"Spontaneous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Congress of subsequent love. Congress of artificial love. Congress of transferred love. Congress like that of eunuchs. Deceitful congress. Congress of spontaneous love. ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... arise from the want of an air-trap in the chimney and a perforated network in the window-pane. Becky listened patiently; for Mrs. Mivers was only a philosopher in her talk, and she had proved herself anything but a philosopher in her actions, by the spontaneous present of five shillings, and the promise of a basket of victuals and some good wine to keep the cold wind she invited to the apartment out ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sometimes again, Indian; certainly he learned something from the Chinese in their porcelains and in their embroidery. I am sure he has been fond of these outer influences, these Oriental suggestions which were for him the spiritual equivalent from the past for his spontaneous ideas, for he, too, had much of all this magic, as he had much of the hypnotic quality of jewelry and precious stones in all his so delicate pictures, firelike in their subtle brilliancy. They have always seemed to contain this suggestion for me: flowers that seemed to be ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... interest must have been reciprocal, for he seemed to look for my coming; but then, in whom was he not interested? I liked him for his real goodness, was entertained by his erratic ways, and admired his intellectual brightness. Never before had I come in contact with a mind at once so spontaneous and so versatile. It was perhaps his most striking peculiarity, that he seemed always to be looking for something startling to occur; and in a dearth of the new and sensational from without, he produced excitement ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... to say more. They all laughed then. Ha, ha, ha! with a spontaneous roar but a short one, a laugh in three blows, since to prolong it, might be interpreted as a lack of respect to ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... amongst her friends; but the consciousness of her expectations with respect to the colonel being known to them, threw around her a hauteur and distance very foreign to her natural manner. Emily alone, whose every movement sprang from the spontaneous feelings of her heart, and whose words and actions were influenced by the finest and most affectionate delicacy, such as she was not conscious of possessing herself, won upon the better feelings of her sister so far, as to restore between them the usual exchange of kindness and ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... momentary change of blind external agencies, assumes to the feelings the character of a perfidy accomplished by mysterious powers, and calls forth something of the same resentment, and in a gladiatorial intellect something of the same spontaneous resistance. A sword that breaks in the very crisis of a duel, a horse killed by a flash of lightning in the moment of collision with the enemy, a bridge carried away by an avalanche at the instant of a commencing retreat, affect the feelings like ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... and still others might be regarded as a species of pheasant. They have the singular habit of depositing their eggs in mounds of rubbish, which they scrape together for this purpose, and then leave them to what might appear a sort of spontaneous incubation. Hence they are usually called "mound-builders," though they do not all adhere to the habit; some of them choosing a very different though somewhat analogous mode of getting their eggs hatched. Naturalists have given them the name of megapoda, on ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... spontaneous offerings of the heart, which flowed in upon him from every part of a grateful nation, when his views were once more seriously turned to this truly interesting subject. Its magnitude was also impressed on others; and the value of obtaining ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Gray, Silliman, Guyot—all were educators in the fullest and truest way. It remains for us to consider a few others who have labored in this country for the spread of knowledge. That the present educational system of the United States is not a spontaneous growth, but has been carefully fostered and directed, goes without saying. It is the result, first, of a wise interest and support on the part of the state, which early recognized the importance of educating its citizens, and, second, of the self-sacrificing efforts ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... Bavarian Landtag a month to make up its mind! To read the heated discussions is to destroy the legend that the proclamation of the Kaiser was by spontaneous demand. ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... had been tested. The spontaneous response to the Powder Alarm in September had been ready enough, for the men of Connecticut and New Hampshire were in motion before the next day. But through the winter of 1774-1775 there had been minor alarms at each little expedition on which Gage sent his soldiers. By these the ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... revolver, but that the revolver had been exploded in the drawer of his desk. The bullets had torn through the front of the drawer and entered his body. The police scouted the theory of suicide, murder was dismissed as absurd, and the blame was thrown upon the Eureka Smokeless Cartridge Company. Spontaneous explosion was the police explanation, and the chemists of the cartridge company were well bullied at the inquest. But what the police did not know was that across the street, in the Mercer Building, Room 633, rented by Emil Gluck, ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... how hearts are inspired, how heal- [1] ing becomes spontaneous, and how the divine Mind is understood and demonstrated? He alone knows these wonders who is departing from the thraldom of the senses and accepting spiritual truth,—that which blesses [5] its adoption by the refinement of joy and the dismissal ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... hepatis. —— from the liver. 9. Haemoptoe venosa. Spitting of venous blood. 10. Palpitatio cordis. Palpitation of the heart. 11. Menorrhagia. Exuberant menstruation. 12. Dysmenorrhagia. Deficient menstruation. 13. Lochia nimia. Too great lochia. 14. Abortio spontanea. Spontaneous abortion. 15. Scorbutus. Scurvy. 16. Vibices. Extravasations of blood. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... offspring from that of the parent plant is present to his mind. Yet, p. 351 of the same volume as above, he tells us that asexual generation "is effected in many ways—by the formation of buds of various kinds, and by fissiparous generation, that is, by spontaneous or artificial division." The multiplication of plants by bulbs and layers clearly comes under this head, nor will any essential difference be felt between one kind of asexual generation and another; if, then, the offspring formed ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... bottom of the blackness until you see that it is flat rebellion against God Himself. This is the true devilish element in all our transgression, and this element is in it all. Oh! if once we do get the habit formed and continued until it becomes almost instinctive and spontaneous, of looking at each action of our lives in immediate and direct relation to God, there would come such an apocalypse as would startle some of us into salutary dread, and make us all feel that 'it is an evil and a bitter thing' (and the two characteristics must always go together), 'to depart ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... shown himself in his writings as somewhat sweeter and more tolerant toward the rest of the world, broader in outlook, and more just and charitable in disposition—more like his great prototype, Emerson, who could do full justice to the wild and the spontaneous without doing an injustice to their opposites; who could see the beauty of the pine tree, yet sing the praises of the pine-tree State House; who could arraign the Government, yet pay his taxes; who could cherish Thoreau, and yet see all his ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... disturbed by the loud rattle of the wheels, and they were not obliged to interrupt their sweet interchange of sentiment while getting into and out of a vehicle. Arm-in-arm, they strolled together along the promenades, he smiling proudly when the passers-by broke out in spontaneous exclamations of delight at Josephine's beauty, and she happy and exultant as she overheard the whispered admiration and respect with which the multitude everywhere greeted Bonaparte, as she pressed with the general through ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... of the Letter. It is an informal letter with no logical plan or doctrinal arguments. It is the spontaneous utterance of love and gratitude. It is a tender, warm-hearted, loving friend and brother presenting the essential truths of the gospel in terms of friendly intercourse. He found in them constant reasons ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... surface. Casein, although not coagulable by heat, is coagulated by the introduction into the milk of acids or extract of rennet. The curd of cheese is coagulated casein. When milk is allowed to stand for some time exposed to warmth and air, a spontaneous coagulation occurs, caused by fermentative changes in the sugar of milk, by which it is converted into lactic acid through ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... the hermit; who, on entering, had observed her devout position, and the spontaneous benediction broke from his lips. "Daughter," said he, leading her to a seat, "this hero will prevail; for the Power before whose altar you have just knelt, has declared, 'My might is with them who obey my laws, and put their trust in me!' You speak highly of the young and valiant ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... day a new problem arises, namely how to account for the appearance of this great Phenomenon, with its orderly phases of evolution, and its own spontaneous (1) growths in all corners of the globe—this phenomenon which has had such a strange sway over the hearts of men, which has attracted them with so weird a charm, which has drawn out their devotion, love and ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... own, the recruits for which were almost altogether foreigners. The sight of new faces, the variety of conversation, the freedom of manner, all in that moving world, pleased the thirst for diversion which, in that puissant, spontaneous, and almost manly immoral nature, was joined with very just clear-sightedness. If Julien paused for a moment surprised at the door of the hall, it was not, therefore, on finding it empty at the end of the season; ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... illumination of the room, the glory of Dorothy's beauty was startling. His eyes sought her face with no need of acting, and the admiration blazing in his gaze was more than genuine; it was thoroughly spontaneous and involuntary. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... than you do, his belief in his own country and in its institutions at their best was so passionate and intense that it was a part of his nature, yet his refined and fastidious tastes were deeply gratified by the influences of his life in England, and the spontaneous kindness which he received added much to his happiness. At that time Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister; the weekly receptions at Cambridge House were the centre of all that was brilliant in the political and social world, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... lady took us to conjugal pairs. It was very difficult to convey to us what this conjugal love was like. Was it Elective Affinity? I asked. Yes; something like that, but still not that. It was the spontaneous gravitation in the spheres, either to other, of the halves of the dual spirit dissociated on earth. Not at all—again in reply to me—like flirting in a corner. The two, when walking in the spheres, looked like ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... possession and sudden inspiration to account for it here he does introduce divine agency, not to destroy, but to prompt the human will; not to create in us another agency, but offering images to stimulate our own; images that in no sort or kind make our action involuntary, but give occasion rather to spontaneous action, aided and sustained by feelings of confidence and hope. For either we must totally dismiss and exclude divine influences from every kind of causality and origination in what we do, or else what other way can we conceive in which divine aid and cooperation ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... building world was ripe for the change. The architects themselves, after receiving their early education under the leaders of the stucco and plaster school of the later Georgian reigns, had had their ideas purified and refined by the art-teachings of the Victorian Gothicists. The result was a spontaneous movement to develop a new system of construction, with lintelled openings and square fenestration,—Queen Anne modified and elevated by mediaeval teachings and traditions. A traditional manner, but a sensible one; a sudden fashion, if you will; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... hunters of big game, devoted nuns and silent priests, the infrequent scientist, and the hundreds of Klondikers, their hearts hot with the greed for gold. These all through the century have enjoyed as we now enjoy the spontaneous hospitality of this little bit of Britain which floats the Union Jack from its fort walls, and whose people, brown and white, when the belated news of the passing of Victoria the Great reached this ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... from studying the internal mechanism of a molecule," nor, perhaps, from taking it to pieces. In 1895 came the {70} discovery of the X-rays by Roentgen in Germany, to be followed in a year by Becquerel's discovery of spontaneous radio-activity, and in a couple of years by the remarkable further discovery, made by Madame Curie, of what was termed "radium," a substance that went on producing heat de novo, keeping itself permanently at a higher temperature than its ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... high standard of morality, he yet feels that he needs something. Having real and strong desires after 'eternal life,' he comes to Christ to try whether this new Teacher could say anything that would help him to the assured inward peace and spontaneous goodness for which he longed, and had not found in all the round of punctilious obedience to unloved commandments. As he kneels there before Jesus, in his eager haste, with sincere and high aspirations ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... helping people in fourteen countries—supplying trained and dedicated young men and women, to give these new nations a hand in building a society, and a glimpse of the best that is in our country. If there is a problem here, it is that we cannot supply the spontaneous and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the new friendships she was forming. Where some people would find only neighbours, Ann's spontaneous, warm-hearted nature discovered friends. Brian Tempest already counted as one, and her acquaintance with Cara Hilyard, begun so unconventionally, was rapidly deepening ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... to their personal inventive action, historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the gradual, spontaneous class-organisation of the proletariat to the organisation of society specially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... on April 30, 1789. He did not desire the Presidency, and would have greatly preferred to remain quietly at Mount Vernon, "an honest man on his own farm," engaged in his private affairs. But he felt that it was his duty to answer so spontaneous and general a call from his fellow citizens, and in the office of chief executive he showed the same firm and wise spirit that had distinguished him as commander of the army. His Cabinet contained the most famous and brilliant men of the day, and the ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... dressing several gores with this, he rolled them up and left them through a night in a drying loft, with the result that the next day they were disintegrated and on the point of bursting into flame by spontaneous combustion. Fresh silk and other varnish were then tried, but with indifferent success. Next he endeavoured to dispense with sewing, and united the gores of yet another balloon by the mere adhesiveness of the varnish ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... of fraternity at parting. There was no material substance to promise. I took it to mean that he would stand by any generous impulses I might have; that he would be, as it were, a patron of spontaneous as opposed to organized charity; a patron of those who are never too poor to give to some one poorer; of those who have no scientific reasons for giving, no statistics, only compassion and pity; of those who want to ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... humorist I have ever known in my life. His humor was always spontaneous, and that gave it a zest and elegance that ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... trusted so long. To call that power the heart was nonsense, as absurd as to call it a function of the brain. It was distinct from both, it had a being of its own, independent, dominating, tremendous in its effects. In danger the head said, stop; the heart said, go on. And honour, then, was the spontaneous reasoning of this superior power, whatever it might be. But, if it reasoned, so unfailingly and so surely about some things, why had it nothing to say about others? Why could this faultless judge decide of nothing save right and wrong? From habit, doubtless, because we refer no other questions ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... become included in that body which has been composed of their metamorphosed and diversely combined or confluent brethren: so included, any derivative germ-cell, or the nucleus of such, may commence and repeat the same processes of growth by imbibition, and of propagation by spontaneous fission, as those to which itself owed its origin;" &c. By the agency of these germ-cells Prof. Owen accounts for parthenogenesis, for propagation by self-division during successive generations, and for the repairs of injuries. His view agrees with mine in the assumed ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... of the Brotherhood of Man. It isn't a mere phrase when you think right. All,—all of us, children of one Father, all with rights to the same inheritance, what should make us cold or grudging, one toward another? What is to prevent our spontaneous gladness in another's success. His happiness and good fortune become ours. It is all in the family, you see. There are no limitations to be placed on an infinite inheritance, are there? Our Father's love is impartial, and ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... and splendor, for intensity of purpose and sublimity of note. In the vision of Helen, for example, the intense perception of loveliness gives actual sublimity to the sweetness and radiance of mere beauty in the passionate and spontaneous selection of words the most choice and perfect; and in like manner the sublimity of simplicity in Marlowe's conception and expression of the agonies endured by Faustus under the immediate imminence of his doom gives the highest note of beauty, the quality of absolute fitness and propriety, to ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the court room filled with farmers and men of the hills, from the eastern side of the county. This gathering the Colonel appropriated as evidence of his popularity and as a spontaneous endorsement for his renomination. Obsessed with this thought, he strutted up the aisle like ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... nothing but rugged path, tree-top, and the face of the cliff, and would not have grasped the fact that the reason for the boy's wild dash was, that he was overcharged with vitality, and that energy which makes a lad exert himself in that natural spontaneous effort to get rid of some of the vital gas, flashing along his nerves and bubbling ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... was spoken. Dinah waited, hoping for a spontaneous word from Hetty, but she sat in the same dull despair, only clutching the hand that held hers and leaning her cheek against Dinah's. It was the human contact she clung to, but she was not the less ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... he knew that in his whole life, till now self-centered, analytical, cold, he never had felt such real, spontaneous happiness. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... themselves. The Delphic oracle was never less obeyed than now, in this vortex of mechanical arts and luxury. For this reason, it is desirable that the religious teacher dwell consecutively upon topics that are connected with that which is within man,—his settled motives of action, and all those spontaneous on-goings of his soul of which he takes no notice, unless he is persuaded or impelled to do so. Some of the old painters produced powerful effects by one solitary color. The subject of moral evil contemplated ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... things: the song of a bird, the eyes of a child, and a wild-flower come upon unexpectedly in a scene of desolation. For in all three, we agreed, shines that wonder which holds adoration, that joy which is spontaneous and uncalculated, and that surprise which pertains to Eternity looking out triumphantly upon ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... incurred by Henry Wilmers. No blame whatever, one would say, if he had been less, copious, or not so subservient, in recording the lady's utterances; for though the wit of a woman may be terse, quite spontaneous, as this lady's assuredly was here and there, she is apt to spin it out of a museful mind, at her toilette, or by the lonely fire, and sometimes it is imitative; admirers should beware of holding it up to the withering glare of print: she herself, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he had planned on the previous occasion, Colonel Hazzard led them to the door as supper was nearly over, having previously notified his officer-in-charge, but no man in the corps was in the secret. "Whatever happens," said he, "shall be entirely spontaneous." ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... preliminary services of this church is the singing, which is not executed by the first talent that money can command. When the prelude upon the organ is finished, the whole congregation, almost every individual in it, as if by a spontaneous and irresistible impulse, stands up and sings. We are not aware that anything has ever been done or said to bring about this result; nor does the minister of the church set the example, for he usually remains sitting and silent It seems as if every one in the congregation was so full of something ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... other strangers,—kept beardless, and rather square in contour; the mouth not small, but keenly cut, like marble, and always quivering before he spoke, as if the lightning of his thought ran thither naturally to seek spontaneous expression; teeth white; chin cleft; nose of the unclassified order, rather long, the curve opposite to aquiline, and saved from sharpness by nostrils that dilated with a pulse of their own, as those of very proud and sensitive people are apt to do; ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... within himself upon the uncommon mixture of the mystical scholar and warrior in his old master, when, as he bent his eyes upon the book of the ancient Rhymer, he was astonished to observe it slowly removed from the desk on which it lay by an invisible hand. The old man looked with horror at the spontaneous motion of the book, for the safety of which he was interested, and had the courage to approach a little nearer the table, in order to discover by what means it had ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... covered her face with her hands as though she dreaded that her heart might be perused in her countenance. It was an involuntary action, repented of as soon as made, for she withdrew the hands immediately, but the spontaneous movement spoke volumes. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... But this is a mystery, and I will not trouble you with mysteries or personal experiences. You would write as your Southern mockingbird sings his "green-tree ballad"; the thought of that bird mewed in a city cage and taught to perform by rote and not for spontaneous joy, troubled me not a little. I am sending you by express ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... her. Yet so marvelous was her beauty, so astonishing was the perfection of her form and feature, so accurate was the living representation of the ideal goddess that the whole vast audience after one glance burst forth into pealing thunders of spontaneous and irresistible applause. ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... 'Deserted Village' are in their way inimitable poems: but we feel that the intellectual fibre of the poets has become dangerously delicate. The critical faculty could not be stimulated further without destroying all spontaneous impulse. The reaction to a more masculine and passionate school was imminent; and if the excellent Crabbe could have put into his box a few of Burns's lyrics, or even a copy of Cowper's 'Task,' one might ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... which it recommends must be a good which man can without sophistry approve. And the good for which man can whole-heartedly strive is not determined by logic, but, in the last analysis, by biology. Human beings cannot freely call good that to which they have no spontaneous prompting. Those ascetics who have denied the flesh may have displayed a certain degree of heroism, but they displayed an equal lack of insight. For it is out of physical impulses alone that ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... youthful dead; For o'er the relics of her forest boy The mother of dead Empires weeps. And lo! Clad in white robes the long procession moves; Youths throng around the bier, and high in front, Star of our hope, the glorious cross is reared, Triumphant sign. The low, sweet voice of prayer, Flowing spontaneous from the spirit's depths, Pours its rich tones; and now the requiem swells, Now dies ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... expression, with not a word too much or one that bears not its part in the total effect, there is yet about the lyrics of Jonson a certain stiffness and formality, a suspicion that they were not quite spontaneous and unbidden, but that they were carved, so to speak, with disproportionate labour by a potent man of letters whose habitual thought is on greater things. It is for these reasons that Jonson is even better in the epigram and in occasional ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... neutralised by chemical combination, presents features akin to the charging of a capacity—say a Leyden jar. There may be a rising potential between the groups of ions until ultimately a point is attained when there is a spontaneous neutralisation. I may observe that the phenomena of reversal appear to indicate that the change in the silver bromide molecule, whatever be its nature, is one of gradually increasing intensity, and finally ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... sudden, vital sense of fifteenth century Florence, then, as never since, the Lily of the Arno: so cunningly and with such felicity are innumerable details individualized, massed and blended. And yet, somehow it all seems a splendid experiment, a worthy performance rather than a spontaneous and successful creative endeavor: this, in comparison with the fiction that came before. The author seems a little over-burdened by the tremendousness of her material. Whether it is because the Savonarola episode is not thoroughly synthetized with the Tito-Romola part: or that the central theme ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... a string of horses standing close together at a watering-trough, drinking, so full of electricity that their manes and tails were spread out and floated in the air, and the long hairs drawn by magnetic attraction from one animal to the other all down the line in a spontaneous effort to complete a circuit. There are times when the free electricity in the air is so abundant that every object becomes charged with the fluid, and it cannot escape fast enough or find "a way out" by any adequate conductor. The effects of such an excess of electricity is decidedly ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... all might see the serene face of the woman who for thirty years has preached the gospel of political freedom, and expounded the constitution of the United States in favor of justice to all. The programme was somewhat informal, all but two of the speeches[333] being spontaneous expressions of admiration for Miss Anthony and her fidelity to principle. There were two regrets connected with the programme. These were caused by the absence of Gov. Porter and Hon. Schuyler Colfax; but the gracious presence of Mrs. Colfax was a reminder ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... After that, eight large islands were created, whence comes one of the names of Japan, "The Empire of the Eight Great Islands." Six smaller islands were also produced. The several thousand islets which make up the archipelago of Everlasting Great Japan were formed by the spontaneous consolidation of the ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... indignantly, his mother chuckled, and there was a spontaneous burst of laughter. Tommy relaxed and lay back happily. Anyway, that was ...
— Native Son • T. D. Hamm
... like too that vein on the brow, which swelled-up black when he was in anger: like the 'horse-shoe vein' in Scott's Redgauntlet. It was a kind of feature in the Hashem family, this black swelling vein in the brow; Mahomet had it prominent, as would appear. A spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man! Full of wild faculty, fire and light: of wild worth, all uncultured; working out his life-task in the depths ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... matters and unpopular payments; it will no longer have the discredit of State control; the rights of the laity will come up and a blow will be struck at clericalism. With all our machinery shattered and ruined we shall be thrown more on individual energy and spontaneous originality of effort. Our new poverty will spur us into zeal. Above all, the Church will be delivered from the temptation, incident to wealth, of sticking to abuses for the sake of gold; of shrinking from principle and justice and ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the effect of Savonarola's preaching on the corrupt and pagan society of Florence. His natural, spontaneous, heart-stirring eloquence, with its exalted imagery and outbursts of righteous indignation, was entirely unprecedented in that era of pedantry and simulation of the classic and heathen oratory. The scholastic jargon indulged in by the preachers of the time was utterly ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... fellers must come free and spontaneous? or not at all. Never was I the woman to advance one step towards any feller in the way of courtship—havin' no occasion for it, bein' one that had more offers than I knew what to do with, as I often tell my husband, Josiah Allen, now, in our ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... woman to have converse with a man is a sin of nature; but to rob him or slay him or drive him into exile proceedeth from malignity of mind. That you robbed Tedaldo I have already shown you, in despoiling him of yourself, who had become his of your spontaneous will, and I say also that, so far as in you lay, you slew him, for that it was none of your fault,—showing yourself, as you did, hourly more cruel,—that he slew not himself with his own hand; and the law willeth ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... age, but must not be confounded with it. The secret of the enjoyment of it is that inversion of home-sickness known to some, that incurable thirst for the sense of escape, which no actual form of life [214] satisfies, no poetry even, if it be merely simple and spontaneous. ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... conspicuous in him, even at such a tender age, that, after his small finances were exhausted, he persisted in his design; and, because he would not make his wants known, actually subsisted for several days on hips, haws, and sloes, and other spontaneous fruits, which he gathered in the woods and fields. Meanwhile, he never failed to be present, when any regiment or corps of men were drawn out to be exercised and reviewed, and accompanied them ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... it subjectively, to have retained a memory of it from another existence: as the stage setting of a vivid dream, all forgotten, will sometimes recur with peculiar and exasperating intensity, in broad daylight. The houses, with their sloping, red-tiled roofs, unexpected gables, spontaneous dormer windows, glass panes set in leaded frames, red brick facades trimmed with green shutters and doorsteps of white stone, each sitting back, sedate and self-sufficient, in its trim dooryard fenced off from the public thoroughfare: all wore an aspect ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... own weakness or the Master's disconcerting gaze upon the thicket, so that (with all the rest) his return appeared spontaneous. For all that, a hubbub arose; oaths flew, fists were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wonder if, in all ages, many a pious soul, as it contemplated the Cross of Christ, has been rapt itself into a passion of gratitude, an ecstasy of wonder and of love, which is beautiful, honourable, just, and in the deepest sense most rational, whenever it is spontaneous and natural. ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... are tightening slowly—and the voice behind them speaks not French, but the jargon of Broadway. And yet, when finally the fingers work closer, closer still, around that throat, when finally the death gurgle of spontaneous pleasure and of clean, honest, fearless night skies comes—and yet, when this happens, Berlin will still rise from the dunghill. I must believe it. For they—we—may kill the laughter of Berlin's streets—as we have killed it in Paris—but we can never kill the heart, the spirit ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... which, hearing of the strange new way in which Wareville obtained it, had sent begging for a loan of this commodity, more precious to the pioneer than gold and jewels. The response was quick and spontaneous and Henry and Paul had been chosen to take the powder, an errand in which both rejoiced. Already they had been two days in the great wilderness, now painted in gorgeous colors by the hand of autumn, and they had not seen a sign of a human ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Spontaneous variation has given a number of curious forms of cauliflower, including one with several heads in the place of one, and another in which the head is flattened sidewise, like the garden cockscomb. These ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... Gervaise Oakes has my will, made in thy favour, before we sailed on this last cruise, and every shilling I leave will be thine. Mr. Atwood, procure that will, and add a codicil explaining this recent discovery, and confirming the legacy; let not the last be touched, for it is spontaneous and ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... unimportant events of life succeed one another. No single flake creates a sensible change on the pile, and no single act constitutes, however much it may exhibit, a man's character." But it is from simple things that the sum of life is made up —from those acts which are most spontaneous and usually least observed that human nature may best be determined and most justly estimated. This man made no preachment of his virtues, believing that "the years are seldom unjust." He was the Navarre of modern journalism, and his white plume ever showed ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a sudden outburst, as forceful as it was spontaneous: "God, if the world were only made up of ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... before leaving camp, not to be staring about them as they marched, but to look straight to the front, every man; and they did it with their accustomed fidelity, aided by the sort of spontaneous eye-for-effect which is in all their melodramatic natures. One of them was heard to say exultingly afterwards, "We didn't look to de right nor to de leff. I didn't see notin' in Beaufort. Eb'ry step was worth a half a dollar." And they all marched as if it were so. They knew well that ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... thrust its nose instantly between her outstretched arms, and as she patted him delightedly the crowd rippled with spontaneous applause. ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... to think. It's like enough a hold-on from that old Industrial work—they been threatening all down the valley, since times are hard and wages fell a little after the war work shut down. There was some hay burned down below there. Folks said it was spontaneous combustion, or something—said it got hot workin' in the stacks. I ain't so sure now. It's them old ways. As if they ever got anything ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... been encountering all day had suddenly seemed to wall him out of all he had conquered, forcing him back into the simpler sordid territory where ways and modes of speech were more familiar to him—where the spontaneous crudity of expression belonged among the husks of all he had supposed discarded ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... (cause) 153. Adj. voluntary, volitional, willful; free &c 748; optional; discretional, discretionary; volitient^, volitive^. minded &c (willing) 602; prepense &c (predetermined) 611 [Obs.]; intended &c 620; autocratic; unbidden &c (bid) &c 741; spontaneous; original &c (casual) 153; unconstrained. Adv. voluntarily &c adj.; at will, at pleasure; a volonte [Fr.], a discretion; al piacere [It]; ad libitum, ad arbitrium [Lat.]; as one thinks proper, as it seems good to; a beneplacito [It]. of one's won accord, of one's own free will; proprio ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... miscellanies? What could be more amusing than a collection of poems that represented a different poetic ideal—a collection of verse with none of the pretensions to artistic merit claimed by the superstars of the poetic world—the spontaneous productions of nonpoets in moments of idleness or desperation. Apparently some of the inscribers in the bog-houses used excrement as a medium for—as well as a subject of—their inscriptions. The Merry-Thought, then, is not even ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... his own reality, and then to multiply their likeness for all the world; to know himself to be Alfieri, to make himself up as Alfieri, and to write plays whereof the heroes and heroines were mere repetitions of Alfieri; such was the mission of this powerful and spontaneous nature, of this self-conscious and ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... "that's all oidle casuisthree an' imply mitaphysics. There's no process of ratiosheeneetion that'll be iver eeble to overturrun the sintimints of jewty and dilicacy that spring spontaneous in the brist. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... free-thinker a term of reproach in England? The same idea in the soul of an Englishman who struggled up to it and still holds it antagonistically, and in the soul of an American to whom it is congenital and spontaneous, and often unrecognized, except as an element blended with all his thoughts, a natural movement, like the drawing of his breath or the beating of his heart, is a very different thing. You may teach a quadruped to walk on his hind legs, but he is always wanting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... culmination of the good and true, and there is no beauty to him without these bases. He has perfect dominion over himself in every respect, so that to do the highest, wisest, loveliest thing is not the least effort to him, any more than it is to a baby to be innocent. It is his spontaneous act, and a baby is not more unconscious in its innocence. I never knew such loftiness, so simply borne. I have never known him to stoop from it in the most trivial household matter, any more than in ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... with which it mingles, had dowered him well with Celtic characteristics. A trace of the brogue still lingered in his speech, along with the slurred r's and the soft drawl of his southern tongue, while his spontaneous rebellion under restraint and his brilliant disregard of the consequences of his behavior were as truly Celtic as was the honey-sweet persuasiveness with which he could convince his friends that whatever he ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... a sincere homage that these multitudes from far and near, and the home crowds, render, with their palm branches and garment-strewn roads, and spontaneous outburst of joyous song.[56] And now as John put his bit of a knotted summary on the end of this part of his story, he points out that even among the members of the Jewish Senate there were many ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... liberty of worship to England, had only brought harsher and more cruel repressive legislation against liberty of worship in Ireland. Where Chesterfield got the ideas which he carried out from the first in his government of Ireland it is hard to understand. He must have had that gift of spontaneous sympathy which is the very instinct of genius in the government of a people among whom one has not been born, among whom one has scarcely lived. His mind seems to have taken in at a glance the whole state of things. Talleyrand said of Alexander ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... and rocked in the tempest of emotion, was the strange reminiscence of early childhood in it all. It was like being a little boy again, nestling in an innocent, unthinking transport of affection against his mother's skirts. The tears he felt scalding his eyes were the spontaneous, unashamed tears of a child; the tremulous and exquisite joy which spread, wave-like, over him, at once reposeful and yearning, was full of infantile purity and sweetness. He had not comprehended at all before what wellsprings ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... and in less than ten minutes the room was empty of all except Mordecai and Deronda. "Good-nights" had been given to Mordecai, but it was evident he had not heard them, for he remained rapt and motionless. Deronda would not disturb this needful rest, but waited for a spontaneous movement. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... elements and processes. The concept of matter in its scientific form is the result of this breaking asunder, essential for all scientific reflexion. In these conceptions the strongest opposition between inner and outer conditions of evolution is expressed: in the domain of internal conditions spontaneous development of qualitative forms—in the domain of external conditions ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... works for the deterioration of taste, just as meager and barren surroundings starve out the desire for beauty. Against such odds, conscious teaching can hardly do more than convey second-hand information as to what others think. Such taste never becomes spontaneous and personally engrained, but remains a labored reminder of what those think to whom one has been taught to look up. To say that the deeper standards of judgments of value are framed by the situations into which a person habitually enters is not so much to mention a fourth point, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... the presence of the bishops, and the respect which a polished and select society inspired, were, for the most part, a check on the impure inclinations of the clergy, even when their own sense of virtue and religion was insufficient to lead them to a spontaneous compliance with their arduous but sacred duty. But in small towns where these barriers did not exist, the clergy and friars, it must be admitted, infringed, and continued grossly to infringe, frequently in a scandalous manner, the vow of celibacy which they had solemnly sworn ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... 1857), whose reserve, he realised, was "not based on pride, but on the absence of any desire to draw nearer to each other"; while he looked back regretfully to the pension in Paris where the table d' hote was a scene of spontaneous gaiety. The problem of British taciturnity passed his comprehension; but for us the enigma of Tolstoy's temperament is half solved if we see him not harshly silhouetted against a blank wall, but suffused with his native atmosphere, amid his native surroundings. Not till we understand the ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... meeting, fortunately, did not know what it had lost, and its serenity remained unclouded. But it is not to the Mississippi toddies and other creature comforts of America that I look back with gratitude and affection. It is to the spontaneous and unaffected human kindness that met me on every hand; the will to please and to be pleased in daily intercourse; and, in the spiritual sphere, the thirst for knowledge, for justice, for beauty, for the larger and the ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... is teaching superstition. It is unfortunate to use the word; so few people have read history, and so many have dipped into little atheistic manuals, that the majority will rush to a conclusion, and suppose the labour lost. And far from that: These semi-spontaneous superstitions, varying with the sect of the original evangelist and the customs of the island, are found in practice to be highly fructifying; and in particular those who have learned and who go forth again to teach them offer an example to the world. The best specimen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unreserved confession. He was then brought back into court, when Dr. Camus, in the name of the Parliament of Dole, pronounced the following sentence: 'Seeing that Gilles Garnier has, by the testimony of credible witnesses and by his own spontaneous confession, been proved guilty of the abominable crimes of lycanthropy and witchcraft, this court condemns him, the said Grilles, to be this day taken in a cart from this spot to the place of execution, ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... for 10 minutes before administering medicine, and this allows time for a portion of the contents of the stomach to pass into the bowel, and renders it safer to give medicine. In many cases the walking exercise and the diarrhea bring about a spontaneous cure of this disorder, but as in some instances the cramps and pains of the stomachs persist, one may give 1 ounce of sulphuric ether and 1 ounce of tincture of opium, shaken up with a pint of warm water, and ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... she had, I am afraid, no great horror at the thoughts of being overtaken by him; nay, to confess the truth, I believe she rather wished than feared it; though I might honestly enough have concealed this wish from the reader, as it was one of those secret spontaneous emotions of the soul to which the reason is often ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... evident, then, that all the phenomena of animal magnetism have been from an early period known to mankind under the various forms of divinatory ecstasy, demonopathy or witchmania, theomania, or fanatical religious excitation, spontaneous catalepsy, and somnambulism. That, in addition to the ordinary manifestations of insensibility to pain, rigidity, and what is called clairvoyance, the patients affected with the more intense conditions of the malady have at all times exhibited a marvellous ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... treatise makes no mention of cannon. Fire-works, made generally of gunpowder, filings of zinc, camphor, and other ingredients, are described in various old tracts. It is easily conceived, that the deflagration of nitre was likely to be first noticed in those countries where it is the spontaneous and abundant production of the earth, which is the case on the elevated desarts of Tartary and Thibet, and on the low and extensive plains of India and China. The gunpowder, however, made by the Chinese ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... in the loud, spontaneous cheer which rose from those about me, in which at the moment I felt too ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... street in Bloomsbury for the purpose of having teeth extracted by an unknown practitioner. It is possible that the stockbroker is like the poet, a creature who is born, and not made; a gifted and inspired being, not to be perfected by any specific education; a child of spontaneous instincts and untutored faculties. Certain it is that the divine afflatus from the nostrils of the god Plutus seemed to have descended upon Philip Sheldon; for he had entered the Stock Exchange an inexperienced stranger, and he held his place there amongst men whose boyhood had been spent in the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... mulled wine ready for them, and sent them to bed on it! Some days afterwards, in another gale, between two snow-showers, I saw that rare electric phenomenon called St. Elmo's fire—jets of electric fire appearing at the points of all the ship's masts and yards. A spontaneous, unexpected, and most ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... side of his idea, Thor sought for a natural, spontaneous answer, and was not long in finding one. "I want to be identified with the village industries, because I'm going ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... was so keen a thing, so spontaneous, so whole-souled, that long before time came for the noon meal Conniston felt his own blood pounding and clamoring for action. Swiftly he was granted the first true glimpse which had ever come to him of the real nature of work. Such work as he was now about to engage ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... we stood awhile to note the peculiarities of the place and its position. The soil is a loose clay, deep-red or brown, impregnated with iron and, where unclothed with humus, cold and infertile, as the spontaneous aloe shows. The subsoil is laterite, also highly ferruginous. Soft and working well with the axe while it retains the quarry-water, it soon hardens by exposure; and, thus weathered, it forms the best and ugliest of the local building materials. Embedded in the earth's ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... the vale; Calls in the country, catches opening glades, Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades; Now breaks, or now directs, the intending lines; Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs. Still follow sense, of every art the soul, Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole, Spontaneous beauties all around advance, Start even from difficulty, strike from chance; Nature shall join you; Time shall make it grow A work to wonder at—perhaps a Stowe. Without it, proud Versailles, thy glory falls; And Nero's ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... of houses and were absorbed in dolls, while the boys played at archery, foot racing, and mimic hunting, which soon grew into the actual chase of small birds and animals. Some of the sports of the elders were unorganized diversions, leaping, racing, wrestling, and other spontaneous expressions of exuberance. Certain diversions were controlled by more persistent motive, as when the idle warrior occupied his leisure in meaningless ornamentation of his garment or tipi, or spent ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... freely or with so much emotion since they were married; and his wife was deeply touched. She made no answer, but half raising herself, crept to his arms, almost as if she loved him. So she truly did, in a measure, though not with the spontaneous, self-existent love, which, once lit in a woman's breast, is like the central fire hidden in the earth's bosom, enduring through all surface variations—through summer and winter, earthquakes, floods, and storms—utterly unchangeable ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Dove was fine to see; so was Drummer Frank, the errand-boy of the house, as he rub-a-dub-dubbed with all his heart and drumsticks. Jamie had "trained" before, and was made a colonel at once; but Pokey was the best of all, and called forth a spontaneous burst of applause from the spectators as she brought up the rear, her cocked hat all over one eye, her flag trailing over her shoulder, and her wooden sword straight up in the air; her face beaming and every curl bobbing with delight as her fat legs ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... Alps, we are after all but children of the century. We follow its inspiration blindly; and while we think ourselves spontaneous in our ecstasy, perform the part for which we have been trained from childhood by the atmosphere in which we live. It is this very unconsciousness and universality of the impulse we obey which makes ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... confusion upon the table, and which proved to be the Ordnance map of the county, embellished with numerous streaks of paint. 'The outlines of the old Saxon wappentakes,' said Louis: 'I was trying to make them out in blue, and the Roman roads in red. That mark is spontaneous; it has been ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... children have certain needs because in common with many other living creatures they develop through spontaneous, self-expressive activity. The growth of children is a growth in body, in mind ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... apparently, about B.C. 595, when the Amphictyonic meeting interfered—either prompted by the Phocians, or perhaps on their own spontaneous impulse, out of regard to the temple—to punish the Cirrhaeans. After a war of ten years, the first sacred war in Greece, this object was completely accomplished by a joint force of Thessalians under Eurolychus, Sicyonians under Clisthenes, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... been ranked with the greatest of all time and who received more publicity during one day of his visit here than Charles Dickens received during his whole sojourn in America, Senor Blasco and his works form a remarkably small part of the spontaneous literary conversation of the day. The characters which he has created have not taken any appreciable hold in the public imagination. Their names are never used as examples of anything. Who were some ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... are thy boons to us, These the delights to mortals given! Escape from pain, best gift of heaven! Thou scatterest sorrows with a bounteous hand; Grief springs spontaneous; If, by some monstrous growth, miraculous, Pleasure at times is born of pain, It is a precious gain! O human race, unto the gods so dear! Too happy, in a respite brief From any grief! Then only blessed, When Death releases thee ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... experience of men and affairs, and his marvellous powers of conversation, I could not divest myself of the conviction that underneath it all there lay something more than a mere desire to be either kindly or entertaining; in fact, that his geniality, though outwardly spontaneous, was really a cloak to hide another side of his nature—a fog into which he retreated—and that some day the real man would ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... exchanges are not like the merchant's wares, to be held up for a bid. The soul is too grand and spontaneous a creation to be measured. Yes, we must often speak our deepest thoughts, even though they are cast away as nought, and trampled upon. There would be little richness or worth without this free offering, this giving of self for truth's sake, even though we know that we and our words may ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... eagerly in the affirmative. In order to account for this spontaneous good-nature on the part of Grasp, I must explain that old Mr. Quirk had for years secured a highly respectable criminal practice, by having in his interest most of the officers attached to the police-offices and Newgate. He gave, in fact, systematic gratuities ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... exerting itself in the girl's favor. However low a man may sink, honor and chivalry, has he ever possessed them, are never entirely eradicated from his character, and though Albert Werper had long since ceased to evidence the slightest claim to either the one or the other, the spontaneous acknowledgment of them which the girl's speech had presumed had reawakened them ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... clumsy inversion; stately phrases are used when simpler ones were at hand, and would have rendered the meaning of the original better. The entire version has the appearance of being hammered out with great labor, and as a whole it is cold and constrained; scarce any thing seems spontaneous; it is only now and then that the translator has caught the fervor of his author. Homer, of course, wrote in idiomatic Greek, and, in order to produce either a true copy of the original, or an agreeable poem, should have been translated ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... followers at Leipzig defended the French, Bodmer and his friends in Switzerland the English style of literature. The former insisted on classical form and traditional rules; the latter on natural sentiment and spontaneous expression. The question was, whether poets should imitate the works of the classics, or imitate the classics who had become classics by imitating nobody. A German professor wields an immense power by means of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... or said. His blue eyes sparkled and flashed, his clean-cut mobile features were an index to his slightest shades of feeling and expression. He bubbled with enthusiasms, and his faintest smile or lightest laugh seemed spontaneous and genuine. But it was only occasionally at first that he spoke, for Von Blix told their ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... case. His devotion to Marie Louise was heartbreaking. Her sympathy had not been exhausted, but schooled rather by its prolonged exercise, and she gave the forlorn old wretch a love and a tenderness that had been wrought to a fine art without losing any of its spontaneous reality. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Linda assembled her brood. There were cocoa and coffee and muffins and omelette and Fred's little bottle of cream, and his paper, and there was, as always, Linda's spontaneous grace before meat: "I wonder if we're thankful enough, when we think of those poor people ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... strainings and distortions. Those authors appear to forget, that a whole poem cannot be made up of striking passages; and that the sensations produced by sublimity, are never so powerful and entire, as when they are allowed to subside and revive, in a slow and spontaneous succession. It is delightful, now and then, to meet with a rugged mountain, or a roaring stream; but where there is no funny slope, nor shaded plain, to relieve them—where all is beetling cliff and yawning abyss, and the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... eyes of childhood typify innocence; the narrowed line of the flirt's optic proves the invasion of art. The horizontal mouth is the mark of determined cunning; who has not read Nature's most spontaneous lyric in lips rounded ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... just as the lights went out. Prosper was amused at his own intense excitement. "I didn't know I was still such a kid," he said, flashing a smile, the first spontaneous one he had given her, upon Betty who sat beside ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... am no more favored than most people who write stories in receiving from unknown correspondents a variety of suggestions, outlines of plots, sketches of situations, characters, and so forth. One cannot but feel grateful for all this spontaneous beneficence. The mischief is that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred (the fraction is really much smaller) these suggestions are ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at last. The Hindenburg Line, about which there has been so much speculation, is now known to run through Liege, Luxemburg and Metz. According to schedule we are now approaching this position, which has only been attained by an amazing display of spontaneous volatility on our part. The fighting of the last few weeks, in the neighbourhood of the Pogner, Sieglinda, Kurvenal and Lohengrin Lines, fell out as had been prognosticated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... some even going so far as to say that the freedom of manual labourers is an unnatural order of things anywhere. Again, the theorists of absolute monarchy have always affirmed it to be the only natural form of government; issuing from the patriarchal, which was the primitive and spontaneous form of society, framed on the model of the paternal, which is anterior to society itself, and, as they contend, the most natural authority of all. Nay, for that matter, the law of force itself, ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... of the outer man; and the most has been made of it. "Always figuring, always posturing," we hear. I merely point to the seventy noble generations, the personality made up of that courtly heredity, whose smallest quite spontaneous acts and habits seemed to men worth recording, as showing how the perfect gentleman behaved: a model. Another side is found in the lover of poetry, the devotee of music, the man of keen and intense ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... high! Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears (The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth), Of tides obedient to external force, And currents self-determined, as might seem, Or by some inner Power; of moments awful, Now in thy inner life, and now abroad, When power streamed ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... me you said that beauty was my curse." Charley laughed a curt, distant little laugh which was no more the spontaneous humour lying for ever behind his thoughts than his eye-glass was the real sight of his eyes, though since childhood this laugh and his eye-glass were as natural to all expression of himself as John Brown's outward and showy frankness ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... abdomen which consist of the omentum (apron covering the bowels) rolled up and matted into a sausage-shaped tumor in the upper part of the abdomen, or of thickened or adherent coils of the bowel, enlarged mesentric lymph nodes, etc. Spontaneous recovery may occur, or the course of the disease may resemble that of ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... marked his modulations by sudden emphatic movements of the head. His eyes were fixed intently before him, as if he could actually see and follow the shining thread of his song, as it wound away through the air. His performance had all the effect of a spontaneous rhapsody. When it was terminated, he looked down at his auditors, eager, inquisitive, as who should say, "I hope you liked it?"—and then, with a nod clearly meant as a ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... cook, Katie by name. She was born in Germany, and her young girlhood was spent in the old country. She had only a rudimentary education, and even now speaks broken English. But she was endowed with a healthy, independent nature, a spontaneous wit, and a strong demand to take care ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... to have been a man of deep and wise reflection, but especially a consummate master of style. The book is one to read in, rather than to read. It is full of food to thought. The very beginning exhibits a self-consciousness on the writer's part very different from that spontaneous simplicity in which truly great books originate. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... girl. If it had been possible she would have detained her daughter forever in the physique of a child; she feared the time when Mary would become too evidently a woman, when all kinds of equalities would come to hinder her spontaneous and active affection. A woman might object to be nursed, while a girl would not; Mrs. Makebelieve feared that objection, and, indeed, Mary, under the stimulus of an awakening body and a new, strange warmth, was not altogether satisfied by being nursed or by ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... Shelley strongly defended her, but now he felt that this disaster might really be impending. Poor pretty Harriet could not understand or talk philosophy with Shelley, and, what was worse, her sister was ever present to prevent any spontaneous feeling of dependence on her husband from endearing her to him. Even before his second ceremony of marriage with Harriet we find him writing a letter in great dejection to Hogg. He seemed really in the poet's "premature old age," as he expressed it, though none like the poet have the power of ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... Rome. The suspicion is not founded, either in nature or in fact. The successors of St. Peter appear to have followed, rather than guided, the impulse of manners and prejudice; without much foresight of the seasons, or cultivation of the soil, they gathered the ripe and spontaneous fruits of the superstition of the times. They gathered these fruits without toil or personal danger: in the council of the Lateran, Innocent the Third declared an ambiguous resolution of animating the crusaders by his example; but the pilot of the sacred vessel could not abandon ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... calmly enjoying the beauty of the morning, the freshness of the air, the warmth of the dancing beam, and not least, perhaps, his own peaceful thoughts,—the spontaneous children of a contemplative spirit and a quiet conscience. His was the age when we most sensitively enjoy the mere sense of existence,—when the face of Nature and a passive conviction of the benevolence of our Great Father suffice to create a serene and ineffable ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book V • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... George Eliot indulged in them, and he avoided conceits as sedulously as Mr. George Meredith goes out of his way to hunt for them. He is a better writer than any one of these, in that he is always a master of speech and of himself, and that he is always careful yet natural and choice yet seemingly spontaneous. He wrote as a very prince among talkers, and he interfused and interpenetrated English with the elegant and cultured fashion of the men of Queen Anne and with something of the warmth, the glow, the personal ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... the first five minutes. Subscribing was still going on when he left; the papers had ceased the names, only the amounts—too many names; not enough room. L100,000 subscribed by companies and citizens; if this is true, it must be what they call in Australia "a record"—the biggest instance of a spontaneous outpour for charity in history, considering the size of the population it was drawn from, $8 or $10 for each white resident, babies at the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prodigal of the impulses of that protecting tenderness which it is the blessing of early girlhood to draw forth unwittingly, and to enjoy unknown,—affections which lead to no declaration, and desire no return; which are the spontaneous effluence of the very Spirit of Love in man; and which play and hover around winning innocence like the coruscations round the head of the unconscious Iulus, a soft ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... know her. Please tell her so. And this is Mrs. James. Why, yes, of course! I remember you—in the days of my captivity." She laughed a childlike, impish laugh. (Barrie has one rather like it, but more spontaneous, less ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to conceal that Coningsby had imbibed for Sidonia a certain degree of aversion, which, in these days of exaggerated phrase, might even be described as hatred. And Edith was so beautiful! And there had seemed between them a sympathy so native and spontaneous, creating at once the charm of intimacy without any of the disenchanting attributes that are occasionally its consequence. He would recall the tones of her voice, the expression of her soft dark eye, the airy spirit and frank graciousness, sometimes even the flattering ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... is born, which in all appearances seems normal. Perhaps the nose is a trifle squatter than even the average new-born's flat nose. There may also be abnormal sleepiness, greater even than that of the normal baby in the first month or two in that there is no spontaneous awakening from the coma for food. But in most cases this is put down to normal variability, or maybe to that limbo of all a baby's troubles: weakness. After some months, it is noticed that the infant is failing to grow at ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... before the same date; as even in more modern times rhymed heroic poetry appears in England with the Norman conquest, and in Germany the Minnesaenger rise and set with the Swabian dynasty—so, only in a much more decided manner, we see in the ancient and spontaneous literature of India, an age of poets followed by an age of collectors and imitators, that age to be succeeded by an age of theological prose writers, and this last by an age of writers of scientific manuals. New wants produced new supplies, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... never asked other people what was to be done. So she had grown up tranquilly and restfully till she had reached the age of nineteen. She was very charming, without being aware of it herself. Her every movement was full of spontaneous, somewhat awkward gracefulness; her voice had the silvery ring of untouched youth, the least feeling of pleasure called forth an enchanting smile on her lips, and added a deep light and a kind of mystic sweetness to her kindling ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... completeness of its own, and even when I find it in other nations I at once assert for it its character as already known to me. Thus De Wette and I come to differ in the view we take of individual myths. To him they commonly appear as spontaneous free inventions of individual men for their own purposes; not in the ignoble sense in which the vulgar view speaks of the religious narratives of ancient peoples, but free inventions in which there is no intention ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... Of thine own spirit thou hast loved to tell What may be told, by words revealable: With heavenly breathings, like the secret soul Of vernal growth, oft quickening in the heart Thoughts, that obey no mastery of words, 10 Pure Self-beholdings! Theme as hard as high, Of Smiles spontaneous and mysterious Fear! The first born they of Reason and twin birth! Of tides obedient to external force, And currents self-determin'd, as might seem, 15 Or by some inner power! Of moments awful, Now in thy hidden life, and now ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... of nature is the great fountain of all the graces; from which they flow spontaneous, when unchecked by affectation, which at once ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... with here and there a house standing lonesomely prophetic on it. But it is this present Majesty, Friedrich Wilhelm, that gets the plan executed, and the Friedrichs Strasse actually built, not always in a soft or spontaneous manner. Friedrich Wilhelm was the AEdile of his Country, as well as the Drill-sergeant; Berlin City did not rise of its own accord, or on the principle of leave-alone, any more than the Prussian Army itself. Wreck and rubbish Friedrich ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... demure lines of mouth and chin, that could always be relied upon for special pleading when sentence was about to be passed on the dimple by those who disapproved of dimples, drooped with disappointment. But the light-brown hair continued to curl facetiously—it was the sort of hair whose spontaneous rippling conveys to the seeing eye ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... by Mr. Hearne live in this manner. They do not cultivate the earth. They subsist by hunting, and the scanty produce of spontaneous vegetation. But, among these tribes consumption is common. Their diseases, as Mr. Hearne informs us, are ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... it. In the intervals of an intermittent fever or of other illness, it not unfrequently happens that sick persons can accurately foretell the day of an approaching attack and how long it will last. The same thing occurs almost invariably in the case of spontaneous, and generally in that of artificial, somnambulism; certainly the Pythia, as is well known, used to announce the date of her next ecstatic state. In like manner the curative instinct displays itself in somnambulists, and they have been known to ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... genuine one that she gave him, for I heard his boyish greeting before I saw his hot brown face, and there was no mistaking the sudden delight of both. It was sudden and spontaneous, complete, until his eyes lit on me. Even then his smile did not disappear, but it changed, as did ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... of the hunters through the whole summer and autumn, till late in December. During this time, they hunted the deer, the bear, and especially the buffalo. The buffaloes were found in great numbers, feeding on the leaves of the cane, and the rich and spontaneous fields ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley |
