DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • More 'Unnatural' Quotes from Famous Books

... "She would be an unnatural goddaughter if she didn't," said that gentleman, smiling. "She may be your cousin, but I ...

— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Mrs. Lincoln and they planned for the future—they would save a little money and go back to Springfield and he would practice law again. To his wife this unnatural joy was portentous—she remembered that he had been like this just before little Willie died. In the evening they went to Ford's Theatre. Stanton tried to dissuade them because the secret service had heard rumors of assassination. Because Stanton ...

— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers

... It seems unnatural for me to address you in this manner—as if I had cast off the dearer part of myself by the formality. But no other course is open to ...

— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... into the room, poising the tray skilfully in her hand. Nan looked up in a relieved way as she entered. Mrs. Challoner was stretching out her chilled hands to the blaze. Her face had lost its pinched unnatural expression; it was as though the presence of her girls fenced her in securely, and her misfortune grew more shadowy and faded into the background. She drank the tea when it was given to her, and even begged Nan to follow her example. Nan took a little to please her, though ...

— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... side, the small circular building, open to wind, sky and sea, formed the unnatural apex of a natural stairway which led steeply, almost vertically, down to a deep land-locked cove below. The irregular steps carved by nature out of the chalk had been strengthened, and a rough protection ...

— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... "Slavery must have Moral Evil for its foundation, seeing it violates the Law of Nature, as established by its author." "Ambition and avarice on the one hand," thought he, "and social dependence upon the other, affords the former an opportunity of being served at the expense of the latter and this unnatural state of things hath been exemplified in all countries, and all ages of the world from time immemorial." He further said, "Pride and vain glory on the one side, and degradation and oppression on the other creates on the one hand a spirit of contempt, and on the other a spirit ...

— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... light that all objects of the same plane receive identically the same illuminations. If then, one seems favored, it must be by suppression of the rest. Now and then this is necessary, but that it occurs by this means and not by unnatural forcing ...

— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... the blood upon his hands might be indeed called his own, since it was that of his brave countrymen who were fighting for the independence of Scotland, whilst he was assisting its oppressors, who only laughed at and mocked him for his unnatural conduct. He was so much shocked and disgusted that he arose from table, and, going into a neighbouring chapel, shed many tears, and, asking pardon of God for the great crime he had been guilty of, made a solemn vow that he would atone for it by doing all in his power to ...

— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... in 1813. They talked as usual of virtue and human perfectibility; and as the intimacy grew, Shelley, whose chief employment at this time was to discover and relieve genius in distress, began to place his present resources and future prospects at Godwin's disposal. It was not an unnatural relationship to arise between a grateful disciple, heir to a great fortune, and a philosopher, aged, neglected, and sinking ...

— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... at ROSE'S words, has stared at her uninterruptedly since. Now he fights down his emotion and says with unnatural calm:] Very well then. Good-bye and good luck to ...

— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... shepherds and their flocks shall be restored throughout Judah and the Negeb. It would be daring to deny to the Prophet the whole of this prospect. The city was about to be ruined, its houses filled with dead; the land had already been ravaged. His office of doom was discharged; it is not unnatural to believe that his great soul broke out with a vision of the hope beyond for which he had taken so practical a pledge. That is all we can say; some of the details of the prospect ...

— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... underneath the roof, where they stood, permitted them to see on all sides of the tall building, and they looked with much curiosity at the city spread out beneath them. Everything visible was made of wood, and the scene seemed stiff and extremely unnatural. ...

— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... see what he means by it. For love has had for different individuals, ages and nations, a very different significance; and almost every great poet has given it a different interpretation. And this is not unnatural. For love is a passion which, beginning with youth and the hey-day of the blood, expands with the expanding life, and takes new forms of beauty and goodness at every stage. And this is equally true, whether we speak of the individual or ...

— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... was all unnatural. He, the most delicate, the most refined of men—a gentleman in the highest sense of the word—was coarse and loud and vulgar! My heart sank under a sudden sense of misgiving which, with all my love for him, it was impossible to resist. ...

— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... woman. It was perhaps this natural wildness combined with her vanity which tortured Lady Sellingworth most at this period of her life. She still desired happiness and pleasure greedily, indeed with almost unnatural greediness; she still felt that life robbed of the admiration and the longing of men would not be ...

— December Love • Robert Hichens

... a forlorn creature but for the presence of my companion. In his delightful company I half forgot my anxieties, which, exaggerated as they may seem now, ware not unnatural after what I had seen of the confusion and distress that had followed the great battle, nay, which seem almost justified by the recent statement that "high officers" were buried after that battle ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... the time to look at land. Another must try the five yoke of oxen he had that day bought, as if night were the best time to do this. Another had married a wife and could not come, as if night were not a suitable time to enjoy a rich supper with his bride. We wonder at these vain and almost unnatural excuses; but do we find the excuses of men any more reasonable to-day? Men hazard their souls in a life of sin, not for want of invitations, entreaties and warnings from the Lord to come unto him, but because they will not. The Lord pleads with ...

— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... be so, mother. I am willing to acknowledge all their good qualities," said her son; "but these numerous forms which intrude themselves upon every occasion seem like fetters and bonds to free souls. So much unnatural restraint and parade of sanctity is offensive to me. I never could tolerate hypocrites, and such they surely must be, although, of course, they would be shocked at the idea; for under all this excessive humility, this parade of piety, I venture to ...

— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus

... delivering as he did so another vicious blow, this time across Pat's nose—most tender of places. Dazed, trembling, raging with the spirit of battle, he surveyed the man a moment, and then, with an unnatural outcry, half nicker, half roar, he hurtled himself upon his enemy, striking him down. But he did not stop here. When the man attempted to rise he struck him down again, and a third time. Then, seeing the man lying motionless, ...

— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... 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 it than you ...

— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells

... of nationality and declared the nation to be the natural organ of humanity, as opposed to the idea of the state as an artificial organisation: "Nothing seems to be so opposed to the purpose of government as an unnatural extension of territory of a state and a wild confusion of holding different races and nations under the sway of a single sceptre." It was this humanitarian philosophy recognising the natural rights of all nations, great or small, to freedom ...

— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... voice out of the darkness, shrill and unnatural with terror and fatigue. The next moment Fanny Glen herself, bareheaded, panting from her rapid run, white-faced in the light cast by the lantern held by the staff officer, pushed through the group surrounding ...

— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... him? Why go against logic and prolong an unnatural situation which no decent man can understand? This is the question which everybody is asking and to which our investigations enable us to furnish a ...

— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... found that his assailant was the green lady. To her husband she never appeared; but he frequently heard the tones of her voice echoing from the lower apartments, and the faint peal of her cold, unnatural laugh. ...

— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... state robes of George III with such scraps of older fashions as seemed to playgoers for some reason to be romantic. The charm of the theatre in those days was its makebelieve. It has that charm still, not only for the amateurs, who are happiest when they are most unnatural and impossible and absurd, but for audiences as well. I have seen performances of my own plays which were to me far wilder burlesques than Sheridan's Critic or Buckingham's Rehearsal; yet they have produced ...

— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw

... of unnatural gaiety, which the rocks took up and mimicked. 'A plant!' he repeated scornfully. 'Well—yes—a plant. And here,' he added suddenly, showing his right hand, which he had hitherto concealed behind his back—'here is one of ...

— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... content to remain below—nor was that unnatural. Aside from the fear I had of the sloop's yawing and possibly turning turtle, and so imprisoning me in the cabin with no hope of escape therefrom, I felt that I should be more on the alert to seize any opportunity for escape were I at the tiller. So I carried a Mexican poncho which I wound ...

— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... their natural children, or bastards, as to their maintenance. This is the main affliction in other cases, where there is not substance sufficient without breaking into the fortunes of the family. In those cases either a man's legitimate children suffer, which is very unnatural, or the unfortunate mother of that illegitimate birth has a dreadful affliction, either of being turned off with her child, and be left to starve, &c., or of seeing the poor infant packed off with a piece of money to those she-butchers ...

— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... Christ with villany,* *outrage, impiety And oathes great, of usage and of pride! Alas! mankinde, how may it betide, That to thy Creator, which that thee wrought, And with his precious hearte-blood thee bought, Thou art so false and so unkind,* alas! *unnatural Now, good men, God forgive you your trespass, And ware* you from the sin of avarice. *keep Mine holy pardon may you all warice,* *heal So that ye offer *nobles or sterlings,* *gold or silver coins* Or elles silver brooches, spoons, or rings. Bowe ...

— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... Turgenev, or Goncharov. Pages of consummate realism are interwoven with the most fantastical incidents worthy only of the most incorrigible romantics. Scenes of a thrilling interest are interrupted in order to introduce a score of pages of the most unnatural theoretical discussions. Besides, the author is in such a hurry that he seems never to have had the time himself to read over his novels before sending them to the printer. And, worst of all, every one of the heroes of Dostoevski, especially ...

— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... gaze concentrated on the storekeeper. "You're almost an old man," he said, in a slow, unnatural voice; "you have been robbing men and women of their homes for a great many years, and you are still alive. It's surprising that some one ...

— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... white gloves clapping, heads shaking. The noise was strange and rattling. What a curious multiple object a theatre-audience was! It seemed to have a million heads, a million hands, and one monstrous, unnatural consciousness. The singers appeared before the curtain—the applause rose ...

— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... my two sons are enjoying, but my misfortunes has never ceased by day and night to embarras me and torture, and I am plunged in utmost degredation of sorrow to no purpose. At present a law suit is hurled on me by that unworthy and unnatural or I should rather say that prodigious blackguard man viz my brother who is son of my father and mother, and (ah! ah!) how mortifying it is indeed to a person of ...

— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... it looks just like you, and I'll leave it to Ma.' That was too much, and Pa got mad in a minute. He always gets mad at me. But he went up and looked in the basket, and he said it was some Dutch baby, and was evidently from the lower strata of society, and the unnatural mother wanted to get rid of it, and he said he didn't know any 'Almira' at all. When he called it a dutch baby, and called attention to its irregular features, that made Ma mad, and she took it up out of the basket ...

— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... Scraggs, "there come a profound peace on my household. It was 'Zeke, what kin I give you for dinner to-day?' and 'Zeke' this and that, until I says to myself, 'We're going to have cyclones followed by a heavy frost if I tarry here,' so I pulled my freight to Arizona, till this unnatural condition of things passed away. I understand Mrs. Scraggs in her war-paint, but Mrs. Scraggs with her eyes uprolled to Heaven and a white dove perched on each and every ear is a thing I'm not goin' to witness the spoilin' of, if I kin ...

— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips

... modest, retiring to a fault, yet a delightful companion and a most inspiring teacher. There was in him a combination which at first seemed singular; but experience has since shown me that it is by no means unnatural, for he was not only an ideal professor of Latin, but a gifted musician. The first revelation of this latter quality was made to me in a manner which showed his modesty. One evening during our student days at Berlin, at a reception given by the American minister of that period,—Governor ...

— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... had disappeared behind the western horizon; and just as the grey dawn began to appear in the east his eyes were attracted to what seemed to be a dog moving among the picketed ponies. Upon a closer scrutiny, he saw that its actions were unnatural. ...

— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... the drum, this snapping together of the heels at the sound of a sergeant's voice, this sudden freezing to a rigid pose without the move of a muscle, except at the word of command, was something almost beyond him. It seemed utterly unnatural, if not utterly repugnant. Accustomed to swinging along the winding banks of the White Oak, or the cow-paths of the pasture lot, this moving only at a measured pace of twenty-eight inches, and one hundred and ten to the minute, ...

— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden

... being is cemented with sickly qualities: ambition, jealousy, envy, revenge, superstition, and despair have so natural a possession in us, that its image is discerned in beasts; nay, and cruelty, so unnatural a vice; for even in the midst of compassion we feel within, I know not what tart-sweet titillation of ill-natured pleasure in seeing others suffer; and the children ...

— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... to talk. The unnatural self-repression he had practiced gave way before the flood of his sociability. It was Joan's amazing beauty as she stumbled wretchedly into the circle of his firelight, her neck drawn up to its full length, her head crowned high with soft, black masses, her lids dropped under the weight of ...

— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... leaden cloud began to stream across the crags above, intensifying, until it seemed unnatural, the glow of light and color ...

— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... guitar-like music; and pyrotechnic machines were set up at the corners of the streets. Tinsel-covered saints were carried about on the shoulders of painted maskers; and there were Pilate and the Centurion, and the Saviour—a spectacle absurd and unnatural; and yet a spectacle that may be witnessed every week in a Mexican village, and which, with but slight variation, has been exhibited every week for ...

— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... risk, should those strenuous efforts fail into which Sir Edward Grey, as he then was, had thrown his strength. He was endeavoring with all his might to guard the peace of Europe from danger. As he and I had for many years been on terms of close intimacy, it was not unnatural that he should ask me to do what I could by helping in some of the diplomatic work which was his, as well as by engaging in my own special task. Indeed, the two phases of activity could ...

— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane

... him such a pretty smile across the room that he obeyed the impulse to go to her and stand at her side; then, when she left him to dance with De Courcy, she gave him her fan and bouquet and fleecy white wrap to hold, and somehow it seemed not unnatural that De Courcy should bring her back to him as to a sentinel when the dance was over. Thus it was as she sat, flushed a little and smiling, her face uplifted to his, while she thanked him for taking care of her possessions, ...

— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... a fiend, one of the unnatural creatures our wretched European civilisation has made only to destroy the lives of men. Don't let us speak of her! never let us think of her! She is nothing to me. You are my world, my all. If she drives us away from here, there are other parts of the ...

— Six Women • Victoria Cross

... helot people blunts the finer sensibilities of men and women alike; when you can look unshrinkingly at the separation of husband and wife on the auction-block, when you can see innocent children taken from their mothers and sold into eternal separation, I think it is not unnatural in me to fear that a woman with my convictions would not be happy mated with a Southerner. All this is cruel, I fear you will think, but it would be crueller for me to encourage a love that, under present circumstances, would bring ...

— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... constrained to cease from their warfare and become friends and cooeperators. It is absurd to suppose that the war of the industrial classes can continue to be waged, as at present, each seeking to overpower the other. Such a condition of things is simply irrational. All warfare is illogical and unnatural. Human beings are not made to live together on any such terms. They are made to be friends and helpers of one another. The elimination of war is the next step in industrial evolution. And it is the business of the church of Jesus Christ to speak the reconciling word. ...

— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... It's all right, Major, I feel better now. I've found it. 'Twas the key. I left it in the front door lock here when I went away this mornin'. I guess there's nothin' unnatural about me, after all; guess nothin's goin' ...

— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... business!" he shouted at last with unnatural loudness. "Kindly make the declaration demanded of you. Show him. Alexandr Grigorievitch. There is a complaint against you! You don't pay your ...

— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... niece of Claudius, and such marriages were considered unnatural; but Agrippina had subtly shown that, the deceased Emperor being her brother, she already had a sort of claim on the throne, and her marriage with Claudius would strengthen the State. Then she marshaled her charms past Claudius, in a phalanx and back, ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... herself chained up for life, spiteful she knew not why. I had only seen you for a moment, and did not know you. I was mad. I was guilty; but still it is a thing that may be considered as not altogether unnatural under the circumstances. And, after all, it was not sincere—it was pique, it was thoughtlessness—it was not that deep-seated malice which you have laid to my charge. Can you not think of this? Can you ...

— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... and we talked the matter over en route. "Why 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 their existence ...

— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... venture to attack with insufficient force a monstrous and formidable serpent concealed in dense thickets amidst dangerous swamps; yet it was dreadful to live in a state of blockade, cut off from all the important duties in which we were engaged, and shut up with our animals in the unnatural light of the cave, enduring constant anxiety ...

— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... infamous Titus Oates pretended, amongst other more abominable falsehoods, to have taken a doctor's degree at Salamanca. In 1679, there was an attempt to bring him to trial for unnatural practices, but the grand jury threw out the bill. These were frequent subjects of reproach among the tory authors. In the Luttrel Collection, there is "An Address from Salamanca to her unknown offspring Dr T.O. concerning the present state of affairs in England." Also a coarse ...

— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... what they wanted; but being a numerous body of men, and not unacquainted with the use of arms, they kept themselves together as a separate party in the state, and at the time of the Union had nearly formed a most unnatural league with their old enemies the Jacobites to oppose that important national measure. Since that time their numbers have gradually diminished; but a good many are still to be found in the western counties, and several, with a better temper than in 1707, have now taken ...

— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... to smother 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 who ...

— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... clashes of the long straight swords. There is no interest in watching the fight: there is no movement, no skill, no grace (I am speaking of my own impressions.) The strongest man wins; the man who, with his heavily-padded arm, always in an unnatural position, can hold his huge clumsy sword longest without growing too weak to be able either to guard ...

— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... policeman who, having observed Evan's maneuvres from across the street, had felt a perhaps not unnatural curiosity and had come over to ...

— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... a Ditty, instead of inditing Odes, and Sonnets, the Gentlemen of the Bon Goust in the Pit would never have been put to all that Grimace in damning the Frippery of State, the Poverty and Languor of Thought, the unnatural Wit, and inartificial Structure of his Dramas. I am, SIR, Your very humble ...

— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... consumer. That the price of kerosene is lower now than it was fifteen years ago is undoubtedly true, but the reductions were brought about not by the trust, but in spite of the trust. The price now maintained is an unnatural one. The Standard Oil Company never lowered the price of its oil except when compelled to do so by competition. The largely increased output of crude oil, the improved methods of refining, the greatly lowered cost of transportation would have lowered ...

— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... an operation quickly perform'd, and whilest the Wood is sappy, the more solid parts may more easily shrink together, and contract the pores or interstitia between them, then in the rotten Wood, where that natural juice seems onely to be wash'd away by adventitious or unnatural moisture; and so though the natural juice be wasted from between the firm parts, yet those parts are kept asunder by the adventitious moystures, and so by degrees settled in ...

— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... anticipating the excitement," said Mrs. Pendleton, nodding toward Sally; and they all looked in wonder at the unnatural flush on the girl's cheeks and the strange, dazzling brightness ...

— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... independent of the morals as of the reasons. It isn't obliged, by the terms of its existence, to teach, any more than it is obliged to convince. It's the most absolute thing in the world; and from its unnatural height it can stoop at will in moments of enrapturing naturalness without ever losing poise. Wasn't that delightful where Caruso hesitated about his encore, and then, with a shrug and a waft of his left hand to the house, went off in order to come back and give his aria ...

— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... obedience, and the Colonel hitherto had ruled the settlement more or less in accordance with their wishes, though I fancy that this was due to the fact that their views had generally coincided and not to any willingness to defer to them. It was, perhaps, not unnatural that most of them should look coldly on innovations and hold by traditions, for Englishmen are proverbially averse to change. Still, they could recognize when a change was absolutely necessary, and setting aside their ...

— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... that he had been feeding his morbid imagination by brooding over these things, and that living alone in that lonely old house of weird associations must have led him to live such an unnatural life that he had ...

— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking

... the name of Targa Popolo, no mention is made of the Touaricks of Ghat. Indeed, all the notices of the Renegade Tourist on this part of Africa, are extremely meagre and unsatisfactory. As to his divisions of The Sahara into so many deserts, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, &c., this is all arbitrary and most unnatural. The story about the abundance of manna gathered in the districts of Aheer, seems to have been invented to please the Christian doctors of Rome; at any rate, nothing of the kind is now seen or known ...

— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... is struck by the fortuitous, one might almost say, unnatural, character of the Hapsburg empire. While the union of Castile and Aragon, bringing together neighboring peoples and filling a political need, was the source of real strength, the subsequent accretions of ...

— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... below her. She did not see him, but she says that she could not be mistaken in his quick, firm tread. She did not hear the study door close, but a minute or so later there was a dreadful cry in the room below. It was a wild, hoarse scream, so strange and unnatural that it might have come either from a man or a woman. At the same instant there was a heavy thud, which shook the old house, and then all was silence. The maid stood petrified for a moment, and then, recovering her courage, she ran downstairs. The study door was shut, and she ...

— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... it will be seen how important it is to choose the right point of distance: if we take it too near the point of sight, as in Fig. 12, the square looks unnatural and distorted. This, I may note, is a common fault with photographs taken with a wide-angle lens, which throws everything out of proportion, and will make the east end of a church or a cathedral appear higher ...

— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey

... nearly. 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 ...

— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... She turned back on the threshold of the kitchen door through which her work had been taking her to and fro during Garth's outbreak. Her voice was monotonous and smothered; it had its share in her unnatural self-repression. ...

— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt

... was a symbol of Judaism, which loudly proclaimed itself as the only true religion of the age, and condescendingly invited all the world to come and partake of its rich ripe fruit; when in truth it was but an unnatural growth of leaves, with no fruit of the season, nor even an edible bulb held over from earlier years, for such as it had of former fruitage was dried to worthlessness and made repulsive in its worm-eaten decay. The religion of Israel had degenerated into ...

— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... Bergsons' wind-mill. Marie crossed the fence at the wheatfield corner, and walked slowly along the path that led to Alexandra's. She could not help feeling hurt that Emil had not come to tell her about Amedee. It seemed to her most unnatural that he should not have come. If she were in trouble, certainly he was the one person in the world she would want to see. Perhaps he wished her to understand that for her he was as good as ...

— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather

... awful; awful, he thought, because any minute now it might be broken by sounds portending terror. The strain of waiting told more and more severely on the nerves; they talked in whispers when they talked at all, for their voices aloud sounded queer and unnatural. A chilliness, not altogether due to the night air, invaded the room, and made them cold. The influences against them, whatever these might be, were slowly robbing them of self-confidence, and the power of decisive action; their forces were on the wane, and the possibility ...

— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... wedding the town ever had seen, John opened the ceremonies by singing the "Voice that breathed o'er Eden" most effectively, and Sycamore Ridge in its best clothes, rather stuffed and uncomfortable thereby, was in that unnatural attitude toward the world where it thought John Barclay's voice, a throaty baritone, with much affectation in the middle register, a tendency to flat in the upper register, and thick fuzz below "C," was beautiful, though John often remembered that night with unalloyed shame. ...

— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... right thing, it's not, it's not at all!" He would perhaps have added something more to his belated exclamation, but Lyamshin did not let him finish: he suddenly seized him from behind and squeezed him with all his might, uttering an unnatural shriek. There are moments of violent emotion, of terror, for instance, when a man will cry out in a voice not his own, unlike anything one could have anticipated from him, and this has sometimes a very terrible effect. Lyamshin gave vent to a scream more animal than human. Squeezing ...

— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... feelings, and all that is more mysterious still than thoughts and feelings, have blended, and day by day become more essentially one, that the joys of the flesh are freed from the after disquiet, and leave no bitterness behind? When shall we find, instead of the morbid, unnatural excitement produced by too copious, oppressive repasts, by stimulants that are the insidious agents of the very enemy we seek to destroy—when shall we find, in their place, the contained and deliberate gladness of a spirit that is for ever exalted because it for ever is seeking ...

— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... Whenever he shut his eyes there arose before them a vision of his mother's face, a face so fearful in its awesome and unnatural calm that vaguely he wondered how he, the outcast son, upon whom it had been turned like the stare of the Medusa's head, withering his very soul, could have seen it and still live. Why did he live? Why was he not dead, he who had a sword at ...

— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... were seen and heard during their visit; but Mr. Wharton's first object was to find her for whose sake he had undertaken this long journey. He knew her immediately, though her face was worn with trouble and sickness, and there was an intense and unnatural brightness about her eye. Her beautiful hair was unbound, and falling about her shoulders, as she sat in the farthest corner of her cage, ...

— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely

... just and fiery revenge are we," the chant went on,—"but there are other torments than the scalping-knife and the flames. Yet is the slow fire the correct thing. O strange unnatural country, wherein a man may find no wood to burn his enemy!—Ah for the boundless forests of my native land, where the great trees for thousands of miles grow but to furnish firewood wherewithal to burn our foes. Ah, would we were but in our ...

— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... most entertaining and universally improving." To Smollett, "Roderick Random" seemed an "improving" work! Ou le didacticisme va t'il se nicher? Romance, he declares, "arose in ignorance, vanity, and superstition," and declined into "the ludicrous and unnatural." Then Cervantes "converted romance to purposes far more useful and entertaining, by making it assume the sock, and point out the follies of ordinary life." Romance was to revive again some twenty years after its funeral ...

— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... up the Bridges with trim, stockinged legs, in that city of cocked hats and good Scots still unadulterated. It would not cross his mind that he should have a daughter; and the lamp and oil man, just then beginning, by a not unnatural metastasis, to bloom into a lighthouse-engineer, should have a grandson; and that these two, in the fulness of time, should wed; and some portion of that student himself should survive yet a year or two longer in ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... became a god again, there was still a cloud upon the minds of the elder Burtons as to the means by which the divinity was to be sustained. A god in truth, but a god with so very moderate an annual income—unless, indeed, those old Burtons made it up to an extent which seemed to them to be quite unnatural! There was joy among the Burtons, of course, but the joy was somewhat dimmed by these reflections as to the slight means of their Apollo. A lover who was not an Apollo might wait; but, as they had learned already, there was danger in keeping such a god as this suspended ...

— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... unnatural and untrue. It is a factory from which has come forth more hollow pretences, and unmeaning flatteries, and hypocrisies, than the Lowell Mills ever turned out ...

— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... children. I could only plead that the whole subject was distressing to me. He had asked me to put off my problems till my baby was weaned; now I asked him to put off his. But that would not do, it seemed. He took to arguing with me. It was an unnatural way to live, and he could not endure it. I was a woman, and I couldn't understand this. It seemed utterly impossible to make him realize what I felt. I suppose he has always had what he wanted, and he simply does not know what ...

— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... Tortoise you spoke of in India were as cunning in swimming, as you are in speaking, she would neither fear the heate of the sunne nor the ginne of the Fisher." This is but a mild example of the "unnatural natural philosophy" which Euphues has made famous. An unending procession of such similes, often of the most extravagant nature, runs throughout the book, and sometimes the development of the plot is made dependent on them. Thus Lucilla hesitates to forsake ...

— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... desolate, and to live quite alone in declining years [Footnote: Some few years later he married his first wife's devoted friend and companion who had lived with them for eleven years, and who took the greatest care of Newman till he died in 1897.] seems unnatural and unhealthful; but I cannot form any decisions at present. I am conscious of excellent health and unbroken strength, and after forty years of happy love should be very ungrateful ...

— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... been obliged to live in the world. My 'hostility' has saved you from some already, I know—more is the pity it could not save you from this—for it passes all bounds that you should meditate such an unnatural act, upon my soul, in the most natural manner in the world. One must be an Adrian Landale, and live on a tower for the best part of one's life, to reach such a pitch of—unconventionality, let us ...

— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... are. There were bills out for them this morning. I'd blow them, and take the reward, but for you and Squahre Rooksby. They're handy with their knives, too, I fancy. You mind me, and look to yourself with them. There's something unnatural." ...

— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... came to see it, attended by such concourse of the people that they were obliged to sleep in the streets. It was an age that drew the mantle of exterior devotion and laborious penances and pilgrimages over the most hideous crimes and unnatural sins. But perhaps the poor believers who slept in the streets of Mantua on that occasion were none the worse for their faith when the Pope pronounced the Blood genuine and blessed it. I am sure that for some days of enthusiasm they abstained from ...

— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... most terrible-looking man I have ever seen, one too who carried his vast strength very late in life, since from the aspect of his countenance I imagine that he must have been nigh upon seventy years of age, though his supposed unnatural antiquity of course was nothing but a fable put about by the natives for ...

— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... was added the sense that it was a time when evil-minded people might be about, who would certainly assault and stop him if they guessed his errand. To meet his father would make it certain that he would be seized, abused, beaten, and turned back, with the reproach of being an unnatural son—turning against his father. Of this, however, there was little chance, as Dan Hewlett was pretty certain to be either in the "Fox and Hounds" or in the "Blue Lion" collecting partisans. And ...

— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and shudder in the sour east, all June they rain canker-worms upon the roof, and then in autumn choke the eaves with a fall of tattered and hectic foliage. From the window the fading sisters gaze upon the unnatural liveliness of the summer streets through which the summer boarders are driving, or upon the death-white drifts of the intolerable winter. Their father, the captain, is dead; he died with the Calcutta trade, having survived their mother, ...

— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... there was something mysterious, if not entirely unnatural in the conduct of the young woman. Nobody likes unsolved riddles for long. The moment or century of suspense may prove interesting—even exciting; but ...

— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... sense? Take back this sad clear-sightedness; take from mine eyes this cruel light! Give me back my blindness—the happy darkness of my senses; take back thy dreadful gift!" This feeling is perhaps not an unnatural one in the earlier stages of the Path, yet higher sight and deeper knowledge soon bring to the student the perfect certainty that all things are working together for the eventual ...

— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... maiden lady; but it was one of those houses where it is impossible to play. You know the kind of house, don't you? There is a sort of a something about that kind of house that makes you hardly able even to talk to each other when you are left alone, and playing seems unnatural and affected. So they looked forward to the holidays, when they should all go home and be together all day long, in a house where playing was natural and conversation possible, and where the Hampshire ...

— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit

... of the century, the elector separated himself from his people by becoming a Roman Catholic, and, in order that he might establish himself as king of Poland, he burdened the state with continued Austrian alliance, with war, and with heavy taxes. The unnatural union of Saxony and Poland was maintained throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century: it was singularly disastrous ...

— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... room, his wretched shoes, the cheap, misshapen suit, the iron door behind him leading out into the little yard attached to his cell. Against such a background, with his partially caned chairs visible at the end of the bed, he seemed unnatural, weird even. Her Frank! And in this condition. She trembled and it was useless for her to try to speak. She could only put her arms around him and stroke his head, murmuring: "My poor boy—my darling. Is this what they have done to you? Oh, my poor darling." She held his head while Cowperwood, anxious ...

— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature—a good bit, of course, but a bit only—in disproportionate, unnatural, and revolting prominence; and, therefore, unless an artist use delicate care, we are offended. The dismal act of a squalid man needed many condiments to make it pleasant, and therefore Mr. Tennyson was right to mix them subtly and to ...

— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... end of the five hours I had lost fifteen pounds, which did not help me, as during the same time the knapsack had taken on a hundred. For two days the men in the ranks had been rushed forward at this unnatural gait and were moving like automatons. Many of them fell by the wayside, but they were not permitted to lie there. Instead of summoning the ambulance, they were lifted to their feet and flung back into the ranks. Many of them were moving in their ...

— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... based on the same set of characters and fall into the larger subdivisions Apetalae, Monopetalae and Polypetalae, characterized respectively by absence, union or freedom of the petals, and a subdivision, Diclines Irregulares, a very unnatural group, including one class only. A.P. de Candolle introduced several improvements into the system. In his arrangement the last subdivision disappears, and the Dicotyledons fall into two groups, a larger containing those in which both calyx and corolla are present in the flower, and a smaller, Monochlamydeae, ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... Its last prince fled, and the chief cities fell into the hands of independent lords, who constituted themselves petty Emirs in their own dominions. Instead, however, of taking full advantage of this state of anarchy to extend their united power, the Christian kings weakened each other by unnatural and deadly quarrels. Ferdinand, King of Castile, seems to have been the principal aggressor. His great captain in his wars, both with Moslem and Christian states, was Rodrigo Laynez, who was called also by the ...

— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... generation effect such a work. But where the nation has been merely enkindled for a while by a great man's spirit, the light passes away with him who communicated it; and the nation, when he is gone, is like a dead body, to which magic power had, for a moment, given unnatural life: when the charm has ceased, the body is cold and stiff as before. He who grieves over the battle of Zama should carry on his thoughts to a period thirty years later, when Hannibal must, in the course of ...

— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... to the circus or menagerie or to any show of wild animals ought to consider how they would like to be shut up as prisoners all their lives, and forced to do unnatural tricks. Some animal trainers try to make the public believe that tricks are taught by kindness and that the animals are comfortable and happy; but persons not in the business who have had an opportunity to watch trained animals behind the scenes say that there is a great deal of suffering ...

— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... drunken oaths were heard more often than whispered serious talk, the names of popular gladiators seemed of more account than those of future Caesars. Arguments were loud and violent; every mouth slobbered, every lip trembled and every eye glowed with unnatural brightness: curls were dishevelled and laurel crowns awry; the silken draperies on the couches had become tattered rags and the cushions were scattered all about the floor; debris of crystal vases littered the table and bunches ...

— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... white house yonder, and they excuse me because I am a foreigner. You English are so polite. You do not seem to expect foreigners to know how to behave, and you make excuses for them. It is very funny. It makes me laugh," and she laughed so merrily that her former gravity seemed more unnatural. ...

— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... countless pipes; walls covered with sketches of every nook and corner about us; a table for four, heaped with melons, grapes, cheese, and flanked by ten-pin bottles just out of the brook; good-fellowship, harmony of ideas, courage of convictions—with no heads swelled to an unnatural size; four appetites—enormous, prodigious appetites; Knight for host and Marie as high chamberlainess, make the feast of Lucullus and the afternoon teas of Cleopatra but so many quick lunches served in the rush hour of a downtown restaurant! Not only were the trout-baked-in ...

— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... human mind but from an imitation of antiquity, in the works of the moderns they only valued what resembled, or seemed to bear a resemblance to, those of the ancients. Everything else they rejected as barbarous and unnatural. With the great poets and artists it was quite otherwise. However strong their enthusiasm for the ancients, and however determined their purpose of entering into competition with them, they were compelled by their independence and originality of mind, to ...

— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... as a regular custom, though unable to deny that it has been resorted to under the pressure of hunger; but the Feejee islands afford numberless undoubted proofs that hundreds of people were yearly slaughtered to gratify the unnatural taste of their ferocious chiefs. Wars were undertaken for the express purpose of obtaining victims; all persons, friends or strangers, thrown by the stormy ocean on their inhospitable shores, were destroyed; their own slaves were often killed; and men, women, and ...

— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... possible or reasonable relations that could rightfully exist between fallen humanity and its Creator. Here Satan has blinded the minds of the lost lest they should believe, and he has made that which is reasonable and natural seem to be unreasonable and unnatural. They are unable to abandon their Satan-inspired sense of self-sufficiency and independence of God and receive from Him, as a gift, every possession commendable ...

— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer

... and the Navajos, most distinctive of all the Southern tribes, are handy, while all about stretches a big Government reserve full of natural wonders and unnatural ones, too—everything on earth except a Lover's Leap. There are unexcelled facilities for Lover's Leaps, too—thousands of appropriate places are within easy walking distance of the hotel; but no lover ...

— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... the phone in an awkward, unnatural manner, he used a pencil from his pocket to dial a number with which he was familiar, a number that meant the same thing on any telephone exchange in ...

— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... advances were made in the direction of seeking a mutual understanding with the German Protestants—not without hints that Henry had an open mind on the subject of the Augsburg Confession. The Germans however were in no haste to accept Henry as a brand plucked from the burning; rather, they had a not unnatural suspicion that he merely wanted to make use of them. They propounded conditions, which Cromwell submitted to Gardiner, at this time ambassador at Paris. Whatever Gardiner's views were as to papal ascendancy, he was no Lutheran; and he pointed out that to accept the terms would deprive England of ...

— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... man, not ill-made by Nature, but reduced to unnatural tenuity by dissipation—a corporeal attribute of which he was apt to boast, as it enabled him, as he said, to put himself up at 7 st. 7 lb. without any "d—— nonsense of not eating and drinking." The power, however, was one of which he did not often avail himself, as his nerves were seldom in a ...

— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... the condition or distribution of the humours, for he regards inflammation as the passing of blood into parts not previously containing it, he considers that so long as those liquids occupy the system in an unnatural or adulterated state, disease continues; but as they ferment or undergo coction, various characteristic symptoms appear, and, when their elaboration is completed, they are discharged by perspiration or other secretions, by alvine dejections, etc. But where such a general relief ...

— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... meretricious embracements (where sin is turned into art), maketh marriage a dull thing, and a kind of imposition or tax. They hear you defend these things, as done to avoid greater evils; as advoutries, deflowering of virgins, unnatural lust, and the like. But they say, this is a preposterous wisdom; and they call it Lot's offer, who to save his guests from abusing, offered his daughters; nay, they say further, that there is little ...

— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... truth to bring on a great bodily fatigue—and sleep. His sleep only came then in the first watches of the night. As the night wore on the Whisperer began again, as the cloud of weariness lifted a little from him and the senses were released from the heavy sedative of unnatural exertion. ...

— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... and miserable Abbe Liszt! Strange and unnatural fusion of traits the most noble and the most mean! One can scarcely say which was the stronger in you, the grand seigneur or the base comedian. For in your work they are equally, inextricably commingled. ...

— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... was Penrod that he postponed his departure until this film came round again, by which time he had finished his unnatural repast and almost, but not quite, decided against following the profession of a drunkard ...

— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... friend, presented at first sight a very good type of the well-groomed, athletic young American. He was over six feet tall, with smooth, dark hair brushed back from his forehead, a strong, clean-shaven face and good features. Only, as he drew nearer, there was evident a slight, unnatural quivering at the corner of his lips. The cordiality of his greeting, too, was a ...

— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... hard, and our hands hung on every blow. But I remember yet more vividly the strangeness of it all, and the uncanny sensation that the fight itself, the street-lamp, the crowd, and the dim houses around were unreal as a dream: that, and the unnatural hardness of my opponent's face, which seemed the one unmalleable ...

— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... Aristotle and Pliny? Think of "following the cuckoo," as Logan longed to do, in its "annual visit around the globe," a voluntary witness and accessory to the blighting curse of its vagrant, almost unnatural life! No, my indiscriminate bards; on this occasion we must part company. I cannot "follow" your cuckoo—except with a gun, forsooth—nor welcome your "darling of the spring," even though he were never so ...

— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... deep emotion, her cheeks becoming crimson, her blue eyes flashing with an unnatural light, "if that codicil could be found it would save my life. Jan, in his rough, stupid way, tells me I am fretting myself into my grave. Perhaps I am. I want to go ...

— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... been monarchs in their majesty she rode now among stunted pines and dwarf oaks no higher than her head. And soon she was at timber line, where the beaten and disheartened trees grew downward, or curled along the earth like serpents, or spread out in fantastic, unnatural, and monstrous shapes. ...

— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... best during her lifetime. She will then come at night and embrace him and tickle him under the arms, making him laugh till he dies. Bhula or the wanderers are the shades of persons who have died an unnatural death, either having been murdered, hanged, or killed by a tiger. They all keep the scars of their respective wounds and one can imagine what a weird-looking lot they are. They are always on the move, and are, as it were, the mendicant portion of the invisible community. They are not very powerful ...

— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... be a Scotchman, against which nation I had taken a strong prejudice, on account of the wicked and unnatural support given by them to the Chevalier in his bloody invasion of this kingdom, and which prejudice has since been further confirmed in me by the late mean and notorious conduct of Lord Bute. However, I found Mr. Sanders, the purser, ...

— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... seemed to indicate plainly the respectability of the hostess. An American family without a genteel skeleton in its closet could scarcely add to that gossip which keeps society from forgetting its members. Nor was it altogether unnatural that presently Mrs. Roger Catron lent herself to this sentimental deception, and began to think that she really was a more exquisitely aggrieved woman than she had imagined. At times, when this vague load of iniquity put upon her dead husband assumed, through the mystery of her friends, the rumor ...

— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... freed and had come to Philadelphia two years in advance of him. His master evidently supposed that Jack would be mean enough to wish to see his wife, even in a free State, and that no slave, with such an unnatural desire, could be tolerated or trusted, that the sooner such "articles" were turned into cash the better. This in substance, was the way Jack accounted for the sudden change which had come over his master. In defense of his course, ...

— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... in here to capture this boy?" asked the sergeant, who appeared to be bewildered by the unnatural act ...

— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... experiment of repelling those machinations which warred against all established order, and all sanctioned usage, by a novel, and unnatural opposition, is attributable to any other cause, than that of a misjudging principle, must be decided by Him, whose mighty hand suspended the balance of the battle, and whose eye can, at a glance, pierce through ...

— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... projecting a little behind, the sandals having previously been drawn off by servants, for coolness and comfort. Thus it was easy for one who entered the room, to walk up to any individual of the company and converse with him during the meal; and, so far from being out of the way and unnatural, it was the easiest and most natural of all things, that the woman, when she came to Jesus, should touch his feet. This was precisely the part of his body which she could most easily reach, and which she might bathe and anoint, while the meal proceeded, without difficulty to herself ...

— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... But, as was not unnatural, the child forgot her speech, and merely thrust the bouquet, tied with a large pink bow, into the hands of Prince Ferdinand ...

— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... nature or reality, saw that there are many scenes in life in which it is more natural to the personages of the scene to move than to speak, in which indeed motion is natural, and speech is altogether unnatural. If this be so in real life, he said, it should be so on the stage, because nothing passes in the world which may not pass also in the theatre; and as pantomime, or expression of emotion, feeling, purpose, otherwise ...

— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... views, and was now acting as a guide. It was stated that his father was much incensed against him, and had employed emissaries to despatch him secretly. A few months after this campaign I heard that he was shot while out hunting; no doubt, at the instigation of his unnatural parent, who preferred his death to his continuing in league ...

— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... as a Father (Luke 11:13). In every instance in the life of Christ whenever He addresses God in prayer it is always as Father. The fact of the fatherhood of God makes prayer possible. It would be unnatural for a father not ...

— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans

... would venture to say? Every one who can think at all sees how slight are our safeguards against that barbaric force in man which the privileged races have so slowly and painfully brought into check. Democracy is full of menace to all the finer hopes of civilization, and the revival, in not unnatural companionship with it, of monarchic power based on militarism, makes the prospect dubious enough. There has but to arise some Lord of Slaughter, and the nations will be tearing at each other's throats. Let England be imperilled, and ...

— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... rain splashing outside. The hollow, unnatural murmur of a subterranean stream rose drearily. Once he sighed heavily, and all the cavernous ...

— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... individual favourite spot. With some of the Chorus, he laughed about the sleepy member who had gone out into the lobby the other night, and voted the wrong way: with others, he deplored that innovating spirit in the time which could not even be prevented from taking an unnatural interest in the public service and the public money: with the physician he had a word to say about the general health; he had also a little information to ask him for, concerning a professional man ...

— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... with a not unnatural horror, and his letters showed clearly his intense dislike both of the Irish character and of the Irish religion.[30] By far the most valuable contribution he made to the improvement of Ireland ...

— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... hard, unnatural laugh, as he sprang forward and, knocking his arm up, planted a blow well between his eyes. The bullet lodged harmlessly in the ceiling and Wyck lay in ...

— Australia Revenged • Boomerang

... recognized Joe, bowed, smiled and said something and went on, and joined a hilarious group down the room. And Ethel saw him speak to them and she felt their glances turned her way. Joe had grown suddenly awkward, his face wore a forced, unnatural smile, and he was talking rapidly—but she heard nothing that he said. The whole atmosphere had ...

— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole

... for breath, a vivid smile taking the place of words. Mrs. Linford, rendered oddly, almost obstinately reserved by this excessive cordiality, was conscious of something unnatural in that smile—a too great intensity, like the greenness ...

— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... succeeded by his son, Pomaree II., the most famous prince in the annals of Tahiti. Though a sad debauchee and drunkard, and even charged with unnatural crimes, he was a great friend of the missionaries, and one of their very first proselytes. During the religious wars into which he was hurried by his zeal for the new faith, he was defeated and expelled from the island. After a short exile he returned from Imeeo, with an ...

— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... up, and yet speaking rather slowly and timidly, "if I were to say what would naturally occur to any one—you won't be offended? What you have been telling me is absurd, unnatural, impossible, unless there is a woman in ...

— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... for her any way to find any more food, while the famine pierced through her very bowels 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 ...

— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... to-day a full-fledged science which does deal with these mental processes. Psychology speaks about real things as much as chemistry, and the laws of mental life may be relied on now more safely than the laws of meteorology. It seems unnatural that those who have the interests of agriculture at heart should turn the attention of the farmer exclusively to the results of the material sciences and ignore completely the thorough, scientific interest in the processes of the mind. To be sure, ...

— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... gray-headed man, and an aged and infirm woman, were seen walking along, with faltering footsteps, through the street which led to the prison. It was the heart-broken father and mother of this unnatural child. When they came in sight of the gloomy granite walls and iron-grated windows of this dreary abode, they could hardly proceed, so overwhelming were the feelings which pressed upon their minds. When ...

— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott

... Rhoda Gray settled herself on the doorstep, supporting the woman's head in her lap. Her face had set again in grim, hard, perplexed lines. There seemed something unnatural, something menacingly weird, something even uncanny about it all. Perhaps it was because it seemed as though she could so surely foresee the end. Gypsy Nan would not live through the night. Something told her that. ...

— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... isn't a 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

... it is quite conceivable that man might cultivate the deity through fear of the latter's displeasure, and that an elaborate system of ceremonies and beliefs might arise from the desire to avert his anger. Such a conception—which is certainly not a lofty one—is not unnatural in the presence of a great Power whose dispositions and purposes are not well understood; numerous examples of such an attitude might be cited from ...

— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... security, peace, welfare, happiness, and aggrandizement of the American people. The Secretary of State, therefore, avows to Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford that he looks patiently, but confidently, for the cure of evils which have resulted from proceedings so unnecessary, so unwise, so unusual, and so unnatural, not to irregular negotiations, having in view new and untried relations with agencies unknown to and acting in derogation of the Constitution and laws, but to regular and considerate action of the people of those States, in cooeperation with their brethren ...

— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... be decided with reference to individual cases. As a general rule, when only practiced at rare intervals, and faute de mieux, in order to obtain relief for physical oppression and mental obsession, it may be regarded as the often inevitable result of the unnatural circumstances of our civilized social life. When, as often happens in mental degeneracy,—and as in shy and imaginative persons, perhaps of neurotic temperament, may also sometimes become the case,—it is practiced in preference to sexual relationships, it at once becomes ...

— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... obtains among the Nascopies of destroying their parents and relatives, when old age incapacitates them for further exertion. I must, however, do them the justice to say, that the parent himself expresses a wish to depart, otherwise the unnatural deed would probably never be committed; for they in general treat their old people with much care and tenderness. The son or nearest relative performs the office of executioner,—the self-devoted victim being disposed of by strangulation.[1] When any one ...

— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... endeavors of the preparatory schools are not to be depreciated. It is scarcely possible to say too much of the fundamental importance of thoroughness and of minute accuracy in the rudiments of learning. But that extreme zeal in this behalf has produced an unnatural divorce of the practical from the critical, it is vain to deny. The devotion to the latter, which is inaugurated in the preparatory school, is by the college inflamed to the utmost, and the young man reaches his climax when he receives the appointment of ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... them with terror and remorse, were comforted with the delusive hopes of obtaining pardon, and making atonement for their crimes by leaving the greatest part of their fortune to some monastic society. Multitudes, impelled by the unnatural dictates of a gloomy superstition, deprived their children of fertile lands and rich patrimonies in favour of the monks, by whose prayers they hoped to render the Deity propitious" (p. 161). The only new sect of any importance in this century is that of the Monothelites, later known ...

— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... row of women lying on stretchers. They were decent-looking brown-haired matrons for the most part, and it looked unnatural and ghastly to see them lying there. One big railway compartment was slung with their stretchers, and some young men in uniform nursed the babies. I shall never forget that railway compartment as long as I live. A man in khaki appeared, thoughtful, as our people always are, and brought ...

— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... improbable, that Shakespeare put these forced and unnatural metaphors into the mouth of Macbeth as a mark of artifice and dissimulation, to shew the difference between the studied language of hypocrisy, and the natural outcries of sudden passion. This whole speech so considered, ...

— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... but objects on both shores were getting to be confounded with the shapeless masses of the mountains. Here and there a pale star peeped out, though most of the vault that stretched across the confined horizon was shut in by dusky clouds. A streak of dull, unnatural light was seen in the quarter which lay above the meadows of the Rhone, and nearly in a direction with the peak of Mont Blanc, which, though not visible from this portion of the Leman, was known to lie behind the ramparts of Savoy, like a monarch of the hills entrenched ...

— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... each other how deeply they didn't understand what Anthea were saying; 'but after recent eventfulnesses a new leaf has to be turned over, and, after all, mother is more important than the feelings of any of the lower forms of creation, however unnatural.' ...

— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... reply from Hilary; she felt more tremulous than ever. The whole thing was so confused, so unnatural. What with the dark, malignant Hughs and that haunting vision of Bianca, the matter seemed almost Italian. That a man of Hughs' class might be affected by the passion of love had somehow never come into her head. ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... 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

... children were dumfounded by this extraordinary, impossibly monstrous thing—a boy who had not a papa; they looked upon him as a phenomenon, an unnatural being, and they felt rising in them the hitherto inexplicable pity of their mothers for La Blanchotte. As for Simon, he had propped himself against a tree to avoid falling, and he stood there as if paralyzed by an ...

— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... costumes, there is not a single form of really fashionable dress that can be worn without a certain amount of absolute misery to the wearer. The contortion of the feet of the Chinese beauty, said Dr. Naftel at the last International Medical Congress, held at Washington, is no more barbarous or unnatural than the panoply of the femme ...

— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... other which suffers the inspired record to remain intact. I am by no means clear however that Philosophy (begging her pardon,) does not entirely mistake her office, when she pretends to explain the first chapter of Genesis. Hence, her constrained language, and unnatural manner, when she desires to be respectful,—her inconsequential remarks and perpetual blunders when she rather prefers to be irreligious. She is simply out of her element, and is discoursing of what she does not understand.—Theology, dealing with a physical problem ...

— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... leave it to Ma.' That was too much, and Pa got mad in a minute. He always gets mad at me. But he went up and looked in the basket, and he said it was some Dutch baby, and was evidently from the lower strata of society, and the unnatural mother wanted to get rid of it, and he said he didn't know any 'Almira' at all. When he called it a dutch baby, and called attention to its irregular features, that made Ma mad, and she took it up out of the basket ...

— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... to hear their dismal stories almost as well as they liked to hear hers. She made a point of visiting every fresh batch of children, after they had been duly fumigated and disinfected, and she seemed to take a horrible and unnatural delight in the ghastly details of desolation and death which were revealed in the artless ...

— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... it bears in no other instance of the more than two hundred and seventy uses of the word in the New Testament. It is not the word used in Acts 2: 2, as might be expected if it signified wind. Then it seems unnatural to ascribe volition to the wind, thelei. On the contrary, if the words apply to the Spirit, the saying is in entire harmony with other Scriptures, which affirm the sovereignty of the Holy Ghost in regeneration (John 1: 13) and in the control and direction of those who are the subjects of the new ...

— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon

... muffled and unnatural. It seemed to work a sort of magic, for the python vanished, melted away like mist; she drew a great shuddering breath and found she was lying on her bed, unharmed, but with the sheet muffled about her throat and the thick ...

— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... the accident which had happened on their voyage, and felt to say something on the providence of God, and His watch-care over His children. The preacher's voice was pleasant, the ministerial tone not being so pronounced as to make his speech unnatural. Chester listened attentively, as also did Lucy who, Chester observed, was sitting ...

— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson

... incongruous and unpoetical effect on the imagination. Age, in fact, has its own characteristic branch of beauty. An old man with curly hair and a fresh smooth complexion, like Godwin's Struldbrugg, St. Leon, would be an unpleasant and unnatural object. There is a masculine and imposing medium between youthful vigour and decay, in which the leading features of the former man may be distinctly traced; as in Wordsworth's beautiful description of the old knight of Rylstone, and Sir Walter Scott's ...

— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... influential. They are extending the tradition of the best European theatres in their attempts to cultivate excellent and individual expression in drama. They realize that plays must be tested by actual performance,—though not necessarily by the unnatural demands of success in competition with Broadway revues and farce-melodramas,—and thus developed toward a genuine artistic embodiment of the vast and varied life, the manifold and deep ...

— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... came into a world of black men. The sun, which I had seen like a fiery buckler hanging over the city, was utterly gone. As I looked into this unnatural night, the thought smote me that I had brought this judgment on the Holy City, and I formed the determination to fly from my priesthood, my kindred, and my country, and to bear my ...

— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... land off the bow of the Gar. The women native to the locality, and the men, too, were fanatical in the avoidance of any unnecessary exterior application of water. His thoughts moved in a monotonous circle, while the enveloping radiance constantly increased. It became as light as a species of unnatural day, where every leaf was clearly revealed but robbed of all color ...

— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... details of his life difficult. It called for all the qualities in which Majendie was most deficient. It necessitated endless vigilance, endless harassing precautions, an unnatural secrecy. He had to make Anne believe that he had taken to yachting for his health, that he was kept out by wind and weather, that the obligations and complexities of business, multiplying, tied him, and claimed ...

— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... round her protector's neck, her cheeks wet with tears, the mite would gaze round-eyed and in saddened silence at her unnatural father. It is no wonder that she grew up to love Richards. What stories he used to tell her! what fun he used to make for her! how he entered heart and soul into all her games and romps, as if he himself were but a ...

— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables

... Peers were to have had another field-day, for Lord SELBORNE had put down a motion calling attention to the alleged sale of honours. But, to the relief of certain of the recently ennobled, who could not be sure what the Unnatural History of SELBORNE might contain, the ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various

... with disordered hair weep beside fountains that are no more, and pine over rivers turned red with the blood of mortals. Ares and his train have gone forth with the madness of Gods, and have returned, Deimos and Phobos glutted with unnatural delight. Tellus moans with grief, and the faces of men are as the faces of the Erinyes, even as when Astraea fled to the skies, and the waves of our bidding encompassed all the land saving this high ...

— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... the miserable day of Zell's flight. Hannibal's words were true. Zell, in her unnatural absence, would be more in the way—a heavier burden—than if she had become a helpless ...

— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... I am unable to state at this distance of time. I believe I was more astonished than frightened. I could not imagine that this huge creature was in earnest in offering to beat me for what I had said, and yet I was sensible too of an unnatural fire in his eyes—a glow that put an expression of savage exultation into them; and this look of his somehow held me motionless and speechless. He half raised his arm, but a sudden irresolution possessed him, as though my passivity was ...

— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell

... school in Scotland while we were still hopefully ignorant and far from tame,—notwithstanding the unnatural profusion of teaching and thrashing lavished upon us,—getting acquainted with the animals about us was a never-failing source of wonder and delight. At first my father, like nearly all the backwoods settlers, bought a yoke of oxen to do the farm work, and as field after field was ...

— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... natural disposition and run up to seed. You want to induce them to throw out a great abundance of tender leaves. In other words, you want them to 'head.' Just as in the turnip, you do not want them to run up to seed, but to produce an unnatural development of 'bulb.'" ...

— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... to the sense of hearing, and sometimes the gusts were so sudden and strong that the little building trembled, stout though it was. Indeed, Lawrence at first thought they must be experiencing the shocks of an earthquake, a mistake not unnatural in one who, besides having had but little experience in regard to such catastrophes, knew well that he was at the time almost in the centre of a region ...

— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... with thudding screw swung clear over big, steep-sided combers. Moreover, Agatha had scarcely slept during the few days and nights that she had spent in the train. It takes time to become accustomed to the atmosphere of a heated sleeper, and since she had landed she had been in a state of not unnatural ...

— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... cloud dust met them, a gunshot below, rolling up the hillside from the city. They passed within the fringe of it, and at once the noonday sun was darkened for them. In the unnatural light they picked their way ...

— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... amid the horrors of battle. However unseemly, they served to keep up the spirits of the men, to which end other spirits contained in canteens were also freely added. A most reprehensible practice this, for men should go into battle free from unnatural excitement, if they wish to serve the cause in which they are engaged; and moreover, the instances of cruelty which sometimes are perpetrated on the wounded and dying, are caused by the drunkenness of such ruffians as are ...

— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson

... discharge their precious human freight within the first ward of Chicago, the richest and wickedest political ward in the world—the ward of Michael Kenna (Hinky Dink) and "Bathhouse" John Coughlin—the ward feeding every district of prostitution and gambling and unnatural horror in the City—the ward with two miles of indecent resorts, whole armies of reeking lost women, hundreds of pandering men procurers and White Slavers—the ward of thousands of Turkish, Italian and Arabian immigrants, and opium-parched pagan Chinese—the ward in ...

— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann

... as suited his wants. This I well knew, though I never had intercourse with him, even in our happiest days. Thy father retired with the troops to prosecute his claims on England. At all events, his losses must be great, for his real estates were sold, and I became the lawful purchaser. It was not unnatural to wish that he might have no bar ...

— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... careful eyes away from him, "if he hasn't complained, I hardly see why you should attack me like this. I suppose you think I am as unnatural ...

— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... from one to another of her children with the same strained, unnatural smile which had greeted them a few minutes before, and Gurth and Dreda, falling behind the rest, rolled expressive eyes ...

— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... bright sunshine, the blue sky and the unnumbered charms of country life, with its fascination of ever changing landscape, a picturesque mingling of verdure clad hills, green meadows, shady forests, clear lakes and bold mountains? Why should these children be compelled to live a cramped, unnatural life, confined to the narrow streets, poisoned both mentally and physically, by the foul air, disease, corruption, crime and misery of the densely populated city? Why should agriculturists, who are independent co-operative owners of ...

— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... usual the next day; the lingering gravity and sadness, and the occasional absence of mind, were not unnatural symptoms in the early days of grief And almost in proportion to her re-establishment in health, was her father's relapse into his abstracted musing upon the wife he had lost, and the past era in his life that was closed to ...

— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... cause of pregnancy is understood by the Tinguian, but coupled with this knowledge is a belief in its close relationship to the spirit world. Supernatural conception and unnatural births are frequently mentioned in the traditions, and are accepted as true by the mass of people; while the possibility of increasing the fertility of the husband and wife by magical acts, performed in connection with the marriage ceremony, ...

— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... know, I suppose, that she has declined all invitations to stay at Newport, even with her grandmother Mingott? I could hardly persuade her to come with me to the Blenkers', if you will believe it! The life she leads is morbid, unnatural. Ah, if she had only listened to me when it was still possible ... When the door was still open ... But shall we go down and watch this absorbing match? I hear your May is ...

— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... stillness abnormal, unnatural, accompanied by a scorching heat, with an atmosphere so close as to ...

— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... the only possible or reasonable relations that could rightfully exist between fallen humanity and its Creator. Here Satan has blinded the minds of the lost lest they should believe, and he has made that which is reasonable and natural seem to be unreasonable and unnatural. They are unable to abandon their Satan-inspired sense of self-sufficiency and independence of God and receive from Him, as a gift, every possession commendable ...

— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer

... zeal of our Sovereigns, finish our evening as piously as we have begun it." But no sooner were they out of sight of the palace than they hurried to the scenes of dissipation, all endeavouring, in the debauchery and excesses so natural to them, to forget their unnatural affectation ...

— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Merrifield—-begging your pardon, but the sight of you brings back the times when my poor captain was living, and I was the happy woman. 'Tis the thought of my poor orphans that is vexing me, leaving them as I am in a strange land where their own flesh and blood is unnatural to them,' she cried, trying to clasp her swollen hands, in the excitement that brought out the Irish substructure of her nature. 'Ah, Colonel dear, you'll bear in mind their father that would have died for you, and be good ...

— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... On his knees, crying out He had at home an old and doating father; And yet I slew him! There was a ribbon round his neck That caught in the hilt of my sword. A stripling, and so long a dying? Why 'Tis most unnatural! ...

— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... ordain, then are we in possession of that liberty and that happiness, for this principle was fully recognized in our excellent constitution.' 'It is not necessary for us to examine the causes alleged by our enemies for this unjust and unnatural war, because an address from the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, the most respectable in the Union, proves in the most satisfactory manner, that it is wanton and unprovoked, and is the climax of the various outrages previously committed against Great Britain. In this statement they have ...

— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... not take it amiss. "Oh, Cornelia is usually up at all sorts of unnatural hours of the day. I expected when she came here to spend the week with me, we should have some fun, sitting up and talking, but last night is the only time we have had a real good talk, and I suppose that was because we were so excited that even Cornelia couldn't ...

— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... is always singing, always," went on Mrs. Pickens in a melancholy voice. "What she finds to sing about in this miserable place I cannot imagine. It's really unnatural!" ...

— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... It seemed to take smelling-salts and brandy to bring her back. She said afterwards that she was not unconscious, that she knew all that was happening, but felt a stifling sense of suffocation. Later after one of her father's first unnatural outbreaks, she suffered a series of chills and her mother thought, of course, it was malaria; but many big doses of quinin did not break it up, and no matter when the doctor came, his little thermometer revealed no fever. She spent three months ...

— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... believe that he would bear it many days longer after what she had said. Her youth and strength refused to accept such an evil destiny, and her keen feminine perception told her that more than half of his obstinacy had been morbid and unnatural, and would disappear with the change wrought in him by rest and quiet. Her anxiety now was for him, and did not concern herself any longer. She knew nothing of illness save as a sort of vague misfortune, a state of undefined pain during which people stayed in ...

— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... refined salt, and a thousand other articles of commerce produced or stored in the workshops of Phoenicia. These the chapmen bartered for raw gold by weight, tusks of ivory, ostrich feathers, and girls of approved beauty, slaves taken in war, or in some instances maidens whom their unnatural parents or relatives did not scruple to ...

— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... Arabs, swarthy, high-cheeked-boned, keen-eyed fellows, in snowy bournouses, with hair and moustache of almost unnatural blackness. French officers of every arm in the service are grouped round the tables, drinking eau-sucré and playing at dominoes or cards, or lounge on the sofas reading the gazettes. The garçons in scarlet tunics, relieved by their white turbans and ...

— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... 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 ...

— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... Gate again and further off still another whistle could be heard. Over in Tiburon the ferry-boat had calmed down, as it found itself unable to budge in the fog. One after the other, the tower-clocks struck half-past four, the strokes sounding loud and unnatural in the fog. From Telegraph Hill at the northern end of San Francisco a splendid view could be obtained of this undulating sea of mist. A few of the isolated houses situated in the higher parts of the town looked like islands floating on the ever-moving glossy gray billows, while the ...

— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... to be finished at once, and perfect. He forces upon the child an unnatural degree of self-mastery, a devotion to duty, a sense of honour, habits that adults get out of with astonishing rapidity. Where the faults of children are concerned, at home and in school, we strain at gnats, while ...

— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key

... not do anything else," said Hermione. "It is unnatural to me to look forward. The 'now' nearly always has complete ...

— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... by the fire. The last degree of nicety was observable in all these preparations. Diana ate her supper. She must live, and she must eat, and she could not help being hungry; though she wondered at herself that she could be so unnatural. ...

— Diana • Susan Warner

... of life; hence Jehudah Halevi's well-known saying, "Israel is to the world as the heart to the body." An intimate connection was also established, by Jews and Greeks alike, between the physical condition of the heart and man's moral character. It was a not unnatural thought that former ages were more pious than later times. "The heart of Rabbi Akiba was like the door of the porch [which was twenty cubits high], the heart of Rabbi Eleazar ben Shammua was like the door of the Temple [this was only ten cubits high], while our hearts ...

— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... along the heavy canvas 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 series ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... had it stood there, patient, unpretentious, content that the great things should pass it by! And now, modest still, it had been singled out from amongst its neighbours and honoured. Was it honoured? It seemed to Honora, so fanciful this day, that its unwonted air of festival was unnatural. Why should the hour of departure from such a harbour of peace ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... with the realization of the grief of his young mistress, which he could not help. He did not raise his eyes to her face when he turned toward her; there was no speech. In the young woman's heart the pain was too great for her to venture expression safely. The silence was poignant with unnatural restraint. ...

— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... mood when the downfall of Napoleon left him the most powerful sovereign in Europe. With the memory of Tilsit still fresh in men's minds, it was not unnatural that to cynical men of the world like Metternich he merely seemed to be disguising "under the language of evangelical abnegation'' vast and perilous schemes of ambition. The puzzled powers were, in fact, the more inclined to be suspicious in view of other, and seemingly inconsistent, ...

— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of. There had been a necessity for action. And now there was nothing. Her activities were over. Seymour had broken the curious spell which for a short time had bound her, and now she realized everything with unnatural acuteness. ...

— December Love • Robert Hichens

... Protestants—not without hints that Henry had an open mind on the subject of the Augsburg Confession. The Germans however were in no haste to accept Henry as a brand plucked from the burning; rather, they had a not unnatural suspicion that he merely wanted to make use of them. They propounded conditions, which Cromwell submitted to Gardiner, at this time ambassador at Paris. Whatever Gardiner's views were as to papal ascendancy, he was no Lutheran; and he pointed out that to accept the terms would ...

— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... rehearsing explanations it was not unnatural they should overflow into this eagerly receptive channel, and that the less he told Lady Ella the fuller became his spiritual confidences ...

— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... women. From being, according to the statements of Cook, Bougainville, and contemporary explorers, compliant to an unheard of degree, they had become most modest, reserved, and decently conducted; so that the whole island wore the air of a convent, a revolution as amusing as it was unnatural. ...

— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... but as one who neither sees nor hears; like one in a drugged, unnatural stupor. She could not think; an iron hand seemed to have clutched her heart, a dreadful despair to have taken possession of her. She had made a horrible, irreparable mistake; she was body and soul in the power of the man ...

— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... unperceived; but who can describe the agony of my aunt Kate, when she clapped her eyes upon five such close-clipped scarecrows. She vowed vengence of all sorts and descriptions against the impudent, unnatural, shameful monster! Terms which Mikey Brian, in the back-ground, appropriated to himself, and with the utmost difficulty restrained his rising wrath from ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... before I lost a vivid impression of this ceremony; the still hour of the night, the naked savages, with their fancifully painted forms, their wild but solemn dirge, their uncouth gestures, and unnatural noises, all tended to keep up an illusion of an unearthly character, and contributed to produce a thrilling and ...

— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... ruthlessly pointed out how the gaiety, the grace, the naturalness of the one disappears in the forced, hard, brutal brilliancy of the other. The contrast is a just one. The vice of the English libertine was hard and unnatural just because his real nature took little share in it. In sheer revolt against the past he was playing a part which was not his own and which he played badly, which he forced and exaggerated, just because it was not his own. Dryden scoffs at priests and creeds, but his greater ...

— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... to equal, so far as God may enable us. It may be true, and it is true, that in the progress of society the milder virtues have come to belong more especially to our day and our condition. The Pilgrims had been great sufferers from intolerance; it was not unnatural that their own faith and practice, as a consequence, should become somewhat intolerant. This is the common infirmity of human nature. Man retaliates on man. It is to be hoped, however, that the greater spread of the benignant ...

— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... that he looked at it as something portentous and prodigious; as a thing to wonder at—but scarcely as deserving the admiration which we pay to actions properly within the scope of humanity—and as if the energy which was displayed in it was like the unnatural strength of madness. He does not say this, but he appears to feel it; and he scarcely would have felt it if he had cared more deeply to saturate himself with the temper of the age of which he was writing. At the time, all England and all the world rang with the story. ...

— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... of asking, "Why do we live?" Always, and involuntarily, we ask, "Why do we die?" Always we are seeking to continue life, inventing something to make it immune from death. To live, therefore, is natural. Not to live is unnatural. Being unnatural, it is an interference with nature. An interference with nature is superior to nature. That which is an interference of and superior to nature is a direct imposition upon nature. An imposition upon nature could not be possible without the permission and will ...

— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... have a hollow and unnatural sound in her own ears. Neither her uncle nor her brother ...

— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... negotiations in Washington have 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

... beer would ruin a recital for me. The habit of taking alcoholic drinks with the idea that they lead to a more fiery performance is a dangerous custom that has been the ruin of more than one pianist. The performer who would be at his best must live a very careful, almost abstemious life. Any unnatural excess is sure to mar his playing and lead to his downfall with the public. I have seen this done over and over again, and have watched alcohol tear down in a few years what had taken decades of hard practice and earnest ...

— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... 12 And now behold, is the meaning of the word restoration to take a thing of a natural state and place it in an unnatural state, or to place it in a ...

— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... and off the universe, the chaff, hay, and stubble which men have built on the One Living Foundation, Christ, in that unquenchable fire, of which it is written that Death and Hell shall one day be cast into it also, to share the fate of all other unnatural and abominable things, and God's universe be—what it must ...

— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley

... articles were concerned with the description of strange and unnatural sins. In this woman there was something of Locusta and something of Messalina as well: antiquity could ...

— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... mother! She has never seen aught but boorishness all her life, and any departure therefrom seems to her unnatural. I believe she is as much afraid of my courtesy as ever she was of my mischief, and that in her secret heart she still believes me a changeling. No, Madam Woodford, there is but one way to save me from the frenzy that ...

— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... much pain. The appearance of the infant, however, while under it, is shocking,—its little black eyes seem ready to start from their sockets; the mouth exhibits all the appearance of internal convulsion; and it clearly appears that the face is undergoing a process of unnatural configuration. About a year's pressure is sufficient to produce the desired effect; the head is ever after completely flattened;" and as slaves are always left to nature, this deformity is consequently a mark of free birth. The Indians on the north coast possess the characteristics ...

— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne

... to be occasioned by a struggle with the evil spirit who then enters into him. During this fit, he keeps his eye-lids lifted up, distorts his features, foams at the mouth, seems to dislocate his joints, and after many violent and unnatural motions remains stiff and motionless, like a person in a fit of epilepsy. After some time he comes to himself, as if having gained the victory over the evil spirit. He next causes a faint shrill mournful voice to be heard within his tabernacle, as of the evil spirit, who is supposed ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... himself again in his chair with his hands in his pockets—"it is not unnatural, I suppose,—but then that is the first view of the subject—it is the business of reason to correct many impressions and prejudices that are, ...

— Queechy • Susan Warner

... man of genius from whom there might be great things yet to come. The names of those who thus made possible the greatest poem in the English language deserve lasting record; and a word of gratitude may be added to Clarendon and to Charles II for refraining from saying the easy and not unnatural word which would have been instantly ...

— Milton • John Bailey

... her adopted mother was forced, for the sake of her incognito, to rouse, and often to scold her when any witnesses were present who would have thought Mrs. Talbot's toleration of such conduct in a daughter suspicious and unnatural. ...

— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... figure generally, and in the second place, being associated in our minds with the peculiar garb worn by gentlemen, they give what, for want of a better word, I may call style. A high black hat is the ugliest, most shapeless, and most unnatural article ever invented, but still a high hat, good and of the shape in vogue, certainly has a more gentlemanly effect, to use a word I hate, than any other. And now, my boy, you I know dined early, so did we. We shall have tea at seven, so we have three hours for work, and there are nearly ...

— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... relapse, thought I; and I felt my judgment once more giving way before the sweltering fiend, who had retreated but for a moment to renew his attacks with still greater fierceness. The moment he once more entered into me—the instant that I was possessed—I cannot call it by any other name—an unnatural strength pervaded my shrunken muscles and emaciated frame, and I stepped boldly into the hall. While I had stood at the door, listless and feeble as a child, hanging on the arms of the two topmen, after they had raised me from ...

— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... of circumstances and to the wise counsels of time and experience, that power has finally resolved no longer to occupy the unnatural position in which she stood to the new Governments established in this hemisphere. I have the great satisfaction of stating to you that in preparing the way for the restoration of harmony between those who ...

— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... opinion, I suffer for that simplicity in my contrivances, which is their principal excellence. No machinery make I necessary. No unnatural flights aim I at. All pure nature, taking advantage of nature, as nature tends; and so simple my devices, that when they are known, thou, even thou, imaginest thou couldest have thought of the same. And indeed thou seemest ...

— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... outside things, very much amused. Moreover, he was king of a far from contemptible kingdom; and in the blessed ignorance of childhood—that finds pride and honour in things which a wider and sadder knowledge often proves far from glad or glorious—it appeared to him not unnatural that a king should differ, even to the point of some slightly impeding disabilities, from the rank and file of his obedient and devoted subjects. For Dickie, happily for him, was as yet given over to that wholly pleasant vanity, the aristocratic idea. The rough justice of democracy, and the harsh ...

— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... 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

... "Influenced by sensory impressions, but gave good attention to each stimulus word. Had some difficulty in limiting his response to one word, but made all possible effort to comply with every request. On one occasion he was asked to react with his eyes closed, but was unable, under the unnatural conditions, to respond ...

— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent

... brow, and that nameless expression of suffering which betrays itself in the lines about the mouth, that his health was affected by the conflict within him; and many a sudden fit of absence and abstraction, many an impatient sigh, followed by a forced and unnatural gayety, told the observant Valerie that he was the prey of a sorrow he was too proud to disclose. He compelled himself, however, to take, or to affect, an interest in the singular phenomena of the social state around him,—phenomena that, in a happier or serener mood, ...

— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... throat any impious sinner, Has cut with unnatural hand to the bone: Give him garlick—more noxious than hemlock—at dinner; Ye gods! what strong ...

— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... 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

... had till now made upon Lorand the impression of the quarrel of a tipsy husband with his obstinate wife, who answers all his provocations with jesting: the lady seemed incapable of being frightened, the thief of frightening. Some unnatural indifference seemed to give the lie to that scene, which youthful imagination would picture so differently. The meeting of a thief with an unprotected lady, at night, in an inn on the plain! It was impossible that they should speak ...

— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... Tenth succeeds to the government, and how Sidonia meets him as she is gathering bilberries—Item, of the unnatural witch-storm at his Grace's funeral, and how Duke Casimir refuses, in consequence, to ...

— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... was my impression,' said Mr. Fladgate, with a humorous light in his eye; 'the only address on the manuscript was yours, and I came to the not unnatural conclusion that Mr. Ashburn and Mr. Beauchamp were one and the same. Am I to understand that is not ...

— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... live principally on beef and milk; and it is also a common custom for them to drink daily a pint or so of blood taken from a live bullock. As they thus live entirely on cattle, and as cattle cannot thrive without good pasture, it is not unnatural to find that they have a great reverence for grass. They also worship a Supreme Being whom they call N'gai, but this term is also applied to anything which ...

— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson

... sciences of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, etc. Moreover, as Medicine may have to deal with a healthy or unhealthy body, and may have it for its province to preserve or restore health, to assist a natural process (as in the case of a broken bone), or to destroy an unnatural one (as in the case of the removal of a tumor), the same variety of work is imposed ...

— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... convent now, in truth, when the death of the porter was known. Anna Apenborg shut herself up, trembling, in her cell, and even good Dorothea began somewhat to doubt the virtues of the vile sorceress; for the corpse had a strange and unnatural appearance, so that it was horrible to look upon, by which signs it was easy to perceive that he had been prayed to death, as the fearful night-hag ...

— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... struck by the fortuitous, one might almost say, unnatural, character of the Hapsburg empire. While the union of Castile and Aragon, bringing together neighboring peoples and filling a political need, was the source of real strength, the subsequent accretions of ...

— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... some smart Draper that, on the strength of a new Periwig and a lacquered hilt to his Sword, passes for a Macarony. 'Tis not very romantic to relate, but 'tis no less a fact, that the Son and the Mother hated one another. You who have gone through the World and watched it, know that these sad unnatural loathings between Parents and Children, after the latter are grown up, are by no means uncommon. To me it seems almost impossible that Estrangement and Dislike—nay, absolute Aversion—should ever engender between ...

— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... have enemies enough besides such unnatural fishermen; as namely, the Otters that I spake of, the Cormorant, the Bittern, the Osprey, the Sea-gull, the Hern, the King-fisher, the Gorara, the Puet, the Swan, Goose, Duck, and the Craber, which some call the Water-rat: against all which any honest man may ...

— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... gigantesque. There is nothing mountainous or craggy, but the banks and hills at the back being luxuriously wooded, and conveying the idea of being well tenanted, the absence of human habitations seems unnatural, and gives the solitude an air of mystery, only broken at long intervals by a bowered cottage or a wreath of smoke. The most remarkable building is the French chateau of M. Papineau, very prettily ...

— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... common causes of sterility. There, immense tracts sloping gradually upward show a desolation so peculiar, so utterly unlike every common solitude of Nature, that one enters upon it with the shudder we give at that which is wholly unnatural. On all sides are gigantic serpent convolutions of black lava, their immense folds rolled into every conceivable contortion, as if, in their fiery agonies, they had struggled and wreathed and knotted together, and then grown cold and black with the imperishable ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... Runemede. Virginia Water itself lies more than a mile from the station, and is not at its best on Saturdays and Sundays. On quieter week days there is no lovelier stretch of woodland lake-water. It is, of course, not a natural sheet, but its designer had skill enough to know what would not look unnatural. He was Thomas Sandby, Royal Academician and Deputy-Ranger of Windsor Park, and one of the great landscape gardeners of Georgian days. He planned the lake for the Duke of Cumberland, Ranger of Windsor Park after Culloden, and he made it by choking ...

— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... these wiles? To clear herself in my eyes—mine, the eyes of a settled man—to make me believe how good she was, how well-behaved! But, dear child, I knew that before; I could see it from your hands! You are so unnatural that in your seven and twentieth year, you walk ...

— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun

... physiologic reasons against long engagements: they keep the affections and the passions in an excited and unnatural condition, which after a time tends to weaken the nervous system and undermine the health. These evil consequences are common to both sexes. It is far better that the subject of marriage should not be entertained at all unless the circumstances are such that the ...

— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith

... religion; for there is not any of such a fugitive faith, such an unstable belief, as a Christian; none that do so often transform themselves, not unto several shapes of Christianity, and of the same species, but unto more unnatural and contrary forms of Jew and Mohammedan; that, from the name of Saviour, can condescend to the bare term of prophet: and, from an old belief that he is come, fall to a new expectation of his coming. It is the promise of Christ, to make us ...

— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... the next half-hour, giving the men a good rest, when they took their turn, and we could see that while the haze seemed nearer the schooner was quite as far-off as ever. There was a curious coppery look, too, about the sun that made everything now look weird and unnatural, even to the doctor's face, which in addition looked serious to a degree ...

— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn

... holding seems to have been hereditary. But we have too few examples to be sure of our ground here. The slave's father was not concerned in the sale, and that may be the sole reason why he is not named. Fathers sometimes sold their children to be slaves, then they are named. Such sales are not so unnatural as they appear. It was a sure provision for life for a child to sell him as slave to a ...

— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... said Mrs. Pendleton, nodding toward Sally; and they all looked in wonder at the unnatural flush on the girl's cheeks and the strange, dazzling brightness ...

— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... Greek,' for fear lest I should ask you to write verses to me, which, indeed, I shall never do, Olaf. A soldier, a poet, a philosopher, a harpist, one who has renounced women! Now, why have you renounced women, which is unnatural in a man who is not a monk? It must be because you still love this Iduna, and hope to ...

— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... of the adult are strongly flexed and turned inwards, and cannot be perfectly straightened. In the attempt the skin gathers into thick folds on the back, shewing that the full expansion of the foot, as is necessary in walking, is unnatural. The natural position is on all fours, the body anteriorly resting upon the knuckles. These are greatly enlarged, with the skin protuberant and thickened like the ...

— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... I'm filled with surprise Taxidermists should pass Off on you such poor glass; So unnatural they seem They'd make Audubon scream, And John Burroughs laugh To encounter such chaff. Do take that bird down; Have him stuffed again, Brown!" And the barber kept ...

— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... in a voice so loud and unnatural that all were awed into silence. The quiet man had changed so completely he seemed another person. Alfred gazed at him in astonishment. He hurled epithets and denunciations at those whose names he had never before mentioned aloud. He recalled insults and abuse heaped ...

— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... approaches to an end, And the possessions of this fleeting world Will soon pass from me. I am grown too old To have my passions roused by this rebellion; All I can do is, with paternal love, To counsel peace. Be with your lot contented; Seek not unnatural strife, but cherish peace." ...

— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... success of the new Foreign Secretary. When the powers at Vienna, in 1815, were rearranging the map of Europe they had joined Belgium with Holland as the kingdom of the Netherlands, with the idea of forestalling any further advance of France in that quarter. The union was unnatural. Race, language, and religion were opposed to it, and in 1830, the Belgians revolted. A congress of the powers met in London to labor for a peaceful solution. Between the claims of Holland and the aggressive policy of France, ...

— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... else to be 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 that the mystery of Annabel's illness and Maggie's ...

— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... propriety of calling in a clergyman to administer ghostly consolation to the poor condemned in his last moments. It was only with an effort that I was able to get rid of this idea, and come back from this foolish, yet not unnatural fancy, to the reality of the present situation. There was every reason, indeed, for such a momentary misconception. The sadness, the silence, the gloom, all suggested some prison cell; and Jack, prostrate, stricken, ...

— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... of ameliorating, has made martyrs of them. They have not only been deprived of the means of reproduction, but they have been kept in solitude and darkness, and forced to eat until they were led to an unnatural state of fatness. ...

— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... From the unnatural brightness of the eyes of Susie and of Smith, and their still tense attitudes, Ralston sensed the fact that something had happened. He returned Smith's unpleasant look with a gaze as steady as his own. Then his eyes fell ...

— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... help mentioning a circumstance here, though we doubt it will appear very unnatural and incredible to our reader; which is, that, notwithstanding the former character and behaviour of Heartfree, this story of his embezzling was so far from surprizing his neighbours, that many of them declared they expected no better from ...

— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... long he would crawl around the floor in a filthy little dress, whining and fretting; because the floor was full of drafts he was always catching cold, and snuffling because his nose ran. This made him a nuisance, and a source of endless trouble in the family. For his mother, with unnatural perversity, loved him best of all her children, and made a perpetual fuss over him—would let him do anything undisturbed, and would burst into tears when his fretting ...

— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... a high C with the chest voice often realizes an income of thousands to its fortunate possessor. Roger has made a laudable exception; his beautiful use of the falsetto certainly produces a more agreeable effect than the forced chest tones so unnatural to the organ of many a singer. How widespread is this mistaken notion, that the use of the falsetto is entirely contrary to art, we hear frequently enough in the expressions of individuals when some unlucky tenor happens to get caught on one of these tabooed falsetto ...

— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke

... clear, bleak perception of the fact before her. She did not care to call to him again. His head was hidden by the lynx's body, as if he was burrowing underneath the creature; his legs were twisted about each other in a queer, unnatural attitude. ...

— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... was a sturdy conscientiousness, an undespairing courage, patriotism, public spirit, sagacity, and a strong good sense. A great change, both for better and for worse, has since come over it, due largely to reaction against the unnatural rigors of the past. That mixture, which is now too common, of cool emotions with excitable brains, was then rarely seen. The New England colonies abounded in high examples of public and private virtue, though not always under the most prepossessing ...

— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... reason, it may be well for you to understand how far public opinion has advanced with regard to our question. Its progress has been slow, but I believe always in the right direction. Things promised well, when the Oregon dispute became the occasion of an unnatural animosity against Great Britain, and every measure which she was supposed to approve. In the hurly-burly of wind and dust that was blown up under that passing cloud, it is not to be wondered that Dickens and copyright were as completely forgotten as orthography, etymology, syntax ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... peace.' And so men do with their consciences. They stifle them, sear them, forcibly silence them, somehow or other; and then, when there is a dead stillness in the heart, broken by no voice of either approbation or blame, but doleful like the unnatural quiet of a deserted city, then they call that peace, and the man's uncontrolled passions and unbridled desires dwell solitary in the fortress of his own spirit! You may almost attain to that. Do you think ...

— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... looked to them a hero, a saint, a Christ, compared to these modern thieves who were environed with all the defences and impunity which the law and the State could give. When an earth-shock makes the soil under your feet quiver, and gape, and mutter, you feel that unnatural forces are being hurled against you, you feel that you are the mere sport and jest of an unjust deity. This was ...

— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... to sea, and I want to show you that my old heart, though it's pretty well scorched and dried up with the hard life I've led, can still feel thankful for favours done. At first I couldn't make Bob believe that I was his father, and no wonder, for an unnatural one I had been to him all his life; but I told him so many things about when he was a baby that he knows it now, and has taken to call me father, and that warms my heart and gives it such a pleasure I can't describe. After having had no one to care for me for better than ...

— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... strengthens health, and disappointment cultivates disease. A person in love will invariably enjoy the best of health. Ninety-nine per cent. of our strong constitutioned men, now in physical ruin, have wrecked themselves on the breakers of an unnatural love. Nothing but right love and a right marriage will restore them ...

— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... quiver of the heat between. For the valley was just a lake of hot air, hot and murky—"fever weather," said the people in the streets—with a glaring summer sun let in between two long spells of fog. 'Twas unnatural at that season, via; but the blessed Saints sent the weather and one could only be careful what one was about ...

— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... discharged. There was a great commotion among the leaves, the branches swayed and thrashed, and then a dark body plunged downward to strike on the rocky slope of the bluff and roll swiftly out of sight. The hunter's unnatural yell ...

— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... shout, but the muscles of his throat were stiff, and his lungs refused to act. The horse neighed again. This time there was no mistake; it was Roger that he heard! Voice came to him, and he cried aloud,—a hoarse, strange, unnatural cry. ...

— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey