"Unreasonable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cause a failure of justice. They had waited patiently, and were apparently no nearer seeing justice executed than in the beginning. So they proposed to take the law into their own hands. The remedy was, to do away with all but proper defences and execute the law without unreasonable delay. ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... resistance, however, was to a great extent due to causes not of Richard's own making. Though the French in 1386 abandoned their attempt at invasion, the preparations to resist them had been costly, and Englishmen were in an unreasonable mood. Things, they said, had not gone so in the days of Edward III. A cry for reform and retrenchment, for more victories and less expense, was ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... did not know what an unreasonable boy you are," replied the father angrily. "If you say another word about oysters, you shall not ride ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... History of Corsica, you have no materials which others have not, or may not have. You have, somehow, or other, warmed your imagination. I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession. Mind your own affairs, and leave the Corsicans to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... of this arrangement has made it the subject of much enthusiastic declamation among the Gothic architects, almost as unreasonable, in some respects, as the declamation of the Renaissance architects respecting Greek structure. The fact is, that the whole northern buttress system is based on the grand requirement of tall windows and vast masses of light at the end of the apse. In order to gain this quantity ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... experiment requiring twenty-five hundred atmospheres, when the thermometer marks 93 deg. in the shade, indictable at common law. To desire more than one, under such circumstances, is unreasonable, and even wicked.] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... full of her visit to Semple House the preceding evening. Dinorah was no restraint. The slaves Joris owned, like those of Abraham, were born or brought up in his own household; they held to all the family feelings with a faithful, often an unreasonable, tenacity. ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... not find many words in which to thank her. The feeling that I was not going, did not need to leave it all, filled my heart with a happiness as deep as it was unfounded and unreasonable. ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... unreasonable, to be sure, but sometimes Mrs. Farrell used to wonder how her neighbors could be so hard-hearted as to go past unconcernedly, and not notice the necessities which, all the while, she was doing her ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... state of things is fermenting at present among a section of the Koreans. It is possible that if left unchecked, it may culminate in some shocking crime. Now after carefully studying the cause and nature of the dissatisfaction just referred to, we find that it is both foolish and unreasonable.... ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... raising up children to be missionaries, and of thus preaching by proxy. Proxy is the universal resort. Now some proxy effort, and much indeed, is proper and indispensable; but must it not strike every mind, that such a universal and indiscriminate resort to it is utterly unreasonable? ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... are as unreasonable as your master. Now I have a fear that this will not last. I am too ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... to him. He owned some half-dozen houses at Staplehurst, one of which was occupied by the Pardues, and he lived on the rents of these, and the money saved by his thrifty father. The rents he asked were not unreasonable, but if a tenant failed to pay, out he must go. He might as well appeal to the ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... cannot apprehend the formalities of a treaty more than I do, nor so much the success of it. Yet in earnest your father will not find my brother Peyton wanting in civility (though he is not a man of much compliment unless it be in his letters to me), nor an unreasonable person in any thing so he will allow him, out of his kindness to his wife, to set a higher value upon his sister than she deserves. I know not how he may be prejudiced upon the business, but he is ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... to believe every word at its face value; but her very readiness to do so made her cautious. The story was one of every day and bore no marks of improbability; yet among Raymond's faults she could not remember any unreasonable relations with the other sex. It had always been one bright spot in his dead father's opinion that the young man did not care about drink or women, and was not intemperate, save in his passion for athletic ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... more. If they are freed from many tasks now put upon them, it is not unreasonable to ask that this time be put on more careful thinking. Too many a minister of to-day is, intellectually, something of a flibbertigibbet. His sermons do not take hold, because they have not the roots to take hold with. How many ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... soldiers are discontented with their rations of dhurra; and to-day I was addressed by an unreasonable mob, demanding an increase of corn which does not exist. These people never think of to-morrow, and during the long voyage from Tewfikeeyah they have been stealing the corn, and drinking ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... type of Mrs. Sand's convictions—if convictions they may be called—or, at least, the allegory under which her doubts are represented, is, in parts, very finely drawn; contains many passages of truth, very deep and touching, by the side of others so entirely absurd and unreasonable, that the reader's feelings are continually swaying between admiration and something very like contempt—always in a kind of wonder at the strange mixture before him. But let us hear ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... evidence against Mrs. Sterne's character in the ordinary sense, and hardly any of value against her temper, she seems (which is perhaps not wonderful) to have latterly preferred to live apart from her husband, and to have put him to considerable, if not unreasonable, expenses by her fancy for wandering about France ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... "It is not unreasonable to suspect that Marlanx, or some of his agents, having concluded that the Countess knew too much of their operations, and might not be a safe repository, decided to remove her before it was too late. Understand, gentlemen, I don't believe the Countess is in sympathy ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... ways of doing a thing that could just as well be done in one? If the Germans had contented themselves with insisting upon sixteen useless variations for infrequent words, such as hippopotamus, for instance, Ramsey might have thought the affair unreasonable but not necessarily vicious—it would be easy enough to avoid talking about a hippopotamus if he ever had to go to Germany. But the fact that the Germans picked out a and the and many other little words in use ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... at each alternately. So the days rolled on. Josephine fell into a state that almost defies description; her heart was full of deadly wounds, yet it seemed, by some mysterious, half-healing balm, to throb and ache, but bleed no more. Beams of strange, unreasonable complacency would shoot across her; the next moment reflection would come, she would droop her head, and sigh piteously. Then all would merge in a wild terror of detection. She seemed on the borders of a river of bliss, new, ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... "A empty stomach is a plumb unreasonable thing. But the preacher guy done some good, at that. He set Toledo Blake to thinkin' which was somethin' new ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... (Fig. 1, Plate III.), is so called from its being thick like a club. People possessing this class of Thumb belong to the Elementary type as far as Will is concerned. They are brutal and like animals in their unreasonable obstinacy. If they are opposed they fly into ungovernable passions and blind rages. They have no control over themselves, and are liable to go to any extreme of violence or crime during one of their tempers. In fact the clubbed-shaped ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... while I'm gone. The doctor said she might have, any time. Were you headed for our place? If you are, come on; I was just starting back. I don't dare be away any longer." If that were a real unburdening, Ward was an unreasonable young man. Billy Louise looked at him again, and this time her eyes ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... speaking of Tavish as he had last known him on the Firepan. Crazy! Going mad! And at last he had killed himself. Was it possible that a man of Tavish's sort could be haunted for so long by spectres of the past? It seemed unreasonable. He thought of Father Roland and of the mysterious room in the Chateau, where he worshipped at the shrine of a woman and a ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... was employed as dispenser, at a salary of thirty-five shillings a week, by a medical man with a large practice. His income, therefore, fell considerably within the hundred pound limit; and, all things considered, it was not unreasonable that he should be allowed to expend the whole of this sum on domestic necessities. But it came to pass that Nicholas, in his greed of wealth, obtained supplementary employment, which benefited him to the extent of a yearly ten pounds. Called upon to render his statement to the surveyor of income-tax, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... ineffectual whenever the real sentiment of mankind is opposed to it. The divine law is set aside as soon as it conflicts with the popular opinion. In exceptional cases, indeed, the credit attached to unreasonable practices leads to fanaticism, asceticism, and even insanity; but superhuman terrors fail at once when they try to curb the action of genuine substantial motives. Hence we must admit that they are ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... not unreasonable, my dear Captain Okewood," he replied, "but you will understand that I am not to be trifled with, so I give you fair warning. I will give ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... both natural and unreasonable. But reason would have been unnatural at such a time ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... "I feel honored that the young man should make my house his headquarters whenever his fancy leads him to indulge his sportive instincts. Youth must be served, you know. But Mrs. Hollister has such a charmingly unreasonable way of holding me responsible for her son's conduct! And since she happens just now to be our guest—well, you get ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... seem to me an unreasonable reply, that any mother would object to her son's marrying a girl whose father she could throw into ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... themselves. All acids eat into the enamel, as vinegar or lemon-juice does into marble; and one of the best means of preserving this protecting armor of the teeth is never to eat the unripe windfalls of fruit, which I have seen unreasonable children pick up in orchards and devour so recklessly. They give sufficient warning, by their acidity, that they are not fit for food, and when this warning is neglected, they take their revenge by corroding the enamel of the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... was going to confess, that she was going to derange his cherished plan; and unreasonable anger awoke in the man who had been more than willing ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... of success will far outweigh the fraction of failure, and when the profits and losses of the scheme came to be balanced year by year we have no doubt that socially, physically, morally and financially we shall be able to show so enormous a gain that the most unreasonable of ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... city of New York, or if you have ever been in the city of New York for any long time, you know how disheartening, how terrible, and how altogether unreasonable the climate can be at times. But you also know how heavenly it can be on an autumn day, when the sky and the air and the water are all in a good humor. To see and to feel the best of it, you must be down in ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... necessity of taking into account the provisions of Article 5 analysed above, which, by its reference to Article 11 of the Covenant, renders the application of paragraph 8 of Article 15 of the Covenant more flexible. After very careful consideration it appeared that it would be unreasonable and unjust to regard as ipso facto an aggressor a State which, being prevented through the operation of paragraph 8 of Article 15 from urging its claims by pacific methods and being thus left to its own resources, is ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... will avoid her in future. She is nothing to me; but I can't refuse to speak to her. You are unreasonable." ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... conspirators a man who presumes to my daughter's hand! Come, Gallagher, let you and me understand each other. I defy you, or Biddy, or any one, to make good your story. But if you are frank with me, you won't find me unreasonable. ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... properties thereon," he (King) had, while waiting for instructions from England, decided to prevent any foreigner whatever from building vessels whose length of keel exceeded 14 feet, except, of course, such vessel was built in consequence of shipwreck by distressed seamen. There was nothing unreasonable in this prohibition, as the whole territory being a penal settlement, one of the Royal instructions for its government was that no person should be allowed to build vessels without the express permission of the ...
— The Americans In The South Seas - 1901 • Louis Becke
... in one of those fits of sadness for which tears are the sole remedy; so Mary Seyton, perceiving that not only would every consolation be vain, but also unreasonable, far from continuing to react against her mistress's melancholy, fully agreed with her: it followed that the queen, who was suffocating, began to weep, and that her tears brought her comfort; then little by little she regained self-control, and this crisis passed as usual, leaving her firmer and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... be unreasonable to expect anything beyond a person's best. And now, sir, if you please, I will conduct you to the future editor of the Review. As you are to co-operate, sir, I deem it ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... denominator of men's souls, to fall just within the natural comprehension, it cannot obviously have any chance with a literary ambition which aims at falling just outside it. It is quite right to invent subtle analyses and detached criticisms, but it is unreasonable to expect them to be punctuated with roars of popular applause. It is possible to conceive of a mob shouting any central and simple sentiment, good or bad, but it is impossible to think of a mob shouting a distinction in terms. In the matter of ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... had engaged himself to a very young girl, and that he would marry at once. There was nothing wrong in this marriage, but Jasper and I chose to consider it a sin. We had never forgotten our mother, and we thought it a dishonor to her. We forgot our father's loneliness. In short, we were unreasonable and behaved as unreasonably as unreasonable men will on such occasions. Hot and angry words passed between our father and ourselves. We neither liked our father's marriage nor his choice. Of course, we were scarcely likely to turn the old man from ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... this kind amongst the profession, it is no more than would be pronounced 'in reason' by all candid men. And certainly, said one of the three, you wouldn't look for perfection in a tinker? Undoubtedly a seraphic tinker would be an unreasonable postulate; though, perhaps, the man in all England that came nearest to the seraphic character in one century was a tinker—namely, John Bunyan. But, as my triad of tinkers urged, men of all professions do cheat ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... cleanliness and refinement worked itself out in such little matters as the material and color and fit of garments, and all the trifles of the toilet. A soiled or rumpled article of attire showed a dangerous lack of something that should make up the womanly character. He had not reduced all these unreasonable men's notions to a system by which to measure femininity. He did not even know he had them. An excessive constitutional refinement and keenness of perception made him involuntarily look for such scrupulous delicacy as belonging of course to every woman ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... supply of Indian meal porridge was always kept in readiness. Once, when she was Superior, a poor woman not satisfied with all she had already got, represented her great want of a pair of shoes in addition. Without the least discomposure at the unreasonable importunity, the charitable Mother took off her own and presented them to her, reserving for herself a very poor, slight pair, quite insufficient to protect her from the cold. The time was fast approaching, when she who had ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... that both you and Stampa have taken an unreasonable dislike to Mr. Bower," she said determinedly. The words were out before she quite realized their import. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... at the mention of Benoni's religion. No people are more insanely prejudiced against the Hebrew race than the Germans. They indeed maintain that they have greater cause than others, but it always appears to me that they are unreasonable about it. Benoni chanced to be a Jew, but his peculiarities would have been the same had he been a Christian or an American. There is only one Ahasuerus Benoni ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... to this severity in keeping minute ordinances, alike narrow, fanatical, and unreasonable, produced another sect called the Sadducees,—a revolutionary party with a more progressive spirit, which embraced the more cultivated and liberal part of the nation; a minority indeed,—a small party as far as numbers went,—but influential from ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... crossed the ocean to the new-found Indies, touching once the mainland of South America. No need to go into the details of his after life. How can one have the heart to tell of the quick subsiding of his triumph, the malicious envy of courtiers, the unreasonable discontent of subordinates, the selfish ambition of rivals, the wanton wickedness of the West Indian settlers; of his removal from the governorship, and his voyage home in chains, over his Atlantic, of his weakening health, his accumulating anxieties, his troubled old age? The peaceful ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... would have thought a puerile reason, that with him 13 had always proved a luck number, he had much wished that to-day should be his wedding day. And Helen Pomeroy, his future wife, who never thought anything he did or desired to do puerile or unreasonable, had been quite willing to fall in with his fancy. The lucky day had actually been chosen. Then a tiresome woman, a sister of Miss Pomeroy's mother, had said she could not be present at the marriage if it took place ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... issue of the Revolution could have been settled if Great Britain had adopted the principle of Lord Chatham's bill, and if that bill on the one side and the Fourth Resolution on the other had been taken as the basis of settlement, it is at least not unreasonable to conclude that the extreme states rights theory was put forward more in order that the Americans might have something to concede in a bargain with Great Britain than from any belief in the justness of it, and that the real belief of the Americans was that the Colonies had always ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... to be supposed, for example, that if either of your fathers were living now, and had any mistrust on that subject, his mind would not be changed by the change of circumstances involved in the change of your years? Untenable, unreasonable, inconclusive, and preposterous!' ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... from an official census taken in 1825, was 352,866,012, and we may fairly conclude that during the last twenty-eight years this population has extensively increased. If we assume the annual consumption of tea at four lb. per head on the above population; and this is no unreasonable assumption in a country, where, to quote from Murray's valuable work on China, tea "is the national drink, which is presented on every occasion, served up at every feast, and even sold on the public roads;" we shall have a tolerably accurate result as to the total ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the prisoners. This occurred in March, 1386, when it was unanimously resolved that danger would result to the city if Northampton was allowed to come within 100 miles of it.(670) The resolution caused much annoyance to the duke, who characterised it as unreasonable and outrageous, and led to some heated correspondence.(671) It had, however, the desired effect of at least postponing ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... it appeared, in persuading his wife and Chando to proceed to the coast, but the descriptions he gave of the wonders they would see overcame their objections. Still, Chando expressed the not unreasonable fear that he might be seized by Abdullah and carried off again into slavery, and very nearly turned the scale the other way. Mr Hanson, however, through Sayd, promised him protection, and his mother's fears ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... proved that the old French sense of humor was never likely to become extinct. Richard added that he now understood why MM. Debienne and Poligny were retiring from the management of the National Academy of Music. Business was impossible with so unreasonable a ghost. ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... down this fall, Fanny. I'm not unreasonable, I hope. Don't say a word more: I forgot your neuralgia, my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... several indications of this, unmistakeable, though expressed, perhaps, but by a single word. Now it is true both Mr. Collier and Mr. Dyce are committed to a positive opinion on this subject; and it would be unreasonable to expect either of those gentlemen to change their views, except with the fullest proof and after the maturest consideration. But who, besides these, is interested in maintaining the precedence of Marlowe? These remarks have been called ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... "'Tis not unreasonable to believe it," answered one of the inferiors. "The Dons are said to run this passage often, in order to escape speaking us gentlemen, who sail ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... entirely destitute of courage, who hath no spark of manliness, who is the slave of procrastination, who always acts with indiscretion, who is addicted to sensual pleasures, is seldom respected by his subjects. Benefited as thou has been, whence is this unreasonable grief of thine? Do not undo this graceful act done by the sons of Pritha, by indulging in such grief. When thou shouldst joy and reward the Pandavas, thou art grieving, O king? Indeed, this behaviour of thine is inconsistent. Be cheerful, do not cast away thy life; but remember with a pleased heart ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... It is unreasonable to be offended by acts or speeches of an insane patient, to bear a grudge or expect an apology. Very frequently such a patient will turn savagely upon the nearest and dearest, and make cutting remarks and accusations or exhibit baseless contempt. All this conduct must be ignored and forgotten; ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... business without getting nasty with each other. I'll take your promissory note, at seven per cent, and you can secure me with a little mortgage on your Spring- street-business block. It's worth a million and a half. I am not so unreasonable as to imagine even a rich man like you can produce a million dollars cash on such notice, so during the past week I took the liberty of having the title searched and an instrument of first mortgage drawn up by myself. All we have to do is to insert the figures ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... noun, hog, and as an adjective, dirty. He thought the river well named. He also mentioned that on the eastern side of the stream there was an excellent camping-place, but that much pains had been taken to ford it to a very poor one. After pondering this apparently unreasonable movement he asked: "Why did we not camp on that grassy park on ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... Religion will not content them, but we must be forced to govern by Council, such as it shall please them to appoint us; a thing so far beyond all measure, that we think the only mention of so unreasonable a demand is sufficient ... for what other thing is this but to dissolve the whole policy, and in a manner to invert the very order of nature, to make the Prince obey ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... way. Willoughby was trying to yoke Dixon's leaders, while Dixon, owing to his screwmatics, could do nothing but sit on his horse, cursing with wearisome tautology, and casting glances of frantic apprehension toward the ram-paddock. His anxiety was not unreasonable, for there had just come into sight an upright speck, too small to be a horseman; and it was easy to guess who was the likeliest person to be coming on foot from that direction. There is a limit ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... march off to the fighting front, the S. B. A. L. held a soviet in their big grey-stone barracks and refused to get ready to go out because they had grievances against their British officers. This was aggravatingly unreasonable and utterly unmilitary. Severe measures would have to be used. They were given till 2:00 p. m. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... the third time that morning, as he glanced nervously toward the door; but Zoie was exclaiming in her own way and sobbing louder and louder; furthermore she was compelling Jimmy to listen to an exaggerated account of her many disappointments in her unreasonable husband. Seeing no possibility of escape, without resorting to physical violence, Jimmy stood his ground, wondering what to expect next. He did not ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... down both by Moses and by St. Paul. If a man pretended to be a prophet, he was to predict some definite event that should take place at some definite time, at no unreasonable distance: and if it were not fulfilled, he was to be punished as an impostor. But if he accompanied his prophecy with any doctrine subversive of the exclusive Deity and adorability of the one God of heaven and earth, or any seduction to a breach of God's commandments, he was ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... in the west, like a wave of unreasonable happiness, and tore eastward across England, trailing with it the frosty scent of forests and the cold intoxication of the sea. In a million holes and corners it refreshed a man like a flagon, and astonished him like a blow. In the inmost chambers of intricate and embowered houses ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... Martha was wrong or unreasonable in thinking that Mary should have helped her. Jesus did not say she was wrong; he only reminded Martha that she ought not to let things fret and vex her. "Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things." It was not her serving that he reproved, but the fret that ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... get to Italy at Easter. Herbert had the offer of some private pupils, and needed Rickie's help. It seemed unreasonable to leave England when money was to be made in it, so they went to Ilfracombe instead. They spent three weeks among the natural advantages and unnatural disadvantages of that resort. It was out ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... opposition from the country members generally, without reference to party, that Bute was induced to alter both the sum and the mode of levying it—four shillings per hogshead was to be paid, and it was to be levied upon the grower, through the medium of the exciseman. This was not an unreasonable tax, for ale and porter were already taxed both directly and indirectly, and no argument could show that while a liquor produced from malt contributed to the public exigencies, a liquor produced from apples should be exempt. Englishmen, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Lemoine was a citizen of Chili. You see, that fact puts the matter entirely out of my hands. I am powerless. I could only advise the President not to carry out his intentions; but he is to-night in a most unreasonable and excited mood, and I fear nothing can be done to save your friend. If he had been a citizen of France, of course this execution would not have been permitted to take place; but as it is, it is not our affair. M. Lemoine seems to have been talking with some indiscretion. He ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... had been represented that the creche would be self-sustaining, it now became evident that the plan had grown beyond all anticipated or intended proportion, and that instead of being self-supporting the board would be called upon for unlimited and unreasonable outlay. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... to get himself a cigar from a box which stood on a little table by my side. In the full light of the room I saw in his eyes that slightly mocking expression with which he habitually covers up his sympathetic impulses of mirth and pity before the unreasonable complications the idealism of mankind puts into the simple but poignant problem of conduct ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... considered it as their indispensible duty to relieve them as much as possible, and provide for the safety of the state by a proportionable charge on all its subjects. For as the exemption of one part from this equal charge was unreasonable and unjust, so it might tend to alienate the hearts of these subjects residing in one corner of the empire from those in another, and destroy that union and harmony in which the strength ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... persuade yourself that it is your duty to obey an unjust and tyrannical decree, which sacrifices the happiness of two to the unreasonable ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... note in this connection that the last four years of the records are explained by Professor Gowell as being low, due to various "accidents" (?) It is unreasonable to suppose the true explanation of these "accidents" would be found in connection with the increased responsibility and size of ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... of it don't sound so unreasonable, although I don't believe there is much of a demand for that kind of thing. But the other—-the—the knickerbocker things—that's not even practical. It will make an ugly garment, and the women who would fall for a fad like that wouldn't ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... such things. We have a high sense of the importance of the Ulster problem. Nothing, I assure you, is further from our minds than the desire to minimize or treat with undue flippancy the conscientious objections, even the somewhat unreasonable fears of men ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... with an instinctive dislike for scene making] Don't be unreasonable, Hector. It was quite natural of Mr Malone to open my letter: his name was ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... you may be able to give chapter and verse when you denounce him in print. The Chief of the Department may even invite you to drink an absinthe with him in the Sion Casino. But, as for catching your brigand, that request is much too unreasonable to be seriously entertained. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... so tedious, so hot and dusty, that, after walking a few miles upon it, I lost patience altogether with what seemed to be its unreasonable windings, and again made an effort to strike across country by means of by-paths, in order to reach the spot where, according to the map and compass, I thought Vayrac ought to be. I came to a seventeenth ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... your terms, Mr. Holmes. No doubt you are right, and it is unreasonable for us to expect you to act unless we ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Sweet Caps Kid just how it was—how right up to the very last minute I kept expecting the luck to turn and how even then I mighta got it all back if the game-keeper hadn't been so blamed unreasonable and mercenary. When my last chip is gone I holds up a finger for a marker and tells him I'll take another stack of fifty, all blues this time, but he only looks at me sort of chilly and distrustful and remarks in a kind of a bored way that there's ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... oysters, and I am sure he found tough Britons—of whom, I dare say, he made the same complaint as Napoleon Bonaparte the great French General did, eighteen hundred years afterwards, when he said they were such unreasonable fellows that they never knew when they were beaten. They never did know, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... occupied a room at 34, Compton Street, Brunswick Square, in which he lived alone. He suffered from lumbago, as well as from a proud spirit and a broken heart. He had a dread of 'coming to the Workhouse.' Spectral fear which haunts ever the sensitive and poverty-stricken! Unreasonable? Perhaps. But not the less agonising. What comfort may Political Economy and an admirable Poor Law yield to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... of twenty-one days, arranged between Jules Favre and Count Bismarck in negotiations begun at Versailles the latter part of January. The convention was a large body, chosen from all parts of France, and was unquestionably the most noisy, unruly and unreasonable set of beings that I ever saw in a legislative assembly. The frequent efforts of Thiers, Jules Favre, and other leading men to restrain the more impetuous were of little avail. When at the sittings a delegate arose to speak on some question, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the Creation, became acquainted with and yielded to the doctrine of devils, scarcely admits of doubt. Those who conversed with our first parents must have learned from them the circumstances connected with the temptation, fall, and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It is not unreasonable, then, to suppose that the serpent was looked upon at an early period as something more than an ordinary earthly reptile. One can imagine Adam and Eve, when wandering in perplexity and fear, after their first great sin, starting at the sight ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... running the smallest risk of its ever coming to stand upon any dangerous footing of equality. The fatal theory that it was the advantage of the one country that the other should be kept poor, had by this time firmly taken root in the minds of English statesmen, and to it, and to the unreasonable jealousy of a certain number of English traders, the disasters now to be ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... that is absolutely necessary to you, therefore you do not need what He withholds from you—you lack nothing. If you could read aright these things which you call accidents, disappointments, misfortunes, contradictions, which you find unreasonable, untimely, you would blush with confusion, but you do not reflect that all these things are simply the will ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... sooner obey their clergyman, if possible, than contend with him; while the very pride they suppose conquered often returns masked, and causes them to make a merit of their humility and their abstract obedience, however unreasonable: but they cannot so easily persuade themselves there is a merit in ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... who had attained so certain a success with so little delay. Hearing that Tennyson had remarked that the public "hated poetry," Mrs. Browning commented that, "divine poet as he was, and no laurel being too leafy for him," he must yet be unreasonable if he were not gratified with "so immediate and ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... fate roused him from his stupor, and between the consequent excitement and the morning air he acquired an appetite. Philosophical physicians appear to have agreed that sorrow, to a certain extent, is not unfavourable to digestion; and as Popanilla began to entertain some indefinite and unreasonable hopes, the alligator-pears quickly disappeared. In the meantime the little canoe cut her way, as if she were chasing a smuggler; and had it not been for a shark or two who, in anticipation of their services ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... account in Mark and Luke has an air of greater probability, and it has the support of the brief account in John. But there is not a decisive contradiction between Matt. and the other Gospels, and it is therefore unreasonable to pass an unfavourable verdict on any of them. The story in Matt. cannot be discredited as containing an apocryphal miracle, and the mere fact that it is so independent of the other Gospels suggests that ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... Mrs. Jennings should be abandoned to the mercy of Marianne for all the comfort of her domestic hours. To this determination she was the more easily reconciled, by recollecting that Edward Ferrars, by Lucy's account, was not to be in town before February; and that their visit, without any unreasonable ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... provinces who lived on our soil have either perished in the war or fled to their own homes. As for the original settlers[409], who are united to us by ties of marriage, they and their offspring regard this as their home, and we do not think you are so unreasonable as to ask us to kill our parents and brothers and children. All taxes and commercial restrictions we remit. We grant you free entry without supervision, but you must come in daylight and unarmed, while these ties which are still strange and new are growing into ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... "Perhaps it would have been unreasonable, but taking it for granted that he hasn't been communicative, I've a piece of news for you. Some Canadian tourists stayed a night at the Ghyll, two or three months ago, and it seems they met him in British Columbia. I understand he is ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... keep quiet until the Governor-General arrived, as he alone could satisfy their demands. Seeing that they were now more peaceable, I went to the Fort, where several of the inhabitants of the town had assembled. These were most restless, not to say unreasonable. Some thought that to save the town from further disturbance, I should, in the Governor-General's name, have declared the negroes free, but, as, in my opinion, I had no such power, I could not, nor would not, take it upon myself to do so. Nevertheless, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... doubt that that would be so, Herrara; and as she has a nice fortune from her father, you may be sure that she will not trouble about the estates here, and her mother would be welcome to do as she likes with them, which is, after all, not unreasonable, as they are her property and descended to her from her father. Still, I should be glad to learn, if it does not give any great trouble, whether if, as is almost certain—for the people from all the country round took refuge ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... unreasonable to say so, but Jack almost seemed to be endowed with human instincts. He was as restless as I was over long, windy speeches and cross-examinations that were more adapted for the smoking-room of a club than ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... was quite comfortable, and no bother about "Nicht Rauchen" signs. His unreasonable cheerfulness persisted as far as Gloggnitz. There, with the increasing ruggedness of the scenery and his first view of the Raxalpe, came recollection of the urgency of Stewart's last message, of Marie Jedlicka, of the sordid little tragedy that awaited him at the ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens, by no means excluding women;" that a government of the people, by the people, for the people, must be a government of men and women, by men and women, for men and women; and that any other form of government is unreasonable, unjust ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... than amended; and that an extrication from our present dangers is to be looked for in strenuous efforts to preserve the peace, protect the public property, and enforce the laws, rather than in new Guarantees for particular interests, Compromises for particular difficulties, or Concessions to unreasonable demands. ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... him, remembering with a pang that the place I had called home was mine no longer. Those among my friends who know the history of my boyhood understand to some extent my loathing for the cards and dice. It is perhaps unreasonable,—I might be the first to deem it so in any other man,—but when I count up the woe they brought my mother,—father and husband slaves to the same frenzy,—how they wrecked her life and embittered ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson |
