"Inadvertent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the straight trail to Shainsa, and Kyral announced his intention of stopping for half a day at Canarsa, one of the walled nonhuman cities which lay well off the traveled road. To my inadvertent show of surprise, he returned that he had ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... had made a sly sortie to surprise the only surviving knight of Narcottus. Narcottus, on the other hand, was cautiously collecting his scattered foot soldiers, and, with two bishops, and two castle-armed elephants, were meditating a desperate onset to retrieve the disgrace of his lost queen. An inadvertent remark from Lysander, concerning the antiquity of the game, attracted the attention of Philemon so much as to throw him off his guard; while his queen, forgetful of her sex, and venturing unprotected, like Penthesilea of old, into the thickest of the fight, was trampled under foot, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... in his protestations that he spoke the whole truth and nothing but the truth, nor had he always the power of doing so when overpowered by fright. The manner in which his father laid hold of any inadvertent discrepancy, treating it as a wilful prevarication, was terror and agony; and well as he knew it to be the meed of past equivocation, he felt it cruel to torture him by implied suspicion. Yet how ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with me?' said Mr. Tom (he had recovered himself after the inadvertent blush). 'We can ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... Among other drastic enactments to enforce that object, no other language but Dutch was permitted to be used in public of pain of corporal punishment. Not a few noble Frenchmen were subjected to that indignity for inadvertent breaches of that draconian law, but, as conscientious observers of biblical commands which enjoin subjection to all governmental rule, they willingly submitted and obeyed. Intermarriages with their Dutch fellow-colonists further promoted assimilation into one cohesive ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... So she tried to be content and if not teasing or fretting was one of the ways of being good, she tried her utmost to keep to that. She was too brave to tell falsehoods to shield herself from any inadvertent wrongdoing, even if Cousin ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... corner ticked, catching its chain now and then as its manner was. The wooden walls shrunk and groaned a little. The small home-like sounds only accentuated the enormous silence without. Suddenly in the midst of them a real sound fell upon her ear—very low, but different, not like the fragmentary inadvertent murmur of the hut; a small, purposeful, stealthy, sound, aware of itself. She listened, as she had listened before, without moving. It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind the wainscot, hardly louder ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... first name was, I knew, inadvertent and unconscious. It thrilled me. There was a marvellous fascination always about Vicky Van, and now, at the end of this my mysterious night telephone conversation, I felt its thrill and ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... miss fire in conversation; only second-rate shots hit the mind through the ear. This, we will suppose, is why David derived no amusement or delectation from Mr. Bazalgette's inadvertent but ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... respect." "She is indeed well worthy the exalted opinion you express of her; and had I followed her advice, I should not have been found amongst the ranks of your enemies." "You confess the fact then, monsieur le duc?" said I. "I trust, madam, you will not take advantage of an inadvertent expression to turn it against myself. What I fear is, that without ever having been your enemy, I may have passed for such in your estimation; and such indeed is the cruel position in which I am placed." "Stay, my lord duke," cried I; "be candid, and acknowledge that you are my enemy as you have ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... to omit the 16 female and 33 Scottish poets. Of the remaining 203, he dropped 68, and for the student of literary reputation these omissions raise some interesting questions. Undoubtedly a few were inadvertent. About a dozen were authors noted but not dated by Phillips, and it is probable that Winstanley was unable to learn more about them. Fifteen others were English poets who apparently did not write in the ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... a part of England which could be justly described as beautiful that was not already occupied in the degree of its accessibility. I thought of Surrey; I visited it and found myself in a superior Cockney Paradise. Half a dozen men of genius had in an inadvertent moment advertised the pure air of the Surrey highlands, and by the time I came upon the scene trim villas had sprung up by hundreds, and wealth was already in possession. The merest cottage in this favoured district ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... this which is now proposed, my lords, has his majesty been betrayed into an inadvertent appro bation of measures pernicious to the nation, and dishonourable to himself, and will now be kept ignorant of the despicable conduct of the war, the treacherous connivance at the descent of the Spaniards ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... did not turn up. Rogers, when he shut the door on Todd, did not guess that he had shut up Biffen's crack bats too. That Biffen's lost the match, and made no sort of show against Cotton's bowling, may also, perhaps, be attributed to the inadvertent imprisonment ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... knowledge of these things he moved his hand among them cautiously, fearful lest some inadvertent touch might cause the car to go careering into the board wall. He bent his head close to the instrument board in search of printed words indicating the purpose of the various buttons, but the darkness was too dense for him to see anything but the shiny nickel. ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the parlormaid the next morning in an inadvertent, casual manner just as he was leaving the house to catch his London train. When Ann Veronica got it she had at first a wild, fantastic idea that ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... my heart, will do me the justice to believe, that when I am convinced of my friend's weakness, I shall spare it with the most delicate caution: but till I am convinced, I am in perpetual danger of blundering by my careless, inadvertent innocence. You smile, Gabrielle; dear malicious Gabrielle, even in your malice you are charming! Adieu! Pray for the speedy ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... as hard to correct an error, as it is easy to fall into one. In pointing out my inadvertent mistake, the Reviewer unwittingly reproduces it. His sentence, just quoted, is liable to convey the idea that William Brattle was "a merchant of Boston." As he has been kind enough, all through his article, to ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... sparing over what looked at first unspotted light. And in all the ways of it the lovely thing is more like the spring frock of some prudent little maid of fourteen, than a flower;—frock with some little spotty pattern on it to keep it from showing an unintended and inadvertent spot,—if Fate should ever inflict such a thing! Undeveloped, thinks Mr. Darwin,—the poor {129} short-coming, ill-blanched thorn blossom—going to be a Rose, some day soon; and, what next?—who knows?—perhaps ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... added a further concession accordingly. "This will have the best possible effect on the men," said Lee. "It will do much towards conciliating our people." Grant included also in his written terms words of general pardon to Confederate officers for their treason. This was an inadvertent breach, perhaps, of Lincoln's orders, but it was one which met with no objection. Lee retired into civil life and devoted himself thereafter to his neighbours' service as head of a college in Virginia—much respected, very free ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... verification of moral rules; there is no enterprise which does not receive and transmit the now of life that circulates through the moral system at large. To be righteously indignant is to protest passionately in behalf of the whole good, and against the clumsy and inadvertent evil. To this morality owes its universal support, its invincible finality. It need never be apologetic, because it holds no brief; it advocates no measure except the carrying through to the end of what is virtually undertaken by all parties ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... city' to which we may 'continually resort.' The Israelite had right to enter only if his act had been inadvertent, but we have the right to hide ourselves in Christ just because we have sinned wilfully. The hurried, eager flight of the man who heard the tread of the avenger behind him, and dreaded every moment to be struck to the heart by his sword, may well set forth what should be the earnestness of our flight ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren |
