"Unprepared" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the unprepared have given rise to the rumor that only the scripts of favored writers are read in editorial offices. The old trick of placing small pieces of paper between the sheets, in order to prove whether or not the ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... over it, he felt condemned at having passed his time in such a manner. "My mother was in bed," says he. "It seemed to me, all of a sudden, my blood rushed to my head, my heart palpitated, in a few minutes I turned blind, an awful impression rested on my mind that death had come to me and I was unprepared to die. I fell on my knees and began to ask God to have mercy on me. My mother sprang from her bed, and was soon on her knees by my side, praying for me, and exhorting me to look to Christ for mercy, and then and there I promised the Lord if he would spare me I would seek and serve Him, and I ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Christmas morning, at breakfast, the packages beside the various plates were inspected, there were bright faces and loving smiles, and in one case almost a rain of tears, in view of the numerous and lovely mementoes for which the recipient was wholly unprepared. But it was only a "sunshower," and when Mr. Minturn, with a quizzical look, told her to "take care, for she was losing some of her pearls," she laughingly wiped the glittering drops away ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the piano, which was open, and took down a piece of music—it was Kucken's "Maid of Judah." Now, hitherto, George Brand had only heard her murmur a low, harmonious second to one or other of the airs she had been playing; and he was quite unprepared for the passion and fervor which her rich, deep, resonant, contralto voice threw into this wail of indignation and despair. This was the voice of a woman, not of a girl; and it was with the proud passion of a woman that she seemed to ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... ordering them to retire, they found themselves opposed by the now rapidly gathering Boer levies, were repulsed at Krugersdorp, and ultimately forced to surrender on the forenoon of January 1, 1896, at a place called Doornkop. The Johannesburg Uitlanders, who, though unprepared for any such sudden movement, had risen in sympathy at the news of the inroad, laid down their arms ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... roused Robert, and he flew tooth and nail at the stepfather. Hugh Price, unprepared for this violent attack, shook the lad off, held him at arm's length for ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... unprepared," he said in his notes of it. "I didn't sit down—I fell down. I didn't have my tomahawk, and I didn't know what would happen. But he was, composed, and pretty soon I got composed and we had a good, friendly time. If he had ever heard of that sketch of mine he did not manifest it in any way, and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Majesty, I mean—but I am so excited, and—and I don't quite do what I intend to do or say just what I mean. I am quite all right now. You see, that gardener—he isn't really a gardener." She watched Caroline narrowly, quite unprepared for the sudden ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... my rounds," Charlie said, "and see that the sentries are on the alert. If the men were not so tired, I should have said that the best plan would have been to make a dash straight at the enemy's camp. It would take them quite unprepared, even if they know, as I daresay they do, that we are close at hand; and they would lose all the advantage ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... see what traps there were? I was driven the way I went. We started unprepared, and we're jolly ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... without question the ideas on this subject that had been entertained by all Protestants from the days of Luther and Calvin. When Theodore Parker and the transcendentalists began to question the miraculous foundations of Christianity, many Unitarians were quite unprepared to accept their theories. They believed that the miracles of the New Testament afford the only evidence for the truthfulness of Christianity. This issue was distinctly stated in the twenty-eighth annual ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... threw open the latticed window, and in an instant after stood on the very verge of the parapet outside, with not the slightest screen between her and the tremendous depth below. Unprepared for such a desperate effort, Bois-Guilbert had time neither to intercept nor to stop her. As he offered to advance, she exclaimed, "Remain where thou art, proud Templar, or at thy choice advance! One foot nearer, and I ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... convulsion of 1914. While the standing armies of Europe were a constant reminder of possible war, and the frequent diplomatic tension between the Great Powers cast repeated war shadows over the financial markets, the American public, at least, was entirely unprepared for a world conflagration. Up to the final moment of the launching of ultimata between the European governments no one thought it possible that all our boasted bonds of civilization were to burst over night and plunge us back into mediaeval ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... condition of their enjoyment, the calamitous consequences to the higher classes, as seen in the recent history of Europe, may be regarded as a righteous judgment of heaven upon them, for having suffered it to be possible for these new ideas of liberty and rights to come to the people in a state so unprepared. What were all their commanding authorities of government, their splendid ecclesiastical establishments, their great personal wealth and influence,—all their lofty powers and distinctions which even their basest sycophants, sacerdotal or poetical, told ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... it is meant to apply to those who make their living solely and habitually by prostitution. These figures, however, only confuse. We shall have to deal with hundreds every month, whatever estimate we take. How utterly unprepared society is for any such systematic reformation may be seen from the fact that even now at our Homes we are unable to take in all the girls who apply. They cannot escape, even if they would, for want of funds whereby to provide them ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... little band so as to approach the Indian village unperceived. At a given signal they raised the war-whoop and impetuously charged into the cluster of wigwams. As the terrified warriors rushed out of the huts, all unprepared for battle, these unerring marksmen laid them low. One-third of the warriors were slain. The rest fled in dismay. The village was captured with the women and the children. The victorious Carson then demanded the immediate surrender of the ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... now black in the face with fury and vexation, gave orders for to shoot me, and cast me into the ditch hard by. The men raised their pieces, and pointed at me, waiting for the word to fire; and I, being quite overcome by the hurry of these events, and quite unprepared to die yet, could only think all upside down about Lorna, and my mother, and wonder what each would say to it. I spread my hands before my eyes, not being so brave as some men; and hoping, in some foolish way, to cover my heart with my elbows. I heard the breath of all around, as if my skull were ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... and holding men in slavery, as inconsistent with the Christian religion." When his memorial came before the Yearly Meeting for action, it confessed itself "unprepared to act," and voted it "not proper then to give a positive judgment in the case." In 1696 the Yearly Meeting pronounced against the further importation of slaves, and adopted measures looking toward their moral ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... tired of waiting for the advent of his own party to power, changed his political opinions—that is to say "jumped Jim Crow,"—and was made Attorney General by the Duke of Wellington. Next him is Lord Stanley, who commenced life as a Whig and was a member of Lord Grey's Reform administration, but unprepared to go the lengths which his party seemed disposed to take, he too "jumped Jim Crow," deserted them, and joined the ranks of the Opposition. Lord Stanley's vis-a-vis is Sir James Graham; in his early days he had distinguished himself by ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the two great Roman armies, each in itself equal in numbers to that of Hannibal, remained at a great distance from the valley of the Po, the Romans were quite unprepared for an attack in that quarter. No doubt a Roman army was there, in consequence of an insurrection that had broken out among the Celts even before the arrival of the Carthaginian army. The founding of the two Roman strongholds of Placentia and Cremona, each of which received 6000 colonists, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... four men watched the two ships, waiting for any hostile movement. There was a long, tense moment, then something happened for which three of them were totally unprepared. ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... He was all unprepared for the effect of his words. Indeed, he was fain to hold hard to the gunwales. For the negro, with a sudden galvanic start, let slip the paddle from his hand, recovering it only by a mighty lunge in a mechanical impulse of self-preservation. The dug-out, the most tricksy craft afloat, rocked ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... by this record? Is it not that we should look with charity and tolerance upon the schemes and speculations of the political and social theorists of our day; that, if unprepared to venture upon new experiments and radical changes, we should at least consider that what was folly to our ancestors is our wisdom, and that another generation may successfully put in practice the very theories which now seem to us absurd and impossible? Many of the evils of society ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... host of prewar studies by the General Staff, the Army War College, and other military agencies, the Army was unprepared during World War II to deal with and make the most efficient use of the large numbers of Negroes furnished by Selective Service. Policies for training and employing black troops had developed in response to specific problems rather than in accordance with a well thought out and comprehensive ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... She was so wholly unprepared for the meeting that she never afterwards was able to understand why she did not lose her presence of mind. It is on such occasions that the metal we are made of is put to ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... that they had been met and attacked with great fury by Holkerstein, or a party acting under one of his lieutenants. Their own march had been so warily conducted after nightfall, that this attack did not find them unprepared. A barrier of coaches and wagons had been speedily formed in such an arrangement as to cripple the enemy's movements, and to neutralize great part of his superiority in the quality of his horses. The engagement, however, had been severe; and the enemy's attack, though many times baffled, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... ground, defended the treaty as the best attainable, and held up as the alternative a war, for which the refusal of the Republicans to support the military establishment and build up a navy left the country unprepared. In justice to Jay, his significant words to Randolph, while doubtful of success in his negotiation, should be remembered: "Let us hope for the best and prepare for the worst." To the red flag which ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... long loved your daughter, and am not totally unprepared to believe that she may, in some slight measure, reciprocate my affections. I humbly solicit her hand ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... had heard of the slater's death in Tambach; but he did not know that rumor had confused the names of the two places, and that it was possible for anybody to believe that the accident had occurred to him. Absolutely unprepared for that which was to happen in the next moment, he came through the shed. He had meant to go straight to his father in his room, when, seeing Christiane fall fainting to the ground, he hastened toward her. Now he held her in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... to support you it may be all very well, and I shall never stand it without." Then, as Ermine subsided, unprepared with a reply, "Well, Ailie, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... every evidence of congestion. The city was unprepared for the unprecedented increase in population necessitated by the demands of its factories for men to produce munitions of war. The workingmen, however, were soon better provided for than in some other cities. The Rockford Malleable Iron Company conducted two houses for the accommodation of its ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... is capable of using is, of course, the true measure of strength. If, in 1861, either side could have struck swiftly and with all its force, the story of the war would have been different. The question of relative strength was in reality a question of munitions. Both powers were glaringly unprepared. Both had instant need of great supplies of arms and ammunition, and both turned to European manufacturers for aid. Those Americans who, in a later war, wished to make illegal the neutral trade in munitions forgot that the international ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... the High Commissioner and to the Premier of Cape Colony informing them that owing to the starting of Dr. Jameson with an armed force into the Transvaal Johannesburg had been placed in a position of extreme peril which they were utterly unprepared to guard against, and urging the High Commissioner to proceed immediately to Johannesburg in order to settle matters and ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... Phoebus and Leander felt like pain, The one a god, the other but a man; One snare caught Juno and the Carthage dame (Her husband's death prepared her funeral flame— 'Twas not a cause that Virgil maketh one); I need not grieve, that unprepared, alone, Unarm'd, and young, I did receive a wound, Or that my enemy no hurt hath found By Love; or that she clothed him in my sight, And took his wings, and marr'd his winding flight; No angry lions send more hideous noise From their beat breasts, nor clashing ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... liberty to spare, he yearned for death. When the tyrant asked him what style of death he wanted, he said that he would rather die of extreme old age. He was willing to wait, he said. He didn't want to go unprepared, and he thought it would take him eighty or ninety years more to prepare, so that when he was ushered into another world he wouldn't ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... marks the beginning; and a note written in the night of Monday the 9th of February, "tired to death and quite worn out," to say that he had just resigned his editorial functions, describes the end. I had not been unprepared. A week before (Friday 30th of January) he had written: "I want a long talk with you. I was obliged to come down here in a hurry to give out a travelling letter I meant to have given out last night, and could not call upon you. Will ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Sam was not unprepared for this display. His researches in the art of life-saving had taught him that your drowning man frequently struggles against his best interests. In which case, cruel to be kind, one simply stunned the blighter. He decided to stun ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... thrust disputed points on minds unprepared for them. This cost them their lives, and the world's temporary esteem; but the prophecies were fulfilled, and their motives were rewarded by [10] growth and more spiritual understanding, which dawns by degrees on mortals. The spiritual Christ was infal- lible; ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... rearing his head in a strange manner. The idea flashed on me that he would certainly turn, and then—what could happen? More horses were advancing, and two beasts could not possibly pass each other on that narrow ledge! But I was totally unprepared for the ghastly thing that actually did happen. The miserable horse had been seized with the awful mountain-madness that sometimes overtakes men on stupendous heights,—the madness of suicide. With a frightful ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... headlong courage more with each mouthful that had torn me from a warm, dry home where I was appreciated, and had brought me first to the damp tree in the damp field, and when I had finished my lunch and dessert of cold pears, was going to drag me into the midst of a circle of unprepared and astonished cousins. Vast sheep loomed through the mist a few yards off. The sheep dog kept up a perpetual, irritating yap. In the fog I could hardly tell where I was, though I knew I must have played there a hundred times as a child. After the ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... immediately assembled on the shores of the lake of Ilmen, near the city of Novgorod, which commenced its march of three hundred miles, to the remote realms of Souzdal. Georges was unprepared to meet them. He fled, surrendering his country to be ravaged by the foe. His cities and villages were burned, and seven thousand of his subjects were carried captive to Kief. But Georges was not a man to bear such a calamity meekly. He speedily succeeded in forming an alliance with the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... difficulty do we find in excluding from the honours of unaffected warmth and elevation the madness prepense of pseudo-poesy, or the startling hysteric of weakness over-exerting itself, which bursts on the unprepared reader in sundry odes and apostrophes to abstract terms. Such are the Odes to Jealousy, to Hope, to Oblivion, and the like, in Dodsley's collection and the magazines of that day, which seldom fail to remind me of an ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... a tap at the door announced a visitor, and almost immediately Harman entered the parlor. It is scarcely necessary to say, that Mary was quite unprepared for his appearance, as indeed was her mother. The latter sat up on the sofa, but spoke not, for she scarcely knew in what terms to address him. Mary, though much moved previous to his entrance, now assumed the appearance of a coldness, which in her heart she did not feel. That her lover, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... over it, blotting out its movements. It roared past the Circle L bunkhouses, leaving behind it a number of Circle L cowboys who had been awakened by the thunderous noise. The Circle L men had plunged outside in various stages of undress—all bootless, unprepared, amazed, and profane. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... shouting, singing, making a great noise, knocking against chairs and tables, but taking, however, good care not to hurt himself seriously, but screaming loudly in the hope of alarming me. All this had no effect, but I perceived that though he was prepared for scolding or anger, he was quite unprepared ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... It had all come on so suddenly that poor Elspie was quite unprepared for it. She turned as if to fly, but Daniel put his arm round her ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... is cut up with many streams, generally narrow, deep, and difficult to cross except where bridged. The region is heavily timbered, and the roads narrow, and very bad after the least rain. Such an enemy was not, of course, unprepared with adequate fortifications at convenient intervals all the way back to Richmond, so that when driven from one fortified position they would always have another farther to the rear to fall ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... high good-humour, as he buttered Kirstie's scones, and she waited at table. A man who had no need either of love or of popularity, a keen reader of men and of events, there was perhaps only one truth for which he was quite unprepared: he would have been quite unprepared to learn that Kirstie hated him. He thought maid and master were well matched; hard, bandy, healthy, broad Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the pair of them. And the fact was that ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... begs to state that he has this morning seen Lord Stanley, and offered to him the post of Secretary of State for the Colonies.[87] Lord Stanley expressed himself as highly gratified personally by an offer which he said he was wholly unprepared to receive, and which was above his expectations and pretensions; but he said that as he owed to his father Lord Derby whatever position he may have gained in public life, he could not give an answer without first consulting Lord Derby. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... wife, Julia, Caesar's daughter, died. She had been a bond of union between the two men, and the hope of peace was sensibly lessened by her loss. Perhaps the first rupture would have come any how; when it did come it found Pompey quite unprepared for the conflict. He seemed indeed to be a match for his rival, but his strength collapsed almost at a touch. "I have but to stamp with my foot," he said on one occasion, "and soldiers will spring up;" yet when Caesar declared war by crossing the Rubicon, he fled without ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... mood that the screen door banged loudly behind the heels of Tudor, who strode into the room and paused before him. Sheldon was unprepared, though it was very apparent that ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... at that time, that that was its source. And I didn't detect it afterward in Melbourne, when I came on the stage for the first time, and the same question was dropped down upon me from the dizzy height of the gallery. It is always difficult to answer a sudden inquiry like that, when you have come unprepared and don't know what it means. I will remark here—if it is not an indecorum—that the welcome which an American lecturer gets from a British colonial audience is a thing which will move him to his deepest deeps, and veil his sight and break his voice. And from Winnipeg to Africa, experience will ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was one of great surprise—Henry Dornham was so different from what he had expected to find him; he had not thought that he would be fair like Madaline, but he was unprepared for the dark, swarthy, gypsy-like type of ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... at her left, unprepared and with his coffee cup in his hand. He put it down hastily and rose, and the small cup overturned in its saucer, sending a smudge of brown into ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the time it did not seem like vision; it was so natural; unstudied, unprepared, and ever there; spontaneous too and artless as a drop of water or a baby's toy. The natural is ever the unchanging. My God! I tell you, man, ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... The Germans were apparently unprepared for the attack which followed the explosion of the British mines, with the result that the British had to overcome little resistance, and had ample opportunity to prepare a defense from the bombardment that followed. The next morning, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... had strengthened the heart of Lannes, and now his own heart needed strengthening. How was it possible to stop the German army which had come so far and so fast that its Uhlans could already see Paris? The unprepared French had been defeated already, and the slow English, arriving to find France under the iron heel, must go back and defend ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... thoughtless, unprepared, and baseless were all the objections we had made, and how greatly the echo of the present was heard in them, the voice of which, in the province of culture, the old man would fain not have heard. Our objections, however, were not purely intellectual ones: our reasons for protesting against ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... that an embarkation from the ports of Holland, if undertaken instantly after the war had broken out, might have escaped our blockading squadrons, and have at least shown what a French army could have done on British ground, at a moment when the alarm was general, and the country in an unprepared state. But it is probable that Bonaparte himself was as much unprovided as England for the sudden breach of the treaty of Amiens—an event brought about more by the influence of passion than of policy; so that its consequences ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... remote corner of the Empire, his intention was to dethrone his brother, and place on his own brows the diadem of his great namesake. It was necessary for him therefore to assume the offensive. Only by a bold advance, and by taking his enemy to some extent unprepared, and so at a disadvantage, could he hope to succeed in his audacious project. It is not easy to see that he could have had any considerable party among the Persians, or any ground for expecting to be supported by any of the subject nations. His following must have been purely ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... surrender, the St. Louis newspapers printed his order organizing an army of five divisions. The document made a respectable show of force on paper, claiming an aggregate of nearly thirty-nine thousand. In reality, however, being scattered and totally unprepared for the field, it possessed no such effective strength. For a month longer extravagant newspaper reports stimulated the public with the hope of substantial results from Fremont's intended campaign. Before the end of that time, however, President Lincoln, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... say no more," groaned the old woman. "I know what the truth must be, and will try to bear it. I will get home as fast as I can, and put my few affairs in order, so that if I am carried off, I may not go unprepared." ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... heard of Nelson Randolph's illness, yet he was unprepared for the additional tidings that came to him when he was on ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... taken unprepared: Armentieres, Charleroi, Douai, and Tournay had but insufficient garrisons, and they fell almost without striking a blow. Whilst the army was busy with the siege of Courtray, Louis XIV. returned to Compiegne to fetch the queen. The whole court followed him to the camp. "All that you have read ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a little gasp of dismay. "That's too wholesale a word for me, Rosalind! The only experience of the kind I have had happened in India, and I was entirely unprepared, for, as a matter of fact, I cherished a profound aversion for the victim! I didn't dislike him afterwards, though! I was so grieved for the poor fellow's distress, so grateful to him for liking me so much, that I felt quite tenderly ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... us to find what chemicals were present. That mistakes were sometimes made by the Germans was evident when we found that the mask had not been treated with chemicals at all; some of the Huns at least had been unprepared for ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... was slowly but surely recovering, and his preservation from meeting sudden death unprepared was to her a source of unutterable thankfulness. Her own family appeared to regard her with even more tender affection than if no coldness had ever arisen between them; and their love was to her beyond price. Even Sir Gilbert's harsh, worldly character, was ...
— False Friends, and The Sailor's Resolve • Unknown
... army with growing desperation. He knew the inefficiency of his fleet, that it had left Spain unprepared because public opinion demanded immediate action, that its guns were lacking and its morale low, that if it stayed at anchor in the harbor it would be taken by the army, and that if it went to sea it would be annihilated by Sampson. His only chance was to rush out, scatter in flight, and trust ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... He had not been unprepared for something like this, but the pain he might have felt at another time was made easier by a subtle anodyne. He hardly seemed to feel the smart as a week before he might have done. In some strange way Winsome was helping him to bear it—or her prayers ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... to let her go. He laughed at her; then suddenly her face flamed with a passion he was unprepared for, and her eyes danced with strange lights. Few words were spoken, only a few ejaculatory phrases such as "How dare you?" "Let me go!" she said, as she strove to wrench her arms from his grasp. She caught up one of the glasses; but before she could throw it Mike seized her hand; ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... reasons I was wholly unprepared for the painful shock caused by reading the opening page in the March number of these articles. Preceding issues had treated of the rise of the Equal Suffrage movement in this country; while not wholly sympathetic, these were fair, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... for them. If not, a parley would have given the band time to act upon instructions already understood. But Cassim ben Halim, an old soldier, and Maieddine, whose soul was in this venture, were not the men to meet an emergency unprepared. They had calculated on a check, and were ready ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... century the "Americanized" Lutherans did not understand the Germans who came over in such overwhelming numbers, and were unprepared to shepherd them in Lutheran folds. The work had to be done by immigrant pastors who, on their part, did not understand the American life well enough to accomplish the best results. For the sake of the Lutherans who come to us ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... positions in towns and cities, as did most of those graduating from schools of education in universities and colleges. Therefore the great majority of the 87,500 new teachers needed annually for the rural schools must go to their work professionally unprepared. ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... while the wretched Charles, long ago half dead, continued to creep about between his bedroom and his chapel, was an event for which, notwithstanding the proverbial uncertainty of life, the minds of men were altogether unprepared. A peaceful solution of the great question now seemed impossible. France and Austria were left confronting each other. Within a month the whole Continent might be in arms. Pious men saw in this stroke, so sudden and so terrible, the plain signs of the divine displeasure. God had a controversy ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... we debated long as to whether our remaining here could do him service. We even discussed the possibility of raising a force, and attacking Lancaster Castle. We agreed, however, that this would be nothing short of madness. The country is wholly unprepared at present. The Whigs are on the alert, and such an attempt would cost the lives of most of those concerned in it. Besides, we are all sure that Sir Marmaduke would be the first to object to numbers of persons risking their lives in an attempt which, ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... consequence is obvious, the wife has recourse to cunning to undermine the habitual affection, which she is afraid openly to oppose; and neither tears nor caresses are spared till the spy is worked out of her home, and thrown on the world, unprepared for its difficulties; or sent, as a great effort of generosity, or from some regard to propriety, with a small stipend, and an uncultivated mind into ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... she continued, shocked fearfully herself. "I shall recover soon. It is the suddenness—I was unprepared. So it was when I awoke this morning—and it startled me, because I heard it was the first bad symptom that my poor mother showed. Now, I pray you, Stukely, to be calm. Perhaps I shall get well; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... side, and there were many to which he could not respond. He tells how many of the men were praying, how their cries of repentance seemed to him too often cries of cowardice; though who would not fear to enter the presence of God all unprepared and unforgiven? Well might many ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... he spoke. It was the smile or the praise of the song, or a cause too subtle to name, that changed her. She had already seemed an indifferent woman, a great artist, a careless Bohemienne in her speech; but for the next change he was unprepared: it was a pleading child with wistful eyes who seated herself beside him, not remotely through any self-consciousness, but near to him, where speech could ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Quite unprepared, at time approaching sunset, we reached and rounded a sharp curve, to see down and far away, and to be held mute in our tracks. Between a white-mantled mountain range on the left and the dark-striped lofty range on the right I could see far down into a gulf, a hazy void, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... eyes—and she was here to save, not to destroy! The crouching figure on whom she had inflicted a wound without having done the slightest good, was, after all, a big, imaginative child in a vast night, utterly unprepared by rearing and training, psychology or properly directed thought, to cope with this demon-carnival into which he had been projected. And why should not the shell's concussion have stunned ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... occurred to me question alter question that seemed of sufficient importance to prompt immediate inquiry, only to be forgotten as others came into my mind; until the presence of the increasing faint glow on my instrument found me unprepared with any single question of actual importance. Consequently I decided to allow my distant informant to continue with the account of Martian observations of Earth, as being at once the most instructive and surest way of ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... France: British and Russian contingents were to combine with the King of Sweden in Pomerania, and with the King of Naples in Southern Italy. At the head-quarters of the Allies an impression prevailed that Napoleon was unprepared for war. It was even believed that his character had lost something of its energy under the influence of an Imperial Court. Never was there a more fatal illusion. The forces of France had never been so overwhelming; the plans of Napoleon had never been ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of genius who completely broke the fetters of ancient polyphony. This was Claudio Monteverde, then in his thirty-ninth year, and chapel master to the Duke of Mantua. He was the first composer to use unprepared chords of the seventh, dominant and diminished, and to emphasize passionate situations with dissonances. He invented the tremolo and the pizzicato, and originated the vocal duet. His keen dramatic sense enabled him ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... had meanwhile landed in Torbay, and James had fled precipitately to France. Tyrconnel, who seems to have been unprepared for this event, hesitated at first, undecided what to do or how matters would eventually shape themselves. He even wrote to William, professing to be rather favourable than otherwise to his cause, a profession which the king, who was as ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... his final order; and, so fast and furious fell the shower of stones upon the surprised and unprepared hill boys, that their victorious columns halted, wavered, turned, ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... kitchen and opened the portmanteau my father had put up for me. Splints and bandages were there in abundance, enough to set half the arms in the island, but neither chloroform nor any thing in the shape of an opiate could I find. I might almost as well have come to Sark altogether unprepared for my case. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... depth of winter. The cold was severe, and the roads heavy with mire. But the Prussians pressed on. Resistance was impossible. The Austrian army was then neither numerous nor efficient. The small portion of that army which lay in Silesia was unprepared for hostilities. Glogau was blockaded; Breslau opened its gates; Ohlau was evacuated. A few scattered garrisons still held out; but the whole open country was subjugated: no enemy ventured to encounter the King in the field; and, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... blessings of time, and all the hopes of eternity. All this was not prepared long beforehand, for it seems that the dagger had only been shown to Burke on his way to the House as one that had been sent to Birmingham to be a pattern for a large order. Whether prepared or unprepared, the scene was one from which ...
— Burke • John Morley
... and which he and the Christian world are interested in not leaving to chance. That on this point he should have chosen to be prudent; that after his recent experience he should have preferred not to reopen a career of agitation among a people who have shown themselves so unprepared for parliamentary liberty, is what we do not know that we have either the right or the cause to ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... transferred from William FitzJohn and the villeins were not evicted or otherwise disposed of. The place was worse than a desert, for it contained possessors not dispossessed. The poor monks, few and unprepared, who came over at their own expense, probably expecting a roof and a welcome, found their mud flat was inhabited by indignant Somersetae, whose ways, manners, language, and food were unknown to them. The welcome still customarily given in ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... teacher to open windows, to adjust desks, to use the experience of individual children for the education of the class. If the rank and file of teachers have not hitherto been sufficiently observant of physiological and hygienic facts, if they are unprepared from their own lives to detect or to furnish illustrations for the child, this again does not mean that the child should be denied the illustrations, but that the teacher should either have instruction and experience to incite interest and to stimulate ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... his subject, "The Tragedy of the | |Unprepared," the Rev. Otis Colleman delivered a | |powerful attack in Grace Church Sunday against | |unpreparedness in one's personal life and in the | |home, the state, and the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... and that the new Army would be commanded by General Maunoury. I knew nothing then of the French Commander-in-Chief's ultimate plans, and I doubt if at that moment he had been able to formulate any decided line of action. At this particular time I think the unprepared condition of Paris loomed largely in his mind, and that his original intention with regard to the 6th Army was most probably to make further provision for the protection of ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... took fresh grip on the sharpened bone with her spare hand, and lunged with it desperately through the arrow-slit. With the hand that clutched mine she drew me towards her, so as to give the blows the surer chance, and so unprepared was I for such an attack, and with such fierce suddenness did she deliver it, that the first blow was near giving me my quietus. But I grappled with the poor frantic creature as gently as might be—the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... the other terminal where he wanted it, but there was also the chance that the Gods had set the thing up so that, when he stepped through, he would be standing in the Court of the Gods facing a tribunal for which he was totally unprepared. ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... approved of that, and looked meaningly round at old Cap'n Fuller, who was at that time taking more hard cider than we considered good for him. But when the final catastrophe came, we, having missed the logical sequence, were totally unprepared. Mr. Wilde, with a blackamoor fury irresistibly funny to one who has seen a city coal-man cursing another for not moving on, smothered his shrieking spouse in a pillow brought over for that purpose from the Blaisdells', ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... found Hannah unprepared with an answer, and after clearing her throat and getting rather red, she said confusedly that she had seen so little of Mr. Dallas, her intercourse with him had been so slight, that she really did not feel that she knew him well enough to give ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... found Nina quite unprepared. She had constructed no set speech; she had formulated no demand. For a second or so she stood tongue-tied—tongue-tied and helpless—unable to put her passionate appeal into words; then, all of a sudden, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... were hard on his temper. People were afraid to ask him how the war was going, when he opened the newspaper, for if it were bad woe betide the questioner. The reverses of the Allies were nearly breaking his big heart and he had to vent his grief and wrath on somebody. He railed at Britain for being unprepared, he stormed at the United States for their neutrality, and he denounced Canada for being so slow, and always ended up by declaring that Germany would win and wishing with all his heart that, instead of being sixty, he were Trooper's age ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... Unprepared for an attack, the National Guard at once broke and fled, throwing away their arms and abandoning their cannon. Among these was one taken from the Chateau de Richelieu. It had been given by Louis the Thirteenth to the cardinal. On the engraving, with which it was nearly ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... never have been a woman of strong logical faculties, but she had in some things a very surprising and awful astuteness. She seldom introduced any purpose directly, but bore all about it and then suddenly sprung it upon her unprepared antagonist. At other times she obscurely hinted a reason, and left a conclusion to be inferred; as when she warded off reproach for some delinquency by saying in a general way that she had lived with ladies who used to come scolding into the kitchen after they had taken their bitters. ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... country. His child's muscles and courage had done their duty beside those of far older men. They had taken their share in forcing the icy portals of a land unknown, and terror-ridden. He had endured the agony of the first great battle against the overwhelming legions of Nature. He had survived, all unprepared and without experience. It was a struggle such as none of those who came later were called upon to endure. For all that has been told of the sufferings of the Yukon rush they were incomparable with those which John Kars had been called upon to endure at an age when the terror of ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... in an attempt to classify an ablative absolute and answered "unprepared" when the Roman, maliciously pressing his advantage, insisted on his translating. Then with sulky dignity he strode to the blackboards with the B's and C's and the D's and flunked once more on the conjugation of an irregular verb. What time was this for trivial ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... the habits, to embellish the manners, to cultivate the arts of a nation, and to promote the love of poetry, of beauty, and of renown; if you would constitute a people not unfitted to act with power upon all other nations; nor unprepared for those high enterprises, which, whatever be the result of its efforts, will leave a name for ever famous in time—if you believe such to be the principal object of society, you must avoid the government of democracy, which would be a very uncertain ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... and prayer of every American. The fight they are waging is for the things the real, unhyphenated American is supposed to hold most high and most dear. Incidentally, they are fighting his fight, for their success will later save him, unprepared as he is to defend himself, from a humiliating and terrible thrashing. And every word and act of his now that helps the Allies is a blow against frightfulness, against despotism, and in behalf of a broader civilization, a nobler freedom, and a much more pleasant ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... war has been by the German Government most deliberately and systematically prepared for. The fact remains that Britain—though for a long period she had foreseen danger and had on the naval side slowly braced herself to meet it—was on the military side caught at the last moment unprepared; that France was so little intending war that a large portion of the nation was actually still protesting against an increase in the size of the standing army; and that Russia—whatever plans she may have had, or not had, in mind—was confessedly at the same period two years or so behind in ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... causes from which, in their appointed order those various organs are evolved;—first the brain and nervous system, afterwards the tissues and the bones. Thus, unversed in the deeper phases of causation, men are hurried unprepared into ranks of a noble profession to struggle as best they may, through lack of deeper knowledge, with the serious symptoms of disease—at first by rote but later, are tempted to tamper empirically ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... Lady Constance: Some speedy messenger bid her repair To our solemnity:—I trust we shall, If not fill up the measure of her will, Yet in some measure satisfy her so That we shall stop her exclamation. Go we, as well as haste will suffer us, To this unlook'd-for, unprepared pomp. ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... there and skirmished with Stuart's advance. Farmer said he saw no Union pickets, but noticed on his return that Howard's men were away from their arms, which were stacked, and that they were playing cards, etc., utterly unsuspicious of danger and unprepared for a contest. Notwithstanding the reports of Jackson's movement from spies and scouts, Howard ordered no ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... me. Pray return now to your sister; she needs all you can do for her. She is much to be pitied; her sufferings afflict me. I shall see you and her again before my death. It would have been more cruel to leave her unprepared. Do all in your power to nerve and tranquillise her. What is ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... at some distance from the Don, they were informed that the bridge across it was in a dangerous condition, and that probably they would be compelled to wait till the next day before they could cross. For such a delay they were unprepared, having calculated on a good supper and a good bed that night under a friendly roof in Rostov. Another reason for haste was the change in the weather, which had suddenly turned cold; so, disregarding the information given them, they continued to push forward until they reached the bridge. ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... be made. The two physicians, Elliot and Merritt, pressed for publication. Every day, they pointed out, not only meant a further risk of life, but also increased the impending danger of a general outburst which would find the city wholly unprepared. On the other hand, the journalists, Ellis and Wayne, held out for delay. They perceived the one weak point in their case, that neither a dead body nor a living patient had as yet come to the hands of the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... an easy matter with a man Oft in the wrong, and never on his guard; And even the wisest, do the best they can, Have moments, hours, and days, so unprepared, That you might 'brain them with their lady's fan;' And sometimes ladies hit exceeding hard, And fans turn into falchions in fair hands, And why and wherefore no ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... himself that MacNair was unattended by his Indians. The man's back was turned toward him, and the quarter-breed noticed that, as he talked, he leaned upon his rifle. It was a chance in a thousand. Never before had he caught MacNair unprepared—and the man's blood would be upon his own head. Drawing the revolver from its holster, he timed his movements to the fraction of a second; and deliberately snapped a twig, MacNair whirled like a flash, and Lapierre fired. His bullet went an inch too high, and when ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... was a complete surprise to the people of Korea. At this time the peninsula now known to us as Korea and to the Japanese as Chosen, was divided into three kingdoms, Korai, Shiraki, and Kudara. The fleet of Jingo-Kogo landed in the kingdom of Shiraki. The king was so completely unprepared for this incursion that he at once offered his subjection and proposed to become a tributary kingdom. The proposition was accepted. The kings of Korai and Kudara made similar proposals which also were accepted. Each was to make an immediate contribution to the empress, and annually ...
— Japan • David Murray |
