"Unnatural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in a new intoxicating atmosphere? Now and again a small percentage of the whole is flung into the pit, and, for them, where one in ten was heavy slaughter, now one in ten is reasonable escape. The rest, for the greater part of the time, live an unnatural life, death near enough to make them reckless and far enough to make them gay. Commonly men and women more or less restrain themselves because of to-morrow; but what if there be no to-morrow? What if the dice are heavily weighted against it? And what ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... was scarcely in so pleasant a humour. With Lewis she was undeniably cross, but of Mr. Stocks she was radically intolerant. A moment of pique might send her to his side, but the position was unnatural and could not be maintained. Even now Lewis was in her thoughts. Fragments of his odd romantic speech clove to her memory. His figure—for he showed to perfection in his own surroundings—was so comely and gallant, so bright with the glamour of adventurous youth, that for a moment this prosaic young ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... which the trained actress, who may not be a lady, succeeds. The actual transfer to the stage of the drawing-room and its occupants, with the behavior common in well-bred society, would no doubt fail of the intended dramatic effect, and the spectators would declare the representation unnatural. ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... terrible after-effects of X-Ray treatment, of extirpation of the ovaries, the womb, and of other vital organs, became so patent that the physicians of the regular school could not ignore them any longer, Nature Cure physicians had strongly warned against these unnatural practices, and called ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... you will be thankful that I can think, as I trust, heartily of my work, and that my interest is in no way lessened. It ought to be increased. Yet I scarce realise the fact of being a Bishop, though again it does not seem unnatural. I can't explain what I mean. I suppose the fact that I knew for so long before that it must come some day if I ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fruits and roots. And after Ravana had taken his seat, and rested himself a while, Maricha skilled in speech, sat beside Ravana and addressed him who was himself as eloquent in speech, saying, 'Thy complexion hath assumed an unnatural hue; is it all right with thy kingdom, O king of the Rakshasas? What hath brought thee here? Do thy subjects continue to pay thee the same allegiance that they used to pay thee before? What business hath brought thee here? Know that it is already fulfilled, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... act:— Thou'rt pinch'd for't now, Sebastian.—Flesh and blood, You, brother mine, that entertain'd ambition Expell'd remorse[453-18] and nature;[453-19] who, with Sebastian,— Whose inward pinches therefore are most strong,— Would here have kill'd your King; I do forgive thee, Unnatural though thou art,—Their understanding Begins to swell; and the approaching tide Will shortly fill the reasonable shore,[454-20] That now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them That yet looks on me, or ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... For a moment Beth saw nothing but a mad grotesquerie of horse and man, almost ludicrously unnatural, and crazed ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the city an unnatural action struck them with a degree of horror which was still undiminished. A mother had abandoned her little son, only five years old; in spite of his cries and tears she had driven him away from her sledge which was too heavily laden. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... afflicted in his soul, and for the first time in his life fell into melancholy. But sadness was unnatural to one in his estate; for joy is the inheritance of ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... him to live again, he would not have had them otherwise. Destiny had settled for him his politics and his principles, for he could not leave the way in which Montrose had gone before, or be the comrade of Covenanting Whigs. It would have been a thing unnatural and impossible. And yet he feared that the future was with them and not with the Jacobites. He only did his part in arresting fanatical hillmen and executing the punishment of the law upon them, but he would have been glad that night if he ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... into the hall. It was more than half an hour before he returned and when he did a close observer would have noticed that his face had lost its brightness and that the gaiety with which he took up the conversation with his guests was forced and unnatural. However, he tried resolutely to banish his irritation, whatever its cause. He went up to the attic with Mr. Ackerman, where the two searched out skates, woolen gloves and sweaters; he jested with Doris and Jane Harden; he challenged Dick to a race across the ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... raising his swimming eyes and his pallid arms to the door-posts, so often adorned by him with wreaths, when he had fastened a noose at the end of a halter upon the door; he said,— "Are these the garlands that delight thee, cruel and unnatural {woman}?" And he placed his head within it; but even then he was turned towards her; and he hung a hapless burden, by his strangled throat. The door, struck by the motion of his feet as they quivered, seemed to utter a sound, as {of one} groaning much, and flying open, it ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... sign is there in our nature (for the inquiry is only about what is to be collected from thence) that this was intended by its Author? Or how does so various and fickle a temper as that of man appear adapted thereto? It may indeed be absurd and unnatural for men to act without any reflection; nay, without regard to that particular kind of reflection which you call conscience, because this does belong to our nature. For as there never was a man but who approved one place, prospect, building, before another, so it ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... miles! We may now judge of the condescending wonder with which the brother of Darius listened to the ambassadors of a people, by whose glory alone his name is transmitted to posterity. Yet was there nothing unnatural or unduly arrogant in his reply. "Send Darius," said the satrap, affably, "earth and water (the accustomed symbols of homage), and he will accept your alliance." The ambassadors deliberated, and, impressed ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to be bent upon eating the flesh of a heavenly goose!" ejaculated P'ing Erh. "A stupid and disorderly fellow with no conception of relationship, to harbour such a thought! but we'll make him find an unnatural death!