"Unreasonable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... answered the other rather hotly. "That is really unreasonable. Emphatically the incident made no sort of difference, for the very good reason that she was not in the case, save as an innocent sufferer from the evil actions of others. She helped me rather than hindered me. Despite all she was called to ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... news. His father duly congratulated him, and added genially, 'It is well to be you, George. One large commission to attend to, and nothing to distract you from it. I am bothered by having a dozen irons in the fire at once. And people are so unreasonable.—Only this morning, among other things, when you got your order to go on with your single study, I received a letter from a woman, an old friend whom I can scarcely refuse, begging me as a great favour to design her a set of theatrical costumes, in which she and her friends ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... said, "as soon as it is light, and I shall be back before sundown the day after to-morrow. I know it is unreasonable, but I shall go easier in my mind if you will promise ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... unreasonable "blind faith" in remedial means is as strong in the most intelligent as in the most ignorant, and it has ever given me more trouble than the care of the sick. Another serious complication of the sick-room arises from near-by friends who are very certain that their own physicians are better fitted ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... Then: "Waal, I—I don't cal'late to want to be unreasonable nor nothin', but I ain't real keen about takin' no mortgage on that ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... consider the possible end while yet at the beginning, seems not unreasonable, though, undoubtedly, we may never reach the end. Many a fair ship ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... not an unnecessary part, or unreasonable "cog," anywhere in the whole of our bodies. It is true that there are a few little remnants which are not quite so useful as they once were, and which sometimes cause trouble. But for the most part, all we have to do is to look long and carefully enough at any organ or part of our ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... be missed were it not there. The bouquet needs them all. Just so I need all the dear children in my school, and just so I would miss any one. It makes me ashamed to think any little girl is more selfish and unreasonable than a plant, for little girls are a higher order of creation, and we expect more of them than we expect of plants or of animals. All are parts of God, but the human kingdom is the highest ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... this, however, there came upon him an unexpected event so suddenly and painfully that, in his extremest excitement and misery, he fairly hurt the feelings of his Father by unreasonable requirements of him, and reproaches on their being refused. A principal Stuttgart Cautioner of his, incessantly pressed upon by the stringent measures of the creditors there, had fairly run off, saved himself by flight, from Stuttgart, and been ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... which this intruder appeared the most prominent figure, dominating everything and interfering with every detail of their home life. Of course they had known all this before, but somehow it had never seemed so objectionable as it did now, and as Easton thought of it he was filled an unreasonable resentment against Slyme, as if the latter had forced himself upon them ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... its government, and we then complain that it is a failure. Until we imitate the example of the Ring, and organize the intelligence of the community for its government, our complaint is childish and unreasonable. But we shall be told that there is no analogy between building a bridge and governing a city. Let us examine this objection. A city is made up of infinite interests. They vary from hour to hour, and conflict is the law of their being. Many of the ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... sprang high in the west, like a wave of unreasonable happiness, and tore eastward across England, trailing with it the frosty scent of forests and the cold intoxication of the sea. In a million holes and corners it refreshed a man like a flagon, and astonished him like a blow. In the inmost chambers of intricate and embowered houses it woke like ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... shall be carried on in a sound, business-like manner. This seems so obviously reasonable that among people of common-sense there should be no two opinions about it. And the condition of things to be reformed is so obviously unreasonable, so flagrantly absurd and vicious, that we should not believe it could possibly exist among sensible people, had we not become accustomed to its existence among ourselves. In truth, we can hardly bring the whole exorbitance of that viciousness and absurdity home to our ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... where they don't have much rain, and where it hardly ever snows or freezes. And this king had a beautiful wife, whom he loved very much. But, unluckily, this beautiful wife had one great fault. She was always wishing for the most unreasonable and impossible things, and though the king was always trying to get her what she wanted she was never satisfied, and every day she seemed to grow more and more discontented and exacting. At last, one day in the winter, a most extraordinary ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... now allows that the sentence with which we are mainly concerned is oblique, and that the words containing a reference to our Lord's saying in St John's Gospel are attributed to the elders who are mentioned before and after. He still maintains however, that 'it is unreasonable to claim' the reference 'as an allusion to the work of Papias,' He urges in one place that there is 'a wide choice of presbyters, including even evangelists, to whom the reference of Irenaeus may with equal right be ascribed' [195:1]; ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... At bottom, French saints were not extravagant. One can imagine a Byzantine asserting that no French saint was ever quite saintly. Their aims and ideals were very high, but not beyond reaching and not unreasonable. Drag the French mind as far from line and logic as space permits, the instant it is freed it springs back to the classic and tries to ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... the unfordunade gabidalist, finding himself unable do produce his wares ad a cost which will enable him do successfully gompede with the manufagdurers of other goundries, has been gombelled to glose his works and remove his gabidal and his energies to a spodt where he gan find workmen less unreasonable in their demands. There is no more capable or valuable workman in existence than the English artisan, if he gould only be induced to do his honest best for his embloyer; there is hardly any branch of industry in which he is nod ad leasd the equal, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... made them droop: her native clothes clung about her breast and her hips, disclosing, confessing, insisting upon her sex in the cringing oriental way. Miss Howe looked after her guest with a curl of the lip as uncontrollable as it was unreasonable. "A saved soul, perhaps. A woman—oh, assuredly," she said in ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... led out to fight for a piece of ground not large enough to cover the bodies of those who would be slain in the battle; but I do not remember that Shakspeare says that the battle was on this account necessarily unreasonable. It is the old point of honor which, till it had been made absurd by certain changes of circumstances, was always grand and usually beneficent. These changes of circumstances have altered the manner in which appeal may be made, but have not altered the point of honor. Had the Southern ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... frequently has its storms and tempests. The change to manhood and womanhood often involves brain, nerves, body, and soul in confusion; the child sometimes seems lost to himself and his parents,—his very nature changing. In this sensitive state come restless desires, unreasonable longings, unsettled purposes; and the fatal habit of indulgence in deadly stimulants, ruining all the life, often springs form the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Moss, still bowing and smiling, "would not be so unreasonable as to interfere with the career ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... in the afternoon when we all woke again; and Young's first remark was that it must be about supper-time. Rayburn fell in with this notion promptly, and so did I myself—rather to my astonishment, for it seemed unreasonable that after such a stuffing I should desire to eat so soon again. But we did make a supper almost as hearty as our breakfast had been, and in a little while wrapped ourselves in our blankets, with our feet towards the heaped-up fire, and went off once more to sleep, and slept through ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... could not be effectively prohibited, and have in part in their prohibitions confounded what should be allowed and what should not be allowed. It is generally useless to try to prohibit all restraint on competition, whether this restraint be reasonable or unreasonable; and where it is not useless it is generally hurtful. Events have shown that it is not possible adequately to secure the enforcement of any law of this kind by incessant appeal to the courts. The Department of Justice has for the last four years devoted ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... fear, and even an unreasonable jealousy, may be her excuse (just as one excuses a monomania), can one equally forgive her silence? Such a silence is morally what are physically the poisons which kill at once, and defy all remedies; thus insuring the culprit's safety. This silence ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to me, quite fit to go and make war again upon some of His Majesty's subjects, when a thing, altogether out of reason, or even of civilisation, happened; and people who live in lawful parts will accuse me of caring too little for the truth. But even before that came about, something less unreasonable—but still unexpected—befell me. To wit, I received through Mistress Pring an offer of marriage, immediate and pressing, from Captain Anthony Purvis! He must have been sadly confused by that blow on his heart to think mine so tender, or ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... they are freed from many tasks now put upon them, it is not unreasonable to ask that this time be put on more careful thinking. Too many a minister of to-day is, intellectually, something of a flibbertigibbet. His sermons do not take hold, because they have not the roots to take hold with. How many ministers ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... easiest solution for the moment would be in the organization of another department for war and government beyond the seas, or the development of a measurably independent bureau for such work in the present department. Whatever is done, it would be unreasonable to expect unbroken success or exemption from a learner's mistakes and discouragements. But whoever supposes that these will result either in the abandonment of the task or in a final failure with it does not ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... prepared to go as far as almost anyone. I am even inclined to follow Miss M. Carey Thomas, the President of Bryn Mawr College, who attributes the industrial progress of the United States largely to the fact that the men of the country have such well-educated mothers. It seems to me a not unreasonable or extravagant suggestion. I am certainly of the opinion that the conversational fluency and mental alertness of the American woman, as well as in large measure her capacity for bearing her share in the civic labour, are largely the result of the fact that she has in most cases had precisely ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... house Mrs. Allison went to the family sitting-room where she found both her sisters and several of the younger members of the household. "So they have asked for us?" exclaimed Louise in a tone of vexation, "at such an unreasonable hour too. Well," with a sigh of resignation, "I suppose we must show ourselves or papa will be displeased: so wonderfully fond of Elsie as he has grown ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... marriage is, like prostitution, founded on economic considerations; the woman often marries chiefly to earn her living; here, too, we may certainly expect profound modifications. We have long sought to preserve our social balance by placing an unreasonable licence in the one scale, an equally unreasonable abstinence in the other; the economic independence of women, tending to render both extremes unnecessary, can alone place the sexual relationships on a sound and ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... at Hierapolis, keeping his whole army with him; but when he learned what had befallen Sura, he called together the first men of the Hierapolitans and spoke as follows: "Whenever men are confronted with a struggle against an assailant with whom they are evenly matched in strength, it is not at all unreasonable that they should engage in open conflict with the enemy; but for those who are by comparison much inferior to their opponents it will be more advantageous to circumvent their enemy by some kind of tricks than to array themselves openly against them and thus enter into foreseen ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... they were so often entreated and beseeched to embrace, that they will be drowned in the conviction of this, that did refuse love, grace, reason, &c.: love, I say, for hatred, grace for sin, and things reasonable, for things unreasonable and vain. Now they shall see they left glory for shame, God for the devil, heaven for hell, light for darkness. Now they shall see that though they made themselves beasts, yet God made them reasonable creatures, and that he did with reason expect that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... appalling dearth of physical clues—of things upon which a line of investigation could be intelligently based. And he knew that now something had turned up, he must watch himself lest the circumstance assume unreasonable and ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... the other world she had known so well—the world in which she had fluttered so successfully, spending lavishly the money of the man who at that moment lay next to her, worn out by calamity and fatigue. He had been patient through years of her unreasonable extravagance—through her selfish domination—through her tyranny. He was ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... to be as headstrong as he was unreasonable. I have seen him around here several times, but I cannot make out what he is doing here. He asked me about the wreck on Hemlock ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... "But he's unreasonable," whines Mortimer. "He snoops around after me, finds fault with everything I do, and fines me for being a little ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the blood of the Caesars, by their marriage with a royal virgin, or by the nuptials of their daughters with a Roman prince. [58] The aged monarch, in his instructions to his son, reveals the secret maxims of policy and pride; and suggests the most decent reasons for refusing these insolent and unreasonable demands. Every animal, says the discreet emperor, is prompted by the distinction of language, religion, and manners. A just regard to the purity of descent preserves the harmony of public and private life; but the mixture of foreign blood is the fruitful source of disorder and discord. Such ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... as brawls usually do, in the triumph of the most unreasonable and violent. James threw himself upon a bed which was in the room, weeping bitterly, and saying that they would go, and he should lose his Baby Charley. Considering that Charles was now the monarch's only child remaining at home, and that, as heir to the crown, his life was ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... nature. We may suppose that a certain character of effeminacy attached to a tailor in that olden time when he was the fashioner for women as well as men; but now that he has no professional dealings with the fair sex but when they assume masculine 'habits,' it is unreasonable to continue the stigma. In like manner, when the cloth belonged to the customer, it was allowable enough to suspect him of a little amiable weakness for cabbage; but now that he is himself the clothier, the joke is pointless and absurd. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... accommodation, for two reasons—they did not know what to ask for, and they had no Russian money in their pockets; they therefore shook their heads, and signed to the driver to go on. The man evidently thought them very unreasonable and hard to please, but obeyed. It was soon clear to them that they were getting to the outskirts of the city, and they were about trying to make the man turn back when they saw three figures approaching, whom by their rolling walk ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... Daphne. There are indeed several Daphnes, and the first root of the name is far away in another field of thought altogether, connected with the Gods of Light. But etymology, the best of servants, is an unreasonable master; and Professor Max Mueller trusts his deep-reaching knowledge of the first ideas connected with the names of Athena {57} and Daphne, too implicitly, when he supposes this idea to be retained in central Greek ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... everybody was, of what they really were in their hearts, and of what they and their children and their children's children would do for the world if they lived no one would have quarrelled with God for making what would have seemed at the moment, no doubt, very unreasonable and ungallant and impossible-looking discriminations in sorting out the people who should live from the people ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... either have had no true relish and value for the things themselves that are discovered, or have had some prejudice against the persons by whom the discoveries were made. It would be vain therefore and unreasonable in me to expect to escape the censure of all, or to hope for better treatment than far worthier persons have met with before me. But this satisfaction I am sure of having, that the things themselves in the discovery of which I have been employed are most worthy of our diligentest search and inquiry; ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... pounds more than the charge; and if the work be done so much cheaper, as is mentioned, the profit to the undertaker will be unreasonable. ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... this story, during many working hours of two years. I must have been very ill employed, if I could not leave its merits and demerits as a whole, to express themselves on its being read as a whole. But, as it is not unreasonable to suppose that I may have held its threads with a more continuous attention than anyone else can have given them during its desultory publication, it is not unreasonable to ask that the weaving may be looked at in its completed state, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... All acids eat into the enamel, as vinegar or lemon-juice does into marble; and one of the best means of preserving this protecting armor of the teeth is never to eat the unripe windfalls of fruit, which I have seen unreasonable children pick up in orchards and devour so recklessly. They give sufficient warning, by their acidity, that they are not fit for food, and when this warning is neglected, they take their revenge by corroding the enamel of the teeth; not to speak ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... the evening and danced a spirited corrobory on the occasion. This day Piper had seen two of the native inhabitants and had endeavoured to persuade them to come to me, but all to no purpose until at length, enraged at the unreasonable timidity of one of them, he threw his tomahawk at him and nearly hit him as he edged off; an act of which, as I told him in the strongest terms, I ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... him; in the same sense in which St. Martin had said, when complaining of the insensibility of the men of his times: "They do not attend to me, though the serpents obey me." This means that, with the aid of reason and grace, they will not do what unreasonable animals necessarily do, by the impulse ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... of Francis, his mother suffered greatly. A pilgrim, coming to the house for alms, told the servants: "The mother will be delivered only in a stable, and the child see the light upon straw." This appeared strange and unreasonable enough. Nevertheless his advice was followed. Pica was carried to the stable, and there she gave birth to her first son, whom she caused to be baptized John, after the beloved apostle of Jesus. Her husband, Bernardone, was absent at the time ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... certainly be unreasonable to complain that printing with movable types was not invented at a time better suited to our national convenience. Yet the fact that the invention was made just in the middle of the fifteenth century ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... had she been as like her in character and disposition as she was in figure and feature, would Drayton, knowing what he knew, have felt drawn toward her? A man does not remain for twenty years under the influence of an unreasonable and mistaken passion. Drayton certainly had not, although his disappointment had kept him a bachelor all his life, and altered the whole course of his existence. But when we have once embarked upon a certain career, we continue in it long after the motive which started us has ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... If it be undoubted that his education, his tastes, his connexions, and even his prejudices, were all on the side of that conviction which he professes to have derived from patient and persevering research, it seems not unreasonable to require a copiousness and strength of argument, in its support, which, were all the circumstances affecting his relation to it decidedly unfavourable, would, perhaps, scarcely be ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... tears that followed this communication, as speculators would pronounce them unreasonable. It now became necessary for Frances to visit the city to make arrangements, and take a last leave of her pleasant mansion. In justice, it must be said, she thought less of her own deprivation than ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... more an artificial play becomes sincere; once more the personality of a great impersonal artist dominates the poverty of her part; we get one more revelation of a particular phase of Duse. And it would be unreasonable to complain that "La Dame aux Camelias" is really something quite different, something much inferior; here we have at least a great emotion, a desperate sincerity, with all the thoughtfulness which ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... consuls made the usual four-and-twenty days' interval between the introduction and the passing of a project of law obligatory, and forbade the combination of several enactments different in their nature in one proposal; by which means the unreasonable extension of the initiative in legislation was at least somewhat restricted, and the government was prevented from being openly taken by surprise with new laws. It became daily more evident that the Gracchan constitution, which had survived the fall of its author, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... this portion of the work to an unreasonable extent, to give any lengthened details of the working of a system, about which among my readers no two opinions can exist. Let it suffice to say, that the Europeans are generally better and less exacting masters ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... Allies' side spoke now and then spitefully. Way back a big gun boomed. Dorn listened to the whine of shells from his own side with a far different sense than that with which he heard shells whine from the enemy. How natural and yet how unreasonable! Shells from the other side came over to destroy him; shells from his side went back to save him. But both were shot to kill! Was he, the unknown and shrinking novice of a soldier, any better than an unknown and shrinking soldier far across there in the darkness? ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... I made no allowances; though I'm quite aware that, speaking justly, one can't blame him. Probably Eldred never did. But I told you my dislikes were unreasonable; and it makes me hate him to think that he was quite happy away there in England all those five years, while Eldred was half-killing himself with work ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... the winding-up would be better than the lackadaisical running-down of most of the fashionable novels. Snap the main-spring of your watch, and none but an ass can expect you to tell by it what it is o'clock; snap the thread of your narrative in the same way, and he must be an unreasonable being who would expect a reasonable conclusion. Finish thus, in a case of delicate distress; say, "The honourable Mr Augustus Bouverie was struck in a heap with horror. He rushed with a frantic grace, a deliberate haste, and a graceful awkwardness, and whispered in her ear these dread and ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... should he do with the bonds? The floor was no place for them after what had happened; and he remembered too well the experience of yesterday to think for a moment of carrying them about his person. With unreasonable impatience, his ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... seems displeased with you for frightening him so; and now, either you must have done wrong, and given him just cause for his displeasure, or else, if you did right, then his displeasure is unreasonable, and so it is ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... distressed. And indeed that Mrs. Fyne should have appealed to me at all was in itself the evidence of her profound distress. "By Jove she's desperate too," I thought. This discovery was followed by a movement of instinctive shrinking from this unreasonable and unmasculine affair. They were all alike, with their supreme interest aroused only by fighting with each other about some man: a ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... am in Simla," I kept repeating to myself. "I, Jack Pansay, am in Simla, and there are no ghosts here. It's unreasonable of that woman to pretend there are. Why couldn't Agnes have left me alone? I never did her any harm. It might just as well have been me as Agnes. Only I'd never have come back on purpose to kill her. Why can't I be left alone—left alone ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... much puzzled; but he would not give way. The idea of going off in Percy Harrigan's train had come to seem morally repulsive to him; he hated Percy Harrigan's train, and Percy Harrigan also, he declared. And Jessie saw that she was only making him unreasonable—that before long he might be hating her. With her instinctive savoir faire, she brought up his suggestion that she might find some one to chaperon her, and stay with him at North Valley until he was ready ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... terror, which is a sudden madness and paralysis of the soul, that I say is from hell, and not to be played with or considered or put in pictures or described in stories. All this I say to preface what happened, and especially to point out how terror is in the nature of a possession and is unreasonable. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... compound reduced to an essential oil of investigative profundity, and brought to bear on the subject in question, he would have signally failed to discover the reason of the Sudberrys' larder being crammed that week with an unreasonable quantity of butcher-meat. ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... altogether unreasonable. When we first came in sight of the lake the rain lifted, and the afternoon sun gushed out upon a world of vineyards. In other words, the vines clothe all the little levels and vast slopes of the mountain-sides ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... confidence, he proceeded with more assurance in speech and manner; for the cold inflexible looks of the Archbishop irritated him. "If these proposals can be amended, my lord, let me know in what points, and, if possible, your pleasure shall be done, even if it should prove somewhat unreasonable. I would have peace, my lord, with Holy Church, and am the last who would despise her mandates. This has been known by my deeds in field, and counsels in the state; nor can I think my services have merited cold looks and cold language from ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... tyrants and imperial cities nothing is unreasonable if expedient, no one a kinsman unless sure; but friendship or enmity is everywhere an affair of time and circumstance. Here, in Sicily, our interest is not to weaken our friends, but by means of their strength to cripple our enemies. Why doubt this? ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... herring for dinner and a bit of cold veal; she had a pound cooked to last her the week—of course, for the days when she dines at home and alone. She will not spend more than ten sous a day for her food. It is unreasonable. If I were to say anything about it to Monsieur le Marechal, he might quarrel with Monsieur le Baron and leave him nothing, whereas you, who are so kind and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... so great a favourite of Heaven as Abraham, and being visited by angelic messengers, and instructed by celestial visions; this may be admitted. But do not those who reject the truth of Christianity, or disobey its precepts, act a more criminal as well as unreasonable part, inasmuch as they enjoy all the instruction and all the experience of past ages? And is it not a more outrageous defiance of Heaven to oppose the reality of its manifestations, after successive centuries have demonstrated the truth of predictions once mysterious, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... in 1871 he was given the opportunity of introducing laboratory methods and all the newer processes of experimentation into Harvard Medical School. Now, the address from which the following extracts are taken was delivered on May 7, 1871. Perhaps the inference is not an unreasonable one that Dr. Bigelow was here protesting, and protesting in vain, against the introduction in America of those methods of vivisection which he always ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... has not said what he was to tell; so you cannot find fault with him, for what he has not told. If a man comes to look for fishes, you cannot blame him if he does not attend to fowls.' 'But,' said Colonel M'Leod, 'he mentions the unreasonable rise of rents in the Highlands, and says, "the gentlemen are for emptying the bag, without filling it"; for that is the phrase he uses. Why does he not tell how to fill it?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, there is no end of negative criticism. He tells what he observes, and ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... drawbacks are counter-balanced by certain advantages. In short, what applies to one country does not always apply to the other. Yet you propose to treat her exactly as if she were living in England. That strikes me as somewhat unreasonable." ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Slavonic civilization as expressed in its monuments of theological literature. Nevertheless, they have never been enthusiastic Pan-Slavists, any more than the Dutch have ever been ardent Pan-Germans; it is as unreasonable to expect such a thing of the one people as it is of the other. The Bulgarians indeed think themselves superior to the Slavs by reason of the warlike and glorious traditions of the Tartar tribe that gave them their name and infused the Asiatic element into their race, thus endowing them with greater ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... possibilities of a happiness he has long sought, and a nascent promise of it. He is unknown to her; but he stands in her sight illuminated by the hero's potent glory, she his and he hers by all the golden, fond, unreasonable laws ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... unreasonable wish, my child, after a great battle!' he said. 'But for once the unreasonable is the inevitable. Nobody was hurt. You see it was necessary to get every man back into the book just as he left it, or what would the schoolmasters have done? There remain now ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... who can be more human than St. Paul? And the more you read his epistles, and the more you know of his life, the more human he becomes. He knew how to be angry and sin not, and the way he "takes it out" of those unreasonable people who would not accept his mission has always been a great delight ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... good deal that is human about these stories when stripped of the marvellous, which surrounds them, and it is not unreasonable to ask whether they had, or had not, a foundation in fact, or whether they were solely the creations of an imaginative people. It is not, at least, improbable that these ghostly stories had, in long distant pre-historic times, their origin ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... great injustice to their children in case of marriage? A. Parents may be guilty of great injustice to their children in case of marriage by seeking the gratification of their own aims and desires, rather than the good of their children, and thus for selfish and unreasonable motives forcing their children to marry persons they dislike or preventing them from marrying the persons chosen by the dictates of their conscience, or compelling them to marry when they have no vocation for such a life or no true knowledge of ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous
... had a right to reprove him. He did reprove him now, though unintentionally. For David was delighted at having such good news from him; and the uneasiness which he had felt, but never quite expressed, was almost swept away in the conclusion, that it was unreasonable to expect the young man to give his time to them both absent and present, especially when he had been occupied to such good purpose as this letter signified. So he was nearly at peace about him—though not quite. Hugh received from him the following letter in reply to ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... kevils, cleats, and belaying pins, will be dependent for much of their eventual efficiency on the length of the yards, the size of the sails, and other circumstances which it is quite in vain, and quite unreasonable to expect the dockyard workmen to ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... his friends. "You're not the only country cousins, Siskin," he said, which gave Cicely somehow a higher opinion of herself, his dissociation of himself in this matter of country cousinhood from his family striking her as nothing unreasonable. Indeed, it was not unreasonable with regard to the Clintons, the men taking their part, as a matter of course, in everything to which their birth and wealth entitled them, so long as they cared to do so, the women living, for the most part, at home, ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... like his father. But we must remember that Nelly always had Mrs. Spinny. I never saw anything like the love there was between those two. After Nelly lost her own father and mother, she looked to Mrs. Spinny for everything. When Scott was too unreasonable, his mother could 'most always prevail upon him. She never lifted a hand to fight her own battles with Scott's father, but she was never afraid to speak up for Nelly. And then Nelly took great comfort of her little girl. Such a ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... is any thing very unreasonable, perhaps I shall not," said his mamma; "but if it is not very unreasonable, I think, as it is your birth-day, I may venture to promise that ...
— More Seeds of Knowledge; Or, Another Peep at Charles. • Julia Corner
... overflowing with the milk of human kindness, the younger one was full to overflowing with something not nearly so nice; and that whilst Johnson was pre-eminently a reasonable man, reasonable in all his demands and expectations, Carlyle was the most unreasonable mortal that ever exhausted the patience of nurse, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... are now, so I got a lot of it, anticipating the rise in prices that has followed since then; and I also bought a large lot of corn, oats, bran, and so on, which I keep downstairs. You're getting to be rather unreasonable, don't you think?" ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... strongly of the belief that other Shawanoes were near. It was unreasonable to suppose that a single warrior would have crossed the Mississippi alone, when a dozen of them had proven unable to bring the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... we had just seen on the skating floor, with a qualm of quite unreasonable bitterness. That anxiety of Phillida's had a flavor ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... to acknowledge my belief that Mrs. Loraine's messenger was exceedingly unreasonable, for he did not intermit his hammering long enough to ascertain whether any one was coming to the door or not. What was not more than five minutes in fact, might have seemed to be half an hour to him. Within as short a time as could have been ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... sting of dilettantism inflicting my labours with more or less increasing sharpness. It is not for me to say that I despise a fortune, but I am constrained to remark that I believe poverty would have been a fairer friend to me. At any rate I now pamper myself to an unreasonable extent. For one thing, I feel that I cannot work,—much less think,—when opposed by distracting conditions such as women, tea, disputes over luggage, and things of that sort. They subdue all the romantic tendencies I am so parsimonious about wasting. My best work is done when the madding ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... which at first blush looked like a weakening of the force of the anti-trust law but which was in reality a strengthening of it. There had been long and ardent debate whether the Sherman act should be held to apply to all restraints of trade or only to such as were unreasonable. It was held by some that it applied to ALL restraints and therefore should be amended to cover only unreasonable restraints. It was held by others that it applied to all restraints and properly so. It was held by ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... winced palpably at the mention of Benoni's religion. No people are more insanely prejudiced against the Hebrew race than the Germans. They indeed maintain that they have greater cause than others, but it always appears to me that they are unreasonable about it. Benoni chanced to be a Jew, but his peculiarities would have been the same had he been a Christian or an American. There is only one Ahasuerus Benoni in ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... idiosyncrasies? Once the scope of a sickness is known, what remedy shall be used? Some say this, others, that. How shall one choose? Veressayev has felt all of this; he has tried to harden himself against the unreasonable ingratitude of some, the scepticism of others; he realizes that patience, resignation, and heroism are needed in order to struggle against and support the mortifications in the career of a doctor. How much easier it would be not ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... man, and in doing this is obliged to do but little violence to her habits of thought and feeling, and no violence at all to such sentiments of independence as stand most in the way of man. Hence men shrink with horror from coming in contact with a godless woman. In their eyes she is monstrous, unreasonable and offensive. Even an utterly godless man, unless he be debauched and debased to the position of an animal, deems such a woman without an excuse. He looks on her with suspicion. He would not intrust his children to her care. Oh happy lot, and hallowed even as the joy of angels, where the golden ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... at Lord Ralles that had a challenging "I'll do as I please" in it, she went to get her hat and coat. The whole incident had not taken ten seconds, yet it puzzled me beyond measure, even while my heart beat with an unreasonable hope; for my better sense told me that it simply meant that Lord Ralles disapproved, and Miss Cullen, like any girl of spirit, was giving him notice that he was not yet privileged to control her actions. Whatever the scene meant, his lordship did not like ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... the returned traveller that he is back on Manhattan Island is the first Sunday paper. Jimmy, like every one else, began by opening the comic supplement: and as he scanned it a chilly discomfort, almost a premonition of evil, came upon him. The Doughnut Family was no more. He knew that it was unreasonable of him to feel as if he had just been informed of the death of a dear friend, for Pa Doughnut and his associates had been having their adventures five years before he had left the country, and even the toughest comic supplementary ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... thought it would be," she said. "Mrs Fotheringham thinks it's very unreasonable of me to want to ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... generally cloudy, and, as I have before remarked, in any other region it would have rained, but here only a few drops fell, no signs of which remained half an hour afterwards; the barometer, however, was very low, and it was not unreasonable to have encouraged hopes ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... of the sort here, let me tell you," snapped the unreasonable old man. "I can't afford to do business at cost just to please a lot of harum-scarum boys, who want to spend days loafing in the woods when they ought to be earning an ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... in an extremely unreasonable manner. He had no right to visit his spleen on a perfectly innocent bank that paid twenty-five per cent to its shareholders and a thousand a year each to its directors, and what trifle was left over to its men ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... Miss Phillips; "it has not been occupied for years and years—not since anybody around this locality can remember. Some of the uneducated people hereabouts still believe it is haunted, I understand; but it is rather unreasonable to suppose that any of the more cultured ones take any stock in the old story. While the fact that it was supposed to be haunted may have kept people from living in it a good many years ago, I think the real reason it is vacant nowadays is because ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... an unreasonable length have I spun out this letter. But from my disposition of mind to-day, and being alone, or en famille only, I did not think that I should be very concise. To my own tristes you have added more, and the account(s) ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... not answer, he looked up, and their eyes met. Once meeting, they could not quit each other. Diana's gaze was sad enough, but eager with the eagerness of long hunger. His was sharp with pain at first, keen with unreasonable anger; one of the mind's resorts from unbearable torment. Then as he looked it changed and grew soft; and finally, springing up, he went over to where she sat, dropped on his knees before her, and seizing her hands kissed them one after the other till tears began to mingle with ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... unlucky English bank-note which we presented to be changed, never, as he assured us, having seen such a bit of paper before; but kindly offering, if we would leave it a few hours, to have it seen and commented on, and then, if approved, and we liked to pay a somewhat unreasonable number of francs, the sum should be delivered to us. We thought the whole transaction so bizarre that we declined his offer, resolving rather to trust to chance till we reached La Rochelle,—our next destination—than ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... she rode all over the country—other days she hid herself in the woods or climbed to some inaccessible height, and there, with ardent eyes, indifferent to the wind that tossed her dark hair, she dreamed those dreams in which girls delight. She had moods of motiveless irritation, and of unreasonable indulgence. One day a village boy threw a stone at her horse. She pursued him with uplifted whip. Suddenly he turned, and folding his arms, defied her. She laughed aloud, and tossed ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... was an attempt to remove the prejudices of the whites against the blacks, on account of natural peculiarities. Now, prejudice is an unreasonable and groundless dislike of persons or things. Of course, as it is unreasonable, it is the most difficult of all things to conquer, and the worst and most irritating method that could be attempted would be, to attack a man as guilty of sin, as unreasonable, as ungenerous, or as proud, for allowing a ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... carry about with us, in the sanctuary of our own bosoms, our image of the great and almighty God whom we serve; and before that, and that only, do we bow down and worship. Were we indeed atheists, it were not unreasonable that you dealt with us as you now do, nay and much more severely; for, where belief in a God does not exist, it is not easy to see how any state can long hold together. The necessary bond is wanting, and, as a sheaf of wheat when the band is broken, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... friendly services in diplomatic intervention?' I nodded,—I felt that the allusion was unfair. 'Well, the occasion's come,—or, at least, it's very near.' She was still,—and I said nothing to help her. 'You know how unreasonable papa can be.' ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... me thank you for so considerately yielding to my disinclination. It may seem less unreasonable, if I avow to you that although I don't know Mr Lightwood, I have a disagreeable association connected with him. It is not his fault; he is not at all to blame for it, and does not even ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... his bad guardian with all the clemency inherent to his generous nature. He writes to Rogers, 27th June, 1814:—"Are there any chances or possibility of ending this, and making our peace with Carlisle? I am disposed to do all that is reasonable (or unreasonable) to arrive at it. I would even have done so sooner; but the 'Courier' newspaper, and a thousand ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... have been much less unreasonable in their demands. Please to consider whether the same question should be put to them. Both probably should understand that we have no money, and should have to make it, so that their replies respectively would form a ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... afterward Columbus crossed the ocean to the new-found Indies, touching once the mainland of South America. No need to go into the details of his after life. How can one have the heart to tell of the quick subsiding of his triumph, the malicious envy of courtiers, the unreasonable discontent of subordinates, the selfish ambition of rivals, the wanton wickedness of the West Indian settlers; of his removal from the governorship, and his voyage home in chains, over his Atlantic, of his weakening health, his accumulating anxieties, his troubled ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... of securing equanimity, amid the trials of domestic life is, to cultivate a habit of making allowances for the difficulties, ignorance, or temptations of those who violate rule or neglect duty. It is vain, and most unreasonable, to expect the consideration and care of a mature mind in childhood and youth; or that persons of such limited advantages as most domestics have enjoyed should practice proper self-control and possess ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... abstract or concrete, it could be any satisfaction for the wrong-doing of a man that a man who did no wrong should suffer, I would be driven from among men, and dwell with the wild beasts that have not reason enough to be unreasonable. What! God, the father of Jesus Christ, like that! His justice contented with direst injustice! The anger of him who will nowise clear the guilty, appeased by the suffering of the innocent! Very God forbid! Observe: the evil fancy actually substitutes ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... with him and the directors have had a meeting asking Laura to remove him at once. I do think they might have endured him one season when I gave him a twenty-dollar ear-trumpet, but some people are utterly unreasonable; and here I am, in need of advice every moment, and Laura kept in ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... we had got through the twenty-three miles that brought us to New Creek, I hated him intensely, as one hates the man—friend or foe—that bores you to death's door. That he should be puffed up with vainglory, was neither unlikely nor unreasonable. His own shots were the only ones he had ever seen fired in anger. It was natural, too, that he should over-estimate the importance of his capture; he had suffered from the war, in purse, if not in person, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... who resigned because of his old-fashioned ideas of law. This pamphlet contains sixty-seven pages, with numerous exhibits and photographs. The practices set forth are listed under six heads: Cruel and unusual punishments; arrests without warrant; unreasonable searches and seizures; provocative agents; compelling persons to be witnesses against themselves; propaganda by the Department of Justice. The reader may also ask for the pamphlet entitled "Memorandum Regarding ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... do that, sir. I cannot risk the well-being of my life on such a chance." Then his uncle had been angry with him as well as with his niece. In his anger he determined that he would go again to his sister-in-law, and, after some unreasonable fashion he resolved that it would become him to be very angry with her also, if she declined to assist him with all her ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... human society could have the right to force its members to suffer equally in one case for its own unreasonable lack of foresight, and in the other case for its pitiless foresight; and to seize a poor man forever between a defect and an excess, a default of work and an excess ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... reply. Charlotte, absolutely unoccupied, sprawled in a chair, and there were signs of sniffles about her, even at that early hour. It was but a trifling matter that had caused all this electricity in the atmosphere, and the girls' manner of taking it seemed to me most unreasonable. Within the last few days the time had come round for the despatch of a hamper to Edward at school. Only one hamper a term was permitted him, so its preparation was a sort of blend of revelry and religious ceremony. After the main ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... in East Street and attacked the Chippering; and he urged the treasurer to waste no time in obtaining a force of detectives, in securing in Boston and New York all the operatives that could be hired, in order to break the impending strike. Save for this untimely and unreasonable revolt he was bent on stamping out, for Ditmar the world to-day was precisely the same world it had been the day before. It seemed incredible to Janet that he could so regard it, could still be blind to the fact that these workers whom he was determined ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... go to other women, and he got in the habit to such an extent that he refused to give up entirely, even after the child was born. It cannot be expected from a married man, who is used to more or less regular sexual relations, to abstain entirely for nine or ten months. Such a demand is unreasonable and uncalled for. All claims about the injurious effects of intercourse on the mother and child lack proof and foundation. During the first four months of pregnancy no change need be made in the usual sex relations. Their "intensity" ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... cheque, even when unindorsed by the customer and taken by the banker in circumstances constituting him a transferee of the instrument, is probably referable to a custom of this nature. So is the common practice of bankers to refuse payment of a so-called "stale" cheque, that is, one presented an unreasonable time after its ostensible date; although the fact that some banks treat a cheque as stale after six months, others not till after twelve, might be held to militate against the validity of such custom, and lapse ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various |
