"Unprepared" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Germany actually broke out, four years later. Germany was prepared, and France was unprepared for the conflict. Louis Napoleon did not know that Germany was prepared. He actually thought that he could break into the German borders, fight his way victoriously to the capital, make his headquarters ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... is satisfactorily arranged, Mr.—" he began smiling and rubbing his hands. He was so utterly unprepared for the severity of the interruption that the smile was still in process of congealing as I stepped out ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... belief in Germany that the French nation was degenerate and corrupt and unprepared for war. This belief became conviction when, in the debates of the French Senate, Senator Humbert, early in 1914, publicly exposed what he claimed to be the weakness and ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... several shots which were fired at him by the people above, who of course from their position could not see the bear till he had got to a considerable distance. In the confusion that had occurred amongst the people left on the roof of the cave, who were as much unprepared for a bear as I was, some one had jostled my principal shikari—a testy and at times rather troublesome old man, but a most keen sportsman—and, to the great delight of every one, his shins had in consequence been ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... disturbance of our commerce. Although we cherish the expectation that a sense of justice and a consideration of our mutual interests will moderate their councils, we are not unmindful of the situation in which events may place us, nor unprepared to adopt that system of conduct which, compatible with the dignity of a respectable nation, necessity ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... parliament, assigned to his overt acts the character of designs against the state itself. For the confessions of his accomplices, by which the secrets of the Drury-house meetings were brought to light, he was evidently unprepared; and the native violence of his temper broke out in invectives against those associates by whom, as he falsely pretended, all these criminal designs had been originally suggested to his mind. This evidence, he said, had been elicited by the hope of pardon and reward;—let those ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Wholly unprepared for the assault, the bearers were hurled backward, with the heavy shield upon them, knocking down those behind them, who, in turn, fell on those below. Sword in hand, Colonel Warrener sprang upon the hindmost of the falling mass, while, ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... shock was an unexpected one. He had never doubted but that she at least was on his side. Her words found him unprepared, and a moment he showed his discomfiture. His recovery however, was swift and amazing. He bowed to Lucille, and by the time he raised his head even the reproach had gone ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... till one evening Lady Sheerness was seized with a fainting fit at the card-table, and being carried to her bed, in half an hour departed to a world of which she had never thought and for which she was totally unprepared. ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... Helena on the 13th March. This island is in lat. 16 deg. S. [15 deg. 45'.] We here found plenty of water, with abundance of figs, and as many fish as we chose to take. At sun-set, on the 15th, a caravel came into the roads, and anchored a large musket-shot to windward of us. She was totally unprepared for fighting, as none of her guns were mounted. We fought her all night, giving her in that time, as I think, upwards of 200 shots, though, in the course of eight hours, she did not return a single shot, nor seemed to regard us. By midnight she got six pieces ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... always succeeds in obtaining victory by properly leading his troops. No one should slay those that are asleep or thirsty or fatigued, or those whose accoutrements have fallen away, or one that has set his heart on final emancipation,[297] or one that is flying away, or one that is walking (unprepared) along a road, or one engaged in drinking or eating, or one that is mad, or one that is insane, or one that has been wounded mortally, or one that has been exceedingly weakened by his wounds, or one that is staying trustfully, or one that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... lifted the Duke of Wirtemberg on their shoulders, and, with a great shout, plunged twenty abreast up to their cravats in water. The stream ran deep and strong; but in a few minutes the head of the column reached dry land. Talmash was the fifth man that set foot on the Connaught shore. The Irish, taken unprepared, fired one confused volley and fled, leaving their commander, Maxwell, a prisoner. The conquerors clambered up the bank over the remains of walls shattered by a cannonade of ten days. Mackay heard ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... He was all unprepared for the effect of his words. Indeed, he was fain to hold hard to the gunwales. For the negro, with a sudden galvanic start, let slip the paddle from his hand, recovering it only by a mighty lunge in a mechanical impulse of self-preservation. ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... clothing and personal adornment, basketry, trappings for horses, images, toys, stone implements, musical instruments, and those used in games and religious ceremonies, woven fabrics, foods prepared and unprepared, paints for decorating pottery and other objects, earths of which their pottery is manufactured, mineral pigments, medicines, vegetable dyestuffs, &c. But the chief value of the collection is undoubtedly the great variety of vessels and other articles ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... moral suggested by this record? Is it not that we should look with charity and tolerance upon the schemes and speculations of the political and social theorists of our day; that, if unprepared to venture upon new experiments and radical changes, we should at least consider that what was folly to our ancestors is our wisdom, and that another generation may successfully put in practice the very theories which now seem to us absurd and impossible? ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... I was unprepared for the effect of this on Eleanor. For two cents she would have fainted then and there. It's awful to hear a woman moan, and clench her teeth, and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... Cromwell entered he had got out of the room, and down to the door of the house. "Back— back!" repeated by two armed sentinels, convinced him that, as his fears had anticipated, the General had come neither unattended nor unprepared. He turned on his heel, ran up stairs, and meeting on the landing-place the boy whom he called Spitfire, hurried him into the small apartment which he occupied as his own. Wildrake had been shooting that morning, and game lay on the table. He pulled a feather ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... value that masculine admiration which, in an unusual degree, she had the power to excite. Those of her admirers who were in a position to assist her professionally were only prepared to use their influence upon terms which she was unprepared to accept. Those whose intentions were strictly creditable, by some malignancy of fate, possessed no influence whatever. She came to regard herself as a peculiarly unlucky girl, being ignorant of the ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... packages beside the various plates were inspected, there were bright faces and loving smiles, and in one case almost a rain of tears, in view of the numerous and lovely mementoes for which the recipient was wholly unprepared. But it was only a "sunshower," and when Mr. Minturn, with a quizzical look, told her to "take care, for she was losing some of her pearls," she laughingly wiped the glittering drops away ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... India. The Sepoy Rebellion had some features in common with our own. It was inaugurated by premeditated military treachery. It seized upon a large quantity of Government munitions of war. It only asked "to be let alone." It found the Government wholly unprepared. But it was the uprising of a conquered people. The rebels were in circumstances, as in complexion, much nearer akin to that portion of our Southern citizens which has not rebelled, and which has lost no opportunity of seeking our lines "to take the oath of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... my usually early call at the Allen House, I saw, what I was not unprepared to see, a dark ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... stroke, who had brought the queen's brother into his native country, was, that his visit should remain unknown till the proper time came, when his presence should surprise friends and enemies alike; and the latter should be found so unprepared and disunited, that they should not find time to attack him. We feared more from his friends than from his enemies. The lies, and tittle-tattle sent over to St. Germains by the Jacobite agents about London, had done an incalculable mischief ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... deliberate that they would hardly catch the observation of a passenger. It might also seem as if the different parties were afraid to let out the secret of their own lurking apprehension, but yet were resolved not to be caught unprepared. ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... thousands of its sons are mercilessly doomed to death; and the destruction of these unfortunate men is already begun. More than this: the war is being managed by those who have hatched it so badly, so negligently, all is so unexpected, so unprepared, that, as one paper admits, Russia's chief chance of success lies in the fact that it possesses inexhaustible human material. It is upon this that those rely who send to death scores of thousands of ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... have gone before you. They are not few in number—they were your bosom associates; and the blood of all cries aloud, and calls upon you, as the author of their misfortune. Yes! You forced them unprepared, from Time to Eternity. Borne down by this load of guilt, your only justification is, that you were led away by fanaticism. If this be true, from my soul I pity you; and while you have my sympathies, I am, nevertheless called upon to pass the sentence ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... beginning of the summer of 1850, a Russian nobleman, Count Kostia Petrovitch Leminof, had the misfortune to lose his wife suddenly, and in the flower of her beauty. She was his junior by twelve years. This cruel loss, for which he was totally unprepared, threw him into a state of profound melancholy; and some months later, seeking to mitigate his grief by the distractions of travel, he left his domains near Moscow, never intending to return. Accompanied by his twin ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... thanks in an uncertain voice. She felt as if something had come upon her for which she was unprepared, some shadow of the world's pain, some flame of its fires that flickered at her heart for a moment and was gone. She was suddenly afraid, not of the brown eyes that were fixed so hungrily upon her face, but of herself. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... The country back to the James River is cut up with many streams, generally narrow, deep, and difficult to cross except where bridged. The region is heavily timbered, and the roads narrow, and very bad after the least rain. Such an enemy was not, of course, unprepared with adequate fortifications at convenient intervals all the way back to Richmond, so that when driven from one fortified position they would always have another farther to the rear to fall ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... had made a communication to me on the way to London for which I was not unprepared. It was, that he purposed first seeing Mrs. Steerforth. As I felt bound to assist him in this, and also to mediate between them; with the view of sparing the mother's feelings as much as possible, I wrote to her that night. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... intended doing a similar vamoosing stunt. It happened, however, that his horse was more frightened than those of the others. When he jerked at the bridle the beast whirled with such a vicious fling that the boy, totally unprepared for such a move, and unable to get the grip with his knees that a cowboy always secures, went toppling over ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... section crashed to the ground, it was a complete surprise, and caught the inhabitants unprepared. Soon the air was mixing with the poison gases from outside. People tried to escape, and most of them did. All except those that fell unconscious from ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... evidently awake on the temperance question, though still apparently unprepared for suffrage. In a report of a meeting in Birmingham in 1885, the following, from a prominent editor, was ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Rene, "I am deeply grateful for thy warning, and will take care that master Chitta does not find me unprepared for him, in case he seeks ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... well and sent her in safety from the country, after which I too laid down my crown and departed with some who loved me, to form a brotherhood of women-haters further down the Nile, beyond the borders of Ethiopia. There the Egyptian force of which you were in command, attacked us unprepared, and you made me your ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... heard of Nelson Randolph's illness, yet he was unprepared for the additional tidings that came to him when he was ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... later suspecting the enthusiasm of the army, he plunged into war with Germany to rekindle its ardour, on a protest arising from the scheme to put Leopold of Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne; France was unprepared, disaster followed disaster; the Emperor surrendered to the Germans at Sedan, Sept. 2, 1870; a prisoner till the close of the war, he came to England in 1871 and resided with the Empress at ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... true and beautiful. At first, as will be remembered, the revolutionists did not aim at establishing a republic, but that form of government necessarily grew out of their hallucinations. Without pausing to consider that a nation of emancipated serfs were unprepared to take on themselves the duties of an enlightened population, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... was a reply on which neither Jan Jansen Alpendam nor Wilhelmus Kieft had made any calculation. Finding himself, therefore, totally unprepared to answer so terrible a rebuff with suitable hostility, the admiral concluded his wisest course would be to return home and report progress. He accordingly steered his course back to New Amsterdam, where he arrived safe, having accomplished this hazardous enterprise ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... wrong, it would be as likely as not he would. It's a sad thing too," she added, "for his neck's terribly short, and they say all his family have gone suddenly with the apoplexy. It's an awful thing, Miss Isobel, to be taken sudden—and unprepared." ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... sure. All this time Layelah stood looking at me with a smile on her rosy lips and a merry twinkle in her eyes—evidently regarding my words as empty threats and my act as a vain pretence, and utterly unprepared ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... wholly unprepared for the appalling revelation that met her eyes, and the instant that she realized that the paper was the identical certificate, which she believed to be in her own possession, she lost every atom of her color. ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... was a veritable idol in Greece. In 1896 when his country was drifting into war with Turkey, he sounded a warning that the Greek army was unprepared for a campaign. The infantry was armed with condemned French rifles; the cartridges were 15 years old; there was no cavalry; the artillery was obsolete, and the officers few. When the country went to war despite his warning, the result was ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... the form, at first of moralizations, now severe toward the South, now indifferent, yet very generally asserting the essential justice of the Northern position. But it was early evident that the newspapers, one and all, were quite unprepared for the determined front soon put up by South Carolina and other Southern States. Surprised by the violence of Southern declarations, the only explanation found by the British press was that political control had been seized by the uneducated and lawless element. The Times characterized this element ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... his eyes downcast, he suddenly, with no preliminary stir, hit the table with his fist a blow which caused the utterly unprepared Ricardo to leap aside. And only then did Schomberg look up ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... fool to be thus taken by surprise, I scrambled to my feet and hastened to make my visitor welcome. He did not refuse me his hand; but he gave it with a coldness and distance for which I was quite unprepared, and his countenance, as he looked on me, was marked in a strong ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... provided for her in the prison, in a loose robe, conversing gayly with some friends, and surrounded by all the appliances of wealth, an attendant appeared to conduct her into the presence of the judges. Totally unprepared for the awful doom impending over her, she rose with careless alacrity and entered the court. The terrible sentence was pronounced. Immediately terror, rage, and despair seized upon her, and a scene of horror ensued which no pen can describe. Before the ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Prince Berthold arrives unprepared for any show of resistance; and is a little startled to find that Colombe defies him, and that one of her courtiers (not choosing to be outdone by Valence) has the courage to tell him so; but he treats the Duchess and her adviser with all the courtesy of a man whose right is secure; and ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... unprepared to admit that we have a ghost at all," repeated Sir Walter. "Ancient houses, as you say, often get some legend tacked on to them, and here a garden walk, or there a room, or passage, is associated with something uncanny and contrary to experience. This is an old Tudor place, and has been tinkered ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... Pierre, dodging and feinting, and keeping always at a safe distance. A howl of laughter came from Bateese and broke in a roar from the men. St. Pierre stopped in his tracks, a grin on his face, his big arms and shoulders limp and unprepared as Carrigan dodged in close and ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... photographer had ever caught a hint of his essential Britlingness and bristlingness. Only the camera could ever induce Mr. Britling to brush his hair, and for the camera alone did he reserve that expression of submissive martyrdom Mr. Direck knew. And Mr. Direck was altogether unprepared for a certain casualness of costume that sometimes overtook Mr. Britling. He was wearing now a very old blue flannel blazer, no hat, and a pair of knickerbockers, not tweed breeches but tweed knickerbockers of a remarkable ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... veil, was it blue or lilac or lavender? tinted as of rainbow mists. For a little while, neither spoke. Each knew what the dusty dead orange earth, the smoking sand hills, the sifted volcanic ash, the burnt oil smell of shrivelled growth, meant to unprepared travellers. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... coarse, menial tasks as that Viggins does," she thought, as she darned one of his stockings in a way that would render it almost impossible for him to put his foot into it again. "The events of last Monday morning were unfortunate, unforeseen, unprecedented. I was unprepared for such vulgar, barbarous, unheard-of proceedings—taken off my feet, as it were; but now that he's had time to think it all over, he sees that I am not a common woman like Viggins,"—Mrs. Mumpson would have suffered rather than have accorded her enemy the prefix of Mrs.,—"who ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... view the colonization of those who may become emancipated by its operation among our southern brethren, as capable to produce their happiness. Unprepared by education and a knowledge of the principles of our blessed religion, for their new situation, those who will thus become colonized will thus be surrounded by every suffering which can affect the members ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... all the blessings of time, and all the hopes of eternity. All this was not prepared long beforehand, for it seems that the dagger had only been shown to Burke on his way to the House as one that had been sent to Birmingham to be a pattern for a large order. Whether prepared or unprepared, the scene was one from which we gladly ...
— Burke • John Morley
... in the earthworks near Chancellorsville. The Eleventh Corps, under General Howard, was that destined to receive Jackson's assault. This was made at a few minutes past five in the evening, and proved decisive. The Federal troops were surprised at their suppers, and were wholly unprepared. They had scarcely time to run to their muskets, which were stacked[1] near at hand, when Rodes burst upon them, stormed their works, over which the troops marched almost unresisted, and in a few minutes ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... not unprepared for the suspicious looks which innkeepers might be expected to cast upon us, strangely equipped as we were, rude of speech, and so very humble in the style of our travel. We were, therefore, nothing daunted ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... following them? "Does the fifth, or the tenth century belong to the earlier centuries?" it would be asked. In the same way I ask: Does the conception of extension belong to metaphysics? You answer, "Yes." Well, that of body too? "Yes." And that of a fluid body? You stop, you are unprepared to admit this; for if you do, everything will belong to metaphysics. From this it is evident that the mere degree of subordination—of the particular to the general—cannot determine the limits of a science; and that, in the present ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... as her bowsprit, and that she had all her canvas set. Not a human being could be seen in any part of the rigging. I got close up to her. She was a sloop of about seventy tons. She had evidently been caught totally unprepared by the hurricane, and every soul on board had been hurried into eternity. Finding that there would be no use in waiting longer near the spot, for there was not the slightest probability that anyone was floating on any part of the wreck in the neighbourhood, I ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... the unprepared-for bride, Stanton was a man who "did himself well" when he could, though he had always been ready to face hardship if necessary. He had not considered it necessary to stint himself when starting on this expedition, although, later on, he would be quite ready to throw luxuries away ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... reveled in despair. Just because of a bit of a spread with Sammy Oakes and Chet Burrowes, just because of one unprepared lesson! Of course there had been other spreads before this fatal one; and of course there had been one or two unprepared lessons also—therefore the original twenty demerits. But why ruin a boy's happiness forever because of a ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... were the theologians one whit overawed by the Bishop's high tone, for which they were not unprepared. Father Lafuente, who answered, began with a pun: "There is no Casas here but the Casa [house] of God, in which we officiate and for whose support and defence we are bound and ready to stake our lives. Does it appear ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... complicated and the solution less radical and less profound. Already, then, there were writers who held somewhat superficially the conviction, which Tocqueville made a corner-stone, that nations that have not the self-governing force of religion within them are unprepared ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... system. In two years Vandover had learned a great deal; even his dulled wits had been sharpened when it had come to a question of food. The brute in him might destroy all his finer qualities, but even the brute had to feed. When work failed him at the beginning of the week Vandover was not unprepared for the contingency; the thing had happened before and he knew how ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... and States and the practical preparations for entering upon what all felt was the last stage of the long contest. The overshadowing event of the convention was Dr. Anna Howard Shaw's retirement from the presidency, which she had held eleven years. The delegates were not unprepared, as she had announced her intention in the following brief letter published in the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... concussion nearly knocked me head over heels. I was quite unprepared for such a backblast. Before they fired again, I got a man to hold down the front leg of my tripod. The gun was recharged; the order to fire was given, the lanyard was pulled, but ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... a poser. Ger was so absolutely unused to lying that he was quite unprepared for any such question as this, so he ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... to write the "Requiem" was but a momentary welcoming extended to Berlioz. The age in which he lived was unprepared for his art. It found itself better prepared for Wagner. For Wagner's was nearer the older music, summed it up, in fact. So Berlioz had to remain uncomprehended and unhoused. And when there finally came a time for the music of Wagner to retreat, and another to take ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... that same effort after efficiency and economy of time and strength that she has to put into her business to make it successful. She is, therefore, besides being scrupulously neat, perfectly plainly and yet durably and comfortably dressed. The sudden storm does not catch her unprepared, for she cannot afford to lose even an hour's work next day because she "caught cold." She permits no fussing with her garments, therefore they have to be in perfect working order, as fussing takes time, and time is money. Her hair is done neatly, and as becomingly as ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... expert in every technical and practical field has more and more taken control of American life, because the go-as-you-please methods of the amateur have shown increasingly their ineffectiveness. Education has slowly been removed from the dilettantic, unprepared school boards. The reign of the expert in public life seems to have begun. But in private life such an attitude is still a part of the mental equipment of millions. They ignore the physician and cure themselves with patent medicines or mental healing: they ignore the ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... the brute was a fair example of the mode in which rogues generally proceed. He had waited concealed, probably close at hand, while we were attacking the rest of the herd, and then the instant he saw that we were unprepared, had dashed out on us. Had I attempted to run when he got near me, he would have killed me in a moment by striking me on the back; or, had I not jumped aside, he would equally have finished me by a ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... knew that his lordship might marry, and could not have been unprepared for such a possibility; but in order that he might feel no difference in his present position on that account, Lord Hurdly has settled on him what is really a handsome fortune—not only the income of it, but the principal ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... ceremony was to bring her immediately to New York and to this house. With perhaps a pardonable bitterness of spirit, I had refrained from any notification of my intentions, and it was as strangers might enter an unprepared dwelling, that we stepped across the threshold of this house and passed ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... thy power to prove me—prove me!" cried the maiden; "for indeed he is the only stay of aged parents, and he is young and unprepared for death. Moreover his life is dearer ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... "in your present state of mind, and in such a scene as this, I cannot enter upon a topic for which the season is unfit, and you, I am sorry to say, are totally unprepared. It is enough that you know the grounds on which you stand. At a fitter opportunity, I will, as it is my duty, lay before you the enormity of what you are said to have meditated, with the freedom which becomes ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... feeling and environment, to allow of its being judged by any provisional standard. Even the subtleties of technique must be modified by the artist's changing purpose, as this in turn is acted on by influences of which he is himself unconscious. How, then, was an unprepared imagination to distinguish between such varied reflections of the elusive vision? She took refuge in a passionate exaggeration of her ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... perjured traitor, for his part, 125 Should die slow of a broken heart Under his new employers. Last, —Ah, there, what should I wish? For fast Do I grow old and out of strength. If I resolved to seek at length 130 My father's house again, how scared They all would look, and unprepared! My brothers live in Austria's pay —Disowned me long ago, men say; And all my early mates who used 135 To praise me so—perhaps induced More than one early step of mine— Are turning wise: while some opine "Freedom grows license", some suspect "Haste breeds ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... required curriculum of the residential school, and goes forth to his place in the world, he is often unprepared for the struggle, unable to adjust himself to the altered conditions, lacking in patience, perseverance and pluck; the "three P's" of which Clarence Hawkes so often speaks, and without which he claims no blind person can successfully overcome his handicap. The need for this ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... strong in self-command and moral fortitude, and at the same time unable to stand against the overwhelming evidence of an almost incredible fact, had nevertheless been unprepared, by any distinct image of what the beautiful young creature of fifty years ago had become, to accept the reality that encountered her when at last she met it ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... trying to signalize the frigate, they first thought to weigh anchor and try to escape to her protection; but a little reflection told them the enemy would be down upon them before this could be effected, and they would be taken, unprepared for defence. The only other alternative left them was, therefore, quickly adopted; and, in pursuance, the second mate and two seamen were lowered in the life-boat, with orders to keep the ship between themselves and ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... would hold aloof from the war. The total value of her exports and imports in the year 1913 was computed at 1,000,000,000 sterling, and an infinity of fine threads bound her industrial activity with foreign countries. By Great Britain's declaration of war, for which Germany was unprepared until the last days of July, nearly all these threads were snapped asunder, and the industrial and economic life of the Empire had to be swiftly readjusted to the new conditions. And here it was that the nation rose as one man to the unparalleled ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... go a step further. The mind staggers as it contemplates the tens of thousands being hurried into eternity who, either according to the teaching of the Catholic Church or the notions of popular theology, would be deemed unprepared. ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... entire support of the family fell upon his wife. That was, in the very nature of things, an exceedingly meagre support. Mrs. Lee had never looked forward to such a condition in life, and therefore was entirely unprepared for it. Ordinary sewing was all that she could do, and at this she could make but a small pittance. The little that her husband earned was all expended in the accursed poison that had already ruined himself and beggared ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... resentful; and in every case her heated brain had suggested the very words he would use to her; but for this careless tone, and the inexplicable look on his face, according so ill with his tone, she was quite unprepared, and for some time she could make no ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... one of great surprise—Henry Dornham was so different from what he had expected to find him; he had not thought that he would be fair like Madaline, but he was unprepared for the dark, swarthy, gypsy-like type of the man ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... it with provisions and ammunition, with the special object and care that the decision which he was awaiting from the court for making an expedition to Maluco—of which he had been advised and warned—should not find him so unprepared as to cause him to delay the expedition. In this he was very successful, for at that same time, the master-of-camp, Joan de Esquivel, had arrived in Mexico with six hundred soldiers from Espana. In Mexico ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... dream, the wish, to give of Abraham Lincoln's death, its own special thought and memorial. Yet now the sought-for opportunity offers, I find my notes incompetent, (why, for truly profound themes, is statement so idle? why does the right phrase never offer?) and the fit tribute I dream'd of, waits unprepared as ever. My talk here indeed is less because of itself or anything in it, and nearly altogether because I feel a desire, apart from any talk, to specify the day, the martyrdom. It is for this, my friends, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... do so, always whisper. A settler, residing in a dangerous part of the colony, had two soldiers stationed with him as a guard: upon one occasion five natives rushed in at a moment when the soldiers were unprepared for their reception, and a terrible struggle ensued: the soldiers, however, managed, while on the ground, to shoot two of them, and bayonetted the remaining three. The five were afterwards buried before the door, nor could ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... Father Black was so unprepared to answer the question put thus abruptly, accompanied as it was with a look of the deepest earnestness, that there ensued an embarrassing silence in the shop for ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... liable, until the Millennium comes. With reference to this always existent danger, no nation which is not willing to be trampled on can safely take its position on Quaker ground. That the possible event may not find us unprepared, we build fortresses and war-ships, and maintain armies and artillery at vast expense. No one but the mere visionary denies the propriety or the necessity of this. Yet it is demonstrable that a nation about to be involved in war will find a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... road than when there are none. Let us, therefore, reckon a little on the herd. How many of us are there? There is no question of postponing this task until to-morrow. Revolutionists should always be hurried; progress has no time to lose. Let us mistrust the unexpected. Let us not be caught unprepared. We must go over all the seams that we have made and see whether they hold fast. This business ought to be concluded to-day. Courfeyrac, you will see the polytechnic students. It is their day to go out. To-day is Wednesday. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... are probably not unprepared for what I am about to tell you. Yesterday evening the Directors of the East India Company elected me one of the members of the Supreme Council. It will, therefore, be necessary that in a few weeks,—ten weeks, at furthest,—I should ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... dimness and repose are of a terror, that contrast and forcible colour would at least mitigate; the surprise would be lost, or rather be altogether of another kind; it would arm you for the danger, which becomes sublime by taking you unprepared. And there is his little landscape with the sun shedding his rays through the hole in the tree, where the sentiment of the obscure—the dim wood—is enhanced by the bright gleam—and there is in this little picture a whole agreeability of colour. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... against the White Linen Nurse's unprepared shoulder the Little Girl prodded a pallid finger-tip into the White Linen Nurse's vivid cheek. "Silly—Pink and White—Nursie!" she chuckled, "Don't you know there isn't any Marma?" Cackling with delight over her own superior knowledge she folded her little arms ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... murder was avenged by Yermoloff, as usual, relentlessly, but it was his last campaign in the Caucasus. In 1826 the Persians, who had been incensed by Yermoloff's rough ways on their frontier and by his insolent diplomacy, invaded Russian territory with a strong army. The Russians were unprepared, and at first could only act on the defensive. The flames of insurrection at once broke out among the tribes; the whole country fell back into confusion, and the Emperor Nicholas, holding Yermoloff responsible for this disastrous state of affairs, reprimanded ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... explained in his autobiography what were his artistic tendencies and aims: he meant to be topographically true in his rendering of nature, and was unluckily greatly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, who were, at the time of our marriage, attracting great attention. I was totally unprepared for that kind of art, and the most famous specimens of it which my husband took me to see in London only awoke an apprehension as to what I might think of his own pictures when they were shown to me. The old masters in the Louvre, even the yearly Salons, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... man, seizing the shoulders once more with his strong grip—"no more now, boy. It was a hard thing, I know. The consciousness of God's majesty comes often in that way, and often it overwhelms the unprepared. It was hard, but it will leave you more a man; your soul and your faith will both survive. Do what I have told you—as if you were once more the puzzled little Bernal, who never could keep his hair neatly brushed like Allan, and would ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... times, this unlooked-for addition of more than twenty guests would, no doubt, have been an unwelcome tax, but in those days preceding the sad termination of the war there were so many poor, half-starved stragglers from the different commands passing to and fro, that we were never unprepared to feed as many as called upon us. At this time, two cooks were kept continually at work in the kitchen preparing such plain food as we could command: such as boiled hams, biscuit, loaf bread, corn bread, and wheat coffee. The milk and butter, all that we had, were joyfully given to our soldiers. ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... convinced, have died rather than make this pretence for merely personal ends. But he does it—and the reason? It is because he has received that awful summons from home; because "the end" is daily coming nearer, and it must not find him unprepared to meet it; it is because Lord Pharanx's senses are becoming too acute; because the clatter of the servants' knives at the other end of the house inflames him to madness; because his excited palate can no longer endure any food but the subtlest delicacies; because Hester Dyett is able from the ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... Yet he was unprepared when, swerving sharply and skirting an immense shoulder of rock, Jarvo suddenly emerged upon a broad retaining wall of stone bordering a smooth, moon-lit terrace extending by shallow flights of steps to the white doors ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... all that the face may make known of the secret terrors of conscience. And how could she meet the calm eyes of one who found her here in such a relation toward him? Yet all this she had weighed before in her mind; she was not unprepared. The hour and the man had come. She was ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... though I was so much his junior. The more influence he acquired in the business, the higher he advanced me, and I was alone in his private confidence. I came between him and you, and I took you from him. We were both secret, and the blow fell when he was wholly unprepared. The anguish it caused a man so compressed must have been terrible; the wrath it awakened inappeasable. So, a curse came to be invoked on our poor, pretty little ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... promulgation of moral and social ideas which were, in their day, considered very advanced and daring. The primary meaning of his maxim, then, was that a startling idea, or a scene wherein such an idea was implied, ought not to be sprung upon an audience wholly unprepared to accept it. For instance, in Monsieur Alphonse, a husband, on discovering that his wife has had an intrigue before their marriage, and that a little girl whom she wishes to adopt is really her daughter, instantly raises her ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... rancour towards him; and Newton felt convinced that no future opportunity would occur, that his enemy would not profit by, to insure his destruction. Yet to leave him—a murderer!—with all his sins upon his soul, to be launched so unprepared into the presence of an offended Creator!—it was impossible—it was contrary to his nature, and to the religion which he professed. How could he hope for the Divine assistance in his perilous undertaking, when he embarked on it, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... turning toward us, with an aspect of mingled rage and distress, lowered his huge shaggy head for a charge. Pontiac with a snort, leaped aside in terror, nearly throwing me to the ground, as I was wholly unprepared for such an evolution. I raised my pistol in a passion to strike him on the head, but thinking better of it fired the bullet after the bull, who had resumed his flight, then drew rein and determined to rejoin my companions. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... bread to keep him in a half-fed condition; how his faithful endeavors finally attracted the attention of a good blacksmith, who came near knocking him dead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totally unprepared, to take him as his bound apprentice for nine years and give him board and clothes and teach him the trade—or "mystery" as Dowley called it. That was his first great rise, his first gorgeous stroke of fortune; and you ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... God of the Christians' Bible, and commanded all his faithful children to accept the religion of Christ. So much had been done already by persevering mission-work in China, as well as in India, that the people were not altogether unprepared ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne
... of new recruits. By the aid of these and of the armed vessels called into service in other quarters the spirit of disobedience and abuse, which manifested itself early and with sensible effect while we were unprepared to meet it, has been ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... this wise precaution, the unprepared and the unqualified have sometimes entered the outer courts; and when compelled at last to reveal their character, have turned to rend their teachers, and have done their utmost to destroy the School and ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... difficult, nay impossible, to prove a negative; and yet a passage like this from Bolingbroke makes certain that when it was written the word 'isolated' did not exist in our language: "The events we are witnesses of in the course of the longest life, appear to us very often original, unprepared, signal and unrelative: if I may use such a word for want of a better in English. In French I would say isoles" (Notes and Queries, No. 226). Compare Lord Chesterfield in a letter to Bishop Chenevix, of ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... furious. Without uttering another word, he made a desperate blow at me. I was unprepared; and it brought me to the ground. His foot was up, to second it with as violent a kick; but, fortunately, the generous spirit of my opponent and the laws of mob honour were mutually my shield. He recollected the cowardice as well as the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... a free gift of the Emperor of the French, at their first conference, as they would then be as well convinced of Napoleon's good faith as he was himself. In answer, His Holiness was informed that the Emperor was unprepared to discuss political subjects, being totally occupied with the thoughts how to entertain worthily his high visitor, and to acknowledge becomingly the great honour done and the great happiness conferred on him by such a visit. As soon as the ceremony of the coronation was ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... 'I was completely unprepared for this. I could only mutter and shake my head vaguely. Afterwards I am perfectly aware I cut a very poor figure trying to extricate myself out of this difficulty. From that moment, however, the old nakhoda became taciturn. He was not very pleased, I fear, and evidently ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... unprepared as a periodical writer; for I have in my possession a small duodecimo volume, in which he has written, in the form of Mr. Locke's Common-Place Book, a variety of hints for essays on different subjects. He has marked upon the first blank leaf of it, 'To the 128th page, collections for the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... slanted to a point halfway between the zenith and the horizon. Suddenly a thought confronted Ellen Jorth: "He's not comin'," she whispered. The instant that idea presented itself she felt a blank sense of loss, a vague regret—something that must have been disappointment. Unprepared for this, she was held by surprise for a moment, and then she was stunned. Her spirit, swift and rebellious, had no time to rise in her defense. She was a lonely, guilty, miserable girl, too weak for pride to ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... pleasant state, this indecision whether to stay passively and risk the worst or avoid it by flight, and the worst of it is that, whatever course is eventually forced upon us, it finds us equally unprepared, and more liable from such indecision to bungle miserably ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... tactful man—discovered that he must go out and have a prescription made up at a chemist's. That arch-Hun enemy, the gout, against which he must never be unprepared. He would be back in time for dinner. The engaged ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... went, glib and eloquent, weaving out of the tangled text a picture that gradually, freeing itself from the early restraints, painted in vivid detail a spirited conference between Caesar and the German envoys. The class, amazed, resorted to their books; many of the unprepared, quite convinced, stared at him as though a new rival to the ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... mixture of different varieties of trap, conglomerate, and schistose rocks. In the northern states of America such appearances would be unhesitatingly ascribed to the action of ice, but I was at the time unprepared to believe that the glacial period could have left such a memorial of its existence within the tropics, at no greater elevation above the sea than ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... of adding new dimensions to our minds. When you have had an hour's conversation with any of us, or have exchanged three letters, you can be comfortably sure of what we think on any subject under the sun. Thus, you see, I was wholly unprepared for the point of view expressed in your last two letters. I thought you were a gentle disciple,—following the lights behind us indeed; but I did not suspect that you were bent upon this journey through the dust of centuries with the ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... literally.) So we toiled far into the night and then crept wearily to bed in our dismantled nest, to toss wakefully through the few remaining hours of darkness, fearful that the summons of the forehanded and expeditious moving man would find us in slumber and unprepared. ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... them he got something; from some a shilling, from some only sixpence; some few gave nothing at all: these in general endeavoured to escape observation behind the backs of the donors, but Father John let none of them off; and those who were unprepared, and who alleged their poverty, and their inability, he reproved for their idleness, and hinted rather strongly that their visits to Mrs. Mulready's, or similar establishments, were the cause of their not being able to do what he called their ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... joke," he would declare in high good-humour, as he buttered Kirstie's scones, and she waited at table. A man who had no need either of love or of popularity, a keen reader of men and of events, there was perhaps only one truth for which he was quite unprepared: he would have been quite unprepared to learn that Kirstie hated him. He thought maid and master were well matched; hard, bandy, healthy, broad Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the pair of them. And the fact was that she made a goddess and an only child of the effete and tearful ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... devotedness; if you hold it to be a good thing to refine the habits, to embellish the manners, to cultivate the arts of a nation, and to promote the love of poetry, of beauty, and of renown; if you would constitute a people not unfitted to act with power upon all other nations; nor unprepared for those high enterprises, which, whatever be the result of its efforts, will leave a name for ever famous in time—if you believe such to be the principal object of society, you must avoid the government of democracy, which would be a very uncertain guide ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... bank; and ropes being afterwards attached to the carriage, it was soon drawn up to a place of safety. The natives worked as hard as our own people, and that, too, with a cheerfulness for which I was altogether unprepared, and which is certainly foreign to their natural habits. We pitched our tents as soon as we had effected the passage of the river; after which, the men went to bathe, and blacks and whites were mingled promiscuously in the stream. I did not observe that the former differed ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... unprepared for such prompt action. He reeled, and came near falling. It may safely be said, also, that his astonishment was as great as his indignation, and that ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... to be much observed" for all generations, marching by the line of the ancient canal from Rameses, not far from Heliopolis, toward the southern frontier of Palestine. But Moses, instructed not to conduct his people at once to a conflict with the warlike inhabitants of Canaan, for which they were unprepared, having just issued from slavery, brought them round by a sudden turn to the south and east, upon an arm or gulf of the Red Sea. To the eyes of the Egyptians, who repented that they had suffered them to depart, and who now pursued them with a great ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... informed him that it in reality consisted of a number of large low boats fastened together, and was the device of a famous pirate, Timoja by name, who hoped thus to get alongside, and then, with his men, while the Portuguese were unprepared, attack them. ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... sides lost heavily, but the honors and the substantial advantages all belonged to the Dutch, or rather to De Ruyter. He had outgeneralled the allies by his apparent retreat, and then returning had surprised them wholly unprepared. The false move by which the English, two thirds of the whole, stood to the northward and westward, while the other third, the French, went off to the east and south, separated the allied fleet; Ruyter threw his whole force into the gap, showing front ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... old questions, while the Dutch were not ready to concede anything unless the Navigation Act was largely modified. In these circumstances De Witt determined by bold action to try to expedite the negotiations in a sense favourable to Holland. He knew that the English were unprepared. Charles II, in opposition to the advice of Rupert, Monk and the Duke of York, had refused to spend money in preparation for a campaign at sea, which he felt confident would never take place. The ravages of the plague and of the Great Fire of London had made the year 1666 one of the darkest ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... to congratulate myself on the course of wholesome discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to submit. Thanks to it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent calm, which, had they found me unprepared, I should probably have been unequal ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... longer a purpose and a glory upon earth? I shudder when I look up at the beautiful serenity of this autumn sky, and remember that my deed has loosened an immortal soul from its clay, and hurled it, unprepared, into its Maker's presence. My conscience would rebuke my hand, should it willfully shatter the sculptor's marble wrought into human shape, or deface the artist's ideal pictured upon canvas, or destroy aught that is beautiful and costly of man's ingenuity and labor. And yet ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... capital and the provinces, in the garrisons and camps, abroad and at home, to meet the outbreak of a foreign war or a domestic sedition. Whatever were the service, it could by no possibility find Hadrian unprepared. And he first, in fact, of all the Csars, restored to its ancient republican standard, as reformed and perfected by Marius, the old martial discipline of the Scipios and the Paulli—that discipline, to which, more than to any physical superiority ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... You know how few our wants are—John's and mine—and what little use we have for money, after the life we have led together for so many years; and now that he is earning an income that is ample for us, through your kindness. You are not unprepared to hear what favour I have come ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... passed his time in such a manner. "My mother was in bed," says he. "It seemed to me, all of a sudden, my blood rushed to my head, my heart palpitated, in a few minutes I turned blind, an awful impression rested on my mind that death had come to me and I was unprepared to die. I fell on my knees and began to ask God to have mercy on me. My mother sprang from her bed, and was soon on her knees by my side, praying for me, and exhorting me to look to Christ for mercy, and then and there I promised the Lord if he would ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... the Netherlands, Mary's uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, proposed to the King of Spain an offensive alliance against Queen Elizabeth.[234] In the civil wars of France they had just won the victory in two great battles. Who could say what the result would have been if in the still very unprepared condition of England an invasion had been undertaken ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... he was unprepared for the appearance of Mina Raff, immediately after his name was sent up to her rooms, on the minute arranged. What, next, about her occurred to him was the evidence of her weariness. A short and extremely romantic veil hung from the close brim of her ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... exercise of their right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," shall endure through ages to come. But the people of France, shut up in darkness during centuries of misrule, passed at a step from abject servitude to unlimited freedom. They were unprepared for this violent transition. Their conceptions of liberty were of the most extravagant description. What wonder that they became dizzy at their sudden elevation! What wonder that blood flowed in rivers!—that dissension ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... might see wounded Belgians, fresh from the field of battle, staggering in, crawling in, hobbling in from the havoc of shell-fire, their first-aid bandages saturated with mud, their ungainly and impracticable uniforms oozing mud, ghosts of men-these "schipperkes" of the nation that was unprepared for war who had done their part, when the only military thought was for more men, unwounded men, British, French, Belgian, to stem the German tide. Yet many of these Belgians, even these, were cheerful. They could still smile ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... so far learnt that it was not the Bush as not to expect me to offer, and was quite unprepared for the fire that Eustace and I opened on him as to the impossibility of his request. "Miss Alison, my sister," as Eustace said, "going down to a little, common, general practitioner to wait on him;" while I confined myself to "It won't do at all, Harold," and promised ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remainder of his life to prayer, first for the soul of his son, and secondly that henceforward no descendant of his might ever again encounter what seemed to his simple and pious mind the terrible danger of meeting death unprepared. Day after day for many a year he poured all the energy of his soul into the channel of that one intense wish, firmly believing that somehow or other the result he so earnestly desired would be brought about. A student of occultism will have little difficulty in deciding what would be the ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... that the ways of the Lord are inscrutable, and that this is a world in which everything happens; and eventualities, as the late Emperor of the French used to say, will not find him intellectually unprepared. The good American of which Hawthorne was so admirable a specimen was not critical, and it was perhaps for this reason that Franklin Pierce seemed to him a ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr. |
