"Unwritten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over-acted carelessness, "Anybody who likes," he said, "can feed my rabbits," and he disappeared, with a jauntiness that deceived nobody, in the direction of the orchard. Now, kingdoms might totter and reel, and convulsions change the map of Europe; but the iron unwritten law prevailed, that each boy severely fed his own rabbits. There was good ground, then, for suspicion and alarm; and while the lettuce-leaves were being drawn through the wires, Harold and I conferred seriously ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... of the earlier bishops are taken from Bishop Stubbs' "Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum." Of the bishops between 1609 and 1845 there was only one (Peter Gunning) who was not translated to Ely from some other see. It is now an unwritten law that the Bishop of Ely should be a Cambridge man. For at least two centuries and a half this rule has been followed, if we except Francis Turner; and he, though of New College, Oxford, had been Master of S. John's, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... has its own laws,—the common and unwritten law of the forecastle, of which Admiralty Courts take infrequent cognizance, and the law of the quarter-deck, which is to be read in acts of Parliament and statutes of Congress. The sea has its own customs, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... written laws to be administered. The place of these was taken by public opinion and tradition, that is, by the ideas handed down from one generation to another and constantly discussed around the camp-fire and the council-fire. Every decent Indian was singularly obedient to this unwritten code. He wanted always to do what he was told his fathers had been accustomed to do, and what was expected of him. Thus there was a certain general standard ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... testimonial. But don't worry. America can turn out millions just like me, and Oxford can have as many of them as she can hold. On the other hand, how many of YOU can be turned out, as per sample, in England? Yet you choose to destroy yourself. You avail yourself of the Unwritten Law. And you're right, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... tiny fire of distaste fanned itself alive in Allen's brain. Why in the name of World Government did every other girl who made first play with him have to be protected? But there was his out. By unwritten social code he could declare the date off. Except that he had grown to increasingly hate the spiteful practice of 'protection'. It meant Nedda had peeved some local lothario who, along with other males in his clique, was going to damn ...
— DP • Arthur Dekker Savage
... expansions of the first or were based upon Johnson's opposition to reconstruction or upon his speeches in criticism of Congress. Nothing could be said about his control of the patronage, though this was one of the unwritten charges. J. W. Schuckers, in his life of Chase, says that the radical leaders "felt the vast importance of the presidential patronage; many of them felt, too, that, according to the maxim that to the victors belong the spoils, the ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... late Warden of Merton undertook the preparation of this volume he invited the assistance of Dr. Fotheringham in the portions dealing with foreign affairs. At the time of the late Warden's death in 1903 three chapters (x., xii. and xviii.) were unwritten, and one (xx.) was left incomplete. It was also found that the volume had to be recast in order to meet the plan of the series. The necessary alterations and additions have been made by Dr. Fotheringham, who has been scrupulous in ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... in silence the profundity of the point of view thus presented to him, and, according to his habit, quickly made it part of his practice. For his first weeks at school he kept very silent, absorbing its traditions and the unwritten laws made by the boys themselves, on the nice observance of which hung ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... enable the learner to read the common type in one-fourth of the time necessary according to the usual mode of instruction. That its acquisition leads the pupil to the correct pronunciation of every word. That it will present to the missionary a superior alphabet for the representation of hitherto unwritten languages," &c. A similar committee, to whom the question was referred by the House of Representatives in 1852, state that during the past year the system had been tried in twelve public schools, and that, according to the testimony of the teachers, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Prince of Denmark. The old dreary looking castle still stands there. From Elsinore I went to Copenhagen, and occupied myself for a few days in visiting the wonderful museums. There I saw, in the Northern Antiquities Collection, the unwritten history of civilisation in the stone, bronze, and iron tools which have brought the world to what it is now. This museum is perfectly unrivalled. I saw there the first section of kitchen-middens—that is, the refuse of oyster shells, fish-bones, and other stuff thrown out by the ancient ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... rarest of his great qualities, gave a generous and authoritative testimony to the merit of these attacks upon his father, and his father's creed, which Macaulay himself lived to wish that he had left unwritten. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... distance, Arnold of Brescia sadly contemplated Rome's disgrace and the evil state of the Roman people. The yet unwritten words of Saint Bernard were already more than true. They are worth repeating here, in Gibbon's strong translation, for they perfect the picture of ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... generation from the circumstances narrated. It ceases to be reliable when it has been transmitted through more than two hands. In the case of a great and startling event, like a destructive convulsion of nature or a protracted war, the authentic story, though unwritten, of the central facts, at least, is of much longer duration. There may be visible monuments that serve to perpetuate the recollection of the occurrences which they commemorate. Institutions may exist—popular festivals ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... has remained so long unwritten as that which tells the story of the Mormons. There are many books on the subject, histories written under the auspices of the Mormon church, which are hopelessly biased as well as incomplete; more trustworthy works ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... his reading at his son's entrance. He muttered a welcome through the clouds, but he did not raise his eyes. Jimmy took the other arm-chair, and began to smoke silently. It was the unwritten law of the den that soothing silence rather than aimless chatter should prevail. It was not until a quarter of an hour had passed that Mr. Crocker dropped ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... more wonderful gift developed in him when he got home to his native country. Though the tones of Scotch humour were much less refined, and its utterances at that early period could be scarcely more than the jests and unwritten ballads of the populace, yet his early acquaintance with them must have lingered in the young Prince's mind, acquiring additional zest from the prepossessions of exile and the longing for home. And when the polished singer of the King's "Quhair" found himself again in his native land he seems to ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... independent nation, and a free nation, began at Plymouth and at Jamestown. The Constitution only made articulate the spirit which had been growing for more than a century, and it still left an unwritten law set up by custom, habit, and characteristics most aptly nourished to the ends reached in 1776, 1787, and 1789. While our written constitution was made, we still retained the common law of England as the basis of our own, and, like England, proceeded gradually to build upon this broad ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... novel still remained unwritten. Perhaps she had not yet "absorbed" the "local color"; perhaps inspiration was tardy. At all events she had not written a word. But she was beginning to realize the possibilities; deep in her soul something was moving that would presently ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... which might be called the multiple form, is used whenever more than one person is addressed, even though no word may appear in the sentence indicating how many. This is an idiosyncracy which perhaps would never have been developed, certainly would not be perpetuated, in any except an unwritten language. It is of no effect except in a language always colloquial. The multiple form will be given in this grammar as the first person plural, and, whether indicated or not, the other may be understood as being the same ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... cleaned house in September and April. She started with the attic and worked her purifying path down to the cellar in strict accordance with Article I, Section 1, Unwritten Rules for House Cleaning. For twenty-five years she had done it. For twenty-five years she had hated it—being an intelligent woman. For twenty-five years, towel swathed about her head, skirt pinned back, sleeves ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... of statutory law based on Anglo-American common law for the modern sector and customary law based on unwritten tribal practices for indigenous sector; accepts compulsory ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... when that unhappy country had been separated from France and Italy after the Treaty of Verdun in 843, Carlovingian law and the ancient German law books fell into disuse. The law again rested on unwritten customs, on the decisions of the judges and their assessors, and on agreements of the interested parties (feudal services and tenures). Not till the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was any record made of the rules of law which had arisen; many laws of cities on various matters and in various ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... that they are doing wrong, even when it it very difficult for parents to believe that they do not intend wrong-doing. As we have seen from our analysis of truthfulness, the child may very often lie without a qualm of conscience, and he may still more readily break the unwritten rules of courtesy, asking abrupt and even cruel questions of strangers, and haul the family skeleton out of its closet at critical moments. Such things cannot be wholly guarded against, even by the exercise of the utmost wisdom, but the habit of reasoning things out ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... self-abnegation is the first of her duties; however much she may suffer, she must present as calm and serene a countenance as a warrior in the hour of danger, and fall, if necessary, upon the spot, with death in her heart and a smile upon her lips. In order to obey this unwritten law, Madame de Bergenheim, after a slight interruption, seated herself at the piano to accompany three or four young girls who were each to sing in turn the songs that they had been ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the Rock for four days. During whole afternoons he sat there looking out over the Bad Lands. At sunset he returned to camp. Aliris: A Romance of all Time gathered dust. Letters home remained unwritten. Prospecting was left to the capable hands of Old Mizzou until, much to Bennington's surprise, that individual ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... his ungrammatical gibberish. He had sailed (among other places) much among the islands; and after a Cape Horn passage with its snow-squalls and its frozen sheets, he announced his intention of "taking a turn among them Kanakas." I thought I should have lost him soon; but, according to the unwritten usage of mariners, he had first to dissipate his wages. "Guess I'll have to paint this town red," was his hyperbolical expression; for sure no man ever embarked upon a milder course of dissipation, most of his days being passed in the little parlour behind Black Tom's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... already said, so much identify their lives with that of the tribe, that each of their acts, however insignificant, is considered as a tribal affair. Their whole behaviour is regulated by an infinite series of unwritten rules of propriety which are the fruit of their common experience as to what is good or bad—that is, beneficial or harmful for their own tribe. Of course, the reasonings upon which their rules of propriety are based sometimes are absurd ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... were alone together—that was the joy of it all, so much alone together; for Swift Wing did not live with them, and, like Breaking Rock, she watched her daughter's life, standing afar off, since it was the unwritten law of the tribe that the wife's mother must not cross the path or enter the home of her daughter's husband. But at last Dingan had broken through this custom, and insisted that Swift Wing should be with her daughter ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his death or abdication. This method might be sufficiently accurate if the exact duration of each reign were known as well as the exact sequence of the reigns. But no such precision could be expected in the case of unwritten history, transmitted orally from generation to generation. Thus, while Japanese annalists, by accepting the aggregate duration of all the reigns known to them, arrive at the conclusion that the first Emperor, Jimmu, ascended the throne in the year ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... there are those who will say that cats are not in misery when they give vent to those soul-stirring passages from unwritten opera, under the currant bushes, but we cannot but think that they are in the most crushing misery which it would be a charity to put them out of, or they would not chew their words so, and expectorate imaginary tobacco juice, mingled with hair and ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... different. The bugaboo of strict propriety seems to take mysterious ascendancy. We still dine together, but it is done in the most proper evening dress. It seems to be the law—unwritten but unalterable—that Hawkins and I shall display upon our respective bosoms something like a square foot of starchy ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... excellent school for the future politician. The dust might accumulate upon his law books: he was learning unwritten law in the hearts of these countrymen. And yet, even at this time, he exhibited a certain maturity. There seems never to have been a time when the arts of the politician were not instinctive in him. He had no boyish illusions to outlive regarding the nature and conditions of public life. His perfect ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... is unwritten; the great deeds are undone; in no biographical dictionary will you find the name of our cousin the curate. Is his life, therefore, lost? Have his powers ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... once condemned, was ever permitted to come back. The condemnation was for all time. Furthermore, it was part of the Chief's unwritten code, that no one who transgressed the law could ever make atonement, or ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... of Glory, Heroes of unwritten story, Nurslings of one mighty mother, Hopes of her, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Russian boy who called himself Orloff had the look in his eyes of one who has seen things upon which eyes never should have looked. He smoked constantly and ate, apparently, not at all. Among these there existed a certain unwritten code and ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... are certain unwritten laws which have more influence in some cases as to the guilt of a murderer than any on the statute books," said the Gouverneur Faulkner with a very great slowness, so that the poor human dog might comprehend him. "If you ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... subversion they erected their commonwealth, and by its virtue lifted the world out of its orbit and assigned a new course to history. Here or nowhere we have the broken chain, the rejected past, precedent and statute superseded by unwritten law, sons wiser than their fathers, ideas rooted in the future, reason cutting as clean as Atropos. The wisest philosopher of the old world instructs us to take things as they are, and to adore God in the event: "Il faut toujours etre content de ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... over this, as they never failed to be promptly informed by the numerous agents whom they employed in France. It was under these sad circumstances that the year 1813 closed. We will see in future what were the consequences of it, and in fact the history, until now unwritten, of the Emperor's inner life at Fontainebleau; that is to say, of the most ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... confounded by the unexpected suddenness of the attack, Rablay backed two or three paces, and, blinded by the rush of blood from his forehead, drew out his handkerchief. No one stirred. It was part of the unwritten law in Garotte to let every man in such circumstances play his game as he pleased. For a moment or two the Judge mopped his face, and then he started towards his assailant with his round face puckered up and out-thrust hands. He had scarcely moved, however, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... changed. His machine must be kept a secret as long as he could. The machine was his, James Quincy Holden's property by every known and unwritten legal right of direct, single, uncluttered inheritance. The work of his parents had been stopped by their death, but it was by no means finished with the construction of the machine. To the contrary, the real work had only begun with the completion of the first working model. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... keep her by you. If she grew worse you would be justified in putting her, as we say, under restraint, or in the care of those best fitted to look after her, but even then you would remain her husband. That is the unwritten law of our and of ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... contribution to the public opinion of the day, whether our contribution be a raindrop or a Niagara. We are responsible for what we say and what we leave unsaid, for what we do and what we leave undone, for what we write and what is unwritten. We are responsible for the errors we have committed and for those we have taken no part in overthrowing. So, whether we realize it or not, we are consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally, directly or indirectly, according to our opportunities ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... civilized or barbarous, has such a code of its own. Without it social life would be impossible, for no man would know what to expect of his neighbors, nor be able promptly to interpret the words and actions of his fellow-men. It is in obedience to an unwritten law of this kind that an American takes off his hat when he goes into a church, and an Asiatic, when he enters a mosque, takes off his shoes; that Englishmen shake hands, and Africans rub noses. Where etiquette is well understood and well adapted to the persons whom ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... towns on the sea-board, but they left the clans of the interior comparatively untouched. Their life centred around the family. The Government counted for little or nothing; for was it not the symbol of the detested foreign rule? Its laws were therefore as naught when they conflicted with the unwritten but omnipotent code of family honour. A slight inflicted on a neighbour would call forth the warning words—"Guard thyself: I am on my guard." Forthwith there began a blood feud, a vendetta, which frequently ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... works—Landseer, Frith, Phil Morris, Mueller, Ansdell, Ansdell and Phillip, Hefner, Weiser, Creswick, Sant, John Wilson, Junr., Solomon, and Henry O'Neil—the latter artist's "Return of the Wanderer" being in a conspicuous position. As Sir Robert points them out, he seems to see an unwritten story on every canvas. He singles out the Mueller as his greatest treasure, for it was the last and possibly the best work the artist ever chronicled with his brush, and he died ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... once more—half a penknife, a bunch of keys, but not a farthing. Suddenly I dive into my pocket and take the papers out again. It was a mechanical movement, an unconscious nervous twitch. I selected a white unwritten page, and—God knows where I got the notion from—but I made a cornet, closed it carefully, so that it looked as if it were filled with something, and threw it far out on to the pavement. The breeze blew it onward a little, and then it ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... the red man's story; far and wide He searched the unwritten annals of his race; He sat a listener at the Sachem's side, He tracked the ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... uncompromising degree. With him there is no need of further speech, and to this end I have inscribed certain words upon his namepaper. To everyone this person will now return the paper which has been entrusted to him, folded so that the nature of its contents shall be an unwritten leaf to all others. Nor shall the papers be unfolded by any until he is within his own chamber, with barred doors, where all, save the one who shall find the message, shall remain, not venturing forth until daybreak. ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... chapel,—but at its eastern end where the altar might have been, was a dark purple curtain against which blazed in brilliant luminance a Cross and Seven-pointed Star. The rays of light shed by this uplifted Symbol of an unwritten Creed were so vivid as to be almost blinding, and nearly eclipsed the summer glory of the sun itself. Awed by the strange and silent solemnity of my surroundings, I was glad to be hidden under the folds of my enshrouding white veil, though I realised that I was in a sort of secret recess ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... apt to be taken in by mediums or even by spirits. Yes; but this only imposes the ordinary obligation of keeping one's eyes open. I know spiritualists who believe in every medium qua medium, and others who accept as unwritten gospel the idiotic utterances of a departed buccaneer or defunct clown: but these people are so purely exceptional as simply to prove a rule. Do not accept as final in so-called spiritual what you would not accept in avowedly mundane matters. Keep your eyes open and your head cool, and you will ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... then, the demeanor of one who knows that he is doomed alone to unwritten responsibilities. He lagged, with tragic ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... each other guiltily. They had no desire to spread scandal, no desire to be ill-natured. Who would have? And to outsiders no word was breathed, unwritten law ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... originally expressed, we see revealed, in the reconstruction of a language that no longer exists, the material objects and habits of thought and life of a people who passed away before history began,—so imperishable are the unconscious embodiments of mind, even in the airy and unsubstantial forms of unwritten speech! By this process, then, we learn that the Aryans were a nomadic people, and had made some advance in civilization. They lived in houses which were roofed, which had windows and doors. Their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... difficult for us to understand how so many good things are blocked, not only in the Federal Government, but in the separate States, by the written constitutions. In Great Britain the Constitution consists of unwritten principles embodied either in Parliamentary statutes or in the common law, and yields to any Act which Parliament may pass, and the judiciary can impose no veto on it. This is one reason why England is so far ahead of the United States in labour legislation. Miss ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... being more intricate than any ordinary bath, took a long time, and when it was over, and Ourieda a perfumed statue of ivory, the cooling-room was entered for the dyeing of the bride's hair. The girl's face showed how she disliked the process; but it being an unwritten law that the hair of an Arab bride must be coloured with sabgha, she submitted. After the first shudder she sat with downcast eyes, looking indifferent, for nothing mattered to her now. Since Manoeel would never see it again, and perhaps it would soon lie deep under earth in a coffin, she cared ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... from England, and originated there in custom. It is often called the unwritten law, because unwritten in origin, though there are now many books describing it. Its principles originated as habits of the people, five hundred, eight hundred, years ago, perhaps some of them back in the time when the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... before the fact and the first settlers of the west after the fact had their part, witting or unwitting, willing or unwilling, written or unwritten, along with George Rogers Clark and his men, who seized the British forts in that territory during the Revolution (and thus gave standing to the claim for its transfer), and along with the men of the Atlantic colonies who sacrificed ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... dappled deer was hidden under a fallen tree-top and one day, while the doe was gone, he fell upon the helpless fawn, which, according to the unwritten law of the forest, ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... head as he puffed thoughtfully at his pipe. Perhaps he was thinking of the night when Jones had threatened him with death and laughed at his helplessness. "According to the 'unwritten law' which is made to cover so many lawless acts, I have the power to deal with them as I think fit," he answered. "And I must confess I was sorely tempted to take the law into my own hands when I knew the mutineers ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... will there receive the rewards of patriots. Scores who were here despised for cowardice, will there receive the plaudits that await the brave. Legions who have perished in ignominious cells, will there be found crowned heroes. For who knows the yet unwritten record of the horrible war between the States, but the heroes who perished ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... Golconda. We believe that Woman should associate freely with man, and we believe that it is for the preservation of her rights. She should become acquainted with the metaphysical designs of those who condescended to sing the siren song of flattery. This, we think, should be according to the unwritten law of decorum, which is stamped upon every innocent heart. The precepts of prudery are often steeped in the guilt of contamination, which blasts the expectations of better moments. Truth, and beautiful dreams—loveliness, and delicacy of character, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... the door disturbed these pleasant thoughts and he frowned. There was an unwritten law at the Vicarage that save for the most urgent of reasons he should never be interrupted at ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the three great compromises which postponed the Rebellion. All the leading men and all the striking events of our history would contribute something to the interest and value of the work. Why go to antiquity or to the Old World for subjects, when such a subject as this remains unwritten? ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... adoption or rejection of the latter. The trilingual rule is followed, delegates addressing the assembly either in French, German, or English, as they prefer, each speech being followed by a brief resume in the other two languages from the interpreter. In the commissions, by an unwritten but generally accepted custom, French and German are the only languages used. (Latterly the representatives of the United States of America, with the individualistic courage that becomes them, have shown a disposition to rebel against this custom and defy it; ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... "Unwritten law, chivalry, all the rest of that rot? I am well aware that the Southern trigger-finger is none too steady, where lovely woman is concerned," he admitted, with a faint sneer. "But when one plays for high stakes, Miss Eustis, ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... poems one would never suspect that they were produced in an age of turmoil. To be sure, one finds a few poems on slavery (sentimental effusions, written on shipboard to relieve the monotony of a voyage), but these were better unwritten since they added nothing to the poet's song and took nothing from the slave's burden. Longfellow has been criticized for his inaction in the midst of tumult, but possibly he had his reasons. When everybody's shouting is an excellent time to hold your tongue. He had his own work to do, a work for ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... unsteadily, but his father smothered a sigh and watched him with curious solicitude. The unwritten law that Christopher had learnt so well had been very heavily infringed, and Charles Aston had no liking for the man who had infringed it, though he was his ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... three times across the room. Then he turned to Armisted, who also had risen, looked at him more coldly than before and said: "But the man— would it not be better that he—could not the country spare him better than it can spare you? Or are the Armisteds opposed to 'the unwritten law'?" ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... when the Ninth National Convention of women to demand their legal rights was in session in New York, there were only three white women in the now rich and beautiful city of Denver. Still another ten years of wild border life, of fierce vicissitudes, of unwritten tragedies enacted in forest and mine, and Colorado was organized into a territory with a population of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... cherished the memory of Robert Seymour, but that to a certain extent the claim has a foundation of fact to rest upon; for who will deny that had not Seymour communicated his idea to Chapman, and Chapman introduced the artist to Dickens, the "Pickwick Papers" themselves would have remained unwritten. In this sense, but in this sense only, therefore, Robert Seymour was the undoubted originator of "Pickwick." He was an artist of great power, talent, and ability; and it seems to us that those only detract from ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... to see daylight. What exactly was the trouble I didn't understand, but it was evidently something to do with the good old Artistic Temperament, and I could believe anything about that. It explains everything. It's like the Unwritten Law, don't you know, which you plead in America if you've done anything they want to send you to chokey for and you don't want to go. What I mean is, if you're absolutely off your rocker, but don't find it convenient to be scooped into the luny-bin, you simply explain that, ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... faith and practice are not to be confused, each is separate from the other; the two may unite or the one may be divorced from the other without the integrity of either being affected: this is the unwritten Hindu code which she and hers had ever held; and now, after years of belief in it, to face round suddenly to its opposite—this was more than she could do. She held, as it were, the Truth in her hand, and turned ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... vast wildernesses and mighty lakes, has been traditionally invested with a mystery. The very name of Mackinaw, in the Indian tongue, signifies the dwelling-place of the Great Genii, and many are the legends written and unwritten connected with its history. If the testimony of an old Indian chief at Thunder Bay can be credited, it was at old Mackinaw that Mud-je-ke-wis, the father of Hiawatha, lived ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... from naturalism into the conventional was through symbolism, and belonged to the time when unwritten thought was first recorded by pictured signs, which then ceased to be merely decoration. We find that the naturalism of the earliest Egyptians and Asiatics was soon entirely absorbed by the effort to express some hidden meaning or mystery, and then to fit the representation to a special place ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... are, in our public and political capacity, cautiously studious not to offend; yielding a prompt obedience to the authorities for the time being, and to the established laws; especially those which are enacted for the benefit of the injured, and such as, though unwritten, reflect a confessed disgrace ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... bought for 4000l.,—half of which, according to Scott's bad and sanguine habit, was borrowed from his brother, and half raised on the security of a poem at the moment of sale wholly unwritten, and not completed even when he removed to Abbotsford—"Rokeby"—became only too much of an idol for the rest of Scott's life. Mr. Lockhart admits that before the crash came he had invested 29,000l. in the purchase of land alone. But at ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... temptation in this country of adapting business methods and ideals to politics rather than political ideals and methods to business. Our eighteenth-century thinkers explained citizenship itself, not as a duty to our neighbours but as the fulfilment of an unwritten contract. Our nineteenth-century legal writers elevated the idea of free contract almost to an industrial ideal; while, in somewhat the same spirit, the gutter journalists of to-day, when they are at a loss for ...
— Progress and History • Various
... believed that regulations were made only to oppress; that the men who drafted such a code were idiots, and that those whose duty it became to enforce it were simply spies and tyrants, resistance to whom was innate virtue. He was forever ignoring or violating some written or unwritten law of the Academy; was frequently being caught in the act, and was invariably ready to attribute the resultant report to ill luck which pursued no one else, or to a deliberate persecution which followed him forever. Every six months he had been on the verge of dismissal, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... "abolitionism" that only one man out of the five who voted against the resolution had the courage to sign this protest with him. Lincoln was young, poor, and in need of all the good-will at his command. Nobody could have blamed him for leaving it unwritten; yet he felt the wrong of slavery so keenly that he could not keep silent merely because the views he held happened to be unpopular; and this protest, signed by him and Dan Stone, has come down to us, the first notable public act ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... deserted fish-stage, and lonely grave remain, a crumbling commentary of yesterday, a hint of recurring to-morrows. Son succeeds father, race replaces race, but the great Mackenzie flows on, and, as it flows, unwritten history along these banks is ever in the making. Tragedy and triumph, self-aggrandisement and self-obliteration, are here as well as in the noisy world we have left. Lessons these are for us, too, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... heat and "drouth" we could have loitered in that pleasant shade; but we were due at the Red Lilies "second night out"; and it being one of the unwritten laws of a "nigger-hunt" to keep appointments—"the other chaps worrying a bit if you don't turn up"—soon after four o'clock we were out in the blazing heat again, following the river now along its higher flood-bank through grassy plains ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... I always consider Milton's Macbeth the most fascinating poem—certainly, if play it were, the most fascinating play—ever unwritten. But of this any man may be sure; that (since they were both great poets) one made, as the other would have made, a story of far more value to us than Shakespeare or Milton or any man before or after could have made by ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his trade, Hindford felt convinced that presently the man would approach Mrs. Errington and be promptly sent about his business. Her negative would, no doubt, be eager enough even upon this exquisite and charitable morning. Wishing devoutly that, being a gentleman, he had not to conform to an unwritten code of manners, Hindford walked away. And, as he walked, he saw continually the back of the beggar with that black coat of the two hills and the ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... are usually able to straighten it out. In case the latter are unable to agree on the remedy, the case is referred by them to the assistant superintendent, whose duties, for a certain time at least, may consist largely in arbitrating such difficulties and thus establishing the unwritten code of laws by which the shop is governed. This serves as one example of what is called the "exception principle" in management, which is ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... what strains and strophes of unwritten verse pulsate through my soul when I open a certain closet in the ancient house where I was born! On its shelves used to lie bundles of sweet-marjoram and pennyroyal and lavender and mint and catnip; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... ordinances that are written down. Of course, the Vedas have been reduced into writing, but for all that, they continue to be called the Srutis, as the Common Law of England, though reduced into writing, is still called the unwritten ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... received each one for himself a praise which grows not old, and the noblest of all sepulchers. For the whole earth is the sepulcher of illustrious men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone, but ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... Froude notices, was not written by Cecil and merely signed by the queen, but was her own peculiar and characteristic composition. "Far sooner," she wrote, "would I pass over those murders on land; far rather would I leave unwritten those noyades in the rivers—those men and women hacked in pieces; but the shrieks of the strangled wives, great with child—the cries of the infants at their mothers' breasts—pierce me through. What drug of rhubarb can purge the bile ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... one man was ever known to pull the cord which set in motion a guillotine that took off his own head. But there is much unknown, as well as unwritten, history. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... of all its own secrets and secret hopes—for these were of but small value in the eyes of the worldling—but of all those matters which belonged to the little village to which they were trending, and the unwritten lives of every dweller ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... work was the codification and reformation of the unwritten law of the land. Code Danilo is rude enough, but an advance upon the laws of Vladika Petar. It was printed in Italian as well as Serb. Italian, till the beginning of the present century, was the only foreign tongue that had made any way ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... contact with the facts of the outer world are those which quicken a desire for the improvement of the condition of society, the increase of the happiness of men, the amelioration of human destiny. With this unwritten condition of human nature De Maistre, like other men of his mental calibre, is found to have complied. He incurred the suspicion and ill-will of most of those by whom he was immediately surrounded, by belonging to a Reform Lodge at Chambery. The association was one of a perfectly harmless ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... rested on its commanding officer. The officers and non-commissioned officers had to be trained from the beginning. In the British army the tradition of the duties of officers and non-commissioned officers,—the interior economy of the regiment—descends from generation to generation as unwritten laws or rules. Certain things are done in a certain way, often differently from other corps, in memory of some event in the history of the regiment. We had no standing orders and no regimental traditions. In a regular regiment a non-com. learns how to "carry on" his ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... was wrong of him; it was a distinct contravention of an unwritten law among "Commercials" that no person must be interrogated concerning the nature of his business. The big and the little man, once inside the hostel, which is their club as well, are on an equality. I did not remind my questioner of this—I ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... wrong-doers. Right was right and wrong was wrong to him. There was no shading in the meaning. All he asked of men was to ride fast, shoot straight, and deal squarely in any game. He admitted that murder, horse-stealing, and branding another man's calves were subjects for the unwritten law. But in his code this law meant death only after a fair trial, with neighbors for a jury. He was not scrupulous that a judge should be present. His duties were ended when he ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... am maharanee," she said, "there will be an end of Gungadhura's swinishness. Moreover, promises will all be kept, unwritten ones as well as written. Gungadhura's contracts will be carried out. Do ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... neighbors and their slaves they were masterful and relentless. In their relations with each other they were accustomed to observe the limitations of the law. In deference to the representatives of authority, in respect for precedent and for the observances of unwritten custom, they went beyond their descendants on the frontier. Circumstances in America have greatly changed in a century and a half: the type of American character has changed less. The quieter, longer-settled ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... Negroes. In the English Provinces, on the other hand, since teaching the slaves would probably result in their becoming Christians, the colonists naturally were strenuous in their efforts to prevent any enlightenment of the blacks, due to the existence of an unwritten law to the effect that no Christian might be held a slave. Many planters forbade the teaching of their slaves, until finally the Bishop of London settled the difficulty by issuing a formal declaration in which he stated that ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... and claimed the coat as belonging to Mrs. Ladley. But she refused to give it up. There is a sort of unwritten law concerning the salvage of flood articles, and I had to leave the coat, as I had my kitchen chair. But it was Mrs. Ladley's, ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... as a law-maker that Yaroslaf is chiefly known. Before his time the empire had no fixed code of laws. To say that it was without law would not be correct. Every people, however ignorant, has its laws of custom, unwritten edicts, the birth of the ages, which have grown up stage by stage, and which are only slowly outgrown as the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... enjoyment of the cold, he calls out a shrill, wiry zee, zee, zee, that rings merrily from the pines and spruces when our fingers are too numb to hold the opera glasses in an attempt to follow his restless fittings from branch to branch. Is it one of the unwritten laws of birds that the smaller their ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... was Nick who at last rose and gave the signal for departure. It was an unwritten law between these two that when one left Aim-sa's presence they both left it. Therefore Ralph followed suit, and they retired ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... Ellen Jervis, at least there were no laws written, and unwritten, which demanded of her as a duty that she should become the mother of this child. In that respect she escapes the ignominy reserved for the married mother who produces children that are not ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird |
