"Unpremeditated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plomb which, born of necessity as it was, and natural, equalled that of the most practised fine lady which should show her artificial habit or skill. Like an instinct of self-preservation, I suppose; swift in action, correct in adjustment, taking its measures with unpremeditated good aim. She answered with ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... do with arresting the outlawry that made the roads rattle with the clatter of the hoofs of horses at midnight raids, but I do know young Byron was the last man hanged by the Klu Klux in Madison county, and may I not hope the unpremeditated protest made in that Sunday evening address, helped in some measure to bring about the transformation, and contribute a mite to the public sentiment that has made Richmond a saloonless ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... wait. The four winds of heaven bore forth in all directions the odour of the carrion; and the undertakers hurried up, so that the experiments, begun with four subjects, were continued with fourteen, a number not attained during the whole of my previous searches, which were unpremeditated and in which no bait was used as decoy. My trapper's ruse was ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... from the dark abyss of time to the twilight of the Middle Ages, the satisfaction of the sexual instinct offered fewer difficulties than the gratification of any other need or desire. With every unpremeditated and cursory indulgence the craving disappeared from consciousness and left the individual free to give his mind to the acquisition of the necessities of life which were far more difficult to obtain. Primitive, prehistoric man lived in the moment. When there was plenty of food ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... life of man, and elaborated word by word, with innumerable revisions, his short songs, which are gems of poetry, charming at once the ear and the heart. Novels are perhaps too easily written to be of lasting value. An unpremeditated word, in which the thoughts of years are exploded, may be one of the most admirable of intellectual phenomena, but an unpremeditated volume can only be ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... unpremeditated action in much higher terms than it actually deserved; for, really, I did it, as I have said ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... lifted into the piece, Grifone the grey-eyed, self-contained little Secretary, whose brain seemed quicksilver, whose acts those of a deliberate cat, whose inches were few, whose years only tender. One of Amilcare's rare acts of unpremeditated humanity had been to snatch him, a naked urchin of nine, from Barga, when (after a night surprise) he was raining fire and sword and the pains of hell upon that serried ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... had its own separate leaders and its own local agents. The first, though precipitated into action by fortunate discoveries on the part of the government, had been anxiously preconcerted for three years. The second was an unpremeditated effort, called forth by a most ill-timed, and also ill-concerted, foreign invasion. The general predisposing causes to rebellion were doubtless the same in both cases; but the exciting causes of the moment were different in each. And, finally, they ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Clement underwent at Jerome's hands was unpremeditated. It came about thus. Jerome, in an indulgent moment, went with him to Fra Colonna, and there "The Dream of Polifilo" lay on the table just copied fairly. The poor author, in the pride of his heart, pointed ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... event—supposing it to be such—could only have occurred at an unpremeditated moment. We will not follow our friend across the threshold. He has left us much food for thought, a portion of which shall lend its wisdom to a moral and be shaped into a figure. Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world individuals are ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that Thyrsis would sigh for a stenographer. She would make herself a Grecian costume out of a sheet, and dance to music of her own making; or she would put trinkets upon her forehead, and be a gypsy-queen—she could be anything that was wild and exotic and unpremeditated. She had dances for that mood also—she would laugh and caper as merrily as any young witch. But then, again, there would come the Corydon of melancholy and despair; her features would shrink up, her face would become peaked and pitiful, she would seem like a child of ten. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... touched her shoulder.... It was unpremeditated, something besides his own will had urged him to speak ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... times. Then he smiled, recalling the way in which the governess had warned him that Mrs. Tootle could overhear what he said. Somehow, this slight gesture of the girl's had seemed to bring them closer to each other; there was an unpremeditated touch of intimacy in the movement, which it pleased him to think of. This was by no means the first time that he had stood with thoughts busied about her, but the brief exchange of words and what had followed gave something ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... year it becomes increasingly difficult to understand—how entirely different the world was then from what it is now. It was a dark world; it was full of preventable disorder, preventable diseases, and preventable pain, of harshness and stupid unpremeditated cruelties; but yet, it may be even by virtue of the general darkness, there were moments of a rare and evanescent beauty that seem no longer possible in my experience. The great Change has come for ever more, happiness and beauty are our atmosphere, there is peace on earth ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... told us, and we cannot now know more, is, that he composed much of this poem in the night and morning, I suppose, before his mind was disturbed with common business; and that he poured out, with great fluency, his "unpremeditated verse." Versification, free, like his, from the distresses of rhyme, must, by a work so long, be made prompt and habitual; and, when his thoughts were once adjusted, the words would ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... heroic—what has been the result? A few imbecile and uncombined plots—in every instance detected before they broke out into action, and which perhaps if undetected would never have broken into action. One or two sudden, unpremeditated attempts, frantic in their character, if not prompted by actual insanity, and these instantly crushed. As it is, we are not less assured of safety, order, and internal peace, than any other people; and but for the pertinacious and fanatical agitations of the subject, would ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... dormant in his mind. He had even gone to the bishop's with a subconscious disposition to give Felicity up; but her father's scorn had aroused his perversity, and had resulted in a declaration of obstinacy that was unpremeditated. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... bush and a half deep—of the shrubbery, where was a bench that gave us a view while we gossiped of Mrs. Stannace's tiara-like headdress nodding at an upper window. Within doors and without Limbert's life was overhung by an awful region that figured in his conversation, comprehensively and with unpremeditated art, as Upstairs. It was Upstairs that the thunder gathered, that Mrs. Stannace kept her accounts and her state, that Mrs. Limbert had her babies and her headaches, that the bells for ever jangled at the maids, that everything imperative in short took place—everything that he had somehow, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... been unpremeditated. It was one of those inevitable things. It had to happen. He had not planned it, although he knew, now, that had he not procrastinated his going, had he not drifted, he could have foreseen it. And now, going could not mend matters. The madness of it, the hell of it and the joy of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... lest Dorriforth should come to the knowledge of it. She would not have his composed mind disturbed with such a thought—his steadfast principles so much as shaken by the imagination—nor overwhelm him with those self-reproaches which his fatal attraction, unpremeditated as it was, would still have drawn ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... head, and splitting her thin boots in her haste. She entered her own dwelling, as she had emerged from it, by the drawing-room window. In other circumstances she would have felt some timidity at undertaking such an unpremeditated excursion alone; but her anxiety for another had cast ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous'd; Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son: If answerable style I can obtain Of my celestial patroness, who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplor'd, And dictates to me slumbering; or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse: Since first this subject for heroick song Pleas'd me long choosing, and beginning late; Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroick deem'd chief mastery to dissect With long and tedious ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... do for us. Yet we have to behave to-day—or should behave to-day—so as to secure a pleasurable and profitable to-morrow, in case we are permitted to be alive on the morrow. It seems to me how wonderful it is that any act on one's part—quite unpremeditated, or only if done just by chance—can have so great an influence on all our to-morrows. It may ruin all our prospects or may make us the happiest of mortals. It may bring the saddest of morrows to those dearest to us, or it may shower blessing—unintentionally, of ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... Neptune's ire or Juno's, that so long Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son: If answerable style I can obtain Of my celestial Patroness who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplored, And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse, {153} Since first this subject for heroic song Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late, Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... the Oriental countries is most favourable to the production of the political criminal: Russia and Germany are not without their representatives. Occasionally bands of political criminals are formed, and then, in the midst of demonstrations, unpremeditated violence may be committed. The Stundists and the Young ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... his mind to combat the lurking distrust that teased his brain, and either to disperse it altogether or else confirm it beyond all mere shadowy misgiving. Some such thought as this had occurred to him, albeit vaguely, when he had, on a sudden unpremeditated impulse, asked Lucy to give him a few minutes' private conversation with her after supper, but now, what had previously been a mere idea formulated ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... fringed with gold thread above her perfect and lightly stepping feet. Shoes she wore shining with brightest wire of findruiney. As she came up the dell, rejoicing in her freedom and the sweetness of that sylvan place and the solitude, she contemplated the bright stream, and sang clear and sweet an unpremeditated song. ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... with an effort to keep out of my face and voice the suspicions I had gained from the incidents of the visit to the Borton place. "Entirely unpremeditated, I assure you." ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... whip, the man broke into a sort of endless, drawling song. In that song everything had a place. By "everything" I mean both the various encouraging and stimulating cries with which Russian folk urge on their horses, and a random, unpremeditated ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... with that diabolical dual consciousness which makes us spectator and listener to ourselves, in the back of my brain—or my soul—was running this query: "I wonder what a raw battlefield looks like? I have a chance to see if I want to— perhaps." I suppose that was an attack of involuntary, unpremeditated curiosity. I did ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... Mannering," the murder, though unpremeditated, of a single person, (himself not entirely innocent, but at least by heartlessness in a cruel function earning his fate,) is avenged to the uttermost on all the men conscious of the crime; Mr. Bertram's death, like that of his wife, brief in pain, and each told in the space of half a dozen lines; ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... song. We did not expect to have found among the uncivilized inhabitants of this sequestered spot, a character, which has been the subject of such praise and veneration where genius and knowledge have been most conspicuous; yet these were the bards or minstrels of Otaheite. Their song was unpremeditated, and accompanied with music; they were continually going about from place to place, and they were rewarded by the master of the house, and the audience, with such things as one wanted and the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... blithe spirit!— Bird thou never wert— That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... sudden, unreasoning, and unpremeditated as his intrusion. It was not like himself, he knew, and yet it was as perfectly instinctive and natural as if he had intruded upon a sister. In the South Seas he had seen native girls diving beside the vessels for coins, but they had provoked no ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... visit was unpremeditated; he was shipwrecked while returning from a visit to France, where his consecration had taken place in A.D. 665. His reception was so hostile that after getting safely away he decided to return at some future ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... understood, better than Lettice did herself, the involuntary, unpremeditated gesture which put a greater distance between them on the window-seat, and knew in a moment that ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... they reached Jim Hayward's home. The Baron alighted, and spoke to her through the window. 'Margery, can you forgive a lover's bad impulse, which I swear was unpremeditated?' he asked. 'If you can, ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... Fanny, and trembles for the fate of the kind-hearted Emily, as he beholds her mirthfully joining in the mazy dance. He, too, by witnessing the frequently recurring scenes of death, beholds the genuine sorrow of the bereaved wife, or the devoted husband—and can, by the constant unpremeditated exhibitions of fondness and feeling, appreciate the affection which exists in such and such places, and understand, with an almost magical power, the value of the links by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... from his own conversations in later years were this happily-touched sketch, it could hardly be more interesting than it is. But, fortunately, it does not stand alone. Its fine recognition of the lofty purity of his nature is everywhere borne out by the unpremeditated and candid self-revelations of the diary. Their characteristic trait is everywhere aspiration—a sense of joy in elevation above the earthly, or a sense of depression because the earthly weighs him down. ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... their contents scattered in every direction. The fire had been hastily extinguished with a bucket of water, and a frying pan lay where it had been overturned. If the thing had been possible, Thorpe would have guessed at a hasty and unpremeditated flight. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... doubt in mine. I told Hephzy of my experience when I joined her in the Lounge. My attempts to say "Really" and "Isn't it" and "Rather" in the Heathcroft manner and with the Heathcroft accent pleased her very much. As to the result of my unpremeditated "tip" she ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he might be mistaken even in that. Miss Owen herself took such a view of the matter at the time, and passed it lightly by. But, afterwards, in the course of her ponderings, it came back again. The unpremeditated words, in which her employer had admitted the probability of a resemblance between herself and what his own lost child might most likely have become, seemed to find their place amongst the other strange things which were perplexing ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... or to his anger, only to disappoint him in the end, or else would have been conventional in her refusal and so sent him to the bad, probably. You recognized just what you could be to him, and had the skill—nature, rather, for all was unpremeditated—to obtain an influence by which you can incite him to a better manhood and a greater success, perhaps, than if he were your accepted lover. Forgive this long preamble: I am thinking aloud and feeling my way, as it were. What did you ask him to promise? ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... the corner of Cooper Street. He stood for a moment, lurching with unpremeditated steps to the front and rear, astonished by the noise and the crowd. Then he recognized Mrs Yabsley, and became suddenly excited, under the impression that she was being taken to the lock-up by the police. He lurched gallantly into the throng, calling on his friends to rescue the old girl from ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... could the unpremeditated scene have been finer. The Votaress, as she took the wider circuit against the Mississippi shore, caught the whole power of the setting sun on all her nearer side while she swept close along an undivided curtain of autumn forest drenched in the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... newly-kindled fire to wait. He had just come in haste from Melchester. The upshot of his excitement about the wedding, which, as the possible hour of its solemnization drew near, had increased till it bore him on like a wind, was this unpremeditated journey. Lying awake the previous night, the hangings of his bed pulsing to every beat of his heart, he decided that there was one last and great service which it behoved him, as an honest man and friend, to say nothing of lover, to render to Ethelberta at this juncture. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... at her with the pity one feels for a child who is suddenly confronted with the result of some unpremeditated naughtiness. ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... especially the Emir Kais, maintained the reputation of their house and displayed a brilliant courage. The Emir Fakre-deen was at Canobia at the time of the outbreak, which, as it often happens, though not unpremeditated, was unexpected. He marched to the scene of action at the head of his troops, and, when he found that Kais had been outflanked and repulsed, that the Maronites were disheartened in proportion to their previous vanity and insolence, and that the Turkish forces ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... of a stick held by Simba. He gave his whole energies to getting over the day's difficulties of all sorts. His relations with the Leopard Woman swung back. Perhaps vaguely, in the back of his mind, he looked forward to the interpretation of that unpremeditated kiss; but just now a mixed feeling of responsibility and delicacy prevented his going forward from the point attained. During the march they walked apart most of the time. The weariness of ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... thoughts and expressions previously prepared for other occasions, but the neophyte may well consider it necessary to think out carefully the matter of what to say and how to say it. Cicero said of Antonius, "All his speeches were, in appearance, the unpremeditated effusion of an honest heart; and yet, in reality, they were preconceived with so much skill that the judges were not so well prepared as they should have been to withstand the force ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... other incidents of that hideous carnival; the race, the foul, if it was a foul; the dreadful nightmare vision called into her mind by the look upon Montalvo's face; the trial of the Mare, her own unpremeditated but indelible perjury; the lonely drive with the man who compelled her to it; the exhibition of herself before all the world as his willing companion; and the feast in which he appeared as her cavalier, and was accepted of ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... against which Diane had warned her? It had all happened so suddenly—that last, unpremeditated dance, those tense, vibrant moments in the winter-garden, then the jarring interruption of other couples seeking its fragrant coolness. And she and Michael ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... to trust the success of his powers to fortune, he did not absolutely neglect the reputation which may be acquired by speaking on a sudden occasion; and if we believe Eratosthenes, Demetrius the Phalerean, and the comic poets, there was a greater spirit and boldness in his unpremeditated orations than in those he had committed to writing. Eratosthenes says that in his extemporaneous harangues he often spoke as from a supernatural impulse; and Demetrius tells us that in an address to the people, like a man inspired, he once uttered ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... He spoke the unpremeditated notion which the sunburst had created in his brain,—spoke not seriously nor yet lightly. He had as much right to his genealogy ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... words the other night. They were merely in reply, and quite unpremeditated, and were not ill received. I feel that much practice will be necessary to make me a good debater on points of detail; but my friends tell me that I have raised my reputation by showing that I was quite equal ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... thing was entirely unpremeditated it seemed like a special piece of good luck that Mrs. Coombe should have at that moment in her pocket a note to the druggists (who were not called druggists, exactly) and that all she needed to do was to add Miss ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... a queer life for a girl to live, that happy-go-lucky life of the Latin Quarter, lawless and unpremeditated, with a cafe for her school-room, and none but men for comrades; but Nina liked it; and her father had a theory in his madness. He was a Bohemian, not in practice only, but in principle; he preached ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... opposite of what he was expecting. I did not doubt this for a moment; in fact, direct and deliberate transmission of thought is, even among men, a very rare, difficult and uncertain, phenomenon, whereas involuntary, unpremeditated and unsuspected communications between one subconsciousness and another can no longer be denied except by those who of set purpose ignore studies and experiments that are within the reach of any one who will take the trouble to engage in them. I was persuaded therefore ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... to fourteen lines, because fourteen lines seemed best adapted to unity of sentiment. I thought nothing about the strict Italian model; the verses naturally flowed in unpremeditated harmony, as my ear directed, but the slightest inspection will prove they were far from being mere elegiac couplets. The subjects were chiefly from river scenery, and the reader will recollect what Sir Humphrey Davy has said on this subject so ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... enchanting, mirage-like spectacle. "The Shenandoah," Jack said, mopping the dust, or rather the thin coating of mud, from his face and brow, for the perspiration, oozing at every pore, naturally covered the exposed skin with an unpremeditated cosmetic. The march to Fairfax Court-House, for which judicial temple the curious soldier looked in vain, was but eight miles from the point of departure in the morning, but it was two o'clock in the afternoon ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... caused at first by the strange terms on which my wife and I were living together, gradually vanished before the frequency of my visits to North Villa. We soon began to speak with all the ease, all the unpremeditated frankness of a long intimacy. Margaret's powers of conversation were generally only employed to lead me to exert mine. She was never tired of inducing me to speak of my family. She listened with every appearance of interest, while I talked of my father, my sister, or my elder brother; ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... Triplet's most unpremeditated thoughts and actions often savored ridiculously of the sublime. Then and there, gazing with folded arms on this fortress of Thespis, the polytechnic man organized his first assault. The next evening ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... Brandon; Miss Lindsay knows better. Remember, too, that this proposal of mine was quite unpremeditated. This morning I had no tender thoughts of anyone except one whom it ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... diffuses it self into every Word and Action: A Man must be a Savage, who at the Sight of Emilia, is not more inclined to do her Good than gratifie himself. Her Person, as it is thus studiously embellished by Nature, thus adorned with unpremeditated Graces, is a fit Lodging for a Mind so fair and lovely; there dwell rational Piety, modest ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... quite carried out of herself by this sudden and unexpected splendor—having evidently no knowledge of its approach—like a girl as she still is, in her natural, unpremeditated movements, rose from her couch and eagerly bent forward toward the vase, the better to scan its beauties, saying, as ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... close my eyes at any time to see her just as she was then—the little witch! She knew full well how to make the most of her attractions, and though she has often declared since to me that the pose was quite unpremeditated, I could ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... that, amid all human wrong and disaster, the hand of Providence moves in wise adjustment, and ever out of evil educes good, ever through loss in some lower degree of life brings gain to a higher degree? Consider how, in an unpremeditated way, you are brought into contact with a stranger, and how his life and experience touching yours, give out a spark that lights a candle in your soul to illumine chambers where scarcely a ray had shone before; and this ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... after he has accomplished his education. The most splendid effort of the most mature orator will be always finer for being previously elaborated with much care. There is, no doubt, a charm in extemporaneous elocution, derived from the appearance of artless, unpremeditated effusion, called forth by the occasion, and so adapting itself to its exigencies, which may compensate the manifold defects incident to this kind of composition: that which is inspired by the unforeseen circumstances of the moment, will be of necessity suited to those circumstances ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... enshrined in history, and whose stool is a souvenir in the museum,—Jean, impelled by a burst of indignation, bounced from her seat and flung her stool at the dean's head, crying with a loud voice, "Villain, dost thou say mass at my lug?" The unpremeditated deed acted as a signal; the whole congregation was immediately in an uproar; the dean fled and the service ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... had generous instincts, and a desire to reach the needy directly instead of through the medium of institutions, but he had never known just how to approach them. His presence in this unknown part of the city had been unpremeditated, but he welcomed the chance that had led his steps hither to perform an errand of mercy. He handed Amarilly five dollars, and wrote down her address. He was most reluctant to receive the surplice ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse{1} strains of unpremeditated art. ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... deeply touched by the desire of my friends of Hannibal to confer these great honors upon me I must still forbear to accept them. Spontaneous and unpremeditated honors, like those which came to me at Hannibal, Columbia, St. Louis, and at the village stations all down the line, are beyond all price and are a treasure for life in the memory, for they are a free gift out of the heart and they ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... children of these ravaged lands. And when those of us who went to Poland for him in January, 1919, to find out the exact condition and the actual food needs of the twenty-five million freed people there, made our report to him, a single unpremeditated sentence in this report seemed most to catch his eyes and hold his attention. It did more: it wetted his eyes and led to a special concentration of his efforts on behalf of the suffering children. This sentence was: "We see very few children playing in the streets of Warsaw." Why were they not playing? ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... still hovering over her hair, went down against her cheek and pressed her to him. She could hear his heart beating. It sounded as loudly in his breast as her own. She had a sense of sudden, unpremeditated emotion. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... of these songs consist of epic tales several hundred verses in length. The lyric songs compare favorably with those of other nations, but the long epic extemporized compositions, by which the peasant bard, in the circle of other peasants, in unpremeditated but regular and harmonious verse, celebrates the heroic deeds of their ancestors or contemporaries, have no parallel in the whole history of literature since ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... about the room. His first impression was that Marette must have lived in it for a long time. It was a woman's room, without the newness of sudden and unpremeditated occupancy. He knew that formerly it had been Kedsty's room, but nothing of Kedsty remained in it now. And then, as his wondering eyes beheld the miracle, a number of things struck him with amazing significance. He no longer doubted that Marette Radisson was of the far Northland. His faith ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... the leader may tell you one singer is worth all the rest. So, if Corkey were in this parlor, and should render one unforeseen, unpremeditated sneeze, you would not know the parlorful had sneezed along with him. Corkey's sneeze is unapproachable, unrivaled, hated, feared, admired, reverenced. The devout say "God bless you!" with deep unction. The adventurous declare that such a sneeze would buckle the cabin-floor ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... learned of that city: then visited Padua, where he engaged in another publick disputation, beginning his performance with an extemporal poem in praise of the city and the assembly then present, and concluding with an oration equally unpremeditated in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... inspiration, flash, spurt. improvisatore^; creature of impulse. V. flash on the mind. say what comes uppermost; improvise, extemporize. Adj. extemporaneous, impulsive, indeliberate^; snap; improvised, improvisate^, improvisatory^; unpremeditated, unmeditated; improvise; unprompted, unguided; natural, unguarded; spontaneous &c (voluntary) 600; instinctive &c 601. Adv. extempore, extemporaneously; offhand, impromptu, a limproviste [Fr.]; improviso^; on the spur of the moment, on the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... weakness. He forgets the happiness of his home, the love of those dear to him, in the desire to free himself from a disgrace insignificent{sic} in comparison with that entailed by committing the highest of all crimes. One would wish to believe that Webster's deed was unpremeditated, the result of a sudden gust of passion caused by his victim's acrimonious pursuit of his debtor. But there are circumstances in the case which tell powerfully against such a view. The character of the murderer seems curiously contradictory; both cunning and simplicity ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... of falsities in rhyme, In metre, quantity, or time, Is never yours; you sing along Your unpremeditated song." ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... meeting with Helen, a meeting which had been quite unpremeditated, he had thought of but little except her. During his talk with her in the parsonage sitting room he had been—there was no use pretending to himself that it was otherwise—more contented with the world, more optimistic, happier, than he had been for months, it seemed to him for years. Even while ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... one step at a time. He was deliberating whether he should return that picture that was in his coat pocket or keep it until the original should be his own. He entered the room, took another picture and another envelope and came slowly downstairs. His crime at first had been unpremeditated, but his persistence was ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... things. Yet while he is turning his thoughts to something else, an inordinate movement may arise about this also: thus when a man, in order to avoid the movements of concupiscence, turns his thoughts away from carnal pleasures, to the considerations of science, sometimes an unpremeditated movement of vainglory will arise. Consequently, a man cannot avoid all such movements, on account of the aforesaid corruption: but it is enough, for the conditions of a voluntary sin, that he be able to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... province of Benevent is surrounded by other provinces which show a maximum of crimes due to conditions of blood, while it registers a smaller number. Naples, again, shows a considerably smaller number of such cases than the provinces surrounding it, but it has a greater number of unpremeditated cases of manslaughter. Messina, Catania and Syracuse have a remarkably smaller number of blood crimes than Trapani, Girgenti and Palermo. It has been attempted to claim that this difference in criminality is due to social condition's, because ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... ran his notes, "I was astonished at the reported feats of men in war; I believed they were exaggerated, and that there was a kind of unpremeditated conspiracy of silence about their real behaviour. But when on my way to visit India for the third time I turned off to see what I could of the fighting before Adrianople, I discovered at once that ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... least an hour, and the reddening light of the parting day seemed to give a solemn emphasis to her closing words. The stranger, who had been interested in the course of her sermon as if it had been the development of a drama—for there is this sort of fascination in all sincere unpremeditated eloquence, which opens to one the inward drama of the speaker's emotions—now turned his horse aside and pursued his way, while Dinah said, "Let us sing a little, dear friends"; and as he was still winding down the slope, the voices of the Methodists reached ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... them not with misanthropic hate: Fain would he now have joined the dance, the song; But who may smile that sinks beneath his fate? Nought that he saw his sadness could abate: Yet once he struggled 'gainst the Demon's sway, And as in Beauty's bower he pensive sate, Poured forth his unpremeditated lay, To charms as fair as those that soothed ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... the dock, but fortune, heroism, and a mystery combine to change her fortunes and those of her friends near the Cinder Pond. THE CASTAWAYS OF PETE'S PATCH Illustrated by ADA C. WILLIAMSON. $1.35 net. A tale of five girls and two youthful grown-ups who enjoyed unpremeditated camping. DANDELION COTTAGE Illustrated by Mmes. SHINN and FINLEY. $1.35 net. Four young girls secure the use of a tumbledown cottage. They set up housekeeping under numerous disadvantages, and have many amusements and queer experiences. "A capital story. It is refreshing to ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... thee—and yet she favours her feyther,' said he; and the moment he had uttered the incautious words he looked up to see how Sylvia had taken the unpremeditated, unusual reference to her husband. His stealthy glance did not meet her eye; but though he thought she had coloured a little, she did not seem offended as he had feared. It was true that Bella had her father's grave, thoughtful, dark eyes, instead ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... trees, the villas with their various embellishment in the line of glass porticos and privet hedges, the General, Mrs. Horlick, Messrs Brookes and Berkins—how complete it seemed, how individual and how synthetical— his eyes filled with tears of unpremeditated grief. The leaves were falling, the hills were shrouded in wreaths of floating mist. Some trees had been cut down and scaffolding had been reared about the Manor House, some of the walls had already fallen revealing the wall paper, the pattern of which he could almost distinguish. He was going to ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... say that the irruption into the house of the Bannerworths by Sir Francis Varney, was certainly unpremeditated by him, for he knew not into whose house he had thus suddenly rushed for refuge from the numerous foes who were pursuing him with such vengeful ire. It was a strange and singular incident, and one well calculated to cause the mind to pause before it passed it by, and consider ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... unpremeditated, uncontrollable outburst his eyes wistfully sought hers. She met his look with a languid ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... many years ago, I left the city quite defeated, glad indeed that I was escaping, and thinking (as I have related elsewhere) that I should never again set foot upon a paved street. These things went deep with me. Only the other day, when a friend asked me how old I was, I responded instantly—our unpremeditated words are usually truest—with the date of my ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... sermons, their living interest, their unpremeditated variety in unity, fit them well for this purpose,—close personal influence on minds of widely differing views, united in the one great aim of a Christian life. We shall probably take an early opportunity ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... an unpremeditated thing. The man in the skull cap had been showing her something about the copy. As he was leaving, she asked: "Is the man who sits at the ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... literature or in both.[52] This method has the advantage of laying out the whole year's work beforehand and of guaranteeing that the student comes to the classroom with something more than a facility in unpremeditated utterance. It is generally found to be of greater interest because it follows the lines of his own ordinary thinking—first the problem and then the attempt to find the principles that ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... be explained, however, that the maid Chi'ao Hsing was the very person, who, a few years ago, had looked round at Yue-ts'un and who, by one simple, unpremeditated glance, evolved, in fact, this extraordinary destiny which was indeed an ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... interruption this time was quite unpremeditated. "Phillips?" he repeated, sharply. "Egbert, you mean? Oh, yes.... Humph.... Is he ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... destroyed his last hope. In a quite unpremeditated manner he put out the gas and rolled under a leather divan which stood at the end of the room. He wished now, with all his heart, that he had run away while he had the chance; but it was ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... night's work would put all the stored-up thoughts in order, and on the next day they would pour forth with all the power of a strong mind thoroughly saturated with its subject, and yet with the vitality of unpremeditated expression, having the fresh glow of morning upon it, and with ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... WINSTON, sauntering in from behind SPEAKER'S Chair when Questions had advanced some way, startled by strident cheer from Ministerialists and Irish Nationalists. Opposition angrily replied. FIRST LORD, faintly blushing, found anchorage on Treasury Bench. Unpremeditated outburst of enthusiasm meant as welcome back from Bradford, where he reviewed political situation with force and frankness that recalled his father's platform speeches delivered in his prime. Demonstration repeated when later he rose to answer question concerning his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... poured out his soul to the outraged god. He reminded him that it was the custom of the Northmen to exact blood-fines for kinsmen slain, and surely the blessed gods would not be less forgiving than the earth-born. Passionately he adjured Balder to show him how he could make reparation for his unpremeditated fault, and suddenly, an answer was vouchsafed, and Frithiof beheld in the clouds a vision ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... to the unhappy prisoners—the same contest took place between these and the Judges. One was acquitted, and the other two found guilty of "meurtre volontaire, mais sans premeditation."—Voluntary, but unpremeditated murder. These two were condemned to labour for life, but a respite was granted, and an appeal made to the King in their behalf. I was not disappointed in the ebullitions of public feeling which many of the incidents of the trial called forth. Mr ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... with a sudden and unpremeditated burst of tears at the failure of his hopes; for he was half child as well as half hero. At this juncture Gay opened her eyes, and burst into a wild howl at the unwonted sight of Timothy's grief; and Rags, who was ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as light as day with the glare of lamps, and torches, and bonfires blazing on all the circumjacent heights, as with tremendous shouts, and unpremeditated triumph, the mighty multitude escorted the great Consul home, not to his own house, where the rites of the Good Goddess were in celebration, and whither no male could be admitted, but to his next-door neighbor's mansion, in which he and his friends were entertained ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Mr. Tupper during his visit here have been struck with his characteristic impulsiveness. In accordance with this feature of his mind, nearly all of his most successful performances have been occasioned by something altogether incidental and unpremeditated—the result of an impulse accidentally—shall we not say, providentially?—imparted. It was so with the first work in this series (four volumes) respecting the composition of which he has given to me in conversation the following account. Some years ago he ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... mind he might fail. And the time of leaving found him curiously depressed. He had gripped Chet's hand, then turned to Diane for what might be a last good-by. The quick enfoldment of her soft body in his arms was as unpremeditated as the kiss he placed upon her lips.... He swung away abruptly, and fell in behind his guide without a word. The way led first across the ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... spree: the rustling of the Bar Double M stock, the discovery, the death of his friend and maybe of Cullison, the certain punishment that would follow. He was a horse thief caught almost in the act. Perhaps he was a murderer too. And the whole thing had been entirely unpremeditated. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... Their most graceful pirogues were dug from its bole, and its odorous bark served to roof their rude houses. No boat I have ever tried runs so lightly as a well-made tulip pirogue, or dug-out, and nothing under heaven is so utterly crank and treacherous. Many an unpremeditated plunge into cold water has one caused me while out fishing or duck-shooting on the mountain-streams of North Georgia. If you dare stand up in one, the least waver from a perfect balance will send the sensitive, skittish thing a rod from under your feet, which of course leaves you standing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... the moment, in finding passion I had also found self; and shame of this self dragged down my elation. I had sprung to my feet in wild rage against Nat's murder; I had spoken words—fierce, unpremeditated words—which, beginning in a boyish defiance, had ended on a note which, though my own lips uttered it, I heard as from a trumpet sounding close and yet calling afar. In a minute or so it had happened, and behold! I that, sitting beside Nat, should ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... This unpremeditated buffoonery answered the purpose probably better than the set speech would have done. The Queen laughed heartily, and swore (in her turn) that he had made the best speech she had heard that day. Lambourne, who instantly saw his jest ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... unprejudiced review of the circumstances surrounding the emeute of September 1879 clearly indicates that the spontaneous and unpremeditated action of a discontented, undisciplined, and unpaid soldiery had not been planned, directed, or countenanced by the Ameer, his ministers, or his advisers. There is no evidence to prove or even to suspect that the mutiny of his ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... stillness of his room, and in the profounder hush of his expectancy, was conscious of gathering up all his sensibilities and perceptions into one exquisitely-adjusted instrument of notation. Until now he had tasted Pellerin's society only in unpremeditated snatches, and had always left him with a sense, on his own part, of waste and shortcoming. Now, in the lull of this dedicated hour, he felt that he should miss nothing, and forget nothing, of the initiation that awaited him. And catching sight of Pellerin's ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... necessary, whether there was any greater expedience in providing by authority forms of prayer for the minister than forms of sermons. Reading, whether of prayers or sermons, might be discouraged without encouraging unpremeditated praying and preaching. But the whole question as between the prelatists and the Assembly divines has like many others been best solved by the trial. A vast majority among the Dissenters themselves consider the antecedents to the sermon, with exception of their congregational hymns, as the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... accompaniment than the music of the spheres. Respecting the date of composition, we may trust Aubrey's statement that the poem was commenced in 1658, and when the rapidity of Milton's composition is considered ("Easy my unpremeditated verse") it may, notwithstanding the terrible hindrances of the years 1659 and 1660, have been, as Aubrey thinks, completed by 1663. It would still require mature revision, which we know from Ellwood that it had received by the summer of 1665. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... this discursive preliminary sketch, the length of which was unpremeditated, of the leading influences which are fast hurrying to social disorganization, it is time that once more we stand face to face with the one disorganizing doctrine of one-sided free trade; with the banner on which the phraseurs and farceurs have inscribed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... later he stood alone, between the sunlight and the firelight, gazing blankly at the door that hid her from view; and wondering whether he had advanced or retarded matters by his unpremeditated ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... first to appear in festal array. The hall then was empty, before the army of rearranging, cushion-patting housemaids were marshalled in, and there was a place by the forsaken fire, at one end, where they might imitate, with art, the unpremeditated. Above all, here, for the snatched instants, they could breathe so near to each other that the interval was almost engulfed in it, and the intensity both of the union and the caution became a workable substitute for contact. They had prolongations of instants that counted as visions of bliss; they ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... her and smiled slightly; and then I remember noticing that his full, arched upper lip seldom quite met its counterpart over his teeth. This gave an unpremeditated casual effect to everything he found to say, and made him look a dreamer at his busiest. His smile was at the folly of ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... anything of the kind. He hardly knew me by sight. He thought only of coming to the rescue of an unfortunate lecturer, prostrated on the very threshold of his career; and a friendly hallucination made him for the moment really believe what he said. His unpremeditated assertion must have been set down by the recording angel on the same page with Uncle Toby's oath, and then obliterated in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... followed so quickly, the action was so rapid and unpremeditated, that Ainsley never quite remembered its sequence. He has a confused memory of seeing the wet ground illumined by many lights, of drumming rifle fire and hissing bullets, and then, immediately after, the rush and crash of a couple of German "Fizz-Bang" shells. ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... approaching the ships, and none could be persuaded to come on board. The reason was, that on the former voyages, after parting with the Resolution, the Adventure had visited this place, and ten of her crew had been killed in an unpremeditated skirmish with the natives. It was the fear of retaliatory punishment that kept them aloof. Captain Cook, however, soon made them easy upon the subject, and their familiarity was renewed; but great caution was used, to be fully prepared for a similar attack, by keeping the men well-armed on ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... was mysterious and complete. There was not a single clue to show which way he had gone, or how, or why. Only one thing seemed certain and that was that his departure was unpremeditated. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the "Paradise Lost" as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for the muse having "dictated" to him the "unpremeditated song." And let this be an answer to those who allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the "Orlando Furioso." Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is still more observable in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... invitation, would you dare to return earlier than you are expected, and converse with her before she leaves? We might explain to Chigi afterward that we had miscalculated the time, or that our appearance was in some other way unpremeditated." ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... across the detaching intervention of sixteen crowded years, critically and I fancy almost impartially, to those beginnings of my married life. I try to recall something near to their proper order the developing phases of relationship. I am struck most of all by the immense unpremeditated, generous-spirited insincerities upon which Margaret and I ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... prattle, the visitor gazed about him. The bed had been unslept in, and here and there were evidences of a hasty and unpremeditated leave-taking. Upon an open desk lay a half-finished poem, obviously intended for no eyes save the writer's. Several dainty missives and a lace handkerchief, with a monogram, invited the unscrupulous and prying glance of the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... fascinated by them, with the one on the left as well as the one on the right, without knowing, indeed, which was on the left or which on the right, which was mother, which was daughter. He abandoned himself willingly to the pleasure of unpremeditated and exquisite sensuous delight. He even tried to mingle them in his heart, not to distinguish them in his thought, and quieted desire with the charm of this confusion. Was it not only one woman beside him, composed of this mother and daughter, so much alike? ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... along up the stream, chattering as if there were no rubric of silence in the angler's code. Presently another simple-minded troutling falls a victim to their unpremeditated art; and they begin already, being human, to wish for something larger. In the very last pool that they dare attempt—a dark hole under a steep bank, where the brook issues from the woods—the boy drags out the hoped-for prize, a splendid trout, longer than a new lead-pencil. ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... is only getting up from his seat. How wonderful he is! I never heard anything more impressive in my life. After all, unpremeditated art is the greatest art. Such an effect as that could never have been ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... gelding knew the clank of those suspending chains and the slight unsteadiness of the meeting halves of the bridge as well as it knew oats. But it could not enjoy its own entirely premeditated surprise quite so much as Bertie and Billy were enjoying their entirely unpremeditated flight from Oscar. The wind rippled on the water; down at the boat-house Smith was helping some one embark in a single scull; they saw the green meadows toward Brighton; their foreheads felt cool and unvexed, and each new minute ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... appears that in the past there have been just two methods whereby a civil polity has come into existence and established itself for a short period or a long. These two methods are, first, unpremeditated and sometimes unconscious growth; second, calculated and self-conscious revolution. The first method has produced communities, states and empires that frequently worked well and lasted for long periods; the second has had issue in nothing that has endured ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... statecraft. She is thinking of alliances, of throwing her weight and influence upon the side of law and security. No longer a political Thoreau in the woods, a sort of vegetarian recluse among nations, a being of negative virtues and unpremeditated superiorities, she girds herself for a manly part in the toilsome ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... where the lyrist has to be displayed. Before the gates of Hades and the throne of Proserpine he sings, and his singing is the right outpouring of a poet's soul; each octave resumes the theme of the last stanza with a swell of utterance, a crescendo of intonation that recalls the passionate and unpremeditated descant of a bird upon the boughs alone. To this true quality of music is added the persuasiveness of pleading. That the violin melody of his incomparable song is lost, must be reckoned a great misfortune. We have good reason to believe ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... step was meerly accidental, wholly unpremeditated on either side, and by what can be judged by the character of the lady, and her behaviour afterwards, was no more on her part than a surprize on the senses, in which the mind was not consulted, and had not the least share, I ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... Shakespeare and Shelley have wasted powder upon the skylark; for never such "profuse strains of unpremeditated art" issued from living bird before. Skylark! pooh! who would rise at dawn to hear the skylark if a ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... from Mr. Beirne's: 'low on the sand and loud on the stone.' In the soft-lit room no sound broke the nocturnal stillness except the mechanism of the clock, pushing busily toward the three-quarter mark. Carlisle was looking up at Canning with eyes full of unpremeditated sweetness. Into Canning's face the blood leapt suddenly. Without other warning, he leaned back against the heavy table, and took her almost roughly ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... while he prayed in simple language for comfort and a blessing to the mourning household. He was followed with a very few but intensely earnest words by Luke. Even John Gunter put up an unpremeditated prayer in the words, "God help us!" uttered in a choking voice, and the old fisherman followed them ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... verified; a myth has been received as true at some time, but is now known to be false. A fabrication is designed to deceive; it is a less odious word than falsehood, but is really stronger, as a falsehood may be a sudden unpremeditated statement, while a fabrication is a series of statements carefully studied and fitted together in order to deceive; the falsehood is all false; the fabrication may mingle the true with the false. A figment is something imaginary which the one who utters it may or ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... me to him by intellectual efforts of no mean or common kind (for he saw they delighted me, and they were familiar to him) Belmont, I say, possessed of a pleasing person, a winning aspect, and an address that, though studied with the deepest art, appeared to be open, unpremeditated, and too daring for disguise, this Belmont was no other than the hated Wakefield! Yes, it was Wakefield himself, that by a stratagem which drove me half mad, while it made every drop of blood in his body tingle with triumph, had thus circumvented me! He it was who ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... massacre of St. Bartholomew was a sudden and unpremeditated act cannot be maintained; but it does not follow that the only alternative is to believe that it was the aim of every measure of the Government for two years before. Catherine had long contemplated it as her last expedient in extremity; but she had decided that she could not resort ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... would have it, the hated official was lounging outside his doorway, smoking a cigarette, as Ergin, a gun on his shoulder, strolled homeward from the marshes. The latter asserts that the act was unpremeditated, for at the time his thoughts were far away. But Ergin adds: "The sudden appearance of that evil face and the recollection of its owner's foul and inhuman cruelty suddenly inspired me with uncontrollable fury, and I raised my fowling-piece ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... pointing to General W. H. Harrison, said, "Your father wishes you to take a chair." But the ordinary courtesy of calling the white Governor the father of the red men was repugnant to Tecumseh, and with lofty mien and unpremeditated eloquence he declined the proffered seat. "No," he exclaimed, "the sun is my father, the earth is my mother, and I will rest on her bosom." And he sat down on Mother Earth with his assembled warriors, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... inhaling, not incensen but cigar smoke. I could look at them all the better because, for the most part, they were not looking at me but at my uncle, and calculating consciously or unconsciously how they might use him and assimilate him to their system, the most unpremeditated, subtle, successful and aimless plutocracy that ever encumbered the destinies of mankind. Not one of them, so far as I could see, until disaster overtook him, resented his lies, his almost naked ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... speak of what concerns life and death!" sighed San Miniato. "No—Beatrice did not answer immediately. I said much more—far more than I can remember. How can you ask me to repeat word for word the unpremeditated outpourings of a happy passion? The flood has swept by, leaving deep traces—but who can remember where ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... trick, and always repays careful examination. It may be a spurred, ticked or dotted beard, but in any case the initial stroke must be carefully examined, whatever form it may assume, for the oft-emphasized reason that it belongs so essentially to the clue-providing class of unguarded and unpremeditated automatic strokes that are overlooked by ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... looked about for an agent, and found one in the person of a Mrs. Villars, hairdresser to the widow. He offered this person a handsome douceur in case of success, and she was to undertake that the lady should meet the gentleman in the most unpremeditated manner. Various schemes were resorted to: with the alias, for he was not above an alias, of Major-General Villars, the Beau called at the widow's country house, and was permitted to see the gardens. At a window he espied a lady, whom ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... that one evening he strolled up to their piazza, they lived near to one another in the country, and fell into one of those easy and unpremeditated talks, in which, to be sure, he was always most pleasant, when he said, among other things, "Don't be anxious about the education of your daughters: they will do very well; don't teach them so many things,—teach them one thing." ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... perambulator and was off with it without a license down the back staircase. To the Kensington Gardens we went; it may have been Manitoba we started for, but we arrived at the Kensington Gardens, and it had all been so unpremeditated and smartly carried out that I remember clapping my hand to my head in the street, to make sure that I ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... colleague was required for him. He would fain, for reasons of his own, have been that smart colleague himself; but that he knew was impossible. He and Neverbend were the Alpha and Omega of official virtues and vices. But he took an opportunity of mentioning before Sir Gregory, in a passing unpremeditated way, how excellently adapted Tudor was for the work. It so turned out that his effort was successful, and ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... me,' she said quickly; and with a sudden movement she went up to him and put her hand on his shoulder. The caress, so innocent, unpremeditated, and instinctive, ran through him like a voltaic shock. These two were almost strangers; they had scarcely met till within the past week, Mark being seldom in Bursley. 'You mistake me—it is a shame of ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... his feelings had unwittingly changed their pole. On his knees before her, he had vowed that her happiness was the end of all his pleading; now it was frankly happiness he sought, the happiness of them both, but, first and foremost, happiness. And it could hardly have been otherwise: the one unpremeditated mingling of their lives had killed thought; he could only feel now, and, throughout these days, he was conscious of each movement he made, as of a song sung aloud. He wandered up and down the wooded paths, blind to everything but the image of her face, which was always ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... of this people, the young girl about the time of the feast entered bearing a cup which she was to present to the one whom she would choose for a husband; she stopped before the Greek and offered him the cup. This unpremeditated act appeared to have been inspired from heaven; the Gallic chief gave his daughter to Euxenus and permitted him and his companions to found a city on the gulf of Marseilles. Later the Phocaeans, seeing their ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... wandering again. Bear with the unpremeditated enthusiasm of a citizen who only attained years of discretion at her last birthday. We shall soon have done with Sandwich; we are close to the door ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... one throbbing with feeling; the eight Novelletten, almost, but not quite successful attempts at a new form; the genial but unsatisfactory G-minor Sonata, the Nachtstuecke, and the Vienna Carnaval, opus 26, are not all of these the unpremeditated outpourings of a genuine poet, a poet of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... The pattern is, of course, a traditional Norse one, although the carving is comparatively modern. The points to be noted in the other box were its quaint and simple construction, the use of the letters as decoration, more especially the unpremeditated manner in which they have been grouped, the four letters below making a short line which is eked out by a rude bit of ornament. The letters are cut right through the wood, and are surrounded with an engraved line. Fig. 51 was noted on account of the way in which a very simple pierced ornament ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... being produced they cannot be so. The glow of a first conception must in some measure survive or rekindle itself in the work of planning and executing; and what is called a technical expedient may 'come' to a man with as sudden a glory as a splendid image. Verse may be easy and unpremeditated, as Milton says his was, and yet many a word in it may be changed many a time, and the last change be more 'inspired' than the original. The difference between poets in these matters is no doubt considerable, and sometimes important, but it can only be a ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... pastoral. Overton Churchyard is one of the "seven wonders" of North Wales: it has a very trim and stately appearance, not that ragged, free if melancholy, outspreadedness which distinguishes many country cemeteries, that unpremeditated luxuriance of creepers and flowers, blossoming bushes and grasses, that make up at least half of one's pleasant reminiscences of such places. How much more interesting to find an old tomb or quaint "brass" under the temple of a wild rosebush or in the firm ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... man tripped in his haste to get down, plunged into my bosom, threw his arms round my neck to save himself, and almost bore me to the ground. Neither of us being demonstrative in our affections, this unpremeditated, not to say unintentional, embrace I felt to be quite touching. My father obviously resolved to make the most of his opportunities, for he gave me a thoroughly exhaustive hug ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... believe that London was just as good in 1876 as it had been fifty years before. We were young and happy, enjoying ourselves, and on easy terms with one another. "It was roses, roses all the way." Our talk was unpremeditated and unstudied, quick as lightning, springing out of the interest or the situation of the moment, uttered in an instant and as soon forgotten. Everyone who has ever made the attempt must realize that to gather up the fragments of such talk as this is as impossible as to collect shooting stars or ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... love with her from that earliest time when she would not give him the least of her possessions, and now he asked her if she would not promise him the greatest. She did not like what she felt "rehearsed" in his proposal; it was not her idea of a proposal, which ought to be spontaneous and unpremeditated in terms; at the same time, she resented his precipitation, which she could ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... a few instances, and only a few, in which we knew any thing that was happening in the world; and even then our knowledge did not extend out of the city." We cannot be infallibly certain of Maria Monk's description of the interior of the Nunnery; but that unpremeditated remark, so minutely descriptive of the predominating ignorance among the Nuns of all terrestrial concerns exterior of the Convent, is satisfactory proof that the narrator was not sketching from fancy, but ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk |
