"Unheard-of" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... immediately recanted. It was in other directions that the energies of the people found their exercise. If Englishmen were heedless of foreign philosophers, they were quick to notice that the fruit of the vine had failed, and forthwith the unheard-of novelty of taverns where beer and mead were sold sprang up in France, probably by the help of those English traders whose beer was ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... to history, and none is more so than that of Robespierre. According to popular belief, this personage was a blood-thirsty monster, a vulgar tyrant, who committed the most unheard-of enormities, with the basely selfish object of raising himself to supreme power—of becoming the Cromwell of the Revolution. Considering that Robespierre was for five years—1789 to 1794—a prime leader in the political movements in France; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... fell and the woman disappeared, but in a few minutes more an unheard-of thing happened—among the servants in the hall, the same old woman appeared making her way with a hurried fretfulness, and she descended haltingly the stone steps and came to his side where he sat on his ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Iceland and Newfoundland.[40] The great power of Spain and Portugal by sea, and their jealousy of other countries rendered it impossible at that period for foreign seafarers to carry on traffic in the East-Asiatic countries, which had been sketched by Marco Polo with so attractive accounts of unheard-of richness in gold and jewels, in costly stuffs, in spices and perfumes. In order that the merchants of northern Europe might obtain a share of the profit, it appeared to be necessary to discover new routes, inaccessible to the armadas of the Pyrenean peninsula. ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... interesting young couple ever known. All down both sides of the table, too, are various young ladies, beautiful to see, and various young gentlemen who seem to think so; and there, in a post of honour, is an unmarried aunt of Miss Emma's, reported to possess unheard-of riches, and to have expressed vast testamentary intentions respecting her favourite niece and new nephew. This lady has been very liberal and generous already, as the jewels worn by the bride abundantly testify, but that ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... spite of Wenzel. King of Hungary, after unheard-of troubles and adventures, ending some years ago in a kind of peace and conquest, he has long been. King of Bohemia, too, he at last became; having survived Wenzel, who was childless. Kaiser of the Holy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... master to an open and infamous death; to banish that numerous and strongly-allied family; to do all this under the name and wages of a Parliament; to trample upon them too as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors when he grow weary of them; to raise up a new and unheard-of monster out of their ashes; to stifle that in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever were called sovereign in England; to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice; ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... not to become a giraffe. But now that a man may make money, and rise in the world, and associate himself, unreproached, with people once far above him, not only is the natural discontentedness of humanity developed to an unheard-of extent, whatever a man's position, but it becomes a veritable shame to him to remain in the state he was born in, and everybody thinks it his duty to try to be a "gentleman." Persons who have any influence in the management of public institutions for charitable education know how common this ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the floor, it becomes scarcely less than painful. When perhaps only one or two remain to be puzzled, the master, weary at last of his task, though a favorite one, tries by tricks to put down those whom he cannot overcome in fair fight. If among all the curious, useless, unheard-of words which may be picked out of the spelling-book, he cannot find one which the scholars have not noticed, he gets the last head down by some quip or catch. "Bay" will perhaps be the sound; one scholar spells it "bey," another, "bay," while the master all the time means "ba," which ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... opportunities of observing the proofs of English art and skill which I see every where and in every department, I cannot but the more deeply regret that these wonderful discoveries, and strange and unheard-of inventions, in every branch of science and art, are likely to remain unknown to the people of India. If I were to relate on my return all the wonders I have seen, no one would believe me: and to what could I appeal in evidence of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... humble endeavour which sorely tried the conscience of the average Englishman. That any one should wish to write plays that were not intended to please the public—that did not pay—was an unheard-of desire, morbid and unwholesome as could well be, and meriting the severest rebuke. But the Independent Theatre has somehow managed to struggle into a third year of life, and the New English Art Club has opened ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... of persons with which the general reader would be apt to associate no ideas but those of wild superstition and rude manners, is in the highest degree interesting; and I cannot resist the temptation of quoting two of the songs of this hitherto unheard-of poet of humble life.... Rude and bald as these things appear in a verbal translation, and rough as they might possibly appear, even were the originals intelligible, we confess we are disposed to think they would of themselves justify ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... left the other eager shipmasters out of his count. The Captain of the Drumeltan raised the 'blood-money' to an unheard-of sum, and two days later towed out to sea, though the wind was W.S.W. beyond the Straits—a ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... Miss Ophelia found Topsy with her very best scarlet India Canton crape shawl wound round her head for a turban, going on with her rehearsals before the glass in great style,—Miss Ophelia having, with carelessness most unheard-of in her, left the key for ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... prejudice either to one's Conscience or the Government, one may think bad Verses bad Verses, and have full right to be tir'd with reading a silly Book. But since these Gentlemen have spoken of the liberty I have taken of Naming them, as an Attempt unheard-of, and without Example, and since Examples can't well be put into Rhyme; 'tis proper to say one word to inform 'em of a thing of which they alone wou'd gladly be ignorant, and to make them know, that in comparison of all my ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... communication with the East. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific railways, the pioneer transcontinental lines, fostered on generous grants of land, were the tokens of the new transportation movement. Railroads were pushing forward everywhere with unheard-of rapidity. Short lines were being merged into far-reaching systems. In the early seventies the Pennsylvania system was organized and the Vanderbilts acquired control of lines as far west as Chicago. Soon the Baltimore and Ohio system extended ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... in the air; "the almond-trees are in bloom, violets cover the grass, and oh! the divine, the celestial, the unheard-of beauty of it all!" It is almost a pang for her, "with its strange mixture of longing and regret and delight," and in the midst of it she says, "I have to exert all my strength not to lose myself in ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... I pray to Heaven I may never see again; sad complications producing unheard-of tortures, and bringing the sufferer again and again to the very brink ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... replied Mrs. Glynn. "Didn't she always go there? It isn't that. It is the most unheard-of thing she had done; but no woman, unless she had plenty of money to bring it ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fell upon the British troops as they were marched out, despoiled them of their few remaining effects, dragged the Indians in the English service out of their ranks, and assassinated them under circumstances of unheard-of barbarity. Some soldiers with their wives and children are said to have been savagely murdered by these brutal Indians. The greater part of the garrison, however, arrived at Fort Edward under the protection of the French escort. The enemy demolished the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Columbia spoke first. He had come thirty miles since dawn. He seemed unnerved and fearful, like one about to announce some unheard-of calamity. The most stoical bent forward ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... in thought and feeling—ah, that was beyond my power. I knew that the predatory Potsdam gang had chosen and forced the war in order to realize their robber-dream of Pan-Germanism. I knew that they were pushing it with unheard-of atrocity in Belgium and northern France, in Poland and Servia and Armenia. I knew that they had challenged and attacked the whole world of peace-loving nations. I knew that America belonged to that ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... of Satan rushing into the temple Perpetrate an unexampled, unheard-of, crime. Thomas proceeds to meet their drawn swords: He yields not to threats, to swords, ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... an unheard-of hour, but they took no note of time this night; and Denys had still much to tell them, when the door was opened quietly, and in stole Cornelis and Sybrandt looking hang-dog. They had this night been drinking the very last drop ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... slowly that, though their power to reach our minds is unheard-of in any of the seven galaxies we know about, it still cannot take and use any but the ideas in the forefront of our consciousness. In other words, chess was a possibility. They could be forced to take a sacrificed ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... his fear, he, with another gentleman, repaired to Bordeaux, and persuaded the Parliament to obtain from the King the commissioning of two of its members, Espagnet and Lancre, to try the wizards in the Basque country. This commission, absolute and without appeal, worked with unheard-of vigour; in four months, from May to August, 1609, condemned sixty or eighty witches, and examined five hundred more, who, though equally marked with the sign of the Devil, figured in the proceedings ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... half-dozen years had come to present the case in a new light. The young colony was not languishing. It was full of sturdy life; it had wrought mischief to the schemes of Gorges; and what was more, it had begun to take unheard-of liberties with things ecclesiastical and political. Its example was getting to be a dangerous one. It was evidently worth while to put a strong curb upon Massachusetts. Any promise made to his subjects Charles regarded as a promise made under duress which he was quite justified in breaking ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... uninhabitable by its ordinary frequenters. The chance customer who risked himself in this den, became, from the moment of his entrance, the victim of the terrible four; and, in most cases, made his escape without finishing his newspaper and cup of coffee, seasoned as they were by unheard-of maxims on art, sentiment, and political economy. The conversation of the four comrades was of such a nature that the waiter who served them had become an idiot in ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... preached as that practised by these heartless, soulless invaders from across the wide Pacific—men who stifled gambling and scorned all bribes. "Your chief of police is no gentleman," declared certain prominent merchants, arrested for smuggling opium, and naturally aggrieved and indignant at such unheard-of treatment. "He did not tell us how much he wanted! He did not even ask us to pay!" Retained in responsible positions in the office of the collector of customs, two Spanish officers of rank were presently found to have embezzled some ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... to tell you a thing, the most astonishing, the most surprizing, the most marvelous, the most miraculous, the most magnificent, the most confounding, the most unheard-of, the most singular, the most extraordinary, the most incredible, the most unforeseen, the greatest, the least, the rarest, the most common, the most public, the most private till to-day, the most brilliant, the most inevitable; in short, a thing of which there is but one ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... Alimony. Miss Alimony was one of that large and increasing number of dusky, grey-eyed ladies who go through life with an air of darkly incomprehensible significance. She led off Lady Harman as though she took her away to reveal unheard-of mysteries and her voice was a contralto undertone that she emphasized in some inexplicable way by the magnetic use of her eyes. Her hat of cock's feathers which rustled like familiar spirits greatly augmented the profundity of her effect. As she spoke ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... desperate truth, unheard-of or no. The whole thing lies in our hands. They cannot come till after midnight, and by that time Thwaite may be ready in Bardur, and the Khautmi men may be holding the road. That would delay them for a little, and by the time they took ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... echoing streets; day after day Broadway resounded with the racket of their drums. Rifles, chasseurs, zouaves, foot artillery, pioneers, engineers, rocket batteries, the 79th Highlanders, dismounted lancers of the 69th and dragoons of the 8th—every heard-of and unheard-of unnecessary auxiliary to a respectable regiment of state infantry, mustered for inspection and marched away in polychromatic magnificence. Park, avenue, and square shrilled with their windy fifes; the towering sides of the transports struck back the wild ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Dusty Ben along with the others?" This was an unheard-of price to pay for any horse. Creech saw that Bostil was desperate. It was an almost overpowering temptation. Evidently Creech resisted it only by applying all his mind to the thought of his clean-limbed, soft-eyed, ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... he ventured to make any observation; indeed, he was so astonished at such an unheard-of proceeding, and so shocked at the unfortunate situation of Isabel, that he hardly ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... years later Pope John wrote a letter to Edward III., in which he declares that the object of Pope Adrian's Bull had been entirely neglected, and that the "most unheard-of miseries and persecutions had been inflicted on the Irish." He recommends that monarch to adopt a very different policy, and to remove the causes of complaint, "lest it might be too late hereafter to apply a remedy, when the spirit of revolt ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... to understand the amazement and the shock which came upon them when young Lloyd George not only refused to submit to their bullying, but stood up to them and even thrust wounding words at them. It was an unheard-of proceeding. Some of these magistrates, lifelong supporters of Church and state, must sometimes have wondered why the presumptuous youth was not struck dead by Providence for his temerity. He, on his part, was never so happy as when he was shocking them. Clients quickly grew ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... dismay of the two bourgeois, put first one long leg and then another through the window and came in noisily to sit down (they were standing on the running-board all this time with the train going forty miles an hour...a thing which was simply unheard-of in France before the war...one of the 'privileges' which the poilu take!). Well, they shook hands with me two or three times over and assured me they had never seen an American before...and indeed the two ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... things heaped up evidence for the poor girl; she brooded over each separate item all night, and added to the sum Polly Mariner's gossip, and looked forward to the day when everybody in Greenfield should say, "Lizzy Griswold's had a disapp'intment of John Boynton!" Poor, dear, Lizzy! as if that were an unheard-of pang! as if nine-tenths of her accusers were not "disapp'inted" themselves,—some before, some after marriage,—some in themselves, some in their children, some in their wretched, dreary lives! But there was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... accordingly, in a position to state that exaggerated statements are made in the reports from French headquarters, and to confirm the facts that the Germans were outnumbered several times by the French; that the French suffered terrific and unheard-of losses, in spite of several days of artillery preparation; that the French attacks failed altogether, as none of them attained the expected result, and that the encircling movement of General Joffre is without tangible result." "The world presently shall see ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... reverend sir: It has been certified to us, the preachers of the King our lord, by persons whom we are forced to believe, and it also appears to be notorious, that men of our Spanish nation in the Indies commit great and unheard-of evils against the natives of those parts; such as robberies and murders, thereby giving the greatest offence to God and bringing infamy on our holy faith, and by which such an infinite number of people have ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... had to stop and explain much about beaver tails, and the rest of beavers, to the Frenchman, who was interested like a boy in this new, almost unheard-of beast. At length: ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... with, and consoling one another in all these little vexations, and at last came to be so fond of each other that for Placida's sake Vivien became quite patient, and for Vivien's sake Placida made the most unheard-of exertions. But now the Fairies who had been watching all these proceedings with interest, thought it was time to interfere, and ascertain by further trials if this improvement was likely to continue, and if they really loved one another. So they caused Placida to seem to have ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... that the motive by which she had been actuated in making it must have been either the fear of discovery, or a desire to rid herself of persons of whom she had become weary, in order that she might be left at liberty to encourage new suitors; or finally, that she had been urged to this unheard-of measure by individuals who had obtained sufficient influence over her mind to induce her to sacrifice her peace and her honour ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... 1887. Perhaps the great book sensation of 1888 occurred in the sale at Christie's when a portion of the library of the late Lord Chancellor Hardwicke ('The Wimpole Library') was sold, and when a dozen tracts relating to America, bound together in a quarto volume, realized the unheard-of sum of L555. In the same sale also there were three Caxtons: the 'Game and Play of Chesse,' 1475-76, first edition, but not quite perfect, L260; and 'The Myrrour of the Worlde;' and Tullius 'De Amicitia,' both imperfect, in ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... not up to now taken a very serious view of the case, which had seemed to me rather grotesque and bizarre than dangerous. That a man should lie in wait for and follow a very handsome woman is no unheard-of thing, and if he had so little audacity that he not only dared not address her, but even fled from her approach, he was not a very formidable assailant. The ruffian Woodley was a very different person, but, except on one occasion, he had not ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... small, ugly, homely face, withered and gnarled hands; and she was dressed that day in a little old bonnet of unheard-of age, and in dingy, frowsy black clothes, shiny and creased, that came out of their box perhaps ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the unheard-of west Round which the strong stream of a sacred sea Rolls without wind for ever, and the snow There shows not her white wings and windy feet, Nor thunder nor swift rain saith anything, Nor the sun burns, but all things rest ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... me opposite to a part of the room which was partitioned; I tried to get my boot on; I pulled it with my hands, I pushed with all the strength of the muscles of my leg, making the most unheard-of efforts, when suddenly, the two tags of my boot remained in my hands, and my foot struck ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... their standard at Donald Fraser's and each made stupendous efforts to out-bake the other. But very rarely was there an advantage on either side. If one party got ahead of the other by so much as a cookie at one festivity, the defeated were sure to produce some unheard-of ammunition at the next. One New Year's Eve the South came charging up with thirty different varieties of pie, causing rout and dismay in the ranks of the enemy. But on the next Dominion Day the North responded gallantly with an eleven-story iced cake looking ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... of the tide of loyalty that swept over the nation—all these were visible enough. But Hyde was under no delusionment as to the canker that was soon to wither all his hopes. He draws no flattering picture of the work in which his own part was so large. He recognizes that there "must have been some unheard-of defect of understanding in those who were trusted by the King with the administration of his affairs." [Footnote: Life, i. 315.] His disappointment is too great to permit him to waste words in any attempt to dissociate himself ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... "crack,"—or else it was Kate's fancy—for she started as if it had been a cannon-ball; and though she sat with her book in her lap by the fire in Mary's room, all the dear old furniture and pictures round her, her head was weaving an unheard-of imagination, about robbers coming in rifling everything—coming up the stairs—creak, creak, was that their step?—she held her breath, and her eyes dilated—seizing her for the sake of her watch! What article there would be in the paper—"Melancholy disappearance of the youthful Countess ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... delivery of the mails, and a daily service to the coast has also been established. A fast overland service to Wan Hsien now exists, by which the coast mails are transmitted between that port and Chung-king in the hitherto unheard-of time of two days—a traveler considers himself fortunate if he covers the same distance in eight days. There are fast daily services to Luchow (380 li distant) in one day, Sui-fu (655 li) in two days, Hochow (180 li) in one night, and Chen-tu (1,020 li) in three ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... prospectors and the pack-trains alike penetrated the Salmon River Range. Oro Fino, in Idaho, was old in 1861. The next great strikes were to be made around Florence. Here the indomitable packer from the West, conquering unheard-of difficulties, brought in whiskey, women, pianos, food, mining tools. Naturally all these commanded fabulous prices. The price for each and all lay underfoot. Man, grown superman, could overleap time itself by a stroke of the pick! ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... justice which they have rendered to their vassals and subordinates, upon the kindness which they have shown to the fellahin, on the paternal solicitude with which, in the years of insufficient inundations or of bad harvests, they have striven to come forward and assist them, and upon the unheard-of disinterestedness which kept them from raising the taxes during the times of average Niles, or of unusual plenty. Gifts to the gods poured in from one end of the country to the other, and the great building works, which had been at a standstill since the end of the VIth dynasty, were recommenced ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... one of the finest libraries that is to be found in all Spain, and among his books he passed long hours of the day and of the night, compiling, classifying, taking notes, and selecting various sorts of precious information, or composing, perhaps, some hitherto unheard-of and undreamed-of work, worthy of so great a mind. His habits were patriarchal; he ate little, drank less, and his only dissipations consisted of a luncheon in the Alamillos on very great occasions, and ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... according to Mecutchen,—and all were as strong as could be. Dr. Laycock identified his bill, swore that his treatment of Mrs. Stiles was in accordance with the most recent discoveries in medical science, that Mrs. Stiles had suffered unheard-of agonies, and that she had obeyed all his directions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... here was a sufficiently ridiculous affair, owing to the misbehaviour of the pack-horse, for it was impossible upon this occasion to manage with as little luggage as usual, so we arranged to take a good-sized carpet-bag (a most unheard-of luxury), and on each side of it was to be slung a rifle and a gun, and smaller bags of bullets, shot, and powder-flasks, disposed to the best advantage on the pack-saddle. This was all very well in theory, but when it came to the point, the proper steady old ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... known as "east half south," as it not unfrequently happens that he is. He compels his bearers to tax their powers of endurance to the utmost, urging them by all the endearing epithets in the nautical vocabulary to unheard-of exertions, regardless of the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... purification. He would load himself of his own will with so many anxieties and so much work that he would have no time left to listen to the insidious voice of his "old friends." Could he manage to silence them at once? This unheard-of grace—would it be granted to him? Or would not rather the struggle continue in the depths of his conscience? What comes out as certain is that those terrible passions which turned his youth upside down, nevermore play any part in his life. From the ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... step over the threshold of the twentieth century. What greater wonders will the dreamers yet unfold? It may be that another magician, greater even than Edison, the "Wizzard of Menloe Park," will rise up and coax the very laws of nature into easy compliance with his unheard-of dreams. I think he will construct an electric railway in the form of a huge tube, and call it the "electro-scoot," and passengers will enter it in New York and touch a button and arrive in San Francisco two hours before they started! I think a new discovery ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... all in these lazy times of peace, you would say true. But you see, in the first place, this is ever so long ago. Then, in the second place, it was in the heat of war, when everything was on a gigantic scale, and things had to be done in unheard-of ways. Then, chiefly, this particular business involved the buying up of I do not know who among the Rebels there in Texas, and among their allies on the other side the Rio Grande. This old Spaniard, whom mamma remembers, and ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... are irresistible, too, these little ones. They pull away the scholar's pen, tumble about his paper, make somersets over his books; and what can he do? They tear up newspapers, litter the carpets, break, pull, and upset, and then jabber unheard-of English in self-defence; and what can you do ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for five days. There had never been such preparations. Paul and Arthur scoured the land for holly and evergreens. Annie made the pretty paper hoops in the old-fashioned way. And there was unheard-of extravagance in the larder. Mrs. Morel made a big and magnificent cake. Then, feeling queenly, she showed Paul how to blanch almonds. He skinned the long nuts reverently, counting them all, to see not one was lost. It was said that eggs whisked better in a cold place. So the ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... when he went down through the business part of the town, he discovered that his sermon of Sunday had roused almost every one. People were talking about it on the street—an almost unheard-of thing in Milton. When the evening paper came out it described in sensational paragraphs the Reverend Mr. Strong's attack on the wealthy sinners of his own church, and went on to say that the church "was very much wrought up over ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... of the soul, by its own act of will, is, I admit, great for any one occasion or for a definite time, yea, it is marvellous. But of such exertions and such an even frame of spirit, as Baxter's were, under such unremitting and almost unheard-of bodily derangements and pains as his, and during so long a life, 1 do not believe a human soul capable, unless substantiated and successively potentiated by an especial ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to Egypt, and next to the island of Cyprus. Dreadful were the devastations committed by these infatuated people, and shocking the barbarities exercised on the unoffending inhabitants. 5. Some were sawn asunder, others cast to wild beasts, or made to kill each other, while the most unheard-of torments were invented and exercised on the unhappy victims of their fury. Nay, to such a pitch was their animosity carried, that they actually ate the flesh of their enemies, and even wore their skins. 6. However, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... view the corpse. Men could not satiate their eyes with feeding on the carcass of a serpent who, by his unbounded ambition and pestiferous perfidy, by every demonstration of horrible cruelty, monstrous lust, and unheard-of avarice, selling without distinction things sacred and profane, had filled the world with venom.' Cesare languished for some days on a sick bed; but in the end, by the aid of a powerful constitution, he recovered, to find ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... you," said Bellenger, having shaken the wallet and poked his fingers into the lining where an unheard-of ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... December 1154. He at once endeavoured to compass the overthrow of Arnold of Brescia, the leader of anti-papal sentiment in Rome. Disorders ending with the murder of a cardinal led Adrian shortly before Palm Sunday 1155 to take the previously-unheard-of step of putting Rome under the interdict. The senate thereupon exiled Arnold, and the pope, with the impolitic co-operation of Frederick I. Barbarossa, was instrumental in procuring his execution. Adrian crowned the emperor at St Peter's on the 18th of June 1155, a ceremony ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a trying time in the life of the Reserve Battalion. Training was concentrated to an unheard-of degree—a recruit being allowed nine short weeks before he found himself on Embarkation Leave. Drafts were required by the dozen, both for the Western Front (for which the Somme and Beaumont Hamel Offensives were chiefly responsible) and for the Eastern Front. Then there was the trying coastguard ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... Wenzel and Metski was in the trenches at Minsk, where they had a tough debate regarding our adventure in the forest: the woodman insisting it was the Finn's spell that brought the wolves in such unheard-of numbers, and the peasant maintaining that it was a judgment on our desecration of Christmas-eve. For my own part, I think the long storm, and a great scarcity of food had something to do with it, for tales of the kind were never wanting in our province. The wolf-gathering, however, saved us ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... known, So that I counselled might have been of thee? Before the sorrows and the grief begun, That have nigh quenched my eyes; but raised shall be The curtain from the scene, that thou upon My pain mayst look, and mayst lament with me; And I to thee of mine unheard-of woe The argument ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... perhaps, even less than that. Let us say it simply, it was not he who stole; it was not the man; it was the beast, who, by habit and instinct, had simply placed his foot upon that money, while the intelligence was struggling amid so many novel and hitherto unheard-of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... an unheard-of, audacious, and preposterous proceeding; one which the rules and regulations of the Fire Department, many and varied as they are, never anticipated. But it was adopted. Meanwhile the Captain found it necessary to inspect the interior of the building, ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... though he generously made me welcome, and would not even accept the jewels with which I offered to pay my passage. Our voyage was prosperous, and after visiting many lands, and collecting in each place great store of goodly merchandise, I found myself at last in Bagdad once more with unheard-of riches of every description. Again I gave large sums of money to the poor, and enriched all the mosques in the city, after which I gave myself up to my friends and relations, with whom I passed my time in feasting ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... cars drawn by sacred bullocks; the royal body-guard in full uniform; a delegation of mandarins in court-dress; a hundred Buddhist priests attached to the royal temple; and, moreover, his Majesty has granted special permission an unheard-of thing, let me tell you!—for the royal ballet to give a performance expressly for you to-morrow afternoon on the terrace of the throne-hall. It will be a ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... in the house. On the third day he felt quite at home, like as in the fisherman's hut on the sand-hills where he had passed his early days. Here on the heath there was certainly an unheard-of wealth, for the flowers and blackberries and bilberries were to be found in plenty, so large and sweet, that when they were crushed beneath the tread of the passers by, the heath was ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... designs of states! What petty motives rule their fates! How the mouse makes the mighty mountains shake! The mighty mountain labours with its birth, Away the frighten'd peasants fly, Scared at the unheard-of prodigy, Expect some great gigantic son of earth; Lo! it appears! See how they tremble! how they quake! Out starts the little beast, and mocks their ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... know what my life is," she presently said. "I have no pleasure, I see nothing, I do nothing. I live in Paris as I might live at Poitiers. My mother-in-law calls me—what is the pretty word?—a gad-about? accuses me of going to unheard-of places, and thinks it ought to be joy enough for me to sit at home and count over my ancestors on my fingers. But why should I bother about my ancestors? I am sure they never bothered about me. I don't propose to live with a green shade on ...
— The American • Henry James
... striving to be great, but to be greater than he is; conscious of his strength of will, his power of intellect, his daring courage, his elevated station; and making use of these advantages to commit unheard-of crimes, and to shield himself from remorse ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... be made, on account of circumstances that overrule all common efforts. New York is a great colony—a very great colony, Miss; but it was once Dutch, as everybody knows, begging Mr. Follock's pardon; and it must be confessed Connecticut has, from the first, enjoyed almost unheard-of advantages, in the moral and religious character of her people, the excellence of her lands, and the purity"—Jason called this word "poority;" but that did not alter the sentiment—though I must say, once for all, it is out of my power to spell every word as this man saw ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... the world, weakened with so many examples of violence, baseness, ambition, covetousness and hypocrisy, was in need of a stimulus like Bolvar, whose moderation and whose unheard-of abnegation in the full possession of power have rendered ambition hate The example of this great, virtuous man may serve as a general purification, strong ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... sufficiently agreeable to induce Vendome to pay his respects at parting; for it would have been more embarrassing still if, when according to custom he advanced to kiss the Duchesse de Bourgogne, she had given him the unheard-of affront of a refusal. As for the Duc de Bourgogne, he received Vendome tolerably politely, that is to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... should "dine late so long as The Gentleman" was with us, whilst my mother was thinking how to break so weighty an innovation to such valuable servants. They served him with alacrity, and approved of his brief orders and gracious thanks. The Colonel did unheard-of things with impunity—threw open his bedroom shutters at night, and more than once unbarred and unbolted the front door to go outside for a late cigar. Nothing puzzled Martha more than the nattiness with which he put all the bolts and bars back into their places, as if he ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... compliance with this request. When we got outside the door, Peggotty informed me that Mr. Barkis, being now 'a little nearer' than he used to be, always resorted to this same device before producing a single coin from his store; and that he endured unheard-of agonies in crawling out of bed alone, and taking it from that unlucky box. In effect, we presently heard him uttering suppressed groans of the most dismal nature, as this magpie proceeding racked him in every joint; ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... alive and very much awake. It was awake ever since the early break of day, when Mahmat Banjer, in a fit of unheard-of energy, arose and, taking up his hatchet, stepped over the sleeping forms of his two wives and walked shivering to the water's edge to make sure that the new house he was building had not floated away ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... as it raged from room to room. Skene was burning. It was beyond the reach of human help. In a little while there would be no trace of all those crimes and all those horrors. Now it was one mass of flame. It looked like some primeval furnace, where the gods might work unheard-of miracles. ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... unheard-of hardships to endure, but they persevered in the work, being protected by Divine Providence in a very singular manner, and finally the mission was established, and grew more prosperous day by day. In the following spring the Bishop formed ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... replied the master quickly, although his color had changed at the name. "I decline to say another word on the matter until this mystery is cleared up—until I know who dared to break into my desk and steal my property, and the purpose of this unheard-of outrage. And I demand possession ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... defence of your Church, on behalf of the omnipotent God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, by your power and authority, I forbid the government of the German and Italian kingdoms, to King Henry, the son of the Emperor Henry, who, with unheard-of arrogance, has rebelled against your Church. I absolve all Christians from the oaths they have made or may make to him, and I forbid that any one should obey him as ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... of this wild, desolate lake, I was conscious of a slight thrill of expectation, as if some secret of Nature might here be revealed, or some rare and unheard-of game disturbed. There is ever a lurking suspicion that the beginning of things is in some way associated with water, and one may notice that in his private walks he is led by a curious attraction to fetch all the springs and ponds in his route, as if by them was the place for ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... plumes of seraphim, and all the paraphernalia of paradise freshened up with a few new words such as 'immense, infinite, solitude, intelligence'; you have lakes, and the words of the Almighty, a kind of Christianized Pantheism, enriched with the most extraordinary and unheard-of rhymes. We are in quite another latitude, in fact; we have left the North for the East, but the darkness is just ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... thought of Christine and—and—well, he gave an assumed name, an alias, to the police. Colonel Grand kept his own silence, and for years he has held this over me as a threat. I have had many letters from him, believe me. Christine is no longer the little, unheard-of circus rider. She is—well, she is a ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... With blood of its own lord.—Dreadful attempt! Just reeking from self-slaughter, in a rage 410 To rush into the presence of our Judge; As if we challenged him to do his worst, And matter'd not his wrath!—Unheard-of tortures Must be reserved for such: these herd together; The common damn'd shun their society, And look upon themselves as fiends less foul. Our time is fix'd; and all our days are number'd; How long, how short, we know not:—this we know, Duty requires we calmly wait the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... Fanfar beheld a terrible, unheard-of thing. When Monte-Cristo entered, his hair was black as night, and as he stood there his hair began to whiten. What terrible torture that man must have undergone in those minutes. Age, which had made no mark on this organization of iron, suddenly took possession of it. First, his temples looked ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... surprise that a power which in the infancy of the bank was freely asserted as one of the ordinary and familiar duties of the Secretary of the Treasury should now be gravely questioned, and attempts made to excite and alarm the public mind as if some new and unheard-of power was about to be usurped by the executive branch of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... lord, can you blame my brother Plyant if he refuse his daughter upon this provocation? The contract's void by this unheard-of impiety. ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... a name hitherto only known in Strasbourg and the Quartier Poissonniere. He issued deposit certificates to his creditors, and resumed payment; forthwith people grew accustomed to his paper all over France. Then an unheard-of-thing happened—his paper revived, was in demand, and rose in value. Nucingen's paper was much inquired for. The year 1815 arrives, my banker calls in his capital, buys up Government stock before the battle of Waterloo, suspends payment again in the ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... was walking with some young friends, he heard cries for help, and ran in that direction: a little boy, eight or nine years old, had just fallen into a pond. Sand immediately, without regarding his best clothes, of which, however, he was very proud, sprang into the water, and, after unheard-of efforts for a child of his age, succeeded in bringing the drowning boy ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... thee a wall, that we see so many stones about?" And then, as they received no answer, they continued:—"And how's this? How comes Monna Tessa in this plight? 'Twould seem thou hast given her a beating! What unheard-of doings are these?" What with the weight of the stones that he had carried, and the fury with which he had beaten his wife, and the mortification that he felt at the miscarriage of his enterprise, Calandrino was too spent to utter ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... she is not the solitary object of his affections, let her at least be the solitary victim of his perfidy. And that Mrs. Porcher should aspire to share her role of betrayed one was, to Serena, a piece of unheard-of impertinence. She refused to bestow further attention upon Miss Hart, and turned haughtily to ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... it is generally admitted, was simoniacal; and by simony he raised the funds necessary for his campaign to reestablish and support the papal authority. This simony of his, says Dr. Jacob Burckhardt, "grew to unheard-of proportions, and extended from the appointment of cardinals down to the sale of ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... at a brisk pace, big with great thoughts of going for a soldier and dying in some foreign country where it was very hot and sandy, and leaving God knows what unheard-of wealth in prize-money to Dolly, who would be very much affected when she came to know of it; and full of such youthful visions, which were sometimes sanguine and sometimes melancholy, but always had her for their main point and centre, pushed on vigorously ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... girl, Dick's mother, was good. Yes; that's the only word to use, strange as it seems to me even after all these years. You see, she was not a hornbill. She came in touch with life at first hand; she took from life what she wanted; she had, what were to me, unheard-of ideas about love and the free gift of self, and yet she never meant to hurt any one; and she had kept herself, amid all the confusion, the gentlest ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... he even let her persuade him to walk, with her assistance, as far as the Cottage; and when she had established him in the most comfortable chair beside her mother, he was so content with the change that Maurice, coming home from Cacouna, was met by the unheard-of announcement, ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... to an adventure which had befallen Bob in his younger days, on an occasion when he had been cruelly deserted in a sinking ship by the rest of the crew, and had made his escape, as described by himself, after enduring unheard-of suffering. ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... his surprise, several steps. "Never," cried he indignantly, "never would I presume to do so unheard-of a thing! Such a transgression of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... good sir," said Paul, "may I ask how it happens that we should find an Englishman in this almost unheard-of wilderness? To tell you the truth, my first impression on seeing you was that you were the ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... which seemed to flutter aloft in a fantastic way. The dwarf took advantage of this invisibility to scale the walls of the fortress unseen, and hurled down the ponderous machines used to throw stones, arrows, boiling pitch, and oil. Thus he greatly helped Ortnit, who, in the mean while, was performing unheard-of deeds of valor, which excited the admiration of Princess Sidrat, ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... Doctor Ox made the proposition to light the town at his own expense? Why had he, of all the Flemings, selected the peaceable Quiquendonians, to endow their town with the benefits of an unheard-of system of lighting? Did he not, under this pretext, design to make some great physiological experiment by operating in anima vili? In short, what was this original personage about to attempt? We know not, as Doctor Ox had no confidant except his assistant Ygene, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... Brobdingnagian, Bunyanesque, Herculean, Gargantuan; infinite &c 105. large as life; plump as a dumpling, plump as a partridge; fat as a pig, fat as a quail, fat as butter, fat as brawn, fat as bacon. immeasurable, unfathomable, unplumbed; inconceivable, unimaginable, unheard-of. of cosmic proportions; of epic proportions, the mother of all, teh granddaddy ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a country like ours, boasting of the political equality of all social conditions, it is a great reproach that such a thing as a common seaman rising to the rank of a commissioned officer in our navy, is nowadays almost unheard-of. Yet, in former times, when officers have so risen to rank, they have generally proved of signal usefulness in the service, and sometimes have reflected solid honour upon the country. Instances ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Heart: But then I found out Bonvile, my only dearest Friend. Bonvile no sooner heard of my Engagement, but flew unto my Succour with as much Bravery, as a great General hastned by Alarms, marches to meet the Foe: You left your Nuptial Bed perhaps to meet your Death. O unheard-of Friendship! My Father gave me Life, 'tis true; but you, my Friend, support my Honour. All this for me, while I, ungrateful Man, thus seek your Life: For to my eternal Horror be it spoke, you are the Man whom I ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... strange fabrics in paste, towers and castles, which are offered to the assault of valiant teeth, and like Darius' palace in one banquet demolished. He is a pitiless murderer of innocents, and he mangles poor fowls with unheard-of tortures; and it is thought the martyrs' persecutions were devised from hence: sure we are, St. Lawrence's gridiron came out of his kitchen. His best faculty is at the dresser, where he seems to have great skill in the tactics, ranging his ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... once. The inquisitive old lady below, on seeing the extensive preparations for the supper of three fellow-mortals, was struck with reverence for us, and expressed her belief that those, who lived on such marvelous and unheard-of delicacies would never die. We, indeed, had requested Dhemetri to cater more simply for us; but his professional pride would not ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... wet, Sally entered the room in time to see her cousin bend to kiss me gratefully with sisterly fervor. Yet it was a woman's kiss, given for its own sake. Sally could not comprehend; it was too sudden, too unheard-of, that Diane Sampson should kiss me, the man she did not love. Sally's white, sad face changed, and in the flaming wave of scarlet that dyed neck and cheek and brow I read with mighty pound of heart that, despite the dark stain between us, she loved ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey |
