"Unfinished" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rosemaries. My Bees, whom I kill by crushing their heads, are readily accepted; and I at first see nothing that corresponds with my suspicions. Then my nurselings languish, disdain their food, give a careless bite here and there and end by perishing, from the first to the last, beside their unfinished victuals. All my attempts miscarry: I do not once succeed in rearing my larvae to the stage of spinning the cocoon. And yet I am no novice in the functions of a foster-father. How many pupils have not passed through my hands and reached maturity in ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... in the text was his Decados, a history of Portuguese India, written in fulfilment of a royal commission. The first "decade" was completed in nine years (1552), the second soon after, and the third ten years later. The fourth was left unfinished at his death, but was completed later by Diogo do Conto, who added eight more volumes. A complete edition was printed at Lisbon in twenty-four volumes (1778-88). Barros was a conscientious writer and a good ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... all this period his mind was doubtless fermenting with projects which kept him in a fevered and irritable condition. "He had a small writing-table," Mr. Phillips says, "with a shallow drawer; I have often seen it half full of sketches, unfinished poems, soliloquies, a scene or two of a play, prose portraits of some pet character, etc. These he would read to me, though he never volunteered to do so, and every now and then he burnt the whole and began to fill ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of Claudian on the Rape of Proserpine, the longest extant work connected with the story of Demeter, yet itself unfinished, closes the world of classical poetry. Writing in the fourth century of the Christian era, Claudian has his subject before him in the whole extent of its various development, and also profits by those many pictorial representations of it, which, from the famous picture of Polygnotus ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... these two, who had never felt more than the merest butterfly wings of love brushing them, light as lashes. No word between them, only an unfinished sweetness, waiting to be ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... our day is covered by a fourth palace, built seventy years later (by Gaston, the rebellious brother of Louis XIII., then exiled to Blois), was an open space containing pleasure-grounds and hanging gardens, picturesquely placed among the battlements and unfinished ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... multitudes, he exposed and denounced their hypocrisy, is supposed to take place in one of the great outer courts of the Temple, the buildings of which, although begun forty-six years previously, were at this time still unfinished, and were indeed never fully completed in accordance with ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... for gratitude That lured me to the desert years ago. I did my work—and was not that enough? No; but because the idlers sneered and shrugged, The envious whispered, the traducers lied, And friendship doubted where it should have cheered I flung aside the unfinished task, sought praise Outside my soul's esteem, and learned too late That victory, like God's kingdom, is within. (Nay, let the folio rest upon my knee. I do not feel its weight.) Ingratitude? The hurrying traveller does not ask the name Of him who points ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... had once been a family house, and in an uppermost room of which I could look from my work across the trees of the little park in Stuyvesant Square to the towers of St. George's Church. Then later in the spring of 1889 the unfinished novel was carried to a country house on the Belmont border of Cambridge. There I must have written very rapidly to have pressed it to conclusion before the summer ended. It came, indeed, so easily from the pen that I had the misgiving which I always have of things which do ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... fixed and known; and we have nothing to hope from your candor or to fear from your capacity. Indolence and inability have too large a share in your composition, ever to suffer you to be anything more than the hero of little villainies and unfinished adventures. That, which to some persons appeared moderation in you at first, was not produced by any real virtue of your own, but by a contrast of passions, dividing and holding you in perpetual irresolution. One vice will frequently expel another, without the least merit in the man; as powers ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... language is, as it were, to begin anew, and we make use of the most singular and boldest combinations to explain ourselves. Our wit comes from us, "like birdlime, brains and all." We pay too little attention to form and method, leave our works in an unfinished state, but still the materials we work in are solid and of nature's mint; we do not deal in counterfeits. We both under and over-do, but we keep an eye to the prominent features, the main chance. We are more for weight than show; care only about what interests ourselves, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... in manufacturing articles of dress for herself and children. She desired to present Mr. Davis on Christmas with a handsome dressing-gown. The material was purchased, and for weeks the work had been under way. Christmas eve came, and the gown had been laid aside so often that it was still unfinished. I saw that Mrs. D. was anxious to have it completed, so I volunteered to remain and work on it. Wearily the hours dragged on, but there was no rest for my busy fingers. I persevered in my task, notwithstanding my head was aching. Mrs. Davis was busy in the ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... sentence unfinished—the last resource of the sneak and the coward who wishes to reserve to himself the letter of the denial in the spirit of ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... from his bed in haste at the thrilling of the general alarm of something unusual in the daylight annals of the town. His bare feet were thrust into slippers, his great white shirt was collarless, dainty narrow blue silk suspenders held up his hogshead-measure pantaloons. The redness of unfinished sleep ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... his shoulder like any laborer, and drawing the hood of his garment over his bald crown as the mist of rain increased to a driving sheet, Father Baby tramped along the river edge toward an unfinished defense against the waters. It was a high dike, beginning on a shoulder of the peninsula above the town, but extending barely a mile across a marsh where the river had once continuously raveled the shore even in dry ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... The unfinished treatise known as De Vulgari Eloquentia had the curious fortune to appear in an Italian translation (1529) some fifty years before it was printed in its original Latin. It is a most interesting little work, showing considerable acuteness of perception ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... as he glanced at me, and moved the rabbit to the corner nearest to him—the absurd-looking object being carefully covered over, as if he was afraid I should begin joking him again about its unfinished state. ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... used another method of persuasion, talking more but saying less. He had staked much on his estimate of the baronet's character, and awaited his reply with an anxiety of which his face gave no trace. Very rare were the occasions on which he had told so much of an unfinished investigation to another person, and that person not an official of Scotland Yard. Often he had feigned to open his heart with the same object—to win confidence by apparent confidence. The difference now was that he had given the facts ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... out through the traffic of the street, turned a shade paler under his sun-burned skin, and Patricia could see that his hand gripped almost fiercely upon the steering-wheel. She realized that he had understood the important part of what she had said, and she did not complete the unfinished sentence. There was a considerable silence before either of them spoke again, and then Morton asked calmly, but in a voice that was so changed as to be ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... remark remained unfinished. With a boisterous laugh the boy flung a small canvas bag on the counter and emptied its contents before ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... month has opened its eyes on the world, and still the illustrious Charles [bricklayer] potters about, still the carpenter plies the creaking saw and the stunning hammer, still the plumber plumbs and the bellhanger rattles, still the cisterns overflow and the unfinished drains send forth odorous fumes, still the rains descend and all around the house is a muddle of muck and mire, and still there is so much to do that we look forward to some far distant futurity, when all that we are now suffering ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... give up that idea of the Lady Macbeth picture all the same. I was the gainer, for he gave me the unfinished sketch, and it is ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... pressure; and though the timber "cribwork" erected to facilitate the placing of floating pontoons to form the dams, was found considerably disturbed and in some places seriously damaged, the piers, with the exception of one or two heavy stone blocks, which were still unfinished, escaped uninjured. One heavy block of many tons' weight was carried to a considerable distance, and must have been torn out of its place by sheer force, as several of the broken fragments were found ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... first published in 1842, is the great prose classic of Russia. That amazing institution, "the Russian novel," not only began its career with this unfinished masterpiece by Nikolai Vasil'evich Gogol, but practically all the Russian masterpieces that have come since have grown out of it, like the limbs of a single tree. Dostoieffsky goes so far as to bestow this tribute upon an earlier work by the same author, a short story entitled The Cloak; this idea ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... grew more violent. He saw the people at the next table turn and stare, heard the men laughing harshly. For the spectacle was evidently not an uncommon one here. She pushed away her unfinished glass, gathered up her velvet bag and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... while he was only looking out of window, began to swim before he had got to the bottom of a page. The last sentences of the unfinished chapter alluded to a matter of fact which he had not yet verified. In emergencies of any sort, he was a patient man and a man of resource. The necessary verification could be accomplished by a visit to the College of Surgeons, situated in the great square called Lincoln's Inn Fields. Here ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... From an unfinished house on the Varvarka, the ground floor of which was a dramshop, came drunken shouts and songs. On benches round the tables in a dirty little room sat some ten factory hands. Tipsy and perspiring, with dim eyes and wide-open mouths, they were all laboriously singing some song or other. They ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... in Turkey when the victorious Bulgarians marched after the retreating Turks. I never dreamed then that such scenes would happen in France in the wake of a German retreat. It is a little thing, like one of those unfinished letters from a soldier to his wife, which overwhelms one with pity for all the ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... 130 florins and 6 soldi in 1491, but it was not finished till the next year. Polimante da Nicola was made citizen of Perugia in 1473. Three years after he began the choir of S. Domenico, which cost 11 florins per seat. Four years later it was still unfinished. "Mastro Crespolto and Mastro Giovagne" were his assistants. Domenico had three sons, Chimenti, Francesco, and Marco, who followed the paternal calling. Chimenti was one of those who were judges in 1490 in the competition for ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... poor cousin's memoir. He was found dead from effusion of blood on the brain, with his pen still in his hand, and his head bowed down on his unfinished manuscript, on the margin of which he had just sketched a small boy wheeling a toy wheelbarrow full of stones from one open door to another. One door is labelled ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... lap for a space, while her shrewd eyes roamed over the fields, and sought Buck Mountain beyond, thrusting its topmost clump of chestnut-trees against the sky. She nodded to her thoughts as she picked up the unfinished sock. ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... occupation he followed from 1831 to 1836. His first book was entitled "Sketches of London Society, by Boz." This was followed, in 1837, by the "Pickwick Papers," a work which suddenly brought much fame to the author. His other works followed with great rapidity, and his last was unfinished at the time of his death. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Mr. Dickens visited America in 1842, and again in 1867. During his last visit, he read his works in public, in the principal cities of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... trees and flowers and other natural details should share the same deficiency perplexed my logical soul, and even dismayed it. I stood and stared, then moved about, and stood and stared again. Everywhere was this mockery of a sinister, unfinished aspect. I sought in vain to recover my normal point of view. My mind had found this goblin garden and wandered to and fro ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... her childhood came and went. Laughter and tears and kisses! And then, in no time at all, she found herself changing for the journey in the "little house under the hill." There, locked up in the little desk Cousin Eleanor had given her long ago, was the unfinished manuscript of that novel written at fever heat during those summer days in which she had sought to escape from a humdrum existence. And now—she had escaped. Aunt Mary, helpful under the most trying circumstances, was putting her articles ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... an address on the theatre at Harvard and at Yale. He enlarged his magazine article on "The Play and the Public" for that purpose. It is now easily accessible, included in the fourth volume of the Memorial Edition of his plays. It was found among his many papers and unfinished manuscripts. There is no recent playwright whose "Life and Letters" are more worthy of preservation. I have looked through most of the materials; have seen letters descriptive of his childhood in Schenectady, New York, (he was born, May 2, 1865 in Elmira); have read accounts ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... Mr. Newman, "I see—yes! A hundred years, ago I was part of my Maker's unfinished plan ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... was the planning of a great entertainment to be given in the opera house, by local talent, both in and out of the church, for the purpose of raising money that the church still owed their former pastor. The unfinished work was a quilt of a complicated wheel pattern. Every spoke of each wheel contained the name of some individual who had paid ten cents for the honor. The hubs cost twenty-five cents. When finished this ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... 23, 1805] Monday 23rd December 1805 Rained without intermition all the last night and to day with Thunder and Hail the fore and after part of this day Capt Lewis and my Self move into our hut to day unfinished- two Canoes with Indians of the Clat Sop nation Came up to day. I purchased 3 mats and bags all neetly made of flags and rushes, those bags are nearly Square of different size's open on one Side, I also purchased a panthor ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... left by reason of some great convulsion or disaster, by forgotten races, and you will find there half excavated and rounded pillars still adhering to the matrix of the rock from which they were being hewn. Such unfinished abortions are all human lives if, when Death drops its curtain, there ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... An unfinished piece of costly embroidery thrown on a little stand near the bed, another piece of a less costly kind, but yet too luxurious to be intended for the use of this poor family, shewed that his wife and daughter—this gentle ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... when Lacordaire was preaching in Lyons, proves that, though devoting himself with ardor to the study of economical problems, Proudhon had not lost his interest in questions of religious history. Among his writings on these questions, which he was unfortunately obliged to leave unfinished, we may mention a nearly completed history of the early Christian heresies, and of the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... the little unfinished room under the rafters, the woman sat down on the corner of the bed, physical discomfort forgotten in ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Raleigh's unfinished History of the World, which leaves us to regret that later ages had not been celebrated by his eloquence, was the fruits of eleven years of imprisonment. It was written for the use of Prince Henry, as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... need of idealism and courage, because we have essential work at home—the unfinished work of American freedom. In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... for eery stories in his notebooks; Twice-Told Tales; Mosses from an Old Manse; The Scarlet Letter; Hawthorne's sympathetic insight into character; The House of the Seven Gables, and the ancestral curse; his half-credulous treatment of the supernatural; unfinished stories; a contrast of Hawthorne's methods with those of Edgar Allan Poe; A Manuscript found in a Bottle, the first of Poe's tales of terror; the skill of Poe illustrated in Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... was Washington's headquarters. Here Mrs. Washington helped him entertain officers and members of Congress. The General was so busy that he was often obliged to leave his guests at the table, while his own meal remained unfinished. ...
— George Washington • Calista McCabe Courtenay
... a sort of bitter irony that he who had covered so many big events of world importance in the past twenty years should be abruptly torn away in the midst of the greatest event of them all, while the story is still unfinished and its outcome undetermined. If there is a compensating thought, it lies in the reflection that he had a life of almost unparalleled fulness, crowded to the brim, up to the last moment, with those experiences and achievements which ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... rock, and security the horses to the trees, we united our strength, and launched our unfinished canoe into the water. The wood of which she was composed was so light that she floated high; but to give her greater buoyancy, we secured a quantity of dry rushes round the gunnel; and we found that when our stores ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... instrument. Her songs were too wild for accompaniment—interminable stanzas of unequal length, with a refrain at the end of each that rose through a thousand emotions to a crash of ecstasy, and then died away to dreaminess, coming to an end on an unfinished rising scale. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... able to survey four thousand bodies piled in the narrow compass of the breach of Badajos, but his resolution was sustained by the knowledge that the military end for which they fell had been accomplished. Had his task been unfinished it is doubtful whether even his steadfast soul would not have flinched from its completion. Thorneycroft saw the frightful havoc of one day, and he shrank from the thought of such another. 'Better six battalions safely down the hill than a mop up in the morning,' said he, and he gave the word ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the thing up, Petrie! Either I am growing too old to cope with such an adversary as Fu-Manchu, or else my intellect has become dull. I cannot seem to think clearly or consistently. For the Doctor, this crime, this removal of Slattin, is clumsy—unfinished. There are two explanations. Either he, too, is losing his old cunning, or he has ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... broad surface is secured to which the others may be made true. By planing the ends before the width is planed, the danger of splitting off fragments can be avoided by chiseling the corner of the unfinished edges, C, a, and D, b, Fig. 103, into a buttress. By planing the ends and the width before the thickness is planed, a dressed face is secured all around for gaging the thickness. In following ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... Vikram, continue for yourself and conclude this lecture, which I leave unfinished on account ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... son the same fidelity and attachment which they had always professed to himself during his lifetime, and which had been cemented by so many mutual good offices. He expressed his indifference on the approach of death; and though he regretted that he must leave unfinished a work so happily begun, he declared himself confident that the final acquisition of France would be the effect of their prudence and valor. He left the regency of that kingdom to his elder brother, the duke of Bedford; that of England to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... at La Brede with its thousands of soberly-clad volumes, standing as he left them on its shelves, annotated by his own hand; the manuscripts still unfinished of the 'Lettres Persanes; the grave silent cabinet, with his chair beside his study-table, as if he had quitted it a moment before you came—all these are eloquent, indeed, of the great thinker whose 'Esprit des Lois,' too rich in ripe wisdom to be heeded by the headlong and haphazard political ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... on the low steps of the church, in charge of the children. In one hand she held an unfinished wreath, and she was binding the dark, shining leaves with the other. A swarm of snowflakes, scarce more than glittering crystals, danced merrily about her head and flecked her black fur on one shoulder. As David, not very mindful just then of whither he was going, stepped forward across the ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... on him and all France if for any cause he leave the holy work unfinished!" cried Richard, when the messenger of Philip had spoken. But finally he was persuaded to give a reluctant ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... the admired cockney art of carpet gardening and a sandpit, imported from the seaside for the delight of the children, but speedily deserted on its becoming a natural vermin preserve for all the petty fauna of Kingsland, Hackney and Hoxton. A bandstand, an unfinished forum for religious, anti-religious and political orators, cricket pitches, a gymnasium, and an old fashioned stone kiosk are among its attractions. Wherever the prospect is bounded by trees or rising green grounds, it is a pleasant place. Where the ground stretches far ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... much heat and sunshine, and then I would lie for hours in the sun and recall the sunny days I had spent in Andalusia, and my thoughts were continually reverting to Spain, and at last I remembered that 'The Bible in Spain' was still unfinished; whereupon I arose and said: This loitering profiteth nothing,—and I hastened to my summer-house by the side of the lake, and there I thought and wrote, and every day I repaired to the same place, and thought and wrote until I had ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... showed me an unfinished Saint-Francis, which indeed could very well remain unfinished for ever without any loss to religion or to art. Next he showed me some old paintings of a better style, but apparently restored after ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... the knowledge that those who are dearest to us and to whom we are dearest, are profoundly unconscious of us, in an impassive state, anticipative of that mysterious condition to which we are all tending—the stopped life, the broken threads of yesterday, the deserted seat, the closed book, the unfinished but abandoned occupation, all are images of Death. The tranquillity of the hour is the tranquillity of Death. The color and the chill have the same association. Even a certain air that familiar household objects take upon them when they first emerge from the shadows of the night ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... together to help hide thee from Christ. Thou art an organizer of Sin—a disciple of Satan"—he was speaking not loud or threateningly, but with a force before which the other shrank visibly—"I cannot say I thank thee for the invitation on thy tongue unfinished, but I am better of not hearing it. Get ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Ladysmith could have held out for another month, but the garrison had, after our failure at Spion Kop, given up all hope of our relieving them. Poor chaps! they have had an awful time of it. We learn that the Boers had left a huge unfinished dam of sandbags across the Klip River so as to flood out our shelter near the banks of the town; another week would have seen this really marvellous work completed; but luckily, as it was, our friends had to decamp ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... out of my extry overhalls while he got grub together, to start south through one hundred miles of the ruggedest and barrenest country that was ever left unfinished. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... came out on a sandy shore, where five or six turtles were apparently asleep. In spite of all our exertions, the creatures reached the stream. L'Encuerado discovered two little heaps of sand, one of which was still unfinished, and contained twenty eggs about as big as chestnuts, and covered with a whitish skin. A little farther on, Lucien caught a small red turtle, the size of a crown-piece. On hearing from l'Encuerado ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... yesterday I should have thought me blest To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak Of middle life and look adown the bleak And unfamiliar foreslope to the West, Where solemn shadows all the land invest And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest. Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame To stay the shadow on the dial's face At manhood's noonmark! Now, in God His name I chide aloud the little interspace Disparting me from Certitude, and fain Would know the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... far as it extends, by a charitable Canon, and left unfinished through lack of money, the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours is a vast pile, four storeys high, and consequently far too lofty, since it is difficult to carry the sufferers to the topmost wards. As a rule the building is occupied by a hundred infirm and aged paupers; but ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... at last I kiss your perfect face, Perfecting now our unfinished, first embrace. Your young hushed look that then saw God ablaze In every bush, is given you back, and we Are met at length to finish our rest of days ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... referred to it as the "stub-tailed church," on account of its abbreviated spire; also, later, with a knowledge of its prosperous membership, as the "Church of the Holy Speculators." He was at an evening reception in the home of one of its members when he noticed a photograph of the unfinished building framed and hanging ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... revolt. For nothing was further from his wishes than to be under the necessity of engaging in another war at his departure; lest, when he was drawing his army out of the country, any war should be left unfinished, which the Gauls would cheerfully undertake, when there was no immediate danger. Therefore, by treating the states with respect, making rich presents to the leading men, imposing no new burdens, and making the terms of their ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... Tabriz six days in advance of his associates, to prepare for their coming. But so tardy had been the carpenters, that Mr. Perkins and the ladies found things in a very sorry condition. It was late in November, and after facing a driving rain all day, they had to content themselves with unfinished and unfurnished rooms; and as the muleteers did not arrive with their baggage, they had neither bedding, nor a change of clothing. But they had a blazing fire, and provisions from the market, with a sharpened appetite, and slept comfortably on piles of shavings, covered ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... we would fain believe it the reanimated spirit of a race that flourished in former ages, with those hideous monsters whose bones alone remain to tell the history of their existence." It is quite true that in the cultivated Mamillarias there is nothing unsightly, or rough, or unfinished. Without foliage, their stems globose, or short cylinders, or arranged in little cushion-like tufts, and enveloped in silky spines, like tiny red stars, always looking the same, except when in flower, and never looking in the least like ordinary plants. Characters such as these ought to find many ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... subsidiary essays, upon the various arrangements for insuring cross-fertilization in flowers, for the climbing of plants, and the like. These, as we have heard, may before long be reprinted in a volume, and supplemented by some long-pending but still unfinished investigations upon the action of Dionaea and Drosera—a capital subject for ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... unconscious, or unregardful, of the chill thick mist which enveloped everything and fell with steady heavy fall upon the bright hair of one and the smooth cap of the other. They had not spoken to each other all that while, unless an unfinished word or two of Mrs. Derrick's reached ears that did not heed them. It was Faith herself who first moved, perhaps reminded by the increasing dullness that her mother was feeling it too. She took her hand from the gate, and passing the other round Mrs. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... antiquarian, and he was acquainted with nearly all the ancient and modern languages. In 1820 he published five cantos of a poem on "The Destruction of the Primitive World," which, though it remains unfinished, is a superb monument of genius and one of the literary glories of Holland. Bilderdyk excelled in every species of poetry, tragedy only excepted, and his published works fill more ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... striving to forget herself, she glanced furtively at the childish face of the distorted little body, wondering what impression the shifting dawn made on the unfinished soul that was looking out so intently through the brown eyes. What artist sense had she,—what could she know—the ignorant huckster—of the eternal laws of beauty or grandeur? Nothing. Yet something ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... trying to hide under the solicitous words something real, inward, prickling and inconvenient. Soloviev, with a puerile delight, with the most sweeping of gestures, hitting the table with his fist. Nijeradze, with a slight doubtfulness and with unfinished phrases, as though he knew that which must be said, but concealed it. The queer fate of the girl, however, had seemingly engrossed, interested them all; and each one, in expressing his opinion, for some reason inevitably ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Apelles perfected the head and bust of his Venus with the most elaborate art, but left the rest of her body in the rough, so certain persons only took pains with my head, and left the rest of my body unfinished and unworked. Yet in this matter I have falsified the expectation, not only of the jealous, but also of the downright hostile, who formerly conceived a wrong opinion from the case of Quintus Metellus, son of Lucius—the most energetic and gallant man in the world, and in my opinion ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... gay Indian blanket gently over her mother's shoulders, as if afraid she would be cold. Then she slipped a needle and some beads and buckskin, to complete an unfinished moccasin, underneath the blanket. Her mother was going on a long journey, and would want occupation. There were no tears in Susie's eyes when she replaced the bottles and the skinning knife with the discolored blade behind ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... stage, and debase as he exalted. For instance, you take the uncompleted books of living authors, fresh from their hands, wet from the press, cut, hack, and carve them to the powers and capacities of your actors, and the capability of your theatres, finish unfinished works, hastily and crudely vamp up ideas not yet worked out by their original projector, but which have doubtless cost him many thoughtful days and sleepless nights; by a comparison of incidents and dialogue, down to the very last word he may have written a fortnight before, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... board—sometimes both above and below at the same time. These knives leave the surfaces filled with little ridges and hollows across the grain. These hollows, though they are hardly visible to the eye on the unfinished surface, show up as ugly streaks upon the surface after it has had a finish ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 3 • H. H. Windsor
... numbers. I had a little difficulty in finding every instalment, but I succeeded at last. You girls will enjoy reading it. I am afraid—" Aunt Abigail glanced uneasily at the rosy west, and left the sentence unfinished. "I hope," she said instead, "that you didn't wait ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... to the last day of her life. She said in her last hours that she had come back here to resume her work, and could not leave it thus unfinished. No marble marks the resting-place of this truly wonderful woman, but her memory is certainly held precious in the hearts of her throngs of pupils, in the hearts of the Colored people of this district, and of all who took knowledge of her life, and who reverenced the cause ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... legacy of the Legonia Fish Cannery as a trust. In the atmosphere of this room this feeling was always enhanced, the trust more sacred. Here Richard Gregory had worked, planned, worried. Every detail of the room spoke eloquently from father to son. Here was begun an unfinished work. Richard Gregory had believed in it; had ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... fell at once into place, fitting together like the pieces of a puzzle, an unfinished puzzle, nevertheless. The largest pieces were still scattered haphazard on the board, and there seemed extremely little prospect of fitting them into the rest. How had Pia ever met the man? What was he doing at Chorley Old Hall? And ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... man, of about fifty; his complexion was muddy and indefinite; his small whiskers, of a grayish red, were trimmed and pruned as accurately as a box border-edging, and the partial absence of eyebrows and eyelashes gave his face a sort of unfinished look. The expression natural to it was, I think, a low, vicious cunning; but his features and little green eyes were so rigidly disciplined that, as a rule, neither had any characteristic save utter vacuity. In his own line he was ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... the story of the Tower of Babal was borrowed by the Jehovist author of this part of Genesis from the tradition of the famous unfinished Temple of Belus, one of the wonders of antiquity. "Birs Nimroud" is thus described ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... horned, toothed, and serrated horrors. These amorphous creatures glided about in the seas, and vast sea-worms, or centipedal asps, the parents of modern krakens and sea-serpents, doubtless, accompanied them. There stood that unfinished world reeking with charcoal fumes, its soft, fungous, cryptogamic vegetation efflorescing with fierce luxuriance in that ghastly carbonic atmosphere. Rudimental palms and pines of mushroom growth stood there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... music room, where the print of Beethoven had hung before, and it gave her the acutest gratification. It represented her sitting, with eyes cast down at her piano, and was indeed much on the same scheme as the yet unfinished one of Olga, which had been postponed in its favour, but there was no time for Georgie to think out another position, and his hand was in with regard to the perspective of pianos. So there it hung ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... distinctly in favor of consistently pursuing the policy we have inaugurated of building up a thorough and efficient Navy, I can not refrain from the suggestion that the Congress should carefully take into account the number of unfinished vessels on our hands and the depleted condition of our Treasury in considering the propriety of an appropriation at this time ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... inches by 6-1/2 inches, and is entirely lacework, and apparently has been intended for part of a sampler. The worker perhaps changed her mind and considered rightfully that she had accomplished her chef d'oeuvre, or as so often explains these unfinished specimens, the Reaper gathered the flower, and only this dainty piece of stitching was left to perpetuate the memory ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... stark legs sticking out across the road. The gray was shot through and through in three places. The right fore hoof of the roan had been cut smack off, as smoothly as though done with an ax; and the stiffened leg had a curiously unfinished look about it, suggesting a natural malformation. Dead only a few hours, their carcasses already had begun to swell. The skin on their bellies was ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... but for the life of him he could not take any interest in any such line of research. He hated the gases, ashes, soot, smoke, and dirt generally. Huge rough castings of steel and iron seemed gross and ugly to him, and the completed product seemed coarse and unfinished. The only improvements he could think of were improvements in beauty of line, in refinement of the design, in added ornamentation, and other enhancements of the physical appearance of the product. In these he took some interest, but he had the good sense to know that ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... 1879,[12-3] to the effect that "it is free from grave errors of fact which disfigure the latter [the Flat Island Book saga]." We are almost forced to the conclusion that a hand less cunning than Vigfusson's has had to do with the unfinished section ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... time, a prophecy. He wished nothing else than that the people of God might attain to such a degree as to realize the idea of a people of God; and this must come to pass at some future time, because the omnipotent and faithful God could not leave His work unfinished. But Moses himself immediately subjoins the prophecy to the wish, as a clear proof, that behind the wish the prophecy is concealed: "Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets! for the Lord will give His Spirit upon them," etc.; which is equivalent to: "At some ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... resisted the curiosity to know what that ballad was: so my worthy friend has done me a mischief, which I dare say he never intended; and reduced me to the unfortunate alternative of leaving your curiosity ungratified, or else disgusting you with foolish verses, the unfinished production of a random moment, and never meant to have met your ear. I have heard or read somewhere of a gentleman who had some genius, much eccentricity, and very considerable dexterity with his pencil. In the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Winifred remembered her unfinished book, and thought to get it as she stepped from the elevator. She knocked lightly at Mrs. Latimer's door. She heard a faint rustle inside, then all was still. Again she gave a soft, playful battering of open palms on the panels; ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... his religious tongue. During his secular life, which continued up to the time of advanced age, he had never learnt any songs. And, therefore, sometimes at a feast, when for merriment sake it was agreed that all should sing in turn, he, when he saw that the harp was nearing him, would rise from his unfinished supper and go quietly away to ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... was yet a Territory, and her one-roomed house, with a half-story above, was yet unfinished, and while the Indian reservation, yet inhabited by the Delawares, was less than two miles distant, and no Methodist preaching had yet been established in Brookville, my mother opened her doors to the transient ...
— The Heroic Women of Early Indiana Methodism: An Address Delivered Before the Indiana Methodist Historical Society • Thomas Aiken Goodwin
... carriage got between them and before Tom could clear himself of the carriage Sobber was a good distance away. He turned to the eastward, down a side street where a large building was in the course of erection. He looked back and then skipped into the unfinished building. ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... where either the will has entirely disappeared, or else it was left unfinished, and so we have a row of these standing stones, as seen in this illustration. This has been called the American Stonehenge name is inappropriate, because we have no reason to suppose the plans of the builders of the two structures ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... folly in listening to the fairy, and accepting her delusive gift. What had he got by it hitherto? Nothing but his mother's regrets and the ridicule of his companions. He threw himself on his bed. It grew dark; he could no longer be vexed with the sight of his unfinished angel; and presently he fell asleep and forgot ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... two years. It was thought that a single session was too short a term for men in general to acquire the knowledge and experience necessary to a right performance of the responsible duties of a representative. Besides, measures are often left unfinished at the close of a session; and those who have once examined their merits and demerits, can dispose of them more ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... learnt the paternal art,—how well will appear from a single fact. About this time, his father's office was destroyed by fire, and with it the unfinished printing of the Legislative Journals and Acts of the year. Time did not allow waiting for new material from Philadelphia. Just in this strait, he that had of old been so inauspicious, Dick Davison, came once more into play,—but, this time, not as a marplot. He, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... thoughts began to turn to his unfinished rondo; in his leisure moments, rhymes suitable and unsuitable, possible and impossible, were perpetually jingling in his imagination. He labored under the conviction that he had a work of genius to complete. A poet he had left the earth, and a ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... moment the man gave way to useless regret and foreboding, then he gathered himself together, his brows cleared, and he returned to his unfinished meal. At least they should not have the satisfaction of knowing how sorely they had hit him. As he ate it occurred to him that by dragging the table along the floor he could bring the key within ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the unfinished poem, "Christabel," was written in 1797, the second part which, however, left the story apparently as incomplete as before, in 1808. The two parts were first published in 1816. The poem is a picture of white innocence, purity, and truth, pursued and ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... quickly at Laodice's sleeve and shook his head at her in an admonitory manner. He had laid down his bread unfinished. But the shepherd looked at ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... me; when the fifteen-franc has not eaten his fowl, or the ten-franc has left his dish unfinished, I send it to the five-franc prisoner; it is a feast for the poor devil, and one must be ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... unfinished prayer he finished not, But, kneeling, once more kissed the marble feet, And, while his heart with many thoughts waxed hot, He clad himself with fresh attire and meet For that bright service, and with blossoms sweet Entwined with tender leaves ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... thoughtfully. "I realized it some time ago—oh, a year ago! I feel just as you might feel, Rich, if you had left some critical operation unfinished, or done in a wrong way, and then gone back to do it over. I feel as if, in going back to first principles, and doing what I could for my own people, I had 'trued' a part of my life, if you can understand ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... was founded on their report. It was conclusive as to the articles on which satisfactory information had been then obtained, and reserved, for future consideration, certain others, needing further inquiry. It is proposed now to review those unfinished articles, that they may also be comprehended in the Arret, and the regulations on this branch of commerce, be ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... still unfinished, but not for worlds would Constans have remained alone in that echoing, wind-swept cavern, surrounded by these monstrous shapes of metal. Lever and piston, wheel and shaft, the familiar outlines had disappeared, and in their stead a vast, indefinable bulk ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... higher. It was then that the cathedral of Rouen was built, with its elegant lightness,—a marvel to modern travellers. Soon after, the cathedral of Cologne appears, more grand than either,—but left unfinished,—with its central aisle forty-four feet in width, rising one hundred and forty feet into the air, with its colossal towers, intended to support the slender openwork spires, five hundred and twenty feet in height. The whole church is five hundred and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... morning-room of my place in the country that I wouldn't take a thousand pounds for! I go about using my eyes and pick 'em up cheap. Cheapest picture I ever bought was a Prout—thirty-two by twenty; got it for two pound ten! Unfinished, of course, but it only wanted the colour being brought up to the edge. I did that. Took me half a day, and now—well, any dealer would give me hundreds for it! But I shall leave it to the nation, out ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... time, Clayt," drawled Mounchersey, carelessly; "Mr. Cosine told me yesterday that 'Boss' has called on Clarian about his cutting so many prayers and recites, and that, after seeing the unfinished picture, he gave the youngster carte blanche as to time, till it is completed;—so it must be something worth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... with them. And my gaze resting upon her fair hair, her blue eyes, the lines of her neck, and overlooking the features which might have reminded me of the faces of other women, I cried out within myself, as I admired this deliberately unfinished sketch: "How lovely she is! What true nobility! it is indeed a proud Guermantes, the descendant of Genevieve de Brabant, that I have before me!" And the care which I took to focus all my attention upon her face succeeded in isolating it so completely that to-day, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... real characters. Remember, my dear Rinaldo, the maxim of the incomparable philosopher of Geneva: "Man is not naturally amiable." If the human character shews less pleasing and attractive in the obscurity of retreat, and among the unfinished personages of a college, believe me, the natives of a court are not a whit more disinterested, or have more of the reality of friendship. The true difference is, that the one wears a disguise, and the other appear ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... transformed into apes and phantoms; those who had proposed to assault the heavens with their arms, God set against each other so that they fell in the combat; and those who had resolved to carry on a combat with God in heaven were scattered broadcast over the earth. As for the unfinished tower, a part sank into the earth, and another part was consumed by fire; only one-third of it remained standing.[88] The place of the tower has never lost its peculiar quality. Whoever passes ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... Sherwood's party. The steam was merrily hissing from the escape-pipe; Ethan was busy, as he always was, in rubbing down the polished parts of the engine, and Lawry was walking up and down the forward deck. Quite a collection of people had assembled on the unfinished wharf and the shore to witness the departure of the steamer. As Captain Lawry paced the deck, there was a slight commotion in the crowd, and three persons passed through, making their way to the deck. One of them was the sheriff who had arrested the ferryman ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... that contain writing. Perhaps, therefore, those three continuous pages indicate a section in the representation; perhaps it was intended to fill them later on; in a similar way also page three has been left unfinished, because the lower half was only ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... art cannot hope to bestow a crown of laurels among living masters; it must be content with a view of active tendencies. The greatest classic has often come into the world amid least expectation. A critic in the year 1850 must need have omitted the Unfinished Symphony, which was then buried in a ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... of his life, and the plan according to which it was to be managed had been prepared and was ready for adoption. A leading feature of that plan was that it was to be carried out by Executive authority. * * * The first business, transacted in the Cabinet after I became President was this unfinished business of my predecessor. A plan or scheme of reconstruction had been prepared for Mr. Lincoln by Mr. Stanton. It was approved, and at the earliest moment practicable was applied, in the form of a proclamation, to the State of North ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... an ungrateful little wretch. Here has Jaffery sacrificed his work for three months and devoted himself to pulling together Adrian's unfinished manuscript and making a great success of it, and you treat him as if he were ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... who went to seek one filthier than she was? How could he ever find one filthier?' inquired Rashid, reverting to Suleyman's unfinished story of the foolish woman and her husband and the hapless cow, when we lay down to sleep that evening in the village guest-room. I also asked to hear the rest of that instructive tale. Suleyman, sufficiently besought, raised himself upon an elbow ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall |
