"Coincidence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the story remains to be told. By a strange coincidence the prophetic utterance of Howgill was fulfilled in a striking manner, for all the children of Justice Duckett died without leaving any issue, whilst some of them came to actual poverty, one begging her bread from door to door. Grayrigg Hall passed into the possession of the Lowther ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... Valdivia, was never paid, though the conquest of that fortress proved the immediate cause of success in negociating a loan in England, which, before that event, had been found impracticable. By a remarkable coincidence, the first instalment of the loan arrived at Valparaiso at the period of my departure; but the English merchants to whose care it was consigned, refused to permit the money to be landed, in consequence of the disorganization in which the corrupt conduct of ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... St. Paul's Episcopal Church, was the first president of this, the first Young Men's Christian Association of the United States. It is a strange coincidence, easily understood by the Christian, that on the twenty-fifth of November, one month previous, without any knowledge on the part of Boston, the first Young Men's Christian Association of America had been organized at ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... a coincidence, my good fellow. I was coming down, and I telegraphed Miss Cavendish to that effect. When you brought her message to the office you received mine, which must have been delayed. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... their product that goes for export at lower than the domestic price in order to dispose of it without depressing local prices. They do not need to conspire, for there can be perfectly coincident action to meet the same economic currents. Such coincidence has much greater possibilities of general influence with a few concerns in the field than if there ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... me also how it happens that I am living again "near by Quincy?" As true as you live, I never thought of the coincidence. If you please, we pronounce it "Kansee." When I read your question I laughed. I remembered that Abelard, when he was first condemned, retired to the Hermitage of Quincy, but when I took down Larousse to look it up, what do you think I found? Simply this and nothing ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... the besom of the night-current, and it is beneath our dignity to attach any real importance to them. It is always beneath our dignity to go degrading the integrity of the individual soul by cringing and scraping among the rag-tag of accident and of the inferior, mechanic coincidence and automatic event. Only those events are significant which derive from or apply to the soul in its full integrity. To go kow-towing before the facts of change, as gamblers and fortune-readers and fatalists do, is merely a perverting ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... me," she said at last, "that the coincidence is becoming more and more striking. Have you ever seen that ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... which defence diverted him from the due praise of Randal, until cries of "Cut it short," recalled him to that subject; and then the topics he selected for eulogium were "amiability of character, so conspicuous in the urbane manners of his young friend;" "coincidence in the opinions of that illustrious statesman with whom he was conjoined;" "early tuition in the best principles; only fault, youth,—and that was a fault which would diminish every day." Randal's seconder was a bluff yeoman, an outvoter ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that Joseph was meant to be, in the accurate sense of the word, a type of Christ. But the coincidence is not to be passed by, that these same powerful motives of envy and of greed were combined in His case too, and that there again a Judah (Judas) appears as the agent of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... out by facts. And if it were—was there any conceivable hypothesis that would explain it except the one offered so confidently by this grave, dignified man who sat and looked at him with something of interested compassion in his heavy eyes? Coincidence? It was absurd. Certainly graves did sink, sometimes—but ... Thought-transference from someone who noticed the grave...? But why that particular thought, so ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... lady-students at Somerville College, I re- membered the first line of Caradoc's soliloquy, and made some use of it. On the other hand the broken line I have read her eyes in my 1st part of Nero is proved by date to be a coincidence, and not a reminiscence.—Caradoc was to 'die impenitent, struck by the ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... contrast between the mischief in her eyes and the austerity of her brow, or the queer little fashion she had of winking rapidly four or five times, and then opening her eyes wide and looking straight into the depths of his own. He considered it quite a coincidence that he had unconsciously returned to the spot on which they had met the day ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... secret" of childhood (and where lives there a man or woman that has not sexual memories, not necessarily secrets, of some sort or other, related to the period of puberty or antedating it by a certain varying period?) or the establishment of a relationship other than co-existence or coincidence, between the speech embarrassment and the "concealed sexuality" (just as if even proof of the existence of this relationship was sufficient testimony of the causative operating influence ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... in the habit of conducting experiments may not be aware of the coincidence of circumstances necessary for their being managed so as to prove perfectly decisive; nor how often men engaged in professional pursuits are liable to interruptions which disappoint them almost at the instant of their being ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... place, and if one of them is killed or wounded, how can the affair be kept secret in this gossiping city of Rome? And what remarks it will call forth! It is evident that these two boys have quarrelled only on account of the relations between Madame Steno and Maitland. By what strange coincidence? Of that I ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... man on board, so to speak, at the time. Him, also, by a curious coincidence, the professor had not invented, and him he had not even very greatly improved, though he had fished him up with a lasso out of his own back garden, in Western Bulgaria, with the pure object of improving him. He was an exceedingly holy ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... no effort to detain her. He was looking intently at a certain spot in the carpet. The coincidence—it was ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was harmless, Inspector. But I strongly suspect that regular clients were supplied with something quite different. You see, I know no fewer than thirty unfortunate women in the West End of London alone who are simply helpless slaves to various drugs, and I think it more than a coincidence that upon their dressing-tables I have almost invariably found one or more ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... fresh British advance reoccupied the ridge, and by that time the Boers had disappeared. Some seventy killed and wounded, many of them terribly mutilated, were found on the scene of the disaster. It is certainly a singular coincidence that at distant points of the seat of war two of the crack irregular corps should have suffered so severely within three days of each other. In each case, however, their prestige was enhanced rather than lowered by the result. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... then, is coincidence," Madame de Sevenie suggested. "You who made a walking tour of this country so long ago, monsieur, regard there that good Monsieur Duchemin, himself engaged upon just ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... with it the opening chapters of this work; fortunately a few pages had been set up, and the impression sent to a literary gentleman, then editor of a popular critical journal, and were thus saved from destruction: to him we are indebted for the posthumous articles of Cooper, wherewith, by a coincidence as remarkable as it is auspicious, we now enrich our columns with a contribution from the American pioneer in letters. In discussing the growth of New York and speculating on her future destiny, the patriotic and sagacious author seems to have anticipated ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... a coincidence between the taste for the toilet which had recently come to Cosette, and the habit of new clothes developed by that stranger which was very repugnant to Jean Valjean. It might be accidental, no doubt, certainly, but it was ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... island was seen by Captain Cook and, by a remarkable coincidence of ideas, received from him the same name, but I cannot with certainty reconcile the situation of some parts of the coast that I have seen to his survey. I ascribe this to the various forms in which land appears when seen from the different heights of a ship and a boat. The chart I have given ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... It is a curious coincidence, that this argument of Las Casas should have been first published - in a translated form, indeed - by a secretary of the Inquisition, Llorente. The original still remains in Ms. It is singular that these volumes, containing the views of this great philanthropist on topics of such ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... reason for asking," he consequently pursued, and took out of his coat-tails a round tin box handsomely labelled "Nat. Fly Paper Co.," so that I supposed it was thus, of course, that the lady came by her fly-paper. But this was pure coincidence, and the conductor explained: "That company's me and a man at Shreveport, but he dissatisfies me right frequently. You know what heaven a good razor is for a man, and what you feel about a bad one. Vaseline and ground shells," he said, opening the box, "and I'm not saying anything ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... 1499, appears manifest, first from the deposition of Ojeda himself. The following are the words of the record: "In this voyage which this said witness made, he took with him Juan de la Cosa and Morego Vespuche [Amerigo Vespucci] and other pilots." [300] Secondly, from the coincidence of many parts of the narrative of Vespucci with events in this voyage of Ojeda. Among these coincidences, one is particularly striking. Vespucci, in his letter to Lorenzo de Medici, and also in that to Rene or Soderini, says, that his ships, after leaving the coast of Terra Firma, stopped ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... The coincidence puzzled him; but by the time he had read the morning papers he had forgotten about it, and it was not until he had emerged into the street that it was forcibly recalled. The street was crowded with people; and as Philip stepped in among them, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... churchmen of this generation. Bishop Kip's immortal work and Mines's incomparable volume deserve to be ranked together, and though they differ widely in their manner of presenting the Old Faith, yet are they one in purpose. Is it not a little singular, or is it not rather a happy coincidence, that the two foremost pioneers of the Church's work in California should thus be the authors of works which are fit to take rank with the Apologiai of the early Christian writers or the "Apologia pro Ecclesia ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... business until they have returned to their house and waited awhile. In Rome there are certain persons who are noted for this evil power, and marked and avoided in consequence. One of them is a most pleasant and handsome man, attached to the Church, and yet, by odd coincidence, wherever he goes, he carries ill-luck. If he go to a party, the ices do not arrive, the music is late, the lamps go out, a storm comes on, the waiter smashes his tray of refreshments,—something or other is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... very fine chant was usually being performed: rather soft, tender, and impressive—than loud and overwhelming. I own that, by a thousand associations of ideas, (which it were difficult to describe) this coincidence helped to give a more solemn effect to the object before me. You enter a door, immediately opposite to it—and no man of taste can view it, unexpectedly, for the first time, without standing still ... the very moment it meets his ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... man;—and the Squire, after being almost overcome during the ceremony, experienced a natural reaction, talking cheerfully throughout the long drive. He recounted many anecdotes of Eskew, chuckling over most of them, though filled with wonder by a coincidence which he and Flitcroft had discovered; the Colonel had recently been made the custodian of his old friend's will, and it had been opened the day before the funeral. Eskew had left everything he possessed—with the regret that it was ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... even in stories no author would dare—not even the veriest amateur scribbler—would presume to affront intelligent readers by introducing such a coincidence ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... second perception appears to be the copy of another, ever so old. But even allowing the centre of perception to be double, I can see no good reason for supposing this indefinite lengthening of the time, nor any analogy that bears it out. It seems to me most likely that the coincidence of circumstances is very partial, but that we take this partial resemblance for identity, as we occasionally do resemblances of persons. A momentary posture of circumstances is so far like some preceding one that we accept it as exactly the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... not coincidence, but the need for men that made Dick's wish come true almost at once. A few hours after he received his letter Colonel Winchester found him sitting in the lobby of the hotel in which Dick had twice talked with the contractor. But the boy was alone this time, and as Colonel Winchester ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... another odd coincidence) was won by the butler himself, to whom, very generously, the publisher's wife resigned the vellum copy of our hostess's poems. From a literary point of view, it is interesting to note that Mr. Frank Richardson is the only master of belles lettres who is appreciated ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... as though to observe the effect of his words on me. I could not refrain from starting when I heard him utter the name of Clarimonde, and this news of her death, in addition to the pain it caused me by reason of its coincidence with the nocturnal scenes I had witnessed, filled me with an agony and terror which my face betrayed, despite my utmost endeavours to appear composed. Serapion fixed an anxious and severe look upon me, and then observed: 'My son, I must warn you that you are standing with foot raised ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... conversation with Ernest, in which I had expressed such an anxiety to do good, he had supplied me bountifully with means, so that my purse was literally overflowing. I had met the society once, and had gone alone. The hour of the meeting was ten. What a coincidence! Was Providence opening a way in which my doubting feet should walk? When I mentioned the day of ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... attain to sing with any certainty at sight. What rendered the study of music more agreeable to me at that time, was, being able to practise it with Madam de Warrens. In other respects our tastes were widely different: this was a point of coincidence, which I loved to avail myself of. She had no more objection to this than myself. I knew at that time almost as much of it as she did, and after two or three efforts, we could make shift to decipher an air. Sometimes, when I saw her busy at her furnace, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the actual life; between that which one ought to do; that which you would that others should do, and that which you do yourself. Yes, what has happened is very painful; but the surprise of the event, its coincidence with the nuptial day makes it still more painful. We magnify—everything in our emotion, when it is ourselves that misfortune touches. Suppose, for a moment, that you had read this in ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... of the liquor dealers followed my address with remarks highly complimentary to the work being done, and a resolution pledging me their support was unanimously adopted. The same day, by a curious coincidence, the Women's Christian Temperance Union passed a similar resolution in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... beautifully clear, and its validity has never in recent generations been called in question; yet it should be explained that the argument does not amount to an actually indisputable demonstration. It is at least possible that the coincidence between the observed and computed motion of the moon may be a mere coincidence and nothing more. This probability, however, is so remote that Newton is fully justified in disregarding it, and, as has been said, all subsequent generations ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... This farther coincidence of opinion not only induced me to persevere in my plan, but afforded me a degree of grateful satisfaction, and self-respect, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... must restrict intellect to the comparing or interlacing of single perceptions.' But man transcends in his mental powers the barriers of the brute intellect at a point which coincides with the starting-point of language. And in this coincidence Professor Mueller endeavors to find a sufficiently fundamental explanation of the problem of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... his erect carriage and an unusual grace of movement, and the power and success in his face, made men turn to look at him. He had been told that he resembled the early portraits of Henry Clay, and he had never quite forgotten the coincidence. ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... fortunate coincidence, the annual festival of the Bromo is celebrated to-day, when Siva, the Third Person of the Hindu Triad, is propitiated by a living sacrifice. Goats and buffaloes were flung into the flaming crater long after the offering of human victims was discontinued, but, alas for ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... foreshadow his own death, but they showed the willingness, almost eagerness, with which he offered himself. Although America was not yet in the war, a tardiness which had been a great grief to Alan Seeger, there is a poetic coincidence in the fact that he met his death on July 4, 1916, while the Legion was carrying out an attack on the little village of Belloy-en-Santerre. After his death two volumes, containing his poems, letters, and diary, were issued, 1917, with an Introduction ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... For myself, however, I was mentally discussing certain topics which had formed matter for conversation between us at an earlier period of the evening; I mean the affair of the Rue Morgue, and the mystery attending the murder of Marie Roget. I looked upon it, therefore, as something of a coincidence, when the door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted our old acquaintance, Monsieur G—, the Prefect of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... story. Neither need it be set lightly down as a curious coincidence. I know the charm that the old man said. I cannot give it here. It will only work successfully if taught by man to woman or by woman to man; nor do I pretend to say that it will work for every one. I believe it to ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... are many of that kind need not be doubted. For example: Is not the rule, Si inoequalibus aequalia addas, omnia erunt inaequalia, an axiom as well of justice as of the mathematics? and is there not a true coincidence between commutative and distributive justice, and arithmetical and geometrical proportion? Is not that other rule, Quae in eodem tertio conveniunt, et inter se conveniunt, a rule taken from the mathematics, but so potent in logic ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... By a coincidence which afforded more pleasure to my fellow-voyagers than to me, one of the two boats reserved for the use of the Conversation Club was named the Sarah, the other rejoicing in the inappropriate name of Firefly. I was, of course, voted to a place ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... heard it, accepting it always as a sign of grace. And it was as he said. Not my unworthiness, but the rain, had ever silenced it. In memory I ran over the occasions, and so clearly did I perceive the truth of this, that I marvelled the coincidence should not earlier have ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... that such currents permanently circulate around the molecules of paramagnetic substances. Under ordinary conditions there is no coincidence in their direction and no resultant current is produced. When magnetized or polarized the molecules are brought into order, so that the direction of their current coincides and the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... the name of the son and heir. I was about to remark that he is a baronet and that it is a singular coincidence that he should also have been here in America while his mother was stricken with paralysis. It is strange, too, that his first name should be the same ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Mrs. Davis in January, 1860, in Washington; and I infer, since it was not found on the body of the fugitive President of the South, it was taken from the trunks of Mrs. Davis, captured at the same time. Be this as it may, the coincidence is none the less ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... except one family who sit near us on the deck, and they have asked us to stay with them at their country place on the New Jersey shore. But—Oh! I forgot to tell you, Mamma, Mr. Renour is on board. Is it not a strange coincidence? He seemed very surprised to see us, and for a moment it was quite awkward when I introduced him to Octavia—because she, not being deaf like Aunt Maria, I knew would hear him calling me Lady Elizabeth and think ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... of the iundici to the limits originally imposed by Marcus Aurelius and that further the same emperor instituted certain rulings for the amelioration of food distribution; when, moreover, we consider in connection with this the coincidence of the disappearance of the consular food prefects for Italy on the one hand and the reappearance of the pretorial district prefects on the other, it will not appear overbold to suppose that Macrinus, in the course of the reform affecting the iuridici, also detached from ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... others. Nor does a true artist force his wit. "A confirmed punster is as great a bore as a patronizing moralist." Moreover, the life of society depends upon the general glow of the party, rather than the prominence of an individual, so that a brilliant talker will seek to bring out "the coincidence which strengthens conviction, or the dissent which sharpens sagacity, rather than individual experiences, which ever seem to be egotistical. In agreeable society all egotism is to be crushed and crucified. Even a man ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... led, on the 25th of September, 1846, by the discovery of a star of the eighth magnitude, not recorded in Dr. Bremiker's map, to make the first observation of the planet predicted by Leverrier. By a singular coincidence, Mr. Adams, of Cambridge, had predicted the appearance of the planet simultaneously with M. Leverrier; but by the concurrence of several circumstances much to be regretted, the world at large were not made acquainted with ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... showed few signs of his recent excesses, was noisy and boisterous, clutching at this brief escape from a situation which he dreaded. Fischer on the other hand, remained in the back-ground, ominously silent, thinking rapidly, speculating and theorising as to the coincidence, if it were coincidence, of finding Lutchester and Pamela together. He listened to the former's polite conversation, never once letting his eyes wander from his face. All his thoughts were concentrated upon one problem. The mysterious escape of Sandy Graham, which ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by a great aunt; he had no nearer relatives living. It is a singular coincidence that the lawyer appointed by the court to defend Turnbull was his intimate friend, Philip Rochester, who made his ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... were two utterly novel and independent sets of empirical facts which harmonize strangely with the supposition that substances are composed of chemical atoms of a determinate weight. This surely could not be coincidence—it tells of law. And so as soon as the claims of Dulong and Petit and of Mitscherlich had been substantiated by other observers, the laws of the specific heat of atoms, and of isomorphism, took their place as new levers of chemical science. With the aid of these new tools an ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the report of the fire, and the conjectured loss. The reporters somehow had found out the fact that the loss fell entirely upon Lapham; they lighted up the hackneyed character of their statements with the picturesque interest OF the coincidence that the policy had expired only the week before; heaven knows how they knew it. They said that nothing remained of the building but the walls; and Lapham, on his way to business, walked up past the smoke-stained shell. The windows looked like the eye-sockets of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... an oath against liquor, to except christenings or weddings, and very frequently funerals, as well as Christmas and Easter. Every one acquainted with the country knows this, and no one need be surprised at the delight with which Art Maguire hailed this agreeable coincidence. Art, we have said before, was naturally social, and, although he did most religiously observe his oath, yet, since the truth must be told, we are bound to admit that, on many and many an occasion, he did also most unquestionably regret the restraint that ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Swift and Shakespeare, like Thackeray and Fielding, never hesitated at a touch of grim humour even though it might border on grotesque, he himself would probably not have missed the coincidence of— ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... of analogical coincidence between magnetism and electricity are first, that when one end of an iron bar possesses an accumulation of arctic magnetic ether, or northern polarity; the other end possesses an accumulation of antarctic ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... protege and Mr. Davies have gone into the same troop. What a strange coincidence! Isn't it time ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Nelson's sensitiveness to censure His vindication of his recent conduct His erroneous conceptions of French military aims Importance of Vado Bay First meeting between Nelson and Jervis Nelson's anxiety to remain on the station Coincidence of views between Nelson and Jervis Nelson sent again to the Riviera Reconnoitres Toulon Expects a French descent in force near Leghorn Analogy between this and Napoleon's plans in 1805 Nelson urges the Austrians ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... through not knowing the nature and coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan has been with him ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... dispersion of a curious lot of miscellanies, apparently derived from Darlaston Hall, near Stone, Staffordshire, an imperfect, but very large and clean, copy of the first edition of the Canterbury Tales, by Caxton, was adjudged to Mr. Quaritch at L1020, a second one, by an unparalleled coincidence presenting itself at the same place of sale a few months later, only four leaves wanting, but not so fine, and being knocked down at L1800 to the same buyer. The Asburnham Chaucers and other works ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... Hermann Kotschmar, whose "Te Deum" is well known in the United States. The organ is in a handsome case on the platform at one end of the hall and is entitled to take its place among the world's great instruments. It is certainly a coincidence that those who have been associated with Mr. Hope-Jones in business now rank as the foremost organ builders in America, as witness this fine organ and that in the Cathedral of St. John ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... However, I really know nothing about Mr. Conolly's antecedents. His manner when he appears at our board meetings is quiet and not unpleasant. Marian, it appears, met him at Towers Cottage the year before last, and had some scientific lessons from him. He was quite unknown then. It was rather a curious coincidence. I did not know of it until about a month ago, when he read a paper at the Society of Arts on his invention. I attended the meeting with Marian; and when it was over, I introduced him to her, and was surprised to learn that they knew one another already. ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... work, Nicholas remarks, as corroborative of the Malay descent of the New Zealanders, the singular coincidence, in some respects, between their mythology and that of the ancient Malay tribe, the Battas of Sumatra, whose extraordinary cannibal practices we have already detailed; especially in the circumstance of the three principal divinities of the Battas having precisely the same functions assigned to them ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... aged 56 years, of an excessively corpulent habit, had been affected for a great number of years with a scirrhus of the right breast. Finding her health decline, she at last disclosed it, and in coincidence with the opinion of Dr. WARREN, sen. I amputated it on the 30th of May, of the present year. We however informed her friends, that the probability of eradicating the disease was extremely small. The skin was in many places hardened ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren
... several of the prominent features of the Baconian system. Too little of Leonardo's scientific writings has been published to furnish material for a satisfactory determination of their importance in promoting the advance of knowledge,—but the coincidence of thought, in some passages of his writings, with that in some of Bacon's weighty sentences, is remarkable. "I shall treat of this subject," he says, in a passage published by Venturi, "but I shall first set forth certain experiments; it being my principle to cite experience first, and then to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... of soul could have sprung from all the vices, from the cruelty and corruption which one would fain attribute now to the Southern people? The laws of inflexible logic refute these false imputations. And—strange coincidence—while Southern men presided over the destinies of the Union, its gigantic prosperity was the astonishment of the world. In the hands of Northern men, that edifice, raised with so much care and labor ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... succeeded. Some time afterwards, a complete copy of the same work turned up, and on comparison it was found that in many places there were indeed different words, and in a few passages new proofs even had been adduced: but on the whole the restored portion presented so many points of extraordinary coincidence, that his friends were not a little astonished at the thoroughness with which Abulfazl had worked himself into the style and mode of ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... "Creakety-crack! Here I come. Creakety-crack!" Why should he come in to call the doctor out of his pew when the case is not urgent? Cannot the patient wait twenty minutes, or is this the cheap way the doctor has of advertising? Dr. Camomile had but three cases in three months, and, strange coincidence, they all came to him at half-past eleven o'clock Sunday morning, while he was in church. If windows are to be lowered, or blinds closed, or register to be shut off, let it be before ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... another sorrowful story. The sisters' fate (there is a sad coincidence and similarity in it) was to be undivided; their life, their experience was the same. Some one without a name takes leave of Jane one day, promising to come back. He never comes back: long afterwards they hear of his death. The story ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... of Professor Junkerman's work in the schools of Cincinnati, a coincidence happened in 1906 which recalled my childhood days with all the vivid coloring traced upon my mind fifty-two years ago. In the number of The Musician for May, 1906, I saw two pictures that were familiar and I looked without seeing the names printed beneath them. ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... and his court to fasting and prayer, and built churches and monasteries. He died three years later, in 840, and historians have profited by this slight coincidence to prove that the appearance of the comet was a harbinger of death. The historian, Raoul Glader, added later: "These phenomena of the universe are never presented to man without surely announcing some ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... "What a coincidence!" she exclaimed, gayly. "Mrs. Schmidt and Mrs. Ferguson and Mrs. McMahon are all coming around here this afternoon. I invited them to attend a ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... in broken reverberation through the trees, he thrusts the watch hurriedly into his fob. Then stands in expectant attitude, with eyes upon the embouchure of the upper path, scanning it more eagerly than ever. There is a strange coincidence between the strokes of the clock and the flashes of Fernanda powder—both numbering the same. Though not strange to the leader of the savage troop. He knows what it is— comprehends the significance of the signal—for signal it has been. A dread one, too, foreboding ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... prophets are not subject to the prophets. Again, there are others, who, like the Church of Rome, would surrender the conscience of each man to the conscience of the Church, and coerce the particulars of faith into exact coincidence with a formal creed. Spiritual unity saves the right of both in God's system. The Church exists for the individual, just as truly as the individual for the Church. The Church is then most perfect when all its powers converge, and are concentrated on the formation ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... not but feel the strange coincidence that words such as these should come to strengthen him, when he felt he had most need to shelter himself under the shadow of the Cross. The service proceeded, the creed, sanctus, and other choral portions being sung by the whole monastic body in sonorous ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... accept the curious coincidence, if not as a reward for an act of straightforwardness, in which I saw no merit, at least as proof that the upper powers had not altogether forgotten me. I found both the editor and his periodical, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... called tyrants and revolutionaries, and the deaths of those revolutionaries called criminals. It is to something of all this that Victor Hugo wishes to open men's eyes in "Les Miserables"; and this moral lesson is worked out in masterly coincidence with the artistic effect. The deadly weight of civilisation to those who are below presses sensibly on our shoulders as we read. A sort of mocking indignation grows upon us as we find Society rejecting, again and again, the services of the most serviceable; setting Jean Valjean to pick oakum, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and incidentally connecting Chicago with the South, West, and East. This road, having a large local mileage and being anxious to extend its franchises in Chicago and elsewhere, was deep in state politics. By a curious coincidence it was mainly financed by Haeckelheimer, Gotloeb & Co., of New York, though Cowperwood's connection with that concern was not as yet known. Going to Southack, who was the Republican whip in the senate, Avery proposed that he, in conjunction with Judge Dickensheets and ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Annaclochmullin and the chambered cairn of Newbliss in Ireland, in the tomb of Cashtal-yn-Ard in the Isle of Man, in the barrow of West Tump in Gloucestershire, and in the horned cairns of the north of Scotland. These parallels are due to something more than coincidence; in fact, it is clear that megalithic building is a widespread and homogeneous system, which, despite local differences, always preserves certain common features pointing to a single origin. It is thus difficult to accept the suggestion that it is merely a phase through which ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... of a battle; if we were to find but a single paragraph in which two out of three correspondents agreed verbally, we should regard it as a very strange coincidence. If all three agreed verbally, we should feel certain it was more than accident. If throughout their letters there was a recurring series of such passages, no doubt would be left in the mind of any one that ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... discover that Meeker was to be a passenger with me in the Kut Sang, but I was out in the street again before it dawned upon me that the situation was more than a mere coincidence. The missionary had lied to me when he said he had been refused passage, he had misled me when he said it was impossible to buy a ticket in the Kut Sang, and I could make nothing of it all but that he did not want me to know he was sailing in the ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... was connected by long satin ribbons to the lesser clusters which hung from it, I recalled with conceivable horror the use to which a similar ribbon had been put in the room below. In the shudder called up by this coincidence I forgot to speculate how a bouquet carried by the bride could have found its way back to this upstairs room when, as all accounts agree, she had fled from the parlor below without speaking or staying foot ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... doubt, to be attributed to an unluckiness in the choice of helpmates,—dictated, as that choice frequently must be, by an imagination accustomed to deceive itself. But from whatever causes it may have arisen, the coincidence is no less striking than saddening, that, on the list of married poets who have been unhappy in their homes, there should already be found four such illustrious names as Dante, Milton[58], Shakspeare[59], and Dryden; and that we should now have ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... for very nearly the same thing," went on Mr. Titus. "That is where the coincidence comes in. It is strange that we should both appeal to Mr. Swift ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... round, examining her merits, as might not long ago have been seen in a slave market in Egypt. She was sold for £30, in the street, opposite a small inn then called “The Horse and Jocky,” and kept by a man commonly called Banty Marshall. I am not aware that it is more than a coincidence, that, although the inn has now a different name, a device in the window represents a cat on a barrel. The parish stocks stood at the top of this street, where the Court House now stands; they were last used in 1859, and were only removed on its ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... family life has left small impression of dramatic interest. There was no development of the sentiments, no betrayal of the fluctuations of the passions which must have existed. There was no accident to reveal, no coincidence to surprise us. Hidden among the Powers That Be, which rule New England, lurks the Deity of the Illicit. This Deity never obtained sovereignty in the atmosphere where the Morgesons lived. Instead of the impression which my after-experience suggests to me ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... marble fragment in the island of the Tiber bearing the inscription "SEMONI SANCO DEO FIDIO," a Sabine God. A few, however, think that Justin could not have made so glaring a mistake in writing to the Romans, and that if it were a mistake Irenaeus would not have copied it. The coincidence, however, is too striking to bear any other interpretation than that perhaps some ignorant controversialist had endeavoured to give the legend a historical appearance, and that Justin had lent a too ready ear to him. It is also to ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... talked this over since, and it may only be a coincidence. But Mrs. Ostermaier's cousin is married to a Congressman from the west, and she sends the Ostermaiers all his speeches. Mr. Ostermaier sends on his sermon, too, in exchange, and every now and then Mrs. Ostermaier comes running in to Tish with something delivered in our national ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... A coincidence it may have been, but, as a fact, for the fortnight succeeding Kirby's exploit there was a lull in the crimes. There followed, as though to make amends, the seven days still remembered in the Daleland ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Lydia looked down at her robe; it was the blue flannel yachting-suit of the Aroostook, which she had put on for convenience in taking care of her aunt. "Isn't it too ridiculous?" Mrs. Erwin meant to praise the coincidence, not to blame the dress. Lydia smiled faintly for answer, and the next moment she stood ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Critias heard from Solon and related to us. And when you were speaking yesterday about your city and citizens, the tale which I have just been repeating to you came into my mind, and I remarked with astonishment how, by some mysterious coincidence, you agreed in almost every particular with the narrative of Solon; but I did not like to speak at the moment. For a long time had elapsed, and I had forgotten too much; I thought that I must first of all run over the narrative in my own mind, and then I would speak. And ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... loss to account for this queer coincidence, this mute communion, Peter elbowed over the edge, dangerously high above the water, and slid down a ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... coincidence the name that appears the following instant is that of Henry Hide, the head of the leather Trust. The ribald jest of the boy proves to ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... narrated by Moses thirty centuries ago, with the historical account of the origin of the division of the primeval family into three separate colonies, colonizing the earth after their families and after their tongues.—Genesis x. 32. The discovery of this coincidence fills Bunsen with astonishment. "Comparative philology," he says, "would have been compelled to set forth as a postulate the supposition of some such division of languages in Asia, especially on the ground of the relation of the Egyptian ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... a pleasing coincidence, Conte Crayon himself appeared with the desired explanation. "You see," he said, "that beast of a Siccatif de Courtray hunted me up yesterday and told me the yarn about you and the slop-shop man. He ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... "No. You see, by coincidence, a police squad car was coming down the street just at that moment to arrest Mr. Rossi. You would have been apprehended. As I understand Californian law of the period, your life would have been ...
— Gun for Hire • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... though he, himself, had never experienced telepathy more than half a dozen times in his life, he had made a study of the subject and was pretty well aware of its limitations. The colonel might have dismissed—as most men do—his own fleeting experiences as "coincidence" or "imagination" if it had not been for the things he had seen and felt in Africa during World War II. He had only been a captain then, on detached duty with British Intelligence, under crusty old Colonel Sir Cecil Haversham, who didn't believe a word ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... present; but as they grow longer, their names grow shorter. This name will first be abbreviated to Chrony; if we find that too long, it will be reduced again to Crow; which, by-the-bye, is not a bad name for a negro," said the planter, laughing at the coincidence. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... saw, but I took very little notice of the ship until in tacking across her wake, I noticed her name in gold letters across the stern—'Duncan McDonald.' Now that is my own name, and was my father's; and try as I would, I could not account for this name as a coincidence, common as the name might be in the highlands of the home of my ancestors; and before the staunch little steamer had gotten a mile away, I ordered the boat to follow her. I intended to go aboard and learn, if possible, something of ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... Hortense, in astonishment, "the same date as to-day!... They tore off the leaves until the 5th of September.... And this is the anniversary! What an astonishing coincidence!" ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... fear on a diseased heart, none can say with certainty. That his heart was diseased, that he had had many former seizures, during which his life seemed in danger, is beyond question; but if it was merely coincidence, it was surely the most remarkable coincidence on record, that his death should come at the exact moment foretold by the lady of his vision, as related by himself three days before ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... are constrained at the same time to acknowledge that there was some reality in this prophetic element of paganism, which cannot be explained away as the result of mere political or intellectual foresight or accidental coincidence. It was not all imposture. As a ray of light is contained in all that shines, so a ray of God's truth was reflected in what was best in this pagan prophecy. The fulfilment of many of the ancient oracles cannot be denied ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... him in the breast. It is necessary to say that on the evening before he had noticed that the little medallion which had been given to him by Fanny Dorville, worn from its chain by friction, had disappeared from his neck. Scoffing comrades smiled at the coincidence; ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... gentleman and tell him you're busy getting married this week and next, and that, by a singular coincidence, your partner is similarly engaged; that our manager will attend to him with all care and courtesy, unless he can postpone his trip until our return. Suggest that he call around a week or ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... sufficient coincidence between his declaration and the course she had urged upon her lover, to lend Bellston's account of himself a certain interest in Christine's ears. He might perhaps be able to tell her something that would be useful to Nicholas, if their dream were carried ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... no visible wires." It may even be said that it was the first modern drama in which no wires had been employed. Not that even here the execution is perfect, as Ibsen afterwards made it. The arm of coincidence is terribly shortened, and the early acts, clever and entertaining as they are, are still far from the inevitability of real life. But when, in the wonderful last act, Nora issues from her bedroom, dressed to go out, to Helmer's and the audience's stupefaction, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... near one of the slave crossing-places, we were robbed for the first time in Africa, and learned by experience that these people, like more civilized nations, have expert thieves among them. It might be only a coincidence; but we never suffered from impudence, loss of property, or were endangered, unless among people familiar with slaving. We had such a general sense of security, that never, save when we suspected treachery, did we set a watch at night. Our native companions ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... all which performances concur to prove, that great cities, in every age, and in every country, will furnish similar topicks of satire[342]. Whether Johnson had previously read Oldham's imitation, I do not know; but it is not a little remarkable, that there is scarcely any coincidence found between the two performances, though upon the very same subject. The only instances are, in describing London as the sink of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... a coincidence, but L700 is the sum specifically mentioned in the proceedings brought by Colonel Fielding in October 1722, five months after the loss of his Chancery suit, against the cardsharper, Robert Midford, who was then apparently threatening him with outlawry for the recovery of the gambling ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... hung heavy on Jack Halloway's hands after he had heard Brent announce his departure. The chair scraped on the floor, had been his only assurance that the other had understood him and that might, within possibility, have been a coincidence. Still Brent's promptness in cutting him off on the arrival of the operator had seemed a hopeful sign ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... belonging. His present visit was in mere perfunctory compliance with some order of a court in which Mr. Brewer had an action to get possession of the property as heir to his deceased sister. By a mere coincidence, the visit was made on the day after the night that Deputy King had unlocked the house for another and very different purpose. His presence now was not of his own choosing: he had been ordered to accompany his superior and at the moment ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... don't know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal, Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty, One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and- twenty. Through some singular coincidence— I shouldn't be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy— You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of February; And so, by a simple ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... "Master, what a coincidence! Are these newly decorated walls really ancient with memories?" I looked around my simply furnished room with ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... or might not prove true. If they did, the effect must be great; if they did not, the failure would soon be forgotten in matters of more interest. Our hero, therefore, risked but little, while he had the chance of gaining a very great advantage. By a fortunate coincidence, the result completely justified the prediction. A bee rose, made its circles around the stand, and away it went toward the island-like copse in the prairie; while its companion soon imitated its example, but taking the other prescribed direction. This time Peter ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... his unbelieving, unpleasant smile. "Just at this particular time, after all these thousands of years, the coincidence would indeed ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer |
