"Unmerited" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Now, if one were to take Shadwell for the subject of a paper, one might very well show how unjustly his name has fallen into contempt. It has often occurred to me to do this. "But Shadwell never deviates into sense." The sneer, in my opinion, is entirely unmerited. For my own part, I put Shadwell very high among the dramatists of his time, and I think I could show that his absolute worth is by no means inconsiderable. Shadwell has distinct vigour of dramatic ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... have done my work, and nothing further that this world may do, whether of good or evil, shall be able to affect me. I ask this—more, I entreat it of you, I implore you, in the sacred name of an injured father, by all his unmerited wrongs and sufferings, to unite with me in this holy purpose, and help me to accomplish it. Do not be deceived by appearances. Believe me, I entreat you, ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... I must say an unmerited, trust in me, Miss Baring—Diana: but I mean—I swear I mean to do the best I can for you and myself. I have thought better of the life I have been leading; I shall turn over a new leaf, and be another man if you ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Peytel and his family, there have been two deaths already; was a third death absolutely necessary? and, taking the fallibility of judges and lawyers into his heart, and remembering the thousand instances of unmerited punishment that have been suffered, upon similar and stronger evidence before, can any man declare, positively and upon his oath, that Peytel was guilty, and that this was not THE THIRD MURDER ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of close application and study. He had a fancy for drawing up railway time-tables, and would conduct an imaginary train from Chicago to New York with perfect precision. He wrote childish verses, which sometimes attained the unmerited honors of print. But this bright, gentle and studious child sickened and died in February, 1862. His father was profoundly moved by his death, though he gave no outward sign of his trouble, but kept about his work, the same as ever. His ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... measures which were forced upon the ministry in 1816 is well-known. The people complained with every just reason of the pressure of taxes, which were levied, as they said, upon the industrious, to be squandered in extravagant salaries, sinecures, and unmerited pensions. They complained of the large standing army, which the Regent insisted to be necessary for the maintenance of "our position and high character among the European powers." The prince's aversion to the popular cry for retrenchment and reform is shown by one of George's caricatures entitled, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... you again about thinking too well of him, but he refrains; he prefers acknowledging that the expression of a fellow creature's regard—even if more than he deserves—does him good: it gives him a sense of content. Whatever portion of the tribute is unmerited on his part, would, he is aware, if exposed to the test of daily acquaintance, disperse like a broken bubble, but he has confidence that a portion, however minute, of solid friendship would remain behind, and that portion he reckons ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... overflowing heart of a mother could but speak its throbs, if admiration of gifts so astonishing and virtues so divine could be worthy your acceptance, or could reward you for all the good you have done us, I would endeavour to discharge the unexampled and unmerited obligation. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... are unmerited, Our follies are inherited, Directly from our gran-pas they all came; Our defects have been transmitted, And we should be acquitted Of all responsibility ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... so utterly broken in spirit was he that when Cortes came after the execution had taken place, and with his own hands unclasped the irons, Montezuma actually thanked him as if for some great and unmerited favour. Not long after the Spanish general expressed his willingness that the emperor should if he wished return to his own palace, but Montezuma declined the offer, doubtless fearing to trust himself again to the haughty and ferocious chieftains, who could not but despise the cowardly ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... before it, is a prize which will bring a man more peace at the last than all the good things of this life put together and joined with an immortality as lasting as Virgil's, provided the infamy and failure of the one be unmerited, as also the success and immortality of the other. Here is the test of faith—will you do your duty with all your might at any cost of goods or reputation either in this world or beyond the grave? If you will- -well, the chances are 100 to 1 that you will become ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... distinguished poet, whom some of his waggish friends have taken up the absurd fancy of exhibiting in print as a sort of boozing buffoon; and who is now, instead of revelling in the license of tavern-suppers and party politics, bearing up, as he may, against severe and unmerited misfortunes, in as dreary a solitude as ever nursed the melancholy of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... care, not their divagations nor their psychologizings. The modern writer must linger on every step in the story until the motive and the meaning are laid bare. In the present-day version Sigurd's mental sufferings are described at length, and our hearts are wrung at his unmerited woes. The saga knows no such woes, and to all appearance Sigurd's life is not unhappy to its very end. Indeed, it appears in more than one place in Morris's poem that Sigurd has become godlike ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... Rose's rather poignant charm, as she resisted any other appeal to her emotions. With the charm left out, Rose was simply a well meaning, somewhat insufficiently civilized young person, the beneficiary, through her marriage with Rodney, of a piece of unmerited good fortune. She didn't in the least mean to be unkind to her, however, and didn't dream that she was giving Rose an inkling how she thought ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... feel as if it were a cruel and unmerited suspicion, but she did not over come him. "Madam," he said, "it would be against my orders, as father of a family, to give my child away without doing my poor best ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with unmerited success. The son of Triarius, who had lately been uttering such noble sentiments about Gothic kinship, and the folly of Gothic warriors playing into the hands of their hereditary enemies, the crafty courtiers of Constantinople, soon came to terms with the Emperor, and on ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... swallowed up in it the half of his fortune, and now wished to sell it. It was this unfortunate situation, added to an attack skilfully managed, that had induced the foolish Charlotte to return to him. He had only to assume before her the air of a great man crushed by unmerited misfortune, for her to reply that she would serve ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the household, had very serious consequences. The effect it produced on Jacqueline was decisive and deplorable. The poor child, after going through all the states of mind endured by those who suffer under unmerited disgrace—revolt, indignation, sulkiness, silent obstinacy— felt unable to bear it longer. She resolved to humble herself, hoping that by so doing the wall of ice that had arisen between her stepmother and herself might be cast down. By this time she cared less to know of what fault she was ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... happy subjects of this free government, some reflections upon the wretched condition of his countrymen. They will not, I trust, think worse of my brethren, for being discontented with so hard a lot as that of slavery; nor disown me for their fellow-creature, merely because I deeply feel the unmerited sufferings which my ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... refuse to fulfill this duty, Erik would have the right some day, perhaps, to be astonished at you. Recall to mind also that he is a boy of too remarkable abilities to be condemned to an obscure and illiterate life. Such a sentence would have been unmerited two years ago, and now, after his brilliant career at Stockholm, it would ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... as I was going to leave her next day, she did not wish me to remember her only as a woman in rusty black. I replied that I would always remember her not for the colour and fashion of her garments, but for her great, unmerited misfortunes, her virtuous heart, and for the kindness she had shown to me. My words evidently pleased her, and while we sat together conversing pleasantly, before us were Ramona and Santos, one standing, the other seated, both feasting their eyes on their mistress ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... that day to this. I have sunk in the world, and, instead of riding my horse and drinking my wine, as a real gentleman should, have hardly enough now to buy a pint of ale; ay, and am very glad when anybody will treat me to one. Why, why was I born to undergo such unmerited misfortunes? ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... communicated itself by a sort of electric thrill to Theos, whose heart began to beat heavily with a sense of vague alarm. "What is this Khosrul?" he thought half resentfully—"and how dares he predict for the adored, the admired Sah-luma so dark and unmerited an end? ... "Hark! ... what was that low, far-off rumbling as of underground wheels rolling at full speed? ... He listened,—then glanced at those persons who stood nearest to him, . . no one seemed ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... but ever after he was honoured by the epithet of Kerbelai; and I, to please my mother, who spoilt me, was called Hajji or the pilgrim, a name which has stuck to me through life, and procured for me a great deal of unmerited respect; because, in fact, that honoured title is seldom conferred on any but those who have made the great pilgrimage to the tomb of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... other. It is just saying to one and all of us, There is forgiveness through the blood of My Son: Take it, and whoever believes the reality of the offer takes it.... We are apt to stagger at the greatness of the unmerited offer and cannot attach faith to it till we have made up some title of our own. This leads to two mischievous consequences: It keeps alive the presumption of one class who will still be thinking that it is something in themselves and of themselves ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... destiny of Europe. I see the inward workings of fear struggling with pride in an ardent, enterprising, and tumultuous mind. I see all the captious jealousy of conscious usurpation, dreaded, detested, and obeyed, the giddiness and intoxication of splendid but unmerited success, the arrogance, the presumption, the selfwill of unlimited and idolized power, and more dreadful than all in the plenitude of authority, the restless and incessant activity ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... his shoulders, while Eve, at once assuming an injured air for such an unmerited attack, said, "Really, Joan, I don't know what you mean. Old Poll Potter has just been telling us that Adam came flying and fuming up her way, wanting to know if she'd seen us, and then, when she said where we'd gone to, he used the most dreadful language to her—I'm ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... for some time was not without a wholesome effect; and in the end they were so far tamed into civility by our blameless and peaceful demeanour that I could discern more than one of them beginning to be touched with the humanity of respect for our unmerited punishment. But their officer, Lieutenant Swaby, an Englisher by birth, and a sinner by education, was of an incorrigible depravity of heart. He happened to cast his eye on Martha Swinton, the minister's eldest daughter, then but in her sixteenth year, and notwithstanding the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... a man of about forty-five or fifty; tall, handsome, black-mustached and with the haughty arrogance of pride most often seen upon the faces of those who have been raised by unmerited favor to positions of power ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... recent critical emergency. She had come, she said, to bid her dear madame farewell, for she was resolved to go. Her own room had been invaded, that insult and reproach might be heaped upon her; how utterly unmerited Mrs. Marston knew. She had been called by every foul name which applied to the spy and the maligner; she could not bear it. Some one had evidently been endeavoring to procure her removal, and had but too effectually succeeded. Mademoiselle was determined to ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... as I told you before Christmas, to take away any pension. I know that the public seem to call for a reduction of such of them as shall appear unmerited. As a censorial act, and punishment of an abuse, it might answer some purpose. But this can make no part of my plan. I mean to proceed by bill; and I cannot stop for such an inquiry. I know some gentlemen may blame me. It is with great ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... it that the new west ever ruthlessly strips reality naked of creed and prejudice and caste, ever breaks down the barrier relics of a mouldering past, ever forces recognition of men as individuals with individual rights, apart from sect and class and unmerited prerogatives? The Catholic priest was wounded. The Protestant home was near. Manhood in Protestant garb recognized manhood in Roman cassock. Necessity commanded. Prejudice obeyed as it ever obeys in that vast land of untrameled freedom. So Father Holland ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Finland. Before any attempt in that direction, the Swedes were certain to try to recover Narva or Riga. If in later years they turned their eyes to St. Petersburg, it was only because that town had acquired undue and unmerited political importance. It was easy of attack and difficult to defend. There was no possibility of concentrating any large number of troops there, for the whole country, forty leagues round, was a barren desert. In 1788 Catharine II complained that her capital was too near the Swedish frontier, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... me in the end. Until then—and then most of all—I am at her feet humbly: an unworthy, but a very earnest, suppliant for her good-will. Should she have the cruelty to refuse my supplication, it will remain with me to die in an unmerited despair!" ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... with which he uttered the threat alarmed Mistress Croale. He might rouse unmerited suspicion, and cause her much trouble by vexatious complaint, even to the peril of her license. She must take heed, and not irritate her enemy. Instantly, therefore, she changed her ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... contest was sharp and obstinate. Several amendments were proposed in committee; but all were rejected. The motion that the bill should pass was supported by Mulgrave in a lively and poignant speech, which has been preserved, and which proves that his reputation for eloquence was not unmerited. The Lords who took the other side did not, it should seem, venture to deny that there was an evil which required a remedy; but they maintained that the proposed remedy would only aggravate the evil. The patriotic representatives of the people had devised ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the slightest degree, but a look of profound surprise, a gaze at the offered coin (which he nevertheless pockets) as if he either did not see it, or did not know it, or could not believe his eyesight;—all this, however, with the most quiet forbearance, a Christian-like non-recognition of an unmerited wrong and insult; and finally, all in a moment's space indeed, he quits you and goes about his other business. If you have given him too much, you are made sensible of your folly by the extra amount of his gratitude, and the bows with which he salutes you from the doorstep. Generally, you cannot ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he viewed his situation, things were in a pretty fair muddle—a muddle which annoyed him because it was so unmerited. He was pledged to Terry, while she held herself unpledged. He was committed to help Maisie—a distinctly unwise little lady for any bachelor to help. As a third party to his problem, Lady Dawn intruded herself—though why she should, he wasn't certain. He would have ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... before he dared to stretch out a hand to gather for himself the happiness ready to bloom for him, he would be dead! She thought she saw that the man, lonely, sensitive, to a fault, was passing his days in brooding melancholy, in unmerited self-reproach. He had had more than enough of sadness in his life. For an idea, a stupid convention of other folks' manufacture, and not worth respecting, he should have no more. He should not be allowed to take his own path, to push ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... tyrannical or fanatical administration, but in preventing such abuses he has no voice. He may not enter our older Universities, at least as the member of a college; that is, he can only take a degree at Oxford or Cambridge under the implied and wholly unmerited stigma applying to the non-collegiate student. And these iniquities apply not only to the great anthropoids whose strength and grossness we might legitimately fear, but to the most delicately organized types—to the Barbary Ape, the Lemur, and the Ring-tailed Baboon. ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... and led on the work of our Protestant Reformation, and placed the historian of Whalley where his sacred functions should have led him to respect the rights and consciences even of those from whom he might differ, and not hold them up to unmerited obloquy and reprehension. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... style thee "Tiburs" who have not at heart To hurt Catullus, whereas all that have Wage any wager thou be Sabine classed) But whether Sabine or of Tiburs truer 5 To thy suburban Cottage fared I fain And fro' my bronchials drave that cursed cough Which not unmerited on me my maw, A-seeking sumptuous banquetings, bestowed. For I requesting to be Sestius' guest 10 Read against claimant Antius a speech, Full-filled with poisonous pestilential trash. Hence a grave ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... sufficiently thank you for the high and unmerited honor you have done me to-night. I feel keenly that on such an occasion, with such company, my place is below the salt, but as you kindly invited me it was not in human nature for me to refuse. Although in knowledge and comprehension ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... language that I cannot pass it thus slightly over. It is one which, rightly regarded, may assist to put us in a just point of view for estimating the character of the local and provincial in speech, and rescuing it from that unmerited contempt and neglect with which it is often regarded. I must here go somewhat further back than I could wish; but only so, only by looking at the matter in connexion with other phenomena of speech, can I hope to explain to you the worth and significance ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... "Alexander himself, or Charles XII., when at the head of their first victorious armies, could feel a greater transport in their bosoms." After reading this, some may perhaps think that Pope's epigram on Cibber[14] was not unmerited; but when they consider that thieves feel a similar exultation, they may rather be inclined to pity poor human nature. In exemplification of what we have advanced, we request attention to the following extract from Vaux. Some of his acquaintances in Newgate had informed him that Mr. Bilger, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... tam-o'-shanter might have easily overcome this dislike that had been bred not alone in the minds of the girls of the two upper classes, but among the sophomores and her own classmates as well. The sophomores thought her ridiculous; the freshmen themselves felt that she was bringing upon the whole class unmerited criticism. ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... been entrusted to him by the Marechal d'Ancre, but from a higher and a holier motive; as the young Comte de la Pena was no sooner set at liberty, with an injunction immediately to leave France, than he received him with all the sympathy due to his unmerited misfortunes, and put him in possession of this remnant of his inheritance. Thenceforward the son of Concini remained in Italy until the year 1631, when he fell a ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... thank you for the Skibo grouse and also for your kind letter. It is a solemn and absorbing thing to hear so many kind and unmerited words as I have heard and read this last week. It seems to me another man they are talking about, while I am expected to do the work. I wish a little of the kindness could be saved till I leave ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... former self is coming back upon me, and, while I think of you as of my true and only friend, I shall be unable to persist. I will not part with thee, my friend. I cannot do it. Has not my life been solemnly devoted to compensate thee for thy unmerited love? For the crosses and vexations thou ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... supreme court of literary appeal, has not only reversed the judgment, but, according to its general practice, reversed it with costs, and condemned the unfortunate works to pay, not only for their own inferiority, but also for the injustice of those who had given them an unmerited preference. And it must be owned that, without making large allowances for the circumstances under which they were produced, we cannot pronounce a very favourable judgment. They must be considered as exotics, transplanted to a foreign climate, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... individuals, confirming each other when in concert, thwarting each other when opposed. The author has painted a number of striking situations arising out of their conflict. He enquires why we are more pained by unmerited reproach, than lifted up by unmerited approbation; and assigns as the reason that the painful state is more pungent than the corresponding pleasurable state. He shows how those men whose productions are of uncertain merit, as poets, are more the ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... language knows what words are made of. Nor, had his personal reflections concerned myself alone, should I have felt called upon to reply to them thus publicly, for it has always seemed to me that unless we protest against unmerited praise, we have no right to protest against unmerited abuse. I believe I can appeal to all here present, that during the many years I have had the honor to lecture in this Institution, I have not once allowed myself to indulge in any personal remarks, or attacked those ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... action in Egypt has formed the subject of frequent comment in this country; neither, assuredly, in spite of occasional blame, have I any reason to complain of the measure of praise—often, I fear, somewhat unmerited praise—which has been accorded to me. But I may perhaps be allowed to say what, in my own opinion, are the main objects achieved during my twenty-four-years' tenure of office. Those achievements are four in number, and let ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... you,—who of all my friends alone remained true in exile, and unshaken by misfortune,—to you I will confide a secret that I would intrust to no other. I repent me already of having espoused this cause. I did so while yet the disgrace of an unmerited attainder tingled in my veins; while I was in the full tide of those violent and warm passions which have so often misled me. Myself attainted; the best beloved of my associates in danger; my party deserted, and seemingly lost but for some bold measure such as then offered,—these were ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... kept at the boiling-point by the question of the Reform Bill—groaned over by some as the first step to democracy and destruction; eagerly hailed by others as a new dawn of freedom, peace, and prosperity. The delay in passing the Bill had rendered the King unpopular, and brought unmerited blame on Queen Adelaide, for having gone beyond her prerogative in lending herself to overthrow the King's Whig principles. The ferment had converted the old enthusiastic homage to the Iron Duke as a soldier into fierce detestation of him as a statesman. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... too often deviates from his own principles—that in every thing he comes short of his duty. Therefore doth he confess himself "an unprofitable servant"—that he lays God under no obligation—yea, that he lives on mercy—that all the good things which he receives, are unmerited, the gifts of divine grace—that was mercy denied him, and "the reward of his hands given to him, it would be ill with him" —he should be ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... housing for the army of industrialism, an army fighting with itself, rank against rank, man against man, that the survivors may have whereon to feed. Pass by in the night, and strain imagination to picture the weltering mass of human weariness, of bestiality, of unmerited dolour, of hopeless hope, of crushed surrender, tumbled together ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... shadowy figure had leaped upon the engine-step a scant half-second behind him, and Callahan was stuffing the crumpled copy of the order into the sweat-band of his cap. The next instant the big 1010 leaped forward like a blooded horse under an unmerited cut of the whip, slid past the yard limits telegraph office and shot out upon the main line of ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... like a statue, with her arms extended, and the bank-notes in her hand; her features worked—she had much ado not to cry; and any one that had known the whole story, and seen this unmerited repulse, would have felt for her; but her love came to her aid, she put the notes in her ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... affair is, that the second Commission took nearly seven years to arrive at this conclusion,—so that the Count's imprisonment had about expired by efflux of time when the Sacra Consulta declared it to be unmerited." ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... and aptitudes merely imaginary and practically contemptible. The flux of existence is continually repenting of its choices, and giving everything actual the lie, by continually substituting something else, no less specific and no less nugatory. This world, any world, exists only by an unmerited privilege. Its glory is offensive to the spirit, like the self-sufficiency of some obstreperous nobody, who happens to have drawn the big prize in a lottery. "The world", M. Benda writes, "inspires me with a double sentiment. I feel it to be full of grandeur, because it has ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... Colonel hurried to embrace his friend, but the latter was slashing, mangling, in a fit of rage, the slain beast. "I accept not unmerited thanks," he answered at length, turning from the Colonel's embrace. "This same boar gored before my eyes a Bek of Tabasoran, my friend, when he, having missed him, had entangled his foot in the stirrup. I burned with anger when I saw my comrade's blood, and flew in pursuit of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... independence and bad domestic example, indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long. Once it had, by an opening undesigned and unmerited, led him into the way of happiness. Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one amiable woman's affections, could he have found sufficient exultation in overcoming the reluctance, in working himself into the esteem and tenderness of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... she observed the others wished to do. In this way she acquired a kind of negative authority, for although her "No" did not always prevail, it still seemed to give her a right to show her annoyance, by meeting it with an expression full of unmerited suffering and ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... for myself; no inconvenience or danger should ever lead me to a pusillanimous behaviour; and I felt only for my patron, who, with every advantage for happiness, and being in the highest degree worthy of it, seemed destined to undergo unmerited distress. ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... was Dean of Worcester when promoted to the See of Exeter. He was a famous theological writer, and was translated to Norwich in 1641. There he suffered a great deal of unmerited persecution, which he bore bravely, though the ill-treatment of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... liked. I suppose he hoped that the trip with Edgar would cheer me up. Accordingly, after dinner, I was given my liberty, and set off for the Wilburs, leaving Halstead grumbling over what he deemed my unmerited good fortune. ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... it, Bobolink," he told the other, who was still fretting under the unmerited charge. "Perhaps when he cools off and realizes what a serious thing he has said, Mr. Briggs will publicly take his words back, and will thank you fellows in ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... chief aside, and said, "Good Sheik, you may probably be already acquainted with the cause of my visit." "Yes, Sir," replied he gravely, "if I do not mistake, it is the disease of the princess which procures me this unmerited honour." "That is the real case," replied the sultan. "You will give me new life if your prayers, as I hope they may, restore my daughter's health." "Sir," said the good man, "if your majesty will be pleased to let her come hither, I am in hopes, through God's ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... plotted to ally her base Scotch blood to the noble blood of the Audleys; and, having exhausted every opprobrious epithet, she was forced to stop from want of breath to proceed. As Alicia listened to the cruel, unfounded reproaches of her aunt, her spirit rose under the unmerited ill-usage, but her conscience absolved her from all intention of injuring or deceiving a human being; and she calmly waited till Lady Audley's anger should have exhausted itself, and then entreated to know what part of her conduct ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... door, bade him begone, and never under any pretext whatever again to insult me with his presence. When he had departed, I burst into a paroxysm of tears, but they were tears shed not for the loss of him I now despised, but of wild sorrow at my unmerited degradation. That conflict over, the weakness had for ever passed away, and never since that hour, has tear descended cheek of mine, associated with the recollection of the villain who had thus dared to trifle with a heart, the ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... rehabilitation, presented the Pope with a claim for a revision of the sentence of condemnation in the name of Joan of Arc's mother and of her two brothers. The petition ran thus: 'The brothers, mother, and relations of Joan, anxious that her memory and their own should be cleansed from this unmerited disgrace, demand that the sentence of condemnation that was given at Rouen shall be annulled.' Not, however, until the death of Pope Nicolas V., and the accession of Calixtus III., ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... not sleep. She starts up continually, haunted by the foul insults of yesterday and the immense unmerited hatred of the people of France. What a load for a ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... in the kindliest possible manner that some friends of my art, who wished to remain unknown, sympathising with my unmerited condition, had united to offer me the means of relieving my burdensome position. I considered it fitting to express my thanks for this happy consummation only to my patroness, Princess Metternich, and now set about ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... day of much rain outwardly, yet very little of the dew of Hermon appear'd to distil among us. Nevertheless, a comfortable calm was witness'd towards the close, which we must render to the account of unmerited ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... them, that the whole tale I tell you is correct, and that Sir John Hastings, on the one hand, paid largely, and on the other threatened sternly, in order to conceal the marriage of his eldest son, and transmit the title to the second. But my mother could not bar me of my rights: she could endure unmerited shame for pecuniary advantages, if she pleased; but she could not entail shame upon me; and were it in the power of any one to deprive me of that which Sir John Hastings left me, or to shut me out from the succession to his ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... you cut out my part of it, at least,' Ernest said anxiously. 'Oh, Mr. Wilks, you don't know what I've suffered to-night on account of this dreadful unmerited leader. It's wicked, it's unjust, it's abominable, and I can't bear to think that I have had anything to do with sending it out into the world to inflame the passions of unthinking people! Do please try to let my part of it be left out, and only Mr. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... not live—of that every one was quite sure. Still, there was no gainsaying the fact that, churlish and morose as our skipper's normal temper always was, he was never so much so as in his behaviour towards his able fourth mate, who, being a man of fine, sensitive temper, chafed under his unmerited treatment so much as to lose flesh, becoming daily more silent, nervous, and depressed. Still, there had never been an open rupture, nor did it appear as if there would be, so great was the power Captain Slocum possessed over the will of everybody ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... room, "knees bent, and feet on tiptoe as if afraid of a wet floor." When his feet were not swollen with the gout, they were so slender, he said, that he "could dance a minuet on a silver penny." He was ridiculously lean, and his hands were crooked with his unmerited disease. An invalid, a caricature of the birds, and not particularly well dressed in spite of his lavender suit and partridge silk stockings, he has nevertheless contrived to leave in his letters an impression of almost perfect grace and dandyism. He had all the airs of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... there more than once, was sure of it. As by the reckoning it must be still over a hundred miles distant, the navigating officer was summoned, to his great disconcertment, to be eye-witness of his personal error; and the chronometers fell under unmerited suspicion. The navigator was an inveterate violinist. He had a curious habit of undressing early, and then, having by this symbolic act laid aside the cares of the day, as elbow space was lacking in his own cabin, he would play in the open ward-room for an hour or more before turning in; always ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... (p. 147) demands the repeal of the Arms Act on account of the "hardship it causes, and the unmerited slur which it casts on the people of this country." Now as any respectable person can obtain a license to carry firearms for under 4s., and as cultivators are granted licenses gratis in order that they ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... regard to the incalculable evils that would have arisen if the Government at that critical moment had suffered itself to be deterred from upholding the only true standard of value, either by the pressure of adverse circumstances or the violence of unmerited denunciation. The manner in which the people sustained the performance of this duty was highly honorable to their fortitude and patriotism. It can not fail to stimulate their agents to adhere under all circumstances ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... than any of his acts, since he touched the pockets of the people. The odium, however, fell chiefly on his ministers, especially those who received the name of the Cabal, from the fact that the initials of their names spelt that odious term of reproach, not unmerited in their case. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... stated that it is a widely-prevalent distemper, affecting both sexes alike; to know that it is an annoying, intractable, persistent condition, wearing to the child in every sense, subjecting it to a demoralizing mortification as well as to unmerited scoldings, humiliations, and punishments, and that its habit, in badly-ventilated quarters, will breed other diseases,[107] as well as that its continued action tends to the development of onanism, with its long and widely-ramifying trains of physical and social ills; and to find ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... lady's statement is nearly as follows:—that about twelve months ago, when the erection of the building in Hyde Park was spoken of, and the nature of its contents mentioned, she, feeling anxious to prove to the world that the very high and royal patronage she enjoyed was not unmerited, sent in her subscription of five guineas towards the construction of the building, and intimated her intention of sending in some specimens of her own works. She was immediately assigned a most elegant site for her display on the ground floor, ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... smile. But I love our quiet fields, the peace of home, and the voice of friends who greet you. Up to the present I have always lived in contradiction with my nature; my fiery blood, my nature so hostile to injustice, the spectacle of unmerited miseries have thrown me into a struggle of which I do not foresee the issue, a struggle in which will remain to the end without fear and without reproach, that which daily breaks me down and ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... took the management of the pit into his direction, putting himself at the head of those critics who call themselves the town; and in that capacity chastised several players, who had been rendered insolent and refractory by unmerited success. As for the new productions of the stage, though generally unspirited and insipid, they always enjoyed the benefit of his influence and protection; because he never disliked the performance so much as he sympathized with the poor author, who stood behind the scenes in the most dreadful ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... son of his second wife, and as I was born when my father and mother were on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Hosein, in Kerbelah, I was called Hajji, or the pilgrim, a name which has procured for me a great deal of unmerited respect, because that honoured title is seldom conferred on any but those who have made the great pilgrimage to the tomb of the blessed ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... government during his absence, was accurately informed of his motions, and had summoned the retainers of the crown to join the royal standard at St. Albans. There is, however, reason to believe that he was not hearty in the cause which it was his duty to support. He must have viewed with pity the unmerited misfortunes of one nephew, and have condemned the violent and thoughtless career of the other; and from the fate of his brother Gloucester, and the cruel and unjust treatment of the only son of his brother, John of Gaunt, he could not draw any very flattering conclusion with respect ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... translation of part of Mr. Pope's preface to his Version of the Iliad. As I do not understand English, I cannot form any judgment of his performance, though I have heard much of it. I am indeed willing to believe, that the praises it has met with are not unmerited, because whatever work is approved by the English nation, cannot be bad; but yet I hope I may be permitted to judge of that part of the preface, which has been transmitted to me, and I here take the liberty of giving ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... Guardian, or Freeman's Journal. In this sheet, which was edited by Mr. Willcocks himself, various desirable measures of reform were advocated, and the dominant faction were from time to time referred to in opprobrious, but certainly not untruthful or unmerited language. The paper obtained a considerable circulation, and soon made its editor an object of bitter hatred on the part of the authorities. The vilest abuse was poured out upon him, and he was subjected ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... kept his head, and made no serious mistake; but he accepts no unmerited censures. Seeing that the transports are not enough for the healthful carriage of the troops, he so represents it. The government, already impatient at any report of defects, hopes that things are now arranged ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... made prisoner by Gonzalo, who was even on the point of putting him to death; but on setting out for Quito, Gonzalo took him into favour. Carvajal now followed him with good will against the viceroy, upon whom he was eager to take signal vengeance for the unmerited death of his brother; and was even followed on this occasion by about thirty of his friends and relations, who formed a separate company ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Doubt and suspicion, and all that can torture the heart of a lover. Think ye we have but to come, and that then the maiden will follow Merely because we are rich, while she is poor and an exile? Poverty, too, makes proud, when it comes unmerited! Active Seems she to be, and contented, and so of the world is she mistress. Think ye a maiden like her, with the manners and beauty that she has, Can into woman have grown, and no worthy man's love have attracted? Think ye that love until now can have been shut out ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... is there to say or do now? What is there left for me, save to offer you what scant protection I may—good God!—and take you forward with us in the morning? This is a cruel, unmerited perplexity you have caused me, Lois. What unkind inspiration prompted you to do this rash, mad, foolish thing! How could you so conduct? What can you hope to accomplish in all this wicked and bloody business that now confronts us? How can I do my duty—how perform it to the letter—with ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... exceptions, is acknowledged by all moralists; the chief of which is when the withholding of some fact (as of information from a male-factor, or of bad news from a person dangerously ill) would preserve some one (especially a person other than oneself) from great and unmerited evil, and when the withholding can only be effected by denial. But in order that the exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have the least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought to be recognized, and, if possible, its limits defined; ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... she answered, flushing at the unmerited reproof. "But I am by way of handing over my charge to you. Doesn't the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... rehearsing all he had before given of directions, and dwelling still more on some others, but then apparently repenting of laying down the law, he ended by entreating her to use her own judgment, believe in his perfect confidence, and gratitude beyond expression for most unmerited kindness. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pernicious tendency of the system introduced by Constantine was displayed in the feeble administration of his sons; who, by their vices and weakness, soon lost the esteem and affections of their people. The pride assumed by Constans, from the unmerited success of his arms, was rendered more contemptible by his want of abilities and application. His fond partiality towards some German captives, distinguished only by the charms of youth, was an object of scandal to the people; [69] and Magnentius, an ambitious soldier, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... strengthened the opposition to reform of all those who were interested in abuses. From the well-meaning king, if left to his own ways, nothing more could be hoped. Pecuniary embarrassment, with Louis, as with many less important people, was quite as much a symptom of weakness as a result of unmerited misfortune. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... to whom she was not denied. Darden came at times, sat in Mistress Stagg's sunny parlor, and talked to his sometime ward much as he had talked in the glebe-house living room,—discursively, of men and parochial affairs and his own unmerited woes. Audrey sat and heard him, with her eyes upon the garden without the window. When he lifted from the chair his great shambling figure, and took his stained old hat and heavy cane, Audrey rose also, curtsied, and sent her duty to Mistress Deborah, but she asked ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... been treated, and looked upon him as a sort of champion of their cause, so that he may be rather designated a popular statesman than otherwise, although he was considered in the wrong on that one point, and the reflexions which he flung upon England would have passed away as unmerited, and soon sunk into oblivion, had not a portion of the English press so indulged in abuse and ridicule of the French at that period, who often remark that they were subdued by the allies combined, but that it is only the English press ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... acuteness had helped in deposing the splendid brigand Foucquet, and his power was serving France well, so well that he brought about his head the inevitable jealousy which finally threw him, too, into unmerited disgrace. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... as fair, A matron heart and virgin soul! The flickering light that crowns her hair Seems like a saintly aureole. A tender sense upon me falls That joy unmerited is mine, And in this pleasant twilight shine My perfect bliss ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... right to civility, and the withholding of wages is no more culpable, if more illegal, than is the withholding of civil treatment, and the infliction of the indignity of impatience and harsh and unmerited reproof. ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... of the transcendent honour, the glorious task of saving souls. What was I, steeped in sin, as I had been up to the very moment of my conversion—what was I, insolent, pretending worm, that I should raise my grovelling head, and presume upon the unmerited favour that had been showered so graciously upon me? It remained for those—purest and best of men, whose lives from childhood onward had been a lucid exposition of the word of truth—whose deeds had given to the world ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the hate that we have known The bitter words, not all unmerited? Have hearts e'er thriven beneath our angry frown? Have roses grown from thistles we have sown? Or lucid dawns flowered out of sunsets red? Lo, all in vain The violence that added pain to pain, And drove the sinner ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... notice of the Bristol milkwoman, my design has been to rescue her name from unmerited obloquy, and not in the remotest degree to criminate Hannah More, whose views and impressions in this affair may have been somewhat erroneous, but whose intentions it would be impossible ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... they attempted to grasp on the retirement of the invaders; and Dost Mahommed, released from captivity, (as we expressed in Feb. 1843 the hope that he would be,) once more rules in Cabul—there destined, we trust, to end his days in honour after his unmerited misfortunes—and has shown every disposition to cultivate a good understanding with the government in India. Akhbar Khan is again established in his former government of Jellalabad; and it is said that he meditates availing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... as Pope says, "fed with dedications;" for Tickell affirms that no dedicator was unrewarded. To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt of flattery, and to suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the falsehoods of his assertions, is, surely, to discover great ignorance of human nature and human life. In determinations depending not on rules, but on experience and comparison, judgment ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... Englishman stood quietly waiting, his quick eyes going from Dalbarade to the wizened figure by the window, and back again to the Minister. His look carried both calmness and defiance, but the defiance came only from a sense of injury and unmerited disgrace. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... greatest charm is here felt most strongly. The ludicrous so helps the pathos, and the humour so uplifts and refines the sentiment, that mere rude affection and simple manliness in these Yarmouth boatmen, passed through the fires of unmerited suffering and heroic endurance, take forms half-chivalrous half-sublime. It is one of the cants of critical superiority to make supercilious mention of the serious passages in this great writer; but ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... a dead silence. Hector stared at his shoes; Peggy gave a short, staccato cough; and Arthur looked swiftly across the room, to see how Mellicent bore herself beneath this unmerited snub. She was seated on the sofa beside Eunice Rollo, slightly in advance of himself, so that only a crimson cheek was visible, and a neck reddened to the roots of the hair, but Arthur saw something else, which ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... voice, she could still trust to her musical accomplishments to provide for the necessities of life. Plead as I might with her to forget the past, I always got the same reply: 'If I was base enough to let myself be tempted by the happy future that you offer, I should deserve the unmerited disgrace which has fallen on me. Marry a woman whose reputation will bear inquiry, and forget me.' I was mad enough to press my suit once too often. When I visited her on the next day she was gone. Every effort to trace her has failed. Lost, my friend—irretrievably ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... depend upon the applause of the world, St. Paul declares that if we please men, we are not the servants of God,[3] the friendship of the world being enmity with God. If then that little book has brought to me some vain and unmerited praise, it would be well worth my while to build upon its foundation some inferior work, so as to beat down the smoke of this incense, and earn that contempt from men which makes us so much the more pleasing to God, because we are thereby ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... case—a case of peculiar and unprecedented hardship—to his most Sacred Majesty, and to advocate his cause. And if, happily for your memorialist, his most Sacred Majesty, recognising the innocence of your memorialist, and taking his long-protracted and unmerited sufferings into his gracious consideration, should, of his most gracious pleasure, vouchsafe to reinstate your memorialist in that rank and station in his Royal Navy which he previously held, your memorialist ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... to an end: yet we still linger, loth to part with a spirit so dear to us. From the scanty and too much neglected field of his biography, a few slight facts and indications may still be gleaned; slight, but distinctive of him as an individual, and not to be despised in a penury so great and so unmerited. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... during so distressing a period of absence, to have written you a letter so gay and careless as my last. I confess indeed the societies of this place afforded me so much entertainment, that in the midst of generous friendship and unmerited kindness, I almost forgot the anguish of a lover, and the pains ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... beset spinning if we choose to whip them with their vanity! it is the consolation of the great to watch them spin. But the pleasure is loftier, and may comfort our unmerited misfortune for a while, in making ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to write out her exercise again, and she fancied she saw a triumphant look in Annie Forest's eyes as she left the school-room, where poor Hester was obliged to remain to undergo her unmerited punishment. ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... conduct was premeditated and aimed at the repression of his hopes. He would show her that there were other women in the world, and that one of them at any rate had not thought so poorly of him. It was foolish conduct on his part, but then people suffering under unmerited snubs, neglect, and mockery at the hands of a lady they admire are apt to lose their judgment and do foolish things. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... Moratin. His industry was astonishing: between October 1824 and November 1828, he composed thirty-nine plays, six of them original, the rest being translations or recasts of classic masterpieces. In 1831 he published a translation of Tibullus, and acquired by it an unmerited reputation for scholarship which secured for him an appointment as sub-librarian at the national library. But the theatre claimed him for its own, and with the exception of Elena and a few other pieces in the fashionable romantic vein, his plays were a long series of successes. His only serious ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... the palmy days of the elm. When the tide of war set away from New England, the Washington Elm fell into unmerited neglect. The struggling patriots had no time for sentiment; and when the war came to an end they were too busy in shaping the conduct of the government, and in repairing their shattered fortunes, to pay much attention ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various |
