"Unforced" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little more than five months' stay in England, fell a victim, to the small pox. In the memoir of that young prince, who died at Rotherhithe, and was buried in the church-yard there, in December, 1784, there are some points of resemblance to the case under our notice. The natural and unforced politeness of the youth, his aptness at conforming, in all proper things, to the habits and customs of those to whose hospitality he was intrusted; his warm and single-hearted affection for such persons, ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray
... been with you in thought, and with him, your dear brother,—my dear friend! If he should have known me and conversed with me, I could lot have refrained from making the journey to see him. How easy his converse ever was, how natural, how sensible [176] and humorous by turns, but especially so unforced that for me it always had a charm by itself. The words seemed to drop from our lips almost without our will, and yet with nobody could I get through so much conversation in so little time. Neither of us seemed to want ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... that word Jesus, and say, that the adding these words, my Master, to it, and the often repetition of them, seemed to perfume his mind, and leave an oriental fragrancy in his very breath. And for his unforced choice to serve at God's altar, he seems in another place of his poems, "The Pearl," (Matt. xiii. 45, 46,) to rejoice and say—"He knew the ways of learning; knew what nature does willingly, and what, when it is forced by fire; knew the ways of honour, and when glory inclines the ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... Thence reconveys, there to be lost again. O happiness of sweet retired content! To be at once secure and innocent. Windsor the next (where Mars with Venus dwells, Beauty with strength) above the valley swells 40 Into my eye, and doth itself present With such an easy and unforced ascent, That no stupendous precipice denies Access, no horror turns away our eyes: But such a rise as doth at once invite A pleasure and a rev'rence from the sight: Thy mighty master's emblem, in whose ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... otherwise should it be. Even when he deservedly failed to become a shining light in the literary firmament to which he aspired—an unheard-of piece of audacity on the part of his authoress—I did not rebel. Miss SHEILA KAYE SMITH has an essential clarity of visualisation, a deep and still reserve of unforced pathos and an exquisite sense of the haunting word, that combine with a most competent alertness of movement to make her latest artistic success, The Challenge to Sirius (NISBET), a book for which I can hardly find ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... from the crystalline sphere of a straightforward mind, did not fail to perceive that her father, as she called him, and Donald Farfrae became more desperately enamoured of her friend every day. On Farfrae's side it was the unforced passion of youth. On Henchard's the artificially stimulated coveting of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Winifred looked after the transfers from the kitchen at critical moments, while Mousie and Winnie were our waitresses. A royal blaze crackled in the open fireplace, and seemed to share in the sparkle of our rustic wit and unforced mirth, which kept plump Mrs. Jones in a perpetual quiver, like a ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... had been at a loss to discover in Stella Croyle the woman whom Hardiman had led him to expect. Her spirits were high, but unforced. She chattered away with more gaiety than wit, like the rest of Hardiman's guests, but the gaiety was apt to the occasion. She had the gift of a clear and musical laugh, and her small delicate face would wrinkle and pout ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... whole undoubtedly successful, though, for whatever reason, its merits do not appear to have been recognized by the public. It is unequal, and it is too prolix: but when it is good, which is not seldom, it is very good, unforced, idiomatic, and felicitous. In one of its features, the habit of supplying connecting links to Horace's not unfrequently disconnected thoughts, perhaps I should have done wisely to follow it more than I have done: but the matter is one where a line must be drawn, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... converse over the stories of their youth, the young dancing to the pipe and tabor, or singing in little groupes, arranged on the green seats under their orchard trees, appear, without effort, to sink into that enviable state of unforced enjoyment, which falls upon their minds as easily and calmly as the sleep of Heaven upon ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... sin itself, and not the pain That warns us of its chafing chain; That worship's deeper meaning lies In mercy, and not sacrifice, Not proud humilities of sense And posturing of penitence, But love's unforced obedience; That Book and Church and Day are given For man, not God,—for earth, not heaven,— The blessed means to holiest ends, Not masters, but benignant friends; That the dear Christ dwells not afar, The king of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... is at least no prima facie objection to this explanation of the words, will, I think, be readily enough admitted. It is perfectly simple and unforced, and it conveys a lively and touching representation of the feelings which would naturally spring up in the minds of a grateful and warm-hearted people, to their great benefactor and friend, who, amidst disease, and pain, and weakness, had made the greatest and most unwearying ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... had no real gift for the manufacture of these ingenious pieces of mechanism. He did not even many times succeed in disposing the events and marshalling the characters in his narratives so as to work, by seemingly unforced and natural means, to a final situation and climax. Too often, in order to hold his story together and make it move forward at all, he was compelled to make his personages pursue a line of conduct preposterous and improbable, and even antagonistic to their nature. Take this very book. ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... O ever blessed! give me still Presence of mind to put in act my will, Whate'er the occasion be; And so to live, unforced by any fear, Beneath those laws of peace, that never are Affected with pollutions popular Of unjust injury, As to bear safe the burden of hard fates, Of foes ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... bearing the orator's sceptre were a voice of singular fulness, depth, and variety of tone; a falcon's eye with strange imperious flash; features mobile, expressive, and with lively play; a great actor's command of gesture, bold, sweeping, natural, unforced, without exaggeration or a trace of melodrama. His pose was easy, alert, erect. To these endowments of external mien was joined the gift and the glory of words. They were not sought, they came. Whether the task were reasoning or exposition or expostulation, the copious springs never failed. Nature ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... truly, of the best Have fallen beneath Love's sword of flame? Yet may I not from passion cease Nor in forgetting seek release; For love's my comfort, pride and law, Public and private, aye the same. Blest eyes that have of thee their fill And look upon thee at their will! Ay, of my own unforced intent, The slave of passion ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... Hose, which our fathers call'd the Clown; Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call, And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall: Nature was all his Art, thy veine was free As his, but without his scurility; From whom mirth came unforced, no jest perplext, But without labour cleane, chast, and unvext. Thou wert not like some, our small Poets who Could not be Poets, were not we Poets too; Whose wit is pilfring, and whose veine and wealth In Poetry lyes meerely in their stealth; Nor didst thou feele their drought, ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... all her sympathies and affinities; yet she was not incapable of a high order of tragic emotion, as her performance of the mad scene of "Lucia di Lammermoor" gave ample proof, but this form of artistic expression was not spontaneous and unforced. It was only well accomplished under high pressure. Escudin said of her, "It is not only the nature of her voice which limits her—it is also the expression of her acting, we had almost said the ensemble of her physical ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... Sovereigns! [Justinian and Theodora] gain somewhat when all other realms revere you. It is a common thing for the ruler to be praised in his own land, but to receive the unforced praise of foreign lands, that is indeed desirable. You are loved, most pious Emperor, in your own dominions; but how much grander a thing to be yet more loved in the regions of Italy, from whence the glory of the Roman name was diffused over the whole world! It ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... willingly, and exhorted him in the name of Jesus Christ, to complete his self accusation fully, to the end that he might experience the goodness and mercy which were used in that tribunal towards those who showed true repentance by a sincere and UNFORCED confession. The secretary read aloud the confession and exhortation, Dellon signed it, Don Fernando rang a silver bell, the alcayde walked in, and, in a few moments, the disappointed victim was ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... what forced worship and unforced worship are like. Forced worship is corporeal, inanimate, obscure and sad—corporeal because it is of the body and not of the mind; inanimate because it has no life in it; obscure for lack of understanding in it; and sad because ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... all things fell and vile, Hate's yell, and envy's hiss, and folly's bray, Remember me; and with an unforced smile See ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hours. Sacobie Bear was a great gossip for one of his race. In fact, he had a Micmac nickname which, translated, meant "the man who deafens his friends with much talk." Archer, however, was pleased with his ready chatter and unforced humour. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... received his visitor with a charming cordiality, insisted on his taking tea with him, and then let loose a flood of small-talk, as though he were delighted with his visitor. His welcome was so perfect, his manners so gracefully unforced, that Barrant had an uneasy suspicion that he was being beaten at his own game, and was slightly out of countenance in consequence. Up to that moment he could not, for the life of him, decide whether Austin Turold's polished self-assurance ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... mantle of the orator which he has confidently assumed. Lastly, no man ever used voice or gesture better for the purpose of expressing certainty; no man can say "I tell Mr. Jones he is totally wrong" with more air of unforced ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... and sing them therewith to suitable melodies and with the play of instrumental accompaniment. The music must follow the sense of the words; if they are simple and natural then also must the music be easy, unforced and without pretension. Music is the expression of soul-feeling. If now the soul of the musician be virtuous, so also will his music become noble and full of virtuous expression, and will set the souls of men in union with those of ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... companies, associations, unions, societies, clubs, subserving enterprise, philanthropy, culture, art, amusement; as well as the multitudinous institutions annually receiving millions by endowments and subscriptions: all of them arising from the unforced cooperations of citizens. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... M. P. (interpreted with great relish and vigour by Mr. HUBERT HARBEN), remarked, "I call a spade a spade," she replied, "And I suppose you would call a dinner-napkin a serviette"—one of the pleasantest remarks in a play where the good things said were many and unforced. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... and unforced can carry the name—is done at a window that overlooks this park. Were it not for several high buildings in my sight I might fancy that I lived in one of the older squares of London. There is a look of Thackeray about the place as though the Osbornes ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... well as by its gigantic, incommunicable facility in exercising them. Therefore, literally, it is no man's business whether he has genius or not: work he must, whatever he is, but quietly and steadily; and the natural and unforced results of such work will be always the things that God meant him to do, and will be his best. No agonies nor heart-rendings will enable him to do any better. If he be a great man, they will be ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... various satire, general utility, united with great vivacity of composition, Gil Blas is unrivalled: but, as a merely agreeable book, the Memoirs of Grammont perhaps deserve that character more than any which was ever written: it is pleasantry throughout, pleasantry of the best sort, unforced, graceful, and engaging. Some French critic has justly observed, that, if any book were to be selected as affording the truest specimen of perfect French gaiety, the Memoirs of Grammont would be selected in preference to all others. This has a Frenchman said ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... pleasure in them is as strong and as fresh as ever. I do not know of any quality they lack. Grace, dignity, poetry, spirit, imagination, these enrich them and make them charming and beautiful; and wherever humor appears it is high and fine—easy, unforced, kept under, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 865; predisposed, propense^. docile; persuadable, persuasible; suasible^, easily persuaded, facile, easy-going; tractable &c (pliant) 324; genial, gracious, cordial, cheering, hearty; content &c (assenting) 488. voluntary, gratuitous, spontaneous; unasked &c (ask) &c 765; unforced &c (free) 748. Adv. willingly &c adj.; fain, freely, as lief, heart and soul; with pleasure, with all one's heart, with open arms; with good will, with right will; de bonne volonte [Fr.], ex animo [Lat.]; con amore [It], heart in hand, nothing loth, without ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... manner, took the gaunt female by surprise, and threw her quite off her guard. She laughed,—a natural, unforced laugh in which there was not a trace of bitterness. He was really a delightful young man, she thought, in spite ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... This unforced choice, this fond election of evil, would appear perfectly unaccountable, if we did not consider the composition of the National Assembly: I do not mean its formal constitution, which, as it now stands, is exceptionable ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Dale noticed the freshness and unforced music of Norah's singing, and it was not long before she received an invitation to sing among the regularly trained ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... lingering touch, and scanned the mysterious characters with fascinated eyes. These grouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speaking eyes —how beautiful to me! For was not this my darling, and was not all this mute wonder and interest and homage a most eloquent tribute and unforced compliment to it? I knew, then, how a mother feels when women, whether strangers or friends, take her new baby, and close themselves about it with one eager impulse, and bend their heads over it in a tranced adoration that makes all the rest of the universe vanish out of their consciousness and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Nor has he ever refused any one, fancying himself aggrieved, the privilege of setting himself right in a proper manner in the same columns in which the alleged injury was inflicted. He has the genuine and unforced respect and esteem of those employed by him, for his treatment of them has always been kind and considerate, and although no newspaper conductor can possibly avoid creating prejudice and temporary ill-feeling. Mr. Benedict has probably no real enemy, whilst among those who best ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... case, she has written a story which deserves a considerable success. The Jam Queen is to a large extent what would be called in drama a one-part affair. There are plenty of other characters, many of them drawn with much unforced skill, but the personality of the protagonist, the Jam Queen herself, overshadows the rest. Mrs. Quilter is an abiding joy. There have been plutocratic elderly women, uneducated but agreeable, in a hundred novels ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... there, and knew nothing of real social intimacies. As she told her aunt in her wickedness, she would almost have preferred a shoemaker,—if she could have become acquainted with a shoemaker in a manner that should be unforced and genuine. There was a savageness of antipathy in her to the mode of life which her circumstances had produced for her. It was that very savageness which made her ride so hard, and which forbade her to smile and be pleasant ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... for Palmyra, for I know She will not need my prayers; but for myself: With a feigned tale I have abused your ears, And, therefore, merit death: but since, unforced, I first accuse myself, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... the moving sea 50 He lay in slumber quietly; Unforced by wind or wave To quit the Ship for which he died, (All claims of duty satisfied;) And there they found him at her side; 55 And ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... the topic with unforced enthusiasm. He had been surprised and deeply touched over the discovery that his father did not require to be argued out of the project either to send him back to Harvard or to start him in at the bottom in Martin Whitney's bank. "If he'd just been through it all himself, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... tenderness will find itself abused, begin to heave the gorge, disrelish and abhor the Moor; very nature will instruct her in it, and compel her to some second choice. Now sir, this granted;—as it is a most pregnant and unforced position,—who stands so eminently in the degree of this fortune as Cassio does? a knave very voluble; no further conscionable than in putting on the mere form of civil and humane seeming, for the better compass of ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... dream had done its office when it had provided me with characters and materials for a more probable and less abstruse and difficult plot. All further dependence upon it should then have been relinquished, and the story allowed to work out its own natural and unforced conclusion. But it is easy to be wise after the event; and the event, at this time, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... sketches concerned with the War. They are a little unequal, some being better than others, and others (naturally) being worse than some. They all reveal their author, Miss EVELYN ORCHARD, as possessed of a pleasantly unforced style, and perhaps rather more ease than imagination. One of them, my own favourite, the story of a parson who enlisted, is conspicuous as containing so admirable a recruiting speech that I can only hope it is transcribed from life. Having said so much, perhaps ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... et Nicolette." In his beautiful essay upon that story, Mr. Pater has deliberately omitted this episode, which is indeed like a spot of blood-stained mud upon some perfect tissue of silver flowers on silver ground. It is a piece of cruellest realism, because quite quiet and unforced, in the midst of a kind of fairy-land idyl of almost childish love, the love of the beautiful son of the lord of Beaucaire for a beautiful Saracen slave girl. For, although Aucassin and Nicolette are often separated, and always disconsolate—she ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... hands, and she could wear short sleeves with impunity. A rational, unforced, and coherent vivacity had now revealed itself as a characteristic of her mode and conversation. Her ankles had long before that grown too sightly to be exhibited. Such is so-called civilization! Her hair seemed to darken before one's eyes. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... part in fostering the early evidences of vocation. The youth, under their influence, voluntarily moves nearer to the goal of his aspirations, unforced by the caprice of the thoughtless or over-enthusiastic parents. Numerous little incidents are associated with the life of Blessed Jean Baptist Vianney, which will help to develop the germ of ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... every scent, every attitude that we are encouraged to assume, gives us a push in the same direction if we let it do its rightful work. For other temperaments the collective, deliberate, and really ceremonial silence of the Quakers—the hush of the waiting mind, the unforced attitude of expectation, the abstraction from visual image—works to the same end. In either case, the aim is the production of a special group-consciousness; the reinforcing of languid or undeveloped individual ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... desperate, attempt to recover power. The attempt failed. From that time he relinquished all ambitious hopes, and retired laughing to his books and his bottle. No statesman ever enjoyed success with so exquisite a relish, or submitted to defeat with so genuine and unforced a cheerfulness. Ill as he had been used, he did not seem, says Horace Walpole, to have any resentment, or indeed any feeling ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... still possible for the soul in some dim journey hence, seemed wholly untenable, and, with it, almost all that remained of the religion of his childhood. Future extinction seemed just then [124] to be what the unforced witness of his own nature pointed to. On the other hand, there came a novel curiosity as to what the various schools of ancient philosophy had had to say concerning that strange, fluttering creature; and that curiosity impelled him to certain severe studies, in which his earlier religious conscience ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... appear complex and difficult. So our consideration of the processes of outcropping and acceptation has inevitably invested them with a false appearance of difficulty. Autosuggestion is above all things easy. Its greatest enemy is effort. The more simple and unforced the manner of its performance the more potently and profoundly it works. This is shown by the fact that its most remarkable results have been secured by children ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... distinguishes the modern from the ancient. It is not, it never will be, and it never can have been natural for noble and civilized creatures to accept with spontaneous complacency, to discharge with unforced equanimity, such offices or such duties as weigh so lightly on the spirit of the Sophoclean Orestes that the slaughter of a mother seems to be a less serious undertaking for his unreluctant hand than the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... adopted is highly dramatic, the dialogue being natural and flowing; trenchant and sprightly, but not too witty for a truthful reflex of actual conversation. The humour is genial and unforced; there is no smell of the lamp about it, no premeditated effort at dragging in jests, as in Congreve. As typical examples of Farquhar's vis comica I Would cite the description of Squire Sullen's home-coming, and his 'pot of ale' speech, Aimwell's speech respecting conduct at church, ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... from the stage. It is to be noted also that while the play thus divides itself into two parts, these are skilfully woven together by a happy stroke of art. The last scene of the third Act not only finishes the action of the first three, but by an apt and unforced transition begins that of the other two; the two parts of the drama being smoothly drawn into the unity of a continuous whole by the introduction of the old Shepherd and his son at the close of the one and the opening of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson |
