"Involuntary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... York; and whether he would think it too much of a liberty, if I asked him, if he had any good books in his chest. He stared a little at first, but marking what good language I used, seeing my civil bearing toward him, he seemed for a moment to be filled with a certain involuntary respect for me, and answered, that he had been to church once, some ten or twelve years before, in London, and on a week-day had helped to move the Floating Chapel round the Battery, from the North River; and that was the only time he had seen it. For his books, he said he did not ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... drops of sweat broke out on his forehead. Suddenly he had remembered the roll of papers sticking out of Bobinette's muff. He uttered a cry: "My God! But supposing!"... He did not put the rest of his thought into words. For an instant he had the idea that through thoughtlessness, by mistake, an involuntary one assuredly, his mistress had taken this document to wrap up her letters ... without suspecting. That was it! No doubt she had carried off with her this secret plan of mobilisation—but if the plan got lost? If it were dropped ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... entreaties or tears would move them in the slightest, but that courage and firmness would at any rate command their respect and admiration. She had therefore schooled herself to show no emotion when the time came; and now, except that she had given an involuntary shudder at the sight of the gesticulating throng, she betrayed no sign whatever of her emotion, but looked round so calmly and unflinchingly that the violent abuse and gesticulations died away in a murmur of admiration of the pale-faced ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... one of the two masks he had taken from the chest, and smiled with derision as he saw the gesture of involuntary fear which the slight shock of the black ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... himself to the real characters of the people in question, when once he had discovered them. His villains became curious studies in human nature; he turned them over in his mind, and he caused Deuceace, Barry Lyndon, and Ikey Solomons, Esq., to pay back some of their ill-gotten spoils, in an involuntary but very legitimate fashion, when he put them into print and made them the heroes of those grim ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... art who desired her father's work, the room need not fear a critical eye; and she was so well assured of the faultless neatness of her own person, that she only passed a hand over her brown hair, and with an involuntary movement pulled her simple white robe more ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... adulatory to make a young woman the involuntary keeper of the secrets of two unreflecting young men; that is all, my good Nanny. We cannot well betray them, and we are consequently their confidants par force. The most amusing part of the thing is, that they are masters of each other's secrets, in part at least, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... upon which the plaintiff relies, declares that slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, shall be forever prohibited in all that part of the territory ceded by France, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... embarrassing position at first for poor Malanya, but, after a while, she learnt to bear it, and grew used to her father-in-law. He, too, grew accustomed to her, and even fond of her, though he scarcely ever spoke to her, and a certain involuntary contempt was perceptible even in his signs of affection to her. Malanya Sergyevna had most to put up with from her sister-in-law. Even during her mother's lifetime, Glafira had succeeded by degrees ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... Also, the clean-cut stump must be horizontal, otherwise the rain would soften the fragile edifice of clay and soon lay it low; also, the stump must not be lying on the ground and must be kept at some distance from the dampness of the soil. We see therefore that, without the intervention of man, involuntary in the vast majority of cases and deliberate only on the experimenter's part, the Osmia would hardly ever find a reed-stump suited to the installation of her family. It is to her a casual acquisition, a home unknown to her race before men took it into their heads to cut reeds and make ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... now quote and discuss a very beautiful passage from a lecture upon Stoicism by Professor Gilbert Murray, which also displays the same characteristic of an involuntary shaping out of God in the forms of denial. It is a passage remarkable for its conscientious and resolute Agnosticism. And it is remarkable too for its blindness to the possibility of separating quite completely the idea of the Infinite Being from the idea ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... afternoon, to fly away with the Marechal de Luxembourg, which, on the stroke of five, he punctually did as per contract, taking with him the window and its stone framing into the bargain. The clothes and wig of the involuntary aeronaut were, in the handsomest manner, left upon the bed, as not included in the bill of sale. In this case also we have a copy of the articles of agreement, twenty-eight in number, by the last of which the Marechal ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... say something to papa," said Janey, her heart involuntary rising at the thought, though at the same time she shivered to think of the treachery involved to all the tenets of the family. Janey sat on the steps and listened to the others talking. No one pointed ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... furtively and with increasing interest, growing more and more reconciled the while to his involuntary detention ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... demanded quickly. I had shocked him, that was clear. His tone was unmistakable; it indicated an instinctive, involuntary protest. But he recovered himself in a flash. 'That's jealousy,' he laughed. 'All you British Museum people are the same.' Then he added, with an unsuccessful attempt to convince me that he meant what he was saying: 'Of course it is small. It's nothing, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... madame, has received a letter from Monsieur Raoul, in which this noble young man declares that he would rather give up Inez, than deceive us; he has related his whole life's history. He is to fight a duel with your son to-morrow, and as Inez is the involuntary cause of this duel we are come to prevent it; for it is now entirely without ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... 'declined being lectured on the food or beverage she saw fit to take;' which was but reasonable in one who had arrived at her maturity of intellect and fixedness of habits. So the subject was thenceforth tacitly avoided between us; but, though words were suppressed, looks and involuntary gestures could not so well be; and an utter divergency of views on this and kindred themes created ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... came from the lips of each of the girls—an involuntary cry from each one, brought out by ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... habits, as well as involuntary ones, and habitual discontent and discouragement, gnawing at one's vitals are truly death-dealing. The study of human nature is, in Alaska, particularly interesting in these directions, to the one with his mind's eye open ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... pattern, so arranged in a building that when a fire occurred carbonic acid gas was evolved, and, if the conditions were right (as the mediums say), the fire was put out. It worked very nicely at experimental fires built for the purpose, but was apt to fail in case of an involuntary conflagration. About the year 1867 a patent was granted to Carlier and Vignon, of France, for an apparatus in which water saturated with carbonic acid gas was projected upon the fire by the expansive ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... sensible, level-headed, practical woman, but like many of the inhabitants of Glebeshire, she was deeply superstitious. It was not so very many years since old Jane Curtis had been ducked in the St. Dreot's pond for a witch, and even now, did a cow fall sick or the lambs die, the involuntary thought in the Glebeshire "pagan mind" was to look for the "evil eye." But Mrs. Bolitho herself had had a very recent example in her own family of "possession." There had been her old grandfather, living in the farm ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... but showed him also what that resistance would cost; above all it had exhibited to him in all beauty and clearness of detail that upon which he was never to look again. The pain had been sharp and quick, and was scarcely distinguished from the momentary, involuntary happiness. But he could bear it, and worse. It was not to escape it that he had determined to end his life. Nor would he do the fatal deed if he were sure that he were impelled to it merely in the hope of escaping a little suffering, or much. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... imprisonment, but at the same time would require him to sign a contract to repay by his labour the sum advanced. By various devices the labourer would then be kept constantly in debt to his employer and be held in involuntary servitude for an indefinite time. The "peons'' as a rule were negroes, but a few white ones were found; and in several instances negroes were found holding members of their own race in peonage. A law forbidding ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... involuntary prominence by being democratic amid aristocratic surroundings. Others, on the contrary, but with the same result, continue to live the life to which they were born, even when placed amid surroundings that make their actions all but grotesque. An example of this latter class was Scotty ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... these words. It beat quicker always when such thoughts were touched. She was shy of seeking them; she almost tried, in an involuntary way, to escape them at first, when they were openly broached; yet she longed always, at the same time, for a deeper understanding of them. "I should like to know the Miss Josselyns better," she said presently, when Miss Craydocke made no haste to speak again. "I have been thinking so ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... by my enemy Barbey d'Aurevilly. You will writhe with laughter. It is perhaps owing to the perversity of my mind, which likes unhealthy things, but the latter work seemed to me extremely amusing; it is the last word in the involuntary grotesque. In other respects, dead calm, France is sinking gently like a rotten hulk, and the hope of salvage, even for the staunchest, seems chimerical. You need to be here, in Paris, to have an idea of the universal depression, of the stupidity, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... told the Prince d'Anhalt, had he chose to do so; for Frederick was a man who thought deeply. The chief circumstance favourable to his ambition was the imbecility of the old French Government, then in its dotage, and unable to see that an army of involuntary soldiers was no longer compatible with the state of the nation. This Government had reduced its soldiers to a condition worse than that of the common labourers upon the roads, while it deprived them of all hope of rising, and all feeling of pride ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... who are thus quietly to sacrifice the greatest thing in their lives, the one reality for which they have come into existence, for Jenny's sake. Great is their love for each other, but even greater and stranger must be their involuntary love for an invisible goodness, an ideal of ineffable pity. They are going to die ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... of each edition of this pamphlet to benefit no favored class, but, according to the apostle's admonition, to "reprove, rebuke, exhort," and with the power and self-sacrificing spirit of Love to correct involuntary ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... easy work. During our rapid scouting journey we had a number of accidents. Going over a snow-slope one day I slipped and shot down a snow-slope with terrific speed for a distance of three hundred yards, just escaping getting smashed to pieces at the end of this involuntary toboganning. One of my carriers, who carried a child on the top of one of my loads, had a similar accident, with the result that ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... utmost degree of gratitude and satisfaction your Grace's most kind and generous letter, which my long (but as you know) involuntary silence ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... manifestation of confidence and affection but those with which he would regard a mother or a sister. Maria was a wife but in name. She did not share his apartment or his couch. Though deeply wounded by this inexplicable neglect, she seldom spoke of it even to her most intimate friends. The involuntary sigh, and the tear which often moistened her cheek, proclaimed ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... an involuntary motion as though he was going to strike the coward down. Bill controlled himself with ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... sort of involuntary outburst. For a moment Captain Burnett turned his head aside. He felt rebuked by this crude, boyish enthusiasm, which had gone so straight to the heart of things. Why was he, the grown man, so selfish, so impatient, when this poor lad acquiesced ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and ominous air that was skirling up on the hillside; and Mackenzie's face, as he heard it, grew wroth. "That teffle of a piper John!" he said with an involuntary stamp of his foot. "What for will he be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... their comrade's courage and of his danger stopped the retirement of the Greeks. Their rowers were now straining every nerve to come to the rescue of the isolated trireme, and from shore to shore the two fleets met with loud outcry and the jarring crash of scores of voluntary or involuntary collisions. ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... humbly," he answered, with intense contrition. "May I assure you that the act was wholly involuntary and that I am very sorry ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... as she saw him, with an involuntary and timid motion, but so great was her surprise and joy that she could not control her speech or action ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... being mistaken and having acted on their mistakes, most men shrink from realizing their error, and thus descend deeper and deeper into the mire. And, although it is the intention that decides primarily whether white or black magic is exercised, yet the results even of involuntary, unconscious sorcery cannot fail to be productive of bad Karma. Enough has been said to show that sorcery is any kind of evil influence exercised upon other persons, who suffer, or make other persons suffer, ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... not go here through the whole "infernal circle" of her sufferings and involuntary migrations, which I have elsewhere described more fully. I will not relate how she was "moved on" from one place to the other; the only variety in her treatment consisting of an occasional return to prison. Eleven years had thus altogether elapsed when at ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Waverley felt an involuntary shudder creep over him at the mysterious language held by this outlawed and lawless bandit, which, in despite of his attempts to master it, deprived him of the proper to ask the meaning of his insinuations. A heath pallet, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... grim little laugh, relishing her strength, and then Young Perch would give an involuntary ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... not deny himself that last sting of his vengeance; yet, as he saw the faces of the men on whom he flung the insult, he felt for the moment that he might pay for his temerity with his life. He put his hand above his eyes with a quick, involuntary movement, like a man who wards ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... After an involuntary pause for a few moments, owing to the deep emotion in the congregation, poor Josey was led forward. Minister and congregation seemed to make but slight impression upon him; Henry Ferguson was the charm throughout; he even turned his head, while the minister's hand ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... us indicate our true natures in hysterical outbreaks, fits of bitterness and suspicion; but this involuntary frankness is generally discounted by some ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... writer as a criminal, rather than a psychic, "Fat Boy." After all, once grant your ghost and anyone can conjure it, with appropriate circumstance, at the proper moments. Wyndfell Hall was full enough of ghosts, all ready to appear at the voluntary or involuntary instance of a young lady named Bubbles, who was one of the Christmas house-party and the owner of a rather uncomfortable gift of spook-raising. But beyond making themselves an occasional nuisance to the guests I couldn't find that the phantoms ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... [Now MS. A] I awake, and with a busier mind, And active will self-conscious, offer now Not as before, involuntary pray'r And passive adoration! Hand and voice, Awake, awake! and thou, my heart, awake! Awake ye rocks! Ye forest pines awake! (Not in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the queen. The blade was red, for the blood had become rust; after a momentary examination during which the queen became as white as the cloth which covered the altar on which she was leaning, he put it back into the coffer with an involuntary shudder. ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... amiable qualities, he owned to having treated her very ill: and that at this time his life was one of profligacy, gambling, and poverty. She became with child of you; was cursed by her own parents at that discovery; though she never upbraided, except by her involuntary tears, and the misery depicted on her countenance, the author ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... blaze of day flashed upon their silken leaves. Amid all this pomp of beauty and splendour the bride moved along, surpassing all that was fair and resplendent around her by the exceeding loveliness of a face and form to which every eye and every heart paid involuntary homage. At her side appeared the exulting bridegroom, to whom, however, more it should seem through diffidence than aversion, her eyes were never raised; for though Count Alberoni had advanced beyond the middle age of life, yet he still retained ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... anon grasped the empty air, and motioned his arm, as if in the midst of deadly conflict. And Joe, though his bruised face betrayed not his cast of thought, still evinced a participation in the ideal transactions of the night, by the frequent involuntary motions of his body, and repeated endeavours ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... tempestuous; and the waves of the sea so tremendous that the little vessel sunk, and rose, and rolled, as if each succeeding shock were the last ere she sank for ever into the roaring abyss; while each convulsion of the bark called forth involuntary moans and shrieks of distress, which were heard commingled with the whistling of the tempest, and the dash of the waves, that ever and anon burst on and swept over the deck. And thus, for the space of fourteen days went the Good Intent and her inmates, tossed to and fro on the German Ocean, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... wanting to tell you the new plan, and see how you will like it," said Dora quickly; for she felt an involuntary dread lest Kitty should, in presence of this courteous stranger, say something to ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... after Miss Ainslie's involuntary flight from Red Wing that Nimbus, when he arose one morning, found a large pine board hung across his gateway. It was perhaps six feet long and some eighteen or twenty inches wide in the widest part, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... could realize what he was about, he had waded across the shallows and seized the alder branch. A dash of water showered her as he shook the hook free; she stood up with an involuntary gasp and met the astonished eyes ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... strong probability that the offal of civilization is here nearly wholly wanting. It is self-evident from this that I would not be disposed to neglect the first opportunity for renewed investigations in the direction indicated, our involuntary rest at the drift-ice ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... since the myth itself always arises, according to the same author, out of a necessity and unconsciousness on the part of its framers, and by impulses which act alike on all, we must go back to the Spurious Freemasonry of the Dionysiacs for the principle which led to the involuntary formation of this Hiramic myth; and then we arrive at the same result, which has been already indicated, namely, that the necessity of the religious sentiment in the Jewish mind, to which the introduction of the legend of Dionysus would have been ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... mills. In such cases the sheets get a faint diaper pattern impressed upon them. The opening of crack spaces points to lateral shrinkage of the portions of chilled material they surround, and to some release from a state of involuntary tension. If this action is accompanied by some actual densification of the fissured chill, then we have a result that possibly conflicts with the example of condensation from chilling cited by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... was anxiously watching their proceedings from the loft, witnessed the fiendish tragedy, and uttered an involuntary shriek of horror, which disclosed her hiding-place to the barbarians, and they instantly vaulted up the ladder, overpowered and tied her; then dragging her rudely down, they placed her, with the two elder children, upon horses, and hurriedly set off to the north, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Nothing, however, was farther from his thoughts than such a project, for, as he ascended the steps of the staircase of the palace formerly occupied by Urban VII, he continued, in very different terms, his monologue, a species of involuntary "copy" which is written instinctively in the brain of the man of letters when he ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... all the discomfort without the relieving admission of caricature; the parallel instances I have always wanted to rewrite; while, on the other hand, for many totally dissimilar workers I have had quite involuntary admirations. It isn't merely that I don't so clearly see how they are doing it, though that may certainly be a help; it is far more a matter of taste. As a writer I belong to one school and as a reader to another—as a man may like to make optical instruments ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... some degree everyone possesses. This sense of the world's presence, appealing as it does to our peculiar individual temperament, makes us either strenuous or careless, devout or blasphemous, gloomy or exultant, about life at large; and our reaction, involuntary and inarticulate and often half unconscious as it is, is the completest of all our answers to the question, "What is the character of this universe in which we dwell?" It expresses our individual sense of it in the most definite way. Why ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... February evening, it seemed to his exultant sense, as Diana sat chatting to him beside the fire, that his power with her had substantially advanced, that by a hundred subtle signs—quite involuntary on her part—she let him understand that his personality was pressing upon hers, penetrating her will, transforming her ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at the opposite side of the table, at least seven feet from her, but probably there was the same glow in his eyes which had once frightened Dounia so much. She shuddered and once more looked about her distrustfully. It was an involuntary gesture; she evidently did not wish to betray her uneasiness. But the secluded position of Svidrigailov's lodging had suddenly struck her. She wanted to ask whether his landlady at least were at home, but ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... campaigns he was a brave and splendid soldier. If you ask of his friends, you will find that they adore him. If you ask his character from his enemies, you will find that they respect him, and respect is the involuntary tribute which friend and enemy alike have to pay to elevated worth; and, to-day, as the bells toll, their sounds will vibrate with the tenderest feelings through every noble heart. Public confessions of his worth and his greatness will ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... intense and eager was his involuntary sympathy—as though he himself were breathing fog, and gas, and the foul odors of an empty theatre. He went to the window and threw it open, and sat down there. The stars were no longer quivering white on ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... up, and close his master's eyes in death. The poor faithful fellow was in the utmost distress; he reproached himself with his involuntary cry—"Count of Nideck—what are you doing?" and tore ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... will often enough appear INHUMAN, for example, when put alongside of all past seriousness on earth, and alongside of all past solemnities in bearing, word, tone, look, morality, and pursuit, as their truest involuntary parody—and WITH which, nevertheless, perhaps THE GREAT SERIOUSNESS only commences, when the proper interrogative mark is set up, the fate of the soul changes, the ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in his countenance, but as if moved by an involuntary recognition of the infinite absurdity of seeking throughout the world for what was the closest of all things to himself, and looking into every heart, save his own, for what was hidden in no other breast, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... it drew towards its close, and the rider's musings seemed to accord with the change in the sky. His face expressed a singular mixture of impatience, determined will, and unsatisfied desire. But where most other men would have sighed, or given way to some involuntary exclamation, he merely set his teeth, and tightened the grasp on ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... papa often says so and he knows all about it," replied Alfred with an involuntary wriggle suggestive of painful memories. Then, as if anxious to change the conversation from its somewhat personal channel, he asked, pointing to a row of grinning heads above the wall, "Do you ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... fears which are inspired by the idea of a being jealous, severe, capricious, whose eternal disgrace the least fault is sure of incurring, and in whose eyes the smallest weakness, or freedom the most involuntary, is sufficient to cancel years of strict observance of all the ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... through the mind of every individual: of these, some are thrown up by occasions; but others, and often the greater part, follow the habitual train of our associations. It is not to thoughts of the former kind that I refer; it is to those of the latter class—those involuntary thoughts which spring up of themselves in the mind of every person: it is these, not the former, that afford clear indication of the general temper and disposition. The question I would propose to you is, What is the bent of your thoughts when, disengaged ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... true, my pious friend, that there are those who can be absorbed by such small matters? I find these preoccupations to be so frivolous that I was pained at being even the involuntary recipient of them, and I splashed the water with my hands to announce my presence and put a stop to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... just so fallen as to half drape the dome from its very topmost point, and to pick out in perfect silver the great orb and the cross. When Syme saw it he suddenly straightened himself, and made with his sword-stick an involuntary salute. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... drawbridge—lowered never to be raised again—where rumbling pony-carts crowd the pedestrians to the wall, the passage opens into gloomy dungeons, with barred windows looking out upon the stagnant waters of the moat. With an involuntary shudder, you pass on. A native policeman, in an opera-bouffe uniform, stands at the further end in order to dispatch the vehicles that can not pass each other in the narrow gate. Windowless, yellow walls, upon the corners of the streets, make reckless driving very ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... there's rue for you." Strange and involuntary is the law of association! I can never see the garnishing and seasoning herbs of the garden without thinking of the mad words of distraught Ophelia. I fancy, however, that we are all practical enough to remember the savory soups and dishes rendered far more appetizing than they could otherwise ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... 17,500 leucocytes associated with a fetid diarrhea, an unquestioned infection, while Mary C. (Case 7), with a temperature of only 100 deg., had no rise in number of total white cells but 41% of lymphocytes. This last might be due to an internal secretion or an involuntary nervous system anomaly. The possibility of the three high temperatures with leucocytosis being due to intercurrent infections must be considered. Charles O. had high fever only for ten days during a psychosis ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... found but little assistance from the neighbourhood of Mr Arnott, since even his own desire of conversing with her, was swallowed up by an anxious and involuntary impulse to watch the looks and ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... an involuntary gasp, but she recovered herself. "Then I'm sure our conversation was a very pleasant one, if we were talking ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... with the "Wild Geese" had not the unlucky Stockie at this moment, given a loud sneeze. At which some of the minor members of the company giggled. The chief looked sternly at the culprit. He saw Stockie about to repeat the involuntary sneeze and grabbed him by the nose and throat. Too late! The noise had been heard below and the imperative command was given to "come down." Slowly the trap-door was opened and the ladder descended. Then a scuffle ensued to ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... to animal, both to man, men to men, and all the higher forms again break up, and reinforce again with their separated constituents the lowest kingdom. It is a continual sequence of sacrifices from the lowest to the highest, and the very mark of progress is that the sacrifice from being involuntary and imposed becomes voluntary and self-chosen, and those who are recognised as greatest by man's intellect and loved most by man's heart are the supreme sufferers, those heroic souls who wrought, endured, and died ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... across the lawn, Rosalie and Duane strolled into view. She saw them, and with a nervous movement, almost involuntary, she ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the adventurers returned, raising the death-cry and firing their guns; somewhat depressed by losses they had suffered, but boasting that they had surprised fifty-three English, and killed or taken all but one. It was a modest and perhaps an involuntary exaggeration. "The very recital of the cruelties they committed on the battle-field is horrible," writes Bougainville. "The ferocity and insolence of these black-souled barbarians makes one shudder. It is an abominable kind of war. The air one breathes is contagious of insensibility and ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... story of the origin of sin, in every respect a masterpiece, is told by J; we do not know whether to admire more the ease with which Jehovah, like a skilful judge, by a few penetrating questions drives the guilty pair to an involuntary confession, or the fidelity with which the whole immortal scene reflects the eternal facts of human nature. The religious teaching of J is extraordinarily powerful and impressive, all the more that it is never directly didactic; it shines ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... you, dear friends, but has felt it? You men, slowly torn upon the rack of rheumatism; you women, with the hidden agony gnawing at your breast" (his roving regard was swift, like a hawk, to mark down the sudden, involuntary quiver of a faded slattern under one of the torches); "all you who have known burning nights and pallid mornings, I offer ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Mistrusted—not misunderstood—was the right symbol for these people. Misunderstood was the other kind of curse. Both had been brought on his head by that fellow Haldin. And his head ached terribly. He passed his hand over his brow—an involuntary gesture of suffering, which he was too careless to restrain. At that moment Razumov beheld his own brain suffering on the rack—a long, pale figure drawn asunder horizontally with terrific force in the darkness ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... experiences; and I cannot say that I think that they are explicable upon any ordinary hypothesis; that one should thus create a sense of sympathy or misunderstanding by the exercise of involuntary imagination which should have a real power to affect one's relations with a person—here I feel myself on the threshold of a very ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... first involuntary start of surprise and indignation she stood quite still, but with a defiant chin well elevated and her shoulders back, and if she had in her turn grown pale, it was less with fright than with the contained exasperation that lighted the fires in her ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... which had happened in one of our own. Mr. Ross heard the shrieks of a female issuing from an outhouse; and so piercing, that he determined to see what was going on. On looking in he perceived a young female tied up to a beam by her wrists; entirely naked; and in the act of involuntary writhing and swinging; while the author of her torture was standing below her with a lighted torch in his hand, which he applied to all the parts of her body as it approached him. What crime this miserable woman had perpetrated he knew not; ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... cheeks and the mute devotion of the eyes. In its purest forms, it is apt to be a secret even unto itself, the subjects of it knowing indeed that something ails them, but not knowing exactly what. So that the most effective love-making is involuntary and unconscious. And I suspect that, as a general thing, if the true lover's passion be not returned before it is spoken, it stands little chance ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... mournful, and no longer dwelling on the painful side of past transactions, her remorse had given way to resigned acquiescence, and desolation to a sense that there was one who understood her. The sweet tones, and, above all, those two words, 'dear Sophy,' would come chiming back from some involuntary echo, and the turbid depths ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not been disturbed she would not have wakened until the sun rose, but at the end of an hour, an involuntary movement of the head caused it to slip off the limb against which it was resting with such a shock that instantly she was as wide awake as ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... instant its head was drawn into the snake's mouth, and gradually the whole body disappeared, as the reptile gorged it, and I could perceive from the lump which gradually moved down the snake's neck, that it had been sucked into its stomach. Involuntary I raised my hand, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... off our boots and putting on the slippers we had purchased. This done, we proceeded into the interior of the edifice, with which I confess myself greatly disappointed; as the tout ensemble displays no magnificence, and the impressions on the gazer's mind, partake of none of that involuntary admiration and religious awe, which the sight of an old English cathedral, or the splendid churches of Italy, never fails to produce. One of its greatest defects arises from want of loftiness in the dome, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... was impossible for me to leave the room, for I was by no means in a costume to make my appearance in the public halls. On the whole, I concluded that the best thing I could do would be to keep still and never, by word or look, to let either of them know of my most involuntary eavesdropping. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... with ulceration and sloughing of the throat and glands; a smarting and weakening diarrhoea; involuntary evacuations of the bowels; dizziness, deafness, coma, grinding of the teeth; retention of urine; petechiae; a rapid decline of the patient's strength; a quick, small, weak pulse; rapid breathing; twitchings, tetanus, hiccough, &c.—Closing up of the nose frequently precedes a dangerous ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... forwarding of a profusion of undesirable documents and vegetations. You may view them also in the light of establishments for the manufacture and distribution of domestic perfumery, payment for which is never exacted at the moment of its involuntary purchase, but is left to be collected by a doctor,—who calls upon you during the winter, levies on you with a lancet, and distrains upon your viscera with ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... their customs, with regard to dying persons, occasion many involuntary murders; but their religion ordains that when the physician declares there is no hope left, the ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... involuntary reflection with me has been the perception that London was and is and shall be, and New York is and shall be, but has hardly yet been. New York is therefore one-third less morally, as she is one-third less numerically, than London. In her future she has no past, but ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... rustic appearance and garb, Duperret, the involuntary victim of Charlotte Corday, sat next to Carra. He was of noble birth, but cultivated with his own hands the small estate ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... a fit!" he screamed. "It was a involuntary spasm brought on by takin' two searchin' medicines too near together. ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... helps himself to money here, there, and everywhere, scarcely giving a thought to his responsibilities, so certain is he of ultimate and beneficent triumph. He will make rich beyond the dreams of avarice all these his involuntary supporters. Unhappily, just before his scheme is ready and the metal runs, he is stopped by the stupidity of the law, and finds himself ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... "I found you unconscious this morning lying on the cellar floor. I carried you to the cot, and from involuntary movements discovered the sprained ankle. After stitching on the saturated bandages, I brought out refreshments and liquors. You did not use these, but continued unconscious, responding only in mutterings. I watched all day until evening, and then ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... yielded to this advice, and I went down into the after-cabin with all the passengers to arrange about the staterooms and berths. Our involuntary guests declared that they were very sorry to make so much trouble, and especially to disturb our arrangements on board. Both my father and I assured them they made no trouble, and that we were not at all disturbed by their presence, inasmuch as we had invited them to take the cruise in the ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... about, rolling on the grass and throwing handfuls of sand into the other's eyes, heedless of the risk of blinding, while their mothers were engrossed in that grave gossip which marks the dwellers in villages. These gatherings occurred daily before the fisherman's house; they formed a tacit and almost involuntary homage, consecrated by custom, and of which no one had ever taken special account; the envy that rules in small communities would soon have suppressed them. The influence which old Solomon had over his equals had grown so simply and naturally, that no one found ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... in him throb strangely; the pain of it melting into a glow more startling than the first shock; and with an awkward laugh he turned abruptly away from her;—too abruptly, as a twinge in his left leg gave warning, so that the laugh ended in an involuntary sound ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... the involuntary tribute. Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton stared indifferently at the glowering backwoodsmen as he walked the few steps to the church. Not so Major Hay. His eyes fell. There was Colonel Clark waiting at the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ringing in the ears not to be got rid of, though it allowed my own impulses and ideas to continue their uninterrupted course. It was like a preternaturally heightened sense of hearing, making audible to one a roar of sound where others find perfect stillness. The weariness and disgust of this involuntary intrusion into other souls was counteracted only by my ignorance of Bertha, and my growing passion for her; a passion enormously stimulated, if not produced, by that ignorance. She was my oasis of mystery in the dreary desert of knowledge. I had never allowed my diseased condition to betray itself, ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... rubbing the hair the wrong way. Spasmodic twitching or contractions in the muscles sometimes occur. There is frequent elevation of temperature. The animal is unable to pass urine or faeces, or there may be an involuntary ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... cried out; but that cry was involuntary. Then he remembered that he was where he had no business to be, and he kept very still. He even lost interest in the thing he had tried to reach and which had caused ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... him, though God knows how hard I was trying not to hurt him with pitying looks. At all events he began to explain himself of his own accord, very impetuously; indeed I rather think the outburst was purely involuntary. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... she words the letter about my poor invalid! She does not speak of him as her dearest friend, an expression which I would have expected her to use," here an involuntary tremour passed through Pauline's frame, "but she speaks of him as the dearest friend of us both. What does this mean? Was it written spontaneously, or on deliberation? It is a trap to draw me into indiscretions? ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... Inasmuch as the chief working principle of human nature is the principle of natural selection, the entire method of the teacher of the future will be based on his faith in natural selection. All such teaching as he attempts to do will be worked out from the temperamental, involuntary, primitive choices of his own being, both in persons and in subject. His power with his classes will be his power of divining the free and unconscious and primitive choices of individual pupils ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... his predecessor. It is not our intention to characterise his excellences as a composer. The millions of mankind that he has delighted in one form or other, according to their opportunities and capacities, have spoken his best panegyric in the involuntary accents of open and enthusiastic admiration; and his name will for ever be sweet in the ear of every one who has music in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... his involuntary thoughts, as he read the eyes behind the ridiculously tiny weapon. "She really means ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... gay-furred cats a painted fantasy, Her college and her maidens, empty masks, And I myself the shadow of a dream, For all things were and were not. Yet I felt My heart beat thick with passion and with awe; Then from my breast the involuntary sigh Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook My pulses, till to horse we got, and so Went forth in long retinue following up The river as it narrowed to ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... duty was, and as soon as he could move he began to edge along the short beat. Once at the end he drew a deep and shuddering breath, and, fighting all his involuntary instincts, he peered over the top. An invisible thing whipped close over his head. It did not whistle; it cut. Out in front of him was only thick, pale gloom, with spectral forms, leading away to the horizon, where flares, like sheet-lightning of a summer night's storm, ran along ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... "Mac ain't no fool, if he does chaw hay," said another, and the crowd laughed. They were losing that frenzy, largely imitative and involuntary, which actuates a mob. There was something counteracting in the ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... involuntary unbelief, which has been previously well flavoured with self-satisfied despair. Add to this one beautiful text of Scripture. Mix these well together; and as soon as ebullition commences grate in finely a few regretful allusions to the New Testament and the lake ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman
... M. Gerbois made an involuntary movement. Now that his daughter was restored to him, he began to see things in their true light. The arrest of his adversary meant half a million to him. Instinctively, he took a step toward the door.... Lupin barred his ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... hole!" was Janet's involuntary exclamation, to which Hannah responded a most contemptuous "Umph!" and thus was the war-cry raised on either side. "What was you goin' to git for your mother?" asked Janet, without deigning to notice the portly African, who smoked ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... the great empty hall with an involuntary quickening of the breath. How desolate it was, but how beautiful in its desolation! What strange revels had taken place there to the notes of wild music, what girls had danced, what voices had shouted, ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... &c.; and I need scarcely add, at least for the benefit of those who have travelled in the north of Norway, several friendly, hospitable families in whose society we talked away many hours of our involuntary stay in the neighbourhood. The inhabitants of course live on fish. All agriculture is impossible here. Potatoes have indeed sometimes yielded an abundant crop on the neighbouring Ingoe (71 deg. 5' N.L.), but their cultivation commonly fails, in consequence of the ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... listened in silence, with the concentrated look which his thin dark face could assume when he wished to guard it against any involuntary change of expression. When his cousin ended, he said with a slight smile: "Since you've learned the wisdom of waiting, I don't see why you urge me to rush in—" but the troubled appeal of her eyes made him add, as he ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... other, after a considerable pause. Then he added, with an involuntary sigh, "I had been following his movements for some time; but the Camorra stepped in. They are foolish people, those Camorristi—foolish and ignorant. They punish for very trifling offences, and they do not make sufficient warning of their punishments. Then they are quite ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... imperative, a command. As the stars lighten the darkness with their myriad lucid points, so in the divine ideal Christian men are to be as twinkling lights in the abyss of darkness. Their light rays forth without effort, being an involuntary efflux. Possibly the old paradox of the Psalmist was in the Apostle's mind, which speaks of the eloquent silence, in which 'there is no speech nor language, and their voice is not heard,' but yet 'their line has gone out through all the earth, and their ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... cerebellum removed from the crania of birds and small animals, and yet they did not die. I believed that, though the brain were to be removed from a human skull, the subject would not die, although he would certainly be divested of the intelligence which governed all save the purely involuntary actions of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... Trials. In those days reliability runs were more popular in England than motor races. Perhaps there was no inkling that after all an automobile was not merely a toy. The Scottish Trials was over eight hundred miles of hilly, heavy roads. The Ford came through with only one involuntary stop against it. That started the Ford sales in England. In that same year Ford taxicabs were placed in London for the first time. In the next several years the sales began to pick up. The cars went into every endurance and reliability test and won every one ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... griefs in a strong, healthy man's voice, erect in the center of the parlor, looking mechanically, distractedly at Maria-Jose with his dreamy eyes; the concentrated effort of his memory brought to his face an involuntary immobility which Maria-Jose, most deliciously ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... surprise, the lips bitten in vexation and thrust out in sullenness or displeasure, while a higher degree of anger is shown by a stamp of the foot. Quintilian, regarding the subject, however, not as involuntary exhibition of feeling and intellect, but for illustration and enforcement, becomes eloquent on the variety of motions of which the hands alone ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... agreed the prince hastily. "I admit you are right there, but it was involuntary, and I immediately said to myself that my personal feelings had nothing to do with it,—that if I thought it right to satisfy the demands of Mr. Burdovsky, out of respect for the memory of Pavlicheff, I ought to do so in any case, whether I esteemed Mr. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ostentatious in error, closes up the avenues of knowledge, and 'shuts the gates of wisdom on mankind.' It is not enough to show that there is no reason for a thing that we do not see the reason of it: if the common feeling, if the involuntary prejudice sets in strong in favour of it, if, in spite of all we can do, there is a lurking suspicion on the side of our first impressions, we must try again, and believe that truth is mightier than we. So, in ordering a definition of any subject, if we feel a misgiving that there ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... heredity, from the very beginning of four-legged dogs on earth, was the defence of the meat. He never reasoned it. Automatic and involuntary as his heart-beating and air-breathing, was his defence of his meat once he had his paw on it, his teeth in it. Only to Steward, by an extreme effort of will and control, could he accord the right to touch his meat once he had himself touched it. Even Kwaque, who most usually ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... experiences was his involuntary assumption 'for this occasion only' of the role of the fighting editor. He was essentially a man of peace, and would always prefer making an angry man laugh to fighting with him; but one day there called ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... of honor able manhood, than the horrible hypothesis that a refined, cultivated, noble Christian woman, a devoted daughter, irreproachable in antecedent life, bearing the fiery ordeal of the past four months with a noble heroism that commands the involuntary admiration of all who have watched her—that such a perfect type of beautiful womanhood as the prisoner presents, could deliberately plan and execute the vile scheme of theft and murder? Gentlemen, she is guilty of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... significantly and took a step toward her. She made an involuntary step backward and her right hand again sought the butt of the revolver, the left closing on the edge of the door that opened into her room. Terror had given her courage and as Yuma continued to advance with ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... excite the admiration of the world, but which, under the circumstances of the age, the prejudices and ignorance of the voyageurs, and the imperfect state of maritime science, may truly be considered the most astonishing upon record. It must be observed, too, that this was no involuntary boat expedition—no desperate alternative of some foundering ship's crew—but the deliberate, carefully considered project of an experienced sailor; and that the hardihood evinced in its conception was surpassed by the resolution, perseverance, and skill, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... but there could hardly have been a more involuntary or helpless listener. Presently my parents came back, escorted by both the gentlemen of the house, tall fine-looking men, the elder with snowy hair, and the dignity of men of the old school; the younger with a joyous, hearty, out-of-door countenance, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in by a maid grown gray in his aunt's service, and Miss Lucretia presided. Mark's eyes again wandered from Miss Allison Clyde to Stella with involuntary comparison. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and close the door carefully behind me. As I did so, I cast an involuntary glance without. The sky was inky and a few wandering flakes of the now rapidly advancing storm came whirling in, biting my cheeks and ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... back-bone seemed to shrink, for he fancied that he actually felt the dreaded claws sinking into his flesh. In his haste he missed the branch, and fell violently forward, scratching himself terribly among the bushes. Again he rose, and a cold perspiration broke out upon him as he uttered an involuntary howl of terror, and once more leaped up at the limb of the oak, which he could just barely see. He caught it; despair nerved him, and in another moment he was safe, and panting ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... do no harm, and when neglected they render no help. But he who honors God as needing anything declares, without knowing it, that he is superior to God. Therefore it is not angering God that harms us, but not knowing God, for wrath is alien to God, because it is the product of the involuntary, and there is nothing involuntary in God. Do not then dishonor the Divinity by human false opinions, for thou wilt not thereby injure the Being enjoying eternal blessedness, from whose incorruptible nature ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... the seas; and she proceeded to utilize her naval superiority to appropriate what remaining French colonies most suited her purpose. In this way she possessed herself of Malta (1800), St. Lucia, Tobago (1803), and Mauritius (1810). Then, too, the dependence of Holland upon France, involuntary though it was most of the time, afforded her an opportunity to seize such valuable Dutch colonies as Ceylon (1795), Guiana (1803), and South Africa (1806). The sorry subservience of the Spanish Bourbons to Napoleon gave Great Britain a similar chance to prey upon Spanish ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... knife in his leathern sheath, and made an involuntary movement of the hand toward his rifle, at this sudden interruption; but the Indian sat composed, and without turning his ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... has passed. She was facing him now, her head erect, her voice steady. Her dark, cavernous eyes were upon him; he experienced an odd, indescribable sensation,—as of shrinking,—and without being fully aware of what he was doing, replaced his hat upon the table, an act which signified involuntary surrender on ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... property. It repealed the Imperial Statute of 1790 so far as it related to Upper Canada, and to enact that from and after the passing of the act "No Negro or other person who shall come or be brought into this Province ... shall be subject to the condition of a slave or to bounden involuntary service for life." With that regard for property characteristic of the English-speaking peoples, the act contained an important proviso which continued the slavery of every "negro or other person subjected to such service" ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... reached the stairway, and was already sinking into its trap-like entrance. His head and shoulders alone appeared above the line of wall, when some half-involuntary thought induced him to stop and look back. The coward had partly got over his fright now that he had arrived within reach of succour, and he glanced back from a feeling of curiosity, to see if the struggle between Garcia and the cibolero was yet over. He meant ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... sheaves on his fork, at the women bending over the corn, and the children at play. . . . They have not displaced a stone, or removed a spadeful of earth, to add to the beauty of the scenery; nor do they take one step, plant a tree or a flower, that is not necessary. All that we see is merely the involuntary result of the effort that man puts forth to subsist for a moment in nature; and yet those among us whose desire is only to create or imagine spectacles of peace, deep thoughtfulness, or beatitude, have been able to find no scene ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... for a few moments, surveying the woman who sat opposite him, so cool and so composed. He felt once more the thrill of involuntary admiration that she always aroused ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... sarcasm Lady Lochleven took a step towards Mary Stuart, holding in her hand the knife which she had just been using to cut off a piece of meat brought her to taste; but the queen rose up with so great a calm and with such majesty, that either from involuntary respect or shame of her first impulse, she let fall the weapon she was holding, and not finding anything sufficiently strong in reply to express her feelings, she signed to the servants to follow her, and went out of the apartment with all the dignity that anger ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
