"Spontaneously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Perry's feeble voice joined in, and last of all Huldah's shy, weak treble. They were all so grateful, so full of thankfulness and faith, they could not help it. And ever after, when Huldah passed along that road, the same lines sprang spontaneously to heart and lips, "One step enough ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... and on Nottingham, the stronghold of the Southumbrian host. In both towns he erected burhs. These successes once more placed the West Saxon king in the foremost position amongst the many rulers of Britain. The smaller principalities, unable to hold their own against the Scandinavians, began spontaneously to rally round Eadward as their leader and suzerain. In the same year with the conquest of Stamford, "the kings of the North Welsh, Howel, and Cledauc, and Jeothwel, and all the North Welsh kin, sought him for lord." In 923, Eadward ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... the sight of the homestead swept bare of its stock to supply the invaders of Russia, the memory of Schill's companions shot in cold blood for the cause of the Fatherland, before the Prussian nation caught that flame which had spontaneously burst out in France, in Spain, and in Russia at the first shock of foreign aggression. But the passion of the Prussian people, if it had taken long to kindle, was deep, steadfast, and rational. It was undisgraced by the frenzies of 1792, or by the religious ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... to deem it possible that he might be spared the so greatly desired and 'yet so intensely dreaded moment of revelation. He fancied that Marcolina, thrilling, entranced, transfigured, would spontaneously whisper his name. Then, when she had forgiven him, he would take her with him that very hour. Together they would leave the house in the grey dawn; together they would seek the carriage that was waiting at the ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... accordingly, as Mr. Montagu has so happily written, "little given to study of any kind, aknowledge of Heraldry was considered indispensable:" to them it was the "outward sign of the spirit of chivalry, the index, also, to a lengthened chronicle of doughty deeds." And this Heraldry grew up, spontaneously and naturally, out of the circumstances and requirements of those times. It came into existence, because it was needed for practical use; it was accepted and cherished, because it did much more than fulfil its avowed purpose. At first, simply useful to distinguish particular ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... lady made in her enumeration of the advantages of his situation, in order to give more weight to her remonstrance, and then, in words which we will not do him the injustice to imitate, told how Mr. Francis Kennedy 'had assumed spontaneously the charge of Master Harry, in despite of his remonstrances in ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of the "calliope" was truly ludicrous. To this was soon added all sorts of noises that only street urchins know how to develop spontaneously. ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... the two footmen in the antechamber who ran to open the door as soon as they recognized the carriage; from the profoundly respectful air with which the rest of the liveried servants spontaneously arose as the viscount passed, one could easily see that he was looked upon as the second, if not the real ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... "Te Deum" sprang spontaneously from the lips of Ambrose and Augustine, each saint voicing an alternate stanza, so now the two witnesses hurled their fulminations against ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... She counted out six or eight flowers, according to the season, doubled a sprig of cane in half, added a leaf, twisted some damp thread round the whole, and broke off the thread with her strong young teeth. The little bunches seemed to spring spontaneously from the layer of moss, so rapidly did she stick ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... laborious pace; and so a sympathy is preserved between our frame of mind and the expression of the relaxed, heavy curves of the roadway. Such a phenomenon, indeed, our reason might perhaps resolve with a little trouble. We might reflect that the present road had been developed out of a tract spontaneously followed by generations of primitive wayfarers; and might see in its expression a testimony that those generations had been affected at the same ground, one after another, in the same manner as we ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... overwork, forced work, are the chief ruinous influences," they would have to draw the conclusion, "then let us give the poor property, guarantee their subsistence, make laws against overwork," and this the bourgeoisie dare not formulate. But the great cities have grown up so spontaneously, the population has moved into them so wholly of its own motion, and the inference that manufacture and the middle-class which profits from it alone have created the cities is so remote, that it is extremely convenient for the ruling class ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... a bog than it would be under more favorable conditions. The buds that succeeded in opening might indeed be very rare, and the flowers pale and scentless, but they represented far more moral effort than if they had bloomed spontaneously in a garden. ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... with his parents on the shores of a large bay on the east coast of Lake Michigan. It was at a period when nature spontaneously furnished everything that was wanted, when the Indians used skins for clothing, and flints for arrow heads. It was long before the time that the flag of the white man had first been seen in these lakes, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... demonstrates that we need, for their successful management, a vast accession to the common stock of intelligence and virtue. But intelligence and virtue are the product of cultivation and training. They do not spring up spontaneously. We need, therefore, unexampled alacrity and energy in the application of all those influences and means which promise the surest and readiest returns of wisdom and probity, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... he looked towards the town he laughed outright, freely, spontaneously; threw his head back with merriment, and then glued his eye to the glass again. What he had seen was a girl of about five years of age with a man, in La Rue d'Egypte, near the old prison, even then called the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... astonishing," added the eager reformer, "is the manner in which they are produced. The hand is moved to write or draw them spontaneously. The symbol comes first, the interpretation afterwards. Here is a vulture soaring away with a lamb. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... l'Empereur!" sprang spontaneously to the lips of the young man, who darted out like lightning to announce to his family this new proof of ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... definite, universally similar ideas, and to attain definite aims; and wherever matter in the process of development offers certain conditions, there the intellectual element produces what is called life. And this takes for granted that life may spring up spontaneously there where there was no life before; and this fact has been established beyond all reasonable doubt. The juice of mutton, beef and a mixture of gelatine and sugar have been put in separate vessels, these made air-tight and exposed for a long time to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... down the deer and greeted them with cheerful words that came spontaneously from a joyful soul. They had built their fire, not a large one, in an oak opening and all around the trees rose like a mighty circular wall. The red shadows of a sun that had just set lingered on the western edge of the forest, but in the east all was black. Out of this vastness came the ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... been deeply interested by your admirable article on Birds' Nests. I am delighted to see that we really differ very little—not more than two men almost always will. You do not lay much or any stress on new characters spontaneously appearing in one sex (generally the male) and being transmitted exclusively, or more commonly only in excess, to that sex. I, on the other hand, formerly paid far too little attention to protection. I had only a glimpse ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... may have been the first stimulus and the ultimate scope of the wit and humour which he here expended, they are NOT to be explained as moral indignation in disguise. And in truth Chaucer's merriment flows spontaneously from a source very near the surface; he is so extremely diverting, because he is so ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... grows best spontaneously, the arbutus best in shady caves; and the wild notes of birds are sweeter than art can teach. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab's case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... there if the man had not been called by an important customer. "I have been here hours, haven't I? I feel as if I ought to buy something. Could you show me something about $1.55?" The man laughed so spontaneously and Bambi joined him so gayly, that they ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... accomplish what so many famous soldiers and statesmen had failed in. It is doubtless due to the genius of Farnese that the Spanish yoke was again fixed on the neck of the southern of the two confederacies into which the Burgundian state had spontaneously separated. Welcomed by a large number of the signers of the Treaty of Arras, [Sidenote: 1579] he promptly raised an army of 31,000 men, mostly Germans, attacked and took Maastricht. A sickening pillage followed in which no less than 1700 women were slaughtered. Seeing his mistake, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... course, whether all was well down the river? As he replied in the affirmative, with perfect confidence and cheerfulness, we did not resume the subject until the day was wearing away. But then, as Herbert changed the bandages, more by the light of the fire than by the outer light, he went back to it spontaneously. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... middle-aged men she recognised his thin sharp shoulders. She had been compelled to look up from her prayers, and she wondered if he had been thinking of her. If so, it was very wrong of him to interrupt her at her prayers. But a sensation of pleasure arose spontaneously in her. At that moment he had to remove his hat from the chair on which he had placed it, and she noticed the gold stud links in his large shirt cuffs, the rough material of which the coat was made, and how well it lay ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... excitement there. Kuehlmann suggested to Ludendorff that he should come to Brest himself and take part in the negotiations. After long discussion, however, it appeared that Ludendorff himself was not quite clear as to what he wanted, and declared spontaneously that he considered it superfluous for him to go to Brest; he would, at best, 'only spoil things if he did.' Heaven grant the man such gleams of insight again, and often! It seems as if the whole trouble ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... from English society was attended with the most solid benefits. Before I was recalled home, French, in which I spontaneously thought, was more familiar than English to my ear, my tongue, and my pen. My awkward timidity was polished and emboldened; M. Pavilliard gently led me from a blind and undistinguishing love of reading into the path of instruction. He was not unmindful that his first task ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... in our journey. The first nation we came to was called the Folles-Avoines, or the nation of wild oats. I entered their river to visit them, as I had preached among them some years before. The wild oats, from which they derive their name, grow spontaneously in ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... tenderness, but I dismiss all that when I mentally survey your other qualities. I have thought of fifty things to say to you of the TOO FAR sort, not one of any other; so that your prohibition is very unfortunate, for by it I am doomed to say things that do not rise spontaneously to my lips. You say that our shut-up feelings are not to be mentioned yet. How long is the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... microscopic nearness. Over this vivid surface bison are browsing, and antelopes gambolling; plumed warriors flit by on their ponies, as the pioneer-men and women with wagons, oxen and horses are moving westward. This is the scene where love springs spontaneously out of the close ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... half a year after this that his desultory studies became concentrated on electricity, and after a time this took them to Munich. During the course of these studies he began to write, quite spontaneously. The students had formed a society, and Rafael was expected to contribute a paper. But his contribution was so original that they begged him to show it to the professor, and this encouraged him greatly. It was the professor, too, ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... so," replied Mrs. Kidder, who invariably frowned when addressed as "Cousin Kathryn," and brightened faintly if spontaneously Kittied. "We've been here more than a week, and seen all the Nice and Monte Carlo sights, thanks to the Prince. There's nothing to keep us, although it will be about all we can do to get off ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... suppose, were onomatopoetic, that is to say, vocal imitations of the objects to which they referred. At any rate they arose spontaneously in connection with the situation that inspired them. They were then imitated by others and thus became the common and permanent possession of the group. Language thus assumed for the group the role of perception in the individual. It became the sign and symbol of those meanings ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... she loved him! Of her former attachments not one had been so deep; never had her soul surrendered to any feeling so spontaneously, so disinterestedly, and so joyously as now that her maternal instincts were aroused. For this little boy with the dimple in his cheek and the big school cap, she would have given her whole life, she would have given it with joy and tears of tenderness. ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to her lips spontaneously. Even on her way up the stairs, she had not thought of preparing a pretext for her visit, but she now felt an intense longing to dispel the cloud of misunderstanding that hung ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Giuki's daughter, so that the tears spontaneously flowed, and at the same time screamed the geese in the court, the noble birds, ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... vain endeavour to aid me, infirm with old age; for then I shall have ceased to be able to enjoy your kindness, and death, close at hand, will be claiming its due. I deem it foolish to address my entreaties to you, when your compassion is so ready, spontaneously, to render assistance. A criminal has often gained pardon by confessing; how much more reasonably ought it to be granted to the innocent? It is your province[44] {now to judge of my cause}; it will fall to others by-and-by; and again by a like revolution, the turn of others ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... fragmentation of the individuals, who isolated, dwindling, and prostrate at the feet of the all-powerful State, who, due to remote historical causes, and yet more so by modern legislation, have been made incapable of "spontaneously grouping around a common interest." Very probably—and of this we may judge by two sketches of a plan, undoubtedly provisional, but the ideas of which were long settled in his mind—M. Taine would have first described this ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... me to act a very ridiculous part, who contend, that the effect of the divine decree is absolutely irreconcilable with human liberty; because the natural and necessary liberty of a rational creature is to act or choose from a rational motive, or spontaneously, and of purpose: but who sees not, that, on the supposition of the most absolute decree, this liberty is not taken away, but rather established and confirmed? For the decree is, 'that such an one shall make choice of, or do some particular thing freely. And whoever pretends to deny, that ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... have seen this, you will cause the popular party in every city to consider your friendship a guarantee of their own safety; nor could you reap any greater blessing than the goodwill which will thus be offered to you, spontaneously and without ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... the hierarchy, as he very descriptively calls it, of the several sciences. His classification of these is based on the simplest and most intelligible principle. We think that we rather add to, than diminish from, the merits of this classification, when we say, that it is such as seems spontaneously to arise to any reflective mind engaged in a review of human knowledge. Commencing with the most simple, general, and independent laws, it proceeds to those which are more complicated, which presume the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... purpose difficult of execution. For in the relation between author and editor, any harshness of reproach on the part of the latter, or any expression of alienation and imperfect sympathy, seems unbecoming in one who has spontaneously assumed the office of a patronus to a client, and are uniformly painful to the reader. On this account it is that the late Mr. Roscoe figures amongst all editors of Pope as by far the most agreeable. He has a just tenderness for the memory ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... man's heart by the hand of the Creator. It favored the resurrection to life of the natural religious affections, and the revival of those holy longings and aspirations after a higher life and a grander destiny than earth can give, which arise so spontaneously in the breasts of men. It allowed the better self to rise and assert its power, while it shamed the evil self into the shade. And often, when away beyond the sight of man or of human habitation, amidst the eternal silence and the boundless ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... yourself. I want to know all that you have done, all that you have thought even, while I have been away." She tried to resume the endless succession of questions by means of which she was accustomed to lure him into speaking of himself. But she put them far less spontaneously, far less adroitly, than usual. Her one all-absorbing anxiety in entering that room was not an anxiety to be trifled with. After a quarter of an hour wasted in constrained inquiries on one side, in ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... destruction of these people began. It was the first to be destroyed and made into a desert. The Christians began by taking the women and children, to use and to abuse them, and to eat of the substance of their toil and labour, instead of contenting themselves with what the Indians gave them spontaneously, according to the means of each. Such stores are always small; because they keep no more than they ordinarily need, which they acquire with little labour; but what is enough for three households, of ten persons each, for a month, a Christian ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... sympathy between the ways [97] and aspects of outward nature and the moods of men. And what stood to the primitive intelligence in place of such metaphysical conceptions were those cosmical stories or myths, such as this of Demeter and Persephone, which springing up spontaneously in many minds, came at last to represent to them, in a certain number of sensibly realised images, all they knew, felt, or fancied, of the natural world about them. The sky in its unity and its variety,—the sea in its unity and its variety,—mirrored themselves respectively in these ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... that have been mentioned already as serving them for food, the principal is the breadfruit, to procure which costs them no trouble or labour but climbing a tree. The tree which produces it does not indeed shoot up spontaneously, but if a man plants ten of them in his lifetime, which he may do in about an hour, he will as completely fulfil his duty to his own and future generations as the native of our less temperate climate can do by ploughing in the cold winter, and reaping in the summer's heat, as often ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... hand, when human beings are educated to a lively realization that they are by nature time-binding creatures, then they will spontaneously live in accordance with their time-binding nature, which, as I have said, is the source and support of ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... Lord's Supper the table was to be so placed that the communicants might sit orderly about it or at it; but all liturgical form was abolished, and the prayers even at this sacrament were such as the minister might spontaneously offer. ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... necessity, in order to assure defense of her own security, to act otherwise. This assurance has been given several times. The President of the Republic spoke of it to the King of the Belgians, and the French Minister to Brussels has spontaneously renewed the assurance to the Belgian ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... observation,—which have such a size and locality that we can study and accurately determine their organization and habits,—are unquestionably produced from parents of their own kind. Only the minute microscopic animals are now supposed to be generated spontaneously; and this alleged fact rests not on direct proof, but only on our inability in certain cases to trace the process of their production in the ordinary way. As many of these animals, in their perfect state, are not more than the twelve thousandth ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... wanted here, and that the truth of direction must precede the severity of observation. Is this so? Whose note book is it then, that has come into our hands, with the rules and plummet of the new science running through it, where all the observation takes, spontaneously, the direction of this new doctrine of nature, and brings home all its collections, in all the lustre of their originality, in all their multiplicity, and variety, and comprehension, in all the novelty and scientific ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... sullenly; but its rider felt no impatience. His humour was of the kindliest. His heart, indeed, came near singing for joy, simply, spontaneously, even as the larks sang, climbing up and upward from salt marsh and meadow, on either side the rutted road, into the limpid purity of the spring sky. A light wind flapped the travel-stained, high-collared blue cloth cloak which he wore; and brought him both the haunting fetid-sweet reek ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... while his active soul is abroad [traveling] without his body? When you, amid such great impurity and infection of profit, have no taste for any thing trivial, but still mind [only] sublime things: what causes restrain the sea, what rules the year, whether the stars spontaneously or by direction wander about and are erratic, what throws obscurity on the moon, and what brings out her orb, what is the intention and power of the jarring harmony of things, whether Empedocles or the clever ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... have been corrected by several attempts, the method gives a confidence, a sense of sureness, which makes the real telling to a real audience ready and spontaneously smooth. Scarcely an epithet or a sentence comes out as it was in the preliminary telling; but epithets and sentences in sufficiency do come; the beauty of this method is that it brings ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... violent heat is generated, causing a violent molecular bombardment of the sides of the vessel containing the mixture. Now, if the mixture be compressed it becomes hotter and hotter, until a point is reached at which it ignites spontaneously. Early gas-engines did not compress the charge before ignition. Alphonse Beau de Rochas, a Frenchman, first thought of making the piston of the engine squeeze the mixture before ignition; and from the year 1862, when he proposed this innovation, the success of ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... but they did not see much, in her outward demeanour at least, to give them cause for alarm. She was certainly graver, preoccupied, and rather sad; but, again, her natural gaiety would over-flow more spontaneously than it had done for long, thus showing that pride and womanly feeling had been wounded; ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... his last address the British flag was run in on a cord and "God Save the King" was sung. The Bishop had no time to propose the omission of the second verse, but one is proud to know that those Englishmen, even amidst their excitement, spontaneously omitted it. The whole scene revealed what was finest on both sides. Bishop Bury told the German Staff that at the meeting "we all sang 'Send ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... the natives of Korona, a village situated close to the head of Galley Reach. This was collected with the help of a Motu-speaking native, and contains a few apparently Melanesian words. Dr. Strong was spontaneously told that these had been introduced from the coast in quite recent ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... been to places where the Lord had previously prepared the hearts of the people, and therefore it had been my joy to see a revival spring up, as if spontaneously; that is, without the ordinary preparation by the people of the place. These extraordinary manifestations of God's power and love; and they showed me what He could and do. Now that I was somewhat ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... and took his hand in my own spontaneously. 'Mr. Ashurst,' I said, 'you may interpret prophecy as long as ever you like, but you are a dear kind old gentleman. I am truly grateful to you for your ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... Gambia, he says,[A] "It is rich and deep, and amazingly fertile; it produces spontaneously, and almost without cultivation, all the necessaries of life, grain, fruit, herbs, and roots. Every thing matures to perfection, and is excellent in its kind."[B] One thing, which always surprized him, was the prodigious rapidity ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... altered by unnatural habits and associations, as the pleasures of the taste are; because the pleasures of the sight more commonly acquiesce in themselves; and are not so often altered by considerations which are independent of the sight itself. But things do not spontaneously present themselves to the palate as they do to the sight; they are generally applied to it, either as food or as medicine; and from the qualities which they possess for nutritive or medicinal purposes they often form the palate by degrees, and by force ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... several courses, and our hostess once or twice threw uneasy glances toward us, for Browning was the "lion" of the evening. But, once launched, he was not to be stopped; and as for me, I shall always remember that I heard Browning—spontaneously, without a moment's pause to remember or prepare—recite the whole, or almost the whole, of one of the immortal things ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... different this woman was to what she had pictured her, remembered that spontaneously offered hand. Had Mrs. Ashton known who she was? Oh, surely not, or she would never have appeared ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... the tissue of their foliage hard and fibrous, imparting an aerial aspect, and such faded tints as are unknown to their growth in other climates. The greater number of these trees do not reproduce themselves spontaneously, and tend to disappear when neglected. The Acacia Seyal, formerly abundant by the banks of the river, is now almost entirely confined to certain valleys of the Theban desert, along with a variety of the kernelled dom-palm, of which a poetical description has come ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... introduced, succeed one another in uninterrupted succession from the middle of November to the latter end of March: thus filling up an interval of more than four months, and affording a wholesome and nutritious article of food during one-third of the year. This fruit grows spontaneously in every situation, on the richest soils, as on the most barren; and its growth is so rapid that if you plant a stone, it will in three years afterwards bear an abundant crop of fruit. Peaches are, in consequence, so plentiful throughout the colony, that they are every where given ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... several Colleges into a common University is sameness of type in the education given, and sameness of discipline in the various Colleges. This condition is attained in France by the centralizing and irresistible power of the State; in Oxford and in Cambridge it has grown up spontaneously, and has partially succeeded; in Oxford, however, as in Cambridge, the multiplicity of Colleges and of rival, though similar interests, has produced feebleness in the government of the central authority, which is a fault little complained of ...
— University Education in Ireland • Samuel Haughton
... being impressed with the liveliest sentiments of affection for those who have so long, so patiently, and so cheerfully, suffered and fought under my direction; having from motives of justice, duty, and gratitude, spontaneously offered myself as an advocate for their rights; and having been requested to write to your excellency, earnestly entreating the most speedy decision of congress upon the subjects of the late address from the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... hold of a growing sapling, we can of course bend it to all sides in succession, so as to make the tip describe a circle, like that performed by the summit of a spontaneously revolving plant. By this movement the sapling is not in the least twisted round its own axis. I mention this because if a black point be painted on the bark, on the side which is uppermost when the sapling is bent ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... Roi!" was the response, an exclamation that came spontaneously to the lips of all Frenchmen on every emergency of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... of an inquiry, and not ask for the inquiry itself. In all mythologies and traditions, then, there are what may be called natural resemblances, parallelisms suggested to the senses of each race by natural objects and every-day events, and these might spring up spontaneously all over the earth as home growths, neither derived by imitation from other tribes, nor from seeds of common tradition shed from a common stock. Such resemblances have been well compared by William Grimm, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... she laughed again, spontaneously, then was disconcerted to find a pair of sunken old eyes regarding ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... only, in matters of mere speculation. Her religion, her philosophy, (in both of which the errors were comparatively few, and the strain dignified and generous) were, as I have already said, the pure result of feeling and taste. She adopted one opinion, and rejected another, spontaneously, by a sort of tact, and the force of a cultivated imagination; and yet, though perhaps, in the strict sense of the term, she reasoned little, it is surprising what a degree of soundness is to be found in her determinations. But, if ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... dark days, when, among both the young and old, everyone was for himself, and the unfortunate, and feeble, were neglected and despised. Now, thanks to the blessed ennobling influences of Christianity, even the boys were catching this Christly spirit, and would spontaneously ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... conception as a basis, Leibnitz deduced his doctrine of pre-established harmony, whereby the numerous independent substances composing the world are made to form one universe. He believed that by virtue of an inward energy monads develop themselves spontaneously, each being independent of every other. In short, each monad is a kind of deity in itself—a microcosm representing all the great features of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... answer to the objection, that vines do not grow in the northern parts of America, where Vinland, if part of this continent, must be fixed, it may be observed, that in Canada the vine bears a small fruit; and that still further north, in Hudson's Bay, according to Mr. Ellis, vines grew spontaneously, producing a fruit which he compares to the currants of the Levant. The circumstances mentioned in the Icelandic Chronicles respecting the natives, that their canoes are made of skins; that they are very expert with their bows ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... often "acted out" her stories and songs, to the great admiration of children and the amusement of older people, but it was very seldom this favor was granted, without earnest and reiterated entreaties. It was the first time she had ever spontaneously offered to personate the Sibyl, whose oracles she uttered, and it was a proof that an unusual fit of ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... eyelids were touched. The pupils, largely dilated, showed very little sensibility to light, and all that remained of vision was shown by slight winking when the hand was suddenly brought close to the eyes. The whole face lacked expression. At certain moments, either spontaneously or as a consequence of divers provocations, a light smile, to which the muscles of the face generally did not contribute, wandered over her lips. Then the face resumed its primitive expression, and thus she remained for the half-hour which ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... the blows of the clapper following one another rapidly as ever, and with the greatest of regularity. But thrust his head out as far as he would, there was no glare visible, as there had been the year before when the haystack was either set on fire or ignited spontaneously from being built up too wet. Then the whole of the western sky was illumined by the flames, and patches of burning hay rose in great flakes high in air, and were swept away by ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... two whose names occur most spontaneously to the mind as typical examples are, perhaps, Henry James and W.D. Howells. Of these the former has identified himself so much with European life and has devoted himself so largely to European subjects that we, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... fresh disaster, each representing it according to the political creed to which he adheres. The Royalists assert that the outbreak is the result of a long and grave conspiracy, fomented by those who expect to derive advantage from it; while the Liberals maintain that it has arisen spontaneously and simultaneously from the wounded spirit of liberty, lashed into a frenzied resistance by the ordonnances. I pretend not to know which of these statements is the most correct; but I believe that the favourite opinion of the worthy Sir Roger de Coverley, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... Whenever men spontaneously risk their lives and fortunes in the support of a particular cause, they are wont to set a high value on their services, and generally assume the right of expressing their opinions, and of interfering ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... as a man. You must know that the seeds of fungi are scattered so universally over the world that, only comply with the conditions, and you will produce them everywhere. Prepare the bed it loves, and a mushroom will spring up spontaneously, an excellent food, like manna from heaven. So superstition says, kill your deadliest enemy, and plant him, and he will come up in a delicious fungus, which I presume to be this; steep him, or distil him, and he will make an elixir of life for you. I suppose there is some foolish ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gallery as though she were expecting something. "Hallo, everyone!" she said tentatively, gaily. They stared back at her, stolid and antagonistic, defying her. She began to laugh then, as she laughed every night at the same moment, spontaneously, shrilly, helplessly, until suddenly she had them. It was like a whirlwind. It spared no one. They were like dead leaves dancing helplessly in its midst. Even Stonehouse felt it at his ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... of which is feebler than its predecessor, dishing up the old characters, the stale ideas, the used-up backgrounds. I have always hoped that some one would be kind and brave enough to tell me when I did that. But now that the end seems to have come to me naturally and spontaneously, I cannot accept my defeat. I am like the monkey of whom Frank Buckland wrote, who got into the kettle when the water was lukewarm, and found the outer air so cold whenever he attempted to leave it, that he was eventually very nearly boiled alive. ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is only on second thought and closer study that one sees how well concealed is the careful and laborious polish ad unguem of every chord. This is the true art of song, where the lyrics should seem to gush spontaneously forth from a full heart and yet repay the closer dissection that shows the intellect perfecting ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... This is all which Touaricks do." The Touaricks are determined to feel as little of the primeval curse,—"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,"—as any people. The Targhee then gave me spontaneously a bit of knowledge which I had not before heard. He proceeded, "When I return to my house on the road (or by the caravan route), and to my wife, I don't uncover my face and go up to her and stare boldly at my wife. No, I cover my face all over, and sit down ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... individualistic sort which has placed it in great demand amongst amateur editors, and it is not unlikely that the author may be rewarded with a Laureateship at no distant date. The work is invariably of spontaneously graceful rhythm and universally pleasing in sentiment, having frequently an elusive suggestion of the unreal. A few of Mrs. Jordan's poems are of the grimly weird and powerful variety. "The Song of the North Wind" is a remarkable contribution to amateur letters, and ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... for every sort of knowledge, and is curious to learn and is never satisfied; who has magnificence of mind, and is a spectator of all time and all existence; who is harmoniously constituted, of a well-proportioned and gracious mind, whose own nature will move spontaneously toward the true being of everything; who has a good memory, and is quick to learn, noble, gracious, the friend of truth, justice, courage, temperance." The ideal presented is that of complete harmonious culture, the aim of which is not to make an artisan, a physician, a merchant, a lawyer, but ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... my opinion, overrated. He can be educated to perform certain acts, but he would never volunteer his services. There is no elephant that I ever saw who would spontaneously interfere to save his master from drowning or from attack. An enemy might assassinate you at the feet of your favourite elephant, but he would never attempt to interfere in your defence; he would probably run away, or remain ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the other in toil, privation, and care. No inclemency of the seasons inflicts present suffering on these happy islanders, or brings apprehensions for the future. Nature presents them with her most delicious fruits spontaneously and abundantly; and she has implanted in their breast a lively relish for the favours she so lavishly ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Larbi's melodies were, they created an atmosphere of wild tenderness. Spontaneously they bubbled up out of the heart of the Eastern world and, when the player was invisible as now, suggested an ebon faun couched in hot sand at the foot of a palm tree and making music to listening sunbeams and amorous spirits of ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the old colonial spirit of cooeperation, when merely living in a community meant a certain daily service to all the community. We must continue to do now more consciously and with more technique, so to speak, what was once done more spontaneously and in a more primitive way. It is thus that the idea of neighbor might extend throughout the country as a whole. All the materials are at hand for an unlimited development of the practical life. The sense of solidarity ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... the letter had already humiliated him, for the lapse of time, the change of circumstance, the literary degeneration of Ingram, and his very acquaintance with the man, had made him feel the words very differently than when they had come spontaneously out of his blood. His sense of their futility added ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... Nathaniel Johnson introduced the raising of silk into the country, which is an article of commerce exceedingly profitable, and, by proper encouragement, might have been made very beneficial both to the colony and the mother country. Mulberry trees grew spontaneously in the woods, and thrived as well as other natural productions. The great demand for silk in Britain made it an object of the highest consequence. About the beginning of March the worms are hatched from the eggs; nature having wisely so ordered it, that the silk-worms should come ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... regarding the condition of the atmosphere, it may readily be imagined that Africa, in those parts, after all, is not so bad as people supposed it was; for, when so much moisture falls under a vertical sun, all vegetable life must grow up almost spontaneously. It does so on the equator in the most profuse manner; but down at 5 deg. south, where there are six months' drought, the case is somewhat different; and the people would be subject to famines if they did ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... loadstone draws anything to it which is near, nor does anything spontaneously approach them. But this stone emits strong exhalations, by which the surrounding air being impelled forceth that which is before it; and this being drawn round in the circle, and returning into the vacuated ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... establishment. It is safe to say that no established church has ever existed, however imperially endowed, that would have been equal to the undertaking of it. With no imposing combination of forces, and no strategic concert of action, the work was begun spontaneously and simultaneously, like some of the operations of nature, by a multitude of different agencies, and went forward uninterrupted to something as nearly like completeness as could be in a work the exigencies of which continually widened beyond all achievements. The planting of the church in the West ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... drawn to the classical nobility from which Berlioz's art so spontaneously springs. It is not fully acknowledged that he was, of all nineteenth-century musicians, the one who had in the highest degree the sense of plastic beauty. Nor do people always recognise that he was a writer of sweet and flowing melodies. Weingartner expressed the surprise he felt ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... enjoyed to the full the privileges and delights of an accepted lover. What visions of future happiness those two weeks of close companionship opened to my eyes! The refinement and natural dignity of the woman made her caresses of exquisite daintiness and tenderness. Spontaneously and absolutely without a suggestion of affectation her love was poured out generously to the man who had won her heart, and each evening it seemed as if my affection had increased a ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... earthquakes, broke up on the surface, and washed with rain until, after ages upon ages had passed, clays and soil were formed, from which plants, of their own accord, sprang up without a germ; in other words, germs came into being spontaneously and grew up, as we see them, developed in all their grandeur. This chance life, somehow, chanced to assume animal form and fashion until, in the multitude of its changes it reached the fashion of the monkey; and then, at last, the fashion of man, both ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... so before spontaneously, and have been since greatly stirred by your two letters, with their earnest expressions to the same effect. Besides, Sallustius has been always at my side to prompt me to spare no pains to induce Lucceius ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... more dancing throughout the country in those days than there is now: and it seems to have sprung up more spontaneously, as if it were a natural production, with less fastidiousness as to the quality of music, lights, and floor. Many country towns had a monthly ball throughout the winter, in some of which the same apartment served ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... the wolf-like character, yet that the breed gave birth in five instances in the same country, within no great length of time, to a wolf perfect in every character; and we must further suppose that in two of the cases the newly produced wolves afterwards spontaneously increased to such an extent as to lead to the extinction of the parent-breed of dogs. So remarkable a form as the P. nigripennis, when first imported, would have realized a large price; it is therefore improbable ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... years a new form of organisation was established. Members spontaneously associated themselves into groups, "The Nursery" for the young, the Women's Group, the Arts Group, and Groups for Education, Biology, and Local Government. The careers of these bodies were various. The Arts Group included philosophy, and, ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... abundant cats. My father was always fond of these mysterious deities of ancient Egypt, and they were never turned away from our doors; but how so many of them happened to find us out in this remote region I cannot explain. It seems as if goodwill towards cats spontaneously generated them. They appeared, one after another, to the number of five; but when the time came for us to leave the red house forever, the cats would not and could not be packed up, and they were left behind. In my mind's eye ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... rather to an act of the supreme will than to a result imposed upon him. Holding entirely aloof from natural philosophy and the scientific spirit, the first condition of which is to have no prior faith and to reject that which does not come spontaneously, he remained in a state of equilibrium which would have been fatal to convictions less urgent than his. The supernatural did not excite any natural repugnance in him. His scales were very nicely adjusted, but in one of them was a weight of unknown quantity—an ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... law here. Jesus asks for only what we give freely and spontaneously. He does not want anything except what is given with a free, glad heart. This is to be a voluntary surrender. Jesus is a voluntary Saviour. He wants only voluntary followers. He would have us be as Himself. The oneness of spirit leads the way into the intimacy of closest friendship. And ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon |
