looked surprised. On the other side counsel were employed nominally on behalf of the Crown, although in reality the prosecution, which in such a case was unusual if not unprecedented, had been set on foot and undertaken by the ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... be?" exclaimed Mrs. Clinton. Punctuality at meals being so rigidly observed it was unprecedented that Cicely should not have begun to dress at a quarter to eight. At ten minutes to eight Mrs. Clinton was convinced that some accident had befallen her. At five minutes to, she tapped at the door of the Squire's dressing-room. "Edward," she called, "Cicely ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... Congressional delegation was unanimously and strenuously in his favor' ... Either the President has totally changed his policy or Lane, Pomeroy and Conway are responsible for this most unexpected and unprecedented appointment ..."] ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... immovable chief. You might have seen a covert smile now and then gleam in the eyes of that obstinate functionary, but otherwise he seemed profoundly unconscious that his presence was in the least disagreeable. The Mayor did not venture upon the unprecedented step of requiring him to withdraw, so after a good deal of meaningless ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... the same Nathan Pocknet, who in 1818 petitioned for the removal of the Overseership. This remonstrance was not prepared by the Indians. It came wholly from the Rev. Mr. Fish, and the Overseers. It speaks of the "unprecedented impudence" of the Indians, and mentions a "Traverse Jury." No one who signed it, had any voice in preparing it. It shows ignorance of the memorial of the tribe, by supposing they ask for liberty to sell their lands; and ignorance of the law, ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... the discovery of America, but as an immediate consequence of the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope we shall presently find Bartholomew Columbus in the very next year on his way to England, to enlist the aid of King Henry VII. in behalf of a scheme of unprecedented boldness for which his elder brother had for some years been seeking to obtain the needful funds. Not long after that disappointing voyage of Santarem and Escobar in 1471, this original and imaginative sailor, Christopher Columbus, had conceived (or adopted ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... representatives of a civilised European power, and that the nation which they represent has shown no qualms of conscience. That such a calamity, the permanent results of which include a holocaust of European wealth and credit, accumulated during a century of unprecedented industry and ingenuity, the loss of innumerable lives, and the destruction of all the old and honourable conventions which have hitherto regulated the intercourse of civilised nations with each other, in war as well as in peace, should have been possible, is justly felt to ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... all this was most fascinating. A little later Captain Murray destroyed both entrances to the town, but before daylight, by dint of extraordinary labor, they were reconstructed lower down the slope, and the work at the stump was going on as if nothing so unprecedented ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... entered the town on the 27th. Sakharov conformed to this retreat in the Dobrudja; on 4 January Macin, the last place east and south of the Danube, was evacuated, and on the 5th Braila on the opposite bank south of the Sereth and Danube confluence. On the 23rd the Bulgarians, taking advantage of the unprecedented frost, crossed the marshes at Tulcea, but were annihilated by the Rumanians on the northern bank, and remained content for the rest with the defensive. The same wintry conditions put an end to fighting at the other extremity of the line in the Carpathian passes, ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... ever made double? Or what new thing has been wrought by the coming of the Saviour? For the truth of the faith and the unwontedness of the miracle alike remain, for Catholics, unshaken. For how great and unprecedented a thing it is—unique and incapable of repetition in any other age—that the nature of Him who is God alone should come together with human nature which was entirely different from God to form from different natures by conjunction a ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... black rigolette, and all, when she finished this unprecedented speech; and when he went to sleep that night in the old north chamber, the one he and Louisa had been born in, the one his father and mother had died in, it was with a little smile ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... country. Mobilization of the Fleet has taken place; mobilization of the Army is taking place; but we have as yet taken no engagement, because I do feel that in the case of a European conflagration such as this, unprecedented, with our enormous responsibilities in India and other parts of the Empire, or in countries in British occupation, with all the unknown factors, we must take very carefully into consideration the use which we make of sending an expeditionary force out of the country ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... now one of the greatest exports of Ceylon, and within the last few years the trade has increased to an unprecedented extent. In the two years of 1849 and 1850, the exports of cocoa-nut oil did not exceed four hundred and forty-three thousand six hundred gallons, while in the year 1853 they had increased to one million thirty-three ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... exclaimed a voice, in a low but most offensive tone—"alone? How uncommon"—Miss Aubrey for a moment seemed thunderstruck at so sudden and unprecedented an occurrence: then she hurried on with a beating heart, whispering to Margaret to keep close to her, and not to be alarmed. The speaker, however, kept ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... tragedies." Shakespeare, to him, was our Will clearly, a man of known and friendly character. The other authors of allusions did not need to say WHO their "Shakespeare" was, any more than they needed to say WHO Marlowe or any other poet was. We have examined the possibly unprecedented argument which demands that they who mention Shakespeare as the poet must, if they would enlighten us, add explicitly that he is ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... capitalist find a profitable investment, and which give employment and subsistence to a numerous and increasing body of industrious and dexterous mechanics. The laborer is rewarded by high wages in the construction of works of internal improvement, which are extending with unprecedented rapidity. Science is steadily penetrating the recesses of nature and disclosing her secrets, while the ingenuity of free minds is subjecting the elements to the power of man and making each new conquest auxiliary to his ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... accordance with the effete standards) in the battle which is before her. Dr. Nordan, the family physician, her parents, and those of her fiance, take her to task and endeavor to demonstrate to her the consequences of her unprecedented demand. She learns in the course of this prolonged debate that she has been living in a fool's paradise. She has been purposely (and with the most benevolent intention) deceived in regard to this question from the very cradle. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... It was unprecedented. It was revolutionary. It shrieked unto heaven. The poor, despised scrubs were actually holding the haughty 'Varsity men on even terms. More than that; they even threatened to win. They seemed to forget that they were doormats for the "regulars," mere "sparring partners," to be ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... sufficient to show to what depths the Church of Rome had sunk; it is more convincing than a thousand satires, than a thousand official reports. The affairs which the Pope entrusted to his daughter were—at least so we assume—wholly secular and not ecclesiastical; but this bold proceeding was entirely unprecedented. The prominence given Lucretia, the highest proof of favor her father could show her, was due to special reasons. Alexander had just been assured of the consent of Alfonso d'Este to the marriage ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius |
