"Unfinished" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lines are part of an unpublished poem, by Coleridge, whose Muse so often tantalizes with fragments which indicate her powers, while the manner in which she flings them from her betrays her caprice, yet whose unfinished sketches display more talent than the laboured ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... has left in all he did some breathing of the air which stirs the heather. But however desirous to enlarge on his genius as an artist, I would rather speak of him now as a friend who has gone from amongst us. There is his deserted studio—the empty easel lying idly by—the unfinished picture with its face turned to the wall, and there is that bereaved sister, who loved him with an affection which death cannot quench. He has left a name in fame clear as the bright sky; he has filled our minds with memories pure as the blue waves which roll ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... variety of minute coincidences, perceptible on collating the printed portion. We may likewise conclude, that from it several of the later transcripts were taken of the introductory portion, and the Fourth Book, to complete the text of the unfinished printed volume. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... of his story to the admiration of posterity, or to display his own powers, rather than to represent fact or record instructive biography, he would have carefully avoided whatever tended to diminish the interest of the whole, and give it an unfinished appearance. By concealing some of the more unsightly parts of the picture, and by rendering prominent others of a more attractive character, he might have contrived to accomplish an effect, though ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... few weeks' shopping in town. Agatha and Christabel had just returned from two years' sojourn abroad, and were presumably "finished" young ladies. Cynthia and Betty wondered how much finished, and whether finished enough to look down with contempt upon unfinished damsels still undergoing ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... Paris—hardly more than twelve miles. We simply crawled most of the way. We crept through the tunnel this side of Lagny, and then stood on this side of the Marne, and whistled and shrieked a long time before we began to wiggle across the unfinished bridge, with workmen hanging up on the derricks and scaffoldings in all sorts of perilous positions, and all sorts of grotesque attitudes. I was glad when ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... except in the stanzaic arrangement of Shelley's Ode to the West Wind,—aba, bcb, cdc, ded, ee. Other examples besides translations of Dante are short poems by Wyatt and Sidney, Browning's The Statue and the Bust, and Shelley's unfinished The Triumph of Life. ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... such warlike comers. Hark! [Whistling.] That's American. One might win bloodless laurels here. Will you stand a moment just as you are, Maitland;—'tis the very thing. There's a little space in my unfinished picture, and with that a la Kemble mien, you were a fitting mate for this young Dian here, (taking a pencil sketch from his portfolio,)—the beauty-breathing, ay, beauty-breathing, it's no poetry;—for the lonesome little glen smiled to its ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... was nearly midnight when two men, talking cheerfully of the last gusher in, the Buckburnett field, emerged from the stairway and passed into the street. They were tenants who had stayed late to do some unfinished business. ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... ones. His work is well worth consultation; although Baillet and Morhof do not speak in direct terms of praise concerning it—and the latter seems a little angry at his giving the preference to the Parisian libraries over those of other countries. It must be remembered that this was published as an unfinished production: as such, the author's curiosity and research are highly to be commended. I have read the greater part of it with considerable satisfaction. The same person meditated the execution of a vast work in four folio volumes—called "La Bibliotheque ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... From an unfinished house on the Varvarka, the ground floor of which was a dramshop, came drunken shouts and songs. On benches round the tables in a dirty little room sat some ten factory hands. Tipsy and perspiring, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... time the building of the ships went merrily on, until, when they were nearly finished, a disgraceful treaty was made with Algiers, and work on the new navy was neglected, and three of the unfinished ships sold. But in 1797 the French depredations became so unbearable that work was hastened; and cities and towns, not satisfied with the three frigates provided for, began collecting subscriptions for the purchase of ships, to be presented to the Government. The first of the frigates ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... punctually at twenty minutes to nine, we passed each other near —— House, each of us on our way to the theatre of our daily operations. She was an embroideress, as I soon discovered from a small stretching-frame, containing some unfinished work, which she occasionally carried in her hand. She set me a worthy example of punctuality, and I could any day have told the time to a minute without looking at my watch, by marking the spot where we passed each other. I learned to look ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... tune, yawning. The world seemed to have grown very tedious all of a sudden, and it did not seem so pleasant as she deemed it would prove to sit again in the yew circle and sing. She began a song or two, to leave each unfinished with a yawn, and, because yawning is contagious, Tiffany yawned too, discreetly behind her fingers. It was while Tiffany looked away to conceal a vaster yawn than its fellows, too vast for masking with finger-tips, that she saw a soldierly figure coming across the garden ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... want of form in the unfinished statue, because it is struggling into form; it is nothing without form; but there is no want of form in the elemental laws and effusions,—in fire, or water, or rain, or dew, or the smell of the shore or the plunging waves. And ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... the two girls; it was enough for him to sit and watch the play of May's beautiful features, and hear the sound of her voice. What could this sudden return of hers mean, he wondered? Was it a passing whim, or was it?—— He left even the thought unfinished, and ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... cheerful fire light, as the night came on, they placed their things in as orderly a manner as possible, and found themselves quite comfortable, though much remained to be done, the chinking of the walls being the chief task unfinished. ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... idle. He did not wish to leave any work around the place unfinished, and early and late he spent many hours in the house and in the garden, doing the things that ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... not without thought of going. They may be seen twenty in a row, one above the other, or on the slanting ropes or guys which hold up the masts of the rickcloths over the still unfinished corn-ricks. They gather in rows on the ridges of the tiles, and wisely take counsel of each other. Rooks are up at the acorns; they take them from the bough, while the pheasants come underneath and pick ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... work the next day, and Billy did indeed soon find herself "playing" under Bertram's watchful insistence. She resumed her music, and brought out of exile the unfinished song. With Bertram she took drives and walks; and every two or three days she went to see Aunt Hannah and Marie. She was pleasantly busy, too, with plans for her coming trip; and it was not long before even the remorseful Bertram had to admit that Billy was looking ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... the unfinished second story of the theatre had possibilities. She had it plastered and gaily papered, she put up a frieze of animals from Noah's ark; she bought toys and games and a huge sand-box—and for a nominal fee, a mother could ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... this occasion. Brennoralt, also a tragedy, was first published under the title of The Discontented Colonel, in 1639, as a satire on the Scottish insurgents. The Goblins, a comedy in five acts, is enlivened by the presence of a motley crew of devils, clowns, wenches, and fiddlers; and an unfinished piece, entitled The Sad One, may also be classed as a tragedy, as it opens briskly with a 'murder within' in the very first scene, which undoubtedly would have culminated in wholesale horrors had the author gone on and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... into the absorbed silence of his work again, leaving the sentence unfinished. He looked up at her with a long, close, almost intimate scrutiny, under which and his ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... the paper, the introductory words, all had told on the instant that the letter had come to him from the hands of the widow Jethway, now dead and cold. He had instantly understood that the unfinished notes which caught his eye yesternight were intended for nobody but himself. He had remembered some of the words of Elfride in her sleep on the steamer, that somebody was not to tell him of something, or it would be her ruin—a circumstance hitherto deemed so trivial and meaningless that ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... descended from our rock, and security the horses to the trees, we united our strength, and launched our unfinished canoe into the water. The wood of which she was composed was so light that she floated high; but to give her greater buoyancy, we secured a quantity of dry rushes round the gunnel; and we found that when our stores were in her, there was ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the same time, that Crowe and Cavalcaselle are right in their conjecture that what the younger master did was rather to repair injury to the last work of the elder and supplement it by his own than to complete a picture left unfinished by him. The whole conception, the charpente, the contours of even the landscape are attributable to Bellini. His are the carefully-defined, naked tree-trunks to the right, with above in the branches a pheasant, and on a twig, in the immediate foreground ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... can't have any cares, Lady Lesbia,' said Kibble, with an incredulous smile, trying to smooth the disordered hair, anxious to make haste with the unfinished toilet, for it was within ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of the water, so that no loon can be heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, and make the woods resound with their discharges. The waves generously rise and dash angrily, taking sides with all water-fowl, and our sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop and unfinished jobs. But they were too often successful. When I went to get a pail of water early in the morning I frequently saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order to see how ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... expected only such supply at present as the current service necessarily required, it would be requisite to assemble them again next winter, when they should have full leisure to conclude whatever business had this session been left imperfect and unfinished: that the parliament of Ireland had twice put such trust in his good intentions as to grant him, in the beginning of the session, a large supply, and had ever experienced good effects from the confidence reposed in him: and that; in every circumstance, his people should find his conduct ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... staring me in the face, every one telling a more bitter tale than his fellow.—When I tell you even —— has lost its power to please, you will guess something of my hell within, and all around me.—I began Elibanks and Elibraes, but the stanzas fell unenjoyed and unfinished from my listless tongue: at last I luckily thought of reading over an old letter of yours, that lay by me in my bookcase, and I felt something for the first time since I opened my eyes, of pleasurable existence.——Well—I begin to breathe a little, since I began ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and cry to discover the perpetrator of the outrage, but nothing came of it. From somewhere in that labyrinth of unfinished building and scaffolding fenced in by high hoardings a bomb had been thrown of insufficient power to do much damage to anybody. The Prefect of Police, riding in close attendance on the royal carriage, had himself vaulted the barrier, on the side whence it had seemed to come, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... only six hours daily to the pursuit. Make as good a school, and accomplish as much for it, as you can in six hours, and let the rest go. When you come from your school room at night, leave all your perplexities and cares behind you. No matter what unfinished business or unsettled difficulties remain. Dismiss them all till another sun shall rise, and the hour of duty for another day shall come. Carry no school work home with you and do not talk of your ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... hams wrapped in bracken, a brace of pheasants, and a 'neck' of harvest corn elaborately plaited: and almost directly beneath it stood a circular table with a lamp and a set of dominoes, the half of them laid out in an unfinished game. The floor was of slate but strewn with rugs, some of rag-work others of badgers' skins. A tall clock ticked sedately in a corner. On one side of the chimney a weather-glass depended, on the other a warming-pan—symbols, as it were, of conjugal ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... he wrought at the many books which filled the years between "Pickwick" and the unfinished "Mystery of Edwin Drood," may also be granted. Also may it be confessed that within the bounds of one book there are the extremes of good and bad. It is peculiar to Dickens that often in the very novel we perchance feel called upon to condemn most, occurs ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... the muscles are in process of formation and elaboration. If you turn them into another channel, and permit that strength which should have gone to the perfecting of one person to go to the making of another, both remain in a state of weakness and the work of nature is unfinished. The workings of the mind, in their turn, are affected by this change, and the mind, as sickly as the body, functions languidly and feebly. Length and strength of limb are not the same thing as courage or genius, and I grant that strength of mind does not always accompany ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... seclusion of the royal architect, the works were suspended, and it now remains unfinished. Censure and abuse have, however, always been abundantly lavished on its architecture, whether it be the result of royal caprice or of professional study; but the taste of either party deserves to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... arising after another at long intervals and far apart in space, but a sudden blazing forth of a whole firmament of light. But that is a phenomenon to all appearance not to be repeated, or, more correctly speaking, not to be completed, since it broke up unfinished, leaving the world in partial darkness. Literature has been ever since wailing the loss of the seventy per cent of Livy's History, of the eighty per cent of Tacitus and of Euripides, of the still larger proportion of AEschylus and ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the fact that while my own letter to Delphine lay unfinished on my desk, a note arrived from Ralph Maplestone, to give me grave news of ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... her hands pressed against her cheeks. He stood impassible—hatefully impassible. "....... if I were to consent to... this... how... how soon...?" He understood the unfinished question. Interest warmed his face again. He took a step towards her, but by a gesture she seemed to beg ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... the ARCADIA, the saga of Burnt Njal, and the GRAND CYRUS. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Ariosto, Boccaccio, Scott, Dumas, Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot, were some of his favourite authors. He once began a review of George Eliot's biography, but left it unfinished. Latterly he had ceased to admire her work as much as before. He was a rapid, fluent talker, with excited utterance at times. Some of his sayings were shrewd and sharp; but he was sometimes aggressive. ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... each meal for children to wash and prepare themselves comfortably without going to the table excited by hurry, and they should be required to remain at the table for a fixed time, and not allowed to hastily swallow their food in order to complete an unfinished task or game. An interval of at least half an hour should intervene after meals before any mental exertion is required. Constant nibbling at food between meals should be forbidden; it destroys the appetite, increases the saliva, and interferes ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... six ships of war that were on the stocks; then he reduced Fontarabia and St. Sebastian's, together with Port Antonio in the bottom of the bay of Biscay. In this last exploit the French were assisted by a detachment of English seamen, who burned two large ships unfinished, and a great quantity of naval stores. The king of England, with a view to indemnify himself for the expense of the war, projected the conquest of Corunna in Biscay, and of Peru in South America. Four thousand men, commanded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... souls that feel the want of something real. And now 't is night, and well it is that I Am here. I stand, my hand on this old tree, Pressing its mossy side, with no one near I can call fellow in the human strife, The great, unfinished drama of this life. Alone, alone, with Nature and its God, I'll sit me down, and for a moment muse On busy scenes, and, like some warrior chief, Behold, yet mingle not in earth's great acts. To-night how various ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... remainder of the six essays simply reach an ordinary average. You will be surprised therefore, my dears, to learn that I do not award the prize to any of these themes, but rather to a seventh composition, which was put into my hands yesterday by Miss Danesbury. It is crude and unfinished, and doubtless but for her recent illness would have received many corrections; but these few pages, which are called 'A Lonely Child,' drew tears from my eyes; crude as they are, they have the merit of real originality. They are too morbid to read to you, ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... Eddystone the ensuing season. He formed and made out designs for the iron rails of the balcony, the cast iron, the wrought iron, and the copper-works of the lantern, &c. There was a violent storm on the 9th of March, 1759, which it was supposed might have damaged the unfinished lighthouse, as it had done very great damage to the ships and houses at Plymouth. As soon as it was possible to effect a landing the works were visited and a report sent to Smeaton. From this he found, with ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... sugar-growing countries, as to excite astonishment and amusement in the house. Observing this feeling, he exclaimed, "I may be called a renegade, I may be called a traitor—" but the sentence remained unfinished amidst shouts of laughter from all sides of the house, and reiterated bursts of derisive cheers from the opposition. In fact, the leader of the commons gave up the shipping and colonial interests, with some slight show of concession, which nearly the whole ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in love?" challenged Jean, searching in a big chintz bag where she kept her handiwork for a piece of unfinished sewing. (Jean's domesticity was always a source of ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... original autograph of the Evangelist is at present attainable. Whether S. Mark was interrupted before he could finish his Gospel,—(as Dr. Tregelles and Professor Norton suggest;)—in which case it will have been published by its Author in an unfinished state: or whether "the last leaf was torn away" before a single copy of the original could be procured,—(a view which is found to have recommended itself to Griesbach;)—in which case it will have once had a different termination from at present; which termination however, ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... had forgotten the room behind her and her friends at the tea-table, as well as the other women drifting in from the adjoining room. She was contemplating, with her little, absent-minded smile, her husband's name on the builder's sign halfway up the unfinished sky-scraper opposite. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and yet I could not help feeling that a kind of reserve was upon the party. I noticed that when some story was being told Cap'n Jack coughed, whereupon the eyes of the story-teller were turned upon me, and the yarn remained unfinished. I could see, too, that many of the men did not like me, and I grew uneasy at the ugly looks they gave me. Moreover, I could not help remembering that in spite of all I was a Pennington, and was no fit company for such as they. And yet I could not escape, for I was ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... those of no creature he had ever observed. One could hear the flip-flap of their slippers all over the place, and at all hours. They were down-at-heel, draggle-tailed, and futile. There was no workmanship about them. They were as unfinished, as unsightly as a puddle on a road. They insulted his eyesight, his hearing, and his energy. They had lank hair that slapped about them like wet seaweed, and they ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... shoulder like any laborer, and drawing the hood of his garment over his bald crown as the mist of rain increased to a driving sheet, Father Baby tramped along the river edge toward an unfinished defense against the waters. It was a high dike, beginning on a shoulder of the peninsula above the town, but extending barely a mile across a marsh where the river had once continuously raveled the shore even in dry seasons. The friar was glad to ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the smoke of midday dinners was arising from Greenwich Village when he turned back toward town. When he reached the Commons on his homeward way he came across a knot of idlers who were wasting the hour of the noontide meal in gaping at the unfinished municipal building. ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... might be free; then she should become his wife: she might be already bound; in that case,—again the terrible shadow darkened his face for an instant. Then he recollected himself, and his eyes, seeking a visible object, rested on her face a little sad with its dwelling upon her unfinished sentence which would have spoken of her mistakes. A flash of perception revealed the truth to him; he saw the gulf that yawned between his nature and hers, and, almost cursing her for being so above him, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... manner on the plank road, meets Posey and Wright, and a small affair occurs. But Wright is sent along the unfinished railroad, and outflanks him. He is also at this moment ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... thought of the place and the performer. The effects of a real orchestra could not have been finer than the voices of the wind instruments, which were like those of an organ and combined wonderfully with the harmonies of the strings. But the unfinished condition of the machine set limits to the composer's execution, and his idea seemed all the greater; for, often, the very perfection of a work of art limits its suggestiveness to the recipient soul. Is not this ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... I say that you have to be told twice—I will not be left alone with that child! He's as good as nobody! What could HE do if—" Here he left the sentence unfinished. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... little place of some 500 inhabitants, but shows in its ruined palaces and unfinished church that it was once populous and prosperous. It has had a stormy history, during which the Perastines have shown themselves sturdy fighters and loyal supporters of their overlords, and is the one city of the Bocche which remained faithful and grateful to Venice, even after Campo Formio. When ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... becomes exhausted in its violent efforts, everything appears weary and overcome as soon as the energy of action is abated; all seems dead after the great crises of life, and the furniture, the hangings, and the portraits of great personages still unfinished on the canvases, all seem to rest as if the whole place had suffered the master's fatigue and had toiled with him, taking part in the daily renewal of his struggle. A vague, heavy odor of paint, turpentine, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... wake to sorrow, When low on the land the cloud-wrath lay; Many an eve we feared to-morrow, The unbegun unfinished day. ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... the old and new cathedrals, neither of which is particularly interesting. The latter is unfinished, and might have been a fine edifice had the labor and money expended on its construction been directed by taste. The interior, rich as it is in marbles and sculpture, has a heavy, confused effect. The pillars ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... abandoned quarries, whence Egyptian temples, that were destined never to be completed, were built, our spirits are but partly 'polished after the similitude of a palace,' while much remains in the rough. The builders of these temples have mouldered away and their unfinished handiwork will lie as it was when the last chisel touched it centuries ago, till the crack of doom; but stones for God's temple will be wrought to completeness and set in their places. The whole threefold divine ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... days after landing at Brundisium, in the year B.C. 19. His body was transferred to Naples, and he was buried near the city at Puteoli. By his will he left some property to his friends Varius and Nicca, with the injunction that they should burn the unfinished epic. The injunction was never carried out, by the express command of the emperor, who directed Varius to publish the poem without any additions of any kind. An order carefully executed, for as the "Aeneid" stands there ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... sure protection, careful only to protect himself, and with no thought of striking in return. Thus the hours passed away, and, as the sun approached the west, the damsel began to despair. But so much the more her anger increases, and she redoubles her efforts, like the craftsman who sees his work unfinished while the day is wellnigh spent. O miserable damsel! didst thou know whom thou wouldst kill,—if, in that cavalier matched against thee thou didst but know Rogero, on whom thy very life-threads hang, rather than kill him thou wouldst ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... wrote the proces-verbal of the demolition of the ciborium, says that the desecration and the removal of the relics took place on Septuagesima Sunday, January 22, about seven in the evening; at nine o'clock lightning struck the unfinished roof of the basilica; heavy pieces of masonry fell with a crash; mosaics were wrenched from their sockets, and fissures and rents produced in various parts of the building. In the same night the Tiber overflowed its banks, and the turbulent waters rushed as far as the palace of Cardinal Rusticucci ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... and the phrase died unfinished; strong as her love had grown, it looked to her unproven and without desert, beside that which had chose to perish for his sake. And where they stood with the future as fair before them as the light of the day around them, he bowed his head, as before some sacred thing, at the whisper of the child ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... by his excitement, and Adams took up the unfinished sentence almost tenderly. "So far, of course, she is merely a beautiful promise, a flower in the bud," he said. "Her genius—if she has genius—has not found itself, and the notes she strikes are all mere groping attempts at a perfect self-expression. Yet, undoubtedly, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... evening, between eight and nine, there gathered thunder over Berlin; wild tumult of the elements: thunder-bolt "thrice in swift succession" struck the unfinished Steeple; in the "hood" of which men thereupon noticed a light, as of a star, or sparkle of the sun; and straight-way, in spite of the rain-torrents, there burst out blazes of flame. Blazes unquenchable; grand yet ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... appears what progress was made herein, & in part what charge it was, and how left unfinished, and some reason of y^e same; but in truth (as was afterwards appehended) the meaine reason was M^r. Allerton's policie, to have an opportunitie to be sent over againe, for other regards; and for that end procured them thus to write. For it might then well enough have been ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... staged at Covent Garden, and met with wonderful success. A little more than a year later Goldsmith died of a nervous fever, the result of overwork and anxiety, and was buried in the burial ground of the Temple Church. His unfinished poem, Retaliation, a series of epigrams in epitaph form on some of his distinguished literary and artistic friends, was issued a few days after his death, and added greatly to his reputation as a wit and humorist, a reputation which was ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... acquainted with, as that near Bala, near Beddkelert, and beyond Machynleth, are not attractive either in their forms or in their accompaniments; the Bala Lake being meagre and insipid, the others as it were unfinished, and unaccompanied with ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of the Executive and Legislative Branches, keeping this caution ever in mind, address ourselves to the business of the year before us—and to the unfinished business of last year—with resolution, the outlook is bright ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... it would be well for them to change their residence. What could life do for him there at Orley Farm, after all that had passed? He had gone to Liverpool and bought guano, and now the sacks were lying in his barn unopened. He had begun to drain, and the ugly unfinished lines of earth were lying across his fields. He had no further interest in it, and felt that he could no longer go to work on that ground as though he were ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... she withdrew her gaze and glanced at the patient. To her, too, the wounded man was but a case, another error of humanity that had come to St. Isidore's for temporary repairs, to start once more on its erring course, or, perhaps, to go forth unfinished, remanded just there to death. The ten-thirty express was now pulling out through the yards in a powerful clamor of clattering switches and hearty pulsations that shook the flimsy walls of St. Isidore's, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... The sentence remained unfinished as I had written it two years and a half ago when Disease laid its hand on me, and all my MSS. ended in a dash. It was a description of Kristofer Hansteen, an explanation of his work in Norway. And now that I am ready to pick up the thread ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... Maillard, which lasted three hours, certain unauthorised and self-constituted assassins appeared at the Abbaye and proposed to go on with the work of extermination which he had left unfinished. The gaolers were obliged to deliver up a few prisoners, to save time. When Maillard returned, he established a sort of tribunal for the trial of prisoners, while the murderers, in all something under 200, waited outside and slaughtered those that were ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... with its dark tapestries, and its candelabra, crosses and reliquaries, of dull, old gold that seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. Nothing was lacking. Ancient fabrics and garlands of flowers covered the walls, hiding the master's studies in color, unfinished pictures, profane works that could not be tolerated in the discreet, harmonious atmosphere of that chapel-like room. The floor was partly covered with costly rugs, Persian and Moorish. In front of the altar were two praying desks and behind them, for the more important ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... exertions in his endeavours to put things right. He came from Canterbury, where he was Prior, and where he had already distinguished himself as a zealous builder; but all that is recorded as due to him at Burgh is the completion of some unfinished buildings, the dormitory, the refectory, and the chapter-house. We may feel confident therefore that the Saxon Church built by Ethelwold remained substantially as first erected until the time of Ernulf's successor; ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... some unfinished business," remarked Archie. "We're going to take up this little matter with Mr. Carey ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... for that in Rome," said Campbell; "the churches are so unfinished, so untidy. Rome is a city of ruins! the Christian temples are built on ruins, and they themselves are generally dilapidated or decayed; thus they are ruins of ruins." Campbell was on an easier subject ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... responsible for the Hindustani part of it. Our enthusiasm grew. For three or four days we talked of nothing else. We experimented, we planned; we dreamed, we wrote. But alas! other things soon thrust themselves upon us, and our unfinished cook book was pigeon-holed for years ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... CHORAL LYRIC POETS.—The chorus was in general use in Greece before the time of Homer, and nearly every variety of the choral poetry, which was afterwards so brilliantly developed, existed at that remote period in a rude, unfinished state. After the improvements made by Terpander and others in musical art, choral poetry rapidly progressed towards perfection. The poets during the period of progress were Alcman and Stesichorus, while finished lyric poetry is represented by Ibycus, Simonides, his disciple Bacchylides ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... when the Hotel Roden was pointed out to us we appreciated the witticism, for the Roden is—or was at the time of our visit—merely the steel skeleton of a building which, we were informed, had for some years stood unfinished owing to disagreements among those ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... of these books is manliness. The stories are wonderfully entertaining, and they are at the same time sound and wholesome. No boy will willingly lay down an unfinished book in this series. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... poured out, in these Southampton evenings, an eager stream of song. 'His poetic composition,' says his friend, 'was then exceedingly facile: more than once or twice has he taken home with him at night some unfinished act of a drama, in which the editor [Kelsall] had found much to admire, and, at the next meeting, has produced a new one, similar in design, but filled with other thoughts and fancies, which his teeming imagination had projected, in its sheer abundance, and not from any ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... in that class of ballads of which the Douglas Tragedy is a type: the hero loves the daughter of his enemy's house, her kinsmen kill him, and she dies of grief. This is the story told in both the lays of Helgi Hundingsbane, complete in one, unfinished in the other. No single poem preserves all the incidents of the legend; some survive in one version, some in another, as ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... ruin of regular British regiments by a crowd of Indian savages, and of the bloody repulse of the most numerous army that had yet assembled round our standards in America before a few weak French battalions and an unfinished parapet. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... patience and meekness, could have resisted the curiosity to know what that ballad was: so my worthy friend has done me a mischief, which I dare say he never intended; and reduced me to the unfortunate alternative of leaving your curiosity ungratified, or else disgusting you with foolish verses, the unfinished production of a random moment, and never meant to have met your ear. I have heard or read somewhere of a gentleman who had some genius, much eccentricity, and very considerable dexterity with his pencil. In the accidental group of life into which ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... second makes; What Dulness dropp'd among her sons impress'd Like motion from one circle to the rest; So from the midmost the nutation spreads Round and more round, o'er all the sea of heads. 410 At last Centlivre[342] felt her voice to fail, Motteux[343] himself unfinished left his tale, Boyer the state, and Law the stage gave o'er,[344] Morgan[345] and Mandeville[346] could prate no more; Norton,[347] from Daniel and Ostroea sprung, Bless'd with his father's front and mother's tongue, Hung silent down his never-blushing ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... them, never allowing a word of despondency to escape him, and never despairing of ultimate success. And at length death comes, and the mighty builder is snatched away suddenly in the midst of his unfinished labours, bequeathing to his successors the task of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the chips with hasty, impatient blows from the shapeless block, you would have been tempted to say that he was but a stonecutter, and but a hasty workman at that. Even now we do not know exactly what form and expression he would have given to the still unfinished head. But no one can examine it and hesitate to pronounce it a grand work of a master-mind. In any manifestly incomplete work you must judge the purpose and character and powers of the workman or artist by its ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... calmly. "Be not so lost in thy terror, oh Norqua. I, too, have seen the ship and I fear not. Yet will I obey if so my father bids," she added quickly. "Go thou ahead. I follow." And hastily gathering together some reeds and colored grasses lying on the ledge, parts of an unfinished basket upon which, evidently, she had during some previous visit been at work, she flung them into a corner of the cavern and ran lightly down the narrow path leading to ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... two poems mentioned in the Preface to the volume of 1859, as designed to form with it an immense trilogy: Dieu and La Fin de Satan. Neither was published till after the poet's death, and the latter was left in an unfinished condition. But they were both planned in the days when, isolated on his rock and severed from active life, the poet meditated on the deep questions of life and death. They were meant to be, the one the prelude, and the other the ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... reached the natural conclusion that "such occurrences, such a history with all its concomitant and dependent circumstances, in brief, such a nation cannot be a lying invention. Its development is the greatest poem of all times, and still unfinished, will probably continue until every possibility hidden in the soul life of humanity shall ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... away silently, but as he stumbled through the dark, unfinished part of the cellar he thought to himself, "Well, that's the last time he'll give me an order for ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... knowing that it was sometimes dangerous to encounter them, the inhabitants did not go out; although they heard them making a terrible bellowing and uproar. It appeared the next morning, that one of the elephants had fallen into an unfinished trench, which had no water in it, and did not know how to get out again. It is supposed, that his companions had pulled him out with their trunks; for there were clearly defined marks of their having stationed themselves on each side; some kneeling, and some standing, and ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... vision fades, the gorgeous shapes sweep on into darkness, and, waking from his revery, the artist sees before him only the dull walls of his narrow chamber; the canvas stretched a blank upon its frame; the works, maimed, crude, unfinished, of an inexperienced hand, lying idly around; and feels himself—himself, but one moment before the creator of a world of wonders, the master spirit of shapes glorious and majestical beyond the shapes of men-dashed down from his momentary height, and despoiled ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the meaning of the "bloom," or waxy coating found on many leaves, was one of those inquiries which remained unfinished at the time of his death. He amassed a quantity of notes on the subject, part of which I hope to publish at no distant date. (A small instalment on the relation between bloom and the distribution of the stomata on leaves has appeared in the 'Journal of the Linnean Society,' ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... is thought to be an unfinished work. Unmethodical and without proportion, it may have been either compiled clumsily after the poet's death, or put together carelessly by himself amid the indolence which grows sometimes upon old age. It declares the essentials of poetry to ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... shalt not go over this Jordan. The Lord thy God, He will go before thee.' Not even Paul is indispensable. The under-shepherds die, the Shepherd lives, and watches against wolves and dangers. Paul had laid the foundation, and the edifice would not stand unfinished, like some half-reared palace begun by a now dead king. The growth of the Church and of its individual members is sure. It is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... exceedingly well satisfied with himself after he had finished the writing of his diary up to date. Possibly the fact that he had not completed his account of the wreck of the Waldo had troubled him, as any work left unfinished troubles a progressive or conscientious man. But whether or not he had been disturbed about his diary, he was happier than usual after he had completed the task. His physical condition had been greatly improved under the careful nursing of Mrs. Bennington. In the course of the afternoon ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... unfinished letter from Miss Arabella, beginning "Dear and Honored Sir," and another from the borough justice. Miss Arabella was dead. The care of her sister had worn her so much that she had dropped into a gentle decline, and knowing herself near the end had ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... friend and foe; two hundred yards of pulverised No Man's Land, now soaked like a sponge. About midway stretched an unfinished German trench, from which our guns had driven the enemy before they had had time to complete it. It was little more than a wet shallow ditch now, with a line of sandbags on the British side, and when Dennis had crossed it he continued his perilous course ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... its name. But in this later form, the true story of this singular man doomed to wear an iron vizor over his features during his entire lifetime could only be treated episodically. While as a special subject in the Crimes, Dumas indulges his curiosity, and that of his reader, to the full. Hugo's unfinished tragedy,'Les Jumeaux', is on the same subject; as also are others by Fournier, in French, ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... was a kiosque with four-and- twenty alcoves (Liwan, for which see vols. iv. 71, vi. 347) all builded of emerald, etc., and one remained with the kiosque (kushk) unfinished." I adopt Galland's reading salon a vingt- quatre croisees which are mentioned in the Arab. text towards the end of the tale, and thus avoid the confusion between kiosque and window. In the H. V. there is a domed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... these lectures I have raised points and left them open and unfinished until we should have come to the subject of Mysticism. Some of you, I fear, may have smiled as you noted my reiterated postponements. But now the hour has come when mysticism must be faced in good earnest, and those ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... work that evening without much thought of the probable outcome of his morning's effort. Like most college professors, he had a number of unfinished problems on hand, any one of which might require years for its solution. The scholar's work, like the housekeeper's, is never done, and like the housekeeper, too, he can cover up his postponements and neglect ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins |
