"Unprovoked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disapprobation must have arisen from virulence of malice, rather than severity of criticism: but as I was more apprehensive of there being just grounds to excite the latter than conscious of having deserved the former, I continue not to believe that probable, which I am sure must have been unprovoked. However, if it was so, and I could even mark the quarter from whence it came, it would be ungenerous to retort: for no passion suffers more than malice from disappointment. For my own part, I see no reason why the author of a play should not regard a first night's audience as a candid and judicious ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... grass. Here was a strange grandchild for the warriors that followed or faced Kamehameha. I give the singular instance as the more explicit; but the whole race must have been stricken at the moment with a similar weakness. No man dare say of this revolution that it was unprovoked; but its means were treachery and violence; the numbers and position of those engaged made the design one of the most insolent in history; and a mere modicum of native boldness and cohesion must have brought it to the dust. "My race had one virtue, they were brave," said a typical Hawaiian: "and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a much maligned race. They are exceedingly independent, and although along the frontier of their own territory in S'suchuan they wage a war of robbery and destruction it is not wholly unprovoked. No one can enter their country safely unless he is under the protection of a chief who acts as a sponsor and passes him along to others. Mr. Brooke, an Englishman, was killed by the Lolos, but he was not properly "chaperoned," and ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... you have come here," began the squire in a dignified tone. "My son tells me that you have committed an unprovoked outrage upon him in dragging him from his wheel. I can only conclude that you are ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... means; she knew nothing of the claimants to either. She was a stranger, seeking only hospitality in Klosterheim, which apparently was violated by unprovoked exertions of authority." ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... rather because of the contagion of revolutionary ideas than from the military point of view. From the latter, it should have been obvious to a man like Nelson that the French must be deterred, under existing conditions, from entering Naples unprovoked; because the farther they advanced the more exposed was their army, in case war, which was darkly threatening, should be renewed in Upper Italy. They dared not, unless by folly, or because first attacked, prolong their already too extended ex-centric movement into Lower Italy. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... one, yet it is confirmed by Pliny, who both mentions the discovery itself, and gives a clue to the motives which may have urged the emperor to a cruelty apparently so unprovoked. He speaks of an artificer who had invented a method of making flexible glass, and adds that Tiberius banished him, lest this new fashion should injure the workers in metal, of whose trade the manufacture of gold, silver, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... sprang up the bank, and appeared about 20 paces in our front. Without a moment's hesitation she uttered several short roars, and upon the beautifully clean ground she bounded forward in full charge straight for Moolah Bux. I never saw a more grand but unprovoked attack. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Militia's disobedience of Orders,—had they retreated without a very extraordinary miracle the Loyalists would have fallen a prey to their unmerciful yet unprovoked Enemies. ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones
... were entirely defeated, and the disaffected band dispersed or destroyed. The result has been creditable to the troops engaged in the service. Severe as is the lesson to the Indians, it was rendered necessary by their unprovoked aggressions, and it is to be hoped that its impression ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... said the old gentleman, speaking like a gentleman, 'my name, sir, is Brownlow. Permit me to inquire the name of the magistrate who offers a gratuitous and unprovoked insult to a respectable person, under the protection of the bench.' Saying this, Mr. Brownlow looked around the office as if in search of some person who would ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... contrary, that every thing which was said at the Meeting had a natural tendency to prevent them. As to the attack on the office of the Morning Chronicle, that might possibly arise out of what Mr. Hunt said at the Meeting. And, what then? Was he to endure the calumnies, the unprovoked calumnies, of that paper for years, and never reply a word? It would have cost him hundreds of pounds to cause to be published in that paper answers to a hundredth part of the base attacks upon him contained in that same paper. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Nay, such was my love for the whites that those of my own country pointed at me as they passed, and said, 'Logan is the friend of the white man.' I had even thought to live with you but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, cut off all the relatives of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any human creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... already gone far to rehabilitate this former "bad man" in the good graces of the community. Under cover of this friendship, McKee hoped to escape suspicion of any part in the homicide he contemplated. For it was murder, foul, unprovoked murder that was in the black soul of the half-breed. He intended to incriminate Bud so deeply as to put it beyond all thought ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... but always with the same issue: she smiles and refuses; and Thaddeus 'shakes his ambrosial curls' with a 'very god-like frown' of denial; I hope it is self-denial, in compliment to his mother's cruel and unprovoked negative. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... on the contrary, accused Captain Shortland of being the sole mover and principal perpetrator of the unprovoked and ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... and slaughtering the clergy and the husbandmen. The piety of an after age saw in the retribution which overtook Egfrid the following year, when he was slain by the Picts and Scots, the judgment of Heaven, avenging the unprovoked wrongs of the Irish. His Scottish conquerors, returning good for evil, carried his body to Iona, where it was ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... rifle and plenty of ammunition. It was the track of a grizzly bear. I saw many tracks on this expedition and on others afterwards but I have never seen a bear yet, except in captivity. The grizzly seemed to shun me; but I believe they will not often attack a man unprovoked, and will lie perfectly still while one may pass within a few ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... RUFFIAN.—We understand that a young boy in the service of Mr. Nathan Badger, one of our most respected citizens, has disappeared under very extraordinary circumstances. The evening previous to his departure he made an unprovoked attack upon Mr. and Mrs. Badger, actually throwing Mr. Badger downstairs and firing a pistol at Mrs. Badger. He was a small, slight boy, but the strength he exhibited was remarkable in thus coping successfully with a strong man. Mr. Badger thinks the boy must have been suddenly attacked ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... be left to fall unheeded from the lips of one who bears every indication of being steeped in rice spirit," he said with unprovoked dignity. ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... than brutal," she broke out, with a petulant stamp of the foot. "To think that your sister, too, should have such a unprovoked insult offered to her! I am ready to sink with shame ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... yourself safe from the blow of a skull-cracker, hurled by an unseen hand on watch under a gateway. The police make themselves conspicuous here by their absence; 'tis a fit spot for midnight murder and robbery—unprovoked, unpunished. Honest tradesmen may reside here, but not from choice; they are bound to ignore street rows; lending a helping hand to a victim would cause them to receive, on the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... affairs, in May, 1845, the civil war broke out. The Christians attacked the Druses in several districts on the same day. The attack was unprovoked, and eventually unsuccessful. Twenty villages were seen burning at the same time from Beiroot. The Druses repulsed the Christians and punished them sharply; the Turkish troops, at the instigation of the European authorities, marched into the mountain and vigorously ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... played at their own expense, and that those whose staple of conversation is banter or "chaff" become irascible the moment they are flicked with their own whip. For years Wagner had been the victim of unprovoked personal attacks in the Jew-controlled press, and some of the worst of these can be traced to Jew scribblers. Yet on the publication of Judaism in Music in the Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik, a wail went up from these journalistic ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... Buckingham Palace, the 29th day of March, 1854, Present, The Queen's Most Excellent Majesty in Council. Her Majesty having determined to afford active assistance to Her Ally, His Highness the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, for the protection of his dominions against the encroachments and unprovoked aggression of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of all the Russias, Her Majesty, therefore, is pleased, by and with the advice of Her Privy Council, to order, and it is hereby ordered, that general reprisals[211] be granted against ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... imply that I am drunk, sir?" demanded Morson, in a fury. "Bear witness, gentlemen, that the insult was unprovoked." ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... should never have credited him with in finding the places where the unhappy Dutchman was most sensitive. Strickland employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective. The attack was so unprovoked that Stroeve, taken unawares, was defenceless. He reminded you of a frightened sheep running aimlessly hither and thither. He was startled and amazed. At last the tears ran from his eyes. And the worst of it was that, though you hated Strickland, and the exhibition was horrible, ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... time for the escape of the Princess. This presence of mind, joined to the frankness of the youth, staggered Manfred. He even felt a disposition towards pardoning one who had been guilty of no crime. Manfred was not one of those savage tyrants who wanton in cruelty unprovoked. The circumstances of his fortune had given an asperity to his temper, which was naturally humane; and his virtues were always ready to operate, when his passions did not obscure ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... far back; I seek not so much to excuse as to account for—less to justify than to analyze—the characteristics of the class before me. I wish to establish that the pioneer hatred of the Indian was not an unprovoked or groundless hatred, that the severity of his warfare was not a mere gratuitous and bloody-minded cruelty. There are a thousand actions, of which we are hearing every day, that are indefensible in morals: and yet we are ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... kind, of which there are many, are doubted by the authorities, who have found it impossible to authenticate a single instance of unprovoked attack. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... frontier there should be no further advance on either side. In April, however, a conflict occurred between the Russians and the Afghans, which seemed to indicate that General Komaroff had committed an act of unprovoked aggression on the Ameer. Mr. Gladstone moved a vote of credit on the 27th in a speech, whose eloquence and energy greatly stirred both sides of the House. Happily, the difficulty with Russia was adjusted by conceding ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... husband's cheek grow paler each day; she saw his firm step grow weaker and weaker. In the night-time his hollow cough would start her from the brief slumber into which she had fallen. Then would the form of this, his unprovoked and relentless enemy, rise before her mind, and her soul turned ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... pamphlet on the French Revolution is an extraordinary instance. Neither the People of France, nor the National Assembly, were troubling themselves about the affairs of England, or the English Parliament; and that Mr. Burke should commence an unprovoked attack upon them, both in Parliament and in public, is a conduct that cannot be pardoned on the score of manners, nor justified ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Muskingum, at a later period, when the Moravian Indians, at the three villages of Schoenbrun, Salem, and Gnadenhuetten, were first disarmed and then deliberately tomahawked by Williamson and his associates; the unprovoked murder of the family of Logan; the assassination of Bald Eagle, of the gallant and high-souled Cornstalk, and his son Elinipsico: we need but recall these, from the long catalogue of similar cases, to satisfy every candid mind, that rapine, cruelty ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... reading, and confirmed the fears that he had been trying to shake off. Mr. Ap Dave, the Chancellor, whose lively controversial style endeared him to his supporters and embittered him, politically speaking, to his opponents, had risen in his place to make an unprovoked apology for having alluded in a recent speech to certain protesting taxpayers as "skulkers." He had realized on reflection that they were in all probability perfectly honest in their inability to understand certain ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... to hear. His ungenerous design was beginning to be hateful to him. Not only old Charlie's unprovoked goodness was prevailing; the eulogy on Belles Demoiselles had stirred the depths of an intense love for his beautiful home. True, if he held to it, the caving of the bank, at its present fearful speed, would let the house into the river within three months; but were ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... base poisoner!" answered Douglas, "wouldst thou have committed so horrible, so unprovoked a murder, and mentioned my name ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... burning to avenge these wrongs. The thievish Blackfeet had made these assaults upon them entirely unprovoked. The savages were greatly elated with their victories, and it was deemed essential that they should be so thoroughly chastised, that they would no longer molest those who were hunting and trapping ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... Russia. Prussia, hoping for Russian aid still, put aside the French demands, but the Tsar Alexander expressed a decided preference for a defensive campaign against France, and refused any assistance unless the French should commit an unprovoked aggression on Koenigsberg. Scharnhorst seems to have seen the wisdom of this policy. He now turned to Austria, but there again a definite alliance was refused. Russia was equally unable to move Austria to join her, so that Russia and Prussia were each isolated ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... crew A british seaman all his titles drew, Captain, Esquire, Commander, too, in chief, And hence he gained his bread and hence his beef: But sir, you might have searched creation round, And such another ruffian not have found Though unprovoked an angry face he bore,— All were astonished at the oaths he swore He swore, till every prisoner stood aghast, And thought him Satan in a brimstone blast He wished us banished from the public light; He wished ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... taken to avoid unduly alarming the public, or provoking panic. We hope to be able to announce something definite in the morning. The sympathy of all the Powers will undoubtedly be with us, for every known tenet of international law has been outraged by this entirely unprovoked invasion." ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... everywhere been dangerous and always will be. There's no security in any part of the world where people cannot think of a government without a king, and there never will be. You cannot conceive of a democracy that will unprovoked set out on a career of conquest. If all our religious missionary zeal and cash could be turned into convincing Europe of this simple and obvious fact, the longest step would be taken for human advancement ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... only person to whom the news of Anne's resignation brought unmixed pleasure. Her pupils looked upon it as a sheer catastrophe. Annetta Bell had hysterics when she went home. Anthony Pye fought two pitched and unprovoked battles with other boys by way of relieving his feelings. Barbara Shaw cried all night. Paul Irving defiantly told his grandmother that she needn't expect him to eat any ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... And has the pillory or the penitentiary been the reward of that Postmaster-general? Have we not seen printing-presses destroyed; halls erected for the promotion of human freedom levelled with the dust, and consumed by fire; and wanton, unprovoked murder perpetrated with impunity, by slave-mongers? Have we not seen human beings, made in the likeness of God, and endowed with immortal souls, burnt at the stake, not for their offences, but for their color? Are ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... unjust, and unnatural war, at a time when Great Britain was straining every nerve in defense of her own, and the liberties of the world. Europe is now happy and free, and now hastens justly to avenge an unprovoked insult. Accept of my offers; everything I have promised, I guarantee to you, on the sacred ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... prosperity or disaster entirely out of relation to any of their actions; men upon whom good or bad luck seemed suddenly, at a turn of the road, to spring from the ground or descend from the stars, undeserved, unprovoked, but complete and inevitable. One, we will say, who scarcely has given a thought to some appointment for which he knows his rival to be better equipped, will see this rival vanish at the decisive moment, another, who has counted upon the protection of a most influential friend, will ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... to suggest that civil strife did take place. Tacitus[1] states that there were three leaders, each with his own army in the city, and the Rabbinical authorities[2] speak of the three councils in Jerusalem. It is further said that the second Temple was destroyed because of the unprovoked hatred among the Jews, which was the equal of the sins of murder, unchastity, and idolatry that brought about the fall of the first Temple.[3] Yet the fact that the men who were the foremost agitators of the Rebellion were its leaders to the end suggests that the people had reliance on their leadership; ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... at their command. All these noises deepened and became substantial to the listener's ear, till she could distinguish every soft and dreamy accent of the love-songs that died causelessly into funeral-hymns. She shuddered at the unprovoked wrath which blazed up like the spontaneous kindling of flume, and she grew faint at the fearful merriment raging miserably around her. In the midst of this wild scene, where unbound passions jostled each other in a drunken career, there was one solemn voice of a man, and ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was both justifiable and necessary to the village in which a death had occurred, it was considered an unprovoked attack by the raided settlement; a challenge and an insult which had to be avenged. Thus feuds were established, some of which ran through many years, and resulted in considerable loss of life. A town, which had lost to another a greater number of heads than they had secured, ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... and character, that I could not help suspecting you had heard the facts from a person with whom you spent some hours lately; and I was much hurt by your alluding to them in such a severe and public manner. You will ask me, how I could conceive you to be capable of such unprovoked malevolence: and my answer is, 'I cannot tell;' I can only say, such is the effect of the unfortunate susceptibility of my heart, or, to speak more candidly, of my temper. I confess I cannot, in these ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... mistake on his part; he was blundering, and I had an intuition that the blunder was of an odious, of an unfortunate nature. I was anxious to end this scene on grounds of decency, just as one is anxious to cut short some unprovoked and abominable confidence. The funniest part was, that in the midst of all these considerations of the higher order I was conscious of a certain trepidation as to the possibility—nay, likelihood—of this encounter ending in some disreputable brawl which ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... not say to every one that I always pronounce her name in German fashion because she occasionally shies, but that is the truth. I do not mind her shying, or a certain mysterious and apparently unprovoked jump, with which she sometimes indulges herself, and no one else rides her, so I think she does no harm, but I do not like the principle of allowing her to be wicked, unrebuked and unhindered, and some day I ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... due deference and acknowledgment to an established custom of our newest authors, by a long digression unsought for and a universal censure unprovoked, by forcing into the light, with much pains and dexterity, my own excellences and other men's defaults, with great justice to myself and candour to them, I now happily resume my subject, to the infinite satisfaction both of the ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... wanton and unprovoked as Warrington's, and Bartholomew's foe was relatively to himself even less powerful; moreover, while the Peacock's crew showed great skill in handling their guns, the crew of the Erebus most emphatically did not. The intent in both cases was equally bad, ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... never dreamed of anything like this. Cholula was bad enough, but there the people brought it on themselves; and the Spaniards would have been slain, had they not first begun to kill. But here it is altogether different. It was an unprovoked massacre, and after this, who can hope that the whites and Mexicans ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... the editor says, the attack made upon the "Agnes" would seem to have been altogether unprovoked by the conduct either of the captain or any of the crew; but we must not, in matters of this kind, assume that we are in possession of the whole truth, when we have heard the statement of only one of the parties. What may have been the exact nature of the offence given to the natives ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... ex-soldiers had stormed the headquarters of the "wobblies," and the latter had defended themselves, and killed two or three of their assailants. A news agency had sent out over the country a story to the effect that the "wobblies" had made an unprovoked assault upon the ex-soldiers. "That's what the papers do to us!" said John Colver. "There have been scores of mobbings as a result, and just now it may be worth a man's life to be caught carrying a red card in ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... the unprovoked hostility with which she falls upon him in his absence, in the pertinacity and bitterness of her satire, there is certainly great argument that he occupies much more of her thoughts than she would have been willing to confess, even ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... an interest and sympathy, which offered the strongest possible contrast to the unprovoked rudeness of the mistress of the lodging-house. He declared that he could only do justice to his sense of obligation by following Mr. Rayburn's example, and expressing himself as frankly as if he had been speaking ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... was found in the neighbourhood, near a small freshwater swamp, and by the things that were left behind it was evident that a hasty retreat had been made. It would have been as well if we could have punished these people in some way for their unprovoked attack; but to have followed them far into the bush would have been quite useless. A comparison of their conduct with that of the natives of Shoal Bay, confirms what I have before stated of the extraordinary ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... most persistent efforts have been made to confuse the public mind as to its origin and motives, and to drag the people of the loyal States down from the national position they had instinctively taken to the old level of party squabbles and antipathies. The wholly unprovoked rebellion of an oligarchy proclaiming negro slavery the corner-stone of free institutions, and in the first flush of over-hasty confidence venturing to parade the logical sequence of their leading ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Major Jamieson said. "There are many no older, both in the ranks and as officers. Men in Sweden of all ages and of all ranks are joining, for this unprovoked attack, on the part of Poland, has raised the national spirit to boiling heat. The chief difficulty is their and your ignorance of the language. Were it not for that, I could obtain, from the minister of war, commissions ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... peace. Nay, such was my love for the whites, that those of my own country pointed at me and said, 'Logan is the friend of white men.' I had even thought to live with you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cool blood and unprovoked, cut off all the relatives of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any human creature. This called on me for revenge. I have killed many. I have fully glutted ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... and although the corporal was not particularly sentimental, he could not but be deeply touched by the contrast forced upon him, between the moaning animal and the wild lust for blood which reigned in the hearts of their unprovoked assailants. His first impulse was to call approvingly to the dog, but the next moment's reflection on the folly of such a proceeding stifled the impulse. Then his attention was called not only to the perfect ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... the Minister of his presence in France, as Bonaparte never pardoned a Septembrizer, and the English guineas he possessed might be claimed and seized as national property, to compensate some of the sufferers by the unprovoked war with England. In vain did he address himself to his fellow labourer in revolutionary plots, the Counsellor of State, Real, who had been the intermedium between him and Talleyrand, when he was first enlisted among the secret agents; instead of receiving money he heard threats; ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and pale by turns. "Mother," she replied, with a ring of pain in her voice, "I have always respected your opinions and feelings, and shall continue to do so, and try my best to please you. But it is hard that I should have to suffer these unprovoked attacks; and it seems strange that the girl's coming should be made the occasion for one, for I had hoped that her presence in the house would have made ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... circumstances were cited. It appeared that Flavio came constantly to see the child: the only strange part of the case was that he appeared very fond of it, and as tender and considerate towards it as a man of his brutal nature could be. There clearly must have been some ground for this sudden and unprovoked attack,—if, indeed, he committed it; after exhausting every possible motive, we could not arrive ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... bringing their troops upon Belgian soil. Now, however, with the German army invading Belgium, the English statesmen had to decide their course. As heads of one of the nations to guarantee Belgium's freedom, they called on Germany to explain this unprovoked invasion. The Germans made no answer. They were busily attacking the city of Liege. Great Britain gave Germany twenty-four hours in which to withdraw her troops. At the end of this time, with Germany paying no attention still, England solemnly declared war and took her stand alongside ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... This unprovoked attack on their unresisting and unoffending guest brought the rich blood to the very temples of Miss Howard, who rose, and addressed herself to her kinsman, with a manner that could not easily be mistaken any more ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a civilized race, they assert that the Turks are not. The outcry against the Greeks on this occasion was so great that an inter-allied commission, including American representatives, was appointed to make a thorough investigation. This commission unanimously found the Greeks guilty of the unprovoked massacre of 800 Turkish men, women and children, who were shot down in cold blood while being marched along the Smyrna waterfront, those who were not killed instantly being thrown by Greek soldiers into the ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... "Your unprovoked attack upon me—especially since it gives you the first shot. What if I were to shoot you down now? With the pistol you see in my holster here, I could send six bullets through your body, before you could bring your rifle to your shoulder. What ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the vicomte, wiping his lips. "You are all witnesses to this unprovoked assault. There can be but one result. You shall ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... because she had discovered that they had murdered a son whom she had had by a former husband. Her case was adjourned—the council to whom it had been referred being in doubt how to draw a line between just revenge and unprovoked crime; and so she was remitted to the judgment of the Areopagus, those severe Athenian judges, who are said to have decided disputes even among the gods. They, when they had heard the case, ordered the woman and her accuser to appear before them again in a hundred years, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Aggression," I replied. "Its mottoes are, 'Stop trouble before it starts,' and, 'If we have to fight, let's do it on the other fellow's real estate.' But this situation is just a little too delicate for literal application of those principles. An unprovoked attack on the z'Srauff would set every other non-human race in the galaxy against us.... Would an attack by the z'Srauff on New ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... Parliament; and Cobden, Bright, Milner Gibson, W.J. Fox, Layard, and many others were left without seats. Manchester rejected John Bright because he had spoken in the interests of peace and honor, and condemned one of the most cowardly, brutal, and unprovoked wars of ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... the extremes of exultation, full of careless joy and of an invincible sadness—like a day-dream. The sense of all this having been gone through as if in one great rush of imagination is all the stronger in the distance of time, because it had something of that quality even then: of fate unprovoked, of events that didn't cast ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... yonder young soldier thus," returned the stranger, whose eye kindled, as even the meek repel unprovoked outrage, though his frame trembled violently at being subject to open insults from men so rude and unprincipled; "thou didst not dare to ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Marie Antoinette ceased to be Sovereigns from the period they were ignominiously dragged to their jail at the Tuileries. From this moment they were abandoned to the vengeance of miscreants, who were disgracing the nation with unprovoked and useless murders. But from this moment also the zeal of the Princesses Elizabeth and de Lamballe became redoubled. Out of one hundred individuals and more, male and female, who had been exclusively occupied about the person of Marie Antoinette, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... pirate Ichabod reached the two; his great sword went high in air, and was about to descend upon the naval person, whoever he was, who had made such an unprovoked attack upon his honoured passenger, when his arm was caught by some one from behind. Turning, with a great curse, his eyes fell upon the face of ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... drunken Englishman, an officer of the Indian army, I am sorry to say, beat several natives of Cairo, with whom he happened to come in contact in the crowd, in the most brutal and unprovoked manner, and yet no notice was taken, and no complaint made. It was certainly something very unexpected to me to see a Frank Christian maltreating the Moslem inhabitants of a Moslem city in which he was a stranger, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... when I made my first trip into the forest I began to delve for true wolf stories, and I have been delving ever since. So far, after over thirty years of digging, I have actually dug up what I believe to be one authentic story of an unprovoked wolf having actually attacked and killed a man. On several occasions, too, I have had the satisfaction of running to cover some of the wolf stories published in our daily press. I read a few years ago in one of Canada's ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... father, sternly, "this is shameful, cowardly behavior, utterly unworthy of a son of mine—this unprovoked assault upon a defenceless little girl. It has always been considered a cowardly act to attack one weaker ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... and densely-wooded part of the island, far removed from those portions which we have yet had occasion to describe, a band of fiendish-looking men were making arrangements for one of those unprovoked assaults which savages are so prone to make on those who settle ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... being a woman, she might be in love; but the two ideas, Marion and love, refused to coalesce. And again, was it likely that such as she, her mind occupied with so many other absorbing interests, would fall in love unprovoked, unsolicited? That, indeed, was not likely. Then if, solicited, she but returned love for love, why was she sad? The new experience might, it is true, cause such commotion in a mind like hers as to trouble her greatly. She would not know what to do with it, nor where to accommodate her ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... of the violence she had offered Orgles. Her faith in human justice had been much disturbed; she feared that Orgles, moved with a desire for vengeance, would represent her as the aggressor, himself as the victim of an unprovoked assault: any moment she feared to find herself in the clutches of the law. She was too dispirited to look for work; to ease the tension in her mind, she tried to discover what had become of Mrs Ellis, but ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Shakespeare saw deeper into human nature. And perhaps his wisest departure from the old story is in making John a morose, sullen, ill-conditioned rascal, whose innate malice renders the joy of others a pain, and the pain of others a joy, to him. The wanton and unprovoked doing of mischief is the natural luxury and pastime of such envious spirits as he is. To be sure, he assigns as his reason for plotting to blast Claudio's happiness, that the "young start-up hath all the glory of my overthrow"; but then ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... after this, public disgust make the author feel, in the midst of the little circle of flatterers that remains to him, what an insight he has given into the guilt of satire before maturity, before experience, before knowledge; if the original unprovoked intruder upon the peace of others be thus taught a love of privacy and a facility of retraction; if Turnus have found ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... hear the complexion of to-day. I suppose it will, on the part of administration, have been a wretched farce of fear, daubed over with airs of bullying. You, I do not doubt, have acted like yourself, feeling for our situation, above insulting, and unprovoked but at the criminality that has brought us to this pass. Pursue your own path, nor lean to the court that may be paid to you on either side, as I am sure you will not regard their being displeased that you do not go as far as their interested views may wish. If the court should receive any more ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... are personally known. Of some, indeed, you were, in years long past, the trusted guide, to whom they owe more than can be expressed in words; and all are conscious that the ingenuous fulness of your answer to a false and unprovoked accusation, has intensified their interest in the labours and trials of your life. While, then, we resent the indignity to which you have been exposed, and lament the pain and annoyance which the manifestation ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Datis and Artaphrenes, when they reached Asia in their voyage, brought them up to Susa; and king Dareios, though he had great anger against the Eretrians before they were made captive, because the Eretrians had done wrong to him unprovoked, yet when he saw that they had been brought up to him and were in his power, he did them no more evil, but established them as settlers in the Kissian land upon one of his own domains, of which the name is Ardericca: and this is distant two hundred and ten furlongs ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... this treachery and unprovoked attack meet with its just punishment and at the same time taught us a useful lesson to be more cautious in future. With respect to the size of these natives they are much the same as at Sydney, their understanding better though, for they easily made out our signs when it ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... the natives much as Israel treated the natives of Canaan, and to have conceived themselves to have Old Testament authority for occupying the territories of the heathen, and reducing them by the sternest methods to serfdom or submission. Here they had an unprovoked massacre to avenge, and they showed equal promptitude and courage. Pouncing upon Mosilikatze, they defeated his vastly superior force with so great a slaughter that he fled north-westward far away beyond the Limpopo River, and fell like ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... of an Ohio regiment was shot through the head and instantly killed while reading a newspaper. He was violating no rule whatever, and when shot was from eight to ten feet inside the window through which the bullet came. This was a wholly unprovoked and wanton murder; the cowardly miscreant had fired the shot while he was off duty, and from the north sidewalk of Carey street. The guards (home guards they were) used, in fact, to gun for prisoners' heads from their posts below, pretty much after ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... think hardly of us, Mr. Osbaldistone, and it is not natural that it should be otherwise. But remember, at least, we have not been unprovoked. We are a rude and an ignorant, and it may be a violent and passionate, but we are not a cruel people. The land might be at peace and in law for us, did they allow us to enjoy the blessings of peaceful law. But we have ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... manifesto to foreign nations, and the first document of the new Minister of Foreign Affairs. It is bold, high-toned, and American, but it has dark shadows; shows an inexperienced hand in diplomacy and in dealing with events. The passages about the frequent changes in Europe are unnecessary, and unprovoked by anything whatever. It is especially offensive to France, to the French people, and to Louis Napoleon. It is bosh, but in Europe they will consider it as une ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... in this uncertain and inchoate condition, and the Administration had no declared policy on some of the most important questions, Congress came together fired with indignation and revenge for a war so causeless and unprovoked. A large portion of the members, exasperated toward the rebels by reason of the war, and dissatisfied with delays and procrastination, which they imputed chiefly to the Administration, were determined there should be prompt and aggressive action against the persons, property, institutions, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... with. Then some facetious gentlemen on the left, after pressing sideways in a body, and squeezing Mr. Snodgrass into the very last extreme of human torture, would request to know 'vere he vos a shovin' to'; and when Mr. Winkle had done expressing his excessive indignation at witnessing this unprovoked assault, some person behind would knock his hat over his eyes, and beg the favour of his putting his head in his pocket. These, and other practical witticisms, coupled with the unaccountable absence ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... accents, did not my heart throb in my bosom with all the agitation of a taken bird, and shall I again have to enter into a personal treaty with the man who, be his general conduct what it may, has been, the constant and unprovoked cause of my unequalled misery? Douban, no!—to listen to his voice again, were to hear an alarm sounded to every violent and vindictive passion, of my heart; and though, may Heaven so help me as my intentions towards ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... short, harsh, dense; and his back, running up from shoulder to loins, ended abruptly in the knob-like tail. He looked like the devil of a dogs' hell. And his reputation was as bad as his looks. He never attacked unprovoked; but a challenge was never ignored, and he was greedy of insults. Already he had nigh killed Rob Saunderson's collie, Shep; Jem Burton's Monkey fled incontinently at the sound of his approach; while he had even fought ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... men could scarcely do less. But surely the true onus of wrong and moral responsibility for all which might follow, rested upon that party who, giving way to mixed impulses of rash judgment and of morose temper, had allowed himself to make a most unprovoked assault upon the character of one whom he did not know; well aware that such words, uttered publicly by a person in authority, must, by some course or other, be washed out and cancelled; or, if not, that the party submitting to such defamatory ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... caution in her when her father was concerned. She had a vision of a fight, with Landson pleading entire ignorance of the whole cause of offence, and her father probably summoned by the police for unprovoked assault. ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... and glossy, and, by giving the whole feature an air of being on the point of expanding to its original shape, produced a snubbed expression which relieved the otherwise formidable aspect of the man, and recommended him as probably a modest and affable fellow when sober and unprovoked. He seemed about fifty years of age, and was clad in a straw hat and a ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... that Mr. Tawnish was obliged to step aside to avoid a collision; yet even then, Raikes thrust out an elbow in such a fashion as to jostle him very unceremoniously. Never have I seen an insult more wanton and altogether unprovoked, and we all of us, I think, ceased to breathe, waiting for the inevitable ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... Tom." Fentress spoke quietly. When Ware had done as he requested, the colonel spoke again. "You are my witness that I was the victim of an unprovoked attack." ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... would have prevented a repetition of such depredations; but the event has not answered this hope. The Chickamaugas, aided by some banditti of another tribe in their vicinity, have recently perpetrated wanton and unprovoked hostilities upon the citizens of the United States in that quarter. The information which has been received on this subject will be laid before you. Hitherto defensive precautions only have been strictly enjoined ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... reconciliation to the man who had made so unprovoked an assault upon him was characteristic of his nature. He never could cherish malice, and it was very hard work for him to remain angry with any one, ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Nigel admitted. "Actually, we cannot put ourselves back into the spirit of those days. You must remember that it was an unprovoked war, a war engineered by Germany for the sheer purposes of aggression. That is why a punitive spirit ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... After this impudent and unprovoked attack, Mr. Flinders snapped his gun at the man who threw the spear; but the flint having received some wet when it was laid upon the beach, it missed fire. It was loaded with buck shot, and he was strongly tempted to fire among the cluster ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... the apprehension of the murderers. The temper of the crowd, however, was sullen. No man dared trust his neighbour, and yet every honest breast swelled with impotent indignation at this wholesale and unprovoked massacre. No clue was possible. Everybody remembered, of course, how broadcast and publicly the fact of the gold had been scattered. Nobody dared utter his suspicions, ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... your justice; I ask you with equal confidence if, when within the kingdom faction after faction was detected and suppressed, I yielded to any sentiment of undue vengeance? Has not every outbreak of unprovoked disaffection rather tended to exhibit the forbearance of the King my son and my own? Need I recall the concessions which we have made to those who had sought to injure us? Need I ask you to remember that we have bestowed upon them governments, titles, riches, high offices ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Transvaal in council thus comments on the occurrence in an official minute:—"The surrounding and gradual hemming in under a flag of truce of a force, and the selection of spots from which to direct their fire, as in the case of the unprovoked attack by the rebels upon Colonel Anstruther's force, is a proceeding of which very few like incidents can be mentioned in the annals ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... order to justify their unprovoked hostilities against France, had required the sanction of some legal authority; and Edward, that he might give them satisfaction on this head, had applied to Lewis of Bavaria, then emperor, and had been created by him "vicar of the empire;" an empty title, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... better say that I have been for the last four months going about in my little Ship as in former years, and now am about to lay up her, and myself, for the Winter. The only Friend I hear from is Donne, who volunteers a Letter unprovoked sometimes. Old Spedding gives an unwilling Reply about thrice in two years. You speak when spoken to; so does Thompson, in general: I shall soon ask of him what he has been doing ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... acting in that capacity he killed his man. He was trying to arrest him, so he informed me, and the fellow showed fight, when he took out his gun and shot him. It was claimed by the authorities that the shooting was unprovoked, and that the man could have been arrested without killing him. Aside from the fact that he had killed his man, I must say that I never met a man for whom I had a higher regard. He was very kind to me, very patient, and made my work as easy for me as he possibly could. I remained with ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... down and I kicked it," lisped the little one. "I kicked it," she laughed, unconscious that she had committed an unprovoked assault on her plaything. "Mend it; oh, please ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... ambitious mother who was sure that she must be equally clever if she would only let herself go, to every examination that happened to be going for girls of her age; so that she and Miss Leech spent their days either on the defensive, preparing for these unprovoked assaults, or in the state of collapse which followed the regularly recurring defeat, and both found their lives a burden too great to ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... Samuel Evans, better known as "Young Dutch Sam," a pugilist, was brought before Mr. Conant, charged with having committed an unprovoked and violent assault on policeman Mackenzie, C 182, and Lord Waldegrave was also charged with attempting to rescue Evans from ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... ignorant of the cause of his hurt, sprang right at the throat of his companion, to whom he evidently attributed his misfortune. It was a curious sight to see the astonishment of the other lion at this most unprovoked assault. Over he rolled with an angry snarl, and on to him sprang the black-maned demon, and began to worry him. This finally awoke the yellow-maned lion to a sense of the situation, and I am bound to say that he rose to it in a most effective ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... chiefs, and had conferences with them; so that when the Revolution began, the Upper and the Lower Creeks, and the Cherokees as well, were the firm friends of the British. During the Revolution, as we have already seen, they made constant and unprovoked attacks on the patriots, burning their houses, carrying off their cattle, and murdering their helpless women and children. These raids were continued even after the Americans had compelled Great Britain to recognize their independence, ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... immediately made after the blacks, who were overtaken and severely punished for their unprovoked attack on Castle Hill Farm. Several were made prisoners, and the captain begged not only that their lives might be spared, but treated them so kindly that when set at liberty they expressed their regret at having attempted to injure ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... exile, literally of a broken heart. Pius IX was hardly more fortunate; to him also this fatal war brought dishonor and exile, the loss of the affection of his subjects, and of the admiration of the civilized world. The reluctance of the Pope to engage, when unprovoked, in a war with Austria is no cause for wonder. He earnestly desired the welfare of his people and the independence of his native land; but all his desires were subject to the interests of the Church, of which he was the recognized head throughout Christendom. The republicans ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... of your head, and of your bowels a string to hang it by'—that was the cry of the Barcelonese, presently echoed in every town and village throughout Spain—and that cry was raised immediately after he had remitted the mulct which he had imposed on Barcelona for unprovoked rebellion. But the mule is quiet enough now; no such yell is heard now at Barcelona, or in any nook or corner of Spain. No, no—the Caballero was kicked out of the saddle, and the muleteer sprang up—There she lies, the brute! ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... danger was the last thing the operator thought of. The unprovoked and murderous attack infuriated him, and again forgetting his caution he drew his own revolver without hesitation, and, running to a more protected spot, leaned over the ledge and fired point-blank into the group, as they looked up to see what had ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... amongst the cushions. No one interfered, for it had dawned on every blurred mind there that here lay a deeper cause for quarrel than mere political conflict. Hortensius, though vanquished now, had been like a madman; his unprovoked insults had come from a heart overburdened with jealousy and with hate. Now when the praefect relaxed his grip upon him, he lay for a while quite still, and anon Caius Nepos beckoned to his slaves, and they it was who ministered ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... gladly have scoured the Strand, with the charitable purpose, now he saw himself so well supported, of knocking the London knaves, who had insulted him, into twiggen bottles; but he was withheld by the prudence of Julian, who, though himself extremely irritated by the unprovoked ill-usage which they had received, saw himself in a situation in which it was necessary to exercise more caution than vengeance. He prayed and pressed his father to seek some temporary place of retreat from the fury of the populace, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... mountains he is to be met with quite frequently, but is not given to unprovoked attack, and with modern firearms an encounter with him is not fraught with great danger. He, or more properly, she will charge man with intent to kill upon certain rare occasions—when wounded, surprised, or when feeling that her young are in danger. But the bear, in company with all the other ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... answerable for them whose wanton intemperance of abuse places men under the necessity of thus acting, in self-defence. The Duke of Bedford's disavowal, in the conclusion of the business, seems to have been manly and unequivocal, and the only real atonement he could make for the original most unprovoked insult. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... magistrates gravely considering this a most serious charge of unprovoked attack upon an industrious individual, ordered the parties to find bail, in default of fully satisfying the inoffensive dealer in pastry, which was ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... were only waiting to catch him out before doing it. These homicides can, however, be atoned without further bloodshed, if the parties interested will agree to it. A more or less amusing instance in kind was recently furnished by the village of Basao, which had in the most unprovoked manner killed a citizen of a neighboring rancheria, the name of which I have unfortunately forgotten. The injured village at once made a reclama (i.e., reclamation, claim for compensatory damages), and Basao agreed, the villages meeting ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... equals of men. This disappointment helps to give rise to that antagonism which is almost inexplicable save as George Eliot's phrase throws light upon it. He thinks that he insults women by these perverse feelings of unprovoked hostility. 'Is it not extraordinary,' he exclaims, 'when among men I have no evil thoughts, no malice, no spleen; I feel free to speak or to be silent; ... I am free from all suspicion, and comfortable. When I am among women, I have evil thoughts, malice, spleen; I cannot speak ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... Be calm now, don't speak in a passion. You are a witness, sir—a dispassionate, unprejudiced witness. Zounds and fury! this is the most insolent, unprovoked, diabolical—but whom do ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... no explanation of the seemingly unprovoked blow, but the crowd surged forward, snatching Danes's body up as though he were something of which these men were ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... your wish, then," retorted the Viscount, with the unprovoked and reasonless passion which he vented on everyone, but on none so much as the son he hated. "You are on a royal road to it. I live out of the world, but I hear from it sir. I hear that there is not a man in the Guards—not even Lord Rockingham—who ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... obstructs no argument that we advance. "Liberty and ordered peace" we, too, strive for; and confidently do we look to you, sir, and to America—whose freedom Irishmen risked something to establish—to lend ear and weight to the prayer that another unprovoked wrong against the defenceless may ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... thus happened to do, the atrocity of this heartless treason against society and the injured dead becomes yet more striking; it seeming wonderful that the piteousness of the sight—the mute pleading of that mouth full of cloated blood—the arousing ocular evidence of the unprovoked assassin's cruelty—the helplessness of the aged woman—her innocence—all should not have kindled humanity in their hearts, (if all principle was dead in their dark minds,) just enough to dare to call a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... each, and laden with stores and provisions, was descried[b] stealing along the shore to its relief. Blake, who had received secret orders from the council, gave chase; the whole squadron was captured, and the next day[c] Dunkirk opened its gates.[2] By the French court this action was pronounced an unprovoked and unjustifiable injury; but Mazarin coolly calculated the probable consequences of a war, and, after some time, sent[d] over Bordeaux, under the pretence of claiming the captured ships, but in reality to oppose the intrigues of the agents ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... hatred which Southerners bore to Friend Hopper's name was manifested in a cruel and altogether unprovoked outrage on his son, which caused the young man a great deal of suffering, and well nigh cost him his life. John Hopper, Esq., now a lawyer in the city of New-York, had occasion to go to the South on ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... over the soldier's face at this unprovoked demonstration of heartless cruelty was fearful, but he kept his head. "Lor' blime!" he commented to me when I came up and sympathised with him over his loss, "I could have knocked the god-damned head off the swine and ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... And the infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It had stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness, unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all awoke, to tempt, even while they frightened him. And his encounter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it were a real incident, did but show his sympathy and fellowship with wicked mortals, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not purely material, not military. They believe so profoundly in the perfect justice and high importance of their cause that it would seem as if they counted upon the cause alone to win the victory. No nation, they say, ever spent itself in a better cause. Victims of an unprovoked attack, unprepared, which is the best evidence of peaceable will, witnesses of the outrage of a neighbor people, bleeding from the wounds of their own country,—what better cause for war could men have? And the Latin intelligence ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... year after his son's departure, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski's health and temper became much worse. He grew still more irritable, and it was Princess Mary who generally bore the brunt of his frequent fits of unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out her tender spots so as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible. Princess Mary had two passions and consequently two joys—her nephew, little Nicholas, and religion—and these were the favorite subjects of the prince's attacks ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... appropriate duties. At the moment when the commissioners appointed for carrying into execution certain provisions of the treaty of August 19, 1825, with various tribes of the Northwestern Indians were about to arrive at the appointed place of meeting the unprovoked murder of several citizens and other acts of unequivocal hostility committed by a party of the Winnebago tribe, one of those associated in the treaty, followed by indications of a menacing character among ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... left the alligator to himself—became so infuriated at this unprovoked assault, that he turned and sprang upon his new enemy, seizing him round the body in a firm hug. Both struggled over the ground, the one growling and snorting, while the other uttered a sound like ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... cunning in his character that stamp him for a very unamiable young man: it is uncommon for a heart to be so tainted so early My cousin's(1332) affair is entirely owing to him;(1333) nor can I account for the pursuit of such unprovoked revenge. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... sitting down beside him, that compassionate deity took the foot upon his lap, and began very gently to shampoo it, continuing till all the pain was gone. Then said Bhrigu: What god is greater than this god? For who but a god, and the very highest, would requite an unprovoked assault by tenderness, and pity, and oblivion of his own wrong? Surely this is the badge of Deity in its very essence, that, like sky-crystal, is pure, and absolutely transparent, and ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... joy now broke its way through the gloom of her apprehensions. "Ah!" cried she, "I have not, then, any means to recede! an unprovoked breach of promise at the very moment destined for its performance, would but vary the mode of acting wrong, without ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... tea-table set for three, she sat one evening with her hands folded on her lap, and her eyes fixed on the door as if she expected it to make a sudden and unprovoked assault on her. In a few minutes her expectations were almost realised, for the door burst open and a boy burst into the room with—"Here ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... personage thought proper to fall foul of me (wholly unprovoked) in the Athenaeum of August 25, '88. I ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... charges against the Imperial Government, the emigrants dwelt largely upon the devastation of the eastern districts by the Kaffirs' inroad of December, 1834, which was certainly unprovoked by the colonists. Yet Lord Glenelg, who was then Secretary of State for the Colonies, justified the Kaffirs, and not only refused to punish them, but actually gave them a large slip of land, including the dense jungles along the Fish River, that ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... local concern, though it could help itself to the national money, force the nation into an unjust war, and stain its reputation in Europe with the buccaneering principles proclaimed in the Ostend Manifesto. All these were plainly the results of the ever-increasing and unprovoked aggressions of Northern fanaticism. To be the victims of such injustice seemed not unpleasing to the South. Let us sum up the items of their little bill against us. They demanded Missouri,—we yielded; they could not get ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... "I happen to know that Roscoe's story is strictly correct, and that your nephew made an unprovoked attack upon him." ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... beginning for a long night-drive. And though for a while all things seemed to be going about as well as I could wish, there remained a nervousness which, slight though it seemed while unprovoked, yet tinged every motion of the horses and even my own state of mind. Still, while we were going west, and later, north into the one-third-way town, the drive was one of the most marvellously beautiful ones that I had had during that ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... make Sam Winnington take the wilful deed so much to heart? Hear him rating Will, whom he had been used to patronize in a careless, gracious style, but upon whom he now turned in strong resentment. These reproaches were not unprovoked, but they were surely out of bounds; and their matter and manner rankled in the breasts of both these men many a day after they had crossed the Rubicon, and travelled far into the country on whose borders they ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... squirted vitriol from behind a corner, rather glad than otherwise if it fell on the women of those he hated or envied. And if Dryden is never dastardly, as Pope often was, so also he never wrote anything so maliciously depreciatory as Pope's unprovoked attack on Addison. Dryden's satire is often coarse, but where it is coarsest, it is commonly in defence of himself against attacks that were themselves brutal. Then, to be sure, he snatches the first ready cudgel, as in Shadwell's case, though even then there is something ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... a third badly crippled. So soon as surgeons plugged up the holes in his hide which members of the vengeful posse shot into him after they had him surrounded and before his ammunition gave out, he was brought to bar to answer for the unprovoked murder of a postal clerk on a transcontinental limited. No time was wasted in hurrying his trial through to its conclusion; it was felt that there was crying need to make an example of this red-handed desperado. Having been convicted with commendable celerity, the Lone-Hand Kid ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... purpose, the piece went off accidentally, and, to my regret then and since, inflicted upon the young gentleman a severer chastisement than I desired, though I am glad to understand it is like to prove no more than his unprovoked folly deserved." ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Cibber, telling of the play's presentation, "Jacobitism had lately exerted itself by the most unprovoked rebellion that our histories have handed down to us since the Norman Conquest; I therefore thought that to set the authors and principles of that desperate folly in a fair light, by allowing the mistaken consciences of some their best excuse, and by making ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... be mad, utterly and positively mad!" exclaimed Colonel Delmar; "I regret very much that he has ever come here. I know that some years ago, when he was younger, he fought two or three duels rather than make an apology; but in this instance it was so unprovoked, and I had hoped that he had got over all that nonsense and obstinacy. Are you a good shot, Keene? because he is ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... session at Richmond, in answer to a resolution of the convention asking him to define the policy he intended to pursue in regard to the Confederate States. In this he re-asserted the position assumed in his Inaugural, and added that "if, as now appears to be true, an unprovoked assault has been made on Fort Sumter, I shall hold myself at liberty to repossess it if I can, and the like places which had been seized before the government was devolved upon me. I shall, to the best of my ability, repel force by force." This letter was used to inflame public sentiment in Virginia, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the Diggers' bastings. Crack! feathers fly over the heads and into the eyes of the Camanches, and there many of them stick. The Camanches realize the disadvantages of unprovoked assault with no rules of warfare ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... faster than sound, so that the range could not have been great, but there was nothing by which our own batteries might have been directed to effective reply. We all abused "Long Tom" at first because of his unprovoked attack on a defenceless town, but by contrast with what is known among Devon men as the "Bulwaan Sneak," and among bluejackets as "Silent Susan," the big Creusot gun with its loud report, the low velocity of its projectiles, and the puff of white smoke giving ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... that? They might have been going anywhere. Why man!—that pair could pretty nearly nail us for unprovoked assault." ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... as he went on, he reflected on the strange scene through which he had just passed. All had gone on so rapidly that he could hardly recall the events to his memory. He was, however, quite sure that this unprovoked assault concealed some motive with which at ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... nothing, our prince was guilty of incredible outrages upon various persons and, what was most striking these outrages were utterly unheard of, quite inconceivable, unlike anything commonly done, utterly silly and mischievous, quite unprovoked and objectless. One of the most respected of our club members, on our committee of management, Pyotr Pavlovitch Gaganov, an elderly man of high rank in the service, had formed the innocent habit of declaring vehemently on all sorts of occasions: "No, you can't lead me by the nose!" Well, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to serve me so?' she cried with arching back. 'I'll teach you puppies how to make an unprovoked attack!' One puppy started to his feet with terror in his eyes, The other said, as soon ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... am bound to Kill? A Friend, that for my sake wou'd stake his Life, Leave a Chast Bride and untouch'd Nuptial Bed For me base Man, nay worse than Savage Beast: The generous Lyon, never kills his kind They say, altho provoked to utmost rage; Yet I vile Monster, more ungrateful Man, Thus unprovoked, must kill my Brother Creature, And which is worse, my Dear and only Friend! All for the pleasure of ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris |
