"Unprovoked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to avenge these wrongs. The thievish Blackfeet had made these assaults upon them entirely unprovoked. The savages were greatly elated with their victories, and it was deemed essential that they should be so thoroughly chastised, that they would no longer molest those who were hunting and trapping within those wild solitudes. The whole party of trappers struck the trail which led to the ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... conduct of those factions which hurried you into this civil, unjust, and unnatural war, at a time when Great Britain was straining every nerve in defense of her own, and the liberties of the world. Europe is now happy and free, and now hastens justly to avenge an unprovoked insult. Accept of my offers; everything I have promised, I guarantee to you, on the sacred ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... manifesting itself so truculently that a British garrison had been placed in Khelat-i-Ghilzai, right in the heart of the disturbed territory. This warning and defensive measure the tribes had regarded with angry jealousy; but it was not until a rash 'political' had directed the unprovoked assault and capture of a Ghilzai fort that the tribes passionately flew to arms, bent on contesting the occupation of their rugged country. Colonel Wymer was sent from Candahar with a force, escorting a convoy of stores intended for the equipment ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... nation. This, of course, was not the first news that we had received of it; we had been duly apprised of its departure from Libau on 15th October and had also heard—with surprise on the part of the Japanese, and with bitter mortification and shame on my own part—of its subsequent unprovoked and unpunished attack upon the Gamecock fleet of British trawlers; but nobody was in the least disturbed by the news that this formidable fleet was at last actually at sea, for as a matter of fact we in Japan regarded its departure as nothing more ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... knights were well pleased with this decision. It was an age when quarter was but seldom given, and wholesale slaughters followed battles, so that they had, naturally, the ideas common to the time. Still, they both felt that this attack was wholly unprovoked and altogether beyond the scope of the expedition, and were well pleased that their leader would have naught to do with it. It was, however, a different matter when they heard that an army twelve thousand strong was coming out against them, ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... "children are the most vexatious creatures in the world. The idea of her getting inflammation of the lungs in this unprovoked fashion. The end of it will be that I shall not be able to go to the duchess's ball to-morrow night, and she was so kind about it, she made quite a point of my coming. Besides I have bought that lovely new dress on purpose. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... against the Greeks on this occasion was so great that an inter-allied commission, including American representatives, was appointed to make a thorough investigation. This commission unanimously found the Greeks guilty of the unprovoked massacre of 800 Turkish men, women and children, who were shot down in cold blood while being marched along the Smyrna waterfront, those who were not killed instantly being thrown by Greek soldiers into the sea. High handed ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... was brought up before this clergyman charged with a violent and unprovoked assault on a man in a public-house. He was said to have gone into the room where the prosecutor was, and to have taken up his jug of ale and appropriated the contents to his own use without the owner's consent. The prosecutor, annoyed at the outrage, rose, ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... down to give thanks to their God, their Government, and their General. Suddenly, on the chorus of their rejoicing there broke a discordant note. They were confronted with the fact that a 'friendly Power' had, unprovoked, endeavoured to rob them of the fruits of their victories. They now realised that while they had been devoting themselves to great military operations, in broad daylight and the eye of the world, and prosecuting an enterprise on which they had ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... prosperity or disaster entirely out of relation to any of their actions; men upon whom good or bad luck seemed suddenly, at a turn of the road, to spring from the ground or descend from the stars, undeserved, unprovoked, but complete and inevitable. One, we will say, who scarcely has given a thought to some appointment for which he knows his rival to be better equipped, will see this rival vanish at the decisive moment, another, who has counted upon ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... came over the soldier's face at this unprovoked demonstration of heartless cruelty was fearful, but he kept his head. "Lor' blime!" he commented to me when I came up and sympathised with him over his loss, "I could have knocked the god-damned head off the swine and I ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... say to every one that I always pronounce her name in German fashion because she occasionally shies, but that is the truth. I do not mind her shying, or a certain mysterious and apparently unprovoked jump, with which she sometimes indulges herself, and no one else rides her, so I think she does no harm, but I do not like the principle of allowing her to be wicked, unrebuked and unhindered, and some day I shall give my mind to admonishing this four-footed Princess of Thule, who seems at ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... would gladly have scoured the Strand, with the charitable purpose, now he saw himself so well supported, of knocking the London knaves, who had insulted him, into twiggen bottles; but he was withheld by the prudence of Julian, who, though himself extremely irritated by the unprovoked ill-usage which they had received, saw himself in a situation in which it was necessary to exercise more caution than vengeance. He prayed and pressed his father to seek some temporary place of retreat from the fury of the populace, while that prudent ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... and the first document of the new Minister of Foreign Affairs. It is bold, high-toned, and American, but it has dark shadows; shows an inexperienced hand in diplomacy and in dealing with events. The passages about the frequent changes in Europe are unnecessary, and unprovoked by anything whatever. It is especially offensive to France, to the French people, and to Louis Napoleon. It is bosh, but in Europe they will consider ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... But are Negroes treated unfairly by juries and public opinion? Yes, and the experience and observation of every fair-minded man will confirm the assertion. One cardinal proof is that a white man seldom receives punishment for assault, however brutal, however unprovoked, however cowardly, be it maiming, homicide, or murder upon a Negro unless, forsooth, the assailant be some degraded creature, disowned by his own caste. Of the numberless instances—running into the thousands—during the past twenty-three years, of ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... very questionable, to say the least, if inoffensive wayfarers should be expected to quietly submit to the unprovoked attack of ferocious animals large enough to tear down a man, merely in view of possibly checking their ferocity at some other time. When capering wildly about in an unequal contest with three or four of these animals, while conscious of having the means at hand to ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... cannot and will not side with Russia, because Russia's arrogance and wickedness have caused this horrible trouble, and because duty and conscience and tradition forbid me to draw the sword against Old England. In the same degree duty and conscience forbid me to make unprovoked war against Russia, because Russia, so far, has done me no harm. So I thought, so I willed when I thought myself isolated. How then could I now suddenly abandon a steady policy, preserved in the face of many ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... would otherwise have left the alligator to himself—became so infuriated at this unprovoked assault, that he turned and sprang upon his new enemy, seizing him round the body in a firm hug. Both struggled over the ground, the one growling and snorting, while the other uttered a sound like ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... asking for water. His senses, dormant and unobserving, permitted the memory to attain a lifelike accuracy and the figure was presented to his inward eye with photographic clearness. Very still in the interest of this unprovoked recollection, he saw again the haggard face with its lowering expression, and remembered Chrystie's question about ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the man who had made so unprovoked an assault upon him was characteristic of his nature. He never could cherish malice, and it was very hard work for him to remain angry with any one, ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... company," says a contemporary writer, "but his wants very often led him into bad." He ran a course of notorious and low dissipation, and was twice tried for murder before he was twenty. His first offence was the cruel and almost unprovoked murder of William Mountford, an accomplished actor, whom Mohun stabbed whilst off his guard. The second was the death of Mr. Charles Coote. For these crimes Lord Mohun had been tried by his peers, and, strange to say, acquitted. On his last acquittal he spoke ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... "my friend and I represent a little group of people who have some interest in the place where we met last night. We are deputed to ask you to explain, if you can, your conduct,—your attack, which it seemed to us was absolutely unprovoked, upon an habitue of the place and an ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... external relations, and now I appeal to your justice; I ask you with equal confidence if, when within the kingdom faction after faction was detected and suppressed, I yielded to any sentiment of undue vengeance? Has not every outbreak of unprovoked disaffection rather tended to exhibit the forbearance of the King my son and my own? Need I recall the concessions which we have made to those who had sought to injure us? Need I ask you to remember ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... when Tennyson's sledge-hammer onslaught was brought to them, so it is said, by a distinguished man of letters—a particular friend of both parties—they rejoiced exceedingly. Tennyson's broadside had not been unprovoked. Years before, in 1830, he had published, through Effingham Wilson, "Poems, chiefly Lyrical," which contained the poem "To a Darling Room," afterwards suppressed. Seizing on this, Lytton had re-echoed in his "New Timon: A Romance of London," the strictures which Christopher North has so severely, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... after the blacks, who were overtaken and severely punished for their unprovoked attack on Castle Hill Farm. Several were made prisoners, and the captain begged not only that their lives might be spared, but treated them so kindly that when set at liberty they expressed their regret at having attempted to injure so good a man, and promised that they ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... merchants from certain privileges in trading with French colonies, which had been accorded only since France had become involved in war with Great Britain. The principle was utterly illegal and extremely injurious. Mr. Adams, in his first resolution, stigmatized it "as an unprovoked aggression upon the property of the citizens of these United States, a violation of their neutral rights, and an encroachment upon their national independence." By his second resolution, the President was requested to ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... seized him. At twenty-eight he burned to play the part of Alexander. Thenceforth the history of his reign chiefly pertains to his gigantic wars,—some defensive, but mostly offensive, aggressive, and unprovoked. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as they passed and said, 'Logan is the friend of the white men.' I had even thought to have lived with you but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There remains not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it; I have killed many; I have fully ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... beasts, much the most stupid of all the dangerous game I know. Generally their attitude is one of mere stupidity and bluff. But on occasions they do charge wickedly, both when wounded and when entirely unprovoked. The first I ever shot I mortally wounded at a few rods' distance, and it charged with the utmost determination, whereat I and my companion both fired, and more by good luck than anything else brought it to the ground just thirteen paces ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... members killed outright and a third badly crippled. So soon as surgeons plugged up the holes in his hide which members of the vengeful posse shot into him after they had him surrounded and before his ammunition gave out, he was brought to bar to answer for the unprovoked murder of a postal clerk on a transcontinental limited. No time was wasted in hurrying his trial through to its conclusion; it was felt that there was crying need to make an example of this red-handed desperado. Having been convicted with commendable celerity, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... their unprovoked attack upon peaceful ships, vastly smaller and supposedly of inferior armament; and also from the nature of that attack. This vessel is probably a scout or an exploring ship, since it seems to be alone. It is not altogether beyond the bounds of reason ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... disobedience of Orders,—had they retreated without a very extraordinary miracle the Loyalists would have fallen a prey to their unmerciful yet unprovoked Enemies. ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones
... the Comparini by the morals of their class, and Count Guido by the peculiarities of his own nature; admits the punishment of the wife and parents to have been excessive, and cannot admit it to have been unprovoked; does not pretend to decide between the conflicting statements, and does not consider that Pompilia's dying confession throws much light upon them; seeing that it may be equally true, or false, or neutralized by another reserved for the priest's ear. Does not regard putting the Count ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... these urged on the inevitable war, for which the Indians now openly prepared. Even the mighty Mingo chief, Logan, who had ever extended the hand of friendship to the white man, now appeared with uplifted tomahawk to avenge the unprovoked murder of his friends. Some eight hundred warriors were soon assembled, thirsting to avenge these recent murders, and eager to establish their right to the disputed territory. Logan, Elenipsico, Red Eagle, and Puckeshinwau were to lead the Indians, with Cornstalk, 'the mighty ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... said regions. If the rights and interests referred to above are in jeopardy, the two governments will communicate with one another fully and frankly as to the measures which should be taken to safeguard those menaced rights or interests, and will act in common in case of unprovoked attack or aggressive action, wherever arising, or the attack or aggressive action, whenever arising, on the part of any ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... up his mind and unwilling to act; Lingard timid and hesitating one minute, angry yet inactive the next; Lingard puzzled in a word, because confronted with a situation that discomposed him by its unprovoked malevolence, by its ghastly injustice, that to his rough but unsophisticated palate tasted distinctly of sulphurous fumes from the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... us he attacked him with ferocious banter. He showed a skill I should never have credited him with in finding the places where the unhappy Dutchman was most sensitive. Strickland employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective. The attack was so unprovoked that Stroeve, taken unawares, was defenceless. He reminded you of a frightened sheep running aimlessly hither and thither. He was startled and amazed. At last the tears ran from his eyes. And the worst of it was that, though you hated Strickland, and the exhibition was horrible, it was impossible ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... save for an incident which happened while they were becalmed off Block Island. The crew here employed themselves in catching cod, and to Franklin, at this time a devout vegetarian, the taking of every fish seemed a kind of unprovoked murder, since none of them had done or could do their catchers any injury. But he had been formerly a great lover of fish, and the smell of the frying-pan was most tempting. He balanced some time between principle ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... disclosed his offer of an unconditional alliance against Russia. Prussia, hoping for Russian aid still, put aside the French demands, but the Tsar Alexander expressed a decided preference for a defensive campaign against France, and refused any assistance unless the French should commit an unprovoked aggression on Koenigsberg. Scharnhorst seems to have seen the wisdom of this policy. He now turned to Austria, but there again a definite alliance was refused. Russia was equally unable to move Austria to join her, so that Russia and Prussia were each isolated ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Persians for so long a time as God permitted you; and they in their turn, since the same God stirs them up, are repaying you with the like. As for us however, neither at that time did we do any wrong to these men nor now shall we attempt to do any wrong to them unprovoked: if however the Persians shall come against our land also, and do wrong first to us, we also shall refuse to submit 111: but until we shall see this, we shall remain by ourselves, for we are of opinion that the Persians have ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... present extremes, yet they expressed themselves with the utmost virulence against the aristocrates, and would hear neither of reconcilement nor palliation. On the other hand, these dispositions were not altogether unprovoked—the young men had been persecuted by their relations, and banished the society of their acquaintance; and their political opinions had acted as an universal proscription. There were even some against whom the doors of the parental habitation were shut.—These ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... speech is much better. If he persists after that, he is either an ignoramus or drunk. If drunk ask two or three of your supporters in the audience to lead him off down the street. If he is a natural fool the problem is not so easy. But if you keep unbroken courtesy and he keeps up his unprovoked interruptions some indignant person standing near will abate the nuisance with a punch in the eye—which is the most effectual ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... 6-7. Earliest recollection of erection. Unprovoked at first. A disposition to punish the organ and satisfaction in doing so. From this time erection took place whenever it was ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "should there be more unprovoked assaults from the people of another planet? What was their object? What had they to gain? ... Perhaps we were safe after all." The answer that destroyed all hope came to them borne in upon a wall of water that swept the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... indeed to restrain, but without inflicting on him serious injury. In an especial degree was this tenderness felt on the part of the Government and people of the North toward that peculiar institution of the South which is distinctively known to be, in some way, fundamentally related to this unprovoked and unreasonable attack. While the South was attributing to the whole North a rabid abolitionism; while the North itself was half suspecting that it had committed some wrong in the excess of its devotion to human ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... of me, base poisoner!" answered Douglas, "wouldst thou have committed so horrible, so unprovoked a murder, and mentioned my ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... been loaned to him from the guard-house at Fort Brady. Dr. Bagg pronounced the ball an ounce-ball, such as is employed in the U.S. service. The wad was the torn leaf of a hymn book. It was extensively reported by the diurnal press, that I had been the victim of this unprovoked perfidy.] ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the body as we thus happened to do, the atrocity of this heartless treason against society and the injured dead becomes yet more striking; it seeming wonderful that the piteousness of the sight—the mute pleading of that mouth full of cloated blood—the arousing ocular evidence of the unprovoked assassin's cruelty—the helplessness of the aged woman—her innocence—all should not have kindled humanity in their hearts, (if all principle was dead in their dark minds,) just enough to dare to call a foul murder "murder"—to turn those twelve Rebecca-ridden, crouching ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... against my good offices. He remonstrated indignantly when I acquiesced in O'Corrigan's assertion that my humble friend must be demented, a plea which opened a way out of the predicament. Fortunately, the Professor's own wisdom in refusing an explanation of an apparently unprovoked assault gave color to this theory, and as Talcott's one clear thought was to escape without any unpleasant notoriety, O'Corrigan satisfied his ire by ordering his mad employee out of ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... these too should have their lesson. He would show them the savagery of which he was capable. Never again would he trust man; he was cruel and unfair. Two experiences had taught him that—first the poisoned bird and now the unprovoked attack. Hereafter he would match his cunning with the man-creatures and if necessary, it would be a battle to the bitter end. Vast as the wilderness was, it was too small to harbor both the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... with Father Gibert until spring, and shall take leave of him by relating an anecdote or two illustrative of his loyalty and benevolence. Some time during Madison's unprovoked war with Great Britain, an alarm came from the upper part of the parish of which Father Gibert was cure, that a party of Americans had been seen marching down the country. The Capitaine of militia, who was the cure's next door neighbour, was immediately sent for, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... Mac snapped at the Boy as he came back with the fresh supply. This unprovoked attack was ample evidence that Mac was uneasy under the eyes of the camp, angry at his own weakness, and therefore the readier to dare anybody to ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... as I think proper; nothing binds me to converse as you dictate. So far from always speaking as I have done just now, I shall never address any one in a tone so stern or in language so harsh, unless in answer to unprovoked insult." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... that? They might have been going anywhere. Why man!—that pair could pretty nearly nail us for unprovoked assault." ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... they had been colliers.' 'I have found,' he says again, 'some of the uneducated poor who have exquisite taste and sentiment, and many, very many, of the rich who have scarcely any at all.' He wrote to Fletcher, in what one must call an unprovoked strain of rudeness, on the danger of his conversing with the 'genteel Methodists.' Indeed, the leading members of the Evangelical school—Lady Huntingdon, Sir Richard and Rowland Hill, Venn, Romaine, and others—were, quite apart from their Calvinism, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... it had been agreed that pending the delineation of the frontier there should be no further advance on either side. In April, however, a conflict occurred between the Russians and the Afghans, which seemed to indicate that General Komaroff had committed an act of unprovoked aggression on the Ameer. Mr. Gladstone moved a vote of credit on the 27th in a speech, whose eloquence and energy greatly stirred both sides of the House. Happily, the difficulty with Russia was adjusted by conceding ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... thought proper to fall foul of me (wholly unprovoked) in the Athenaeum of August 25, '88. I ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... 1870, France and Prussia had carefully avoided bringing their troops upon Belgian soil. Now, however, with the German army invading Belgium, the English statesmen had to decide their course. As heads of one of the nations to guarantee Belgium's freedom, they called on Germany to explain this unprovoked invasion. The Germans made no answer. They were busily attacking the city of Liege. Great Britain gave Germany twenty-four hours in which to withdraw her troops. At the end of this time, with Germany paying no attention still, England solemnly ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... Ireland. The parties concerned were, a hen of the game species, and a rat of the middle size. The hen, in an accidental perambulation round a spacious room, accompanied by an only chicken, the sole surviving offspring of a numerous brood, was roused to madness by an unprovoked attack made by a voracious cowardly rat on her unsuspecting chirping companion. The shrieks of the beloved captive, while being dragged away by the enemy, excited every maternal feeling in the affectionate bosom of the feathered dame; she flew at the corner whence ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... degraded—goaded by the memory of the past, stung by the present, and driven to desperation by the fearful looking for of wrongs for ever to come. In the other, enlightened into the nature of rights, the principles of justice, and the dictates of the law of love, unprovoked by wrongs, with cool deliberation, and by system, they perpetrate these acts upon those to whom they owe unnumbered obligations for whole lives of unrequited service. On which side may palliation be pleaded, and which party may most reasonably claim an abatement ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... state of affairs, in May, 1845, the civil war broke out. The Christians attacked the Druses in several districts on the same day. The attack was unprovoked, and eventually unsuccessful. Twenty villages were seen burning at the same time from Beiroot. The Druses repulsed the Christians and punished them sharply; the Turkish troops, at the instigation of the European authorities, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... equals of men. This disappointment helps to give rise to that antagonism which is almost inexplicable save as George Eliot's phrase throws light upon it. He thinks that he insults women by these perverse feelings of unprovoked hostility. 'Is it not extraordinary,' he exclaims, 'when among men I have no evil thoughts, no malice, no spleen; I feel free to speak or to be silent; ... I am free from all suspicion, and comfortable. When I am among women, I have evil thoughts, malice, spleen; I cannot speak ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... April, 1861, revealed the real intention of the Southern people in their unprovoked assault upon Fort Sumpter. The thunder of rebel cannon shook the air not only around Charleston, but sent its thrilling vibrations to the remotest sections of the country, and was the precursor of a storm whose wrath no one anticipated. This shock ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... to his feet, he clenched his big fist, and made a step toward Sampson, who sat, slight, small, and unprovoked, in his chair. ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... brutal," she broke out, with a petulant stamp of the foot. "To think that your sister, too, should have such a unprovoked insult offered to her! I am ready to sink with ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my due deference and acknowledgment to an established custom of our newest authors, by a long digression unsought for and a universal censure unprovoked, by forcing into the light, with much pains and dexterity, my own excellences and other men's defaults, with great justice to myself and candour to them, I now happily resume my subject, to the infinite satisfaction both of the reader and ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... consisted in the greater imminence of the danger, in having to contend with armed men instead of ferocious brutes, and in the higher value of the prizes which they would obtain in case of success. The idea of there being any injustice or wrong in this wanton and unprovoked aggression upon the territories of a neighboring nation seems not to have entered the mind either of the royal robber ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... that the people of Saguntum, who were insolent and hostile, relying on the protection of Rome, should be punished. The envoys then went to Carthage, where they made an animated protest against what they regarded as an unprovoked attack upon their allies. Rome, in fact, was anxious at this moment to postpone the struggle with Carthage for the same reason that Hannibal was anxious to press ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... and the Chairman, on returning, said that this was a most brutal and unprovoked assault, made all the worse by the previous drinking habits of the defendant. If it had not been for the good character he bore generally speaking (here he looked towards the elder magistrate, who had evidently said a word in Smith's behalf), he would have ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... Jim's hand was upon his collar, while, with language which was neither choice nor mild, he struck him several times, and would have continued the blows had he not in his turn been seized upon by one of the masters, who had seen the whole thing, to whom it appeared to be the most unprovoked attack. ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... and his prayer presumed a favourable answer. Barbara listened in quiet; I could not tell whether fear alone bound her, or whether the soft courtly voice bred fascination also. I was half-mad that I could not hear, and had much ado not to rush out, unprovoked, and defy the man before whom my master had bowed almost to the ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... his mother's brother. Strange to say, Hindoos as well as Mahommedans make offerings to this shrine, and implore the favours of this military ruffian, whose only recorded merit consists of having destroyed a great many Hindoos in a wanton and unprovoked invasion of their territory. They say, that he did what he did against Hindoos in the conscientious discharge of his duties, and could not have done it without God's permission—that God must then have been angry with them for their transgressions, and used this man, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... a much maligned race. They are exceedingly independent, and although along the frontier of their own territory in S'suchuan they wage a war of robbery and destruction it is not wholly unprovoked. No one can enter their country safely unless he is under the protection of a chief who acts as a sponsor and passes him along to others. Mr. Brooke, an Englishman, was killed by the Lolos, but he was not properly "chaperoned," ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... do you suspect? Be calm now, don't speak in a passion. You are a witness, sir—a dispassionate, unprejudiced witness. Zounds and fury! this is the most insolent, unprovoked, diabolical—but whom ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... flushing in his turn. 'What do you mean by these insulting words? Why do you so basely use them to me, unprovoked?' ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... clearly identified as having perpetrated the unprovoked crime of assassinating the temporary occupant of ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... the very best man in the world, this remark stirred the women up to a degree of wrath which no amount of abuse leveled against themselves would have aroused. On the other hand, the Atlanta people, even those who were not in favor of suffrage, felt mortified by this unprovoked insult to their guests, and many of them took occasion in private to express their regret. Several speakers at the convention criticised Dr. Hawthorne's utterances, and every such allusion was received with ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Saturday, Samuel Evans, better known as "Young Dutch Sam," a pugilist, was brought before Mr. Conant, charged with having committed an unprovoked and violent assault on policeman Mackenzie, C 182, and Lord Waldegrave was also charged with attempting to ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... were too much incensed to let the bully off so easily, for they hated him as much as they liked Jan and were indignant at the unprovoked assault Mr Flinders had made upon him. As luck would have it, while they were debating how they should pay him out properly, and whether to give him another ducking in the muddy water or no, a happy means presented itself to them for punishing ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... unkind, and on Saturday nights people were tired and busy and altogether disposed to be unkind, she immediately noted it as fresh evidence that there did indeed exist that human conspiracy of malevolence in which the sudden unprovoked unceasing cruelty of Mr. Philip had made her believe. But if the client from Rio were with her, things would not happen perversely and she would not think dark thoughts. "That'll be fine. You'll make ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... caused a painful distress in my household. He made an unprovoked attack upon a little nephew of mine who is visiting in my household, insulted him by calling him vicious names and falsehoods, stating that ladies of his family were in jail. He then tried to make his pony ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... the Roman under the unprovoked storm had the young Jew's sympathy; so that when he reached the corner of the house, the latter leaned yet farther over the parapet to see him go by, and in the act rested a hand upon a tile which had been a long time cracked and allowed to ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... snake which can, and does, pursue and overtake a mounted man, and which with a touch of its poisoned fang can slay the most powerful brute. The huge Himalayan bear roams under the giant trees, feeding on fruit and honey, yet ready to shatter unprovoked the skull of a poor woodcutter. Those savage striped and spotted cats, the tiger and the panther, steal through it on velvet paw and take ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... and tried to stop him. That he was drunk was Rutter's own fault, with his damned notions of drowning everybody in drink every minute of the day and night. I saw the whole affair and heard the insult, and it was wholly unprovoked. Harry did just what was right, and if he hadn't I'd either have made Willits apologize or I would have shot him myself the moment the affair could have been arranged, no matter where we were. I know perfectly well"—here ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the formidable and unprovoked invasion of their country by Kublai Khan. The Japanese are by nature a military nation, and the Chinese writers themselves describe them as "intrepid, inured to fatigue, despising life, and knowing well how to face death; ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... offering to France the protection she asked, there should be a separate treaty between France, Great Britain, and the United States, according to which the two latter powers should promise to come to the defense of France in case of sudden and unprovoked attack by Germany. The treaty did not, according to Wilson, constitute a definite alliance but merely an "undertaking," but it laid him open to the charge ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... to attach any importance to her misrepresentations,' said Mr. Kendal, turning to Mrs. Meadows, 'but I know not what amends she can make for this most unprovoked slander. Speak, Lucy, have ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an instance of unprovoked ferocity in a red deer at Taymouth, in which the present Earl of Dalhousie ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... on his proposal; I was reluctant to mark the first approach of civilized man to this country of a savage race by an unprovoked act of pillage and robbery; yet we were now in the desert, on the point of perishing for want of food, the pangs of hunger gnawing us even in our very sleep, and with the means of temporary relief at hand. I asked myself if I should be acting justly ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... for the warriors that followed or faced Kamehameha. I give the singular instance as the more explicit; but the whole race must have been stricken at the moment with a similar weakness. No man dare say of this revolution that it was unprovoked; but its means were treachery and violence; the numbers and position of those engaged made the design one of the most insolent in history; and a mere modicum of native boldness and cohesion must have brought it to the dust. "My race had one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... servility or animosity, had, when fortune had changed, or when passion had cooled, been repealed and solemnly stigmatized as unjust. Thus, in old times, the Act which was passed against Roger Mortimer, in the paroxysm of a resentment not unprovoked, had been, at a calmer moment, rescinded on the ground that, however guilty he might have been, he had not had fair play for his life. Thus, within the memory of the existing generation, the law which attainted Strafford had been annulled, without one dissentient ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Aggression," I replied. "Its mottoes are, 'Stop trouble before it starts,' and, 'If we have to fight, let's do it on the other fellow's real estate.' But this situation is just a little too delicate for literal application of those principles. An unprovoked attack on the z'Srauff would set every other non-human race in the galaxy against us.... Would an attack by the z'Srauff on New ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... the crowded events of yesterday, Mavis was concerned for the consequences of the violence she had offered Orgles. Her faith in human justice had been much disturbed; she feared that Orgles, moved with a desire for vengeance, would represent her as the aggressor, himself as the victim of an unprovoked assault: any moment she feared to find herself in the clutches of the law. She was too dispirited to look for work; to ease the tension in her mind, she tried to discover what had become of Mrs Ellis, ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... it was some pleasure (says John Davis, an Englishman, who was the principal pilot of the squadron) to see how the base Indians did fly, how they were killed, and how well they were drowned."* This barbarous and apparently unprovoked attack was attributed, but perhaps without any just grounds, to the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... unscrupulous aggression of France. There were few men who, like Bismarck, were willing to disregard this national feeling and support the Italians. To have deliberately joined Napoleon in what after all was an unprovoked attack on a friendly prince of the same nation, was an act which could have been undertaken only by a man of the calibre of Frederick the Great. After all, Austria was German; the Austrian provinces in Italy had been assigned to the Emperor by the same authority as the Polish provinces ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... sins were unprovoked murder, lying to the elders of the tribe, or stealing a woman within the forbidden degrees—that is, of the same hereditary totem, i.e. of the same blood, or of ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... native beasts had been discovered on Warlock by the Terran explorers. And of those four or five different species, none had proved hostile if unprovoked. But that did not mean that somewhere back in the wild lands into which Shann was heading there were no heretofore unknowns, perhaps slyer and as vicious as the wolverines when they ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... difficulty, had drawn his attention to the international situation. It had informed him that it considered the danger of an attack on France by Germany to be a real one, and had inquired whether, in the event of an unprovoked attack, Great Britain would think that she had so much at stake as to make her willing to join in resisting it. If this were to be even a possible attitude for Great Britain, the French Government had intimated ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... Help of these, and a thousand other nameless Arts, which tis easier for her to practise than for another to express, by the Obstinacy of her Goodness and unprovoked Submission, in spight of all her Afflictions and ill Usage, Bromius is become a Man of Sense and a kind Husband, and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carcases. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter, which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed the king's body-guard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... offence, and some of them for deep enmity. The Dutch, though disliked, were tolerated; but the Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Russians had forfeited the good opinion of the islanders by their unprovoked and unjustifiable aggressions. It is not improbable that the selection of the United States for their first foreign embassy may have been induced by the consideration that the relations between the Japanese and their American neighbors have always been pacific, and that they have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... He was absolutely fearless, but as loving and gentle as he was brave. He understood every word spoken within his hearing, and his master declared that for his wisdom he ought to be named "Solomon." He never made an unprovoked assault upon a living creature, and would stand any amount of abuse from children or those weaker than himself. Let an indignity be offered to his beloved master in his presence, though, and his fury was as terrible as that of a young lion. Then woe to the unfortunate ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... at the sharpness of her guest's unprovoked onslaught, Damaris had dropped the little bunch of trinkets and backed into her corner ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... The unprovoked insults angered the Americans as well as the Brazilians. Knowlton leaped through the toldo and ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... acquaintance of the Iroquois with triese colonists was through two most wanton and butcherly assaults which Champlain and his soldiers, in company with their Indian allies, made upon their unoffending neighbors. No milder epithets can justly describe these unprovoked invasions, in which the Iroquois bowmen, defending their homes, were shot down mercilessly with firearms, by strangers whom they had never before seen or perhaps even heard of. This stroke of evil policy, which tarnished an illustrious name, left far-reaching consequences, affecting ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... war. The viceroy was taken a prisoner to India, whence he never returned. As though ashamed to enter upon a second unprovoked and unjust war alone, she invited France, Russia, and America to join her. France was quite ready to do so in the hope of strengthening her position in Indo-China, and with nothing more than the murder of a ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... character, that I could not help suspecting you had heard the facts from a person with whom you spent some hours lately; and I was much hurt by your alluding to them in such a severe and public manner. You will ask me, how I could conceive you to be capable of such unprovoked malevolence: and my answer is, 'I cannot tell;' I can only say, such is the effect of the unfortunate susceptibility of my heart, or, to speak more candidly, of my temper. I confess I cannot, in these particulars, alter my nature. Blame me as much as I blame myself; be as angry as you please, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... The Andamanese attacked and murdered without provocation every stranger they could on his landing; they burnt his body (as they did in fact that of every enemy); and they had weird all-night dances round fires. Combine these three observations with the unprovoked murder of one of themselves, and the fear aroused by such occurrences in a far land in ignorant mariners' minds, century after century, and a persistent charge of cannibalism is almost ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... These sudden and wholly unprovoked changes give cause for reflection. When my geranium-flowers were devastated, how had the obtrusive Bee, untroubled by the profound dissimilarity between the petals, snow-white here, bright scarlet there, how had she learnt her trade? Nothing ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... good authority for saying that, gross as it was, Mr. WILLIS would have considered it utterly beneath his notice. As it was, however, he deemed it not amiss at one and the same time to punish skulking envy and impotent malignity; to vindicate his reputation with his townsmen against unprovoked calumny; and to render the repetition of any obnoxious remarks from the same source altogether 'of none effect' and unworthy of heed. This he accomplished by his 'Defence' and the 'terrors of the law,' which speedily produced ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... some from choice, and some from necessity. That against the Catti [810] was unprovoked, but that against the Sarmatians was necessary; an entire legion, with its commander, having been cut off by them. He sent two expeditions against the Dacians; the first upon the defeat of Oppius Sabinus, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... quadrilateral, the French Emperor secretly expressed his approval of the Piedmontese attack on the Papal States, and at the same time publicly withdrew his ambassador at Turin, as a protest in the face of mankind against this unprovoked and unjustifiable attack. England, which could not be supposed to have much sympathy with the Holy See, notwithstanding the declarations of her best statesmen in support of the temporal sovereignty, openly pronounced in favor of the Piedmontese aggression ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... quite as wanton and unprovoked as Warrington's, and Bartholomew's foe was relatively to himself even less powerful; moreover, while the Peacock's crew showed great skill in handling their guns, the crew of the Erebus most emphatically did not. The intent in both cases was equally bad, only the British ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... anything in malice. He called his literary idol, Wordsworth, "inhumanly arrogant." Does anybody—not being a Wordsworthian and therefore out of reach of reason—doubt that Wordsworth's arrogance was inhuman? He, not unprovoked by scant gratitude on Coleridge's part for very solid services, and by a doubtless sincere but rather unctuous protest of his brother in opium-eating against the Confessions, told some home truths against that magnificent genius but most unsatisfactory ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... every sovereign to defend himself against the enemies in his own house but external politics seemed based on the maxim that it is the duty of a powerful ruler to increase his territory by direct and unprovoked attacks on his neighbours. There is hardly a king of eminence who did not expand his power in this way, and the usual history of a royal house is successful aggression followed by collapse when weaker hands were unable to hold the inherited handful. Even moderately long ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... positively cruel, was absolutely careless of suffering), and to leave the conqueror master of the Roman world. The coalition indeed was broken up, for Crassus had perished in the East, carrying on a foolish and unprovoked war with the Parthians, and Pompey had come to fear and hate his remaining rival. But Caesar was now strong enough to do without friends, and to crush enemies. The Senate vainly commanded him to disperse his army by a certain day, on pain of being considered an ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... red and pale by turns. "Mother," she replied, with a ring of pain in her voice, "I have always respected your opinions and feelings, and shall continue to do so, and try my best to please you. But it is hard that I should have to suffer these unprovoked attacks; and it seems strange that the girl's coming should be made the occasion for one, for I had hoped that her presence in the house would have made my ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... to the responsibility we incurred by interference with what might (after all) be the Will of Providence. If this should prove so, it would be our duty not to repine. Clarissa contrived to surround the subject with an unprovoked halo of religious meekness, and to work round to the conclusion that it would be presumptuous not to ask Mr. Bradshaw to dinner. Only this resulted absolutely and entirely from her refusing to have her three children all vaccinated from the calf ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... force continue, it would lose its name, and be no longer anger, but revenge; which, though the worst and most fiend-like propensity of a vicious inclination, is sometimes excited by circumstances, that seem in a great measure to alleviate the blackness of it:—repeated and unprovoked insults, friendship and love abused, injuries in our person, our fortune, or reputation, will sour the softest temper, and are apt to make us imagine it is an injustice to our selves, not to retaliate in kind, the ill treatment we receive. Religion, indeed, forbids us to take our own parts ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... Canada, unprovoked by Dissent, was altogether free from the stain of religious persecution: hopelessly fettered in the chains of metropolitan power, she was also undisturbed by political agitation. But this calm was more the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... justice, if He should be propitious to me,—an enemy who, though he had never experienced any harm from me either in deeds which he suffered or in words which he heard, provided a pretext for a war which was unprovoked, and reduced me to this state of misfortune, bringing Belisarius against me from I know not where. And yet it is not at all unlikely that he also, since he is but a man, though he be emperor too, may have something befall ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... father, sternly, "this is shameful, cowardly behavior, utterly unworthy of a son of mine—this unprovoked assault upon a defenceless little girl. It has always been considered a cowardly act to attack one weaker ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... 'the lion,' to attack with every cruelty conceivable, raiding their cattle, slaughtering their men, and sweeping their maidens and young children into captivity. Terrified, half exterminated indeed, as they were by these constant and unprovoked onslaughts, the Mashonas welcomed with delight the occupation of their country by white men, and thankfully placed themselves under the protection of ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... by same author.] —and need only be sketched briefly here. Henry, a gentle, faithful boy, shared with his brother the enmity of the pilot Brown. Some two months following the date of the foregoing letter, on a down trip of the Pennsylvania, an unprovoked attack made by Brown upon the boy brought his brother Sam to the rescue. Brown received a good pummeling at the hands of the future humorist, who, though upheld by the captain, decided to quit the Pennsylvania ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fated period, when the mother country by her ill-starred policy threw away one of her brightest jewels. Individual suffering increased and rendered poignant beyond the usual lot of humanity, marked a contest which was founded upon unprovoked aggression. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... unprovoked and righteous battle with sin, the only evil to be apprehended is the danger of yielding. But far from being sinful, the greater the danger, the more meritorious the struggle. It matters not what ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... and Turk had walked for nearly a mile, and had just turned the corner of a street when, as they passed a butcher's shop upon the right hand, a large brindled mastiff rushed from the shop-door, and flew at Turk with unprovoked ferocity. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... berth unless I had my rifle and plenty of ammunition. It was the track of a grizzly bear. I saw many tracks on this expedition and on others afterwards but I have never seen a bear yet, except in captivity. The grizzly seemed to shun me; but I believe they will not often attack a man unprovoked, and will lie perfectly still while one may pass within a ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... abused, through application to the service of the Great Anarch at Richmond. The Rebel power, which our fleets and armies are steadily reducing day by day, is to be saved from overthrow, and its agents from the severe and just punishment which should be visited upon them for their great and unprovoked crime,—if they are to be saved therefrom,—through the action of the Democratic party, as it calls itself, and which purposes to go to the assistance of the slaveholders in war, as formerly it went to their assistance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... against their brutal and omnipotent guardians? "An impressive spectacle was presented to us one day," reports the Committee, "in the presence of about 100 patrolmen in uniform, who during the period of three preceding years had been convicted by the police commissioners of unprovoked and unwarranted assault on citizens." Still more impressive than "this exhibit of convicted clubbers" was "a stream of victims of police brutality who testified before the Committee. The eye of one ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... a heavy battery on our side made an unprovoked assault on the Turkish lines, to which they were not slow to respond and several shells fell within the confines of our camp. Most of the men were away however on fatigue, and no one was hurt. On the 7th the Battalion took ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... predicament. It was some mistake on his part; he was blundering, and I had an intuition that the blunder was of an odious, of an unfortunate nature. I was anxious to end this scene on grounds of decency, just as one is anxious to cut short some unprovoked and abominable confidence. The funniest part was, that in the midst of all these considerations of the higher order I was conscious of a certain trepidation as to the possibility—nay, likelihood—of this encounter ending in some disreputable brawl which could not possibly be explained, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... sitting, calmly contemplating the spectacle before him. When within reach he struck him a furious blow with his fist, and was preparing to repeat it, when Johnston seized him by the arms, and hastily demanded the cause of such unprovoked violence. Chickatommo, grinding his teeth with rage, shouted "Sit down, sit down!" Johnston obeyed, and the Indian, perceiving the two children within ten steps of him, snatched up a tomahawk, and advanced upon them with a quick step, and a determined look. The ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... fourteen oars, commanded by a serjeant of the garrison, and destined to carry me to Cayenne, whither I repaired by Macapa, coasting along the left of the Amazons to its mouth, without, like you, making tour of the great island of Joanes, or Marajo. After similar courtesies, unprovoked by express recommendations, what had I not to expect, seeing his Most Faithful Majesty had condescended to issue precise orders to expedite a vessel to the very frontiers of his dominions, for ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard |
