"Unreasonable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unreasonable. Suppose you have the cards engraved at once, and I will telegraph our list to the engraver if you will give me his address. If you prefer, you can get them engraved and sent out from there. That will keep ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... himself an abused man, and thinks there never was such a sprite of a woman,—the most utterly unreasonable, provoking human being he ever met with. What he does not think of is, that it is his own inconsiderate, constant fault-finding that has made every nerve so sensitive and sore, that the mildest suggestion of advice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... a quiet spirit of its own; and who in the strange world of human life will unveil for me the hopes and fears, the deep and varied passions, that bind men together and part them, and that seem to me such unreasonable and inexplicable things if they are bounded by the narrow fences of life—emotions that travel so long and intricate a path, that are born with such an amazing suddenness and attain so large a volume, so fierce a velocity—this is the interpreter and ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... swifter and swifter. He wondered if he should see Helen again. It seemed so unreasonable that he should not see her again. It must be a dream! Yet surely he would meet her. She at least was real. She was real. He ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... Was it unreasonable, therefore, to believe that this savage warrior had been touched by the sight of the little one on her knees, with her hands clasped in prayer, and by her eagerness to keep away all ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... the expeditions of the year 820, since they speak of him as having been "the scourge of the country for seventeen years," before he assumed the command of the forces landed from the fleet of 837. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that an accurate knowledge of the country, acquired by years of previous warfare with its inhabitants, may have been one of the grounds upon which the chief command was conferred on Turgesius. This knowledge was ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... else about a matter which was purely your own affair. {308} And as for Philip, 'Why, good gracious!' said he, 'Philip is the most thorough Hellene in the world, a most able speaker, and most friendly towards Athens: only there are certain persons in Athens so unreasonable and so churlish, that they are not ashamed to slander him and call him "barbarian".' Now is it possible that the man who had formerly spoken as Aeschines did, should now have dared to speak in such ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... decline the lawyer had asked Mr. Fox to take no further steps, stating vaguely that Mr. Allen would look into the matter, and would not be unreasonable. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Celtic civilization and dialects. It is uncertain how far they were themselves Celtic in blood and how far they were numerous enough to absorb or obliterate the races which they found in Britain. But it is not unreasonable to think that they were no mere conquering caste, and that they were of the same race as the Celtic-speaking peoples of the western continent. By the age of Julius Caesar all the inhabitants of Britain, except perhaps some tribes of the far north, were ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... her husband that it was both unreasonable and ungrateful of her to become a tearful young woman after their union, and for a phase of some months she certainly was a tearful young woman, but his mother made it clear to him that this was quite a correct and permissible phase for her, as she ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... expressive of his native habitation on the banks of the Phasis. The gold mines to the south of Trebizond, which are still worked with sufficient profit, were a subject of national dispute between Justinian and Chosroes; and it is not unreasonable to believe, that a vein of precious metal may be equally diffused through the circle of the hills, although these secret treasures are neglected by the laziness, or concealed by the prudence, of the Mingrelians. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... have been a brutal sight," he said at last, "and I can't tell you how sorry I am you saw it. I don't wonder you're shaken, poor little girl, and it's natural that the shock should have made you unreasonable and uncharitable—unlike yourself, in fact, for I never knew a more reasonable woman when you are in your right mind, or a more charitable. I'm not so bad, however, as you think me. I never intended to inflict suffering ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... land, do not also lose thy constancy; and if thou must die sooner than others, or than thou didst expect, yet do not die impatiently. For no chance is evil to him who is content, and to a man nothing is miserable unless it be unreasonable. No man can make another man to be his slave, unless that other hath first enslaved himself to life and death, to pleasure or pain, to hope or fear; command these passions, and you are freer ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... goes to Rome, it is not unreasonable that he should there look for some proofs of the vaunted excellence of the Roman faith. Rome is the seat of Christ's Vicar, and the centre of Christianity, as Romanists maintain; and there surely, if anywhere, may he expect to find those personal and social virtues ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... superseded in much of their work by the national government. Freedom of action was also restricted by the same power in other respects also. As early as 1436 a law had been passed, declaring that the ordinances made by the gilds were in many cases unreasonable and injurious, requiring them to submit their existing ordinances to the justices at Westminster, and prohibiting them from issuing any new ones until they had received the approval of these officials. There is no indication of the enforcement of this law. In 1504, however, it was reenacted ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... can appear more unreasonable, than that I should hesitate to admit the seemingly irresistible force of the argument presented to me. An ingenuous disposition would appear to require that, the moment the truth, or what seems to be ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... 'Madam, you are unreasonable!' said David, smiling, and putting down his pipe he laid an affectionate hand on his wife's arm. 'I went careering about the world with you last Saturday and the Saturday before, and this week end I must take for reading. There is ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... suggested to thoughtful observers the necessity of modifying some day the institutions of Gongen Sama; indeed, the Dutch state that they counselled against resisting the demands likely to be made by mercantile powers for a relaxation of their prohibitive policy. Therefore it was that the not unreasonable requirements of Commodore Perry were complied with, which guaranteed succor and good treatment of distressed sailors, and the admission of a consul. This last concession was obtained with much difficulty, for they regarded it as an abandonment of their policy of isolation, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... him with slight disapprobation on her pretty face. He was such a thoroughly nice boy. She wished with almost unreasonable intensity that he possessed more of that sterling quality, solidity, for which his travelling companion, Fisher, was ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... comment to himself that women are unreasonable. Again this statement was due to ignorance of an ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... agents of the King, and were only subscribed to and sealed by the assistants—were addressed, not to the Pope, but to the college of cardinals. The despatch of the barons expresses rudely the tortuous and unreasonable enterprises of him who, at present, is at the seat and government of the Church, and declares that neither the nobility nor the universities nor the people require correction or imposition of any trouble, whether by the authority ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... since it is useless, we think, to strive after that which we know to be beyond our reach. But the picture which I drew was not a phantom; as a model, it was devoid of imperfection; and to aspire to that height which had been really attained, was by no means unreasonable. I had another and more interesting object in view. One existed who claimed all my tenderness. Here, in all its parts, was a model worthy of assiduous study, and indefatigable imitation. I called ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... well-defined channels. The existence of these extensive valleys trending north and south over so large a tract of country render it by no means unlikely that they continue far beyond the limits of present explorations, and it is not unreasonable to infer that the great depression which has been traced nearly five hundred miles north from Spencer's Gulf through Lake Torrens to the stony desert of Sturt (or rather the mud plains contiguous ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... churches for their individual amusement and sanctification. As the day will probably come when every man in Hartford will live in his own mammoth, five-story granite insurance building, it may not be unreasonable to expect that every man will sport his own Gothic church. It is beginning to be discovered that the Gothic sort of church edifice is fatal to the Congregational style of worship that has been prevalent here in New England; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of Ascoli to negotiate with them, but his attempts were all in vain. Two years' arrearages—to be paid, not in cloth at four times what the contractors had paid for it, but in solid gold—were their not unreasonable demands after years of as hard fighting and severe suffering as the world has often seen. But Philip, instead of ducats or cloth, had only sent orders to go forth and conquer a new kingdom for him. Verdugo, too, from Friesland was howling for money, garrotting and hanging his mutinous ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... L. Gal. Unreasonable Man! because you see I have unusual Regards for you, Pleasure to hear, and Trouble to deny you; A fatal yielding in my Nature toward you, Love bends my Soul that way— A Weakness I ne'er felt for any other; And wou'd you be so base? and cou'd you have the Heart To take th' advantage on't ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... settle down in just such a comfortable home as yours, with a man who can work regularly four or five hours a day, thereby relieving one of all painful apprehensions in respect to clothes and pocket-money. I am easy to get along with. I have few unreasonable wants and never complain when they are constantly supplied. I think I could depend ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... Proserpine. You have no wish, no hope, no thought but for me! I have only to speak, and what I desire will be instantly done! And I do speak, I tell you my wish, I express to you my desire, and I am instantly refused! And what have I requested? Is it such a mighty favour? Is it anything unreasonable? Is there, indeed, in my entreaty anything so vastly out of the way? The death of a dog, a disgusting animal, which has already shaken my nerves to pieces; and if ever (here she hid her face in his breast), if ever that event should occur which both must desire, ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... squeaked suddenly. This was not one of the highly-placed astronomers, but part of the mechanical staff who'd been willing to do an unreasonable ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the action of Forrest at Johnsonville about that time caused General Thomas to change his orders and hurry me by rail to Nashville, and thence to Johnsonville, with the advance of my troops, he wishing to see me in person as I passed through Nashville.( 2) It would not be an unreasonable presumption that the burden of conversation in that brief interview was in respect to the alarming condition of Johnsonville at that time, rather than in respect to some future defensive operations against Hood, then hardly anticipated. Indeed, the entire correspondence ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... doubtless something unwholesome and repellent in the most innocent of my tastes; I could not even sin roundly, like other boys, by pilfering or truantry, but must display an exotic passion for reading forbidden books, an abhorred dexterity at caricature. I think we were equally headstrong and unreasonable, I in my young way, he in his old one; and as I trudged along the quiet homeward paths, it shamed me to remember with what hard words we ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... day I found myself in a state of unreasonable exaltation. Several times I put to myself the questions: Why is it that you feel so cheerful and so gay? Why have you the inclination to whistle and to dance in your room? Why do you light a cigar, and let it go out through forgetfulness? Why do you answer your ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... thrusts of the sting instead of three, or even to one, which is then delivered in the foremost segment. This, it would seem, from the persistency with which the Ammophila inflicts it, is the most important prick of all. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the operator, when she begins by pricking the thorax, intends to subdue her capture and to make it incapable of injuring her, or even of disturbing her when the moment comes for the delicate and protracted surgery of the second act? This idea seems to me highly admissible; ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... Jack Triplett came in, and singing (for he is really good company) 'Every feature, charming creature,'—he went on. It is a most unreasonable thing that people cannot go peaceably to see their friends, but these murderers are ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... support while suffering all other parties to slander and insult them. The action of the President of the French Republic in these disgusting circumstances is exceptional and unusual only in respect of his courage in expressly resenting his wrong. Everywhere the unreasonable complaint is heard that good men will not "go into politics;" everywhere the ignorant and malignant masses and their no less malignant and hardly less ignorant leaders and spokesmen, having sown the wind of reasonless ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... it is perfectly evident that I am unreasonable, I know it; but if I break my leg slipping on an orange peel, you would not prevent me from swearing at the person who had peeled the ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... creeter want to do but to go too. Her father was well off and wuz able to send her, and she had relatives there on her own side, some of the Pixleys, so her board wouldn't cost nothin'. So it didn't look nothin' unreasonable, though whether I could get her there and back without her mashin' all down on my hands, like a over ripe peach, she wuz that soft, wuz a question that hanted me, and so ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... then so rooted in the practice of justice that the beneficial ukase[51] ordaining its abolition remained a long time of none effect. It was thought that the confession of the accused was indispensable to condemnation, an idea not merely unreasonable, but contrary to the dictates of the simplest good sense in legal matters, for, if the denial of the accused be not accepted as proof of his innocence, the extorted confession should still less serve as proof of his guilt. Yet even now I still hear ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... France and the crusaders who were still about him might be of real service; and he attempted to win them over. Louis answered that he would engage in no enterprise until he had visited the holy places. Raymond was impetuous, irritable, and as unreasonable in his desires as unfortunate in his undertakings. He had quickly acquired great influence over his niece, Queen Eleanor, and he had no difficulty in winning her over to his plans. "She," says William of Tyre, "was a ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Herbert became more unreasonable than ever. "If Catherine does think of marrying again," he said, "the man will have to reckon first with me. But that is not the point. You seem to have forgotten that the woman at Buck's Hotel is described as a Widow. ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... came to a stand. At length Carlton said, "I hope, dear Reding, you are not joining the Church of Rome merely because there are unreasonable, unfeeling persons in ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... participates in, how many dinners she gives, how many parties she goes to, how many operas and theatres she patronizes, we can approximate somewhat to the size and cost of her wardrobe. It is not unreasonable to suppose that she has two new dresses of some sort for every day in the year, or 720. Now to purchase all these, to order them made, and to put them on afterward, consumes a vast amount of time. Indeed, the woman of society does little but don and doff dry-goods. For a few brief hours she flutters ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Professor Teufelsdroeckh's acquirements, patience of research, philosophic and even poetic vigour, are here made indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his Book, though likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popularity in England we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice of such a topic as Clothes, too often ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Rogliano I found a house of mourning, the consequences of a scene so horrible that the neighbors remember and speak of it to this day. Acting by my advice, my poor sister had refused to comply with the unreasonable demands of Benedetto, who was continually tormenting her for money, as long as he believed there was a sou left in her possession. One morning that he had demanded money, threatening her with the severest consequences if she did not supply him with what he desired, he disappeared ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was stern, quiet, solitary; ours, unreasonable and noisy, but soon over as to manifestation. Yet I must have suffered more than I knew of, I think, for then occurred the first of those strange lethargies or seizures that afterward returned at very unequal intervals during my childhood and early youth, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... that both you and Stampa have taken an unreasonable dislike to Mr. Bower," she said determinedly. The words were out before she quite realized their import. She ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... the whole affair about Stineli, and told how her little boy had got the idea firmly fixed in his noddle that he would never be well again unless this Stineli could come to him; and how even Rico had become unreasonable, and declared that he could go to fetch Stineli, even though he did not know a single stock nor stone of the way; and it was such a long journey up into the mountains, moreover, and it was impossible to realize what horrible people they were who lived ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... to see into what unreasonable disrepute active housekeeping—woman's first natural duty—has fallen in England. Take a family with four or five hundred a year—and we know how small a sum that is for "genteel humanity" in these days—the wife who will be an active housekeeper, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... use of coagulants has also manifested itself in other localities, but the results which have been obtained during the past twenty years from rapid sand filters and from slow sand filters, treating waters previously coagulated with salts of iron or alumina, have shown how thoroughly unreasonable were these objections. In this connection it is interesting to note that there are in the United States more than 350 rapid sand filter plants, and that nearly 12% of the urban population of Continental ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy
... a word the first skirmish between love and pride began. Perhaps she had been unreasonable after all. Was it right to blame a man too harshly for being mad about the woman he loved? In her heart of hearts did she desire any other sort of lover? Tears of vexation came in spite of every effort to maintain her high position. She had to face the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... so well—the world in which she had fluttered so successfully, spending lavishly the money of the man who at that moment lay next to her, worn out by calamity and fatigue. He had been patient through years of her unreasonable extravagance—through her selfish domination—through her ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... grasp a conception so daring and revolutionary took Elsie Marley some time. But when she had once grasped it, she considered it seriously. It did not seem to her, even at first, either unreasonable or impossible. Indeed, influenced by the enthusiasm of the other girl, she began to feel it both reasonable and fitting. In a way, too, it was only natural. For after all, the girl had always had her way ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... practised and avowed. It was not without reason that Charles contrasted the state of the nation then, with its position when under the rule of the legitimate family; and had there not been a strong, though, I think, unreasonable suspicion in the minds of many, that his success would be the prelude to a vigorous attack upon the established religions of the country, and that he would be inclined to follow out in this respect the fatal policy of his grandfather, Charles would in all probability ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... not succeeded, and has therefore given orders for the Russian fleet to come to Constantinople.[11] Heaven grant that these news may not be true, though bad news generally turn out correct. I am so sorry to see the Emperor Nicholas, who had been so wise and dignified since 1848, become so very unreasonable. In Austria they are still a good deal excited. One can hardly feel astonished considering circumstances; I trust that reflection may induce them to modify their measures. The Italian Nobles have shown ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... later times, than the impossibility of this article; so that it is a matter of great consideration and consequence to vindicate our religion in this particular. But if the thing be evidently impossible, then it is highly unreasonable to propose it ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... prevent all involuntary servitude, but all voluntary perpetual bondage. Sixth, that slavery in America reduces a man to a thing, a "chattel personal," robs him of all his rights as a human being, fetters both his mind and body, and protects the master in the most unnatural and unreasonable power, whilst it throws him out of the protection of law. Seventh, that slavery is contrary to the example and precepts of our holy and merciful Redeemer, and ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... the extremity of terror which seized upon the Jew at this information. He knew only too well of the relentless persecution to which his kindred were subjected at this period, and how, upon the slightest and most unreasonable pretences, their persons and their property were exposed to every turn ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... 'Worries make you unreasonable,' she half pouted, following Stephen at the distance of a few steps. 'Perhaps I ought to have told you before we sat down. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... anything so unreasonable!" said Buntingford warmly. "Cynthia is a very good creature, and can ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... always spoiled than to find his best and deepest feelings disbelieved in. At that moment, Summerhay meant absolutely what he said. The girl was nothing to him! If she was pursuing him, how could he help it? And he could not make Gyp believe it! How awful! How truly terrible! How unjust and unreasonable of her! And why? What had he done that she should be so unbelieving—should think him such a shallow scoundrel? Could he help the girl's kissing him? Help her being fond of him? Help having a man's nature? ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... you, Sir: there is now an Union.' JOHNSON. 'There must be a distinction of interest, while the proportions of land-tax are so unequal. If Yorkshire should say, "Instead of paying our land-tax, we will keep a greater number of militia," it would be unreasonable.' In this argument my friend was certainly in the wrong. The land-tax is as unequally proportioned between different parts of England, as between England and Scotland; nay, it is considerably unequal in Scotland itself. But the land-tax ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... with himself. Passionate, impulsive, and often unreasonable, his mind was singularly well-balanced and never before had it succumbed to obsession. He had taken the war as a normal episode in the history of a world dealing mainly in war; not as a strictly personal experience designed by a malignant fate to deprive ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... very unreasonable, but after some dickering it was decided that if he stood the ordeal he was to get an agreed amount of flour, tea, sugar, and tobacco. It was also settled that the ordeal should come off the next day. The conjurer ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... to put at times into their love an element just palpable enough to give one a fright—an extra-terrestrial touch. I ask myself with wonder—how the world can look to them—whether it has the shape and substance we know, the air we breathe! Sometimes I fancy it must be a region of unreasonable sublimities seething with the excitement of their adventurous souls, lighted by the glory of all possible risks and renunciations. However, I suspect there are very few women in the world, though of course I am ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... offer.... I'll treble it.... Hang it all, Pancaldi, you're unreasonable!... I suppose you want me to make it a round sum? All right: a hundred ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... be a woman in America is to be everything. That is why I think it unreasonable that Imperial nobility should be forbidden to match itself here. Once we had aristocracy of money, but since the war, when people became rich in no time by selling shoddy and things, that has levelled ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... in the afternoon Latisan had gone to the big house and had submitted himself to unreasonable complaints when he reported on what was going forward at headwaters. He had ventured to expostulate when the master told him how the thing ought ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... the busy workman, "for the owner of this miserable shanty, and he complains because I am only six months behind with my rent—a most unreasonable man. If he does not get his shoes to-morrow, he will turn me out; I must have some place to work, and so am forced to do the bidding of this ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... or three ideas, this one of cruel, hopeless, unattainable passion for herself would easily dominate him and render him, fresh to the emotions and therefore ignorant of how to control and deal with them, utterly unreasonable, even it might be violent and offensive. What wonder then if her thoughts like her eyes turned toward the loft above her. Despite her flighty tendencies, her town and theatre friendships and quarrels, her impulsive and emotional ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... to have to recount the disputes between a father and a son. We shrink from it and turn away. Suffice it to say that one day Miles and his father had a Vesuvian meeting on the subject of the army. The son became petulant and unreasonable; the father fierce and tyrannical. The end was that they ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... and few, perhaps, are less conspicuously annoying than this of Lord Hutchinson's. Sir Sidney's crimes were less distinctly revealed to our mind. As to Cuvier, Coleridge's hatred of him was more to our taste; for (though quite unreasonable, we fear) it took the shape of patriotism. He insisted on it, that our British John Hunter was the genuine article, and that Cuvier was a humbug. Now, speaking privately to the public, we cannot go quite so far as that. But, when publicly we address that most respectable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... require your friendly services in diplomatic intervention?' I nodded,—I felt that the allusion was unfair. 'Well, the occasion's come,—or, at least, it's very near.' She was still,—and I said nothing to help her. 'You know how unreasonable papa can be.' ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... in an extremely unreasonable manner. He had no right to visit his spleen on a perfectly innocent bank that paid twenty-five per cent to its shareholders and a thousand a year each to its directors, and what trifle was left over to its men in rages. But Priam was not like you or me. He did not invariably act ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... there,—Niece Denis to be female president. Niece Denis, widow without encumbrances; whom in her married state, wife to some kind of Commissariat-Officer at Lille, we have seen transiently in that City, her Uncle lodging with her as he passed. A gadding, flaunting, unreasonable, would-be fashionable female—(a Du Chatelet without the grace or genius, and who never was in love with you!)—with whom poor Uncle had a baddish life in time coming. All which settled, he still lingers. Widowed, grown old and less adventurous! 'That House ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... bar Julian out from these few days of his life. All that he did bored him, and the more decidedly because he came to know that there was something which did not bore, which even excited him, something which he had resolved to give up. He was, in fact, strangely pursued by an unreasonable desire to fly in the face of Doctor Levillier's advice, and of his own secondary antagonistic desire, and to sit again with Julian. Everything in which he sought to find distraction, lacked savour. As he sat watching a ballet that glittered with electricity, and was one twinkle of coloured ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... De Burgh called to escort Katherine and Mrs. Ormonde (who had dined with her) to the theatre he had conquered the extreme, though unreasonable, annoyance which had seized him on finding Errington and Katherine in apparently confidential conversation. He exerted himself therefore to be an agreeable host ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... definite reasons upon which to base her hopes. One thing, however, seemed certain. If the man with the stolen snuff box had arrived in Brussels, it clearly meant that Richard had failed to capture him in London, and it seemed not unreasonable to suppose that he would be ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... at the Areopagus, important affairs were examined fasting; and it has been remarked that, among those people, where public affairs were discussed during the heat of meals, and the fumes of digestion, deliberations were hasty and violent, and the results of them frequently unreasonable, and productive of turbulence ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... was expected to have reveille at daybreak, and to be in line for departure by sunrise. This delighted our men, who always took a childlike pleasure in being out of bed at any unreasonable hour; and by the time I had emerged, the tents were nearly all struck, and the great wagons were lumbering into camp to receive them, with whatever else was to be transported. The first rays of the sun must fall upon ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... sugar instead of salt, and a bright, clear pond, filled with gold fish that let themselves be caught whenever he pleased. Nothing could be more complete, and yet, very strange to say, Master No-book did not seem particularly happy. This appears exceedingly unreasonable, when so much trouble was taken to please him; but the truth is that every day he became more fretful and peevish. No sweetmeats were worth the trouble of eating, nothing was pleasant to play at, and in the ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... not very unreasonable to suspect from what had already passed, that Mr Swiveller was not quite recovered from the effects of the powerful sunlight to which he had made allusion; but if no such suspicion had been awakened by his speech, his wiry hair, dull eyes, and sallow face would still have been strong witnesses against ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... anything fully comprehended. The horse, though possessed of some faculties superior to man's being deficient in reasoning powers, has no knowledge of right or wrong, of free will and independent government, and knows not of any imposition practiced upon him, however unreasonable these impositions may be. Consequently, he cannot come to any decision what he should or should not do, because he has not the reasoning faculties of man to argue the justice of the thing demanded of him. If he had, taking into consideration his superior ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... Simon de Vries, was declined for the reason that it was too much and he did not wish the care of it. Later, he compromised with the heirs by accepting an income of one hundred and twenty-five dollars a year. "How unreasonable," he exclaimed, "they want me to accept five hundred florins a year—I told them I would take three hundred, but I will not be burdened by a stiver more." If he was financially free from the necessity ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Lord is not unreasonable; he requires no high motives where such could not yet exist. He does not say, 'You must be sorry for your sins, or you need not come to me:' to be sorry for his sins a man must love God and man, and love is the very thing that has to be developed ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... certainly, but that made no difference; there was nothing else to be done. Honest Maggie, giggling and rubicund, put aside her complacent nursling (who thereupon became anything but complacent) and took to her kind bosom this strapping and unreasonable young gentleman, who had already got many of his second teeth. That did not prevent him from making an unconscionably good supper, and thenceforth the only person likely to be disturbed by his new departure in gormandizing was Maggie herself. Everything being thus happily arranged, the household ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... strongly, that when people who were not ill or in trouble came to him and asked him to exercise his powers as a sign of his mission, he was irritated beyond measure, and refused with an indignation which they, not seeing Rousseau's point, must have thought very unreasonable. To be called "an evil and adulterous generation" merely for asking a miracle worker to give an exhibition of his powers, is rather a startling experience. Mahomet, by the way, also lost his temper when people asked him to perform miracles. But Mahomet ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... or a boy has the terror of drowning pressed in upon his heart, he is usually a most unreasonable being; and will even clasp his intended rescuer about the neck, and prevent him from carrying out his plans that might have worked well only for ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... a safe inner pocket in the lining of my waistcoat, I went into our room and woke up Anscombe who was sleeping soundly, a fact that caused an unreasonable irritation in my mind. When at length he was thoroughly aroused I said ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... approaching event has already been determined without our help and knowledge. We are never helped in a choice, though we are comforted and encouraged after we have chosen to the best of our knowledge. Many times this seemed cruel and unreasonable to me, but I am inclined to believe in the beneficent ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... friend," cried Wolf, "we must make no unreasonable demands on life. Luxuriant locks, and a well-paid professorship, teeth and celebrity, youth and orders, prosperity, successes of all kinds, these we cannot have unless we are ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... in the paintings of Vandyke, Velasquez, Gainsborough, or other great artists, however difficult the period of fashion with which they had to deal, anything preposterous—always something beautiful, however unreasonable in ornamentation and clothes. Sometimes it is said that beauty and simplicity are the same. But we have to remember that complexity remains simple whilst unconsciousness of complexity remains. There were several periods of dress that retained beauty and complexity ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... not be," said Christian, "so unreasonable in my terms as stories tell of the old apostate; I will offer your Grace, as he might do, temporal prosperity and revenge, which is his frequent recruiting money, but I leave it to yourself to provide, as you may be pleased, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... soon after the Creation, became acquainted with and yielded to the doctrine of devils, scarcely admits of doubt. Those who conversed with our first parents must have learned from them the circumstances connected with the temptation, fall, and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It is not unreasonable, then, to suppose that the serpent was looked upon at an early period as something more than an ordinary earthly reptile. One can imagine Adam and Eve, when wandering in perplexity and fear, after their first great sin, starting at the sight of ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Linen and our Fisheries, our Tillage and our Collieries, our Salt-works, and our Mines, (not to mention many others) would employ most of the idle Hands in the Kingdom, if we would once set vigorously about them. Can we be so unreasonable as to expect she will distress her own Natives, to encourage those in Ireland, as if they had not Sense to consider, that their Charity, as well as ours, should ever begin at home? It can never be denied, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... So speaking, the unreasonable teacher caught hold of Sam once more, and despite the youngest Rover's struggles hustled him out of the office and through a long hallway, at the end of which was located the storeroom he had mentioned. The key to the room was in ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... Side, a butifull open and extensive bottom in which there is an old Village, one also on the Stard. Side a little above both of which are abandened by all their inhabitents except Two Small dogs nearly Starved, and an unreasonable portion of flees- The Hills and mountains are covered with Sever kinds of Pine-Arber Vitea or white Cedar, red Loril, alder and Several Species of under groth, the bottoms have common rushes, nettles, & grass the Slashey parts have ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... us," said aunty piteously, referring to the children's father, "if we begin by losing one of them?" And she unmercifully snubbed Ralph's not unreasonable suggestion of "detectives;" he had always heard the French ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... about the friendship of a pet lamb and dog which he owned when a boy. It was so unreasonable that he was interrupted on nearly every assertion. Long before he had finished, Sponsilier checked his narrative and informed him that if he insisted on doling out fiction he must have some consideration ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... NATURAL: i.e. not founded on mere artificial characters? If you think that they are generally made as natural as they can be, then I should like very much to tabulate the sub-genera, considering them for the time as good genera. In this case, and if you do not think me unreasonable to ask it, I should be very glad of the loan of Volumes X., XI., XII., and XIV., which include Acanthaceae, Scrophulariaceae, Labiatae, and Proteaceae,—that is, the orders which, when divided quite equally, do not accord with my rule, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... did look just that-wise that I knew not whether I to need to kiss her, or to shake her; and truly, how should I know; for my heart did ache that I have her to mine arms; but my brain to say that she did go over-far in the joke; and truly you to see that I did not be unreasonable, neither to be lacking of grace; for indeed I do think that I was swayed all-ways, because that I saw all the dear way that her pretty nature did work; and to conceive of her mood and to understand and be stirred; ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... also. Last night I saw how he suffered, how he struggled to subdue his temper. Phyllis, any moment that temper may subdue him, and then there will be sorrow. You must come to some understanding with him. John and you may enjoy the romance of your present position, and put off, with the unreasonable selfishness of lovers, matter-of-fact details, but Richard ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... with groveling and grotesque cowardice. The Yezid of Mesopotamia, whose belief in the power of an evil spirit is derived from the Manicheism of old, shows his fear of the arch-enemy by simple and not unreasonable acts of negation. He does nothing that may offend; never mentions his name; and dwells on his attributes as little as possible. The devil-worshipper of Ceylon uses such ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... impulse, foolish and unreasonable in its nature, may momentarily appear to offer a sufficient excuse for your conduct; but there are duties imposed upon you which are incompatible with your regard for a poor girl such as I ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of course be cultivated. Now, too, though the intellect is not frequently judged insane, so that pubescent insanity is comparatively rare, the feelings, which are yet more fundamental to mental sanity, are most often perverted, and lack of emotional steadiness, violent and dangerous impulses, unreasonable conduct, lack of enthusiasm and sympathy, are very commonly caused by abnormalities here. Neurotic disturbances, such as hysteria, chorea, and, in the opinion of some physicians, sick-headache and early dementia are peculiarly liable to appear and become seated during this period. In short, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... suffered any silly fancy of mine, as she was in the habit of styling an attachment, to stand in the way of her ambitious views; views which she was determined to carry into effect, in defiance of every obstacle, and in order to accomplish which, she would not have hesitated to sacrifice anything so unreasonable and contemptible as ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Mr. Williams, who had the bill in charge, was desirous of having it passed upon in the Senate on the evening of the day of this discussion, February 15th. Several Senators protested against this as unreasonable haste. "It is extraordinary," said Mr. Doolittle, "that a bill of this kind, that proposes to establish a military despotism over eight million people and a country larger than England, France, and Spain combined, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... the van of human progress, as the result of this theory of a capacity for self-government, turn round and ignore this divinity, this capacity in another branch of the human family? The theory has worked only good in its application thus far, and it is a most unreasonable, a most unwarrantable distrust to expect it to produce mischief when applied to others in all respects mentally and morally the equals of those who now enjoy it. It neither can nor will do so; but, necessarily, the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... unreasonable because angry, I wrote to remonstrate with her on quarrelling with the severity or frankness of a review, which certainly was dictated by real admiration and real friendship; even under its objections the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the topic for discussion in the halls of legislation and at every fireside, the time seemed so opportune for the settlement of the broad question of representation, that the persistency and determination of a few women to secure their rights was neither surprising nor unreasonable. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... foible, that it needs something to be done to it every five minutes; but, after all, these little interruptions of our bright-faced genius are like the piquant sallies of a clever friend,—they do not strike us as unreasonable. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... announced to her that he was about to marry, Sarah Rocliffe was angry. She had made up her mind that Jonas would continue a "hudger," and that his house and land would fall to her son, after his demise. This was perhaps an unreasonable expectation, especially as her own conduct had precipitated the engagement; but it was natural. She partook of the surly disposition of her brother. She could not exist without somebody or something to fall out with, to scold, to find fault with. Her incessant recrimination ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... known, has taken upon itself to abridge the freedom of the press. The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed. Then follow various clauses intended for the security of the people in reference to the administration of the laws. They shall not be troubled by unreasonable searches. They shall not be made to answer for great offenses except by indictment of a grand jury. They shall not be put twice in jeopardy for the same offense. They shall not be compelled to give evidence against themselves. Private property shall ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... you did not come of your own free will at all," I said, and then I found I had hurt her, and I had to explain that it was the disobedience that troubled me; whereupon they both argued seriously that people were not bound to submit to a cruel and unreasonable prejudice, which had set the country in arms against us. "Monstrous," Dermot said, "that two fellows should suffer for their fathers' sins, and such fellows, and you too for not being unnatural to your ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lady Monogram. 'Did anybody ever see anything so vulgar?' This was at any rate unreasonable, for whatever vulgarity there may have been, Lady Monogram ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... real objection I can see to my explanation of the arrangement of the days in this circle is the fact that it necessitates the transposition of two characters, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that the artist may have ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas |
