"Unaccountable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are these sailors! They have no care for the morrow, but spend lavishly the hard-earned wages of their adventurous life. To one like myself, who early knew the value of money, this thoughtless extravagance certainly appeared unaccountable, and nearly allied to madness; but, when I reflected that they are sometimes imprisoned in a ship for years, without touching land, and frequently in peril of losing their lives—that they have scarcely time to scatter their wages and prize-money in the short intervals which ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... experience yesterday, one you might call unaccountable. I ate a hearty dinner, finishing up with a Welsh rabbit, a mince pie and some lobster a la Newburgh. Then I went to a place of amusement. I had hardly entered the building before everything swam ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... and through it filtered a feeble daylight when his feet were ascendant, and when his head was uppermost he glimpsed racing, green water on the other side of the thick glass circle. It was strangely unaccountable. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... peripneumonia, and the great specialist who was then consulted confirmed his fears. But it came to nothing. It was his nerves that were wrong, and it is common knowledge that disorders of the nerves take the most unaccountable shapes: they are got rid of at the cost of days of anxiety. But such days were terrible for Antoinette, and they gave her sleepless nights. She would lie in a state of terror in her bed, getting up every now and then to listen to her brother's breathing. She ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... frightened, and scarcely even annoyed. There were other sounds which I did not myself hear, but of which I was told—stealthy footsteps that paced a certain corridor at dead of night; a sharp, rattling noise like hail dashing against the window-panes, and one or two other trifling yet equally unaccountable occurrences. Once, too, a young lady visiting the house heard in the next room to that in which she was loud and lamentable sounds, as of a woman weeping bitterly and in sore distress. She listened in considerable perplexity for some time, fearing to intrude on the sorrows of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... of stuff too stout to tear. It was well that Gilbert was near, on the same side, and disengaged her in an instant; but her troubles did not end here. As she bustled in and out of the kitchen, preparing the dinner-table in the long sitting-room, the hooks and door-handles seemed to have an unaccountable habit of thrusting themselves in her way, and she was ready to cry at each glance of Mark's laughing eyes. She had never heard the German proverb, "who loves, teases," and was too inexperienced, as yet, to have discovered the fact ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... its banks, or sat listening to its trickling music as it hastened down to the sea; but there was a sadder look on both their faces. Cardo had new lines about his mouth, and Valmai had a wistful look in her blue eyes; both had an unaccountable premonition ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... expected of him, he had recently neglected. He felt the impending bodily demoralisation, the threatened mental disintegration; he suspected its symptoms in a new nervous irritability, in lapses of self-command, in unaccountable excesses utterly foreign to ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... produced. In a social environment saturated with superstition the explanation lies ready to hand, and is accepted without question. A people that sees spiritual agency in all the familiar phenomena of nature are certainly not less likely to trace its influence in the mysterious and unaccountable effects of narcotics and stimulants. And each repeated experiment provides additional proof. Man thus not only believes himself to be surrounded by a spiritual world; he is actually able to enter into communication with it by methods that are defined in the clearest possible manner. Every ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... are potent factors in the mysterious make-up of a social success, but they are not omnipotent. A woman may have this desirable trinity, and yet be as nothing in the social world. In fact, she may be without one, two, or all three, and yet achieve unaccountable ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... upon the ground, and more threatened to fall before dawn, but Philip had engaged to provide horses equal to any emergency of weather, and the darkness of the night lent favor to the enterprise. Virginie's behavior all that day had somehow seemed unaccountable to her mistress. The maid's face was pallid and wore a strange expression of anxiety and apprehension. She winced and trembled when Julia's glance rested upon her, and her hands quivered violently while she helped the latter to adjust her hood and mantle as the hour of assignation approached. ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... the next minit I felt my legs a-waggin', and found myself at t'other end of the string o' vehickles. I wasn't skeered, but I had three chills and a stroke of palsy in less than five minits, and my face had a cur'us brownish-yaller-greenbluish color in it, which was perfectly unaccountable. 'Well,' say I, 'comment ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... hired a few trusted assistants to help them carry out their plans, and a rumour had got abroad—in the unaccountable way of rumours—that there was danger to the King. It was of this rumour that Lord Robert brought him word, telling him bluntly that unless he escaped quickly from this place, he would leave his life there. Yet when ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... commerce; and, as we shall afterwards see, carried their piracies to such a daring and destructive extent, that the Romans were compelled to attack them. Their devotedness to piracy explains what to Mons. Huet appears unaccountable. He observes, that it is remarkable that neither the Dalmatians, who were powerful at sea by means of their port Salona, which was their capital, nor the Liburnians themselves, according to all appearance, had the use of money among them. Commerce cannot be carried on to great extent, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... or three seconds at a time, and then stared like a dog that waits for his master to send him off again running, the corners of her mouth twitching for me to laugh or speak, exactly as a dog might wag his tail. I studied her in the light of a harmless sort of unaccountable creature; witness at any rate for the fact that I had escaped ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sleep, catching himself back, now and then, to luxuriate in the assurance that he was in the right place, finding comfortable assuagements, and that inexplicably, because so suddenly, everything was for the best in a mysterious but probably entirely unaccountable world. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... ready to join her husband at Gibraltar on his way to Tangiers in January. She says a propos of her labours in this respect: "I was dreadfully spied upon by those who wished to get Richard into trouble about it, and once an unaccountable person came and took rooms in some lodgings which I took after Richard left, and I settled with the landlord that I should leave or that person should not have the rooms, and of course he did not have any hesitation between the two, and ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... were acted upon we should certainly no longer be distressed by that intolerable and never-ceasing tremolo which now so frequently mars many, in other respects, fine voices. It is a curious, and at first sight unaccountable, circumstance that this great fault is specially noticeable amongst French singers. But at the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris students are deliberately taught the wrong method of inspiration; for, as we gather from the "Methode de Chant du Conservatoire de Musique," they are told to "flatten ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... since our departure from England, several convicts about this time signified that the respective terms for which they had been transported had expired, and claimed to be restored to the privileges of free men. Unfortunately, by some unaccountable oversight, the papers necessary to ascertain these particulars had been left by the masters of the transports with their owners in England, instead of being brought out and deposited in the colony; and as, thus situated, it was equally impossible to admit or to deny the truth ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... other things, "you're a man of great culture, you've grown up in the highest circles, and here too your behaviour has hitherto been a model, which has been a great consolation to your mother, who is so precious to all of us.... And now again everything has appeared in such an unaccountable light, so detrimental to all! I speak as a friend of your family, as an old man who loves you sincerely and a relation, at whose words you cannot take offence.... Tell me, what drives you to such reckless proceedings so contrary to all accepted rules and habits? What can ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... listened alternately to Ryabovsky's voice and the silence of the night, and thought of her being immortal and never dying. The turquoise colour of the water, such as she had never seen before, the sky, the river-banks, the black shadows, and the unaccountable joy that flooded her soul, all told her that she would make a great artist, and that somewhere in the distance, in the infinite space beyond the moonlight, success, glory, the love of the people, lay awaiting her.... When she gazed steadily without blinking ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... my bedroom, and having shut the door, proceeded to give it a careful examination. As far as I could make out, there was no entrance to the room except by the door, which was shaped to fit the circular walls. I noticed, however, that there was an unaccountable draught, and this I at last discovered came from below the oak wainscoting of the wall. I could not in any way account for the draught, but it existed to an unpleasant extent. The bed, I further saw, was somewhat peculiar; it ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... a little, he caught now a pathetic droop of her shoulders, and he fancied that he saw a little shiver run through her. Just as before he had felt the desire to thrust his face out into the night, he felt now an equally unaccountable impulse to speak to her and ask her if he could in any way be of service to her. But he could see no excuse for this presumptuousness in himself. If she was in distress it was not of a physical sort for which he might have suggested his services as a remedy. She was ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... in question the discernment of some of the Federal administrations in their choice of engravers; unfortunately, I have also to draw attention to an unaccountable delay in the execution of one of the medals. It seems scarcely credible that the one voted in 1857 to Dr. Elisha Kent Kane for his discoveries in the Arctic Seas has not yet been struck. Elder, in his "Life of E. K. ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... by the veins derived from the hollow vein. Obstructions, jaundice, dropsy, induration of the spleen will follow. Thirdly, it communicates with the brain by the nerves and membranes of the back; hence arise epilepsy, madness, fits of melancholy, pains in the back of the head, unaccountable fears and inability to speak. I may, therefore, well agree with Hippocrates that if menstruation be suppressed, many dangerous ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... Sidney Bertram Goldsborough, so called and so registered at the Hotel Atminster, grew decidedly peevish over the unaccountable failure of his order to arrive from a theatrical costumer's, where he had selected it some three days earlier. He was morally sure it had been sent hours earlier by special messenger from the costume shop. In answer to his vexed inquiries the parcels department of the hotel was equally sure that ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... been a long attachment, passionate love and perfect trust, long engagement, marriage postponed because both were poor, and the lover struggling into his profession, and then, it seemed sudden and unaccountable, his marriage with some one else. "It was not like him," said the governess in conclusion; "it was his ambition to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... voyage; for like most American men, he kept his European experiences in his wife's name. So the ocean bothered him. He understood a desert or a drouth, but here was a tremendous amount of unnecessary and unaccountable water. It was a calm, smooth, painted ocean, and as he looked at it for a long time one day, Henry remarked wearily: "The town boosters who secured this ocean for this part of the country rather overdid ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... peaceful possession of his province. Not less remarkable was the fate of witchcraft in Pennsylvania. The Swedes and Finns believed in witches, upon the authority of their native traditions; and a woman of their race having acted in a violent and unaccountable manner, they put her on her trial for witchcraft. Both Swedes and Quakers composed the jury; there were no hysterics; the matter was dispassionately canvassed; impressions and prejudices were not accepted as ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... red, his black eyes afire, his mustaches working up and down. His white teeth had closed with a click on the loud oath which had interrupted the Governor's speech. Honest Sir George and his circle stared at this unaccountable guest in amazement not unmixed with dismay. As for myself, I knew before he spoke what had caused the oath and the fierce triumph in that handsome face. Master Jeremy Sparrow had moved a little to one side, thus exposing to view that which his great ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... I felt reluctance to quit; but the Venetian state certainly possesses uncommon, and to me almost unaccountable, attractions. Be that as it will, we leave these sweet Paduans to-morrow; the coach is disposed of, and we are to set out upon our watry journey to their wonderfully-situated metropolis, or as they call ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... request and had received the colonel's curt reply. Time and again during the recent campaign the veteran soldier now in command had shown marked liking for this energetic young officer. Then came the march to the settlements, and sudden, unaccountable change. Twice or thrice within the past ten days he had shown singular coldness and disfavor; to-night strong and sudden dislike, and Lanier, amazed and stung, could only ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... on Sept. 9, 1767:—'How unaccountable is it that my father and I should be so ill together! He is a man of sense and a man of worth; but from some unhappy turn in his disposition he is much dissatisfied with a son whom you know. I write to him with warmth, with an honest ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... I answered; "but what difference will it make when our air supply is exhausted whether the temperature is 153 degrees or 153,000? We'll be just as dead, and no one will know the difference, anyhow." But I must admit that for some unaccountable reason the stationary temperature did renew my waning hope. What I hoped for I could not have explained, nor did I try. The very fact, as Perry took pains to explain, of the blasting of several very exact and learned scientific hypotheses made it apparent that we could not know what lay before ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Again, I think that the causes assumed are competent to account for most of the physiological characteristics of species, and I not only think that they are competent to account for them, but I think that they account for many things which otherwise remain wholly unaccountable and inexplicable, and I may say incomprehensible. For a full exposition of the grounds on which this conviction is based, I must refer you to Mr. Darwin's work; all that I can do now is to illustrate what I have said ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... ducats each. Their value increased so much, when I was released from prison, that they are now to be found in various museums throughout Europe. Twelve years ago the late Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel presented one of them to my wife; and another came, in a very unaccountable manner, from the Queen-Dowager of Prussia to Paris. I have given prints of both these, with the verses they contained, in my works; whence it may be seen ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... pained and puzzled—nay, she was crossed every moment by the horrid fear that Lucille's mind was unsettled. Her strange agitation seemed otherwise unaccountable. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... looking around her an instant, then, moved by some unaccountable impulse, drew out the chest containing the fancy-dress costumes they had used in so many plays and tableaux. One by one she shook them out and hung them over Rob's headless hobby-horse, when she had finished examining them. There were the velvet knickerbockers ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... here and there, but reflectors above them threw their light upon the pavement, and none up to me. On many accounts I was glad that the night was so dark, for, much as I desired to get down, I wanted no one to see me in my strange position, which, to any one but myself and wife, would be utterly unaccountable. If I could rise as high as the roofs I might get on one of them, and, tearing off an armful of tiles, so load myself that I would be heavy enough to descend. But I did not rise to the eaves of any of the houses. ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... unaccountable manner Stubbs was the first to extricate himself, and, absolutely certain that his adversary meant to kill him, he rolled over quickly and ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... memories. It was not the outcome of a need—the famous need of self-expression which artists find in their search for motives. The necessity which impelled me was a hidden, obscure necessity, a completely masked and unaccountable phenomenon. Or perhaps some idle and frivolous magician (there must be magicians in London) had cast a spell over me through his parlour window as I explored the maze of streets east and west in solitary ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... changes of rock-forming minerals must have amounted to those of fusion. The existence of such conditions is supported by the observation that where the.crystallisation is now the most perfect, the phenomena of folding and injection are best developed.[1] These high temperatures would appear to be unaccountable without the intervention of radiothermal effects; and, indeed, have been regarded as enigmatic by observers of the phenomena in question. A covering of 20,000 metres in thickness would not occasion an earth-temperature exceeding 500 deg. C. if the gradients were such ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... countries have long been familiar. All the customary inexplicable lights were seen; all the customary mysterious big motor cars rushed at forbidden and yet unhindered speeds along unusual roads at unaccountable hours; all the customary signalling out to sea was observed and passionately sworn to by otherwise calm people. It was possible, the inhabitants found, to believe with ease things about Germans—those who were having difficulty with religion wished it were equally easy to believe ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... a small gold ring with three red stones, a souvenir from his sister on leaving home. He decided on getting rid of the latter, and went to the old woman's. At the first glance, and knowing nothing whatever of her personally, she inspired him with an unaccountable loathing. He took her two notes, and on leaving went into a poor traktir, or restaurant, and ordered some tea. He sat down musing, and strange thoughts flitted across his mind and became hatched in his brain. Close by, at another ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... to account for the extreme predilection which I, an old woman in comparison, immediately imbibed for you before we had been an hour in company. Some feelings are unaccountable and inexplicable, but I felt a sympathy, a mesmeric attraction, if I may use the term, which was uncontrollable at our first meeting, and which increased every day during our residence together. It was not the feeling of a mother towards a child—at least I think not, for it was mingled with a certain ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... certainly strange and unaccountable," she said, in reply to her husband's last remark, speaking ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... herself, save the half-witted boy, who seemed to be asleep now, away out on the projecting limb of a cypress tree that nearly overhung the spot, and where he had coiled himself up, and managed to sustain his position upon the limb by some unaccountable means of ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... to the safe Stuart followed her until he stood across the width of the desk from his host whom he regarded absently. Then something quite unaccountable occurred. Mrs. Tollman, in putting down the somewhat heavy metal tray containing her trinkets, let it slip, so that it spilled its rings, and pins and necklaces on the desk top—and as if responsive to her clumsiness in handling her treasures, ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... board entering his own home, unsupported by the presence of his fellow-members and the scientific zeal of the Senior Surgeon, the business of the afternoon began to change its aspect. For some unaccountable reason—unless we take Fancy into the reckoning—this sudden abandoning of Ward C did not seem the simple matter of an hour previous; while in perspective even Margaret MacLean's outspokenness became ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... not follow Pompey for want of shipping, went back to Rome, to take possession of the public treasures, which his opponent, by a most unaccountable oversight, had neglected to take with him. 23. Upon his coming up to the door of the treasury, Metel'lus, the tribune, who guarded it, refused to let him pass; but Caesar, with emotion, laying his hand upon his sword, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... time for d'Artagnan to resume this little dialogue; but then all the ideas of vengeance which he had brought with him had completely vanished. This woman exercised over him an unaccountable power; he hated and adored her at the same time. He would not have believed that two sentiments so opposite could dwell in the same heart, and by their union constitute a passion so strange, and as it ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was probably the daughter of the old gentlewoman who takes care of the house. This lower room has a pavement of gray slabs of stone, which may have been rudely squared when the house was new, but are now all cracked, broken, and disarranged in a most unaccountable way. One does not see how any ordinary usage, for whatever length of time, should have so smashed these heavy stones; it is as if an earthquake had burst up through the floor, which afterwards had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... defence was from home. The evening, therefore, hung heavy on their heads at Longshot Lodge, which was the name of Purcel's residence, especially upon that of the fair Julia, who felt not merely disappointed, but unusually depressed' by the unaccountable absence of her lover, knowing as she did, the turbulence which prevailed in the country. She scarcely ate any dinner, and in the course of a short time retired to her own room, which commanded a view of the ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... dreamed I was back in New York and that a couple of cats were wailing under my bedroom window. Their noise increased so that I awoke, and then I heard unaccountable caterwauls. They were very loud and near, at least one of the creatures was. At length I got up to see. Here on the lake a few yards from the tent was a loon swimming about, minutely inspecting the tent and uttering at intervals deep ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... stiff breeze. The prevailing weather is stormy, and inky clouds gather in massy banks at all points of the compass, culminating in violent outbursts of thunder and lightning, wind and rain. Occasionally, by some unaccountable freak of the elements, the monsoon veers completely around, and blowing a gale from the north, hustles me along over the cobbly surface ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... been such as to put her entirely at her ease she would have felt strange and shy. As it was she felt half afraid of losing herself in the house, to Fleda's unaccustomed eyes it was a labyrinth of halls and staircases, set with the most unaccountable number and variety of rooms; old and new, quaint and comfortable, gloomy and magnificent; some with stern old-fashioned massiveness of style and garniture; others absolutely bewitching (to Fleda's eyes ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... measures imputed to Christ? Be this never so unlikely, yet this is the only thing that can be said. Had Christ been charged with enthusiasm, it would not have been necessary to assign a reason for his conduct: madness is unaccountable: Ratione modoque tractari non vult. But when design, cunning, and fraud are made the charge, and carried to such an height, as to suppose him to be a party to the contrivance of a sham resurrection for himself, it is necessary to say to what end this cunning tended. ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... take a long walk alone with him. No words were said during this ramble to open Maggie Oliphant's eyes to the true state of Hammond's feelings for her, but when she returned from her walk she could not help noticing Annabel Lee's unaccountable depression. It was not until later, however, that Maggie attributed a certain pathetic, almost heart-broken, look in her friend's lovely ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... Circle was a myth, that my cruise among the icebergs was a dream, and that Greenland was set down wrongly on the maps. Long before this I had been convinced that Doctor Molke was a most mysterious character, and wholly unaccountable. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... We have always, before this, felt it an honour and a privilege to have the richest man in these parts living amongst us. But when we see him one of the most eager in support of a "popular" proposal of this sort, then it appears, to me at all events, to be absolutely unaccountable how—oh, well, I won't run the risk making what our chairman calls "accusations"; I will sit down and hold my tongue. I have the right to do that ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... case of urgency. Our paying guest last summer was a Mrs. Pollock, and she was by way of having sudden fancies. Young and unmarried though you are, miss, I think you will tyke my meaning without my speaking plyner? Well, at six o'clock of a rainy afternoon, she was seized with an unaccountable desire for vegetable marrows, and Mr. 'Eaven put the pony in the cart and went to Woodmucket for them, which is a great advantage to be so near a town and yet ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Thirdly, another unaccountable delay in joining the Callonbys, with whom I am every hour in the risque of being "compromis;" and lastly, a duel in perspective with some confounded Frenchman, who is at this very moment practising at ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... totally unaccountable upon any reasonable theory," said the doctor, "and I do not know what to believe, unless we are to conceive that the tooth and the ball were really meteoric stones that have assumed these remarkable shapes and been shot down upon the earth with such force as to penetrate Mr. Dingus' leg, and this ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... and unafraid and able to contradict the emperor freely because of their mutual trust. If one thinks of it, Julian, for all his gentleness, must have been an alarming emperor to converse with. His standard of conduct was not only uncomfortably high, it was also a little unaccountable. The most correct and blameless court officials must often have suspected that their master looked upon them as simply wallowing in sin. And that feeling does not promote ease or truthfulness. Julian compares his friendship ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... promise had been mistrusted. Gideon's test was strange; he did not pray that he might see the angel again, for the thoughts that came into his mind were always strange, not like those of other men, and were unaccountable even to himself. That night the fleece of wool on the ground was wet and the earth was dry. He prayed yet again, and still God was tender to him, for He knows the weakness of the creatures He has made. This time the fleece was dry and the earth was wet, and ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... left for flowers. On Arbor Day, in the classroom, we had sown tomato and lettuce seeds in boxes, that we might have the plants ready for transplanting when our outside soil was in condition. The lettuce plants turned out satisfactorily, but, for some unaccountable reason, the tomatoes were a failure. To replace the latter, we took a corner bed in the garden, divided it into three sections and planted tomato, onion, and cabbage seeds. In five weeks the tomato and cabbage plants ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... storing articles not worth keeping, but too good to be thrown away—an American habit of thrift. Several decrepit chairs and rickety cabinets and old console tables were piled together in a tangled mass. Ronicky looked at them with an unaccountable shudder, as if he read in them the history of the ruin and fall and death of many an old inhabitant of this house. It seemed to his excited imagination that the man with the sneer had been the cause of all the destruction and would be the cause ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... magnetic vellum, these two; whereon the Virgin, wonderfully clothing herself in Mesmerean Cagliostric Occult-Philosophy, has inspired them to jot down instructions and predictions for a much-straitened King. To whom, by Higher Order, they will this day present it; and save the Monarchy and World. Unaccountable pair of visual-objects! Ye should be men, and of the Eighteenth Century; but your magnetic vellum forbids us so to interpret. Say, are ye aught? Thus ask the Guardhouse Captains, the Mayor of St. Cloud; nay, at great length, thus asks the Committee of Researches, and not the Municipal, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... beforehand by an inevitable necessity, and we call her Fate, because there is nothing which is not done by her; wherefore I suppose it will be sufficient to compare this notion with that other, which attribute somewhat to ourselves, and renders men not unaccountable for the different conducts of their lives, which notion is no other than the philosophical determination of our ancient law. Accordingly, of the two other causes of this sad event, any body may lay the blame on the young men, who acted by youthful vanity, and pride of their royal birth, that ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... stranger did not participate. Mike wondered that so good a joke should not have its due effect upon him; and many other notable things were said and done which we have neither space nor inclination to record, but the stranger still maintained his grave and unaccountable demeanour. Mike ever and anon cast a glance towards him, and he always observed that the stranger's eye was fixed upon his own. A dark, bright, burning eye, such as made the recreant tailor immediately look aside, for he could not endure ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... "And the unaccountable disappearance of this will of uncle Richard's, Kavanagh, has it put you in a very ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... world not? Was there anything improper in doing so?" inquired Herbert in astonishment, while Traverse himself gazed in amazement at the excessive and unaccountable ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... in number, should have excited the anger of so great a portion of the English nation. The isle was literally frighted from its propriety. From the Queen on her throne to the humblest villager, all were seized with sudden and unaccountable fear, as if the monarchy had been threatened with immediate overthrow. The Queen, in terror, called her Council of State around her. But her chief adviser, a weak-minded old man, had very little comfort to bestow. He could only help her Majesty's bishops to inflame ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... seas periodically demolishing the outermost houses, it seems almost unaccountable that the little town should have persisted in clinging so tenaciously to the high-water mark; but there were probably two paramount reasons for this. The deep gully was to a great extent protected from the force of the winds, and, as it was soon quite brimful of ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... him at the foot of the stairs. I do not defend what I did. But I had more ammunition; a few wadded bullets, caps, and powder-charges, loose in a jacket pocket; and I thrust them into one of his, upon a sudden impulse, not (as I think) altogether unaccountable, albeit (as ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Lucy, more and more surprised at the unaccountable absence of Braddock's assistant. "Where is ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... should forward the proposal to the Vatican. Manning agreed, and then there followed a curious series of incidents— the last encounter in the jarring lives of those two men. A letter was drawn up by Manning for the eye of the Pope, embodying the Duke of Norfolk's proposal; but there was an unaccountable delay in the transmission of this letter; months passed, and it had not reached the Holy Father. The whole matter would, perhaps, have dropped out of sight and been forgotten, in a way which had become customary when honours for Newman were concerned, had not ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... not out of any imagination that such oblations can add anything to the divine Nature, which even prayers cannot do; but as it is a harmless and pure way of worshipping God, so they think those sweet savours and lights, together with some other ceremonies, by a secret and unaccountable virtue, elevate men's souls, and inflame them with greater energy and cheerfulness during ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... under the counters and ate Heaven knows where, during the term of my acquaintance with them. Jacob differed from all the other of my flock by possessing a premature, thoroughly unchildlike sense of humor. He regarded me as one of the most unaccountable human beings he had ever met, but he had such respect for what he believed to be my good bottom qualities that he constantly tried to conceal from me his feeling that I was probably a little insane. ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... resided. Hercules accepts of the commission; but, I know not for what reason, goes first to Crete, and from thence to [824]Libya; and what is extraordinary, proceeds to Egypt. This makes the plan of his supposed rout somewhat irregular and unaccountable. After some time spent in these parts, he builds the city Hecatompulos, said before to have been built by Osiris: and then traverses the whole of Africa westward, till he arrives at the Fretum Gaditanum. Here he erects two pillars; which being finished, he at last enters Iberia. He defeats ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... opinion," said Gideon Spilett, "with due deference to your experience, Pencroft, is that in the double fact of the absolute disappearance of Cyrus and Top, living or dead, there is something unaccountable and unlikely." ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... children, and made me stare; but I answered angrily that I only wanted a nap, and to be let alone, and I made for the door in spite of his objurgations. Then he ran in front of me, and barring the door with arms outstretched, besought me to await my friend. This unaccountable behavior had rendered me furious, and now I was determined to force my way out, despite the mad resistance and loud gibberish of the waiter, and I began to use my fists. It was in the midst of this tremendous row that my astonished friend ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... go on exploring the grotto-like place he had discovered; but to his surprise, his young master put it off, and the quiet, silent fellow waited. He, though, had more tales to tell of the way in which things disappeared from cottages. Pigs, sheep, poultry went in the most unaccountable way, and the witches who met sometimes on the mountain slope had the credit of ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... rifle. At length a bend in the road hid them from sight. In a few moments, Frank heard the report of a gun, and presently the rebel rode up, with the coat, pants, and boots which had once belonged to the soldier, hanging on his arm. Such scenes as this were enacted every day; but, for some unaccountable reason, Frank was not molested, beyond having his boots stolen one night while he was asleep. He had made up his mind that he would escape at the first opportunity; but he was in no condition to travel, and, besides, the sight of several ferocious blood-hounds, which accompanied the rebels, was enough ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... you call an immediate one, of the unsuccessfulness of the gospel, is 'men's [strange and] unaccountable mistaking the design of it,—not to say worse, as to conceive no better of it, than as a science, and a matter of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Armenia, were covered with dead bodies; the Kurds fled in vain to the mountains. In Caramania and Caesarea, none was left alive. On the roads, in the camps, in the caravansaries, unburied bodies were seen; and a few cities only remained, in an unaccountable manner, free. In Aleppo, five hundred died daily; twenty-two thousand people and most of the animals were carried off in Gaza within six weeks. Cyprus lost almost all its inhabitants; and ships without crews were often seen in the Mediterranean, as afterward in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... hands upon the keys only to snatch them away again as if they were white-hot metal, and Serviss fancied her cheek grew pale. The third time she clashed out a few jarring chords intermixed with quite astonishing roulade on the treble—an unaccountable interruption, as if a third hand had been thrust in to confuse her. She stopped, and he began to share ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... lighting upon the drumsticks, which the usual man in corduroys had hidden away, began beating the big drum furiously. One of the unaccountable whims which influence crowds seized on the mob, and there was almost perfect silence. This seemed to take Donovan by surprise; the open air was having the common effect on him; he was getting unsteady on his legs, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... nearly three weeks in which to intrench herself with doubts and defences. She felt at first surprised and relieved. When her second absence from the Tabernacle was passed over in silence she found in her nature an unaccountable pique, which steadily grew to unrest. She ventured and turned back on the woods path leading to St. James many times, each time daring farther. The impulse to go to St. James came on her at waking, ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... showed that his repentance had been poignant, even before his theft was discovered. He had reimbursed the corporation, and there was no prosecution, because his dishonest act had been no part of generally vicious habits, but a single unaccountable deflection from rectitude. The evident intensity of his remorse had excited general sympathy, and when Parker, the village druggist, gave him employment as clerk, the act was generally applauded, and all the village folk had endeavoured with one accord, by a friendly and hearty manner, ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... Queen's courteous suspension of the rules of etiquette, and what it may have cost her, can be better understood from what an acquaintance of Carlyle said of him when he saw him for the first time. "His presence, in some unaccountable manner, rasped the nerves. I expected to meet a rare being, and I left him feeling as if I had drunk sour wine, or had had ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Alene kept her unaccountable position. Presently her eyes strayed sidewise toward her agitated companion, who, intent on his own angry mutterings, was unaware of her inspection. The gleam of mirth that overspread her countenance was quickly banished; she rose and stood ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... the zenith for determining the fundamental constants of astronomy. He devised a reflex zenith tube, in which the zenith point was determined by reflection from a surface of mercury. The design was so simple, and seemed so perfect, that great expectations were entertained. But unaccountable variations comparable with those of the transit circle appeared, and the instrument was put out of use until 1903, when the present Astronomer Royal noticed that the irregularities could be allowed for, being due to that remarkable variation ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... audience chamber to be cleared! How many curious glances would be cast over their shoulders, by the slowly withdrawing crowd, at the strange group—the viceroy, usually so calm, thus inexplicably excited, and the huddled, rude shepherds, bewildered and afraid of what was coming next, in this unaccountable country! How eavesdroppers would linger as near as they durst, and how looks would be exchanged as the sounds of passionate weeping rewarded their open ears! The deepest feelings are not to be flaunted ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... feeling for a developing inner necessity. There is no story without both. Yet no formula for the amount of each can be devised. The dependence of man upon nature makes inevitable the occurrence of what we call accidents, violent breaks in the tissue of personal and social life, unaccountable from the point of view of our human purposes. By admitting the part played by the non-human background in determining fate, the naturalistic school of writers have enlarged the vision of the novelist beyond the range of the tender-minded ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... spirits, embitters her life, and uproots the purpose of marriage. She blames herself, and accepts blame for a condition, that the other party is alone responsible for. Thus many a blooming wife falls, barely married, a prey to chronic malady, unaccountable to ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... good sense, a great memory, and a constitution capable of the closest application: in a word, there was no profession in which Cleanthes might not have made a very good figure; but this won't satisfy him; he takes up an unaccountable fondness for the character of a line gentleman; all his thoughts are bent upon this, instead of attending a dissection, frequenting the courts of justice, or studying ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... school was named Sarah Lewis, and while there, something of a very extraordinary nature—to me, at least—took place. One day, while at my little desk, there came into my head with a strange and unaccountable intensity this thought: "I am I—I am Myself—I myself I," and so on. By forcing this thought on myself very rapidly, I produced a something like suspension of thought or syncope; not a vertigo, but that mental condition which is allied to it. I have several times read of men who recorded nearly ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... unaccountable attraction of the mind to trifles, which is often incidental to a state of doubt and confusion, the Carrier, as he walked slowly to and fro, found himself mentally repeating even these absurd words, many times. So many ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... had never received one. He kept a rough terrier-dog, that would kill anything in the country, and exhibited three rows of putrified rats, nailed at the back of the stable, as evidences of the prowess of his dog. He swore long country oaths, for which he will be unaccountable, as not even an angel could transcribe them. In short, he was a little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... was very expressive of a friendly disposition, yet I could not help entertaining some suspicions of its sincerity. But when I saw Koah, with a boldness and assurance altogether unaccountable, swimming off toward the boat, with a white flag in his hand, I thought it necessary to return this mark of confidence, and therefore received him into the boat, though armed; a circumstance which did ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... for infanticide. And this right to live includes, and in fact is, the right to be what the child likes and can, to do what it likes and can, to make what it likes and can, to think what it likes and can, to smash what it dislikes and can, and generally to behave in an altogether unaccountable manner within the limits imposed by the similar rights of its neighbors. And the rights of society over it clearly extend to requiring it to qualify itself to live in society without wasting other peoples time: that is, it must know the rules of the road, be able to read ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... composed largely of prominent merchants, came across the channel under a flag of truce to surrender the city's Spear of State, with abject apologies for not having Gurgurk's head on the point of it. Gurgurk, they reported, had fled to Keegark by air the night before, which explained the incident of the unaccountable aircar and lorry. The Channel Battery stopped firing, and, with the exception of an occasional spatter of small-arms fire, the city ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... runaway. They saw a weird horseman, or rather, something like a camel (for Harry rode low, like Tod Sloan with his long back humped—for effect)—apparently fleeing for its life in a veil of dust, along the long white road, and some forty rods behind, an unaccountable tilted coach careered in its own separate cloud of dust. And from it came the shouts and yells. Men shouted and swore, women screamed for their children, and kids whimpered. Some of the men turned with an oath and stayed ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... captain, "place—what do you or I or any one else know about any other place than this world? Place, indeed! you do not suppose that I am silly enough to believe the Bible, with its strange fish-stories, and unaccountable ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous |
