"Undesigned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but record the effect of an actual though undesigned experiment, which I prosecuted for upwards of twelve years among you. For the greater part of that time I could expatiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villany of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny; in a word, upon all those deformities of character which awaken the ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... Surely the principle upheld by our opponents, that much more importance than we allow should be attributed to the 'Internal evidence of Readings and Documents,' might have saved him from error upon a piece of composition which characteristically proclaimed its own origin. At all events, after this undesigned support, I am the less inclined to ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... burning on her cheeks. Why she should feel thus she could not account, "unless," said she to herself, "I fear that my suspicion may be guessed at; and should my words or looks betray the royal Bruce to any harm, that moment of undesigned ingratitude would be ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... total destruction of their native city. Since then they had been driven to and fro at the mercy of the winds and waves, exposed to every conceivable degree of hardship and danger. Their landing finally in the dominions of Latinus in Italy, was not, they confessed, wholly undesigned, for Latium had been divinely indicated to them, on their way, as the place destined by the decrees of heaven for their final home. Following these indications, they had sought the shores of Italy and the mouths of the Tiber, and having succeeded in reaching ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the comedies of Holberg, because there were no stage directions and the tradition was lost. Of his own work, fortunately, that can never be said. Dr. Verrall, in his brilliant and penetrating studies of the Greek Tragedies, has pointed out more than once the "undesigned and unforeseen defect with which, in studying ancient drama, we must perpetually reckon," namely, the loss of the action and of the equivalent stage directions. It is easy to imagine "what problems Shakespeare would present ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... from mentioning the muddles and undesigned evils produced by other legislation of a much less admirable nature.[5] But I may perhaps be allowed to mention that it has seemed to some observers that there is a connection between the Feminism of ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... above instances it will be observed that destruction or disappointment of enemies was the primary, and amusement the secondary object. It must be admitted that all such jokes are of a very poor and severe description. They have not the undesigned coincidence of the ludicrous nor the fanciful invention of true humour. Samson was evidently regarded as a droll fellow in his day, but beyond his jokes the only venture of his on record is a riddle, which showed very little ingenuity, and can not be ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... to "pettifogulize"—i.e., to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction—exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost every body's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations. Undesigned equivocation prevails every where; [10] and it is not the cavilling hair splitter, but, on the contrary, the single-eyed servant of truth, that is most likely to insist upon the limitation of expressions too wide or too vague, and upon the decisive election between meanings potentially double. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... full-proportioned story under the warmth of the feeling it had inspired its writer with; its very incidents created a necessity at first not seen; and it was carried to a close only contemplated after a full half of it had been written. Yet, from the opening of the tale to that undesigned ending,—from the image of little Nell asleep amid the quaint grotesque figures of the old curiosity warehouse to that other final sleep she takes among the grim forms and carvings of the old church aisle,—the main purpose seems to be always present. The characters and incidents that at ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... life of man started out to be what they are. Consider, for example, all the unexpected aesthetic values, the inspiration and variety of emotional result which arises out of the cross-shaped plan of the Gothic cathedral, and the undesigned delight and wonder of white marble that has ensued, as I have been told, through the ageing and whitening of the realistically coloured statuary of the Greeks and Romans. Much of the charm of the old furniture and needlework, again, upon which ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... and the sharpest clarity of thought. Man lives by cooperating with his fellow-men. In the modern world, that cooperation is of a boundless range and an indescribable complexity. Yet it is essentially undesigned and uncontrolled by man. The humblest inhabitant of the United States or Great Britain depends for the satisfaction of his simplest needs upon the activities of innumerable people, in every walk of life and in every ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... finest works of English literature are purely and directly historical; what has been said is intended to refer more particularly to those that are not—the unconscious, undesigned teachers of history, such as fiction, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... composer himself indicated that he desired it to be looked upon as outside of the old operatic conventions. According to its title page it is "Dramma lirico in quattro Atti." "Ada" was still an "Opera in quattro Atti." The distinction was not undesigned. There are many other indications that he desired his work to be looked upon as something as far from old-fashioned opera as were Wagner's later dramas; that he aimed in the first instance at a presentation ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Hazlewood, who persists in declaring, that with whatever intentions the person by whom he was wounded approached our party, he is convinced the gun went off in the struggle by accident, and that the injury he received was undesigned. The groom, on the other hand, maintains that the piece was wrenched out of Hazlewood's hands, and deliberately pointed at his body, and Lucy inclines to the same opinion—I do not suspect them of wilful exaggeration, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... writings there is something like himself and unlike others, which gives individuality. To appreciate this latent quality would require a kindred mind, and minute study and observation. There are a class of similarities which may be called undesigned coincidences, which are so remote as to be incapable of being borrowed from one another, and yet, when they are compared, find a natural explanation in their being the work of the same mind. The imitator might copy the turns of style—he might repeat images or illustrations, ...
— Laws • Plato
... that loved not at first sight,' says Marlowe, and Shakespeare after him. I cannot say whether this be an undesigned literary coincidence or an appropriation. Disraeli, we know, was skilful in the art of annexation. One or two instances may be added. Here is a clear case of borrowing. Fuller says in the character ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... some cases a decided preponderance of the action, whether seen as a whole or looked at in detail, is recognised at once as due to design, purpose, forethought, skill, and effort, and then we properly disregard the undesigned element; in others the details cannot without violence be connected with design, however much the position which rendered the main action possible may involve design—as, for example, there is no design in the way in which individual pieces of coal may hit one another when shot out ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... defend it. The savage accounts are on the level of much anthropological evidence; they may, that is, be dismissed by adversaries as 'travellers' tales.' But the best testimony for the truth of the reports as to actual belief in the facts is the undesigned coincidence of evidence from all ages and quarters.[5] When the stories brought by travellers, ancient and modern, learned and unlearned, pious or sceptical, agree in the main, we have all the certainty that anthropology ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... course they entertained an increased respect for me, which was all right, and a decreased respect for the governess, which was also all right. We met in the hour allotted to French lessons—by an undesigned but appropriate coincidence." ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... This gradual and undesigned Arabising of the country would lead to oppression of the Christians, to the "squeezing" of wealthy natives, and occasionally to the institution of humiliating distinctions of dress and other vexations, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... fit, by reason of their respective specialities of structure, for performing different obviously useful purposes—have all the appearance of having been expressly constructed for the performance of those purposes. If these appearances of adaptation were fallacious, if the apparent utility were undesigned, the chances against the perpetual recurrence of so singularly useful, rather than of some totally useless, set of combinations would be a multiple of innumerosity similar to that which has clearly been shown to represent the preponderance of ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... any divine communications (given under the conditions aforesaid) is to be believed; but perhaps after all, the method would have been more sure, had these sages confined these communications to different testimonies, in which the general harmony and undesigned coincidences should be manifest, but which should contain slight discrepancies, and even some apparent contradictions, which the parties, if there had been collusion, would certainly have obviated. This would, perhaps, have been the best guaranty ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... considerable damage to his right eye and was also losing blood from his nose—nasty injuries which, in my opinion, should have led to the competition being stopped while he received medical attention. No doubt the injuries were undesigned. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... 744; uncontrollable, inevitable, unavoidable, irresistible, irrevocable, inexorable; avoidless[obs3], resistless. involuntary, instinctive, automatic, blind, mechanical; unconscious, unwitting, unthinking; unintentional &c. (undesigned) 621; impulsive &c. 612. Adv. necessarily &c. adv.; of necessity, of course; ex necessitate rei[Lat]; needs must; perforce &c. 744; nolens volens[Lat]; will he nil he, willy nilly, bon gre mal gre[Fr], willing ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ancient authors, Tacitus, Pliny, Diodorus Siculus, and others, furnish abundant testimony in undesigned confirmation of the scriptural account. The following quotation is from Strabo: "There are many indications that fire has been over this country; for, about Massada, they show rough and scorched rocks and caverns, in many places eaten in; and the earth ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... tender sentiment in his wife, as brought home to him by this mute and undesigned evidence of her sale of his portrait and gift, was the conclusive little stroke required to demolish all sentiment in him. He paid the shilling, took the photograph away with him, and burnt it, frame and all, when ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... easily understand that while diverse causes may integrate the nervous system for a specific action, if the cause be suddenly removed, then the result of the integration of the nervous system may be, not a specific action, but an undesigned muscular action, such as crying or laughter. Hence it is that laughter and crying may be evoked by diverse exciting causes. The intensity of the laughter or of the crying depends upon the intensity of the stimulus and the dynamic state ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... the genuineness of Werner is still more convincing. In the first place, there are numerous "undesigned coincidences," allusions, and phrases to be found in Werner and elsewhere in Byron's Poetical Works, which bear his sign-manual, and cannot be attributed to another writer; and, secondly, scattered through the play there are numerous ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... ascertaining the truth. But after all deductions for prejudice, mistake, inaccuracy and every other shortcoming, there is left a strong, an invincible consensus of testimony, honest, independent and full of undesigned corroborations, to the development of the mind of all races in the lower culture along the lines here indicated. Nay, more; the numerous remains of archaic institutions, as well as of beliefs among the most advanced ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... alleged frequency and repetition and variation of the instances, and the alleged time over which the appearances extended, and after which they absolutely ceased, make the hypothesis of involuntary and undesigned allusions of regret and passion infinitely different from what it might be in the case of one or two persons, or for a transitory period of excitement and crisis—unaffected by such considerations, M. Renan proceeds ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Primal Dark retreated, When ther deeps were undesigned, He with rule and level meted ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... understood that sudden pause—the undesigned allusion to Carmina's guiltless knowledge of her feeling towards Ovid. By unexpressed consent, on either side, they still preserved their former relations as if Mrs. Gallilee had not spoken. Miss Minerva looked at Carmina sadly and kindly. "Good-bye for the present!" ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... noise on the smooth road, and the feet of the oxen falling almost soundlessly, they all heard it; and they all felt it. It was nothing less than an echo of what Lois had been repeating; a mute "Even so!"—probably unconscious, and certainly undesigned. Mrs. Lenox glanced that way. There was a far-off look on the old worn face, and lines of peace all about the lips and the brow and the quiet folded hands. Mrs. Lenox did not know that a sigh came from herself ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... then, as in Homer, there are undesigned notes of correspondence between the partly mythical ornaments imaginatively enlarged of the heroic age, and a world of actual handicrafts. In the shield of Hercules another marvellous detail is added in the image of Perseus, very daintily described as hovering in some wonderful way, as if really ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... with an art and genius distinctly his own. In another tale,—which is provincial if not historical, and which was one of his earlier pieces,—"Roger Malvin's Burial," there is also a noticeable beginning in his art, for in this he uses undesigned coincidence to give that impression of a guided accomplishment of fate, which is so dramatically effective to the moral sense. From these few instances it will be observed that Hawthorne reached artistic consciousness, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry |
