"Unpremeditated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was more embarrassed than any of them. I had not, in the least, anticipated that a chance remark would produce such an effect. Like Ezekiel's field of death, strewn with dead men's bones, there was a quiver at the touch of the spirit, and the dead bones stirred. I had uttered an unpremeditated word of love and sympathy, and this word had acted on all as though they had only been waiting for this very remark, in order that they might cease to be corpses and might live. They all stared at me, and waited for what would come next. They waited for me to utter those words, ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... least, supposed to exist between one of them and one of the escaped prisoners, and had thought it strange, too, that particular equipage being chosen. Still, from all he could gather, after ample inquiry, he was forced to the conclusion that the thing was unpremeditated—at least on the ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... fire of his anger had burned itself out, and had left in its place the ashes of despondency and despair. Yet, even in that hour of depression and self-accusation, he did not dream of the far-reaching consequences of this one unpremeditated act of inexcusable folly of which he had just been guilty. He bent down and gathered some wet snow into his hands and bathed his face, and sopped it half dry with his handkerchief, already soaked. Then, not caring, ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... but several of the Shehaab princes who headed them, especially the Emir Kais, maintained the reputation of their house and displayed a brilliant courage. The Emir Fakre-deen was at Canobia at the time of the outbreak, which, as it often happens, though not unpremeditated, was unexpected. He marched to the scene of action at the head of his troops, and, when he found that Kais had been outflanked and repulsed, that the Maronites were disheartened in proportion to their previous vanity and insolence, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... are nearly all of our experiences of earthly existence. It is, indeed, "a thing of shreds and patches." But we are caught in the web of material existence from which there can be no lawful escape, save by unpremeditated physical death. We are thrust into the seething cauldron of formative life. The entire race of man, forced forward by the resistless power of the law of progress, is on the everlasting journey to the heights of perfected being. To us, enmeshed in the ties of interest and affection, the ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... of sentiment or sink to the depths of low comedy. It is 'familiar, but by no means vulgar.' Its first quality is ease—absence of effort, spontaneity, freedom, a degage air. It is in rhythm what the perfect prose letter should be and is—flowing and unpremeditated without slovenliness—having the characteristics of the best conversation, as differentiated from mere argument or harangue. Its second quality is playfulness—a refusal to be too much in earnest in any direction, ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... this time was quite unpremeditated. "Phillips?" he repeated, sharply. "Egbert, you mean? Oh, yes.... Humph.... Is he mixed ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the honorable gentleman who do maintain these opinions, is quite certain. I recollect the recent expression of a sentiment, which circumstances attending its utterance and publication justify us in supposing was not unpremeditated. "The sovereignty of the State,—never to be controlled, construed, or decided on, but by her own ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... but this delicacy was probably never possessed equally by another player." "There is no trick in his playing," writes another critic; "it is all fair scientific execution, opening to us a new order of sounds.... All his passages seem free and unpremeditated, as if conceived on the instant. One has no impression of their having cost him either forethought or labor.... The word difficulty has no place in his vocabulary.... etc." Paganini's lengthened tour through London and ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... they were sincere, for already he repented him his unpremeditated act so far as she was concerned—she returned no slightest answer, gave no sign indeed that she heard a word of it. Baffled, he stood gnawing his lip a moment, and gradually, unreasonably perhaps, anger welled up from his heart. He turned and went out again. Next he had visited his brother, ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Klux had to do with arresting the outlawry that made the roads rattle with the clatter of the hoofs of horses at midnight raids, but I do know young Byron was the last man hanged by the Klu Klux in Madison county, and may I not hope the unpremeditated protest made in that Sunday evening address, helped in some measure to bring about the transformation, and contribute a mite to the public sentiment that has made Richmond a saloonless place ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... thee, blithe spirit!— Bird thou never wert— That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... he had since learned entirely to comprehend; controversies with white-waistcoated proprietors of hotels and voluble tradespeople, generally followed by a severance of hastily-cemented friendships, and a departure of apparently unpremeditated abruptness. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... home, the love of those dear to him, in the desire to free himself from a disgrace insignificent{sic} in comparison with that entailed by committing the highest of all crimes. One would wish to believe that Webster's deed was unpremeditated, the result of a sudden gust of passion caused by his victim's acrimonious pursuit of his debtor. But there are circumstances in the case which tell powerfully against such a view. The character of the murderer seems curiously ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... fear is not what actually makes many childless homes. They often are unpremeditated. A large percentage of the sterility in the world is due to the results of indiscretions that are the outcome of ignorance. One great factor in childless homes is the prevalence of the black plagues. It is estimated that forty-five ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... thought, they have come into being through a long succession of precedents. We cannot explain them fully to children; they can only have the summary and results of them, and these are dry and grinding, opposed to the unpremeditated spontaneous ways of acting in which they delight. Manners are almost fatally opposed to the sudden happy thoughts of doing something original, which occur to children's minds. No wonder they dislike them; we must be prepared for this. They are almost grown up before they ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... meeting with Helen, a meeting which had been quite unpremeditated, he had thought of but little except her. During his talk with her in the parsonage sitting room he had been—there was no use pretending to himself that it was otherwise—more contented with the ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... quickly; and with a sudden movement she went up to him and put her hand on his shoulder. The caress, so innocent, unpremeditated, and instinctive, ran through him like a voltaic shock. These two were almost strangers; they had scarcely met till within the past week, Mark being seldom in Bursley. 'You mistake me—it is a shame of him! ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... matter of policy. There was no principle in it that could be long maintained. The conscription only forced a decision. There were underlying causes for aversion and vengeance, although the actual outbreak was unpremeditated. The angry peasants stood alone for a moment; then was seen the stronger argument, the greater force behind. Clergy and gentry put forward the claim of conscience, and then the men who had been in the royalist plot with La Rouerie, began to weave a new web. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... kind. He hardly knew me by sight. He thought only of coming to the rescue of an unfortunate lecturer, prostrated on the very threshold of his career; and a friendly hallucination made him for the moment really believe what he said. His unpremeditated assertion must have been set down by the recording angel on the same page with Uncle Toby's oath, and then obliterated in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... sorry to have found it necessary to deliver my sentiments on a subject of so important a nature in an unpremeditated minute, drawn from me at the board, which I should have wished to have had leisure and retirement to have enabled me to express myself with that degree of caution and exactness which the subject requires. I have said nothing but what I believe and am morally ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... who kept Priscilla on the verge of nervous prostration for a whole semester, entered upon her college career in an entirely unpremeditated and impromptu manner. It began one day away back in November. Georgie Merriles and Patty had just strolled home from the athletic field, where they had been witnessing the start of a paper-chase cross country, in which Priscilla ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... possessions, and now he asked her if she would not promise him the greatest. She did not like what she felt "rehearsed" in his proposal; it was not her idea of a proposal, which ought to be spontaneous and unpremeditated in terms; at the same time, she resented his precipitation, which she could not deny ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... sight was a pirate or an honest trader. But it was now very evident that the speronara had an object in steering, as she was clearly doing, for the brig, and as that object could scarcely be otherwise than hostile, there was a possibility of their being attacked; and with one of those unpremeditated cheers which British seamen cannot refrain from giving at the thoughts of a skirmish, every man hastened to buckle a cutlass to his side. Powder and shot were got up, and the small arms and boarding-pikes were placed by the sides of the guns, ready at hand, to be seized in a moment. ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... his speech and was about to sit down with his braves, the interpreter, pointing to General W. H. Harrison, said, "Your father wishes you to take a chair." But the ordinary courtesy of calling the white Governor the father of the red men was repugnant to Tecumseh, and with lofty mien and unpremeditated eloquence he declined the proffered seat. "No," he exclaimed, "the sun is my father, the earth is my mother, and I will rest on her bosom." And he sat down on Mother Earth with his assembled warriors, this act and fiery speech more than ever ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... Double M stock, the discovery, the death of his friend and maybe of Cullison, the certain punishment that would follow. He was a horse thief caught almost in the act. Perhaps he was a murderer too. And the whole thing had been entirely unpremeditated. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... the High Street from his lodgings. But though he entered the assize building there was nothing for him to do, and sitting at the blue baize table in the well of the court, he mended pens with a mind far away from the case in progress. Thoughts of unpremeditated conduct, of which a week earlier he would not have believed himself capable, threw him into a mood ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... fail. And the time of leaving found him curiously depressed. He had gripped Chet's hand, then turned to Diane for what might be a last good-by. The quick enfoldment of her soft body in his arms was as unpremeditated as the kiss he placed upon her lips.... He swung away abruptly, and fell in behind his guide without a word. The way led first across the place of smoke ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... has been the result? A few imbecile and uncombined plots—in every instance detected before they broke out into action, and which perhaps if undetected would never have broken into action. One or two sudden, unpremeditated attempts, frantic in their character, if not prompted by actual insanity, and these instantly crushed. As it is, we are not less assured of safety, order, and internal peace, than any other people; and but for ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... severest trial Clement underwent at Jerome's hands was unpremeditated. It came about thus. Jerome, in an indulgent moment, went with him to Fra Colonna, and there "The Dream of Polifilo" lay on the table just copied fairly. The poor author, in the pride of his heart, pointed out a ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself: for Milton conceived the Paradise Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for the muse having "dictated" to him the "unpremeditated song". And let this be an answer to those who would allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the Orlando Furioso. Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is still more observable in the plastic and ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... how you got him!" said Rolfe. "I never thought of looking for him at Riversbrook. Sometimes I am inclined to agree with you that he had no nerve for murder. But an unpremeditated murder doesn't want much nerve. He might have done it in a moment of passion." Rolfe was endeavouring to take advantage of Crewe's communicative mood and to arrive by a process of elimination at the person against whom Crewe had accumulated ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... itself unrestrained. Those around Cavour were in apprehension for his life and his reason. In spite of all that has been said to the contrary, it is probable that Napoleon's resolution, though not unpremeditated, was of recent date. When he entered Milan, he seems to have really contemplated pushing the war beyond the Mincio; there is proof, however, that he was thinking of peace the day before the battle of Solferino, which disposes of the semi-official story ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... by the peculiar way in which prefaces in different editions of the same book appear and disappear for no apparent reason, possibly at the convenience of the printer. It is scarcely fair to interpret as considered, deliberate formulation of principles, utterances so unpremeditated and fragmentary. The theory which accompanies secular translation is much less clear and consecutive than that which accompanies the translation of the Bible. Though in the latter case the formulation of theories of translation was almost equally incidental, respect for the original, ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... explained, however, that the maid Chi'ao Hsing was the very person, who, a few years ago, had looked round at Y-ts'un and who, by one simple, unpremeditated glance, evolved, in fact, this extraordinary destiny which was indeed ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... qualifications, but of unconquerable modesty, held back. At the same time persons, whose destiny caused them to live among the elite of an age, have seen reason to confess that they have heard such talk, such glorious and unpremeditated discourse, from men whose thoughts melted away with the breath that uttered them, as the wisest of their vaunted contemporary authors would in vain have ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... "Pusillanimous companion, I am the blossom of the city and the luminary of the people; my presence gives life to the plains, and my harmony cultivates the desert. If, when in vulgar prose I express the unpremeditated idea, every ear is filled with delight, and the fleeting soul, through ecstacy, flutters on the trembling lips—what must be the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... grave, the secret note-books of this famous wit; and are thus enabled to trace the jokes, in embryo, with which he had so often made the walls of St. Stephen's shake, in a merriment excited by the happy appearance of sudden unpremeditated effusion.—Lord Brougham. ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... meditated it! If he committed it, it was unpremeditated, unintentional; the accident of some lover's quarrel, some frenzy of ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... know whether I have been able to make any of my emotions clear to you in my letters. Terror has a terrible fascination. Up to now I have always been afraid—afraid of small fears. At last I meet fear itself and it stings my pride into an unpremeditated courage. ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... whatever conditions or circumstances we may owe the existence of Charles Lamb's letters, their quality is of course the fruit of the genius and temperament of the writer. Unpremeditated as the strain of the skylark, they have almost to excess (were that possible) the prime epistolary merit of spontaneity. From the brain of the writer to the sheet before him flows an unbroken Pactolian ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... we have been persuaded into an unpremeditated leniency towards the sterner sex, blotting out the pictures of their vicious lives, not indeed to spare them in the very least, but only to save the blush, the sigh, the tear of many a woman whose ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... told us, and we cannot now know more, is, that he composed much of this poem in the night and morning, I suppose, before his mind was disturbed with common business; and that he poured out, with great fluency, his "unpremeditated verse." Versification, free, like his, from the distresses of rhyme, must, by a work so long, be made prompt and habitual; and, when his thoughts were once adjusted, the words would come at ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... touched her shoulder.... It was unpremeditated, something besides his own will had urged him to ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... return he said he hardly thought he should be back from the Snowy Range before I left. Essentially an actor, was he, I wonder, posing on the previous day in the attitude of desperate remorse, to impose on my credulity or frighten me; or was it a genuine and unpremeditated outburst of passionate regret for the life which he had thrown away? I cannot tell, but I think it was the last. As I cautiously rode back, the sunset glories were reddening the mountain tops, and the park lay in violet gloom. It was wonderfully magnificent, but oh, so solemn, so lonely! I rode ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... licences of poetical expression, which are indispensable in other departments of poetry, are here inadmissible. Not only must the versification not interfere with the common, unconstrained, and even careless tone of conversation, but it must also seem to be itself unpremeditated. It must not by its lofty tone elevate the characters as in Tragedy, where, along with the unusual sublimity of the language, it becomes as it were a mental Cothurnus. In Comedy the verse must serve merely to give greater ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... dire to tell!" (Said BAINES). "Be good enough to stop." And senseless on the floor he fell, With unpremeditated flop! ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... be such—could only have occurred at an unpremeditated moment. We will not follow our friend across the threshold. He has left us much food for thought, a portion of which shall lend its wisdom to a moral and be shaped into a figure. Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... abundantly among his contemporaries; they are not necessarily the best specimens that might have been given, if more of his mots had been preserved; and their effect on his listeners depended more on the manner of delivery than on the matter. That they were improvised and unpremeditated is another important consideration. It is quite unfair to compare them, as Warburton does, with the hebdomadal trash of 'Punch,' though perhaps they would stand the comparison pretty well. It is one thing to force wit with plenty of time ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... myth has been received as true at some time, but is now known to be false. A fabrication is designed to deceive; it is a less odious word than falsehood, but is really stronger, as a falsehood may be a sudden unpremeditated statement, while a fabrication is a series of statements carefully studied and fitted together in order to deceive; the falsehood is all false; the fabrication may mingle the true with the false. A figment is something imaginary which the one who utters it may or may not ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the feelings of her father's field-hand; deciding that if he was driven from her forever, it would solve the problem of terminating that old childish love affair which still persisted in occupying a suite of rooms all of its own in her memory; and finally repenting of the unpremeditated thrust which might easily have hurt too deeply so sensitive a man as Jim Irwin. But girls are not usually so made as to feel any very bitter remorse for their male victims, and so Jennie slept very ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... It may be a spurred, ticked or dotted beard, but in any case the initial stroke must be carefully examined, whatever form it may assume, for the oft-emphasized reason that it belongs so essentially to the clue-providing class of unguarded and unpremeditated automatic strokes that are overlooked ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... no doubt that the whole campaign was the result of long and secret preparation. But it had been put into execution at the psychological moment, which was its warrant of success. That this moment had been unpremeditated, and that something very like chance alone had precipitated matters, ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... helplessly. The necessity of sudden action always threw him into confusion. His mind needed not minutes but days to adjust itself to the unpremeditated. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... she promised and assured success: In complete glory she reveal'd herself; And, whereas I was black and swart before, With those clear rays which she infused on me That beauty am I bless'd with which you may see. Ask me what question thou canst possible, And I will answer unpremeditated: My courage try by combat, if thou dar'st, And thou shalt find that I exceed my sex. Resolve on this, thou shalt be fortunate, If thou receive me ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... ridiculous picture: a buffalo dragging the Treasury Bench about the Chamber; as one conjures things in an absurd dream. He laughed outright, at a moment when Mademoiselle Cerise was telling of a remarkable effect she produced one night in "Fedora," unpremeditated, inspired; and Mademoiselle Cerise, with smiling lips and eyes like daggers, called him a bear. This brought him to him self, and he swam with the enjoyment. He did enjoy it, but not as his uncle wished and hoped. Gaston did not respond eagerly ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "what consideration! You will be bursting into unpremeditated poetry about the dark ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... he prayed in simple language for comfort and a blessing to the mourning household. He was followed with a very few but intensely earnest words by Luke. Even John Gunter put up an unpremeditated prayer in the words, "God help us!" uttered in a choking voice, and the old fisherman followed them all ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... because she had allowed herself to dream, to believe that what she had done had been for love, for light! because she had not listened to the warning voice within her! It had always been on the little, unpremeditated acts of Ditmar that she had loved to linger, and now, in the light of Lise's testimony, of Lise's experience, she saw them all as false. It seemed incredible, now, that she had ever deceived herself into thinking that Ditmar meant to marry her, that he loved ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Milan revolt had been one of the customary revolutions, arranged with the help of pen and paper, its first day would have been certainly its last. But even more than the Sicilian Vespers, it was the unpremeditated, irresistible act of a people sick of being slaves. At the beginning Casati tried to restrain it; so, with equal or still stronger endeavours, did the republican Carlo Cattaneo, whose influence was great. 'You have no arms,' ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Still, he did not move immediately. He was in the shade, which was a matter for congratulation on such a day. He had a cigarette between his lips, which made for comfort; and he still felt the exhilarating effects of his unpremeditated boldness, without having come to the point of sober thinking. He sat there, and blew occasional mouthfuls of smoke into the quivering heat waves, and stared down at the river rushing over the impeding rocks as if its very existence depended upon reaching as soon as ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... looked about the room. His first impression was that Marette must have lived in it for a long time. It was a woman's room, without the newness of sudden and unpremeditated occupancy. He knew that formerly it had been Kedsty's room, but nothing of Kedsty remained in it now. And then, as his wondering eyes beheld the miracle, a number of things struck him with amazing significance. He no longer doubted that Marette ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... and they are also arbitrary; excepting a few simple sounds expressive of certain internal emotions, which sounds being the same in all languages, must be the work of nature: thus the unpremeditated tones of admiration are the same in all men."—Kames, Elements of Crit., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... marched at some distance from the column. Several of their friends who were mingled with the members of the Right rejoined them; and we may here mention a fact without giving it more importance than it possesses, namely, that the two fractions of the Assembly represented in this unpremeditated gathering marched towards the Mairie without being mingled together; one on each side of the street. It chanced that the men of the majority kept on the right side of the street, and the men of the minority ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... a topic for conversation. They certainly sparkled and glittered bravely in the library, where the blinds were drawn and the electric lamps turned on. (Kitty had seen to that. Silver looks so well by artificial light, and so, by a happy and unpremeditated coincidence, does ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... not for any fault of hers that he had displayed anger, her face gradually lost its expression of dread. But still she could not fail to notice that the words which he spoke were not such as are commonly prompted by a true and unpremeditated affection; but were rather the labored and soulless result of a mere good-natured desire to make atonement for a neglect, and were uttered in all the careless spirit with which one tries to soothe an improperly aggrieved child; ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... why she had so laughed, save on the supposition that he was more humorous than he had suspected. Anyhow, he laughed too, and they parted laughing. He remembered that he had made a marked effect (though not one of laughter) on the tailor by quickly returning the question, "Are you?" And his unpremeditated stroke with the Countess was similar. When he had got ten yards on his way towards Harold Etches and a fiver he felt something in his hand. The Countess's fan was sticking between his fingers. It had unhooked itself from her ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Troy Wall; or rage Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous'd, Or Neptun's ire or Juno's, that so long Perplex'd the Greek and Cytherea's Son; If answerable style I can obtaine 20 Of my Celestial Patroness, who deignes Her nightly visitation unimplor'd, And dictates to me slumbring, or inspires Easie my unpremeditated Verse: Since first this subject for Heroic Song Pleas'd me long choosing, and beginning late; Not sedulous by Nature to indite Warrs, hitherto the onely Argument Heroic deem'd, chief maistrie to dissect With long and tedious ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... a flourish of the whip, the man broke into a sort of endless, drawling song. In that song everything had a place. By "everything" I mean both the various encouraging and stimulating cries with which Russian folk urge on their horses, and a random, unpremeditated selection ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... over her hair, went down against her cheek and pressed her to him. She could hear his heart beating. It sounded as loudly in his breast as her own. She had a sense of sudden, unpremeditated emotion. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... memory was so singular that he never forgot things, names, or dates, cherishing remembrance of things with precision; and his apprehension was so good, that in skimming thus it was, with him, precisely as though he had read very laboriously. He excelled in unpremeditated discourse, which, whether in the shape of repartee or jest, was always appropriate and vivacious. He often reproached me, and others more than he, with "not spoiling him;" but I often gave him praise ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... expression: a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the "Paradise Lost" as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for the muse having "dictated" to him the "unpremeditated song." And let this be an answer to those who allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the "Orlando Furioso." Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... effaced in one clean sweep of independence, while the lion, "not so badly drawn," was differently dealt with—it was found not "necessary to do anything more than restore it in permanent colour, and that," with a bottle of Brunswick black, "has accordingly been done;" and, as Mr. Bayliss adds, with unpremeditated truth, in the thoughtless pride of achievement, "the notice board was no longer the actual work of ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... just occurred had been unpremeditated. It was one of those inevitable things. It had to happen. He had not planned it, although he knew, now, that had he not procrastinated his going, had he not drifted, he could have foreseen it. And now, going ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the catastrophe was quite unpremeditated. Marion's entire ignorance of the customs of the New Zealanders occasioned that distressing event: as I have before observed, that strangers, not acquainted with their religious prejudices, are likely to commit some fatal error; and ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... departing guests from Mr. Beirne's: 'low on the sand and loud on the stone.' In the soft-lit room no sound broke the nocturnal stillness except the mechanism of the clock, pushing busily toward the three-quarter mark. Carlisle was looking up at Canning with eyes full of unpremeditated sweetness. Into Canning's face the blood leapt suddenly. Without other warning, he leaned back against the heavy table, and took her almost roughly ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the Allgood family, with a sprinkling of local friends. Nobody would have supposed that the above remark would lead, as it did, to a succession of curious puzzles and paradoxes, to which every member of the party contributed something of interest. The little symposium was quite unpremeditated, so we must not be too critical respecting a few of the posers that were forthcoming. The varied character of the contributions is just what we would expect on such an occasion, for it was a gathering ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... straight before him, fascinated by them, with the one on the left as well as the one on the right, without knowing, indeed, which was on the left or which on the right, which was mother, which was daughter. He abandoned himself willingly to the pleasure of unpremeditated and exquisite sensuous delight. He even tried to mingle them in his heart, not to distinguish them in his thought, and quieted desire with the charm of this confusion. Was it not only one woman beside him, composed of this mother and daughter, so much alike? And did ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... might be a general resemblance between the two girls; and he might be mistaken even in that. Miss Owen herself took such a view of the matter at the time, and passed it lightly by. But, afterwards, in the course of her ponderings, it came back again. The unpremeditated words, in which her employer had admitted the probability of a resemblance between herself and what his own lost child might most likely have become, seemed to find their place amongst the other strange things ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... not so sure the witness's costume was unpremeditated, nevertheless acknowledged its power. He opened his examination with an apology for thus troubling her a second time, and explained that new witnesses and new evidence made ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... tears of joy or with loud protestations of gratitude upon bended knees; or whether the prospect of once again visiting that cottage home and all that had so long been held dear, would come with such unpremeditated intensity as to stifle all outward manifestations of delight, except, perhaps, that trembling of the lip or ebb and flow of color which is so often the surest sign of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and Stanhope, the surprise of Monjuich, and the glorious disaster of Brihuega. This man must have been of the Protestant religion; but he was of the aboriginal race, and not only spoke the Irish language, but could pour forth unpremeditated Irish verses. Oliver early became, and through life continued to be, a passionate admirer of the Irish music, and especially of the compositions of Carolan, some of the last notes of whose harp he heard. It ought to be added that Oliver, though ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... movements, extending through half a century, the logical and inevitable end of which was open conflict between the two opposing forces of Freedom and Slavery. At Glasgow his discourse seems to have been almost unpremeditated. A meeting of one or two Temperance advocates, who had come to greet him as a brother in their cause, took on, "quite accidentally," a political character, and Mr. Beecher gratified the assembly with an address which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... my back and almost as I shrugged my shoulders—so, within twenty minutes of the sunrise that told us we were eight human beings isolated from all help but that which we could afford to one another—in a casual, unpremeditated stroke the curse fell ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... accompaniment than the music of the spheres. Respecting the date of composition, we may trust Aubrey's statement that the poem was commenced in 1658, and when the rapidity of Milton's composition is considered ("Easy my unpremeditated verse") it may, notwithstanding the terrible hindrances of the years 1659 and 1660, have been, as Aubrey thinks, completed by 1663. It would still require mature revision, which we know from Ellwood that it had received by the summer of 1665. Internal evidence ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... us spectator and listener to ourselves, in the back of my brain—or my soul—was running this query: "I wonder what a raw battlefield looks like? I have a chance to see if I want to— perhaps." I suppose that was an attack of involuntary, unpremeditated curiosity. I did not want ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... walls of the tall buildings, Philippe Dechartre's little house, by the roughness of its stones, by the naive heaviness of its windows, by the simplicity of the roof, which the architect's widow had caused to be covered with little expense, by all the lucky accidents of the unfinished and unpremeditated, corrected the lack of grace of its new and affected antiquity and archeologic romanticism, and harmonized with the humbleness of a district made ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... various embellishment in the line of glass porticos and privet hedges, the General, Mrs. Horlick, Messrs Brookes and Berkins—how complete it seemed, how individual and how synthetical— his eyes filled with tears of unpremeditated grief. The leaves were falling, the hills were shrouded in wreaths of floating mist. Some trees had been cut down and scaffolding had been reared about the Manor House, some of the walls had already fallen revealing the wall paper, ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... graceful pirogues were dug from its bole, and its odorous bark served to roof their rude houses. No boat I have ever tried runs so lightly as a well-made tulip pirogue, or dug-out, and nothing under heaven is so utterly crank and treacherous. Many an unpremeditated plunge into cold water has one caused me while out fishing or duck-shooting on the mountain-streams of North Georgia. If you dare stand up in one, the least waver from a perfect balance will send the sensitive, skittish thing a rod from under your feet, which of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... state that I have mentioned; but I must add that by the time he reached Charing Cross—he smoked a cigar deferred till after the Channel in a compartment by himself—it had suddenly come over him that they were futile. Now that he had left the girl a subversive, unpremeditated heart-beat told him—it made him hold his breath a minute in the carriage—that he had after all not escaped. He was in love with her: he had been in love with her from the ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... unpremeditated, I believe," said Newman, "but leaving him die without attention or nursing was a calculated brutality, designed to inflame the boy's mates. Fitzgibbon's bitter hazing, without distinction or justice, was ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... suddenly. She understood, better than Lettice did herself, the involuntary, unpremeditated gesture which put a greater distance between them on the window-seat, and knew in a moment that she had ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... Brookfield were accustomed to their father's occasional unpremeditated absences, and neither of them had felt an apprehension which she could not dismiss, until one morning Mr. Powys sent up his card to Arabella, requesting permission ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... horses gave a reply which was the exact opposite of what he was expecting. I did not doubt this for a moment; in fact, direct and deliberate transmission of thought is, even among men, a very rare, difficult and uncertain, phenomenon, whereas involuntary, unpremeditated and unsuspected communications between one subconsciousness and another can no longer be denied except by those who of set purpose ignore studies and experiments that are within the reach of any one who will take the trouble to engage in them. I was persuaded therefore that ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the clank of those suspending chains and the slight unsteadiness of the meeting halves of the bridge as well as it knew oats. But it could not enjoy its own entirely premeditated surprise quite so much as Bertie and Billy were enjoying their entirely unpremeditated flight from Oscar. The wind rippled on the water; down at the boat-house Smith was helping some one embark in a single scull; they saw the green meadows toward Brighton; their foreheads felt cool and ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... will be readily recognized as fair average specimens of those unpremeditated trains of thought with which we are all familiar. Is there, then, in the arrangement of the consecutive thoughts of which the several trains are composed, any method or regularity common, I will not say to all, but to any two of them? According ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... in some measure survive or rekindle itself in the work of planning and executing; and what is called a technical expedient may 'come' to a man with as sudden a glory as a splendid image. Verse may be easy and unpremeditated, as Milton says his was, and yet many a word in it may be changed many a time, and the last change be more 'inspired' than the original. The difference between poets in these matters is no doubt considerable, and sometimes ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... along up the stream, chattering as if there were no rubric of silence in the angler's code. Presently another simple-minded troutling falls a victim to their unpremeditated art; and they begin already, being human, to wish for something larger. In the very last pool that they dare attempt—a dark hole under a steep bank, where the brook issues from the woods—the boy drags out the hoped-for prize, a splendid trout, longer ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... outrageous provocation, and that he himself was temporarily, if not chronically, insane. Every attempt was made by the partisans of his wife to enlist public feeling in her favor; to prove that Stanford White was the aggressor, and that her husband's deed was unpremeditated. The trial was protracted, and the story, as it was brought to light, was one which could hardly be equaled outside Balzac's novels. Had the heroine of this drama not been a beautiful young woman, she and her husband would probably have been forgotten in a week. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... have been reading my diary, you mean thing," cried Miss Molly, stamping her foot. "How dare you come creeping in here, spying at my private concerns! Oh! oh! oh!" with unpremeditated artfulness, relapsing into a paroxysm of sobs just in time to avert the volley of rebuke with which the hot-tempered old lady was about to greet this disrespectful outburst. "I am the most miserable girl in all the world. I wish I ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... remark is, that it is the preacher's duty to aim at imparting to others, not any fortuitous, unpremeditated benefit, but some definite spiritual good. It is here that design and study find their place; the more exact and precise is the subject which he treats, the more impressive and practical will he ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... in looking back over these unpremeditated notes, that if by any chance they came to be published, the public might gain the impression that the Member for SARK and I did all the work of the Garden, whilst our hired man looked on. SARK, to whom I have put the case, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... mistaken, sahib. The young man did his errand with a dexterity that would have deceived many, but not the humble one who watches over the interests of the Presence. The question came as though unpremeditated, as he had expected, and in accordance with the will of the Presence, he gave a true answer, saying that on the first appearance of the strangers on the horizon your honour cried out, 'Behold, some great one cometh! It is in my mind that ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... this was entirely unpremeditated, no one who participated in its pleasures had any forewarning, aside from an informal invitation to lunch with Mrs. Hannah Whitehall Smith and her generous husband, both earnest friends of temperance and important allies of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... extent justified by the facts of the murder. The old man had been killed by blows with a spade; evidently, therefore, the murder was sudden, unpremeditated, fortuitous. The lovers might have planned the robbery, but not the murder. The lover and the miser, Tascheron and Pingret, each under the influence of his master passion, must have met by the buried hoards, both drawn thither by the ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... story, and seeing that the German was interested in the old woman he began to acquire an interest in her himself, an unpremeditated interest; he had not suspected that Biddy was so interesting. The German said she reminded him of the quaint sculpture of Nuremburg, and her character reminded him of one of the German saints, and talking of Biddy and ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... a short sentence over it, in which words of the ancient Hebrew spoken by her fathers blended with the Chaldee, then the language commonly used by the Jews. Her thoughts, as she gave them utterance, clothed themselves in unpremeditated poetry; the Athenian could neither understand all her words, nor her allusions to the past, but the majesty of gesture the music of sound, made him listen as he might have done to the inspired priestess ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... terrace, which communicated with the drawing room, and commanded a view of all the gayety, and fashion of the Italien Boulevard, which moved below us, in the circle of some of the most charming people of Paris, we used to enjoy the refreshing coolness of the evening, the graceful unpremeditated dance, or the sounds of enchanting music. In this happy spot all parties assembled. Those who had been divided by the ferocity of politics, here met in amiable intercourse. I have in the same room observed, the once pursuing republican conqueror, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... that I could no more give way to dejection than to chill and cheerlessness before a genial wood fire. They seemed in truth to have taken me into the family. Barely was I now addressed formally as Richard Morton. It was simply "Richard," spoken with the unpremeditated friendliness characteristic of family intercourse. Heathen though I was, I thanked God that he had brought me among these true-hearted people; "and may He blast me," I muttered, "if I ever relapse into the old sneering cynicism that I ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... they reached Jim Hayward's home. The Baron alighted, and spoke to her through the window. 'Margery, can you forgive a lover's bad impulse, which I swear was unpremeditated?' he asked. 'If you can, shake ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... that mortality had ranged highest; the big game hunters, though hardier and physically better equipped than the students of the party for hardship and endurance had, with the exception of Craven himself, been wiped out to a man. It had been an unpremeditated remark uttered in all good faith with no ulterior motive by a shuddering fever-stricken scientist writing up his notes and diary by the light of the fire with trembling fingers that could scarcely hold the fountain pen that moved laboriously driven by an indomitable ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... she did an unpremeditated thing. The man in the skull cap had been showing her something about the copy. As he was leaving, she asked: "Is the man who sits at ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... and only a few, in which we knew any thing that was happening in the world; and even then our knowledge did not extend out of the city." We cannot be infallibly certain of Maria Monk's description of the interior of the Nunnery; but that unpremeditated remark, so minutely descriptive of the predominating ignorance among the Nuns of all terrestrial concerns exterior of the Convent, is satisfactory proof that the narrator was not sketching from fancy, but ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... moment, in finding passion I had also found self; and shame of this self dragged down my elation. I had sprung to my feet in wild rage against Nat's murder; I had spoken words—fierce, unpremeditated words—which, beginning in a boyish defiance, had ended on a note which, though my own lips uttered it, I heard as from a trumpet sounding close and yet calling afar. In a minute or so it had happened, and behold! I that, sitting beside ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... sooner arrived at the family mansion, than Mr. Tyrrel ran out to receive her. He had just heard of the melancholy accident that had taken place at the village, and was terrified for the safety of his good-humoured cousin. He displayed those unpremeditated emotions which are common to almost every individual of the human race. He was greatly shocked at the suspicion that Emily might possibly have become the victim of a catastrophe which had thus broken out in the dead of night. ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... into "Your glass may be purple and mine may be blue," while urging the claims of what is called Liberal Christianity in a hymn written for the new Unitarian church of Baltimore, he would break forth now and then with something which really seemed unpremeditated,—something he had been surprised into saying in spite of himself, as where he finishes a picture of Moses on Mount Nebo, after a fashion both startling and effective in its abruptness, and yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... mirthfully joining in the mazy dance. He, too, by witnessing the frequently recurring scenes of death, beholds the genuine sorrow of the bereaved wife, or the devoted husband—and can, by the constant unpremeditated exhibitions of fondness and feeling, appreciate the affection which exists in such and such places, and understand, with an almost magical power, the value of the links by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... sermon diligently arranged, and filled out to the smallest word, if he had gone into the profession of the law, would, at the same age and with no greater advantages, address the bench and the jury in language altogether unpremeditated. Instances are not wanting in which the minister, who imagined it impossible to put ten sentences together in the pulpit, has found himself able, on changing his profession, to ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... the possibility that there may have been a quarrel ending in the fatal shot. But what I want to know from you is this—do you think it possible, that, this having happened, Albert Graumann would not have been the first to confess his unpremeditated crime? Is not this the most likely thing for a man of his character to do? Would he so stubbornly deny ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... Brandon; Miss Lindsay knows better. Remember, too, that this proposal of mine was quite unpremeditated. This morning I had no tender thoughts of anyone except one whom it would be improper ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... sudden, unreasoning, and unpremeditated as his intrusion. It was not like himself, he knew, and yet it was as perfectly instinctive and natural as if he had intruded upon a sister. In the South Seas he had seen native girls diving beside the vessels for coins, but they had provoked no ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... shaping new poetic patterns. His tastes were conservative. He lacked that restless technical curiosity which spurred Poe and Whitman to experiment with new forms. But Lowell revealed early extraordinary gifts of improvisation, retaining the old tunes of English verse as the basis for his own strains of unpremeditated art. He wrote "A Fable for Critics" faster than he could have written it in prose. "Sir Launfal" was composed in two days, ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various |