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... brows, very like a face one would expect to see in a nun's hood. Yet so little in the character of the cloister did this countenance keep, that it was plastered thick with chalk and rouge, and sprinkled with ridiculous black patches, and bore, as it rose from the low courtesy before me, an unnatural smile half-way between a ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... indeed a strange and most repellent face, for colour and outline were equally unnatural. It was white, not with the ordinary pallor of fear but with an absolutely bloodless white, like the under side of a sole. He was very fat, but gave the impression of having at some time been considerably fatter, for his skin hung loosely in creases and folds, ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on the brink of the grave, and nothing but the indomitable will to live saved her, the doctors said. On the third day she rallied wonderfully, and some purpose seemed to gift her with unnatural strength. Evening came, and the house was very still, for all the sad bustle of preparation for Sir Richard's funeral was over, and he lay for the last night under his own roof. Hester sat in the darkened chamber of her mistress, and no sound broke the hush but the low lullaby the nurse was singing ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... functions of the eye, were known to have often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the nature of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments upon themselves. "As to an imaginary cry," said I, "do but listen for a moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so low, and to the wild harp it ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... lilies (by the lilies I mean the ladies). Are not the Rosalindas of Britain as charming as the Blousalindas of the Hague? or have the two great Pastoral poets of our own nation renounced love at the same time? for Philips, unnatural Philips, hath deserted it, yea, and in a rustic manner kicked his Rosalind. Dr. Parnell and I have been inseparable ever since you went. We are now at the Bath, where (if you are not, as I heartily hope, better engaged) your company would be the greatest pleasure to us in the world. Talk ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... opening between the two closes, and as a consequence the food is retained in the stomach longer than it is in health—resulting in the course of time in catarrhal conditions of the organ just named, and an unnatural relaxation of its muscular walls. Under such circumstances the patient quickly develops symptoms of indigestion, and if his habits be not corrected the trouble gradually grows worse until the ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... upon flower-beds, grounds of the above description, or some kind of enclosure, shaded by peach or pear-trees, trained trellis-fashion overhead; or by cedars, with one solitary bough twisting fantastically over the ground, showing, in its unnatural contortions, the skill of the artist, the other branches having been lopped off, or stunted, to facilitate the growth and training of ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... probable changes, one of the most important is the defeat of Sir James Graham in Cumberland, an event which the Whigs hail with extreme satisfaction, for they hate him rancorously. I am under personal obligations to Graham, and therefore regret that this feeling exists; but it is not unnatural, and his political conduct is certainly neither creditable nor consistent. He is now little better than a Tory, a very high Churchman, and one of the least liberal of the Conservative leaders. In Lord Grey's Government he was one of the most violent, and for going to greater lengths than the majority ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... jaw, and the constrained position of my head and throat, always caused me to froth at the mouth more or less. Some people think it very fine to see this, and say, "What fine spirited creatures!" But it is just as unnatural for horses as for men to foam at the mouth; it is a sure sign of some discomfort, and should be attended to. Besides this, there was a pressure on my windpipe, which often made my breathing very uncomfortable; when I returned from ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... replied, looking her father full in the face and noticing for the first time with a slight gasp of fear the unnatural rigidity of ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... so much pretending contrast in reference to the Messiah, suit the other contrast in reference to Bethlehem, which is so brilliant and exalted? And now what reason is there for preferring that explanation which is so unnatural, to the other, which is so natural, so obvious, which presents a contrast so beautiful, and opens up to the Covenant-people a source of consolation so rich? Is it this, perhaps, that the eternity of the Messiah is not mentioned anywhere ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... vineyard that I have not done unto it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?' The fault lay not in the vine-dresser, but in some evil influence that had found its way into the life and sap of the vine, and bore fruits in an unnatural product, which could not have been traced to the vine-dresser's action. So God stands, as with clean hands, declaring that 'He is pure from the blood of all men; that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked'; and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... said Mrs. Farrington, looking at her quizzically, "it's not unnatural that you should want to know when you're going to see your native land again; but truly, Patty, I cannot tell you. I'll promise you this, though: to-morrow you'll know more about ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... called up many recollections. He brooded over his engagement during the whole evening, and his night was disturbed. His memory, long in a state of apathy, or curbed and controlled into indifference, seemed endowed with unnatural vitality, reproducing the history of his past life in rapid and exhausting tumult. All its scenes rose before him—Brentham, and Vauxe, and, Muriel—and closing with one absorbing spot, which, for a long time, it avoided, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... squire entered he found the melancholy baronet and priest-hunter sitting upon the hard form, his head hanging down upon his breast, or, indeed, we might say much farther; for, in consequence of the almost unnatural length of his neck, it appeared on that occasion to be growing out of the middle of his body, or of that fleshless vertebral column which ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... her children went into the hedges and gathered snails, which they made into broth and ate—could she ever be forgiven? Was there any hope of salvation for her either in this world or the next after such unnatural conduct? ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... bless his innocence—her philosophy and mine!) "The whole scheme of modern life was lopsided, she said, all the upper classes going to brains and no body and all the lower classes all to body and no brains. Conflict in the end was inevitable. The unnatural way of living was weakening the fiber of the governing powers the people of which intermarried and brought into the world children of weak muscular tissue. She doesn't believe in marriage unless both the man ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... I might say that Lieutenant-Governor Blount has reported from Keegark, where he is now, that the same unnatural absence of ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... destroys one of its litter, or a bitch one of its pups, men are dejected and troubled, and think it an evil omen, and sacrifice to the gods to avert any bad results, on the score that it is natural to all to love and cherish their offspring, unnatural to destroy it. For just as in mines the gold is conspicuous even though mixed up with earth, so nature manifests plainly love to offspring even in instances of faulty habits and affections. For when the poor do not rear their children, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... rein on her feelings, her impassive manner had deceived me. Now that my sympathy with her made me more keenly alive to her distress, I saw the deep pain in her pale face, and the unnatural look of grief in one so young. She tied on her hat in her old, hopeless way, and the ivory smoothness of her face spoke ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... it.... Everywhere in the States lately in rebellion treason is respectable and loyalty odious. This the people of the United States who ended the rebellion and saved the country will not permit; and all attempts to maintain this unnatural order of things will be ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... little intercourse that then existed between states, conjoined with the indignant grief of the parents at the loss of their children, exaggerated the evil of the tribute. The hostages were said by the Athenians to be exposed in an intricate labyrinth, and devoured by a monster, the creature of unnatural intercourse, half man half bull; but the Cretans, certainly the best authority in the matter, stripped the account of the fable, and declared that the labyrinth was only a prison in which the youths and maidens ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... answer. 'Is it a wig ye wear or no? It looks gey unnatural, sae I tak' it to be a wig; but if it's yer ain hair, I beg yer humble pardon. There's nae harm ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... are these memories of youth. With what strange, almost unnatural clearness do I see and hear,—see the white face of that café, the white nose of that block of houses, stretching up to the Place, between two streets. I can see down the incline of those two streets, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the dry leaves; a muntjac barks hoarsely on the opposite hillside, and a fox yelps behind us in the forest. Suddenly there is a sharp snap, a muffled squeal, and a trap a few yards away has done its work. Even in the tree tops the night life is active. Dead twigs drop to the ground with an unnatural noise, and soft-winged owls show black against the sky as they flit across an opening in ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... provided a basis in principle for greater freedom of communication and exchange of people. I urge the Soviet government to cooperate in turning principle into practice by prompt and tangible actions that will break down the unnatural barriers that have blocked the flow of thought and understanding between ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... aspirations, are enough to uphold her in the storms of darkness, without the transferred colorings of a stained sufferer. How often have we seen it in our public prints, that woman occupies a false station in the world! and some have gone so far as to say it was an unnatural one. So long has she been regarded a weak creature, by the rabble and illiterate—they have looked upon her as an insufficient actress on the great stage of human life—a mere puppet, to fill up the drama of human existence—a thoughtless, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... school. Never mind. Up the hill again! Walk we must. Oh what a watery world to look back upon! Thames, Kennet, Loddon—all overflowed; our famous town, inland once, turned into a sort of Venice; C. park converted into an island; and the long range of meadows from B. to W. one huge unnatural lake, with trees growing out of it. Oh what a watery world!—I will look at it no longer. I will walk on. The road is alive again. Noise is reborn. Waggons creak, horses splash, carts rattle, and pattens ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... it was hard for her to utter the word which even when she was a child had seemed unnatural to her—"let us forget all that's gone afore. Sufferin' has coom to both on us, but it has bin warr for thee nor ever it was for ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... And, what is a wiser and better thing, Can keep the living from ever needing Such an unnatural, strange proceeding, By showing conclusively and clearly That death is a stupid blunder merely, And not a necessity of our lives. My being here is accidental; The storm, that against your casement drives, In the little village below waylaid me. And there ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... rule, no coward; but he was faint and tired, and the very fact of being seated out on the dark waters with the gloom so thick that they could see but a short distance, and with an unnatural-looking light on one side and a strange marrow-thrilling cry coming on the other, was enough to startle stouter-hearted lads than he, and he held more tightly to his companion as ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... on such an occasion; and then the speeches! They fall generally to the lot of some middle-aged gentlemen, who seem always to have been selected for their incapacity. But there is a worse trouble yet remaining—in the unnatural repletion which the sight even of so much food produces, and the fact that your dinner for that day ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... off from their womenfolk. Mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts are inaccessible. All have a certain amount of leisure, and very little to do with it. All are physically fit and mentally rather unoccupied. All are living under an unnatural discipline from which, when the last parade of the day is over, there is a natural reaction. Finally, wherever there are troops, and especially in war time, there are "bad" women and weak women. The result is ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... would refuse to believe the human race to be an immense family living in brotherly union, and under the protection of a venerable father? But, heavens! are brothers enemies? Are fathers unnatural, and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... atrocity of crucifixion was that one might live three or four days in this horrible state upon the instrument of torture.[1] The haemorrhage from the hands quickly stopped, and was not mortal. The true cause of death was the unnatural position of the body, which brought on a frightful disturbance of the circulation, terrible pains of the head and heart, and, at length, rigidity of the limbs. Those who had a strong constitution only died of hunger.[2] ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... but nowhere so poor as in a wide realm populous with grass widows. By what interests or avocations, or by what delinquency of duty the tedious hours are cheated, is not revealed to any male philosopher; but he is a poor observer who does not recognise something unnatural in this one-sided life. A few miles away the loud Niagara of London runs swift, and the air vibrates with all the tumult of the strenuous life of man; but here the air is dead, unwinnowed by any clamorous wind, unshaken by any planetary ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... you are," he said. "Sit here, won't you?—I hadn't finished laying the table." He deliberately brought out four more cups. "What unnatural penetration you have, Temple! How did you find out that this is the day when I sit 'at home' and wait for people to come and ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... and that it has been refused. I should add that we have conducted ourselves as faithful subjects, that the feeling of liberty is too strong in our hearts to let us ever submit to slavery, and that we are quite determined to burst every bond with an unjust and unnatural government, if our enslavement alone will satisfy a tyrant and his diabolical ministry. And I should tell them all this not in covert terms, but in language as plain as the light of the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... trouble ourselves," he exclaimed, "about a few unprincipled men in such a wide, such a universal movement? Our objects and ideals are too far above such considerations to allow us to be influenced by them. Men like Myers are but the outcome of unnatural and vitiated conditions; they are produced by the very society which it is our object to abolish—as all manner of disease is produced by vitiated air. With better conditions such men will disappear; nay, the very possibility of ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... suggestions of trickery. An immediate, brilliant success was essential, to carry the thing off: a hitch and all was lost and the luck of the Astrarium and his own fame vanished in smoke! Lily was out of the question that night: she was bubbling over at every pore with unnatural excitement ... she was not Lily,—was not herself ... it meant certain death to her, the aerobike smashed to pieces, the end of all things! Lily would do it to-morrow, the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... coxswain's hesitation seemed to be unnatural; and as for the notion of his preferring wine to brandy, I entirely disbelieved it. The whole story was a pretext. He wanted me to leave the deck—so much was plain; but with what purpose I could in no ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conclusion—following as it does the election of Mr. Stanhope Forbes, makes it plain that the intention of the Academy is to support to the full extent of its great power a method of painting which is foreign and unnatural to English art, which, in the opinion of a large body of artists—and it is valuable to know that their opinion is shared by the best and most original of the French artists—is disintegrating and destroying our English artistic tradition. Mr. Hacker's election, and the three ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... those around her. Free only in the retirement of her own secluded apartments, she is altogether shut out from her legitimate sphere in the duties and enjoyments of life. But the blight on the sex itself from this unnatural regulation, sad as it is, must be regarded as a minor evil. The mischief extends beyond her. The tone and framework of society as it came from the Maker's hands are altered, damaged, and deteriorated. ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... which occurred at his tomb, some of which cures, however, were very gradual. We are also told that when a humble hunchback bowed the knee in adoration at the tomb of St. Andreas, his irresistible faith instantly released him from his unnatural rotundity. In 1243 a Ferrara writer was at Padua, and while attending vespers at the tomb where the sainted body of the Minorite Anthony reposed, he affirms that he saw a person who had been mute from his birth recover his voice ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... songs of Orpheus, Cupid,[15] falling in love with her, courts her and is rejected; his parting kiss "did inspire/her brest with an infernall and unnam'd desire" (p. 123). Golding's Ovid, specifically denying that Cupid had anything to do with Mirrha's unnatural love, suggests that Cinyras' daughter must have been blasted by one of the Furies.[16] Other inventions of Barksted include a picture of her father with which Mirrha converses (pp. 126-127), pictures of her suitors (p. 128), a ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... from circumference to tent pole. She bought the tickets; they entered the circular enclosure where the animals were kept; where the strong beams of the sun, in trying to force their way through the canvas roof, created an unnatural, jaundiced twilight, the weirdness of which was somehow enhanced by the hoarse, amazingly penetrating growls of beasts. Suddenly a lion near them raised a shaggy head, emitting a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... worn you out; I'm sure I'm a mere thread. And I had been at it from immediately after breakfast; and I lunched in one of the stores with ten thousand suburbans who had come pouring in with the first of their unnatural trains: I did hope I should have some of the places to myself; but they were every one jammed. And you came up from your ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... the tribe were initiated into manhood; nor would he look on the heathen rain-making incantations, though his father smoked with anger against him. Under a thousand insults and threats of death Khama stood silent, never insulting nor answering again, and always treating with respect his unnatural father. ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... on during the night he knew that there was a fire in the room, and that strange things were happening to him. But it was all so queer and unnatural that he did not know where the dreams left off and the real began. He was vaguely conscious of his left foot being tied to the right bedpost, of a lock of his hair being cut off and burned on the hearth, and of a low monotonous chant that seemed ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... however great the inconvenience to herself. I knew nothing at that time of two other friends of Evadne's, Mrs. Sillinger and Mrs. Malcomson, to whom I afterward learnt that she was much attached. Owing, I think, to the unnatural habit of reticence which had been forced upon her, she had not mentioned them to me, although she continued to correspond with them. It took her some time to realize that every interest of hers was ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... and marrow, when also her passion was fired to a degree beyond the famine itself; nor did she consult with any thing but with her passion and the necessity she was in. She then attempted a most unnatural thing; and snatching up her son, who was a child sucking at her breast, she said, "O thou miserable infant! for whom shall I preserve thee in this war, this famine, and this sedition? As to the war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives, we must be slaves. This famine also will destroy ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... else could be the murderer? That it could have been Cassion never seriously occurred to me, but I ran over in my mind the rough men of our party—the soldiers, some of them quarrelsome enough, and the Indians to whom a treacherous blow was never unnatural. This must have been the way it happened—Chevet had made some bitter enemy, for he was ever prodigal of angry word and blow, and the fellow had followed him through the night to strike him down from behind. But why did De Artigny ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... abolished all private rights, regarding the actual living people as a beast of burden, and yet worse, as a robot, subjecting their human machine to the cruelest restraints in order to mechanically maintain it in the unnatural, rigid posture, which, according to principles, they inflict upon it. Thenceforth, all ties are sundered between them and the nation; to prey upon, bleed and starve this nation, to re-conquer it ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... little time to contemplate the scene as we rode along, but still I could not help being struck by the solemn stillness, and the wildness of the desolation around. The voices of the men, as they shouted out, appeared strange and unnatural from their very distinctness, as did the tramp of the animals; while not another sound was heard from ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... and its fellow societies do somehow confer a benefit on the college by holding out a reward for hard endeavor. This is the highest goal. I distrust the wisdom of the judges. There is an honester repute to be gained in the general estimate of one's fellows. These societies cut an unnatural cleavage across the college. They are the source of dishonest envy and of mean lick-spittling. For three years, until the election is announced, there is much playing for position. A favored fellow, whose election ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... proud With no uncomely dust distain'd, And all the world by conquest bow'd, And only Cato's soul unchain'd. Yes, Juno and the powers on high That left their Afric to its doom, Have led the victors' progeny As victims to Jugurtha's tomb. What field, by Latian blood-drops fed, Proclaims not the unnatural deeds It buries, and the earthquake dread Whose distant thunder shook the Medes? What gulf, what river has not seen Those sights of sorrow? nay, what sea Has Daunian carnage yet left green? What coast from Roman blood is free? But pause, gay Muse, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... first-fruits of the harvest and to observe strict chastity for nine days. Similar cases of incest with a daughter are reported of many ancient kings. It seems unlikely that such reports are without foundation, and perhaps equally improbable that they refer to mere fortuitous outbursts of unnatural lust. We may suspect that they are based on a practice actually observed for a definite reason in certain special circumstances. Now in countries where the royal blood was traced through women only, and where consequently the king held office ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... crying, saying that this would relieve them more than anything else, and with the invariable result that they soon ceased to cry, and he could hear what they had to say and give his advice. When patients who were very ill craved for some strange and unnatural food, my father asked them what had put such an idea into their heads; if they answered that they did not know, he would allow them to try the food, and often with success, as he trusted to their having a kind of instinctive desire; but if they answered ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... that an election by the national legislature would be the work of intrigue and corruption, like the election of the king of Poland by a diet of nobles; but Mason declared, on the other hand, that "to refer the choice of a proper character for a chief magistrate to the people would be as unnatural as to refer a trial of colours to a blind man." A decision was first reached against an election by Congress, because it was thought that if the chief magistrate should prove himself thoroughly competent he ought to be ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Bertram says, in Maturin's pimento play,—"I am a wretch, and proud of wretchedness." A child, the offspring of your own loins, is something worth watching for. Such a father is your true Tapley; —there is some credit in coming out jolly under such circumstances. The unnatural parent, as those warning cries break the silence, may counterfeit Death's counterfeit, and may even be guilty of the surpassing iniquity of simulating a snore. Nunquam dormio; I am like "The Sun" newspaper,—sleepless, tireless, disturbed, but imperturbable. I meet my fate, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... hand seems never to be found with its original American name. In England, as the name implies, the turkey cock was regarded as having come from the land of the Turks. The bird no doubt spread over Europe from the Italian seaports. The mistake, therefore, was not unnatural, seeing that these towns conducted a great trade with the Levant, while the fact that America when first discovered was identified with India helped to increase the confusion. Thus in French the "coq d'Inde" was abbreviated to "d'Inde" much as "turkey cock" ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... in English historical work has been noticed by the Rev. Charles Kingsley, and may therefore be referred to by me without offence. Your standard historians, having no unnatural regard for their most indefatigable readers, the wives and daughters of England, feel it incumbent upon them to pass over, as unfit for dainty ears and dulcet tones, facts, and rumours of facts, which none the less often determined events by ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... insatiable appetite for knowledge, and consequently a maddening persistence in asking questions. If the child is to remain in the room with a highly intelligent and sensitive adult, it must be told, and if necessary forced, to sit still and not speak, which is injurious to its health, unnatural, unjust, and therefore cruel and selfish beyond toleration. Consequently the highly intelligent and sensitive adult hands the child over to a nurserymaid who has no nerves and can therefore stand more noise, but who has also no scruples, and may therefore ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... do it when there is no road that we know of?" asked Percival, as Jack began making his way toward the top of the unnatural bowl in which they ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... fantastic. He was a small man with two wisps of long hair that curled up on each side, and seen in silhouette, looked like horns. He had a bow tie so big that the two ends showed on each side of his neck like unnatural stunted wings. He had his long black cane still tilted in his hand like a fencing foil and half presented at the open door. His large straw hat had fallen behind him as ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... a curiously unnatural tone: "It was noble of poor Jake to give his life trying to save the ship, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... questions, the analytic method, while not capable of arriving at a demonstrative result, is nevertheless capable of showing that all the positive grounds in favour of a certain theory are fallacious and that a less unnatural theory is capable of accounting for ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... undertakes. To lay the fault on the sovereign will of God, who has "withheld his grace" from the grandchildren of the pious, might be called blasphemy, if we were disposed to speak harshly. The fault lies undoubtedly in the fact, that Practical Devoutness and Free Thought stand apart in unnatural schism. But surely the age is ripe for something better;—for a religion which stall combine the tenderness, humility, and disinterestedness, that are the glory of the purest Christianity, with that activity of intellect, untiring pursuit of truth, and strict adherence to impartial principle, ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... believe in conservatories," she exclaimed, as I expressed my admiration of the many rare plants. "It is as unnatural a life for flowers to be crowded together, each in its little pot of earth, as for human beings in their separate beds in a hospital. The idea of shutting up plants and pictures in a room by themselves, to be visited on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... between human beings; love and hatred enchain certain individuals to one another for a whole series of incarnations; many a victim of the past is to be found again in those unnatural sons who send a thrill of horror through society when it hears of some heinous crime—they have become the torturers of their former oppressors. In other cases, it is love which attracts and unites in renewed affection those who formerly loved ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... not unnatural to claim, therefore, that the most immediate and important short-cut in knowledge that the comprehensive or educated man can take comes to him through his human and personal relations. There is no better way of getting at the spirits of facts, of ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Irish Bill. Although the minister was the exponent and stern advocate of the widest liberality, in applying the reform to England, he undertook to defend, on the very opposite principle, the niggard liberty he was prepared in the same measure to extend to Ireland. In this unnatural and unexpected turn of affairs, Mr. O'Connell took a proud and bold stand, against the Government, and for his country. The ministry succeeded, but he had more than ever acquired the confidence and unbounded ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... known that there were dark spots on his fame. He might also have felt with pride that the splendor of his fame would bear many spots. He would have wished posterity to have a likeness of him, though an unfavorable likeness, rather than a daub at once insipid and unnatural, resembling neither him nor anybody else. "Paint me as I am," said Oliver Cromwell, while sitting to young Lely. "If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling." Even in such ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... British Political Parties: "Parnell's chief lieutenant had shown in the service of his chief an energy and passion which few of us expected of him, and was utterly unsparing in his denunciations of the men who maintained the other side of the controversy. From this it was not unnatural to expect difficulties occasioned both by the leader's temper and by the temper of those whom he led. But men who had been adverse assured me that they had changed their opinions and were glad to find they could work with Redmond ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... only I never meant to let it pop out so suddenly and rudely," I was forced to confess. "In one way it would seem impossible to have too many flowers about, and yet in another it is unnatural, for are not nature's unconscious effects made by using colour as a central point, a focus that draws the eye from a ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... seldom, Ernest was not present; and then my spirits rebounded from this unnatural constraint, and I laughed and talked like other people. The youthful brightness of my feelings flashed forth, and I forgot that a clouded star presided over ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... sorry. I never could find out what that cause was; but the servants spread some reports. They said they had found Maggie and Annabel together; Annabel had fainted; and Maggie was in an awful state of misery— in quite an unnatural state, they said; she went into hysterics, and Miss Heath was sent for, and was a long time soothing her. There was no apparent reason for this, although, somehow or other, little whispers got abroad ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... dark mass of wreckage, over which hung a slight mist of vapour, lay half in the ditch, half across the hedge, close under a tree from the trunk of which the bark had been torn and stripped. A few yards further off something grey, inert, was lying, a huddled-up heap of humanity twisted into a strange unnatural shape. Again the chalky pallor spread even to her lips, her eyes became lit with the old terror. She withdrew her head with a little moan, and resumed her flight. Away up on the hillside was the little country railway station. She fixed her eyes upon it and ran, keeping always ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... parted," asserted the Head. "It would be unnatural for me to have any interest in a man made of tin. Please close the door and ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... vessels on the same day. Poor Harry lived to carry a broad pennant in the service, and Hugh died in command of a frigate. This boy, too! He was a nurtured on board his father's vessel, and learned, from his majesty's discipline, how to turn his arms against his king. There is something shockingly unnatural in that circumstance. Miss Alice, 'tis the child inflicting a blow on the parent. 'Tis such men as these, with Washington at their heads, who maintain the bold ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ten o'clock a strange thing happened. The hotel clocks showed the hour and Mr. Prohack's watch showed the hour, and Carthew was not there with the car. Mr. Prohack could not understand this unnatural failure to appear on the part of Carthew, for Carthew had never been known to be late (save when interfered with by Mimi), and therefore never could be late. Mr. Prohack fretted for a quarter of an hour, and then caused the hotel-garage ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... farmyard. There isn't any wheat or chaff or anything of that sort in the barn, and there never will be again: there's just a pianola and a dancing floor, and if a cow came into this farmyard everybody in the place would be shooing it out again. They'd regard it as a most unnatural object." ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... that into the lowest brutality and wretchedness—to them, while they were making idols of wood and stone; eating dead carcases; and burying their daughters alive; careless of chastity, of justice, of property; sunk in unnatural crimes, dead in trespasses and sins; hateful and hating one another—a man, one of their own people had come, saying: "I have a message from the one righteous God. His curse is on all this, for it is unlike Himself. He will ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... his chair and seated himself. His face was curiously white. It was in an unnatural voice that he said: "How ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... should at Paris be thought too liberal in his religious views (having been complimented for it) which he was very proud of—and thought it necessary to tell the Emperor he was a good Catholic. This is not unnatural in his peculiar position. When Lord Clarendon goes to Paris, he will be able to silence any further allusion to these idle stories which only lead to mischief, and which even Lord Cowley seems to have made more of (as to his own feelings upon them) than was necessary, but that is equally ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... from other satellites in being exceptionally large compared with the size of its primary; it is as big as some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. The earth is the only one of the small planets that has an appreciable moon, and hence there is nothing forced or unnatural in supposing that it may have had ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... her own tumultuous feelings and to carry out Barbara's prescription for the treatment of overgrown babies; but the deuce of it was that though in her eyes Jaffery was pleasantly overgrown, she could not for the life of her regard him as a baby. So it came to pass that an unnatural pair continued to meet and mystify and misunderstand each other to the great content of the high gods and of one unimportant human philosopher ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... made use of the most formal and Squarcionesque contours in his surroundings. The rocks are of an unnatural, geological structure. The towers of Jerusalem are defined in elaborate perspective, and a band of classic figures fills the middle distance. The sleeping forms of the disciples are laid about like so many draped statues taken from their pedestals. The choir of child ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... remember consigning the paper to a state of irremediable spiritual ruin. I am very sorry for this now, and I apologise both to the man and to the paper. I have not the least idea what was the meaning of this unnatural anger; I mention it as a psychological confession. It was immediately followed by extreme hilarity, and I made so many silly jokes to the policeman that he disgraced himself by continual laughter before all the ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... constitution was weak, the cryptia, the stern hierarchy of age etc. Plut., Inst. Lac. 2, appreciates the bad taste of the black broth at its true value. The Cretan community of goods was based chiefly on the unnatural relation created by the authorities known as paiderastia; and which was a very efficient means to prevent over-population. (Plat., De Legg, I, 636. Arist., ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... not unnatural that from the day of Mr. Lincoln's death, his views as to the proper mode of reconstruction should become a subject of warm dispute between the partisans of different theories; yet no controversy could be less profitable for the single reason that ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... I'm the wife of William Tell; Oh, but to be a man!—to have an arm To fit a heart swelling with the sense of wrong! Unnatural—insufferable wrong! When makes the tyrant ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... course, as Laura knew, about Selina's disappearance, in the way of treating it as irregular; but the servants pretended so hard not to be aware of anything in particular that they were like pickpockets looking with unnatural interest the other way after they have cribbed a fellow's watch. To a certainty, in a day or two, the governess would give him warning: she would come and tell him she couldn't stay in such a place, and he would tell her, in return, ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... look on fertile France, And see the cities and the towns defaced By wasting ruin of the cruel foe. As looks the mother on her lowly babe When death doth close his tender dying eyes, See, see the pining malady of France; Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds, Which thou thyself hast given her woful breast. O, turn thy edged sword another way; Strike those that hurt, and hurt not those that help. One drop of blood drawn from thy country's bosom Should grieve thee more than streams of foreign gore: Return thee therefore ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... She scarcely noticed it at all. In her countenance was no annoyance—no sharp pain, that even in that first bridal hour she was not first and sole, as every woman may righteously wish to be. There came to her no sting of regret, scarcely unnatural, to watch another woman's children already taking the first and best of that fatherly love which it would be such exquisite joy to see lavished upon her own. Alas! poor Christian! all these things passed over her as the wind ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... quite seriously," began Yourii, with unnatural earnestness. "I love you, believe me, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... took place in one of the lecture rooms of Grace Hall. There was a full attendance of the entering class, while the absence of sophomores was considered by those who had heard of former freshman elections at Erskine as something unnatural and of evil portent. ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... my relief Lalage laughed. It was an excited, unnatural laugh; and it was not very far from crying. Still ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... fine voice, but be certain it has its defects. Your articulation is vicious, and the gestures upon which you pride yourself, are, in most cases, unnatural. Do not rely upon the fire of momentary inspiration. Nothing is more deceptive. The great Garrick said: "I do not depend upon that inspiration which idle mediocrity awaits." Talma declared that he absolutely ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... the sky was overcast, and tempest clouds, fraught with lightning and thunder, were hanging black and horrid over the town of Logrono. The little troop, resting on their arms, stood awaiting the arrival of their unnatural enemies; rage fired their minds as they thought of the deaths of their fathers, their sons, and their dearest relatives, who had perished, not by the hand of God, but, like infected cattle, by the hellish arts of Egyptian sorcerers. ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... the nearest public promenade, to breathe the pure air and to gain strength for the day. In future, she was to deny herself this sweet gratification. It was such a sacrifice, as the innocent and virtuous, and I may add the tasteful, who are cooped up amid the unnatural restraints of a town, will best know how to appreciate. Still it was made without a murmur, though not without ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... her hands clasped across the back of her head; a crimson spot burning on each cheek, and an unnatural ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... or James A. Garfield, who drove the canal boat and rose to be President of the United States. But the subconscious ideal which is always in his mind, upon which he patterns unthinkingly his speech and his manners and his dreams of success, is—and it would be unnatural if it were otherwise—some local potentate who will not carry home his own little bag of Conant currency when he receives his salary at the end of the month. What are a name and a few moral platitudes about a dead-and-gone hero? What ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... prayer. Many of these are fanatics, some are epileptics, some are insane. They undergo self-torture of the most horrible kinds and frequently prove their sincerity by causing themselves to be buried alive, by starving to death, or by posing themselves in unnatural attitudes with their faces or their arms raised to heaven until the sinews and muscles are benumbed or paralyzed and they fall unconscious from exhaustion. These are tests of purity and piety. Zealots frequently ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... scene—(in imitation of one of the least Shakspearian of all Shakspeare's works, if it be his, the scene between Richard and Lady Anne,)—in which Edith is yielding to a few words and tears, not only unnatural, but disgusting. In Shakspeare, Lady Anne is described as a weak, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... unnatural for a man not to take all he can get. Therefore it has not been very difficult, I fancy, to persuade some of the ignorant people that a deep scheme to wrong them must be hid under the apparent plan for righting them. It is easier to believe that ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... measure for the manufacture of criminals. Freedom, not confinement, is the natural state of man, and the only condition under which influences for reformation can have their full efficiency.... Prison life is unnatural at best. Man is a social creature. Confinement tends to lower his consciousness of dignity and responsibility, to weaken the motives which govern his relations to his race, to impair the foundations of character and unfit him for independent ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... dim in the uncertain light! Who would choose such a spot for a home? Surely only those whose deeds would not bear the light of day. And why that deadly silence and torpor in a house inhabited by human beings? It seemed unnatural and uncanny, and as a great white owl swept by on silent wing with a hollow note of challenge, Cuthbert felt a chill sense of coming ill creep through his veins and run down his spine; and fearful lest his resolution should desert him at the last, he raised his hand and gave the thrice-repeated ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green |
