"Unaccountable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... longer intervals. They at length were bewildered by the Labyrinth of passages, and dispersed in various directions. Carried away by his eagerness to clear up this mystery, and to penetrate into which He was impelled by a movement secret and unaccountable, Lorenzo heeded not this circumstance till He found himself in total solitude. The noise of footsteps had ceased. All was silent around, and no clue offered itself to guide him to the flying Person. He stopped to reflect on the means most likely to aid his pursuit. ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... his bed, and, rubbing his leg gently where the iron had galled it, begins, not a complaint against fate, or his judges, or the misery of present death, but a grateful little reflection. "What an unaccountable thing, my friends, that seems to be which men call pleasure; and how wonderful it is related to that which appears to be its contrary—pain, in that they will not both be present to a man at the same time; ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... proceedings. And why, if the civil authorities are too weak to resist the torrent, is there not a sufficient military force to stem it? is the next question that presents itself. No one seems to know where the blame lies, but every one foretells a dangerous result from this unaccountable state ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... to them was equally strange and inexplicable: this was no other than such a reduction in the size of Mrs. Trunnion as might have been expected after the birth of a full-grown child. Startled at such an unaccountable event, they sat in close divan; and concluding that the case was in all respects unnatural and prodigious, desired that a messenger might be immediately despatched for some male practitioner in the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... in the quadrangle where the keys had fallen—a very forlorn suggestion proceeding from Mr. Jenkins that the right keys might be lying there still, and that this rusty pair might, by some curious and unaccountable chance, have been ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... seems unaccountable is simple. Now and then it happens that when a sudden demand is made upon a person to save his life by swimming he instinctively does the right thing. He adjusts his body correctly, and uses his legs and arms ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... After long and unaccountable delay, two columns were formed for the pursuit of the Bourbonites, and a regular civil war began. At first the Republicans, supported by the French, had the best of the fight, and the strong towns of Andria and Trani were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... decree of the 19th of August 1792, which suppressed the universities and other scientific institutions, there existed in France Faculties and Colleges of Physicians, as well as Colleges and Commonalities of Surgeons. From one of those unaccountable contradictions of which the revolution affords so many instances, these were also suppressed at a time when they were becoming most necessary for supplying the French armies with medical men. But as soon as the fury of the revolutionary ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... done many things that were risky. Jean had shot at him with real bullets so many times that her nervousness on this particular day was rather unaccountable to him. Jean had lassoed him and dragged him behind Pard through brush. She had pulled him from a quicksand bed,—made of cement that showed a strong tendency to "set" about his form before she could rescue him,—and she had fought with ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... pretty sitting-room the good-natured little widow proved herself a very practical friend. First of all, she listened carefully to Poppy's account of all that had transpired that day. She then got Primrose to tell her as much as possible about Daisy. All the child's distress and nervousness and unaccountable unhappiness were related, and the sage little woman shook her head several times over the narrative, and said at last, in ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... dimples on his chin and cheeks, a childish smile on his lips, frank, beautiful, pale violet-blue eyes, he had a most winsome countenance. But behind the angelic front was hidden a very demon. Jackson was a monstrosity if you will, a whited sepulchre, and one of the unaccountable freaks of nature. To those not knowing his habits, a handsome, affable, pleasing man of fine form and features; to those who knew him truly, a villain of the deepest dye, a very demon ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... Moreover, I bruised my elbows and knees badly, and the bruises were there on the following morning to testify to the fact, if I myself had doubted it. The porthole was wide open and fastened back—a thing so unaccountable that I remember very well feeling astonishment rather than fear when I discovered it. I at once closed the plate again and screwed down the loop nut with all my strength. It was very dark in the state-room. I reflected that the port had certainly been opened within an hour after Robert had at ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... Mexico seem to have an unaccountable preference for certain localities, where they may be found in great numbers. In the city of Durango the hotels advertise, as an attraction, that there are no scorpions ill them. For a number of years, according to the municipal records, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... the disturbance, they spirited the body away and burned it, and scattered the ashes. But this was a bad thing for them to do, for the ashes became seeds of the new contagion, and all through the great city, in the strangest and most unaccountable way, men would suddenly begin to speak the truth. And, of course this made business impossible—the merchants and traders had to move away; and how was it possible to preserve authority, when sooner or later all the lawyers and the judges and the politicians would speak truth? ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... next chapters of Mr Mill, noticing some other minor peculiarities (all of them unfortunate, and one, p. 447, really unaccountable) of Sir W. Hamilton's Formal Logic; and some Fallacious Modes of Thought countenanced by Sir W. Hamilton (chs. xxiii., xxiv.—pp. 446, 478), we are compelled to pass over. We must find space, however, for a few words ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... purpose was to exalt her into an object of religious adoration, that nations should kneel before her, and all people do her homage, then the words and the conduct of our Lord at this hour seem altogether unaccountable: and so would the words of the Evangelist also be, "And from that hour that disciple took ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... officer's good-will. If there are too many who love to be tempted to forget their trusts, by a well-managed venality, there are a few who find a greater satisfaction in being thought beyond its influence. The watchman of the gate happened to be one of the latter class, and, by one of the many unaccountable workings of human feeling, the very vanity which had induced him to suffer Il Maledetto to go through unquestioned, rather than expose his own ignorance, now led him to wish he might make some return for the stranger's ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... irregular, untouched as yet by the mower—as we like it best who love our Madison! A week-old moon hung in the sky—ample light for the first hay-ride of the season that is moving toward Water Babble to the strains of guitar and banjo and boy and girl voices. It's unaccountable that there should be so much music in a sophomore—or maybe that's a fraternity affair—Sigma Chi or Delta Tau or Deke. Or mayhap those lads wear a "Fiji" pin on their waistcoats; I seem to recall spring hay-rides as an expression of "Fiji" spirit in my own days at Madison, when ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... thing on the grounds of a stimulated imagination and weak or diseased optic nerves. I can bring forward from various treatises on the optic nerves hundreds of cases as singular as yours, and apparently as unaccountable. Indeed, if I find that this matter continues to affect you so deeply," he continued, with a faint smile, "my first duty will be to read up exclusively on the subject, and have a number of books sent here to you, so as to let you see and judge ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... damned, than God requires he should give to be saved; is not this an extravagant one? 'Be astonished, O ye heavens! at this, and be horribly afraid!' (Jer 2:9-12). Yea, let all the angels stand amazed at the unaccountable prodigality of such ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... enough of it, and there was that in her which leaped in swift response. But it was not to be expected of her that she should be willing to bury the hatchet at a moment's notice after the treatment she had received, and she checked the unaccountable impulse. ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... "had not a chance," she said, of going to her duties for several years; and that is why she considered "Peggy Doherty's" talk about forgiveness so strange and unaccountable. ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... except that an instinctive spirit prompted me—to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavoured to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... to me a most unaccountable circumstance that England—the all-powerful—could not catch the Boers without the aid of these blockhouses. There were so many other ways in which the thing might have been done, and better done; and the following incident, ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... process was started it took no time at all. The day which had been full of perplexities for me, the mysterious invisible thing that had held Nettie and myself apart, the unaccountable strange something in her manner, was ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... might not be at her customary place at the front window to watch him off to his train. At first, he was amused. It was a joke on himself, he thought. But repetition presently dulled the edge of comedy. On the fourth occasion of this apparently unaccountable behavior on Skinner's part, the "cage man" began to ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... anything supernatural in the appearances beheld at River Hall. It is so easy to pooh-pooh another man's tale; it is pleasant to explain every phenomenon that the speaker has never witnessed; it is so hard to credit that anything absolutely unaccountable on natural grounds has been witnessed by your dearest friend, that, knowing my only chance of keeping my temper and preventing Munro gaining a victory over me was to maintain a discreet silence, I let him ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... This unaccountable change of place for the rendezvous of the scattered vessels caused much embarrassment. We do not know what were the remonstrances of La Salle, or what was the defence of Beaujeu. The Joli had scarcely cast ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... "this is a very strange occurrence indeed—most unaccountable! I don't remember ever to have done anything of the kind before, but I seem to have forgotten to bring that work from the city. Dear me! I shall be forgetting my ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... close by his brother's side, he marched along with the party all the way to the Black Bull. Before they got there, a great number of boys and idle people had surrounded them, hooting and incommoding them exceedingly, so that they were glad to get into the inn; and the unaccountable monster actually tried to get in alongst with them, to make one of the party at dinner. But the innkeeper and his men, getting the hint, by force prevented him from entering, although he attempted it again and again, both by ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... the river, and one of them is for Putnam, from the major commanding the regiment. It is brief enough, but exasperating. "I greatly regret to have to report to you, in answer to your directions with regard to Rix, that they came too late. In some utterly unaccountable way, though we fear through collusion on part of a member or members of the guard, Rix made his escape two nights ago, and ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... For some unaccountable reason, Abijah Witherpee found Mr. Jones not at all in the humor for a bargain. The land wasn't worth much, he knew, and it was very handsome in the 'Squire to offer fifty dollars for it, but the fact was that his feelings somehow prompted him ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... second silence, in which Mrs. Carmichael and Travers exchanged baffled glances. The Colonel seemed in some unaccountable way to have lost his nerve and, as though he felt and feared the questioning gaze of his wife, he leaned forward so that his ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... discriminated from one another from this point of view, and the history of dogmatic opinion shows that origin has always been a favorite test. Origin in immediate intuition; origin in pontifical authority; origin in supernatural revelation, as by vision, hearing, or unaccountable impression; origin in direct possession by a higher spirit, expressing itself in prophecy and warning; origin in automatic utterance generally—these origins have been stock warrants for the truth of one opinion after another which we find ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... In the unaccountable manner of these desert conveyances, that creak and groan across the arid wastes with an apparently lumbering inconsequence, the stage that brought the travellers to the Dax ranch left at sunrise to pursue a seemingly erratic career along ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... although, as we have before pointed out, Judas did not at the time know what the other side of the bargain was. Admitting, however, everything that can fairly be urged against him, all that can be affirmed with certainty is that we are in the presence of strange and unaccountable inconsistency, and that an apostle who had abandoned his home, who had followed Jesus for three years amidst contempt and persecution, and who at last slew himself in self- reproach, could be capable of committing the ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... gentleman had the misfortune to possess a suspicious temper. He had not a better friend on the earth than Mr. C., yet by some unaccountable whim or other, he began of a sudden to suspect he was his enemy;—and what was at first at the farthest possible remove from the truth, ultimately grew to be a reality. Had it not have been for his jealousy, Mr. C. might have been to this hour one of the ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... accordingly made for her going abroad, to which the following letters refer, but the scheme ultimately broke down before the prohibition of Mr. Barrett—a prohibition for which no valid reason was put forward, and which, to say the least, bore the colour of unaccountable indifference to his daughter's health and wishes. The matter is of some importance on account of its bearing on the action taken by Miss Barrett in the autumn ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... far worthier of His majesty to seize upon the free will of man and compel it to perform the salutary act which He wishes it to perform. Whoever has studied the lives of saints and eminent converts knows that the sudden and seemingly unaccountable changes of heart which many of them have experienced can hardly be regarded as miracles in the strict sense, though on the other hand it seems certain that grace worked in them with little or no regard to the "congruity" ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... brought with infinite pains to the diggings. He enlivened our wet leisure by repeating whole volumes of Burns and Scott. Bill also returned to his wonderful stories, though the captain and mate sneered at them more than ever; indeed, they were by far the most discontented of the company, and an unaccountable sort of distrust seemed growing between them and Bill. At length, fever and ague began to thin the ranks of the gold-seekers; we saw the working-parties around us diminish day by day, and graves dug in the shadows of the low coppice. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... child she seems to have attracted wide-spread attention on account of certain peculiarities of temperament and conduct. It was noticed that though naturally gay and playful she occasionally assumed a strangely intent and serious manner; that in her happiest moments she was subject to unaccountable fits of shuddering and shivering; and that she seemed keenly alive not merely to the sights and sounds of every-day life but to influences unfelt by those about her. This last trait received a sudden and unexpected development ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... story of the cruise in the Sea Dream, of the unaccountable conflagration, and the fatal landing on the coast, concluding ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... region these trading savages came from, and a vaster region from which, by repeated trade, their stone lamps and that steel knife had come. Subienkow bullied, and cajoled, and bribed. Every far-journeyer or strange tribesman was brought before him. Perils unaccountable and unthinkable were mentioned, as well as wild beasts, hostile tribes, impenetrable forests, and mighty mountain ranges; but always from beyond came the rumour and the tale of white-skinned men, blue of eye and fair of hair, who fought like devils and who sought always for furs. They were ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... never took the trouble to get up a feeling against them. But it seemed to her Mrs. Tascher had not only clearly defined but conscientious likes and dislikes. She had tried to overcome the opposing current so far as it concerned herself, because it was unpleasant; and, although not wholly unaccountable—for she was conscious of some weaknesses, as most mortals are—so far as Mrs. Tascher was affected by her shortcomings the prejudice seemed unfounded. She had never injured her—never, except in that large sense in which all good souls are injured by wrong-doing; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... her unaccountable position. Presently her eyes strayed sidewise toward her agitated companion, who, intent on his own angry mutterings, was unaware of her inspection. The gleam of mirth that overspread her countenance was quickly banished; ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... the distinctive gloomy colouring which is unmistakably spread over the whole early history of man in JE, the Priestly Code has entirely lost the preparation for the flood, which now appears in the most abrupt and unaccountable way. As to the contents of the story, the priestly version here agrees to an unusual extent with the Jehovistic one; differing from it chiefly in the artificial, mathematical marking out of the framework. The flood lasts twelve months and ten days, i.e., exactly a solar year. ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... all right," declared the Shaggy Man. "I hadn't much confidence in his brains myself, when first I came to Oz, for a humbug Wizard gave them to him; but I was soon convinced that the Scarecrow is really wise; and, unless his brains make him so, such wisdom is unaccountable." ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... makes nonsense of a sentence perfectly intelligible when corrected, and causes the writer, in the very act of alluding to a most notorious fact in Spanish history, with which, even in its least details, he appears in other places familiar, to display the most unaccountable ignorance of the very fact he makes the basis of his narrative. Surely if plagiarism can ever be said "digito monstrari et dicier ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... left to fall into the practice of such immorality, as has justly rendered him the object of church censure by this Presbytery. As also in the case of Messrs. Alexander Marshall, and John Cuthbertson, with some others, elders and private Christians, against whom they proceeded in a most unaccountable, anti-scriptural, and unprecedented manner, and upon no better foundation, than that noticed in the case above, pretended to depose and cast such out of the communion of their church, as never had subjected to their authority, nor formerly stood in any ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... that he has seen some remarkably interesting examples of the growth of ice crystals on the walls of the cave and has observed the same unaccountable confusion of the size of grains in the ice, showing how little history can be gathered ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... herself about this hermit's story? Had she allowed her mind to dwell on her loss until she was quite unaccountable for her mental decisions? To tell the truth, this thought frightened the girl of the Red ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... left me that night, I lay propped up with pillows, staring idly at the strange shadows thrown by the hidden lamp across the laundry ceiling and over the floor. As I looked it seemed to me that a change came over the room—a most unaccountable change. ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... close examination, that they are a part of the same original superstratum, which I therein described, though 7 or 800 miles separated from them. They agree exactly in character, and also in the materials of which they are composed; and I believe that some unaccountable gorge of waters has swept away the intervening earth, leaving these solitary and isolated, though incontrovertible evidences, that the summit level of all this great valley, has at one time been where the level surface of these hills ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... of this villain, aptly termed by the late governor of Quillimane a "notorious robber and murderer," became at length intolerable. All the Portuguese spoke of him as a rare monster of inhumanity. It is unaccountable why half-castes, such as he, are so much more cruel than the Portuguese, but such is undoubtedly ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... contraries may work here as elsewhere; and it might not he difficult to demonstrate that a majority of thieves are better fitted by their nature and capacity for almost any other position in life than the one they occupy through perverse circumstance and unaccountable accident. Though mostly men of fair ability, they are not generally successful. Considering the number of thieves, there are but few great ones. In this "Rogues' Gallery" of the New York Police Commissioners we find the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... trail, or whether they had turned off to elude their pursuers, whose desperate mood they could not but know. The latter supposition seemed the more likely, since the path was marked so plainly that it could be lost only by unaccountable carelessness. ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... at Chancellorsville, only to be defeated with a loss of seventeen thousand men. At the beginning of the battle, Hooker had enjoyed every advantage of position, and his army outnumbered Lee's; but he sacrificed his position, with unaccountable stupidity, moving from a high position to a lower one, provoking the protest from Meade that, if the army could not hold the top of a hill, it certainly could not hold the bottom of it; and he seemed unable to use his men to advantage, holding one division ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... with superstition the explanation lies ready to hand, and is accepted without question. A people that sees spiritual agency in all the familiar phenomena of nature are certainly not less likely to trace its influence in the mysterious and unaccountable effects of narcotics and stimulants. And each repeated experiment provides additional proof. Man thus not only believes himself to be surrounded by a spiritual world; he is actually able to enter into communication with it by methods that are defined in the clearest possible ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... was the dull hopelessness of despair in his bloodshot eyes. Douglas, who had never seen anything like it before, felt an unaccountable sense of depression ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... see, when the account which is subjoined to this unaccountable letter comes before you, that, though the Company had desired to know the channels through which he got those sums, there is not (except by a reference that appears in another place to one of the articles) one single syllable of explanation given from one end to the other, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... been so transmuted and etherealized, as it were, that the composer himself would have listened in wondering ecstasy to the mournful strains, which had passed through the alembic of their more delicately organized minds. Listening, I remembered with an unaccountable feeling of sadness, that poor Campana had recently died in London; and almost at the same moment there came to me a remembrance of my beloved mother, whose early death was my first great grief in boyhood. All the songs I had ever heard her sing came back to me, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... became more and more incoherent and inconsequent. He addressed himself at one moment to the representatives of the people, who were quite overcome by astonishment; at another to the military in the courtyard, who could not hear him. Then, by an unaccountable transition, he spoke of "the thunderbolts of war!" and added, that he was "attended by the God of war and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... make clear by a map the mass of mountains which I was about to attempt, and in which I forded so many rivers, met so many strange men and beasts, saw such unaccountable sights, was imprisoned, starved, frozen, haunted, delighted, burnt up, and finally refreshed in Tuscany—in a word, where I had the most extraordinary and unheard-of adventures that ever diversified ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... own mother would call him handsome; he is certainly not young, nor particularly brilliant; and yet there is a fascination about the proprietor of this rambling old house that gave me an unaccountable desire to become his tenant. He is a wine-merchant, and occupies, as his counting-room, the entire second floor. The place is desolate-looking and dusty, and the furniture old with service; but, I am told, no man in Paris controls more of the grand vintages than M. Pontalba. With a Frenchman, ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... of Robert Browning to Miss Barrett is the one dramatic event in his quiet life. To one who has read his passionate and at times fiery, unconventional poetry, the runaway, unconventional marriage is not unaccountable, but altogether consistent. The manner of ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... and holding himself responsible for the safety of the garrison it was but natural, when the discovery had been made of the unaccountable unfastening of the gate of the fort, suspicion of no ordinary kind should attach to the sentinel posted there; and that he should steadily refuse all credence to a story wearing so much appearance of improbability. Proud, and inflexible, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... highest spirits over her unaccountable prank, and laughed girlishly. "Now I will gratify my curiosity. You know I admit my curiosity, sometimes. These men are not alone in their thirst for excitement. It is so tiresome at court, ever the same thing day ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... his mistress's residence, and was afterwards found dead in a cavity of the rocks. After a time, Galliard, a merchant of Guernsey, paid his addresses to the young lady; but she always felt a strong, unaccountable antipathy to him. He presented her with a beautiful trinket. The mother of Gordier, chancing to see this trinket, recognized it as having been bought by her dead son as a present for his mistress. She expired on learning this; and Galliard, being ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... noise as to terrify the poor captive very much. He runs this way and that, around the interior of the box, wondering what has happened, and why he can not get out as he came in. He has no more appetite for the corn, but is in great distress at his sudden and unaccountable captivity. ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... emotional return as between equals who had secretly recognized each other's value. Yet at the same time she regretted not having been left in the dark; as much in the dark as Mr. Travers himself or d'Alcacer, though as to the latter it was impossible to say how much precise, unaccountable, intuitive knowledge was ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... more confounded at my sending for Ibrahim to summon him to my tree, where I presented him with some English sovereigns and a double-barrelled gun. Nothing escapes the inquisitiveness of these Arabs; and the men of both parties quickly perceived that I had established an alliance in some unaccountable manner with Ibrahim. I saw the gun lately presented to him being handed from one to the other for examination, and both my vakeel and men appeared utterly confused at ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... twenty-five to seventy-five and one hundred dollars. Sheep from two to three dollars. There are some tolerable flocks of sheep throughout this state, but they are of little value beyond the price of the wool, a most unaccountable antipathy to mutton existing ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... in which it was designed that the bride should appear at the altar. The fashion as to this point has often varied; but at that time, I believe the custom was for bridal parties to be in full dress. The lady, when the dress arrived, was, to all appearance, in good health; but, by one of those unaccountable misgivings which are on record in so many well-attested cases, (as that, for example, of Andrew Marveil's father,) she said, after gazing for a minute or two at the beautiful dress, firmly and pointedly, "So, then, that is my wedding dress; ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... beings are these sailors! They have no care for the morrow, but spend lavishly the hard-earned wages of their adventurous life. To one like myself, who early knew the value of money, this thoughtless extravagance certainly appeared unaccountable, and nearly allied to madness; but, when I reflected that they are sometimes imprisoned in a ship for years, without touching land, and frequently in peril of losing their lives—that they have scarcely time to scatter their wages and prize-money in the ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... the numerous favorable decisions obtained by them as a result of the enormous amount of litigation, in the prosecution of which so great a sum of money has been spent and so concentrated an amount of effort and time lavished. Indeed, it would be strange and unaccountable were the results otherwise. While the benefits derived were not directly pecuniary in their nature, they were such as tended to strengthen commercially the position of the rightful owners of the patents. Many irresponsible and purely piratical concerns were closed altogether; others were ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... sudden cry. He stopped automatically, listening with every nerve, but there was no repetition of the uncertain sound. As Woolfolk swiftly considered it he was possessed by the feeling that he had not heard the cry with his actual ear but with a deeper, more unaccountable sense. He went forward in a blind rush, feeling with extended hands for the opening in the tangle, groping a stumbling way through the close dark of the matted trees. He fell over an exposed root, blundered into a chill, wet trunk, and finally ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... occult courses. By tradition handed down from father to son, certain workmen, chiefly masons and always genuine Romans, claim to know more about it than other people; but that is as much as can be said. It is known as the "lost water," and it rises and falls, and seeks different levels in unaccountable ways, as water will when it is confined under the earth but is here and there confronted by the pressure of ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... burdened and similarly mingled, and with aims not much less vague; carrying their lumbering waggon-castle, with the dexterity which a long migratory life imparts, over streams and mountains; dangerous to more civilized nations like the sea-wave and the hurricane, and like these capricious and unaccountable, now rapidly advancing, now suddenly pausing, turning aside, or receding. They came and struck like lightning; like lightning they vanished; and unhappily, in the dull age in which they appeared, there was no observer who deemed ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... that mad and unaccountable gentleman" (thus he designates the Prince) "has set up a standard at a place called Glenfinnin—Monday last. This place is the inlet from Moydart to Lochaber; and I hear of none that joined him as yet, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... unaccountable incongruities. Although the most positive man that perhaps ever existed, yet there never was one who more readily yielded to the charm of illusion. In many circumstances the wish and the reality were to him one and the same thing. He never indulged in greater illusions than at the beginning of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... dejected, listless, and somewhat shamefaced; he found Miss Marston calm and commonplace as usual. But it was the calm of a desperate resolve, won after painful hours, that he little recognized. Her instinct to attach herself to this strange, unaccountable creature, to make him effective to himself, had triumphed over her prejudices. She humbled herself joyfully, ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... herself, save the half-witted boy, who seemed to be asleep now, away out on the projecting limb of a cypress tree that nearly overhung the spot, and where he had coiled himself up, and managed to sustain his position upon the limb by some unaccountable means ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... the river on the way, I managed to get my head pretty well inside of the carriage, and, at the time she spoke, was keeping a lookout in front with my back. The remark of Mrs. Sparrowgrass induced me to turn about, and I found the new horse behaving in a most unaccountable manner. He was going down hill with his nose almost to the ground, running the wagon first on this side and then on the other. I thought of the remark made by the man, and turning again to Mrs. Sparrowgrass, said, "Playful, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... For some unaccountable reason there is, or was for many years, a very prevalent idea that the enormous number of skins which have poured into the London market were from birds bred in the vicinity of Calcutta. When we remember the intense heat of that low-lying city, and learn from the records of the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... better luck, and that too in wading right over the ground I had covered. To beat me at anything always gave him the most unaccountable fiendish pleasure. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... secondly, because I have been fooling myself with the idea that I was going to leave New York every day for the last two weeks. I have taken a liking to the abominable place, and every time I get ready to leave, I put it off a day or so, from some unaccountable cause. It is as hard on my conscience to leave New York, as it was easy to leave Hannibal. I think I shall get off ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Sunderbunds in Bengal do not contain monsters more hideous and terrible than are to be found in the eastern portion of Texas, over which nature appears to have spread a malediction. The myriads of snakes of all kinds, the unaccountable diversity of venomous reptiles, and even the deadly tarantula spider or "vampire" of the prairies, are trifles, compared with the awful inhabitants of the eastern bogs swamps, and muddy rivers. The former are really dangerous only during two or three months of the year, and, moreover, a considerable ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... some of it from her, for she, poor thing, had sunk, adventurously, in one disastrous marriage her whole stock of youth and gaiety and charm. It was Ranny's youth and charm and gaiety that made him so surprising and so unaccountable. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... time, mein Verehrtester (my Most Esteemed),' continues he, with an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined from Teufelsdroeckh, or some trick of his, as we suspect, is well-nigh unaccountable, 'by this time you are fairly plunged (vertieft) in that mighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy; and looking round, as all readers do, with astonishment enough. Such portions and passages as you ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... out of the pale of; misplaced; funny. unusual, unaccustomed, uncustomary, unwonted, uncommon; rare, curious, odd, extraordinary, out of the ordinary; strange, monstrous; wonderful &c. 870; unexpected, unaccountable; outre[Fr], out of the way, remarkable, noteworthy; queer, quaint, nondescript, none such, sui generis[Lat]; unfashionable; fantastic, grotesque, bizarre; outlandish, exotic, tombe des nues[Fr], preternatural; denaturalized[obs3]. heterogeneous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... compliance with a precaution that was become habitual, than from any present causes of suspicion, she drew a single bolt and remained at the postern, anxiously awaiting the result of a movement that was as unaccountable as ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... at him with a mingled bark and squeal of joy, and thereafter, for full two minutes, danced round him, a mass of wriggling hair from tip of tail to snout, in uncontrollable ecstasy. Mingled misery and surprise at Jeff's sudden and unaccountable disappearance, prolonged agonies of disappointed expectation, the sickness of heart resulting from hope long deferred, all were forgotten in that supreme moment of joy at reunion ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... enraged with them and with himself. He looked at the plump, sleek hand of the woman with the Roman nose. The insulation and complacency of its pale skin, the passive righteousness about its curve, the prim separation from the others of the fat little finger, had acquired a wholly unaccountable importance. It embodied the verdict of his fellow-passengers, the verdict of Society; for he knew that, whether or no repugnant to the well-bred mind, each assemblage of eight persons, even in a third-class carriage, contains the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... whereby the soul and body are united, and how they are distinguished, is wholly unaccountable to us. We see but one part, and yet we know we consist of two; and this is a mystery we cannot comprehend, any more than that of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... toils, and vigils, and suddenly looking out of his eyes like a starved captive, cried, "you—you—" and prophesied that, whether they would or not, this war was to be his and hers together. A responding thrill must have run from her fingers into his and belied the unaccountable restraint of her welcome, for a joy shone from him which it took her ignoring smile and her hand's withdrawal ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... grizzly was still puzzled. Not only was he struggling against an unaccountable dislike of all cubs in general, but also against the firmly established habits of ten years of aloneness. Yet he was beginning to comprehend that there was something very pleasant and companionable in the nearness of Muskwa. ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... them of their deaths; and, to uphold the fancy, tell you of other strange monitors altogether as ridiculous. Though, as I before observed, I do not deny but the Almighty may employ unusual methods to warn us at times of our approaching ends, yet in general, such common and unaccountable tales are mere nonsense, originating from want of a proper investigation, and kept alive by an infatuated delight in telling strange stories, rendered more ridiculous by recapitulation. How charmingly does our poet ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... If it rained knowledge I'd hold out my hand; but I would not give myself the trouble to go in quest of it.' There was no arguing with him at the moment. Some time afterwards he said, 'Lord Marchmont will call on me, and then I shall call on Lord Marchmont.' Mr. Thrale was uneasy at his unaccountable caprice[1022]; and told me, that if I did not take care to bring about a meeting between Lord Marchmont and him, it would never take place, which would be a great pity. I sent a card to his Lordship, to be left at Johnson's ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... exploring the grotto-like place he had discovered; but to his surprise, his young master put it off, and the quiet, silent fellow waited. He, though, had more tales to tell of the way in which things disappeared from cottages. Pigs, sheep, poultry went in the most unaccountable way, and the witches who met sometimes on the mountain slope had the credit of ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... man handed up the box-like machine, which Bruce started packing under the seat. Just as the operator started back up the hill to get his tripod, in some unaccountable manner the brakes of the heavy truck loosened and the big vehicle started to roll slowly down the hill. So steep was the grade that the truck gained momentum at a ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... almost without interference. Thomas was strongly fortified in his position, so that he would have been safe against the attack of Hood. He had troops enough even to annihilate him in the open field. To me his delay was unaccountable—sitting there and permitting himself to be invested, so that, in the end, to raise the siege he would have to fight the enemy strongly posted behind fortifications. It is true the weather was very bad. The rain was falling and freezing as it fell, so that the ground was covered with a sheet of ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... remain still in doubt about the authenticity of these poems, tho' inclining rather to believe them genuine in spite of the world. Whether they are the inventions of antiquity, or of a modern Scotchman, either case is to me alike unaccountable. Je ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... at the same time for granted, that the Immortality of the Soul is sufficiently established by other Arguments: And if so, this Appetite, which otherwise would be very unaccountable and absurd, seems very reasonable, and adds Strength to the Conclusion. But I am amazed when I consider there are Creatures capable of Thought, who, in spite of every Argument, can form to themselves a sullen Satisfaction in thinking otherwise. There is something so pitifully ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... small tribute to Mrs. Radcliffe's gifts that we often accept such incidents as these without demur. So unnerved are we by the lurking shadows, the flickering lights, the fluttering tapestry and the unaccountable groans with which she lowers our vitality, that we tremble and start at the wagging of a straw, and have not the spirit, once we are absorbed into the atmosphere of her romance, to dispute anything she would have us believe. The interest ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... would shrink from passing a night in a haunted room, or, if alone, would go a mile out of their way to avoid an uncanny spot. The greatest mistake made by narrators of the marvellous is attempting to account for the unaccountable. This book is, I believe, one of a series now being published by ELLIOT STOCK, of Paternoster Row, a stock which Your Own Baron recommends as a safe investment, for the book alone is a good dividend, the interest being kept up all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... board entering his own home, unsupported by the presence of his fellow-members and the scientific zeal of the Senior Surgeon, the business of the afternoon began to change its aspect. For some unaccountable reason—unless we take Fancy into the reckoning—this sudden abandoning of Ward C did not seem the simple matter of an hour previous; while in perspective even Margaret MacLean's outspokenness became less ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... hospital halls and corridors, and they were an incalculable worry to the authorities. More came on every train, and nearly all brought flowers, and jelly, and chickens for preparing broth, and they insisted that the two latter delicacies be fed to the patient at once. Meredith was possessed by an unaccountable responsibility for them all, and invited a great many to stay at his own house. They were still in ignorance of the truth about the Cross-Roads, and some of them spent the day (it was Sunday) in planning an assault upon the Rouen jail for the purpose of ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... a conviction that they are the same—that Richard must have been under some unaccountable mistake in saying that he knew Francis Levison. Besides, who but he, in evening dress, would have been likely to go through Bean lane that night? It leads to no houses, but one wishing to avoid the high road could get into it from these grounds, and ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... having been witness to those infamous actions, says he, I believed all women to be that way naturally inclined, and that they could not resist those violent desires. Being of this opinion, it seemed to me to be an unaccountable weakness in men to make themselves uneasy at their infidelity. This reflection brought many others along with it; and, in short, I thought the best thing I could do was to make myself easy. It cost me some pain indeed, but at last I effected it; and, if ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous |
