"Unexplained" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much in her lot hitherto, she held herself rather hardly dealt with, but as to her "education," she would have admitted that it had left her under no disadvantages. In the school-room her quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and disconnected facts which saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness; and what remained of all things knowable, she was conscious of being sufficiently acquainted with through novels, plays and poems. About ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... saw might well have astonished her, for it was a thing she had never seen before and of which she had never heard. Now she paused in indecision between going forward toward exploration and retreating from new and unexplained phenomena. In her quick instinctive movements was something like the irresolution of the fawn whose nostrils have dilated to a sense of possible danger. Finally, reassured by the silence, she slipped across the broad face of the flat rock for a distance ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... the table the drawing passed from hand to hand. No one praised, no one spoke, no one smiled. When one of the younger children started to say something, he was abruptly told to eat his supper. Heavy hung the weight of unexplained guilt over the five-year-old artist. After the meal her mother took her quietly aside and said, "When you draw a picture of a boy, you don't have to ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... to be impressed with the artist's tact, his delicacy. In words he never referred to their conversation in the foyer of the Auditorium; only by some unexplained subtlety of attitude he managed to convey to her the distinct impression that he loved her always. That he was patient, waiting ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... the time he preserved a delicate distance between himself and Rose, a bright nonchalance and impersonality of tone towards her which made his companionship a perpetual tonic. And, between them, he and Helen coerced Lady Charlotte. A few inconvenient inquiries after Rose's health, a few unexplained stares and 'humphs' and grunts, a few irrelevant disquisitions on her nephew's merits of head and heart, were all she was able to allow herself. And yet she was inwardly seething with a mass of sentiments, to which it would have been pleasant to give expression—anger with Rose ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... They are not all selected for intellectual or artistic brilliance—they are the symbols of undesigned friendships, which existed before I exercised the faculty of choice. They are there, uncriticised, unexplained, these friends of mine. The modest man, you will remember, finds his circle ready-made. I am attached to them, and they to me. They understand no language, some of them, as you will see, except the language of the ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was worrying Sir Bale's heart a little; and the more he thought on the strange visit of Hugh Creswell that night, with its unexplained menace, the ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... was driving home, he passed McKelvey's limousine and saw Sir Gerald, a large, ruddy, pop-eyed, Teutonic Englishman whose dribble of yellow mustache gave him an aspect sad and doubtful. Babbitt drove on slowly, oppressed by futility. He had a sudden, unexplained, and horrible conviction that the McKelveys were ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... with fancy. The girl was his, but he never let his mind linger on the numerous difficulties that lay inevitably between the present hour and his possession of her. He projected himself into the future with a blank unexplained behind, and saw them at unextinguishable hearths, love accompanying them through generations. Through the heather he brushed eagerly now, his eyes intent upon the dim summits of the brae from which again he should see the light of the shealing ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the last twenty centuries, is singularly like that of Lucretius. The Roman poet knew fewer facts than are familiar to our men of science, and was far less able to analyse one puzzle into a whole group of unexplained phenomena. He had besides but a feeble grasp upon those discoveries which subserve the arts of life and practical utility. But as regards absolute knowledge—knowledge, that is to say, of what the universe really is, and of how it became what it seems to ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... explanation of this intense feeling of animosity toward the Loyalists in the breast of that philosopher of moderation are easily traced to one of the most interesting incidents in his residence near the British Court as agent for Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. The incident is connected with the still unexplained mystery of his getting possession of the famous letters of Hutchinson, Oliver, etc. Franklin was living and directing all his practical efforts for enlightening and influencing those whom he supposed to be simply the ignorant plotters of mischief against the Colonists, under the full ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... powerless before the law written on the enlightened consciences of those devoted men and women. These rifles had been forwarded previously to the National Committee at Chicago, for the defense of Kansas, but for some unexplained reasons had never proceeded farther than Tabor, in the State of Iowa. Later on, Mr. Stearns, in his individual capacity, authorized Captain Brown to purchase two hundred revolvers from the Massachusetts Arms Company, and paid for ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... strain and travel. Doubtless they had come from the edge of the lake itself, and he believed suddenly, but with all the certainty of conviction, that they were following him. They were on the back trail, which, in some unexplained manner, they had struck merely to lose again. Chance had brought them to opposite sides of the pond, but he alone had received ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of manner'; and that, in the spring of the following year, the two friends went off to Zurich, where Beddoes hired the theatre for a night in order that Degen might appear on the stage in the part of Hotspur. At Basel, however, for some unexplained reason, the friends parted, and Beddoes fell immediately into the profoundest gloom. 'Il a ete miserable,' said the waiter at the Cigogne Hotel, where he was staying, 'il a voulu se tuer.' It was true. He inflicted ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... man who secretly cherished a passionate love for her, and in the struggle to defend her honour superhuman strength was given her to fling him into the courtyard below. The mystery of his death remained unexplained until the day of his solemn obsequies, when the lady herself, who attended them and was kneeling in solemn prayer, suddenly fell forward and expired. The mysterious strength of this profound and passionate story made an indelible impression upon my mind. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... footlights. But with the advent of Sam, Mr. Pickwick had become a sort of black background and had to behave as such. But this explanation, though true as far as it goes, is a mean and unsatisfactory one, leaving the great elements unexplained. For a much deeper and more righteous reason Sam Weller introduces the more serious tone of Pickwick. He introduces it because he introduces something which it was the chief business of Dickens to preach throughout ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... the fire when they entered the room—lithe and young in his riding costume—and he turned, smiling, to meet her. She kissed him gravely. There was always something unexplained between these two, something to be said ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... up above, alone where dwelleth peace. With all thy foes and with thyself be reconciled. The light-haired god will then be reconciled with thee. They have a Balder in the south—the virgin's son, Who by the Allfather wise was sent to explain the runes Upon the norns' black shield rand,—unexplained before. His battle-cry was peace, his conquering sword was love; And blameless sat the dove upon his silver helm. He holy lived and taught, he died and he forgave,— And under distant palms his ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... English readers heard of it first in the issue of Nature dated August 2. I am inclined to think that this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us. Peculiar markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the site of that outbreak during ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... was selfish in not sharing his point of view and the thoughts which amused him. At times reserve can be the most selfish thing imaginable, and one might as well be reticent on a desert island as in Manicaland. Moreover, despite the tolerant manners of the country, Mills was conscious of something unexplained in his companion— something which engendered a suspicion ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... the brougham moved past the window just as Sir William Gore, who had painfully pulled himself out of his chair, looked out, petrified with surprise at the unexplained crisis that seemed to have come upon the household. "Stamfordham!" he said to himself, "and Frank! What are the Imperialists hatching now, I wonder?" and he mechanically looked round him at Rendel's writing-table. It was, however, closed ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... personage of lesser importance, named Khonsu, who up to that period had been relegated to an obscure position in the celestial hierarchy. How they came to identify him with the moon, and subsequently with Osiris and Thot, is as yet unexplained,* but the assimilation had taken place before the XIXth dynasty drew to its close. Khonsu, thus honoured, soon became a favourite deity with both the people and the upper classes, at first merely supplementing Montu, but finally supplanting him in the third ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... look at it when he took it from Green. It might be an accidental fault in the manufacture of the paper. Yet, trivial as it seemed, it was unusual, and one of the chief assets in detective work is not to let the unusual go unexplained. ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... light, all had been dull, now I seemed to see the truth plainly. That which had come to me as vague conjectures now appeared as certainties, and in spite of the old man's dread news, I had more hope than in the past. I felt sure there were many things as yet unexplained. With my greater mental activity came also more physical vigour. I felt myself capable of trying to escape. I wondered at myself, Jasper Pennington, being kept so long a prisoner without making any attempt at escaping, and I determined that very day to take ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... out over the misty clover-grown pleasance to the country beyond bathed in brilliant moonlight. And something in the beauty of it stilled the wild ache in her heart. She would not admit into her thoughts the least fear, but some unexplained, unconquerable apprehension stayed in her innermost soul. She knew, only she refused to face the fact, that ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... which was suddenly jarred when the wife in the corner, rocking the cradle with one foot while she turned a hoe-cake baking on the hearth with a dextrous flip of a knife, and feeling secure in his deafness, cast a witty fling at his fastidious apparel. With that frequent yet unexplained phenomenon of acoustics, her voice was so strung that its vibrations reached his numb perceptions as duly as if intended for his ears. He made no sign, in his pride and politeness, both indigenous. But he said to himself, "I don't laugh at her gown,—it ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... was an Indian trading-post, located on the mail route to Fort Reno, and only a few miles north of the Chisholm Crossing. The letter was characteristic of my employer. It contained but one imperative order,—that I should touch, either with or without the herd, at Camp Supply. For some unexplained reason he would make that post his headquarters until after the Buford herds had passed that point. The letter concluded with the injunction, in case we met any one, to conceal the ownership of the herd ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... which have astonished us in this adventure may be easily explained. But the prophecy in the square of St. Mark, that first miracle, which, as it were, opened the door to all the rest, still remains unexplained; and of what use is the key to all his other wonders if we despair of resolving this ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... honors far higher than a seat in the Privy Council were due, and would soon be paid, to the man who had saved the British dominions in Asia. Hastings now confidently expected a peerage; but, from some unexplained cause, he was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the reserved, and self-contained man of thirty-two—pessimist and dilettante—who had returned. His lameness he ascribed to an accident in the Alps, but would never say anything more about it; and his friends presently learned to avoid the subject, and to forget the slight signs of something unexplained which had made ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... There was something unexplained, and Licquet was not satisfied. His tricks had brought no result. D'Ache was not found; Mme. Acquet had disappeared; her description had in vain been sent to all the brigades. Manginot, in despair of finding ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... he was also indeed almost sublime. He told them nothing, left his absence unexplained, and though they were convinced he had made some extraordinary purchase they were never to learn its nature. He only glowered grandly at the tops of the old gables. "It's the sacred rage," Strether had had further time to say; and this sacred rage was to become between them, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... all necessary, Miss Carwell," went on the captain. "The law of New Jersey does not demand that in cases of sudden and unexplained death, unless the county physician is not satisfied with his investigation. In that matter New Jersey differs from some of the other states. The county physician will make an autopsy to determine the cause of death. If he is satisfied that it was from natural causes he gives ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... i.e., laced in a thrum, or warp. 10.4: 'Misaunter [ misadventure] have' was used in imprecations: cf. in the Merlin romance, 'Mysauenture haue that it kepeth eny counseile.' 11.3: 'Each at the other's heart.' 13.3: 'sanchothes': unexplained; but it obviously means that the arrow struck between his legs. 16.1: 'yelp,' ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... the copy filed in the War Department of the order actually given to the troops on November 29 explains how that mistake occurred. In brief, the draft of an order prepared in writing for another purpose, but not issued, was by some unexplained blunder substituted for the oral orders actually dictated to a staff officer. It was an example of how the improvised staff of a volunteer army, like the "non-military agencies of government," may ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... executors to make a clear title of the disputed tract to the blacksmith. The shop was his; the boys, at all events, would be undisturbed. One provision in the will greatly excited Mark's curiosity. The notes which he owed to the estate were to be cancelled, and there was an unexplained reference to his uncle Hardwick and to some occurrences of long ago. Mildred at once recalled to mind her father's dying words,—his calling for Mr. Hardwick, and his mention of the cabinet. She had often thought of her search in its drawers, and of her finding the lock of sunny hair ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the loss of individual contact between the European teacher and the Indian scholar. Western education had been started in India at the top, whence it was expected to filter down by some strange and unexplained process of gravitation. Attention was concentrated on higher and secondary education, to which primary education was at first entirely sacrificed. Whereas Lord William Bentinck had declared the great object of Government to be the promotion of both Western science and literature, scarcely ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... mind, purely theoretical difficulties or discrepancies will provoke thought. To the astronomer an unaccounted-for perturbation in the path of a planet provokes inquiry; the chemist is challenged by a curious unexplained reaction of two chemical elements, the biologist, anterior to the discovery of micro-organisms, by the putrefaction of animal tissues. The degree to which curiosity persists and the extent of training a man has had in a given field largely ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... you a bundle of proposals, which, I think, do not profess more than I have hitherto performed. I have printed many of the plays, and have hitherto left very few passages unexplained; where I am quite at a loss, I confess my ignorance, which is seldom ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... I accounted for the emptiness of Niagara in the most satisfactory way, it wouldn't add a soul to the floating population. Under the circumstances I prefer to leave it unexplained." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Vincent had resigned all his command, leaving Keith commander-in-chief. Nelson was convinced—"I knew," was his expression—that the French intended going to Naples. He determined now to resume his enterprise against the republicans in the city; a decision which caused him great and unexplained mental conflict. "I am agitated," he wrote Hamilton the same day, in a note headed "Most Secret," "but my resolution is fixed. For Heaven's sake suffer not any one to oppose it. I shall not be gone eight days. No harm can come to Sicily. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... aright;" for this necessarily implies that we are to study carefully everything relating to the nature of our existence, to the spot and scene of our existence, with its mysterious phenomena, and its comparatively unexplained laws. And we must, moreover, always keep in view the personal relations and duties which the Creator has imposed upon the members of the human race. The knowledge of these relations and duties is one form of learning; the disposition and the ability ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... to have happened that might, if true, be cases of things leaking through from another time world," the sandy-haired man corrected. "Or leaking away to another time world." He mentioned a few of the more famous cases of unexplained mysteries—the English diplomat in Prussia who vanished in plain sight of a number of people, the ship found completely deserted by her crew, the lifeboats all in place; stories like that. "And there's ...
— Crossroads of Destiny • Henry Beam Piper
... unattainable by other methods, and possessing always a charm of grace and power exclusively its own; yet, in its slightness addressing itself, purposefully, to the casual glance, and common thought—eager to arrest the passer-by, but careless to detain him; or detaining him, if at all, by an unexplained enchantment, not by continuance of teaching, or development of idea. But the work of Holbein is true and thorough; accomplished, in the highest as the most literal sense, with a calm entireness of unaffected resolution, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... The ghosts of the old chiefs must surely chuckle when they note that the name by which Canada has called her capital and the centre of her political life, Ottawa, is an Indian name which signifies 'buying and selling.' And the wanderer in this land will always be remarking an unexplained fragrance about the place-names, as from some flower which has withered, and which he ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... still out of doors, quiet and damp with belts of unexplained shadow here and there, and a sense of illimitable space and silence. Julia sat down on the door steps and smelt the good smell of the earth and felt the nearness of it. But it did not comfort her; she was not in tune with the night; ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... In some unexplained way intelligence had been conveyed, through the wilderness, to the widely dispersed trappers, that a Fair for trading, would be held at a very commodious and well-known spot on the above-mentioned stream. There was here a green, smooth, expanded ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... produce music? They certainly comply with the three conditions of air, vibration, and rhythm. Why is the accord of a third so pleasing to the ear? Why is the minor mode so suggestive of sadness? There is the mystery,—there the unexplained phenomenon. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... covered entirely with red. One red cushion is often enough to give the required note. The effect of color is very strong upon people, although a great many do not realize it, but nearly everyone will remember a sudden and apparently unexplained change of mood in going into some room. One can learn a deal by analyzing one's own sensations. Figured wall-papers should also be chosen with the greatest care for this same reason. Papers which have perpetual motion in their design, or eyes which seem ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... warmth and languor began gradually to steal over me, partly, perhaps, from the heat of the fire, and partly from some unexplained cause. An uncontrollable impulse to sleep weighed down my eyelids, while, at the same time, my brain worked actively, and a hundred beautiful and pleasing ideas flitted through it. So utterly lethargic ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... account for such phenomena without admitting any movement of the land itself, we are required to imagine several retreats and returns of the ocean; and even then our theory applies merely to cases where the marine strata composing the dry land are horizontal, leaving unexplained those more common instances where strata are inclined, curved, or placed on their edges, and evidently not in the position in ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... because that man had maintained vigilant, yet unobtrusive, observation upon him during several of the preceding days, keeping near him in all sorts of ingenious guises and making inquiries concerning him—inquiries instituted for some unexplained cause by ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... thoughts about Christmas. She had been terribly frightened at first, when she was brought home from the church; but when her papa kissed her and promised her a sugar dog she was quite sure that, whatever the unexplained mystery might be, he did not think the lovely scene of the night before a wicked one. And when Mrs. Cushing came and covered the little girl up warmly in bed, she only said to her, "Dolly, you must never get out of bed again at night after you are put there; you ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... that, while the features—eyes, nose, mouth—remained the same, the life informing them had undergone some profound transformation. The signature of a new power had crept into the face and left its traces there—an expression dark, and in some unexplained way, terrible. ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... of construction only when it is on its way to completion, which happens about the age of seven—is influenced by the forms of the new surroundings, and at times copies them, more or less, and we may ask ourselves if the unexplained fact of negro children being born to a white woman—the widow of a negro—remarried to a white man is in no way connected with the reproduction of a mental image of the coloured children of ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... became initiated into the mad method by which Narcissus had such a library about him at twenty-one. From some unexplained reason, largely, I have little doubt, on account of the charm of his manners, he had the easy credit of those respectable booksellers to whom reference has been made above. No extravagance seemed to shake their confidence. I remember calling upon them with him one day some months following that ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... character. Such attempts are the result of a tendency to regard the printed page as a fetich—to think that if one knows his alphabet and can call the printed words one after another as his eye runs along the line, some unexplained good will result, or at least that he has performed a praiseworthy act, has "accumulated merit" somehow or somewhere, like a Thibetan with ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... another so closely in a great city that the reading public and the friends of Johnny Bellchambers have ceased to marvel at his sudden and unexplained disappearance nearly a year ago. This particular mystery has now been cleared up, but the solution is so strange and incredible to the mind of the average man that only a select few who were in close touch with Bellchambers will give it ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... the mysterious disappearance of Mr. John Horbury, and the presumed theft of the Countess of Ellersdeane's jewels, seem to indicate an extraordinary crime, and opinion varies considerably in the Scarnham district as to whether Mr. Hollis—the reason of whose visit to Scarnham is still unexplained—fell into the old mine by accident, or whether he was ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... talkativeness; moreover, he was a considerate man, and he respected Harboro. Therefore it may be doubted if he ever said anything about that unexplained drama which occurred on the main street of Eagle Pass on a Sunday morning, before the town was astir. But there was the bartender at the Maverick—and besides, it would scarcely have been possible for any man to do what Harboro had done without being seen ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... her attentively—even delightedly, for all her shortcomings, and knew in his heart that he could never give her in charge of the police. More and more the wonder of it all grew upon him, and now he suddenly found himself thinking of the unexplained incident of the ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... deathly, eerie silence, the nerve-racking quality of which is only known to those who have experienced it, and made all the more impressive by the fact that it occurred on a front which is not usually quiet, was followed by a sudden din and an unexplained mad charge of the hated English. It must have put the fear of God into the Germans of "Wigan Copse," for they made no effort to resist and tried to "run for it." In fact one poor devil—a youngster—who had been lying out in the grass on sentry (but must ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... mysteriousness of the language. 'They gather them.' Who? 'They cast them into the fire.' Who have the tragic task of flinging the withered branches into some mysterious fire? All is left vague with unexplained awfulness. The solemn fact that the withering of manhood by separation from Jesus Christ requires, and ends in, the consuming of the withered, is all that we have here. We have to speak of it pityingly, with reticence, with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... to tell Mr. Stevens the thing that he had omitted: the history of Teeny-bits' unexplained origin. With this information stimulating his mind to solve the mystery, the English master suggested to Teeny-bits that they lose no time in ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... a fair target for the foe, and they fell as grass before the scythe. In a few moments six captains and a large number of common soldiers were dead or dying in the ditch. The assaulting party, in dismay, were beginning to recoil before certain death, when, by some unexplained means, a bold party succeeded in wading through the ditch at another place, and, clambering through the hedge of trees and over the palisades, with great shoutings they assailed the defenders of the one narrow pass ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... phenomena of life. They can talk learnedly about it but they must stop short of the source of life. Everything about anatomy and physiology they know, but the life that flows through the human machine remains unexplained. They can trace the circulation of the blood from the heart through the arteries, from the arteries across to the veins, from the veins back to the heart, but the greatest mind the race has produced cannot say what makes the ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... soliciting subscriptions for this book. At length the desired advancement was obtained,—a nomination as a physician and surgeon to one of the factories on the coast of Coromandel. But banishment to the East Indies was not to be his destiny. For some unexplained reason the project came to nothing; and then—like Roderick Random—he presented himself at Surgeons' Hall for the more modest office of a hospital mate. This was on the 21st of December, 1758. The curt official record states that he was 'found not qualified.' What made matters ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... mean anything," he repeated. "Inhibition! Inhibition! It is the term reserved for deaths that are unexplained and inexplicable: it is the term with which science covers herself when she does not wish to ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... why, themselves; they didn't know wherefore; yet this unexpected echo of their own tongue, in the mouth of that strange and mysterious bird, thrilled through them instinctively with a strange, unearthly tremor. In some dim and unexplained way, they felt half unconsciously to themselves that this discovery was, perhaps, the first clue to the solution of the terrible secret ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... interrupted by loud cries of "To the bar, to the bar," and Lord Marchmont moved that his words should be taken down. Chatham himself seconded this motion: "My words," he thundered forth in an indignant tone, "My words remain unretracted, unexplained, and reaffirmed. I desire to know whether I am condemned or acquitted, and whether I may still presume to hold up my head as high as the noble lord who moved to have my words taken down." Chatham paused for a reply, and none being given, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... at himself. His horse plunged, freakish from his long rest in the stable. Suddenly he spurred on and rode furiously over the country roads, as if mad to reach a certain end. A little later, he cantered up the gravelled drive of the Four Corners, his horse wet and trembling, and he with a craving unexplained, a desire that had ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... eating sore. It was greater than the tragedy of her poor, witless son, the hatred of old Mrs. Brenner, and her ever-present fear of Mart. She had never quite given up her unreasoning hope that some day some one might come to the house in one of Mart's long, unexplained absences and sit down and talk with her over a cup of tea. She put away the feeble hope again as she turned back into the dim room and closed the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... to my resolution, on the third day of September, 1838, I left my chains, and succeeded in reaching New York without the slightest interruption of any kind. How I did so,—what means I adopted,—what direction I travelled, and by what mode of conveyance,—I must leave unexplained, for the reasons ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... and was keen for the sport. Thus it happened that they all but ran down the Emperor of Mexico himself, and instead of guerrillas, Rodrigo saw Cossacks and Dragoons. But the mystery of the rope, added to that of the unloaded pistols, rested unexplained. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... burnt, and the explosion by throwing him to the ground had so shaken and bruised him that he shivered from head to feet as with intense cold. Nevertheless, he recognised his brother without even feeling astonished to see him there, as indeed often happens after great disasters, when the unexplained becomes providential. That brother, of whom he had so long lost sight, was there, naturally enough, because it was necessary that he should be there. And Guillaume, amidst the wild quivers by which he was shaken, at once cried to him "Take me away! take me away! To ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... for the privilege of being "sealed up," the scheme promised at first to turn out a comfortably profitable one. Into the details of the "sealing" it is unnecessary for us to enter. Suffice it to say that the numbers of the "sealed," up to 1808, when for some unexplained reason the process appears to have been discontinued, exceeded six thousand simpletons; the numbers of her deluded followers in the metropolis and its vicinity alone, are supposed at one time to have ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... a legend to the effect that men and women sometimes get to be such friends, and have such relations, that a sudden unexplained absence of three ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... her; the letter she had seen in her hands was still unexplained: yet her entire conviction that Henrietta was not loved by him, joined to a certainty that affection alone could ever make him think of her, lessened upon this subject her suspicions ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the consideration is not stated. The clergy were, by reason of their frequent meagre days and seasons, great consumers of fish. The phosphorescent character of that diet may have contributed, if we accept certain modern theories of animal chemistry as connected in some as yet unexplained way with psychology, to the intellectual predominance of that class of the population in the Middle Ages. That occasional fasting, whether voluntary and systematic as in the cloisters, or involuntary and altogether the reverse of systematic in Grub street, helps to clear the wits, with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... magician—condemned, and finally burned alive, the 30th of May 1431. Ill-fated heroine! I seem to be thinking of writing her epitaph, but I am considering only that there is more to come out of her evidence. For although her heavenly visitants were simply sensorial illusions, there yet remains something unexplained. How came she to foresee the path she was destined to follow? The inquiry would launch us on a broad and wild sea of conjecture, for the navigation of which we have not yet the requisite charts on board, and it grows late—so good-night, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... wounded, the mob fell back. The Patriarch and other dignitaries of the Armenian Church now came upon the ground, and gave their sanction to the spot selected for the burial, and the grave was dug. Just then the Seraskier, for some unexplained reason, ordered the grave to be filled, and another to be dug outside of the cemetery, in the middle of the public highway. The Protestants declined taking part in the burial in such a spot, though entreated to do so by the Seraskier, but remained ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... the root manth, or not, we have, in the ancient inevitable idea, that the original patentees of fire would not willingly part with their treasure, the obvious origin of the myth of the Fire-stealer. And this theory does not leave the analogous savage myths of fire-stealing unexplained and out in the cold, as does the philological hypothesis. {198} In this last instance, as in others, the origin of a world-wide myth is found, not in a 'disease of language,' but in a form of thought still natural. If ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... that Gautama must have had some idea of the corrective influence and disciplinary character of this earthly existence; for there is a quiet assumption that in some unexplained and unintelligible way the soul is improved by this multitudinous process of reincarnation. And yet I fail to see any reason for expecting such a development. Philosophically and morally, the raison ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... place, if St. Paul were an abolitionist at heart, he should have avoided the appearance of so great an evil. He should not, for a moment, have permitted himself to stand before the world in the simple and unexplained attitude of one who had sent back a fugitive slave to his master. No honest abolitionist would permit himself to appear in such a light. He would scorn to occupy such a position. Hence, we repeat, if St. Paul were an abolitionist at heart, he should have let ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... May. Pitt's birthday was on the 28th. Would not all who foresaw ruin for England in the supremacy of "the Doctor" welcome a demonstration on behalf of his predecessor? For more than a year Pitt's friends had been puzzled and abashed by his unexplained retirement, witness the uncharitable surmise of the usually benevolent Dr. Burgh—"Can I see Addington climb upon the stooping neck of Mr. Pitt, and not believe that it is done in hostility or in a masked confederacy? If the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... She had an unexplained feeling of suffocation, and drew great breaths,—she could not have said why,—but she could not help it; and presently she became giddy, and had a great noise in her ears, and rolled her eyes about, and was on the point of going into an hysteric spasm. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... to turn to groups presenting similar variations, not through, but independently of, geographical distribution, and, as far as we know, independently of conditions other than some peculiar nature and tendency (as yet unexplained) common to members of such groups, which nature and tendency seem to induce them to vary in certain definite lines or directions which are different in different groups. Thus with regard to the group of insects, of which ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... and eyes, by his mouth. And the mother does not give reply to his question by word only, but by her actions; by her feeding and care of him, by her neglect, by her joy in him and her irritation because of him, by her coming to him and by her unexplained departures from him. All her actions are a language by which she tells her child who she is in response to the questions implicit in his actions. And her answer to him as to who she is gives him the beginning of an answer to his question as to who ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... with some alacrity, and Margaret, with an unexplained feeling of guilt at her heart, offered to help Miss ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... fatness, extreme thinness, baldness, sea-sickness, stuttering, and (as entailing distress for the landlady) 'shooting the moon.' The motive of contempt for the unfamiliar accounts for long hair (worn by a man). Remains one item unexplained. How can mirth possibly be evoked by the notion of bad cheese? Having racked my brains for the solution, I can but conjecture that it must be the mere ugliness of the thing. Why any one should be amused by mere ugliness I cannot conceive. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... show how movement, unexplained by dialogue, may be used to condense a middle action, a climax, and an opening. Now, if you will turn to the surprise ending of "The System"—which has been discussed before in its relation to dialogue—you will see how business ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... was contradictory. But Jean herself was somewhat contradictory, and the place fitted her. Here was where she spent those hours when her absence from the Bar Nothing was left unexplained to any one save Lite. Here was where she drew into her shell, when her Uncle Carl made her feel more than usually an interloper; or when her Aunt Ella's burden of complaints and worry and headaches grew just a ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... lecture-rostrum for a narrator sensible to the pulses of his audience. Justice compels at times. In truth, there are times when the foggy obscurities of the preacher are by comparison broad daylight beside the whirling loose tissues of a woman unexplained. Aminta was one born to prize rectitude, to walk on the traced line uprightly; and while the dark rose overflowed the soft brown of her cheeks, under musings upon her unlicenced heart's doings overnight, she not only pleaded ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... beautiful person when she met him by chance; and the second, the ungraciousness of her distinctly unpleasant manner upon the same occasion, over both of which he promised himself as he inwardly raged at her frequent, prolonged and unexplained absences, he would shortly ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... watched the group closely, and the sight seemed in some unexplained way to chill and irritate ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and fancy. One thing is therefore obvious to the savage mind—something escapes from the body, travels about, and returns. Such a conviction does not represent the conclusions of a genius speculating upon the meaning of unexplained facts. It is a conviction steadily built up by the pressure of unvarying experience, as steadily as is the conviction that fire burns or that water is wet. The very universality of the belief is proof that it ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... Prussian Minister of War had telegraphed to the Military Inspector of Railroads to take charge of us on our arrival a Cologne, and send us down to the headquarter of the Prussian army, but the Inspector, for some unexplained reason, instead of doing this, sent us on to Berlin. Here our Minister, Mr. George Bancroft, met us with a telegram from the German Chancellor, Count Bismarck, saying we were expected to come direct to the King's ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... religion can give any final satisfactory answer that is capable of logical demonstration, of absolute proof. There is ever, even after the best explanations, a residuum of the unexplained. We must then fall back in the eternal arms of faith, and be wise enough to say, "I will not be disconcerted by these problems of life, I will not permit them to plunge me into doubt, and to cloud my life with vagueness and uncertainty. Man arrogates much to himself when he demands ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... whatever for what he had done, nay, rather, a quiet conviction that, rage as he might, the owner of Threlfall Tower would have to submit. It was indeed the suggestion in the doctor's manner, of an unexplained compulsion behind—ethical or humanitarian—not to be explained, but simply to be taken for granted, which perhaps infuriated Melrose more ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... respectable sinecure mission; but he rapidly advanced from such moderate condemnation until he charged Franklin with being a party to the abstraction of his dispatches from a sealed parcel, which was rifled in some unexplained way on its passage home;[61] and finally he even reached the extremity of alleging financial dishonesty in the public business, and insinuated an opinion that the doctor's great rascality indicated an intention never again to revisit his native land. In all this malevolence he found an earnest ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... the administration. The Mahratta garrison was commanded by a son-in-law of the Patel, known in Musalman History as the Desmukh which is interpreted "Collector of Land Revenue," and by a member of the Imperial Household, on whom, from some unexplained reason, had been bestowed the title of the great Aulia Saint Shah Nizam-ud-din, and who had lately been placed in charge of the Home Revenues, as stated above (p. 152.) These officers immediately opened fire from the guns on the riverside of the fort, and the young Rohilla replied from ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... worst of it was that her merry eye was in partnership with a merry tongue. Indeed, for some unexplained reason, she was bubbling over with congested laughter, the reason for which mere embarrassment set one inquiring. At last, between little gushes of laughter which shook her plump shoulders in a way that aroused wistful memories of Hebe, she archly asked me, with mock solemnity, ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... with a startling abruptness, and the reader must read along some distance before he gathers what the beginning means. Take the monologue of Fra Lippo Lippi for example. The situation is necessarily left more or less unexplained. The poet says nothing 'in propria persona', and no reply is made to the speaker by the person or persons addressed. Sometimes a look, a gesture, or a remark, must be supposed on the part of the one ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... plausibility we could prove that the author of Hamlet was a weakling, by selecting all the obscure and stupid passages, and parading these with the unexplained fact that the play opens with the spirit of a dead man coming back to earth, and a little later in the same play Shakespeare has the man who interviewed the ghost tell of "that bourne from whence no traveler returns." Even Shakespeare was not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... confidence in saying that all the hopes of Mr. Motley's official residence in England have been amply fulfilled, and that the announcement of his unexpected and unexplained recall was received with extreme astonishment and unfeigned regret. The vacancy he leaves cannot possibly be filled by a minister more sensitive to the honor of his government, more attentive to the interests of his country, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... witness to the plot, it seemed to her that he would scarcely be allowed to escape to repeat it far and wide. Especially was this so, as the unexplained death of a Hottentot, suspected of treachery like his master, was not a matter that would have been thought worth notice in those rough and bloody times. She may have been right, or she may have been wrong, but in weighing her ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... becomes clearly manifest in the second century after Christ, though the preparation for it is undoubtedly of earlier date, is perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon in the religious history of antiquity. This is not the place to inquire into its causes, which still remain largely unexplained; there is even no reason to enter more closely into its outer manifestations, as the thing itself is doubted by nobody. It is sufficient to mention as instances authors like Suetonius, with his naive belief in miracles, and the rhetorician Aristides, with his ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... for children's sports, Casts all its clustering foliage to the winds, And lets the eye behold it, limitless, And full of winding mysteries of ways: So now with life that reaches out before, And borders on the unexplained Beyond. ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the districts of the White Nile south of latitude 14 degrees N. should be placed under my command; this, for some unexplained reason, was reduced to latitude 5 degrees N., thus leaving the whole navigable river free from Gondokoro to Khartoum, unless I should assume the responsibility of liberating slaves and seizing the slavers wherever I might find them. This ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... possessed—and that they did attract was an unceasing subject of wonder to its inhabitants. Whatever could the fine folk see in a heap of stones or a waste of water, to bring them there for hundreds of miles, was a mystery unexplained; but the villagers were no more unwilling than professional spiritualists to take a practical advantage of the Inexplicable. In the winter they reaped the harvest of the sea, or explored the bowels of the earth; in the summer they transformed themselves ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn |
