"Involuntarily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... traced the course of the darting flames toward the sky. In the presence of fire, some form of worship is inevitable. Before conflagrations our reveries are transformed into prayers. The silently ascending tongues of flame carry us involuntarily into the presence ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... was about to go." She turned to give Bailey her hand, smiling involuntarily in her relief. With a glance, an inflection, Lestrange had stripped their former meeting of its embarrassment and unconventionality, how, ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... and some wonderful Markobrunner drunk. The waiter now brought some Printaniere soup. The conversation halted, as everyone had involuntarily opened his copy of the book, some of them perhaps really curious to read, the others out of sympathy for ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... him, but it is a motionless, gloomy, and silent world, where everything threatens the annihilation of human faculties. Should he have the misfortune to be left here alone, no help, no consolation, no spark of hope, would soothe his last moments. One is involuntarily reminded of the famous inscription on the gate of the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... landscape sloping far below them towards the firth, and the field-paths where they had wandered hand in hand; or, as age and infirmity grew upon them and prolonged their toilettes, and their hands began to tremble and their heads to nod involuntarily, growing only the more steeled in enmity with years; until one fine day, at a word, a look, a visit, or the approach of death, their hearts would melt and the chalk boundary be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brings out the reverse side of the planters' work: "What is your chief source of failure?" The answer most often given was the honest one, lack of attention. We can all convict ourselves here, either involuntarily or otherwise. Especially during this period of warfare, when so many have been taken away from their plantings and have been unable to get help, there is no question but that our trees have suffered. The next in frequency is "unsuitable soil." Following this come: ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... dinner. When the guests arose, I struck up my ragtime transcription of Mendelssohn's "Wedding March," playing it with terrific chromatic octave runs in the bass. This raised everybody's spirits to the highest point of gaiety, and the whole company involuntarily and unconsciously did an impromptu cake-walk. From that time on until the time of leaving they kept me so busy that my arms ached. I obtained a little respite when the girlish-looking youth and one or two of the ladies sang several ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... the only relic said to have been found. This article was doubtless to be used in discovering deposits of the precious metals by the old adventurers. While walking through the lonely forests the mind of the visitor is involuntarily carried back to the scenes that took place there, as well as to the actors who centuries ago passed away. Now silence broods over the place once so active with life, and nothing but nature remains, while the distant ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... listen, thou wilt (then) utterly perish. If, having recourse to self-conceit, thou thinkest—I will not fight,—that resolution of thine would be vain, (for) Nature will constrain thee. That which, from delusion, thou dost not wish to do, thou wilt do involuntarily, bound by thy own duty springing from (thy own) nature. The Lord, O Arjuna, dwelleth in the region of the heart of beings, turning all beings as if mounted on a machine, by his illusive power. Seek shelter with Him ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... as one lays aside the belongings of the dead. Afterwards, lanterns, which we had placed on the oak center table on coming in, began to smoke and give out a pungent, burning smell, and each of us involuntarily walked across to a window and drew aside the curtains to see how daylight was coming on. The white glare of early morning flooded the room, but the snow-storm had changed to driving sleet and the panes were iced from corner to corner with frozen rain-drift. How we dragged through two more ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the Indian involuntarily lowered his voice; but continued speaking in a tone that his ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... successors' science; as D'Alembert said of Descartes: "If he was mistaken about the laws of motion, he was the first to divine that there must be some." Buffon divined the epochs of nature, and by the intuition of his genius, absolutely unshackled by any religious prejudice, he involuntarily reverted to the account given in Genesis. "We are persuaded," he says, "independently of the authority of the sacred books, that man was created last, and that he only came to wield the sceptre of the earth when that earth was ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the palms of my hands as I entered the shack, and his head turned slowly as I came in, and in his eyes I saw the confession his babbling had revealed to me. But then an expression of pain came also, that made me involuntarily look at Frenchy's little crucifix on ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... lighted his gas for him, as I did every night when we went up together. In a little while I heard him come in and go to his room. I knew nothing then; but next day, going into mother's room, I saw him standing before the glass door of her armoir, looking at a black coat he had on. Involuntarily I cried out, "Oh, don't, Hal!" "Don't what? Isn't it a nice coat?" he asked. "Yes; but it is buttoned up to the throat, and I don't like to see it. It looks—" here I went out as abruptly as I came in; that black coat ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... in him still. He felt himself affected profoundly by the influences which surrounded him, but he had not ceased to believe that the idea of self-sacrificing labour was for him a high vocation. He writhed, his limbs twisting involuntarily, when these thoughts beset him, and often he was surprised to discover that he was actually uttering ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... book on Irish history. For this task he was not altogether well qualified. The religion of Celtic Ireland was repugnant to him, and he never thoroughly understood it. In religious matters Froude could not be neutral. Where Catholic and Protestant came into conflict, he took instinctively, almost involuntarily, the Protestant side. In the England of the sixteenth century the Protestant side was the side of England. In Ireland the case was reversed, and the spirit of Catholicism was identical with the spirit of nationality. Irish ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... offered his hand; did not to be sure detain hers, which would have been inconvenient in a public assembly; but he detained her, falling into talk with an ease or an effrontery which it was impossible not to admire. And Eleanor admired him involuntarily. Certainly this man had capacities. He did not detain her too long; passed away as easily as he had come up; but returned again in the course of the evening to offer her some civility; and it was Mr. Carlisle who put her mother and herself into ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... fear towards the opposite extremity—and behold! there came swiftly, from the gloom above, similar shadows, which swept hurriedly along the gallery to the right, as if borne involuntarily adown the sides of some invisible stream; and the faces of these spectres were more distinct than those that emerged from the opposite passage; and on some was joy, and on others sorrow—some were vivid with expectation and hope, some unutterably dejected by awe and horror. And so they passed, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... in my ears, almost splitting my ear-drums. It was as though I had been suddenly hurled into a magnified cave of the winds and a cataract mightier than Niagara was thundering at me. It was so painful that I cried out in surprise and involuntarily dropped the ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... seemed to shiver and shrink in silence at this enormous breach of etiquette—to use a mild term. Involuntarily the ten pairs of oars in the royal barge hung in mid-air, paralyzed by that sudden outrage. The great, glittering structure, impelled by momentum, glided forward directly under the bows of Rebecca's boat and not ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... that it was much easier for them than for us. People in Europe always get up several hours before we do; people in Asia several hours before Europeans do; and we suppose, as men go toward the sun, it gets easier and easier, until, somewhere in the Orient, probably they step out of bed involuntarily, or, like a flower blossoming, they find their bed-clothes gently opening and turning back, by the mere attraction ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... surprised that his hands jerked themselves involuntarily above his head, though he did not feel particularly frightened; he was filled with a stupefied sort of curiosity to know what would come next. The coach, so far as he could see, seemed filled with uplifted, trembling hands, so that he did not feel ashamed of his own. The man behind him put ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... gasp of amazement—Neale turned and walked out of the room, and out of the church. It was a hot Sunday and the walks were bathed in sunshine. Neale involuntarily took the path across the Parade in the direction of ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... teeth. His face, otherwise, expressed nothing in particular. It was a nearly equal mixture of timidity, self-sufficiency, and contentment. It was quite impossible to concede the least intelligence to the possessor of such a phiz. One involuntarily looked for a goitre. The retail haberdashers, who, having cheated for thirty years in their threads and needles, retire with large incomes, should have such heads as this. His apparel was as dull as his person. His coat resembled all coats, his trousers all trousers. A hair chain, the same ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... quick glance toward him. The astonishment, the intuitive repulsion, the consciousness of what he had done, betokened by the instant look of the one man, and the helpless, mute "How could you?" that seemed spoken in the strange, uprolled, one-sided expression of the other,—these involuntarily-met regards made a brief concurrence at once sad and irresistibly funny, as so many things ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of the woman before us shook involuntarily, but her lips made no protest. I doubt if she possessed the power of speech at that moment. A change, subtle, but quite perceptible, had taken place in her emotions at mention of her sister's husband, ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... General Frances A. Walker, whose volume on the Wages Question is a thoughtful and careful study of the problem from the beginning. These heads are—1. "Peculiarities of stock and breeding. 2. The meagreness or liberality of diet. 3. Habits voluntarily or involuntarily formed respecting cleanliness of the person, and purity of the air and water. 4. The general intelligence of the laborer. 5. Technical education and industrial environment. 6. Cheerfulness and hopefulness in labor, growing out ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... could I let him perceive it. I would have to say No, although he understood it as Yes!' Suddenly he stood near her; he had seized her hand and was looking into her eyes. She bowed her head, he bent toward her. It seemed so strange to her—their lips touched—Maria frightened and blushing, sprang involuntarily from her chair, as if what she was dreaming ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... mean to make this a letter of complaint; but the fact is, I am just now smarting under an ebullition of violence on the part of our friends in Toronto, on the subject of Mr. Stanton's appointment to the Collectorship there, which almost involuntarily led me into these remarks. You will, I hope, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... I shivered involuntarily, although the night was warm, for I happened to know that a good deal of the cargo which we were carrying was of a highly combustible character, such as furniture, pianos, Manchester goods, and the like, ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... society, and during the cardinal revolutions of human history: where, however, they do concur, there it will not be suicide. In fact, this is the natural and practical judgment of us all. We do not all agree on the particular cases which will justify self-destruction: but we all feel and involuntarily acknowledge (implicitly acknowledge in our admiration, though not explicitly in our words or in our principles), that there are such cases. There is no man, who in his heart would not reverence a woman that chose to die ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... this dreary sanctuary is one of Titian's great paintings, The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, to which (though it is so cunningly disposed as to light that no one ever yet saw the whole picture at once) you turn involuntarily, envious of the Saint toasting so comfortably on his gridiron amid all ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... kampongs huddled in the shadow of decaying ruins. Here was a deserted city, with jungle creeping over Dutch waterways and red-brick houses, whose quaint gables and leaded windows spoke of eighteenth-century Holland rather than of twentieth-century Java. One involuntarily looked for windmills. A few of the old houses were still occupied as offices, and at one of these, where a native kampong nestled and stank beneath the rank shrubbery to one side, the ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... surprised and impressed. Evidently he had deep-seated ambitions, for he seemed to speak with actual emotion of these despised things which were so far beneath his planning for the future. She had a vague, momentary vision of Pitt, at twenty-one, prime minister of England; and she spoke, involuntarily in a lowered ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... tall gentleman, who stood gravely regarding her. At sight of him she paused, embarrassed. No figure was more familiar in Washington, yet none was less to be expected here. There was no mistaking the large frame, the high brow, the dark and piercing eye, the costume—that of another day. Involuntarily, although her first impression (based upon other meetings with distinguished men) was one more of apprehension than of pleasure, she swept him a deep curtsy. With the grace of a courtier he extended a hand and led ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... Edith recoiled involuntarily. Bloodshed, and perhaps death, the scandal that would arise, arrest perhaps, or examination before magistrates—all these thoughts came before her. She was brave, but things like these could not be lightly faced. She ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... and this kind gent'man come right off to see you," said the blonde cheerfully. "An' now maybe he'll be wantin' to talk with you, so I'll leave you be. Good night, dearie," and she stepped away quietly, a trail of perfume in her wake, so that Vandervelde's nose involuntarily wrinkled. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... members of our party's military organization assumed in October an attitude of extraordinary caution and even some skepticism toward the idea of an immediate insurrection. The closed character of the organization and its officially military character involuntarily inclined its leaders to underestimate the purely technical and organizational resources of the uprising, and from this point of view we were undoubtedly weak. Our strength lay in the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses and their readiness ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... that remain of this wonderful collection of the most admirable products of fifteen ages of civilization, of art and of industry, the count de Beauvoir says truly that no honest man can help shuddering involuntarily. Though his sentiment of national loyalty is very strong, yet he cannot avoid exclaiming, "Let us leave this place: let us run from this spot, where the soil burns us, the very view of which humbles us. We came to China as the armed champions of civilization ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... one of the ultra-lights flashed around in a short, quick arc, and the girl saw that instead of the fierce glare she had expected, it emitted only a soft violet light. Nevertheless she dodged involuntarily and Stevens ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... greatly enhances the romantic beauty of the situation. The mellow and serene glow of the autumn day harmonized so perfectly with the solemn grandeur of the scene around me, and sank so silently and deeply into my soul, that my spirit fell prostrate before it, and I melted involuntarily into tears." ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... mood to another, I was filled with the desire to shake the life half out of him. But so soon as I moved a step in his direction, intending war instead of peace, he altered the position of his hand, holding it out towards me as if forbidding my approach. Directly he did so, quite involuntarily, I pulled up dead,—as if my progress had been stayed by bars of ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... a volume of poor Tom Campbell in my pocket, and had been glancing over his chef-d'oeuvre, "Ye Mariners of England," when this stately edifice first checked my inspiration. In the wrath of my spirit I tossed the volume overboard. "Psha!" I involuntarily exclaimed, "what is the use of being a genius? What is the gratitude of a country, where a cotton-spinner can purchase the fee-simple of a province, while the man who spreads its fame over the world is left to gather his contemplations over a stove in an attic, watch ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... with the Tchiglit language would justify one in giving definite meanings to these words, or in asserting that an error had been made in the numerals. But it is so remarkable and anomalous to find the decimal and vigesimal scales mingled in this manner that one involuntarily suspects either incompleteness of ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... called the franc tireurs together; and made a proposition to them, which was at once heartily agreed to. He then called together the cure and schoolmaster and—after a few well-chosen words of regret, at the ills which he and his had involuntarily brought upon the village—he handed over to them, in the name of the whole corps, the hundred pounds in thaler notes which had been found upon the schoolmaster whom they had executed for treachery; to be distributed among the inhabitants, according ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... ladies in modern, often extravagant, toilets singing the parts of the grand, imposing figures of the Old and New Testaments has always disturbed me to such a degree that I could never attain to pure enjoyment. Involuntarily I felt and thought how much grander, more impressive, vivid, and true would be all that I had experienced in the concert-room if represented on the stage with costumes, decorations, and ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and Duff Lindsay had come back, the people from Surrey having been sped upon their way to the Far East. Stephen remembered with more than his usual relish an engagement to dine that evening in Middleton Street. He involuntarily glanced at his watch. It was half-past one. The afternoon looked arid, stretching between. Consulting his tablets he found that he had nothing that was really of any consequence to do. There were items, but they were unimportant, transferable. He had dismissed Hilda Howe, but ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... lay cold, in blue-grey, like a morning sea against a far horizon. Suddenly, as a dazzling streak at first, but enlarging rapidly into a dazzling sphere, the sun wheeled above the grey line, a light and glory as when it was first created. "Jim" involuntarily and reverently uncovered his head, and exclaimed, "I believe there is a God!" I felt as if, Parsee-like, I must worship. The grey of the Plains changed to purple, the sky was all one rose-red flush, on which vermilion cloud-streaks rested; the ghastly peaks gleamed ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... had not noticed before, but which was now open. There was a light within, and I saw a prettily-furnished parlor. There was a table with a lamp on it, and by the table sat the lady, Mrs. Chester. I involuntarily stopped, and, looking up, she invited me to come in. Instantly I accepted the invitation, but with a sort of an apology for ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... pressure of his hand, but he could say nothing. Mr Sherwood, however, saw his answer in eyes that were filling involuntarily ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... accident, as we are apt to call it, I can plainly see is calculated to effect many salutary objects. I needed rest of body and mind after my intense anxieties and exertions, and I might have neglected it, and so, perhaps, brought on premature disease of both; but I am involuntarily laid up so that I must keep quiet, and, although the fall that caused my wound was painful at first, yet I have no severe pain with it now. But the principal effect is, doubtless, intended to be of a spiritual character, and I am afforded ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... mane, my horse, of his own accord, broke into a canter, while I, almost involuntarily, trolled ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... of the chin, an eager glance in the eye, a sensitive curve of the lip attracted his boyish egotism. The portrait was an ideal, something to live up to. Involuntarily he ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the altar. There she sat down in a chair, and the doctor on a seat opposite; then he first saw, by the light of the chapel window, how greatly changed she was. Her face, generally so pale, was inflamed, her eyes glowing and feverish, all her body involuntarily trembling. The doctor would have spoken a few words of consolation, but she did not attend. "Sir," she said, "do you know that my sentence is an ignominious one? Do you know there is fire ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... described his afflictions have been unanimous as regards the inevitable end in store for the invalid, and were indeed surprised that he should so long have resisted. It is just possible that I may have involuntarily exaggerated the description of his various symptoms; but the truth is that he was sure of sudden death, even ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... and becoming restless from the fear of separation, he involuntarily drew near to her, and seizing her hand, said - "If thou wilt not form an affection for me, I will throw away my ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... into the other apartment, where Nichol, rendered good-natured by his supper and a cigar, was conversing sociably with the landlord. Mr. Kemble fairly trembled as he came forward, involuntarily expecting that the man so well known to him must ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... did look, but quite involuntarily, and only because a headline caught his eye. It was the same headline from before which Cassy backed. The leaping words shouted at the girl. They shouted at the novelist, a circumstance which did not prevent ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... soft grey crepe de chine, with a big grey hat and feathers, she was such a pretty picture that Patty involuntarily exclaimed in admiration. ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... the listener. Involuntarily he began to follow; but at the edge of the pavement in Gower Street they stopped, and by advancing another step or two he distinctly overheard ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... Involuntarily Roy put out his hand. The other took it with a glad light in his eyes. Then Roy turned out the lamp and ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... authors, Shakspeare has least imitated or repeated himself. While he gives us, in many places, portraits of the same passion, the delineations are as distinct and dissimilar as they are in nature; all his personages involuntarily, and in spite of themselves, express their own characters. From his works may be gleaned a complete collection of precepts adapted to every condition of life and every conceivable circumstance of human affairs. His wit is unbounded, his passion inimitable, and over all he has thrown a halo ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... "It's no use, dear mother"—involuntarily she said "dear": her heart was hungry for affection, Wales was rapidly passing out of her sphere, David's business must soon be wound up in that quarter and where else had she to go? "So long as you keep on with those Hotels I can't touch a penny. I oughtn't to have kept that thousand, only Praddy ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... little difference there is between man and man. A very few touches judiciously applied, would make Roebuck into Wellington, especially if Roebuck held the brush himself. Involuntarily I found my height increasing, my embonpoint diminishing, my eyes brightening, my hair disporting in wavy ringlets over a majestic brow, till at the end of the second page I was Theodore Fitzhedingham, twenty-five years of age, with several grandfathers and grandmothers distinguished in history ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... be "The Birks of Aberfeldie," and vividly recalled the time when Mac was ill and she took care of him. The memory was sweet to her, and involuntarily her eye wandered in search of him. He was not far away, sitting just as he used to sit when she soothed his most despondent moods astride of a chair with his head down on his arms, as if the song suggested the attitude. Her heart quite softened to him ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... of the two armchairs by the fire, and took the other himself. Another silence fell, during which Rokeby saw Osborn smiling secretly and involuntarily to himself as he had seen other men smile. The man was uplifted; his mind soared in heaven, while his body dwelt in a hired plush chair in the sitting-room of furnished lodgings. Rokeby took his drink, contented ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... superb haunches was seen; and the double garland of geraniums that encircled the tulle veiling seemed like flowers of blood scattered on virgin snow. Her beauty imposed admiration; and, murmuring assent, the dancers involuntarily drew into lines, and this pale, uncoloured loveliness, her high nose seen, and her silly laugh heard, by the side of her sharp, brown-eyed mother, passed down the room. Lord Dungory and Lord Rosshill advanced to meet them; a moment after ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... nevertheless felt a certain uneasiness, a longing to be up and doing, to throw himself into the fray; and his eyes kept on involuntarily returning to the face of the clock. The minute hand seemed endowed ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... England well enough by this time;" so his meditations ran, as he sat on a bench in the yard; "and it is not a name I ever encountered there, except—" he looked involuntarily over his shoulder—"as his name. Is the world so small that I cannot get away from him, even now when he is dead? He confessed at the last that he had betrayed the trust of the dead, and misinherited a fortune. And I was to see to it. ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... curious sound in the laugh, it was mocking yet musical, it was eerie yet merry. Involuntarily Ralph thought of Grieg's "Dance of the Imps," and Auber's overture "Le ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... now; but be d—d careful how you say it," was the reply, with a sneer that would have stung an abject slave into a longing for revenge, and that grated on Mr. Billings's nerves in a way that made him clinch his fists and involuntarily grit his teeth. Could it be that O'Grady detected it? One quick, wistful, half-appealing glance flashed from the Irishman's eyes towards the subaltern, and then, with evident effort at composure, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... believe," said Delcasse, and involuntarily the great Minister arose and returned his ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... sight, and even with the name of the Rhine. When the Austrians, in one of the last actions of the campaign of 1813, carried the heights of Hockheim, in the neigbourhood of Mentz, and first came in sight of that river, they involuntarily halted, and stood for some minutes in silence; when the Prince Marshal coming up to know the cause of the delay, their feelings burst forth in peals of enthusiastic acclamation, as they again advanced to the charge. ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... a light stock. The two men involuntarily glanced round them for the satisfaction of the contrast Murchison evoked, though neither of them, from motives of vague delicacy, felt inclined to dwell upon it. John Murchison had the shyness of an artist in his commercial success, and the minister possibly felt that his relation toward ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... on the lonely landscape, and then descended the ravine. That evening, I went early to the ladies' parlor, chatted more than usual with the various damsels whom I knew, and watched with a new interest those whom I knew not. My mind, involuntarily, had already created a picture of the unknown. She might be twenty-five, I thought; a reflective habit of mind would hardly be developed before that age. Tall and stately, of course; distinctly proud in her bearing, and somewhat ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... back his long hair. "I was once called Don Pedro Garcia," said he; "tell me," he added, as all four of us rose involuntarily at this startling announcement, "with ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... officer, who a few weeks later met a tragic end, narrowly escaped death. He was in command of gunboat No. 1, and while directing the attack stood leaning against her flagstaff. He saw a shot flying in his direction. Involuntarily he ducked his head, and the next instant the flying shot cut away the flagstaff just above him. When the action was over, Lieut. Somers stood by the pole, and found that the shot had cut it at the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... life; we are new to the business, a kind of faint-heartedness overpowers us, and leaves us in an almost dazed condition of mind. We feel that we are helpless aliens in a strange country. At all ages we shrink back involuntarily from the unknown. And a young man is very much like the soldier who will walk up to the cannon's mouth, and is put to flight by a ghost. He hesitates among the maxims of the world. The rules of attack and of self-defence are alike unknown to him; he can neither give nor ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... Harold told all he could remember of his sufferings. When he spoke of the return of old rheumatic pains his hearer said involuntarily: 'Good!' Harold paused; but went on at once. The Doctor recognised that he had rightly appraised his remark, and by it judged that he was a well-educated man. Something in the method of speaking struck him, and he said, as ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... and was walking along by the edge of the water with his eyes fixed upon the trees above, where he had a minute before heard the call of a bird, when he was startled by a shout from the Houssa behind him. He involuntarily sprang back, and it was well he did so; for on the instant something swept by within an inch or two of his head. Looking round he saw, at the edge of the stream below him, a huge alligator. This had struck at him with its tail—the usual manner in which the alligator supplies itself with food—and ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... a crisis was at hand and that she must meet it boldly. She thought of the ivory-handled weapon in the holster at her hip and involuntarily her right hand dropped to its butt. She had learned to shoot, but she had never yet shot at a man and she drew her hand away from the butt of the weapon with a shudder. Yuma had been watching her closely, his evil little eyes glittering, and when he ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... course as an explorer. He was however survived by many of his followers, among them by the physician and naturalist Steller, to whom we owe a masterpiece seldom surpassed—a sketch of the natural conditions and animal life on the island, never before visited by man, where he involuntarily passed the time from the middle of November 1741, to the end of ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... was standing opposite him, and I involuntarily leaned against the wall behind me, but suddenly thought, "Be careful. You'll break the glass in the picture of Whistler's Mother, and you'll be sorry." It brought me up standing, and he didn't notice. Isn't the mind a ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... late, the place deserted; as the man had discovered, he had no weapons, nor, strong, active, and practiced as he was, did he flatter himself that he could withstand the length of brawn and sinew before him. Involuntarily, he stepped backward until there was a space between them, casting at the same moment a glance toward the wall where hung axe ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... heard at the door. She involuntarily moves toward him for protection. He enfolds her in his arms just an instant. More knocking and louder. Lassalle tenderly puts her away from him and goes to the door, opens it. The landlord stands there ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... However, some days after, I found that he had offered a florin for a little bread and cheese, and then a dollar, and even more. Being again refused, he complained heavily; but gradually he weaned himself from asking for it, though at times he betrayed involuntarily ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... depths and may only rouse the mockery of those who do not comprehend them. Monsieur d'Albon had one of those delicate natures which divine sorrows, and are instantly sympathetic to the emotion they have involuntarily aroused. He respected his friend's silence, rose, forgot his fatigue, and followed him silently, grieved to have touched a wound that ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... man who is born in and lives for a long time in an old community, is, through this alone, marked with its imprint; the customs to which he conforms have crystallized in him in the shape of sentiments: if it is well-regulated and civilized, he has involuntarily arrived at respect for property and for human life, and, in most characters, this respect has taken very deep root. A theory, even if adopted, does not wholly succeed in destroying this respect; only in rare instances is it successful, when it encounters ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... as something of an outcast, therefore, it will be seen that he was such both voluntarily and involuntarily. ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... him involuntarily, for she was much agitated. "Glad, brother? Yes, I am glad because you ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Marie. Bud leaned forward, staring, his brows drawn together, breathing the short, quick breaths of emotion focussed upon one object, excluding all else. Once, when Frank moved his body a little in the next seat, Bud's hand went out that way involuntarily. The touch of Frank's rough coat sleeve recalled him brutally, so that he drew away with a wincing movement as though ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... man. There's symbolism in that similarity, because every love which is of the heart soon extends to the organ resembling it. The human imagination, the moment it tries to create artificially animated beings, involuntarily reproduces in them the movements of animals propagating. Look at the machines, the action of the piston and the cylinder; Romeos of steel and Juliets of cast iron. Nor do the loftier expressions of the human intellect get away from the advance and withdrawal copied ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... I work?" The question shaped itself in my mind and I uttered it involuntarily. I sat down and stared at the fire. A kind of dull depression came over me, and for some reason the picture of Sarakoff's butterflies appeared in my mind. I saw them with great distinctness, crawling aimlessly on the floor of their cage. "Why ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... lived a hundred years longer!" he cried involuntarily when, led in front of his father by some diabolical influence, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... up at the lamp in the window. Geoffrey's eyes followed hers. Involuntarily he laid his hand on hers. "Dear Miss Vesta!" he said, and his strong, hearty voice could be very gentle. "Miss Blyth told me. Does ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... extraordinary disproportion between the consequences of an invention and the invention itself. We have said that intelligence is modeled on matter and that it aims in the first place at fabrication. But does it fabricate in order to fabricate or does it not pursue involuntarily, and even unconsciously, something entirely different? Fabricating consists in shaping matter, in making it supple and in bending it, in converting it into an instrument in order to become master of it. It is this mastery that profits humanity, much more ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... accordance with the offence to be punished, and may be light or severe. Some exiles are simply banished to Siberia, and can do almost anything except go away. They may travel as they choose, engage in business, and even hold official position. It is no bar to their progress that they emigrated involuntarily. If they forget their evil ways and are good citizens, others will be equally oblivious and encourage them. They have special inducements to become colonists and till the soil or develop its mineral wealth. With ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... and again, but I never spoke after that. He made all the issues clearer and clearer—his own side involuntarily and all the griefs I had to expect. As for him, he dared not kill me—and he dared not give me up to the admiral. In his suspense, since, for him, I was the only person in the world who knew Seraphina's fate, he dared not let me ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... hand; as she did so, a paper fluttered out and fell to the floor. Stooping for it, Norah's quick eyes read involuntarily, ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... remaining. Then he waited for the darkest hour of the night, when the sentinels would probably be asleep; this would be not long before dawn. He knew the hours of their rounds, the length of each watch, every detail with which prisoners, almost involuntarily, become familiar. He waited till the moment when one of the men-at-arms had spent two-thirds of his watch and gone into his box for shelter from the fog. Then, feeling sure that the chances were at the best for his escape, he let himself down knot by knot, hanging ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... pupil. This Jock had looked forward to as the greatest of pleasures. But somehow he did not feel so happy about it now. He did not seem to himself to want Mr. Derwentwater. In some ways, indeed, he had become impatient of Mr. Derwentwater. Since that visit to the theatre, involuntarily without any cause for it, there had commenced to be moments in which MTutor was tedious. This sacrilege was unconscious, and never yet had been put into words; but still the feeling was there; and the beginning ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... and a jet of smoke drifting away from its bows in the still morning air showed me whence the delicate attention had come. Was ever a respectable gentleman in such an impasse? The treacherous sand slope allowed no escape from a spot which I had visited most involuntarily, and a promenade on the river frontage was the signal for a bombardment from some insane native in a boat. I'm afraid that I lost ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... this room except at night, and to bear his grandfather company for an hour or two before bed-time, that he involuntarily glanced round it now in the fast-fading twilight. In that moment he remarked that the door of the cabinet was unlocked—a circumstance so unusual that he went towards it and looked inside to note what might be the reason of such carelessness. Then seeing this silver ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... of her. She thought over all the names on her card, and the little contests that had taken place for her hand, and all Charley's jokes, and M. de l'Empereur's great disaster; and then as she remembered how long she had gone on twisting round with the poor unfortunate ill-used Frenchman, she involuntarily burst out into a ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... was alone, shook his head as he read this letter, and then laid it down with a pish! He did it involuntarily, and was surprised at himself when he found that he had so done. "I should like to argue the point," thought Jack, in spite of himself; and then he threw the letter on the table, and went into Gascoigne's room, displeased ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... invention of a "white night." Those who know their Alice in Wonderland will perhaps involuntarily conjure up the picture of the kindly and fantastic White Knight, riding about on a horse covered with mousetraps and other strange caparisons, which he introduced to all and sundry with the unfailing remark, "It's my own invention." Scoffers will ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... until that instant, she had looked in vain—but it was a man's wonder of woman now, utter and absolute and all-enveloping. She caught her breath then; she touched her lips with a dainty tongue as though they had gone dry of a sudden. Involuntarily she stepped toward him, that single pace which she had fallen away. And above the tumult of her own senses she heard herself trying to laugh and realized how ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... who was the leader in a couple secured by a slave-stick, seemed to regard this woman with a degree of interest that argued near relationship. He started forward half involuntarily when the Portuguese half-caste kicked her. He had forgotten for an instant his fellow in rear, as well as the bar of the goree across his throat, which checked him violently; at the same time one ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... involuntarily notwithstanding the warning, and clung to his arm an instant, but he took no notice of her whatever. His fingers relaxed their iron grasp of hers, his hand dropped to his side, and leaning forward, he bowed his head on the marble dome of the little temple. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... more spiritual than dreamy, his bland smile never writhed into bitterness. The transparent delicacy of his complexion pleased the eye, his fair hair was soft and silky, his nose slightly aquiline, his bearing so distinguished, and his manners stamped with so much high breeding, that involuntarily he was always treated EN PRINCE. His gestures were many and graceful; the tone of his voice was veiled, often stifled; his stature was low, and his limbs slight. He constantly reminded us of a convolvulus balancing its heaven-colored cup upon an incredibly slight stem, the tissue ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... own native land no leniency would be shown. On the contrary, my reasoning, though personal, was, on the whole, the best for the rajah and the people. I stated my extreme reluctance to have the blood of conquered foes shed; the shame I should experience in being a party, however involuntarily, to their execution; and the general advantage of a merciful line of policy. At the same time I told him their lives were forfeited, their crimes had been of a heinous and unpardonable nature, and it was only ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... effect upon General Charles Lee, who came back to his command with as high an opinion of himself, and as low an opinion of certain other people, as he had had when he involuntarily left it. It was some time after this, at the battle of Monmouth Court House, that Charles Lee showed what sort of a man he really was. He had now become so jealous that he positively determined that he would not obey orders, and would act as he thought best. He had command of a body ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... serious, too, were his feelings, and settled were his views, apparently, for he made no petty effort to attract, dazzle, or impress. He contrived, notwithstanding, to command a little; because the deeper voice, however mildly modulated, the somewhat harder mind, now and then, though involuntarily and unintentionally, bore down by some peremptory phrase or tone the mellow accents and susceptible, if high, nature of Shirley. Miss Keeldar looked happy in conversing with him, and her joy seemed twofold—a joy of the past and present, of memory ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... loved her husband. And why was he so unjust to her at the last?" she involuntarily reproached the ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Claudia involuntarily looked up to Ishmael's face; their eyes met— hers betraying the yearning anguish of a famishing heart, and his the most earnest sympathy, the most reverential compassion. Why did Claudia look at him so? Ah! because she could not help it. What was ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the colonel, falling back, as his hand involuntarily rose to the level of his waistcoat pocket ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of the Hill are not, I think, so varied. They involuntarily respect religion, when expressed with sincerity, and incarnated in strength of character. It must have the authority, however, of strength, at least passive strength, to ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... the angry glance of him who had come to dethrone their descendant and appropriate his crown. Then he fixed his eyes on the portrait of a handsome woman whose large blue eyes seemed to gaze at him, and her crimson lips to greet him with a winning smile. Quite involuntarily, and as if attracted by the beauty of this likeness, he approached and ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... third book of the "Ethics", and in the second chapter, Aristotle, dealing with certain actions which, though bad in themselves, admit of pity and forgiveness because they were committed involuntarily, through ignorance, instances 'the man who did not know a subject was forbidden, like Aeschylus with the Mysteries,' and 'the man who only meant to show how it worked, like the fellow who let off the catapult' ([Greek: e deixai Boulemos ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... affliction; for as an affliction every one that loves Zion must view it. When we call to mind how 'few and far between' cases of true conversion are, and the almost unparalleled impertinence and hardness of sinners, we almost involuntarily exclaim, 'Has God forgotten to be gracious? or, Is the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... (phantasia).—This term is employed to describe the power which the mind possesses of imagining or representing whatever has once been the object of sensation. This may be done involuntarily as "in dreams, disease, and hallucination,"[537] or voluntarily, as in reminiscence. Phantasmata are the images, the life-pictures (zographena) of sensible things which are present to the mind, even when no external object ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... of one isolated inner sense. Such was the case with the sensitives with whom Mr. Myers and his colleagues experimented. There are instances, however, when the correction of one sense by another takes place involuntarily and accurate results are brought out. When the sensitive reads the thoughts in a man's mind, this correction is not required, for the will of the thinker shoots the thoughts, as it were, straight into the mind of the sensitive. The introversion under ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... gifts of ingenuity, and to exercise his judgment in either adding, omitting, harmonically or otherwise embellishing the work (while preserving the original idea and characteristics), so as to thoroughly re-create it, so completely destroying the very sensing of the original timbre that one involuntarily exclaims, 'Truly, this never was anything but a violin piece!' It is this, the blending and fusion of two personalities in the achievement of an art-ideal, that is the result of ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... tightened, shutting off my breath. My senses whirled. His grim sardonic face over me became blurred. I tore futilely at my throat to break his choking grip. All the world was a roaring chaos to my fading senses. Then in the blur I saw horror sweep his expression. His fingers involuntarily loosened. I got a breath of blessed air, gasping, and ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... nearly blind and well nigh exhausted. He had been sent round to relieve the men on post and bid them make the best of their way to the guard-room. He was even then searching for Number Five, who had most justifiably, in fact, involuntarily, taken refuge as previously explained. Had he not been blown into the Snaffles' kitchen, he might, like Barker's cow, have been ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... body he opened his eyes. At the very next table to his own were seated two people, a man and a woman. He looked at the latter first. She was clad in yellow, and was very tall, thin and fierce-looking; so fierce-looking that George involuntarily jerked his head back, and brought it with painful force in contact with the wall. It was the Tiger herself, and her companion was the coarse, dreadful-looking man called Johnnie, whom she had sent away in the cab on the night of Mr. ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... energy born of desperation, wrapped his arms about my legs and with tremendous strength jerked me forward, at the same instant striking me in the back with his knee. Thus, to keep from pitching over his head, I involuntarily lost my hold—the last of all things I ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the first born disappears, and all, both sons and daughters, share in the patrimony of the house and in the honors of the household. Despite this, it is natural for a father to love his first born son the best, and for the mother to find her heart clinging involuntarily to the younger and weaker. From the unfortunate the father may turn, but the mother never. She will bind her love tightest about the birdling that, from some misfortune, is unable to ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... involuntarily. To him, his art was too sacred to admit of any flippancy in discussing it. He turned still ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... like a thunderbolt into the midst of the group. Eustace moved involuntarily to Peter's side and put a protecting arm round him, as if he had been struck. The little ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... sing and play. Such was the scene, and such the melody, that had Tan-Sen [140] been present at that hour, he would have forgot his strains; and Baiju-Ba,ora [141] would have gone mad. In the midst of this festivity, the young merchant's eyes filled suddenly with tears, and involuntarily two or three drops trickled down [his cheeks]; he turned round and said to me, "Now between us a friendship for life is formed; to hide the secrets of our hearts is approved by no religion. I am going to impart a secret to you, in the confidence of friendship and ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... a crown for a god," said she, twining it together at the ends. "Will you let me turn you into Apollo for a moment?" And, without thinking, she let it fall lightly on his head. "No Apollo was ever so beautiful," she involuntarily exclaimed. "If only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... depart. Simpletons show us, that a body can get along almost without a soul; but of a soul getting along without a body, we have no tangible and indisputable proof. My lord, the wisest of us breathe involuntarily. And how many millions there are who live from day to day by the incessant operation of subtle processes in them, of which they know nothing, and care less? Little ween they, of vessels lacteal and lymphatic, of arteries ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... to draw out this girl into speaking of things which were sacred to her, and which had a meaning for her that was pure. Her love was for God, and she was trying to explain; and the terms open to her were terms of human love, which she, Evelyn, with a sinful imagination, misconstrued, involuntarily perhaps, but ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... plateaus with comparatively cool climate brave the hottest and most deleterious Ethiopian regions with impunity, which they attribute to their habit of daily fumigation of the naked body with sulphur. It was interesting to know whether sulphurous emanations, received involuntarily, have a like effect. From inquiries made by M. Fouque, it appears that in Sicily, while most of the sulphur mines are in high districts and free from malaria, a few are at a low level, where intermittent fever prevails. In the latter districts, while the population of the neighboring villages is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... continual brilliance which is fatiguing because it is continual, but does not fail to be a marvellous fault. Finally must be cited Rutilius, first because he had talent, then because even amid the invasions of the barbarians he made an impassioned eulogy of Rome which is, involuntarily, a funeral oration; finally, because, despite being a bitter foe to Christianity, he once more involuntarily defined the great and noble change from paganism to Christianity: Tunc mutabantur corpora, nunc animi ("Formerly ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... involuntarily burst from his dry lips when, having burst from behind the barrier, he had a clear view of the field. For the shed was there as intact as ever, and also the two hangars sheltering the aeroplanes. Some distance back, far enough removed ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... except that the earlier quarto has close denotements; which was the author's first expression, afterwards changed by him, not to cold dilations, for cold is read in no ancient copy; nor, I believe, to close dilations, but to close delations; to occult and secret accusations, working involuntarily from the heart, which, though resolved to conceal the fault, cannot rule its ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... don't, for Heaven's sake, adopt the follies and vices of men. As I have said, Dick, vanity is certainly your great weakness, and I want you to be especially on your guard against it. It will tempt you to tamper with the truth, even if it does no worse," (I thought involuntarily of Lady Mary and my tacit admission of the justice of Lord Fitz-Johnes' impeachment of me with regard to her), "and it is quite possible that it may lead ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... is replete with such truthful descriptions, that you are involuntarily borne on the wings of imagination until all seems reality, and you identify ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... furniture was heavy, formal and old-fashioned. Gloomy portraits of dead and gone Chillingtons lined the green walls, and this might be the reason why there always seemed to me a slight graveyard flavour—scarcely perceptible, but none the less surely there—about this room which caused me to shudder involuntarily whenever I ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... this a dead silence prevailed, and then from the ships afloat and the streets and quays ashore there arose a low murmur, instantly changing to a confused clamour of hurrying feet and shouting voices, expressive of the utmost panic and dismay, which became a perfect uproar when, as everybody involuntarily turned toward the spot from which the explosion had seemed to proceed, it was seen that the American warship Maine was sinking rapidly by the head, while the after part of her was enveloped in flames. And as everybody stared in paralysed horror at the ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... that wish; but Miss Celia did comfort him, for presently the sound of music floated out from the parlor—music so soft, so sweet, that involuntarily the boy stopped his crying to listen; then quieter tears dropped slowly, seeming to soothe his pain as they fell, while the sense of loneliness passed away, and it grew possible to wait till it was time to go ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... Again a thunderclap overhead. Involuntarily the Terran ducked. Then he turned his face up to the sky, striving to see any evidence of storm. What hung there sped the growth of the fog on the water. Yet where the fog was gray-white, it was a darkness spouting from the highest point ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... about that. I involuntarily think of this good nurse when I hear all social evils explained by these common phrases: "It is the superabundance of products, the tyranny of capital, industrial plethora," and other idle stories of which we cannot even say: ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... involuntarily playing that weird mysterious part—the part of an International Spy. He was seeing secret things. He had, in fact, crossed the designs of no less a power than the German Empire, he had blundered into ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Smith had involuntarily shown signs of fatigue during the journey, but yet he had borne up well against it. I had never felt called on to grant any extra indulgence as to time because the work was too much for him. But now he was a good ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... shapes with the greatest facility, and playing the most opposite parts in order to arrive at the different ends he proposed to himself; and nevertheless was but little capable of seducing. His judgment acted by fits and starts, was involuntarily crooked, with little sense or clearness; he was disagreeable in spite of himself. Nevertheless, he could be funnily vivacious when he wished, but nothing more, could tell a good story, spoiled, however, to some extent by his stuttering, which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... uttered quickly, almost unintelligibly; then he said something more which I could not catch at all, and such a strange expression passed over his face that I involuntarily recalled the epithet 'cracked.' He looked down, cleared his throat, and seemed to come to himself again. 'What sunshine!' he murmured in a low voice. 'It is a blessing, oh, Lord! What warmth in ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... attempted to withdraw my eyes from this terrible figure, but they wandered back involuntarily, and found his countenance unaltered. I pointed him out to the person who sat nearest to me on the other side, and he did the same to the person next to him. In a few minutes a general curiosity and astonishment pervaded the whole company. The conversation ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... flight by flight, he ascended toward the top of the house. He was noiselessly progressing along the hallway of the third floor; he was about midway of it when under his tread a loose plank gave off an agonized squeak, and, as involuntarily he crouched, right at his side a door was ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... felt the power of his steady gaze, for suddenly and almost involuntarily, I raised my eyes and beheld him leaning against the polished casement, the heavy red curtain over the entrance hanging loosely and gracefully behind him, making an effective background for his white hair ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... his strong, muscled hand in hers. But when he tried to draw her to him, she shrank back involuntarily, startled, and looked at him with wide-open eyes as if she would read Destiny in him,—the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Involuntarily he stopped in his tracks as I faced him, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. His eyes swept greedily over me—silver mesh-purse, wrist-watch, the brooch at my throat, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... She involuntarily pressed his arm, though very slightly; and then in rather a hushed and hurried tone she said, "They were talking about you at dinner to-day. I fear this change of government, if there is to be one, will be injurious to you—losing your ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... at the prospect one involuntarily shudders! One's self is hedged about by impassioned inquisitionists. On every side one is confronted by waving beards, condemning eyes, denouncing faces, clenched hands and pointing fingers. From full twenty throats at once one is beset by shrill interrogations; but, owing to the universal rapidity ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the signature. My heart ceased its beating, and a sudden cry involuntarily escaped me, although next moment I saw that by it I had betrayed myself, for Ambler Jevons sprang to ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... And yet—involuntarily, he stiffened—and yet he'd be hanged if he went back and acted like a whipped pup. No, he was supposed to be a man, and his friends and Anna believed in him, an he'd be hanged if he went back and confessed anything at all, admitted anything. It was all well enough to look facts in ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... them into another tiny, musty-smelling passage that wound about like the run of a rabbit warren, only wide enough for one to pass along at a time, and the strips of lath were so low overhead that Hamilton bent his neck involuntarily to avoid them. ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... before the children, when a howl of protest arose. This was not permitted, if he wanted to win he would have to eat the entire roast himself. Mathias submitted, but dropped his eyes in shame before the children. Time and again he involuntarily passed portions of meat to them, but his attempts were frustrated by renewed protests. He could not continue, however, until the little ones were taken out into the cold. There was no other place, since the only room was taken ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... something moving in the distance, then he was not sure. He decided he would turn back; then curiosity was too much for him; he began to whistle and walked boldly into the darkness, followed the rotten ties, when, lo! he saw a flash of light, heard a thundering report, and, involuntarily giving a yell, started to run, ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... Involuntarily Mark turned. He saw nothing alarming. The next instant he felt himself grasped in the strong arms of the man, and a cloth that smelled strongly of the strange, sweetly sickish odor was pressed ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... out of the chair by his hair. Up, slowly—to his full height, and when his knees had locked stiff the hand let him go, and he swayed a little on his feet. There was a suggestion of awful stillness in his face, in his movements, in his very voice when he said "They shouted"—and involuntarily I pricked up my ears for the ghost of that shout that would be heard directly through the false effect of silence. "There were eight hundred people in that ship," he said, impaling me to the back of my seat with an awful blank stare. "Eight hundred ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... as he rounds some rocky point, half a dozen of these gigantic boulders piled together, leaning against each other with great cavernous openings between, through which he can walk erect, and he involuntarily looks around him for the armor of the ancient giants who piled up these stupendous rocks and walled in the lake with ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... and scrupulously put the kitchen back into its customary order. Having removed the last trace of any one's ever having cooked or eaten there, she lighted a candle and sought her wraps in the icy upper regions of the house. As she passed the parlor door she shivered involuntarily. ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner |
