"Causeless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mines of treasure in your breast, Seen by that jealous sun, but not possest. He, like a devil, among the blest above, Can take no pleasure in your heaven of love. Go, take her; and thy causeless fears remove; [To the King. Love her so well, that I with rage may die: Dull husbands have no right to jealousy: If that's allowed, it must in ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... the road and a clump of trees, I loaded Rowley with the whole of our possessions, and watched him till he staggered into safety to the doors of the "Green Dragon," which was the sign of the house. Thence I walked briskly into Aylesbury, rejoicing in my freedom and the causeless good spirits that belong to a snowy morning; though, to be sure, long before I had arrived the snow had again ceased to fall, and the eaves of Aylesbury were smoking in the level sun. There was an accumulation of gigs ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... virtue of the medicine wore off, I would leap almost without transition (for the pangs of transformation grew daily less marked) into the possession of a fancy brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and a body that seemed not strong enough to contain the raging energies of life. The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainly the hate that now divided ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... frantic; Lear is mad; Ophelia is insane. Her sweet mind lies in fragments before us—a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies; her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to sadness—each equally purposeless and causeless; her snatches of old ballads, such as perhaps her nurse sung her to sleep with in her infancy—are all so true to the life, that we forget to wonder, and can only weep. It belonged to Shakspeare alone so to temper such a picture that we can ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... whispers. To one who found himself alone, beyond the limits of the village and beyond the hearing of its voices,—the vast silence, the vast light, seemed full of weirdness. And these hushes, these transparencies, do not always inspire a causeless apprehension: they are omens sometimes—omens of coming tempest. Nature,—incomprehensible Sphinx!—before her mightiest bursts of rage, ever puts forth her divinest witchery, makes more manifest her awful ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... companion and confederate, making myself accessory to your crimes, and protecting you from the punishment you deserve. Have you not heaped infamy enough upon me, without dishonoring me by the violation of my pledges, and exposing me to the suspicion of being connected with the most cruel and causeless murder that ever set human laws and divine justice at defiance? I have ascertained, what you well knew before I left Caxamarca, that the report of the insurrection was utterly false. I have met nothing on the road but demonstrations of good will. The whole country is quiet, and Attahuallapa has ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... Kembal testified, that Susanna Martin, upon a Causeless Disgust, had threatned him, about a certain Cow of his, That she should never do him any more Good: and it came to pass accordingly. For soon after the Cow was found stark dead on the dry Ground, without any Distemper to be discerned upon her. Upon which he was followed with ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... might seem, with all knowledge, here uses the word "causeless" in its strict philosophical sense;—cause being truly predicable only of phenomena, that is, things natural, and not ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... courteously, how failure might have been avoided. "But if he believed," says his chief of the staff, "that his subordinates were self-indulgent or contumacious, he became a stern and exacting master; ...and during his career a causeless friction was produced in the working of his government over several gallant and meritorious officers who served under him. This was almost the sole fault of his military character: that by this jealousy of intentional inefficiency he diminished the sympathy between himself ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... now no more, If ever you indeed deserved the name, Is 't worthy of your years?—you have threescore— Fifty, or sixty, it is all the same— Is 't wise or fitting, causeless to explore For facts against a virtuous woman's fame? Ungrateful, perjured, barbarous Don Alfonso, How dare you think your ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... that is against experience. No one will say one table might make another, or that one man might make another. We see nothing come into being without an adequate cause." Yet for this adequate cause we are at the same time referred to a belief in a causeless secret invisible agent, and to our own experience, for a proof ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... seceded in 1861, and that the organic change created by the Thirteenth Amendment might be practically set aside by State legislation. In this belief they exhibited their policy towards the Negro. Considering all the circumstances, it would be hard to find in history a more causeless and cruel oppression of a whole race than was embodied in the legislation of those revived and reconstructed State governments. Their membership was composed wholly of the 'ruling class,' as they termed it, and, in no small degree, of Confederate officers below the rank of ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... more bitterly than all) unkind. This behavior on the part of his former ally did not injure Balfour in the regards of Agnes; she resented Charley's conduct, and did her best to redress it by manifesting her own good-will; she had herself had experience of his shifting moods and causeless changes of demeanor, and perhaps she was willing to show what small importance she attached to his capricious humors. Thus it happened that Richard and herself "got on" together much better (as well, of course, as much more speedily) than the former could have hoped ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... womanly gentleness and sympathy, and, above all, a wise forbearance from probing into his still open wounds, might have won a certain amount of gratitude and affection from him. But Helen was unequal to this. She only drove him wild with causeless and senseless jealousy, and goaded him almost to madness by endless ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... portion. Yet a whisper rose, Foolish and causeless, half in jest, half hate. Now wake we and remember mighty blows, And, ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... this mind—the minority that is right—is, I hope, the case. I hope we know assuredly that the arts we have met together to further are necessary to the life of man, if the progress of civilisation is not to be as causeless as the turning of a ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... heart should grant; and not a short reprieve, But length of certain life, to Turnus give? Now speedy death attends the guiltless youth, If my presaging soul divines with truth; Which, O! I wish, might err thro' causeless fears, And you (for you have ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... conversations with Mad. de Coulanges, the same feelings of irritation and contempt recurred; and Emilie, who was a clear-sighted bystander, suffered continual uneasiness upon these occasions—uneasiness, which appeared to Mad. de Coulanges perfectly causeless, and at which she frequently expressed her astonishment. Emilie's prescient kindness often, indeed, "felt the coming storm;" while her mother's careless eye saw not, even when the dark cloud was just ready to burst over her head. With all the innocent address of which she ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... dotted themselves over the veldt, their shell-like surface shielding a crowded insect colony within. Ant-bear holes lurked unseen in his pathway, tripping his heedless steps; and an occasional partridge went whirring upward, making him start aside in causeless terror at the unwonted sound. And over it all rested the glaring, shimmering, blinding light, laden with myriad particles of dazzling red-brown dust. Later still, the red-brown color vanished, and he walked for weary leagues over the fire-blackened veldt where ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... avoiding causeless Quarrels is call'd Cowardice, and to take an affront Baseness, and Meanness of Spirit; to refuse fighting, and putting Life at a Cast on the Point of a Sword, a Practice forbid by the Laws of God and of all good Government, is yet call'd Cowardice; and ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... when thus my life had no commerce with the outside, when I was engrossed in the contemplation of my own heart, when my imaginings wandered in many a disguise amidst causeless emotions and aimless longings, has been left out of that edition; only a few of the poems originally published in the volume entitled Evening Songs finding a place there, in ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... assemblage, Jefferson Davis shall be treated as a patriot, I must enter my solemn protest. Whenever the motives and causes of the war, the beginning and end of which I have seen, are brought into question, I must stand, as I have always stood, upon the firm conviction that it was a causeless rebellion, made with bad motives, and that all men who led in that movement were ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... are often maniacal, it is equally true that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. When I was engaged in a controversy with the CLARION on the matter of free will, that able writer Mr. R.B.Suthers said that free will was lunacy, because it meant causeless actions, and the actions of a lunatic would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse in determinist logic. Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... is written, 'The curse, causeless, shall not fall.' And yet, madame, I assure you that I most tenderly sympathize with you in your misfortunes, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... interrupted, with deep emotion, "cease, I pray you, to agitate yourself with causeless fears. Why should I hesitate to avow a feeling that I fear I have already permitted to appear all too plainly. If you are quite sure that you really wish it, I will be your wife; and never was there a truer or more devoted wife than I will be to you, if it please ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... folly! Oh! vain and causeless melancholy! 20 Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young Lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast Thou to do with sorrow, Or the injuries ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... and, uniting with each other in the ties of amity and brotherhood, to form a blessed league against the marauders of the road. I see amongst you, my Lords, many of the boasts and pillars of the state; but, alas! I think with grief and dismay on the causeless and idle hatred that has grown up between you!—a scandal to our city, and reflecting, let me add, my Lords, no honour on your faith as Christians, nor on your dignity as defenders of ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the Erbprinz's fainting fits were more frequent than ever, and the Erbprincessin sank into a deep and brooding melancholy, which was varied by attacks of painful excitement and sudden bursts of causeless anger. It was whispered at Ludwigsburg that she ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... succeeded in this attempt, I leave to Englishmen, who know and value freedom and constitution, to determine. For myself I shall only say, that my mind is incapable of feeling a greater degree of moral certainty, than that the people of Ireland are innocent of causeless discontent and of ingratitude; and that all the evils which now lacerate that unhappy country, (for the mere suppression of present discontents will not end the danger,) and threaten the mutilation of the empire, are the necessary and inevitable effects of the wicked system ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... undoubtedly is, in a greater or less degree), but an abnormal element in exceptionally morbid natures, and therefore a sentiment (or sensation) with which no great number of people or large proportion of a public audience can sympathize or even understand. Intense and causeless hatred is one of the commonest indications of insanity, and, alas! one that too often exhibits itself toward those who have been objects of the tenderest love; but De Montfort is not insane, and his loathing is unaccountable to healthy minds upon any other plea, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... had to endure the apparently causeless fluctuation of spirits incidental to one compelled to dwell for long periods of time in the fitful ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... hear the little, hurrying steps. He would feel the light breath behind him, and instantly he would be conscious of a soothing, rejuvenating influence. She would throw her plump little arms around his neck with affectionate warmth, with her artless, causeless laugh, and a kiss from that little mouth which never had lied. Claire Fromont, standing in the doorway, would smile as she ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... when Pain might be thy guest, 15 Lord of thy house and hospitality; And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest But when she sate within the touch of thee. O too industrious folly! O vain and causeless melancholy! 20 Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... talking his broken talk or singing his odd, endless, wordless songs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes with an affectionate manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me an embarrassment of which I was ashamed. But for all that, he was capable of flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy sullenness. At a word of reproof, I have seen him upset the dish of which I was about to eat, and this not surreptitiously, but with defiance; and similarly at a hint of inquisition. I was not unnaturally curious, being in a strange place and ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... know how to believe all this now," said Margaret; "it seems so causeless and ridiculous! In Birmingham we could never have given credit to the story of ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... timid fellow-traveller of Frank Osbaldistone, who carried the portmanteau. Osbaldistone says, concerning him, "Of all the propensities which teach mankind to torment themselves, that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, painful, pitiable."—Sir W. Scott, Rob Roy (time, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Of the knife in the killing That ends, when it must, (O the throb and the thrust!) In a death, in the dust, The silence, the stillness, of satiate lust, The solemn pause When the veil withdraws And man looks on his god, on the Causeless Cause. Still, still, Under the hill! The hunter is dead - this is ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... ambassage be sent to foreign princes laden with instructions of your rash-advised charge?... I never yet loved you so little as not to moan your infamous dealings, which you are in mind, we see, that myself shall possess more princes witness of my causeless injuries, which I should have wished had passed no seas to testify such memorials of your wrongs. Bethink you of such dealings, and set your labor upon such mends as best may, though not right, yet salve some piece of this overslip; ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... influence he feels when yet unborn, and whose workings he testifies with his earliest cries, when, 'drowned in tears,' he first beholds the light; for, as the sparks fly upward, so is man born to trouble, and woe doth he bring with him into the world, even thyself, dark one, terrible one, causeless, unbegotten, without a father. Oh, how unfrequently dost thou break down the barriers which divide thee from the poor soul of man, and overcast its sunshine with thy gloomy shadow. In the brightest days of prosperity—in the midst of health and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... at length awake the sleeping sword, And force revenge from their offended lord? How long, ye gods, how long Can royal patience bear The insults and wrong Of madmen's jealousies, and causeless fear? ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... could not have been offensive to the censor. The whole machinery of scrupulousness, concealment and deterrent objects, which stand like dreadful watchmen before the doors of forbidden rooms, cannot on the other hand be causeless. So the question arises: What is it that the dream censor in the most varied forms [lion, dangerous paths, etc.] has so ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... some good fortune when he has apparently done nothing to deserve it, for we see that he must have set the forces in motion in a previous life which now culminate in this result. We are no longer mystified because apparent causeless misfortunes befall him for we know that in the nature of things he did generate the causes in the past. A single incarnation has the same relation to the whole of the soul's evolution that a single day has to one incarnation. As the days are separated by the nights and yet all the days are related ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... memory. To say that these are the necessary outcome of certain antecedents is not to destroy them: granted that they are—a man does not cease to be a man when we reflect that he has had a father and mother, nor do will and memory cease to be will and memory on the ground that they cannot come causeless. They are manifest minute by minute to the perception of all sane people, and this tribunal, though not infallible, is nevertheless our ultimate court of appeal—the final arbitrator in ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... a November Sunday inspired Eustace Reynolds with a melancholy too insistent to be ignored and too causeless to be enjoyed. The grey sky overhead between the house-tops, the cold wind round every street-corner, the sad faces of the men and women on the pavements, combined to create an atmosphere of ineloquent misery. Eustace ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... strange numb feeling at the base of the skull did not keep him from thinking—he would have been glad if it had—and now at last when the terror overcame him it was no longer causeless; he knew now what he feared—he feared that ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... Berlin and that of Bayreuth. It is believed by some that this apparition of "the White Lady" appears to a member of the Hohenzollern family as a sure forerunner of death; and Carlyle's picture of the causeless fright of one of the royal rulers when he thought he had seen this ghost, will recur to all who have read "Frederick the Great." We have heard of no visitor so fortunate as to get a sight of the apparition. One enters through an inner court; and parties who wish to see ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... regretfully, "was an exceedingly proud woman, belonging to a family of social prominence in the East. She felt deeply the causeless gossip connecting her name with the case, as well as the open disgrace of her husband's conviction. She refused to receive her former friends, and even failed in loyalty to your father in his time of trial. It is impossible now ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... almost terrified me. We so rely upon the orderly operation of familiar natural laws that any seeming suspension of them is noted as a menace to our safety, a warning of unthinkable calamity. So now the apparently causeless movement of the herbage and the slow, undeviating approach of the line of disturbances were distinctly disquieting. My companion appeared actually frightened, and I could hardly credit my senses when I saw him suddenly throw his gun to his shoulder and ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... a divorce from you that's what you'll have to do, and what you ought to do—if I understand your story. For by your own showing, a more causeless, heartless, and utterly inexcusable desertion than yours, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... hadst slept Secure beneath a coverlet[5] of stone.[6] Then godlike Alexander thus replied. Oh Hector, true in temper as the axe Which in the shipwright's hand the naval plank 70 Divides resistless, doubling all his force, Such is thy dauntless spirit whose reproach Perforce I own, nor causeless nor unjust. Yet let the gracious gifts uncensured pass Of golden Venus; man may not reject 75 The glorious bounty by the Gods bestow'd, Nor follows their beneficence our choice. But if thy pleasure be that ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... was no sooner left with the Chieftain and Waverley, the rest of his attendants being at some distance, than he said, 'If I owed less to your disinterested friendship, I could be most seriously angry with both of you for this very extraordinary and causeless broil, at a moment when my father's service so decidedly demands the most perfect unanimity. But the worst of my situation is, that my very best friends hold they have liberty to ruin themselves, as well as the cause they are engaged in, upon the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... I desire, Suspicion you pretend, Causeless you yourself retire Whilst I in vain attend, Thus a lover, as you say, Still made more eager by delay. Is this fair excusing? O no, ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... Count's rhodomontade, acknowledged himself obliged to me, and allowed that at that time my fears were not wholly causeless. He behaved with ease and good humour, and left me without appearing to have taken any offence. I shall be with thee on Tuesday. I know it will be a day of feasting to the family, and I will do ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... observers strike, That such fair sisters should be so unlike; That still another and another comes, And at the matron's tables smiles and blooms; That all appear as if they meant to stay Time undefined, nor name a parting day; And yet, though all are valued, all are dear, Causeless, they go, and seldom more appear. Yet let Suspicion hide her odious head, And Scandal vengeance from a burgess dread; A pious friend, who with the ancient dame At sober cribbage takes an evening game; His cup beside him, through their play he quaffs, And oft renews, and ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... pupils. At the sixth there was a momentary rigor. At the seventh her lids began to droop. At the tenth her eyes were closed, and her breathing was slower and fuller than usual. I tried as I watched to preserve my scientific calm, but a foolish, causeless agitation convulsed me. I trust that I hid it, but I felt as a child feels in the dark. I could not have believed that I was still open ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I," said Tammas, and was seized with sudden spasm of seemingly causeless merriment. For looking up as M'Adam was speaking, he had caught a glimpse of a boy's fair head, peering cautiously round the cow-shed, and, behind, the flutter of short petticoats. They disappeared ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... seems to be troubling several of you. I am sorry that you did not all have the advantage of having this explained at an early age. You might have been saved a great deal of suffering and causeless worry. ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... base as to leave me," said she, "and in styling himself my friend does he not promise to protect me. I will not torment myself with these causeless fears; I will place a confidence in his honour; and sure he will not be so unjust as to ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... dark, an attempt to reach a goal never clearly seen. Wandering in a labyrinth of fanaticism, agonizing in the effort to distort nature, the biographical record of religious aspiration serves to show how nearly multitudes may approach the boundary line of insanity in their protracted periods of causeless mental agony and in their fierce hostility to heresy and to science. Alike in Brahmin, Buddhist, Mohammedan, and Christian nations have we seen the vast expenditure of spiritual energy in the blind struggle of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... violence to Nature by imagining an effect without a cause, in many places alleges the die and the balance, and several other things, which cannot fall or incline either one way or the other without some cause or difference, either wholly within them or coming to them from without; for that what is causeless (he says) is wholly insubsistent, as also what is fortuitous; and in those motions devised by some and called adventitious, there occur certain obscure causes, which, being concealed from us, move our inclinations to one ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... disavowal of any intention to be impertinently inquisitorial, and for the sole purpose of arriving at the truth, so as to correct misapprehensions and allay all causeless irritation, a committee be appointed of one from each of the synods of Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Virginia, who shall be requested to report to the next General Assembly on the following points:—1. ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... had, in a fit of causeless despair, told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and she tortured to tell, whether Durga Charan knew his name, and what became of Bisesa—Trejago does not know to this day. Something horrible had happened, and the thought of what it must have been ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... himself so bitterly, nor to blame others; and he knew it was better to accept any sad earthly lot, any cruelty, deceit, or wrong inflicted by others, than to have hardened his heart against any living soul by acts of causeless suspicion ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Lord—Clementina, Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the Master is all I know of the devil; I have known hints of him, in the world, but always cowards: he is as bold as a lion, but with the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much surprise in my two cowards. 'Tis true, I saw a hint of the same nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to attend to; the Master has ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... Off-spring of this Royal Martyr: yet You, Great Sir, denying Yourself the Rights and Priviledges the meanest Subject Claims, with a Fortitude worthy Your Adorable Vertues, put Yourself upon a voluntary Exile to appease the causeless murmurs of this again gathering Faction, who make their needless and self-created fears, an occasion to Play the old Game o're again; whil'st the Politick self-interested and malitious few betray the unconsidering Rest, with the delicious sounds of Liberty and Publick Good; ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... magnanimously that he would not pursue the matter, and plunged into a series of causeless and empty inquiries in the hope of stumbling upon an answer with which he might first of all hammer the witness and then erect a defence. His efforts went unrewarded, and behind him in the dock Mr. Morgan ground his teeth ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... mysterious dimness, the wands of gold, the floating brief dust-motes. He wanted to touch Celia; and he found himself diffident. He wanted to hear her voice; and he suddenly discovered in himself an embarrassment in addressing her which was causeless and foolish. He wanted to look at her; and he did so; but it was not frankly and openly, as he had always looked at people before. His shy side-glances delighted in the clear curve of her cheeks; the soft wheat-colour of her ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... childish affections. But it "was one of those characters of self-will and passion which deteriorate in later life, and in which no new moral beauties spring up to replace the impulsive graces of youth. Regarding Aurore now as the work of another's hands, she made her the victim of ceaseless and causeless petulance. Her gross abuse of her mother-in-law gave Aurore many tears to shed in private, while her persecution of poor Deschartres drove her daughter to the expedient of shielding him—with a lie. The poor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... becomes apparent so soon as the child has to learn its letters, when the dull hearing is perceived which makes it seem inattentive, and gives to its manner an unchildlike nervousness; and the weak intellect is displayed in causeless laughter, causeless mischief, causeless passion, imperfect power of articulation, or want of words, and by a restless ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... the youth; "even in your presence I return to this gay man's face, the causeless dishonour—which he has flung on my name. My brave father, who fell in the cause of his country, demands that justice at the hands of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... minstrels. You love to be charitable, I have enough to give, and enough to keep, as large a daily alms as a deacon gives would never be missed by me. Your father gets old for daily toil; he would live with us, as I should truly hold him for my father also. I would be as chary of mixing in causeless strife as of thrusting my hand into my own furnace; and if there came on us unlawful violence, its wares would be brought to an ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... that the morrow would be her birthday. James felt uneasy. He had never given birthday presents, but he well knew that presents were the correct things on birthdays. He went to bed in a state of the most absurd and causeless mental disturbance. He did not know what to do. Whereas it was ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... and feelings, then, are not lawless and causeless, but are a part of a world of law and order. They are themselves caused and therefore ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... Spinoza means by this not caprice, nor the monstrous miracle of causeless action, but independence of external force or of any disproportionate and illegitimate passion. The freedom to which he aspires is the freedom of God, who eternally acts in accordance with the mutual harmony of the whole attributes of His nature, not one of ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... folly, my beloved, a momentary pang that weakness caused. Indeed, thy fears are causeless; I am well, quite well," he answered, struggling with himself, and subduing with an effort his emotion. "Mine own Agnes, thou wilt not doubt me; look not upon me so tearfully, 'tis passed, 'tis ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... Nelson serves under, on mission to Tunis, i. 113; Nelson's causeless dissatisfaction with ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things, supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors; ensconcing ourselves in a seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... chatting about an every-day concern, and concluded that all depended upon my coolness and steadiness of nerve when the final struggle came, and resolved to sell my life dearly if it must be sacrificed to the fury of a causeless persecution. To my proposition to escape then, having a fleet horse, he would not assent, as he had pledged his honor to take me to the Vigilance Committee. Honor is as essential among lynchers as among thieves, and all I could do was to brace myself for the ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... renown By these two sisters here; The third had causeless banishment, Yet was her love more dear: For poor Cordelia patiently Went wand'ring up and down, Unhelp'd, unpitied, gentle maid, Through many an ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... came into Nott's eyes, which had remained blankly staring at Renshaw's apparently causeless hilarity. Turning to him he winked solemnly. "That keerless kind o' hoss-laff jist fetched her," he whispered, and vanished before his ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... moving at the same instant, yet some of it to one side, some to another, or some forward, and the rest of the coil backwards, but all with the same calm will and equal way, no contraction, no extension; one soundless, causeless, march of sequent rings, and spectral processions of spotted dust, with dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. Startle it, the winding stream will become a twisted arrow; the wave of poisoned life will lash through ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... guests, to the type of the newspapers on the tables—and the whole apartment swang to and fro like a hammock, with an exhilarating motion. For some while I was so extremely pleased with these particulars that I thought I could never be weary of beholding them: then dropped of a sudden into a causeless sadness; and then, with the same swiftness and spontaneity, arrived at the conclusion that I was drunk and had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conclusion to which he came is this: "For mine own part, I must confess myself so lost in the intricacies of these relations, that I know not what to assent to. On the one side, I am loath to load the Lord Cobham's memory with causeless crimes, knowing the perfect hatred the clergy in that age bare unto him, and all that looked towards the reformation in religion. Besides, that twenty thousand men should be brought into the field, and no place assigned whence they should ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... into the room, and Clara explained to her what had happened. As Heidi continued her weeping, the lady, who was evidently getting impatient with her, went up to Heidi and said with decision, "Now, Adelaide, that is enough of all this causeless lamentation. I will tell you once for all, if there are any more scenes like this while you are reading, I shall take the book away from you and shall not let ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... Canst answer that, good Sir? O there are women The world deem mad, or worse, whose life but seems One vile caprice, a freakish thing of whims And restless nothingness; yet if we pierce The soul, may be we'll touch some cause profound For what seems causeless. Early love despised, Or baffled, which is worse; a faith betrayed, For vanity or lucre; chill regards, Where to gain constant glances we have paid Some fearful forfeit: here are many springs, Unmarked by shallow eyes, and some, or all Of these, or none, may prompt my conduct now— ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... pain was over, and nothing remained but that halting of the physical machinery to which we never give a thought during perfect action—the weakness hanging leaden weights to every limb, the unwonted nervousness and irritability, the apparently causeless necessity for inaction—he was anything but a resigned man. Captain George, getting his furlough and carrying him off, was blessed from the deepest heart of the ward nurses. He had a kind of feeling that this ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to keep down his cousin's lively spirits, by suggesting the probability of the jar being cracked, or that the Indians might have returned for it; but Louis was not one of the doubting sort, and Louis was right in not damping the ardour of his mind by causeless fears. The jar was there at the deserted camp, and though it had been knocked over by some animal, it was sound and strong, and excited great speculation in the two cousins, as to the particular material of which it was made, as it was unlike any sort ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... shed Pearly showers of causeless grief, Why bend down that lovely head, Like the autumn's ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... am sorry for thee—sorry, from my soul, to see such a predominating and causeless jealousy occupy the brain of a gallant old soldier. Here, in this last misfortune, to recall no more ancient proofs of his fidelity, could he mean otherwise than well with us, when, thrown by shipwreck upon the coast of Wales, we would ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... this arrest of fugitives, of all ages and both sexes? Truth does not allow us to answer these inquiries in a manner that does credit to the wisdom or the justice of the times. This was not the flight of guilt, but of virtue. It was an humble and peaceable religion, flying from causeless oppression. It was conscience, attempting to escape from the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts. It was Robinson and Brewster, leading off their little band from their native soil, at first to find shelter on the shore of the neighboring continent, but ultimately to come hither; and ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... of the night, the dampness, and the cold; she engenders the miasmatic poisons that rack our bones; she conceals in her mantle the foe who takes us unawares; she rules those vague shapes which fright us in the dim light; the causeless sounds of night or its more oppressive silence are familiar to her; she it is who sends dreams wherein gods and devils have their sport with man, and slumber, the twin brother of the grave." [377] So farther south, "the Brazilian mother carefully shielded her ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... not so happy: and I looked back fondly to the days of the greenwood and the fellowship of the Dry Tree, and the days before that, of my flight with my lord. And moreover with the wearing of the years those murmurs against me and the blind causeless hatred began to grow again, and chiefly methinks because I was the king, and my lord the king's cloak: but therewith tales concerning me began to spring up, how that I was not only a sorceress, but even one foredoomed from of ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... theory of universal momentariness, origination from the non-existent, causeless cognition, and so on, it would follow that persons also not making any efforts may accomplish all their ends. It is a fact that the attainment of things desired and the warding off of things not desired is effected through effort, and so on. But ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... fingers: the pavilion secretly prepared for guests; the guests landed at the risk of their lives and to the imminent peril of the yacht; the guests, or at least one of them, in undisguised and seemingly causeless terror; Northmour with a naked weapon; Northmour stabbing his most intimate acquaintance at a word; last, and not least strange, Northmour fleeing from the man whom he had sought to murder, and barricading himself, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... puzzled her—the apparently causeless change in his attitude. It was true that upon, first recognising in his agent's sister the girl he had rescued from her difficulties on the night of the Fete des Narcisses he had appeared disconcerted and by no means pleased to ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... noose, for catching wild horses. Bot'tom, power of endurance. 8. Flank'ing, overlooking or commanding on the side. 9. Jack-o'-lan'tern, a light seen in low, moist grounds, which disappears when approached. 9. Cov'ert, a covering place, a shelter. 10. Pan'ic, sudden fright (usually, causeless fright). 11. Pro-mis'cu-ous, mingled, confused. 15. Marred, interrupted, spoiled. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Unkind returns thy generous ardor chill, Nor causeless censure give thy bosom pain, Nor thankless hearts reward ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... what she and her father must feel towards the deception which had led her into such a position, and made such a tragedy possible. He foresaw her recoil, her bitter condemnation, the final ruin of the relation between himself and her; and yet more than these did he dread her pain, her causeless, innocent pain. To stab the hand which had helped him, the heart which had already suffered so much, in the very first hours of his own shock and misery, he had shrunk from this, he had tried his best to protect ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... knew the effect of her words; the chief HATED causeless killing; and to hear a lady talk of shooting a high-soaring creature of the air as coolly as of putting on her gloves, was nauseous to him. Ian gave him praise afterwards for his unusual self-restraint. But it was a moment or two ere he had ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... this, she remembered the darkness of the stream, and the softly-gurgling but rapid flow with which it hurried itself on beneath the black abyss of the building. She had often shuddered as she watched it, indulging herself in the luxury of causeless trepidation. But now, were she there, she would surely take that plunge into the blackness, which would bring her to the ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... inflicted on any of our fellow-creatures pains we have no right to bestow, or tempted them to sins they had no inclination to follow; the petty tyrannies of our whims, changes, and fancies—of our scoldings, complainings, peremptory orders, and causeless contradictions, will all one day swell that awful list of sins, of which it may be truly said, 'we cannot answer one in ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... have been no sufficient cause, the terrified crew wet their powder and ceased to fire on the British works. The panic spread to the other batteries, and from them to the forces on shore, even the commander-in-chief being affected by the causeless fear. At one moment the assailants were enthusiastic with expectation of success. Not many minutes afterwards they were so overcome with unreasoning terror that an insane order was given to burn the batteries, and these were fired with such precipitate ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... forgave her her stifled laugh; but I hastily made an imperious sign which abashed her and inspired respect for her neighbor. She sat down beside me. The old man did not choose to leave the charming creature, to whom he clung capriciously with the silent and apparently causeless obstinacy to which very old persons are subject, and which makes them resemble children. In order to sit down beside the young lady he needed a folding-chair. His slightest movements were marked by the inert heaviness, the stupid hesitancy, which ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... old married man, you have guessed who the lady is as well. We surely know by some nameless instinct more about our futures than we think we know. I can remember, for example, that years ago the name of Bradfield used to strike with a causeless familiarity upon my ear; and since then, as you know, the course of my life has flowed through it. And so when I first saw Winnie La Force in the railway carriage, before I had spoken to her or knew her name, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... monarch found life very bright around him. His courtiers called him "the rising sun," and his ambition was to justify the title, to be what with his enormous wealth and authority was scarcely difficult, the Grand Monarch. He rushed into causeless war and snatched provinces from his feeble neighbors, exhausted Germany and decaying Spain. He built huge fortresses along his frontiers, and military roads from end to end of his domains. His court was one continuous round of splendid ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... would have been decided in a day by "twelve good men and true," in a box in the city. It was in this ardour of spirit that he adopted the Romish cause. No man knew more thoroughly the measureless value of an established church, the endless, causeless, and acrid bitterness of sectarianism, and the mixture of unlearned doctrine and factious politics which constitute their creeds. Against Popery in power, Italian, German, or French, in the days of Louis Quatorze, he would have pledged himself on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... home he loaded two pistols, one for the first student who should again insult him, and the other to blow out his own brains. It was no idle threat. The man Guizot had nicknamed ‘Werther’ was capable of executing his plan, for this causeless unpopularity was anguish to him. After his death, I found those two pistols loaded in his bedroom, but justice had been done another way. All opposition had vanished. Every student in the ‘Quarter’ followed the modest funeral of their Senator, who had become the ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, harkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me—to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... you wonder how they got there. The particular weekly that you want is not taken in; the dinner is execrable, and the ventilation a farce. All these evils oppressed me to-night. And yet I was puzzled to find that somewhere within me there was a faint lightening of the spirits; causeless, as far as I could discover. It could not be Davies's letter. Yachting in the Baltic at the end of September! The very idea made one shudder. Cowes, with a pleasant party and hotels handy, was all very well. An August cruise on a steam yacht in French waters or the Highlands was ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... the sidewalk, rattling sticks on the fences, squawking hoarsely, and even attempting to sing in the shocking new voices of uncompleted adolescence. For no reason, and just as a poultry yard falls into causeless agitation, they stopped in front of the house, and for half an hour produced the effect of a noisy ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington |
