"Involuntarily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the very midst of the village, having involuntarily traversed not only the notary's flower garden, but also his drawing-room, if one were to judge by the quality of the now much faded wall paper, and the empty spots ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... hers; when I told her that nothing had yet been done, that it was not too late to renounce our plans, she frowned severely; when I begged her to open her heart to me and I told her I would die rather than cause her one regret, she threw her arms about my neck, then stopped and repulsed me as though involuntarily. Finally, I entered her room holding in my hand a ticket on which our places were marked for the carriage to Besancon. I approached her and placed it in her lap; she stretched out her hand, screamed and fell unconscious ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... exclaimed it involuntarily. Her outflung hand had unwittingly gripped my wrist, caught the electrode there. The touch burned her, and close-circuited my robe. There was a hiss. My current ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... the thought of Crowland had risen in her own wretched mind instantly and involuntarily. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... ample trousers,—a truculent-looking figure which made the maids shudder and embrace one another with suppressed shrieks, but which somehow, even in the midst of his Eastern salaam, gave the Countess a sense that he was acting a comedy, and carried her involuntarily back to the Moors whom she had seen in the Cid on the stage. And looking again, she perceived that though brown and weather-beaten, there was a certain Northern ruddiness inherent in his complexion; that his eyes were gray, so far as they were visible between the surrounding puckers; and ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... involuntarily. He stood for a silent moment, drinking the beauty like wine, perhaps it was the exhilaration of it that made him say abruptly: "Perhaps I'll not go abroad. Perhaps I'll ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... gentlemen, as had been arranged, were helped first to each course. Happening to raise my eyes to address the youth upon my right hand, I saw his countenance suddenly distorted by a contortion expressive of any thing but pleasure. Turning involuntarily to my left-hand neighbor, who happened to be Mr. Winston, I saw a grimace, almost similar, pass over his face, followed by a look of ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... pungency upon inspiration, but I could not perceive the painful sensation which has been spoken of by some Siberian travellers. When breathed for any length of time, it imparted a sensation of dryness to the air-passages. I noticed that, as it were involuntarily, we all breathed ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... and bruised that I can hardly hold a pen in my hand. My limbs are covered with swellings from the bites of insects and torn from forcing my way through briers and thorny bushes; my eyes close involuntarily from lack of sleep and excessive fatigue. My legs are cramped from so much riding, and I have not yet succeeded in getting rid of the chill caused by sleeping on the wet ground in the cold rain. My clothes, up to last night, had not been taken off for a week. ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... Involuntarily I again looked at my mother's face. There was exulting triumph on it, mingled with a look of terrible hatred. I did not know what it meant, ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... up her hands; involuntarily she cried aloud in delight "Cheers! Cheers! How do you do, Cecil? Welcome home, Cecil!—the real Cecil! How pretty you are, Cecil! How well that blue suits you! Don't dare to go back to your dull navy and black. I shall insist that you always wear blue. I feel quite proud of having ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a large man, much larger altogether than myself, and as he said this I looked down involuntarily at his feet; or rather at his foot, for as he stood I could only see one. And then a sudden hope filled my heart. On that foot there glittered a shoe—not indeed such as were my own which were now resting ingloriously at Ballyglass while ...
— The O'Conors of Castle Conor from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... good behavior, that much could be said in her favor; the only criticism that could be made on this estimable trait was that no bold youth was ever tempted to overstep the bounds of discretion when in her presence. No unruly words of love ever rose to his lips; his hand never stole out involuntarily and imprudently to meet her small chilly one; the sight of her waist never even suggested an encircling arm; and as a fellow never desired to kiss her, she was never obliged to warn or rebuke or strike him off her visiting list. Her father had an ample ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... there were no fresh stains on that wall this morning, and the graves remained undug, though here and there were seen the first marks of spades where the wretched victims had begun to dig. It had been a close call, and Tom involuntarily shuddered. The cool air that he drew into his lungs had never seemed so sweet to ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... as if involuntarily raised his head and chest forward out of the water, and sank out of sight in the down-wash of a scarcely cresting breaker. Under no more than a brief several seconds, he emerged spluttering and stretched out on ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... with a microscope. The same ink had been used on both sides. O'Hara's writing was the same on both sides. Often, in writing as many words as occupied both sides of the paper in question, a man's hand grows involuntarily weary. There was nothing of this sort. There seemed to be absolutely nothing on which the greatest penmanship expert could base a plea that either side was, in fact, the last will of Haddon O'Hara. Either ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... at present in Keighley), a fellow-Volunteer, whispered in my ear, "Do you know that old gentleman across the aisle?" "No," replied I. He told me he was no less a personage than Mr Jefferson Davis, Ex-president of the Confederate States of America. Instantly my mind was involuntarily set a-thinking about the American Civil War, and its four years of human butchery—all brought about by this man in front of me who was now coolly listening to the word of God! However, the service was over, and the Volunteers filed out of the church and marched to the strains of ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... of a mile away, and the furnace-door of the engine had just been opened to feed the fire, whose strength sped the carriages to far-off London. A streaming cloud of smoke reflected the glare; it was as though some flying dragon vomited crimson fumes. Involuntarily the girl half rose ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... jerked his head involuntarily to look at Astro. Connel's eyes narrowed. "Here it comes," he thought. "Well, I've handled rebellion of this sort before." He stepped close to Astro. So close in fact that the black and gold of his uniform brushed the massive chest ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... on he felt Mary Grey's arm trembling upon his own, and involuntarily he drew it closer, and, in so doing, he perceived the tremor and jar of her fast-beating heart, and he pitied her with a deep, tender, ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... walking out Ashland Avenue. The streetcars had begun running again, and several passed him, packed to the steps with people. The sight of them set Jurgis to thinking again of the man's sarcastic remark; and half involuntarily he found himself watching the cars—with the result that he gave a sudden startled exclamation, and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... this time, having become over-joyful, they raise a shout, and with a whoop and hurrah they start for home, and the man that has the fastest horse gets into the city first. The unlucky traveler, whose horse gets mixed up with theirs in this stampede, and who thus involuntarily becomes one of the company at an Irish wake, has need to be a ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... more in height, and clothed with ferns. This wall, they noted, was built of huge blocks of stone, so huge indeed that it seemed wonderful that they could have been moved by human beings. At the sight of that marvellous wall Rachel and Noie halted involuntarily, ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... is still erect, active, and with a countenance beaming with animation and benevolence, bids fair to realize the wish which at sight of her involuntarily springs to all lips that her life may long be spared to the good words and works to which it is devoted. She has been the recipient of several handsome testimonials from her towns-people and from abroad, and many a token of the soldier's gratitude, inexpensive, but most valuable, in view of ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... deep waters at its base, greatly enhances the romantic beauty of the situation. The mellow and serene glow of the autumnal day harmonised so perfectly with the solemn grandeur of the scene around me, and sank so silently and deeply into my soul, that my spirit fell prostrate before it, and I melted involuntarily into tears. Yes, regardless of the eager crowds around me, I leant upon the side of the vessel and cried like a child—not tears of sorrow, but a gush from the heart of pure and unalloyed delight. I heard not the many voices murmuring in my ears—I saw not the anxious beings that ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the mine yawned like an immense cavern in the rock. The roaring screech of the machines issuing from it made an inferno of sound from which, involuntarily, Dot shrank. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... fight?" Every head but one turned to a common point at this juncture, and the eyes of only one boy remained upon the speaker. Will Jones had the record for bad fights, and that is why about ninety-nine pairs of eyes had involuntarily sought him out when the speaker asked the question, which he hoped each would ask himself. And the reason Will Jones did not look around accusingly at any of the other boys was because he had taken to heart all that had been ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... fantastic miracles. What is the psychology of it all? The whole age seems to Robert "non-sane." And, meanwhile, across and beyond the medieval centuries, behind the Christian era itself, the modern student looks back inevitably, involuntarily, to certain Greeks and certain Latins, who "represent a forward strain," who intellectually "belong to a world ahead of them." "You"—he says to them—"you are really ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... spoke the sound of the river's turmoil swelled in a great pulsation about the tent, and Seaforth involuntarily drew in his breath. The curious glow he had seen there before, however, grew a trifle ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... nigh exhausted. He had been sent round to relieve the men on post and bid them make the best of their way to the guard-room. He was even then searching for Number Five, who had most justifiably, in fact, involuntarily, taken refuge as previously explained. Had he not been blown into the Snaffles' kitchen, he might, like Barker's cow, have been ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... the air of old-world quaintness which Mrs. Gaskell has made so familiar in her delightful Cranford. The whole of Knutsford breathes the fresh and bright tidiness one always involuntarily associates with such ladies as "Miss Jenkyns," and every house rejoices in a beautifully neat garden. The Royal George Hotel, in the High Street, is a perfect feast to the eye of panelled wainscotting, oak settles, and Chippendale ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... I involuntarily pressed the spur against the side of my horse; but he needed not that. He had already eyed the water, and sprang forward, inspirited with new energy. The next moment he was in ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... God, he isn't!" I cried, and shrank involuntarily, for his eyeballs rolled till only the whites showed in a way that made me shudder. ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... hand—not at that moment. She had come there to lecture him, to talk to him, to comfort him; and now she was unable to say a word. Did he know the secret of her heart; that secret which once and but once had involuntarily broken from out her lips? Had Caroline told him? Had she been so false to friendship—as false to friendship as she had ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... that the old man was frightened of dying. It made Philip a little ashamed, so that he looked away involuntarily. He was always embarrassed by ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... suburbs of the city. Of all his children she was the nearest to him. She had his mother's beauty. She had also his mother's upright rectitude of nature. The Iberian strain had passed her absolutely by. She was a northern rose in a tropical garden. As he drew near to his own gates, he involuntarily quickened his steps. He knew that Antonia would be waiting. He could see among the thick flowering shrubs her tall slim figure clothed in white. As she came swiftly down the dim aisles to meet him, he felt a sentiment of worship for her. She concentrated in herself his memory of home, mother, ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... intelligence, at a glance, the short cut to almost any thing at which their intellects might be employed; and you indulge in a very natural feeling, when, as conquerors, in glancing over their Canaan, you involuntarily plan what you will do some day, if a farm should by chance be your share of the bounty-money, when the war is over. For it is absurd to suppose that such a country will continue forever a prey to the wasting and exhaustive disease of the plantation-system, or that the black will always, as at ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... desires were so moved by it, that when I spoke the words my hands would clinch together, and my fingers would press the palms of my hands, so that if I had had any soft thing in my hand, it would have crushed it involuntarily; and the teeth in my head would strike together, and set against one another so strong, that for some time I could not part them again. Let the naturalists explain these things, and the reason and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... not to be mistaken. It was evident that that gaze cost her an effort. She was, Gordon remembered, a diffident girl. His resentment evaporated.... He speculated upon her reason for coming; and, speculating, involuntarily stood more erect. With a swift, surreptitious ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and a wave of the hand passed between them, the men cheering involuntarily. It was too late for more, the launch being fairly in the inlet, where she received a general but harmless fire from the Arabs. An order had been given to fire the first shot over the heads of the barbarians; but ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Fredersdorf exclaimed involuntarily: "He is, after all, the noblest and greatest of men. It is useless to be angry with him. I am forced against my will ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... endowment worthy of the latter, that he had gone through a most thorough course of education, and had a high spirit. In proportion to these great gifts of his was the allurement that they offered to follow his ambitions: and when once he had turned aside from what was best he drifted even involuntarily into what was worst. It began with his being refused a triumph over the Numantini: he had hoped for this honor because he had previously had the management of the business, but so far from obtaining anything of ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... over me became blurred. I tore futilely at my throat to break his choking grip. All the world was a roaring chaos to my fading senses. Then in the blur I saw horror sweep his expression. His fingers involuntarily loosened. I got a breath of blessed air, gasping, and my ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... The old sacred association—for it was one which she had sung for him a thousand times,—until warned to desist by his tears—deepened the tenderness of her heart, and she said with difficulty, whilst she involuntarily held over the candle to gratify the father's heart by a sight of him. "I was keepin' him before my eye," she said; "God knows but it may be the last night we'll ever see him undher our own roof! Dominick, achora, I doubt I can't part wid him ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... I shuddered involuntarily. Even there, amid the chatter and laughter of those light-hearted tourists, the shadow of Hassan of Aleppo was ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... of sticks and leaves come rattling down on our heads. For some moments we were in total darkness, then a flash of lightning of extreme vividness burst from the clouds, showing to me the rest of the party lying down as I was, and involuntarily attempting to shield their heads with their hands, while all around the lofty palm-trees were yielding to the gale, which was tearing their feathery heads into fragments. Every instant I expected some of the trees to ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... the other canoe, with the help of such an expert, was an easy matter. When it was ready Roderick held it while Fred tumbled in. Stray cushions and paddles, and even an armful of soaking golden-rod were rescued, and then the two young men looked involuntarily at the girl. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... appetite was tempted. The hard fresh butter looked inviting to her eyes, and she stooped over and smelled it half involuntarily. ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... universal rage for rambling, with which I myself, as a true child of the century, am also infected. But the north is so little known—I, for my part, only knew it through Dahl's poetical landscapes—that one feels involuntarily disposed to deck it with the colours of the south, because the south is beautiful, and the north is said also to be so. Thus one is apt to set out with a delusion, and I think it will therefore be an act of kindness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... eyes of searchers, should they miss their fellow and return for him, the lad choked the life from the body of his victim. At last he knew by the sudden struggle, followed by limp relaxation, that the warrior was dead. Then a strange desire seized him. His whole being quivered and thrilled. Involuntarily he leaped to his feet and placed one foot upon the body of his kill. His chest expanded. He raised his face toward the heavens and opened his mouth to voice a strange, weird cry that seemed screaming within him for outward expression, but no sound passed his lips—he just ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I spoke almost involuntarily. The style of her talk was very distasteful to me; and I had just been thinking of what I had once heard my father say, that at no time were people in more danger of being theatrical than ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Mona Montague; I have something important to say to you," he said, in a tone that struck terror to her heart, while the utterance of her real name so startled and unnerved her that, almost involuntarily, she sank back into her chair, her face as white as her handkerchief, and trembling ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... to catch one of the hands that involuntarily had risen toward her face in a gesture of wonder. "Please do," he begged, his tone persuasive, "as ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... Then I sauntered back and entered the house with the fool intention of crossing the courtyard and wandering into the rear building where the crime had occurred. But my attention was diverted and my mind changed by seeing a man coming down the stairs before me, of so fine a figure that I involuntarily stopped to look at him. Had he moved a little less carelessly, had he worn his workman's clothes a little less naturally, I should have thought him some college bred man out on a slumming expedition. But he was entirely too much ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... shrinking from disapproval, the craving for esteem, the very early emotions of shame and vanity, help to pull away from the self-indulgent or selfish impulse. The spontaneous admiration of others for their virtues and anger at them for their sins is applied involuntarily by a man to himself; contempt for his own weakness and joy in his superiority according to the generally accepted code are powerful deterrents. The consciousness of the resentment that others will feel if he does evil, the ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... has heeled over, through the action of an ebb-tide. The effect UPON THE LOW SIDE, so to speak—looking over from the gallery, and seeing the shaft recede to its base—is very startling; and I saw a nervous traveller hold on to the Tower involuntarily, after glancing down, as if he had some idea of propping it up. The view within, from the ground—looking up, as through a slanted tube—is also very curious. It certainly inclines as much as the most sanguine tourist could desire. The natural impulse of ninety-nine people out of a hundred, who ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... of small beads, an Agnus Dei; a rosary hangs from her girdle; she bears a crucifix in her hand, and a diadem of precious stones binds her hair; her large black veil is thrown back. On her entrance all present fall back on both sides with the most violent expressions of anguish. MELVIL falls involuntarily upon ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... easily seen that his was the keener mind. In natural endowments there had never been equality, although there was great similarity of tastes. Jim, despite his education, often lapsed into the homely vernacular of which he heard so much. An involuntarily imitative man in externals was Jim, but essentially ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ways of lengthening our days be to take a few hours from the night, many of us are involuntarily prolonging existence at the present hour. Macbeth did not murder sleep more effectually than the hot weather does. At best, in the sultry nights, most people sleep what is called "a dog's sleep," and by no means the sleep of a lucky dog. As the old English writers say, taking a distinction ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... back involuntarily. He found conversation with detectives as lively as playing at skittles with bombshells. They got on his nerves terribly, these undemonstrative gentlemen with no ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... sure that we have been wrong, Socrates, said Lysis. And he blushed as he spoke, the words seeming to come from his lips involuntarily, because his whole mind was taken up with the argument; there was no mistaking his attentive ...
— Lysis • Plato
... deep shade some natives were squatting round fires, and close by some large outrigger-canoes lay on the beach. On three sides the steep wooded slopes of the former crater's walls rise up to a sharply dented ridge, and it all looks like a quiet Alpine lake, so that one involuntarily listens for the sound of cow-bells. Instead, there is the call of pigeons, and the dull thunder of ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... thing, he thought. He had wanted to come up, he had come. Yet what happened later on that afternoon must be traced to the indignity he had experienced in the elevator; the girl was worrying him intolerably, so much so that when she came out he involuntarily drifted into criticism. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... perhaps to impose upon himself the law of ostracism; for to remove him from his own idolatry is to serve the people!" These words were smothered under peals of affected laughter. Robespierre ascended the steps of the tribune with studied calmness. His impassive brow involuntarily brightened at the smiles and applauses of the Jacobins. "This speech meets all my wishes," said he, looking towards Brissot and his friends; "it includes in itself all the inculpations which the enemies ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... part, a shifting of position which brought him finally to his feet, but he gave no other proof of having heard her, nor did his countenance mirror her relief. "It is as if he dreaded, instead of hailed, her return," was Florence's inward comment as she watched him involuntarily recoil at each fresh token of ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... was to develop three principles which appeared, in combination, to account for most of the expressions and gestures involuntarily used by man and animals. The first was that of serviceable associated habits: certain complex actions being somehow serviceable in particular states of mind, to gratify and relieve certain sensations, desires, &c., whenever the same state of feeling ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... the price, whatever it might be, always with a hope that it would not be as bad as she anticipated. Everything was yet to do, the uncertainty was still hers; the delay gave her lonely hours in which to realise all that this sacrifice might involve, and involuntarily she shrank from it. She was not less resolved, however, and there was an added incentive in the fact that the difficulties in her way were greater than she had expected. Sir John's arrival could have only one meaning; he must know, or had guessed, the real reason of Harriet ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... whom he honestly thought cleverer and more experienced than himself. His chief friends in his Romagnol diocese, friends on the intimate basis of social equality and common provincial interests, were sound patriots, though not revolutionists, and the future Pio Nono involuntarily adopted their ideas and sympathies. He saw with his eyes certain abuses so glaring that they admitted of no two opinions, and these helped to convince him of the truth of his friends' arguments in favour ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... infant still paler, pressed her way through the throng, and gained the counter. She inquired for cough lozenges. It was a long time before she could be attended, but she stood very patiently, though seemingly scarce able to support the weight of her own person. Harry involuntarily glanced around the shop for a chair, and as he did so, his eye rested on a bright-faced little girl, close beside his sister, who was choosing and rejecting a great many pretty toys, and now and ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... they had been felled, the men not considering them good enough to remove. At last we came to a clearing, and I quite despair of making you understand how romantic and lovely this open space in the midst of the tall trees looked that beautiful spring morning. I involuntarily thought of the descriptions in "Paul and Virginia," for the luxuriance of the growth was quite tropical. For about two acres the trees had been nearly all felled, only one or two giants remaining; their stumps were already ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... Involuntarily, Jack cried out. The second pair leaped upon the backs of the first and bore them to the ground. The next moment, the air was filled with curses, and the four figures rolled ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... mean by pious?" demanded Richard, stepping up to the speaker; and as he did so, his fists were involuntarily clinched. ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... out this "lecture pieuse" for some nights as well as I could, and as quietly too; only once breaking off the points of my scissors by involuntarily sticking them somewhat deep in the worm-eaten board of the table before me. But, at last, it made me so burning hot, and my temples, and my heart, and my wrist throbbed so fast, and my sleep afterwards was so broken with excitement, that ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... have the finest sense of touch in the world. I was once a pupil of Karl Tausig." Involuntarily he bowed his head to the revered name of the one man he had longed to hear. Then his feelings almost strangled him; his ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... husband. And why was he so unjust to her at the last?" she involuntarily reproached ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... of God saying to people: "If you do not love Me I will damn you." Contrast this with the words put by the Hindoo poet into the mouth of Brahma: "I am the same to all mankind. The who honestly worship other gods involuntarily worship me. I am he that partaketh of all worship. I am the reward of worship." How perfectly sublime! Let me read it to you again: "I am the same to all mankind. They who honestly worship other gods involuntarily worship ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... injured by so unforeseen an occurrence; and I rely on the regard of Congress for the equitable interests of our own citizens to adopt whatever further provisions may be found requisite for a general remission of penalties involuntarily incurred. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... however, seemed to have dispelled Napoleon's anger, or at least to have appeased the first stormy waves of the sea. When he spoke again his tone was milder, and his look less scorching, returning from time to time, as it were involuntarily, to the hat lying on the floor a few steps from him. He commenced pacing the apartment again with quick steps. Metternich followed him, only with somewhat slackened pace, and thus compelled the emperor ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... Orsino involuntarily thought of a sphynx as he looked at the massive brow, the yellow, sleepy eyes, and the heavy mouth. He wondered how the late Aranjuez had lived and what ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... across. My poor little mother! I thought of her picture—it hung in my library at home; the picture of a young, smiling, dark-haired beauty, whose delicate tint was as that of a peach ripening in the summer sun. All that loveliness had decayed into—what? I shuddered involuntarily—then I knelt humbly before those two sad hollows in the cold stone, and implored the blessing of the dead and gone beloved ones to whom, while they lived, my welfare had been dear. While I occupied this kneeling position the flame of my torch fell directly ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... tiptoe, like a dancing-master, and handed a letter and a card to the minister who was still shivering in front of the fire. When he saw that envelope, of a satiny shade of gray, and of peculiar shape, the Irishman involuntarily started, while the duke, having opened his letter and glanced over it, rose to his feet full of animation, on his cheeks the faint flush of factitious health which all the heat from the fire had failed to ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... and shrink in silence at this enormous breach of etiquette—to use a mild term. Involuntarily the ten pairs of oars in the royal barge hung in mid-air, paralyzed by that sudden outrage. The great, glittering structure, impelled by momentum, glided forward directly under the bows of Rebecca's boat and not a ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... from under him, his feet seemed to move on air, a mighty and unearthly gladness rushed upon his spirit. He felt too buoyant for the earth; he longed for wings—nay, it seemed as if he possessed them. He burst involuntarily into a loud and thrilling laugh. He clapped his hands, he bounced aloft. Suddenly this perpetual transport passed, though only partially, away. He now felt his blood rushing loudly and rapidly through ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... one day to find the door to 618 open. He glanced in, involuntarily. A man sat in the living room—a large, rather red-faced man, in his shirt-sleeves, relaxed, comfortable, at ease. From the open door came the most tantalizing and appetizing smells of candied sweet potatoes, a browning ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... one of the ultra-lights flashed around in a short, quick arc, and the girl saw that instead of the fierce glare she had expected, it emitted only a soft violet light. Nevertheless she dodged involuntarily and Stevens touched ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... are a little too hard on bad observers; that a remark made by a bad observer CANNOT be right; an observer who deserves to be damned you would utterly damn. I feel entire deference to any remark you make out of your own head; but when in opposition to some poor devil, I somehow involuntarily feel not quite so much, but yet much deference for your opinion. I do not know in the least whether there is any truth in this my criticism against you, but I have often thought ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... after him. Maitland experienced a chill sense of criminal guilt; he was painfully conscious of those two shrewd eyes, boring gimlet-like into his back, overlooking no detail of the wreck of his evening clothes. Involuntarily he glanced down at his legs, and they moved mechanically beneath the edge of his overcoat, like twin animated columns of mud and dust, openly advertising his misadventures. He felt in his soul that they shrieked aloud, that they would presently ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... glades of La Bellissima could have awakened in him a passion so sudden and final. Her face between the black folds turned whiter and she shrank back against the jagged wall: and when his eyes flashed again with a wild eager hope she involuntarily crossed herself. He threw himself against the horse and snatched her down and kissed her as he had kissed no woman yet, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... nights they liked best to listen to Blinder's tales of the Thrums Jacobites, tales never put into writing, but handed down from father to son, and proved true in the oddest of ways, as by Blinder's trick of involuntarily holding out his hands to a fire when he found himself near one, though he might be sweating to the shirt and the time a July forenoon. "I make no doubt," he told them, "as I do that because my forbear, Buchan Osler (called Buchan wi' the Haap after the wars was ower), had to hod so ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... St. Louis!" he exclaimed, and his companions involuntarily followed his example, and made a reverential ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... sprang involuntarily to Dick's lips as he gazed at the scene before him. He was filled with bitter indignation and could hardly resist the temptation to break in the window and ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... The Doctor spoke quietly. "But we can't help it now. The sparrow has gone. That lizard may be right here at our feet"—The Very Young Man jumped involuntarily—"and so small we can't see it," the Doctor finished with a smile. "Or it may be a hundred miles away and big as a dinosaur." The Very Young ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... like that were coming home to her! Some one who would be glad to see her and want something she could do for him! Why, even little snub-nosed, impudent Johnny Knox would be a comfort if he were all her own. Her arms suddenly felt empty and her hands idle because there was nothing left for her to do. Involuntarily she stretched them out to the gray dusk with a wistful motion. Then she turned, and went back to the window ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... us involuntarily. It may be that we both heard a footstep, but it is always difficult to say certainly after the event. At any rate, while in the act of turning our heads, two of the three Arabs, who had previously left the room, ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... of St. Philip of Neri, where they relate his ecstasies and his elevations from earth into the air, sometimes to the height of several yards, and almost to the ceiling of his room, and this quite involuntarily. He tried in vain to hide it from the knowledge of those present, for fear of attracting their admiration, and feeling in it some vain complacency. The writers who give us these particulars do not say what was the cause, whether these ecstatic ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... the tension was so great that it snapped. Miss La Neige, who was sitting beside me, had been leaning forward involuntarily. Almost as if the words were wrung from her she whispered hoarsely: "They put me up to doing it; I didn't want to. But the affair had gone too far. I couldn't see him lost before my very eyes. I didn't want her to get him. The quickest way out was to tell the ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... flowers I noticed the "Sturt Desert Pea," just then in blossom, the loveliest wild flower of Australia. I have seen houses larger and finer, no doubt, and better collections of particular objects, but never any place so perfect of its kind. Some lines from the "Palace of Art" involuntarily occurred to me, but to no man does the moral of Tennyson's poem less apply than to the Chief Justice, for he is one of the most sympathetic and kind-hearted of men. I had intended staying at the Adelaide Club, and was provided with an introduction, ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... cheered so that the whole band involuntarily joined him. "Long live Loneli!;" it sounded again and the echo from ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... side and front, which looked stark and lustreless. He was so thin and pale, and his eyes and cheeks were so wan and hollow, that it was scarcely credible that in so short a space of time a man could have become such a wreck. When he saw Katherine he involuntarily dropped his eyes, but extended his hand to her with some effort of earnestness. She was almost as pale as he, but she took his hand. It was so light and cold, it felt so much like death, that the tears ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... I started up, involuntarily. "Oh, shame! Shame!" I cried, and would have rushed out into the aisle. But I had to pass my uncle, and he had no intention of letting me make myself a spectacle. He threw his arms about me, and pinned me against the pew in front; and as he is one of the ten ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... thick and blue around, which, together with the thunder that seemed to rend the wide arch of heaven, and the melancholy aspect of the place, so awed the duke, that he involuntarily called to his people. His voice was answered only by the deep echoes which ran in murmurs through the place, and died away at a distance; and the moon now sinking behind a cloud, left him ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... girl-peddlers of horse-red-deesh were somehow to have a tonic effect upon her. But the spectacle of the rarely swept paving-stones of a side-street in the last days of March was not inspiriting. Phillida had the additional discomfort of involuntarily catching glimpses of her own pallid and despondent face in the pier-glass ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... involuntarily, and felt on the left one the pressure of the wishing ring. She had meant to take it off and leave it with Phyllis, ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... present he submitted. However, some days after, I found that he had offered a florin for a little bread and cheese, and then a dollar, and even more. Being again refused, he complained heavily; but gradually he weaned himself from asking for it, though at times he betrayed involuntarily ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... inspection-work included. Thence, at Breslan for three days more: with dinners of state, balls, illuminations, in honor of the Duke of York,—our as yet last Duke of York, then a brisk young fellow of twenty-two; to whom, by accident, among his other distinctions, may belong this of having (most involuntarily) helped ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... equally clever, seemed to be amusing herself with copying his evolutions. The figure of this woman seemed not unfamiliar to him, and he finally set himself to follow her, increasing his speed, until the two brought up face to face. Involuntarily ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... the events which surround the surrender of Johannesburg, the mind involuntarily pauses, and a picture, which reminds one of the fairy-tales of one's childhood, is called ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... experience counts here as in any other human activity, and all experience worth the name is the result of application, of time and thought and study and practice. If the individual finds he has liking and capacity for this work, he will involuntarily find himself engaged in it. There is no catalogue of such capacity. One man gets results in one way, another in another. But in general only the man of broad sympathy and deep understanding of his fellow men ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... involuntarily, to her dishevelled hair; and at the same moment the little lady, as though making a bolt from captivity, stepped down from the verandah and came shuffling across the yard towards her, almost at ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... be—that splendor of our Canada to come?" He pictured its possibilities in grand vistas. The people were spell-bound by noble hopes and emotions which carried them upward. Involuntarily, as Chrysler looked at his face and bearing, he was reminded of the prophets, and the old white church behind seemed to be rising and throwing back its head, and withdrawing its thoughts into some proud region ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... of cold finality in those last two words and the elder Carmody involuntarily extended his hand. He quitted the room abruptly as the boy, ignoring the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... there was neither mockery nor frivolity in the laugh, that it proceeded involuntarily from the sudden relaxation of overstrained nerves. At the moment Mehetabel was aware of one thing only, that she had nothing more to fear, that her baby was safe from pursuit. It was this thought that dominated her and caused the laugh of relief. She ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... emperor's cruel decree, was yielding up the keys and the golden crucifix. She gave her keys with a firm hand; but when she relinquished the emblem of her office and of her faith, the courage of the poor old woman almost deserted her. She offered it, as the commissioner extended his hand, she shrank involuntarily, and once more pressed the cross to her quivering lips. Then, raising it on high, as if to call upon Heaven to witness the sacrilege, she bowed her head and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... is!" said the shepherd involuntarily. "And surely we've zeed him! That little man who looked in at the door by now, and quivered like a leaf when he zeed ye ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... was a worshiper few would have been missed more than the tall, muscular man, with the long, white hair, who Sunday after Sunday walked slowly up the middle aisle to his accustomed seat before the altar, and who regularly passed the contribution box, bowing involuntarily in token of approbation when a neighbor's gift was larger than its wont, and gravely dropping in his own ten cents—never more, never less—always ten cents—his weekly offering, which he knew amounted in a year to just five ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... asked, involuntarily sinking my voice to the level of hers. Inwardly I was thinking: "I KNEW there ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... cabby knew so well how to make time on. When the recording angel calls off page after page of my life-book and comes to the black one covering that ride, I fear 'twill be no easy task excusing the murderous passion that filled my heart and the poison-steeped curses my lips involuntarily formed. After an eternity I was at 26 Broadway. I flew to the elevator, was on the eleventh floor in an instant, bolted by Fred, the colored usher who guards Mr. Rogers' sanctum, and strode, without knock or announcement, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... success, a vial of quicksilver being the only relic said to have been found. This article was doubtless to be used in discovering deposits of the precious metals by the old adventurers. While walking through the lonely forests the mind of the visitor is involuntarily carried back to the scenes that took place there, as well as to the actors who centuries ago passed away. Now silence broods over the place once so active with life, and nothing but nature remains, while the distant surf is ever sounding an everlasting requiem ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... king passed through upon the scaffold to the block; but the custodian had no doubts. He would not allow a choice of windows, and as to a space broken through the wall, he had never heard of it. But we were so well satisfied with his window as to shrink involuntarily from it, and from the scene without whose eternal substance showed through the shadowy illusion of passing hansoms and omnibuses, like the sole fact of the street, the king's voice rising above the noises in tender caution to a heedless witness, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... are not so much absolute principles of criticism as the features which characterize that of the writer himself and the method which he has almost involuntarily pursued. Let us admit this, and in doing so we concede to him all the qualities that are rarest and most desirable in his art,—impartiality, sincerity, disinterestedness; freedom from theory, from passion, and from prejudice; insight, comprehension, sensitiveness to every trait ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... his ideal realised, and romanus hence signifies in his language all that is noble. He thus involuntarily appears partial to Rome, and unjust to her enemies, notably to ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... involuntarily glanced in the direction where my father stood, and saw him stoop and pick up a ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... involuntarily for his gun, for he was a gun-man by training; while his companions felt for their knives, deadly weapons in a melee. Martin, crying, "Watch 'em, Cassidy!" side-stepped and lunged forward with ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... category of stowaways. Never before had he seen one in a braided cutaway coat and wedding trousers. It was true that the garments were in grievous condition, but they were worn with an air. The stowaway's face showed some embarrassment, but not at all the usual hangdog mien of such wastrels. Involuntarily his tongue moistened when he saw the tray of tea (for he had not eaten since his supper on the steam roller the night before), but he kept his eyes politely averted from the food. They rose to a white-painted girder that ran athwart the cabin ceiling. CERTIFIED TO ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... and my heart is, every hour, more and more enlarged with his goodness and condescension. But still, what ails me, I wonder! A strange sort of weight hangs upon my mind, as Thursday draws on, which makes me often sigh involuntarily, and damps, at times, the pleasures of my delightful prospects!—I hope this is not ominous; but only the foolish weakness of an over-thoughtful mind, on an occasion the most solemn and important of one's life, next to the last ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... she glanced involuntarily towards the garden door. Had any one else than Lord Henry revealed a fraction of his ability to pierce her secret ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... noticed that if you are seated and your adversary is standing, when you get enthusiastic and wish to combat his argument, it is impossible for you to get in your best licks while you are seated? You involuntarily rise when you make your strong points and are ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... the glamour of the meeting was already over. My companion evidently found more pleasure in my person than when I was a mere child; I felt moved and flattered by the pleasure he took in pressing his face against certain parts of my body. On a second occasion, one day, I seemed involuntarily about to transgress decency, but again, as before, separated myself, and remained ignorant of what it was on which I had verged in my excitement. At another meeting, however, I had been allowed to prolong my embrace and to act, indeed, upon my full instincts. Once more I felt suddenly the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Riviere stopped involuntarily. It was as though his antagonist had divined his presence and had come boldly forward to meet him. And, indeed, that was not far from the fact. Larssen, waiting alone in the drawing-room, had had one of his strange ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... walking along by the edge of the water with his eyes fixed upon the trees above, where he had a minute before heard the call of a bird, when he was startled by a shout from the Houssa behind him. He involuntarily sprang back, and it was well he did so; for on the instant something swept by within an inch or two of his head. Looking round he saw, at the edge of the stream below him, a huge alligator. This had struck at him with its tail—the usual manner in which the alligator ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... stern, and became sensible of a faint and perplexing repulsion from him. His languid gracefulness had vanished, and he was no longer gay or amusing. A rugged elemental forcefulness had come uppermost in him, and this was a thing she did not understand. Involuntarily she shrank from this grave, serious man. There was a disfiguring newly healed cut on one of his cheeks, and his hand was raw ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... the pirate chief involuntarily closed at the suggestion, but his head nodded affirmatively. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... society. As to his care for them, no one who witnessed it could deny the exceedingly flourishing condition of the settlement. Whether, however, in all this the doctor had not a keen eye to his own interest was an afterthought which involuntarily presented itself. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... Waterloo only that which is in Waterloo. Of intentional liberty there is none. The counter-revolution was involuntarily liberal, in the same manner as, by a corresponding phenomenon, Napoleon was involuntarily revolutionary. On the 18th of June, 1815, the mounted Robespierre was ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... on, dreaming dreams in which a certain lady occupied a great place. He chanced to lift his eyes at a sound which seemed like a sigh, and lo! Diana Vernon stood before him. She was resting on the arm of a figure so like the portrait on the wall that involuntarily Frank raised his eyes to the frame to see whether it was ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... with a dazed expression for a moment longer, then both hands clutched the rifle and half swung it to position involuntarily. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... exhibiting the latest and most expensive fads in stationery. Over one of them Elsie gave a shriek of delight, an outburst so unexpected and out of character with her former self that their distinguished fellow travelers involuntarily looked up,—and Mrs. Valentin blushed ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... the little old house. As Mrs. Mansfield looked out she saw a faint gleam in the studio. Involuntarily she listened, almost strained her ears. And she murmured, "And the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings of the East ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... compilation of anecdotes of distinguished characters, and two little letters have passed between us upon them. I was unluckily engaged the morning he was at Chelsea, and obliged to quit him before we had quite overcome a little awkwardness which our long absence and my changed name had involuntarily produced at our first meeting; and I was really sorry, as I have always retained a true esteem for him, though his singularities and affectation of affectation always struck me. But both those and his spirit of satire are mere quizziness 3 ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... dug into the palms of my hands as I entered the shack, and his head turned slowly as I came in, and in his eyes I saw the confession his babbling had revealed to me. But then an expression of pain came also, that made me involuntarily look at Frenchy's little crucifix on ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... heroic robes. In an instant the incense and the dark colors, the uncertain pallid faces and bare shoulders, were swept away into a space through which she was dizzily borne. The illusion was so overpowering that involuntarily she caught at the ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... down from the dusty stage that had brought her from the station over the prairies to the unpretentious little house where Wesley Brooke lived. A young girl, so like what Ogden Greene's wife had been fifteen years before that Theodosia involuntarily exclaimed, "Phoebe," came to the door. Beyond her, Theodosia saw the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... from Chaumont. Still musing and dreaming over its numerous and varied associations, we motored along toward Cheverny. This was an afternoon in which to dream,—the air was full of a delicious drowsy autumnal warmth, and a soft haze hung over the Loire and its tributaries. Involuntarily our thoughts turn back to the time when the kings and nobles of France made their stately progress along these same roads, many of them Roman roads, for the great road-builders were all over this country ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... Involuntarily West and Miss Weyland had halted; and now they stared at each other with a kind of wild surmise which rapidly yielded to ludicrous certainty. West broke ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... butter, no milk, no sugar; it was quite clear that the meal had consisted entirely of dry bread with plain tea—call it hot water—and that for a dying man and a delicate over-worked lady! Arthur looked at that pitiable breakfast-table with a twinge of remorse, and the tears rose sharply and involuntarily into his eyes. He had not done enough for them, then; he had not done ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... Aunt Olivia stopped being a Plummer. A sob crept into her throat. "Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary Plummer!" she cried, involuntarily. Then she stepped back hastily, glad for the cotton in Rebecca Mary's ears. For the surprise—she must not spoil the child's hard-earned surprise. And, besides, Aunt ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... open menace. The squatter, notwithstanding his fierce and formidable aspect, did not dare to reply in the same strain. He was evidently cowed, and suffering under some fearful apprehension. "Must go!" he muttered, half involuntarily, as if echoing the other's words. "Yes, must ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... she was likely to admit a new friend. The impression made upon him by her own singular personality had translated itself in feelings and language which, against her will as it were, established an understanding, an affinity. That she had involuntarily aroused in him the profoundest and most chivalrous pity was plain to her. Yet for the first time in her life she did not resent it; and Marcella watched her mother's attitude with a mixture ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hanging around, the feminine garments, the oval mirror, and the dainty toilet accessories beneath. And the things haunted her, for she had seen like things before; and as she looked at them her lips involuntarily formed sounds which her throat trembled to utter. Then a thought flashed upon her, and she steadied herself. She must be calm. She must control herself, for there must be no misunderstanding this time, ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... is better. As I fondly believe this the most interesting intelligence I can give thee, I make it my preamble. What would I not give to have but those four small words from thee? Though I had but little hope, I found myself involuntarily counting the passing hours. My messenger met the stage at the door. I need not relate his success. I fancy many ills from the situation of your health when you left home, and pray ardently they may prove merely fanciful. I have still three tedious days to the next stage, when a line of affection ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... tears, but no one answered. The boys, who had been looking in at the window of the housekeeper's room, had turned into the shrubbery, and Agnes felt as if she had been guilty of a very mean, unworthy action in listening, even involuntarily, to a conversation not intended for her ears. Her cousins, too, she felt quite sure, would be exceedingly cross if they knew she had overheard them; and yet she said to herself—"I was only half awake. I did not want to listen, and I could not help it." It would not mend matters in the least to ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... to his work with the poor, the sinful, the hopeless. He did not seek her; he tried not to seem to avoid her, or to seem to shun the streets where he was most likely to meet her, and the neighborhoods she frequented. Perhaps he did avoid them a little, and he despised himself for doing it. Almost involuntarily he looked to the bench by the chapel door which she occasionally occupied at vespers. She was never there, and he condemned himself for thinking that she might be; but yet wherever he walked there was always the expectation that he might encounter ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... passion for his mistress increased daily, until at last he neither knew what he did nor what he said, nor what was to become of him. He could neither eat nor drink nor sleep: he felt a sense of suffocation; he disobeyed all orders, and forgot all commands involuntarily; he seemed as if pursued by an evil spirit, till one day, knowing that his mistress had gone to an upper chamber, he had followed, or, rather, been drawn after her. As she proved deaf to his entreaties, he had recourse to violence. He knows not what happened; ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... Strand; he did not speak for some minutes, in fact he was looking at the people who passed by them. For the first time in his life a great contrast struck him. Disreputable vulgarity, wickedness, and vice stared him in the face, then involuntarily he turned to Erica and looked down at her scrutinizingly as he had never looked before. She was evidently wrapped in thought but it was not the intellect in her face which he thought of just then, though it was ever noticeable, nor was it the ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... hope died, as this menace came. Do you see what you and your world was meant to us, Man of Earth?" Zezdon Afthen raised his dark eyes to the terrestrian with a look in their depths that made Wade involuntarily resolve that Thet and all Thessians should be promptly consigned to that limbo of forgotten things where ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... toward WILL and going to him, slipping her hand involuntarily through his arm, and looking eagerly with him over the balustrade in almost girlish enthusiasm.] ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... sound of footfalls behind him he turned and saw Nettie Vollar and her uncle, Edward Dunsack. A dark color rose in the girl's cheek, and her hand pulled involuntarily at Dunsack's arm, as if she wished to retreat. Gerrit thought that she had aged since he had latest met her: Nettie's mouth, with its full, slightly drooping lower lip, had lost something of its fresh arch; her eyes, though they still preserved their black sparkle, were plainly resentful. ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... into the stream, driven by strong, quick strokes of the paddles. It seemed almost to leap from wave to wave. All was going well. The edge of the whirlpool was near. Then came the crest of a larger wave,—slap—into the boat. Alden shrank involuntarily from the cold water, and missed his stroke. An eddy caught the bow and shoved it out. The whirlpool receded, dissolved. The whole river rushed down upon the canoe and carried ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... of a secret, which was involuntarily accompanied by a sudden minute start, and ecstatic pressure of the listener's arm, side, or neck, as the position ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... The religion of Celtic Ireland was repugnant to him, and he never thoroughly understood it. In religious matters Froude could not be neutral. Where Catholic and Protestant came into conflict, he took instinctively, almost involuntarily, the Protestant side. In the England of the sixteenth century the Protestant side was the side of England. In Ireland the case was reversed, and the spirit of Catholicism was identical with the spirit of nationality. Irish Catholics to this day associate Protestantism ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... be superfluous to remark that precisely the members of our party's military organization assumed in October an attitude of extraordinary caution and even some skepticism toward the idea of an immediate insurrection. The closed character of the organization and its officially military character involuntarily inclined its leaders to underestimate the purely technical and organizational resources of the uprising, and from this point of view we were undoubtedly weak. Our strength lay in the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses and their readiness ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... as we now propose, belongs, as a pleasure-excursion, only to the present age. In the last it was made involuntarily. Only sixty years ago the English spinster or spectacled lady's-companion, as she crossed over from the mouth of the Tagus to the mouth of the Tiber, or from Marseilles to Naples, looked out for capture by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... University, and although he knew that not a soul in the little river village, unless it was old Captain Renfrew, could construe a line of Greek and that scarcely two had ever traveled farther north than Cincinnati, still, as Peter recalled their names and foibles, he involuntarily felt that he was telling over a roll of the mighty. The white villagers came marching through his mind as beings austere, and the very cranks and quirks of their characters somehow held that austerity. There were the Brownell sisters, two old maids, Molly and Patti, who lived in a ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling |
