"Inadvertent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... declares himself in a manner peculiarly zealous against the Pretender; And if such a writer in four several treatises on so nice a subject, where a royal patent is concerned, and where it was necessary to speak of England and of liberty, should in one or two places happen to let fall an inadvertent expression, it would be hard to condemn him after all the good he hath done; Especially when we consider, that he could have no possible design in view, either of honour or profit, but purely ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... confessed, or that some loved one had ceased to exist;—and all these crises of feeling and anxiety, of surprise and despair, induced with a fiendish deliberation, to startle honor into self-betrayal, wring from exhausted Nature what conscious rectitude would not divulge, or agonize human love into inadvertent disloyalty. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... honour of representing their house, since the dervishes did not turn up. Rogers, when he shut the door on Todd, did not guess that he had shut up Biffen's crack bats too. That Biffen's lost the match, and made no sort of show against Cotton's bowling, may also, perhaps, be attributed to the inadvertent imprisonment of Mehtah ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... nobler flower, all glowing and flashing and fragrant. With eyes dewy with delight she hung over the bouquet, almost trembling in her eagerness of joy. She set the flowers carefully in a vase, with tender circumspection, lest a leaf might be wronged by chance crowding or inadvertent handling. Pitt watched and read it all. He felt a great compassion for Esther. This creature, full of life and sensibility, receptive to every influence, at twelve years old shut up to the company of a taciturn and melancholy father and an empty ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... as the subject of a snapshot she'd once seen Miss Ross crying over. Miss Ross had hidden it hastily and told her it was someone she had once loved, now dead. And this inadvertent disclosure that Miss Ross was the security leak the Major had never had a clue to could only have come about through such confusion as Mike had instigated and Haney and the Chief and Joe had organized. But Joe learned those ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... how the story would be told. "We'll say no more about it, if you please. The young man is sorry. I forgive him. His offense was inadvertent even though vexatious. If he will profit by this experience I will gladly ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... which art there never was an equal master to himself. From these various excellencies, he had so full a possession of the esteem and regard of his auditors, that, upon his entrance into every scene, he seemed to seize upon the eyes and ears of the giddy and inadvertent. To have talked or looked another way would then have been thought insensibility or ignorance. In all his soliloquies of moment, the strong intelligence of his attitude and aspect drew you into such an impatient gaze, and eager expectation, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... his way cautiously across the yard, wary of the tin cans and general rubbish which an inadvertent step might metamorphose most effectively into a decidedly undesirable advertisement of his presence. There was no light that he could see in Melinoff's at all; and he frowned now in a puzzled way. Had the Pippin ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... should be ashamed to charge a scholar, like Mr. Buckle, with being unaware that consciousness does not apply to any matter which comes properly under the cognizance of the senses, and that the word can be honestly used in such applications only by the last extreme of ignorant or inadvertent latitude. Conscious of the existence of spectres! One might as lawfully say he is "conscious" that there is a man in the moon, or that the color of his neighbor's hair is due to a dye. Mr. Buckle is undoubtedly honest. How, then, could he, in strict philosophical discussion, employ the cardinal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and prudent animal did not make angry or inadvertent motions, but evidently was pleased and happy at the arrival of the ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... transgression with the same severity as is due to an enormous crime. Now, suppose two men to sin against God at the same time, the one by the deliberate murder of his father—for the case is possible—and the other, by a slight, almost inadvertent, falsehood; and suppose, further, that they are both to appear before God the next moment to answer for the deeds done in the flesh, I ask whether it is consistent with the idea we have of divine justice to think that both will ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... little ominous, I thought; but Mr. Worden was not a man to be frightened from a good hot supper, by half-a-dozen inadvertent words. He could tolerate even a religious discussion, with such an object in view. He walked on, side by side with Guert, and we were soon at the door of the house of Mr. Van Brunt, the Bachelor in Divinity, as I nicknamed him. Guert entered without knocking, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... Falstaff had just the same 'naivete', but in Falstaff it was the 'naivete' of conscious humour. In Pepys it was quite different, for Pepys's 'naivete' was the inoffensive vanity of a man who loved to see himself in the glass. Falstaff had a sense, too, of inadvertent humour, but it was questionable whether Pepys could have had any sense of humour at all, and yet permitted himself to be so delightful. There was probably, however, more involuntary humour in Pepys's Diary than there was in any other book extant. When ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... other's company, not only in the main business of fighting, but in hawking and hunting in the neighbourhood. It was the enemy's country, and this gave zest to our escapades." He spoke rapidly but he could not distract her attention from his inadvertent admission. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... to the Gentleman who has originated a Subscription for the Support of the Children of our very worthy deceasd Friend. I had been informd of it before; having lately seen a Letter on the Subject, in which the Name of Congress is mentiond in Terms more than "inadvertent." I am much displeasd, when I find the tender Feelings of Humanity & Benevolence towards these helpless Orphans accompanied with the Passion of Anger, and Resentment (probably misplacd) towards that Body, which their "brave Father," if living, would not fail to honor & revere. I should ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... sustain. Such DARES was, and such he strode along, And drew hoarse homage from the howling throng. His brawny breast and bulky arms he shows, } His lifted fists around his head he throws, } Huge caveats to the inadvertent nose. } But DARES, who, although a sinewy brute, Had not of late increased his old repute, Looked scarce like one prepared for gain or loss, And scornful of the surreptitious "cross;" Rather the kind of cove ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... Urging Immanence used to-day Its inadvertent might to field this fray: And Europe's wormy dynasties rerobe Themselves in their old gilt, to ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... door burst rather than swung open, and admitted in the dark interior a regal apparition in black silk and fur which bore rapidly down upon him. The cigarette leaped from the fingers of the urban young man and he gave breath to an inadvertent "Damn!"—but it was upon Merlin that the entrance seemed to have the most remarkable and incongruous effect—so strong an effect that the greatest treasure of his shop slipped from his hand and joined the cigarette on the floor. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... they do turtle, but the sport demands greater patience and dexterity, for the dugong is a wary animal and shy, to be approached only with the exercise of artful caution. An inadvertent splash of the paddle or a miss with the harpoon, and the game is away with a torpedo-like swirl. To be successful in the sport the black must be familiar with the life-history of the creature to a certain extent—understanding its peregrinations and the reason ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... rules; there is no enterprise which does not receive and transmit the now of life that circulates through the moral system at large. To be righteously indignant is to protest passionately in behalf of the whole good, and against the clumsy and inadvertent evil. To this morality owes its universal support, its invincible finality. It need never be apologetic, because it holds no brief; it advocates no measure except the carrying through to the end of what is virtually undertaken by all parties to ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... necessarily following the appointments to certain offices, of all which Her Majesty had approved. I certainly ought to have written to Her Majesty previously to the adjournment of the House of Commons until Thursday the 16th of September. It was an inadvertent omission on my part, amid the mass of business which I have had to transact, and I have little doubt that if I had been in Parliament I should have ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... contented feelings in Wingo and the Legislature to be received with any sort of calm. Wingo was behind the game to the tune of—the Governor gave up adding as he ran his eye over the figures of the bank's erased and tormented record, and he shook his head to himself. This was inadvertent. ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... "She is indeed well worthy the exalted opinion you express of her; and had I followed her advice, I should not have been found amongst the ranks of your enemies." "You confess the fact then, monsieur le duc?" said I. "I trust, madam, you will not take advantage of an inadvertent expression to turn it against myself. What I fear is, that without ever having been your enemy, I may have passed for such in your estimation; and such indeed is the cruel position in which I am placed." "Stay, my lord duke," cried I; "be candid, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... the Theatrum Poetarum 252 modern British poets are named. Of these Winstanley chose to omit the 16 female and 33 Scottish poets. Of the remaining 203, he dropped 68, and for the student of literary reputation these omissions raise some interesting questions. Undoubtedly a few were inadvertent. About a dozen were authors noted but not dated by Phillips, and it is probable that Winstanley was unable to learn more about them. Fifteen others were English poets who apparently did not write in the vernacular. An additional fifteen were poets dated by Phillips but described as inferior ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... drive them from the hill with an amazing fury; even the blue thrush at the season of breeding would dart out from the clefts of the rocks to chase away the kestril, or the sparrow-hawk. If you stand near the nest of a bird that has young, she will not be induced to betray them by an inadvertent fondness, but will wait about at a distance with meat in her mouth for ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... by a mainstream expletive] Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system was slowed to a snail's pace by an inadvertent {fork bomb}. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... were shouting, "Save the Sleeper. Take care of the Sleeper." A guard stumbled against Graham and hurt his hand by an inadvertent blow of his weapon. A wild tumult tossed and whirled about him, growing, as it seemed, louder, denser, more furious each moment. Fragments of recognisable sounds drove towards him, were whirled away from him as his ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... the other hand, was cautiously collecting his scattered foot soldiers, and, with two bishops, and two castle-armed elephants, were meditating a desperate onset to retrieve the disgrace of his lost queen. An inadvertent remark from Lysander, concerning the antiquity of the game, attracted the attention of Philemon so much as to throw him off his guard; while his queen, forgetful of her sex, and venturing unprotected, like Penthesilea of old, into the thickest ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... prods of the stools in the middle of the embers, maintaining an unstable equilibrium by resting their own legs on the top of the walls. Here they sat, smoking and being smoked, till they were dry and warm. Of course, in case of a slip or an inadvertent movement, they would have gone sprawling into the fire. A well-known Swiss botanist, who has seen many strange sleeping-places in the course of sixty years of flower-hunting in the mountains of ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... this which is now proposed, my lords, has his majesty been betrayed into an inadvertent appro bation of measures pernicious to the nation, and dishonourable to himself, and will now be kept ignorant of the despicable conduct of the war, the treacherous connivance at the descent of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... the reply of the minister, for of course she had gone away then. If she had stayed she would have heard him say, with exaggerated prudery, "Felicia! My dear! Were you alluding to Rebecca Mary's limbs?" for the minister wickedly remembered inadvertent occasions when he himself had ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... the conversation, which had been carried on mostly in duets, became general. Flemming soon recovered from the remorse of his inadvertent question, or rather from his annoyance at the thought that possibly it had struck Lynde as having ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Lord, with what rigor didst Thou punish them! A useless glance was checked as a sin. How many tears did those inadvertent faults cost me, through a weak compliance, and even against my will! Thou knowest that Thy rigor, exercised after my slips, was not the motive of those tears which I shed. With what pleasure would ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... still great, and there was the risk that at any moment another inadvertent movement on the part of the boat, such as that made by Mr Gregory in his ignorance of the side on which the enemy lay, might result in discovery, for the sea glowed in the intense light shed by the burning vessel, ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... of line 8 and added it at the end of line 7 (intruding upon margin-space in order to do so), and then supplied, in somewhat smaller letters, the omitted words ACCEPTO UT PRAEFECTUS AERARI. As there are no homoioteleuta to account for the omission, it is almost certain that it was caused by the inadvertent skipping of a line.[25] The omitted letters ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... force by Boggs, that we gets timid about this yere whisky, an' Enright orders the bar'l sent back. An' right he is! S'ppose them Red Dogs was to have come prancin' over for a social call, an' s'ppose in entertainin' 'em we all inadvertent has recourse to that partic'lar licker, whatever do you-all reckon 'd have been the finish? Son, thar'd have been one of them things they calls ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... out of one's head; disconcert, discompose; put out, confuse, perplex, bewilder, moider^, fluster, muddle, dazzle; throw a sop to Cerberus. Adj. inattentive; unobservant, unmindful, heedless, unthinking, unheeding, undiscerning^; inadvertent; mindless, regardless, respectless^, listless &c (indifferent) 866; blind, deaf; bird-witted; hand over head; cursory, percursory^; giddy-brained, scatter-brained, hare-brained; unreflective, unreflecting^, ecervele [Fr.]; offhand; dizzy, muzzy^, brainsick^; giddy, giddy as a goose; wild, harum-scarum, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... reader's consideration, with the view of inculcating caution by the misfortunes of others, and shewing at the same time how possible it is, under the present law regulating joint-stock partnerships, for an honest man, by the most inadvertent act, to entail misery upon himself, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... pass it by. They will do more justice to your self-denial than they would have done to your dialectic talents. Corinna loves to be contradicted, but hates to be convinced, and dreads no monster so much as a short-horned—dilemma. She may forgive the first offense as inadvertent, but "one more such victory and you are lost." Think how often clemency has succeeded where severity would have failed. What did that discreet Eastern emir, when he found his fair young wife sleeping in a garden, where she had no earthly business to be? He laid his drawn sabre softly ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... ended in a cock's-head, and was winged with a couple of long ears; he, moreover, carried in his hand a stick called his bauble, terminating either in an inflated bladder or some other ludicrous object, to be employed in slapping inadvertent neighbors." ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... time he lay, listening. Was there another person in the room? Mr. Grimm's ears were keenly alive for the inadvertent shuffling of a foot; or the sound of breathing. Nothing. Even the night roar of the city was missing; the silence was oppressive. At last he opened his eyes. A pall of gloom encompassed him—a pall without one rift of light. His fingers, moving ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... property of individuals is ascertained and secured, yet a close and beneficial compact subsists. We behold the members of this vast family marked with every style of character. Forlorn infancy, accidental calamity, casual sickness, old age, and even inadvertent distress, all find support from that charitable fund erected by industry. No part of the family is neglected: he that cannot find bread for himself, finds a ready supply; he that can, ought to do so. By cultivating the young suckers of infancy, we prudently establish the ensuing ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... had dark eyes, brown hair that curled in small inadvertent rings, and a rich warm complexion through which the crimson glowed in her round cheeks. She was so pretty that she ought to have been suppressed, and had a way of speaking that made her ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... inadvertent damage Charley's pique had caused. It took ten full minutes, and the heat-deadline was too close for comfort. He finished and breathed more freely as temperatures began to drop. He peeled off the helmet and unzipped ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... assuming the tone of superiority she had always so thinly concealed, 'that nothing I have ever said or done since we have been together, has justified your use of that disagreeable word, "Mistress." It must have been wholly inadvertent on my part. Pray tell ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... arm across a call-bell, rang an inadvertent summons to the steward that cost him the price of the drinks and gave Terry a breathing spell. He sat astride the billiard table under the acetylene lights, vainly trying to smooth down his scalplock, his eyes dancing ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... Son's response had brought anew to her mind the truth that Joseph was not the Boy's father. She appears to have been astonished that One so young should so thoroughly understand His position with respect to herself. He had made plain to her the inadvertent inaccuracy of her words; His Father had not been seeking Him; for was He not even at that moment in His Father's house, and particularly engaged in His Father's business, the very work to which His Father had ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... not hitherto inspired faith in his protestations that he spoke the whole truth and nothing but the truth, nor had he always the power of doing so when overpowered by fright. The manner in which his father laid hold of any inadvertent discrepancy, treating it as a wilful prevarication, was terror and agony; and well as he knew it to be the meed of past equivocation, he felt it cruel to torture him by implied suspicion. Yet how could it be otherwise, when he had been introducing his little brother to his own corrupters, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not a part of England which could be justly described as beautiful that was not already occupied in the degree of its accessibility. I thought of Surrey; I visited it and found myself in a superior Cockney Paradise. Half a dozen men of genius had in an inadvertent moment advertised the pure air of the Surrey highlands, and by the time I came upon the scene trim villas had sprung up by hundreds, and wealth was already in possession. The merest cottage in this favoured ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... me, madame, for my inadvertent remark," said Sir Reginald, bowing as he spoke towards ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... her mind that Captain Corwin would bring him back and that it would take a long, long while. So she tried to be content and if not teasing or fretting was one of the ways of being good, she tried her utmost to keep to that. She was too brave to tell falsehoods to shield herself from any inadvertent wrongdoing, even if ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Dorn had made George Brotherton question the moral government of the universe and, being disturbed in his mind, he naturally was moved to language. So one raw spring day when no one was in the Amen Corner but Mr. Fenn, in a moment of inadvertent sobriety, Mr. Brotherton opened up his ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... seen were a sword and a brace of guns—the one "of them worth three hundred roubles," and the other "about eight hundred." The brother-in-law inspected the articles in question, and then shook his head as before. Next, the visitors were shown some "real Turkish" daggers, of which one bore the inadvertent inscription, "Saveli Sibiriakov [19], Master Cutler." Then came a barrel-organ, on which Nozdrev started to play some tune or another. For a while the sounds were not wholly unpleasing, but suddenly something seemed ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... last I gathered from the new and sprightlier form which the family submissiveness assumed, as well as from certain inadvertent disclosures of Bridget's, that I was confidently expected home again "in the course of a week or two." And I thereupon doubly confirmed myself in the resolve to see this thing through or ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... gay and most informal. Jack was at his best and gave us in inimitable satire a description of a luncheon at Newport in honor of a prize chow dog attended by all the high-bred pups of Bellview Avenue, including Jack's own bull terrier Scotty, which in an inadvertent moment devoured the small Pekingese of Jack's nearest neighbor, a dereliction of social observance which caused the complete and permanent ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... An inadvertent platitude—that lust will seek an expression—and a few diffident proposals for a finer environment—the need and its satisfaction: had the Commission seen the relation of these incipient ideas, animated ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... devoted to artistic excellence and lyric grandiloquence. The poems of Olmedo are few in number for so skilled an artist, and thoroughly imbued with the Graeco-Latin classical spirit. His prosody nears perfection; but is marred by an occasional abuse of verbal endings in rime, and the inadvertent employment of assonance where there should be none, a fault common to most of the earlier Spanish-American poets. Olmedo's greatest poem is La victoria de Junin, which is filled with sweet-sounding phrases and beautiful images, ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... For the necessity of the first something may be said. But the heavy clangor of the bells is doubtless more than a discomfort to many, and it is wholly useless, while the music of the organs and the bands is a pleasure. Do the Aldermen, like Homer, sometimes nod? Sometimes, for an inadvertent hour, do the finer instincts of public spirit flag in those civic bosoms? What evil genius, hostile to the enjoyment of the people, persuaded them? Did the city fathers for one ill-starred moment forget their Tacitus, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail, That crawls at evening in the public path; But he that has humanity, forewarned, Will tread aside, and let ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... have been retained to match the original text. Only such cases which strongly indicated the presence of inadvertent typographical error have been corrected; a detailed list of these corrections can be found at the end of ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... these people I watched closely, half hoping that some inadvertent sign might tell me of someone's knowledge of the secret. But when the clergyman referred to the retribution that would sooner or later overtake the criminal. I could see an expression of fear or apprehension on no face save that of Florence Lloyd. She turned ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... in Oldham's imitation, many prosaick verses and bad rhymes, and his poem sets out with a strange inadvertent blunder: ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... been needful. In the confusion of his rapid summaries and calculations it was a pleasurable thought that she should learn from him, and through him and in him, that it was not so with all. The silence which at first was inadvertent now became deliberate as—while he noted with satisfaction that he had not overstated to himself the exquisite, restrained beauty of her features, her eyes, her hair, her hands, and of the very texture ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... world have a tendency to deviate from the truth when they fall into the hands of justice. The peculiarity is that he retracts his statements with the composed air of a chess-player who requests his opponent to let him take back an inadvertent move. Under the old system of procedure, which was abolished in the sixties, clever criminals often contrived by means of this simple device to have their trial postponed for ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... mechanically rolling the corner of the, rug under his foot. His uncle studied the good-looking, unhappy young face. His mind worked back to that inadvertent "u—er—me" ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... given to the world unless some circumstance then unforeseen should make it absolutely and unavoidably necessary. To see Maggie grow up into a beautiful, refined, and cultivated woman was now the great object of Hagar's life; and, fearing lest by some inadvertent word or action the secret should be disclosed, she wished to live by herself, where naught but the winds of heaven could listen to the incoherent whisperings which made her fellow-servants accuse ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... wanderer was not wholly at ease. He suspected that the kindly and refined nature of these friends silenced many questions which doubtless were in their minds, and often a lull in the conversation filled him with fear and dread of an inadvertent inquiry. ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... popularity a safeguard not only against prying curiosity, but against inadvertent self-betrayal, it was with some misgiving that he saw his hermit-like seclusion threatened, as he rose higher in the business and consequently in the social—scale. In the English-speaking colony of Buenos Aires the one advance is likely to bring about the other—especially in the case of a ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... affairs—or at least an affair—of his own. That affair was Francie Dosson, and he was pleased to perceive how little SHE cared what had become of Mr. and Mrs. Rosenheim and Master Samuel and Miss Cora. He counted all the things she didn't care about—her soft inadvertent eyes helped him to do that; and they footed up so, as he would have said, that they gave him the rich sense of a free field. If she had so few interests there was the greater possibility that a young man of bold conceptions and cheerful manners might become one. She had usually the air of ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... Majesty's Jack, commonly called the Union Jack, or any other of the various flags of command flown by ships of war or vessels employed in the naval service, swift retribution overtook you. Similarly, the inadvertent hoisting of your colours "wrong end uppermost," or in any other manner deemed inconsistent with the dignity of the service which permitted you to fly them, laid you open to reprisals of the most summary nature. Before you realised the heinousness of your offence, a gang boarded ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... waiting, the music of the movement is going on ... To manage it, with its delicacies and compensations, requires that same fineness of ear on which we must depend for all faultless prose rhythm. When there is no compensation, when the pause is inadvertent ... there is a sense of jolting and lack, as if some pin ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... committed more than one murder there, but they were murders in which I exulted, for they meant death to the horrible rattlesnake or deadly moccasin, as they lay sunning their cold blood in the hot rays, ready to deal death to the passer-by, whose inadvertent ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... idea of the perfect Macbeth, it is up to the purveyor of American films to retaliate by presenting one of his plots for ordinary stage performance in the Kirriemuir manner. Here and there an inadvertent touch of Western colour may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... burning at its edge;—these had probably been blown out by the wind, and the young man had thus fallen in. That life should have been supported so long under such circumstances, seems almost incredible: but it is no less curious than true; for the porter was tried before the Correctional Tribunal for inadvertent homicide, the facts were adduced in evidence, and carelessness having been proved, he was sentenced to imprisonment for several weeks, and to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... miss fire in conversation; only second-rate shots hit the mind through the ear. This, we will suppose, is why David derived no amusement or delectation from Mr. Bazalgette's inadvertent but admirable bon-mot. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... her zeal, whom she seemed to regard as a care, but not as an interest; it was as if they had been entrusted to her honour and she had engaged to convey them safe to a certain point; she was detached and inadvertent, and then suddenly remembered, repented and came back to tuck them into their blankets, to alter the position of her mother's umbrella, to tell them something about the run of the ship. These little offices were usually performed deftly, rapidly, ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... them. Among other drastic enactments to enforce that object, no other language but Dutch was permitted to be used in public of pain of corporal punishment. Not a few noble Frenchmen were subjected to that indignity for inadvertent breaches of that draconian law, but, as conscientious observers of biblical commands which enjoin subjection to all governmental rule, they willingly submitted and obeyed. Intermarriages with their Dutch fellow-colonists ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... first proclamations of our new Emperor was one expressly abolishing the court for prosecuting accusations for infringement of the Imperial Majesty by incautious words or inadvertent acts and at the same time decreeing the recall of every living exile banished for such transgressions; also specifically rehabilitating the memory of all persons who had been under Commodus, put to death on the pretext of this sort of guilt. Before the end of the day on which this decree ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... gives satisfaction to the lovers of California, both in and out of the State, the compiler will reap his highest reward. If any suitable author has been left out the omission was inadvertent, and will gladly be remedied in ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... symbolizing the strength of the navy, the loyalty of the army or the honor of the alma mater. Reeled into a skein, the wool is now all but ready for the fingers of the knitter; it has but to be wound in a ball. Yet here danger lurks. An inadvertent twist or a simple tangle quickly knots the thread, unless thoughtful patience rescues. Recklessness means hopeless disarray, and the soft fluff of warming color becomes unkempt disorder, a confused mass from ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... they were the ones intended to serve as targets, and they ducked their heads with such suddenness that the Irishman grinned. Not only that, but one of them caused his pony—probably through some inadvertent act on the part of the rider—to swerve from his course, thereby interfering with ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... and who saw some of the unfortunate accidents, should feel strongly and entertain the impression that inefficiency or individual negligence was widespread among the crew. Such an impression, however, does an inadvertent injustice to the great majority of the crew, who acted with that matter-in-fact courage and fidelity to duty which are traditional with men of the sea. Such of these men, presumably fairly typical of all, as testified ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... I have done?" he further ejaculated. "Can some one have told her falsely that I'm a cad in any way? She might have waited until she proved it. I would not have believed bad any one spoken badly of her." (Here an inadvertent confession of the growing affection he felt for her.) "Even if I were deserving of such ignominy, it was none of her business. I only came to see you,—she had nothing to ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... stateroom, the young man began a thorough exploration, realizing more keenly than before that without baggage or money his plight might prove distressing. But, look as he would, he could find no trace of either, and an inadvertent glance in the mirror betrayed the further fact that his linen was long since past a presentable stage. Another despairing search showed that even his watch was gone and that his only asset, evidently overlooked by the hilarious Higgins and his co-partner ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... not their elder, were startled quite out of their almost inadvertent tranquillity; and the knocker was not still before Pocket realised that it was the first time he had heard it. No letters were delivered at that house; not a soul had he seen or heard at the door before. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... untrue, though it may have been made at the time with honest belief in its truth. This is so wherever, according to the common course of business, it is one party's business to know the facts, and the other practically must, or reasonably may, take the facts from him. In some classes of cases even inadvertent omission to disclose any material fact is treated as a misrepresentation. Contracts of insurance are the most important; here the insurer very seldom has the means of making any effective inquiry of his own. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... What inadvertent remark might not that functionary drop and thus sow suspicion in Honey? At first, Skinner had thought of warning the teller not to discuss these things with Honey. But he made up his mind that that might direct Waldron's attention to their account and ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... unspotted light. And in all the ways of it the lovely thing is more like the spring frock of some prudent little maid of fourteen, than a flower;—frock with some little spotty pattern on it to keep it from showing an unintended and inadvertent spot,—if Fate should ever inflict such a thing! Undeveloped, thinks Mr. Darwin,—the poor {129} short-coming, ill-blanched thorn blossom—going to be a Rose, some day soon; and, what ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... stood gazing dully at the disappearance of these last evidences of his two inadvertent murders, he was suddenly and vehemently aroused by feeling a pair of arms of enormous strength flung about him from behind. In their embrace his elbows were instantly pinned tight to his side, and he stood for a moment helpless and astounded, while the voice of the sea-captain, rumbling in his ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... out her long hair, gave one inadvertent tug, the fair enthusiast came back to earth, and asked her, rather sharply, who her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... his troop. "William," said he, "you are my true and legitimate son. The rest are nobodies." He may, it is true, have only intended to speak figuratively in saying this, meaning that William was the only one worthy to be considered as his son, or it may be that it was an inadvertent and hasty acknowledgment that Rosamond, and not Eleanora, was his true wife. As time rolled on, however, and the political arrangements arising out of the marriage with Eleanora and appointment of her sons to high positions in the state ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... one that got drunk deliberately, than one who done it inadvertent when he aimed to stay sober. Besides, there's various degrees of drunkenness, the term bein' relative. But for the sake of argument admittin' I was drunk, if you object to the singin' and talkin', what do you recommend a man ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... as you patrol the reefs, it is liable to be changed in a flash into clashing tints by inadvertent contact with a warty ghoul of a sea-urchin, a single one of whose agonising spines never fails to bring you face to face with one of the vividest realities of life. A slim but shapely mollusc known as Terebellum or augur, to mention another conceited ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... too inadvertent, and undistinguishing Pamela, keep you long in suspense, for the sake of a circumstance, that, on this occasion, ought to give you as much joy, as it has, till now, given me—since it becomes an advocate in your favour, when otherwise you might expect very severe ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... to punish the intrusion the ghost carried off the intruder's soul and impounded it in a magic fence in his garden, where it still languishes in durance vile. The dreamer at once tenders a frank and manly apology on behalf of his client; he assures the ghost that the trespass was purely inadvertent, that no personal disrespect whatever was intended, and he concludes by requesting the ghost to overlook the offence for this time and to release the imprisoned soul. This appeal to the better feelings of the ghost has its effect; he pulls up the fence and lets the soul out ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... affection for him became, like the memory of their native land or their mild sorrow for the dead, a piece of the immovable furniture of their hearts. The boy, also, after a week or two of mental disquiet, began to gratify his protectors by many inadvertent proofs that he considered them as parents and their house as home. Before the winter snows were melted the persecuted infant, the little wanderer from a remote and heathen country, seemed native in the New England cottage and inseparable from the warmth ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... boy, nor can I tell you, though we've both passed through the experience, the explicable part is a prominent part, I admit, if we analyse the little creeping sensations of gladness, that a touch of her hand, no matter how inadvertent, or the steady gaze of her deep eyes, could cause us to feel. Why, my dear boy, I am an old man now, but my memory is young yet, and I dwell on this dear page of my past, with the same feelings of gratification that animate you on your first experience. I don't ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... immense jumble of Afric's sparkling shores, the Atlas mountains, the Neutral ground, and the Spanish lines. These are some of the objects which never tire the eye. The precipices below us are amazingly steep, in some cases the heights even overhang. Many precious lives were lost through inadvertent steps during the first occupation; and this suggests to me a story I have read somewhere, and which I will ask your pardon for ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... accordingly, to save her own from temptation, the rule was—"whoever was charged with a fault of which they were guilty, if they would ingenuously confess it and promise to amend should not be beaten." The most careful discrimination was made between inadvertent and deliberate falsehood. ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... Milton is a great example of the contrary; but his opinion with respect to the 'Paradise Regained' is by no means fairly ascertained. By what trivial circumstances men are often led to assert what they do not really believe! Perhaps an inadvertent word has descended to posterity. But, in fact, the 'Paradise Regained' is little, if at all, inferior to the 'Paradise Lost,' and is only supposed so to be because men do not like epics, whatever they may say to the contrary, and, reading those of Milton in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... number of alternations, and has to pass its current through many interpositions. It varies with the solution in which the interposed plates are immersed, with the intensity of the current, the strength of the pile, the time of action, and especially with accidental discharges of the plates by inadvertent contacts or reversions of the plates during experiments, and must be carefully watched in every endeavour to trace the source, strength, and variations of the voltaic current. Its effect was avoided in the experiments already described ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... pursue his object, that, before he was aware of what he was saying, he had revealed the secret of his heart. She received his remarks in respectful silence, but gave no indication by which he could judge whether the inadvertent disclosure was pleasing or otherwise, except what might be gathered from her increased cordiality on other subjects, to which she now adroitly turned the conversation. This was just enough to encourage ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... any attention, for it was assumed that he would naturally deny his guilt, as would any other criminal. A person's belief had, therefore, to be judged by outward acts. Consequently one might fall into the hands of the Inquisition by mere inadvertent conversation with a heretic, by some unintentional neglect to show due respect toward the Church rites, or by the malicious testimony of one's neighbors. This is really the most dreadful aspect of the Inquisition and its procedure. It put a premium ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... a plow to be laid. An onlooker, not yet so proficient as to attain his ambition of admission to the play, had mounted the anvil, and from this coign of vantage beheld all the outspread landscape of the "hands." More than once his indiscreet, inadvertent betrayal of some incident of his survey of the cards menaced him with a broken head. More innocuous to the interests of the play was a wight humbly ensconced on the shoeing-stool, which barely brought his ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... them. The Sharpers about Town very ingeniously understood themselves to be to the undesigning Part of Mankind what Foxes are to Lambs, and therefore used the Word Biting to express any Exploit wherein they had over-reach'd any innocent and inadvertent Man of his Purse. These Rascals of late Years have been the Gallants of the Town, and carried it with a fashionable haughty Air, to the discouragement of Modesty and all honest Arts. Shallow Fops, who are govern'd by the Eye, and admire every ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... domiciliary inquisitors, I should not, like your English liberties, escape with the gentle correction of imprisonment, or the pillory.—A man, who had murdered his wife, was lately condemned to twenty years imprisonment only; but people are guillotined every day for a simple discourse, or an inadvertent expression.—Yours. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... unwilling witness, never came. Neither did any return come, in John Crondall, of his old frank gaiety of manner. There remained always the shadow of reserve, of gravity, and of a certain restraint, which dated in my mind from the day of my inadvertent intrusion upon the scene between ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... scats. Scats associated with fox tracks and scats of small size were not picked up. Nevertheless, a few of the scats studied may have been those of foxes. Judging from the contents of scats that were certainly from foxes, the effect of inadvertent inclusion of fox scats would be to elevate the percentage of scats containing berries (but not more than five percentage points). Each scat was broken up and the percentage of scats containing each of the following items was noted (figures are to the ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... "sees nothing against the supposition" that "Dr. Murray is right," but Dr. Munro's remarks about the hypothesis of modern cairns, as a theory "against which he sees nothing," have the air of being an inadvertent obiter dictum. For, in his conclusion and summing up he writes, "We claim to have established that the structures of Dunbuie, Dumbuck, and Langbank are remains of inhabited sites of the early-Iron Age, dating to ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... Vexation; as a Matter, that in its Consequences might have been fatal to the Interest of King Charles, if not to the English Nation in general; and which I the rather relate, in that it may be of use to young Officers, and others; pointing out to them the Danger, not to say Folly, of inadvertent and precipitate Engagements, ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... "distinguishing mark of favor" is it, or what satisfaction can it afford the people in general, that "a native of the province is appointed to preside over it"? - Surely Benevolus must either be totally inadvertent to the accounts of the state of our publick affairs as given to us in the last Mondays papers, or he must have altogether confided in the accounts of a confused writer in the Evening-Post, who in the old stile of the hackney'd writers in Bernard's administration, tells us that ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... chuckle broke from him—not an intrusive chuckle, quite the contrary; a deprecatory and inadvertent sort of chuckle. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of his convalescence this strange death of the sensuous side of Jocelyn's nature. She had said that Avice was getting extraordinarily handsome, and that she did not wonder her stepson lost his heart to her—an inadvertent remark which she immediately regretted, in fear lest it should agitate him. He merely answered, however, 'Yes; I suppose she is handsome. She's more—a wise girl who will make a good housewife in time.... I wish you were not ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... civilization these people stood. In manner towards us they were pleasant and smiling; not averse to the arts of diplomacy, but perhaps a little transparent in their approaches to a desired object. I went on shore one Friday, their Sunday, which was inadvertent on my part, for their religious duties interfered with customary routine; one and another excused themselves to me on the plea that they must go to pray. I was known, however, to be in authority on board, which produced ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... walls shrunk and groaned a little. The small home-like sounds only accentuated the enormous silence without. Suddenly in the midst of them a real sound fell upon her ear—very low, but different, not like the fragmentary inadvertent murmur of the hut; a small, purposeful, stealthy, sound, aware of itself. She listened, as she had listened before, without moving. It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind the wainscot, ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley |
