"Spontaneous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... close the had been almost taken by an English squadron. Under these circumstances, how rapturously we inhaled the balmy, air of Provence! Such was our joy, that we were scarcely sensible of the disheartening news which arrived from all quarters. At the first moment of our arrival, by a spontaneous impulse, we all repeated, with tears in our eyes, the beautiful lines which Voltaire has put into the mouth of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... hopes painful as doubts,—little did he think what a brave, loving spirit was hid under the silken vesture of Amelie de Repentigny, and how hard was her struggle to conceal from his eyes those tender regards, which, with over-delicacy, she accounted censurable because they were wholly spontaneous. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... this voyage, during which they were well tossed about by the frisky Janet, that the ship was set on fire by the spontaneous combustion of some fireworks in one of the cabins. In the midst of the excitement some native sailors were seen by Mrs. Stevenson about to toss overboard a blazing trunk. She stopped them in time and was thankful to discover that she had ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... JEFFERSON are no more; and we are assembled, fellow-citizens, the aged, the middle-aged and the young, by the spontaneous impulse of all, under the authority of the municipal government, with the presence of the chief magistrate of the commonwealth, and others of its official representatives, the university, and the learned societies, to bear our part in these manifestations of respect and gratitude, which universally ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... Voyage autour de ma Chambre, Jean Xavier Maitre, stumbled upon it, or whether it was a spontaneous thought, does not appear; but in his pleasing little book, Lettres sur la Vieillesse, we ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... of his recall there arose for the second time a burst of sympathy from every town, village, and farm throughout the country, in terms of mingled indignation and sorrow.[24] The addresses and resolutions, being spontaneous at each place, varied much, and laid stress on different points, but in all there was a tone of deep regret, of conviction that Sir B. Frere's policy and his actions had been wise, just, and merciful towards all men, and ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... "constructive beauty in art," we will close this paper on "the Design," as belonging more properly to the mechanical than the intellectual side of art; as being rather the slow growth of experience than the spontaneous impulse of the artistic temperament. It is a feature in art rather apt to savor of conventionality to such as would look on nature as the only school of art, who would consider it but as the exponent of thought ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... pause. The girl on the landing above waited tensely for Jeff's answer. It came at last slowly, in a tone that was not unfriendly, but which did not sound spontaneous. "You can do as you like, Chesyl. I ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... who were so confident of their power that they left all to chance. This is a dangerous course, especially when acting a new character. I will admit that there are many instances where great effects have been produced that were entirely spontaneous, and were as much a surprise to the actors who made them as they were to the audience who witnessed them; but just as individuals who have exuberant spirits are at times dreadfully depressed, so when an impulsive ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... heavy pain in the head, accompanied by a slight nausea, and a general feeling of languor and weakness. Even to get upon my feet required something of an effort, which I made, impelled rather by a dim, confused sense of duty, than by any spontaneous impulse or inclination: had I consulted inclination alone, I believe I should have remained passive, and ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... proposed to the competitors by judges who examined each phrase and word with the minutest critical care before pronouncing their verdict. As might be expected, the poetry produced in those circumstances is of a more or less artificial type, and is wanting in the spontaneous vigour of the earlier essays of the Japanese muse. Conceits, acrostics, and untranslatable word-plays hold much too prominent a place, but for perfection of form the poems of this time are unrivalled. It is no doubt to this quality that the great popularity of the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... been using her ill. And even as he spoke with indignation the very marks and stamp of this ill-usage of which he was so certain seemed to add to the inexplicable attraction he felt for her person. It was not pity alone, I take it. It was something more spontaneous, perverse and exciting. It gave him the feeling that if only he could get hold of her, no woman would belong to him so completely ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... strengthened by time, and a more intimate knowledge of the merit of the person who makes it; but it is, it must be, spontaneous, or be nothing. ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... vain attempt to get out over the roofs. But such music does not go up. What could have been the intention of this assault we could not conjecture. It was a time of profound peace through the country; we had ordered no spontaneous serenade, if it was a serenade. Perhaps the Boston bands have that habit of going into an alley and disciplining their nerves by letting out a tune too big for the alley, and taking the shock of its reverberation. It may be well enough for the band, but many a poor sinner ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... grumbling and complaining about the weather, no fault-finding with their lot in life, or their daily surroundings and circumstances. Their conversation was joyous, cheerful, and helpful to one another. Nor was it forced and out of place, but rather it was the natural, spontaneous outflow of loving, humble, glad hearts filled with the Spirit, in union with Jesus, and in love and sympathy ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... Bennington picked up the book again, but found that his brain had reached the limit of spontaneous mental effort. He looked for Old Mizzou and the cribbage game. The miner had gone to visit Arthur again. Bennington wandered ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... moreover, that this recent exodus was a sort of spontaneous movement of the masses of the Negro population and not one composed of its leading elements. This fact has been marveled at, because in this migration the rank and file of Negroes, accustomed to being led, showed some initiative ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... explain that there are two kinds of teachers: people who are teachers by nature, and those who have acquired the methods by long study. The first, having little to learn, and a love for the child, with a spontaneous quality of giving their all, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... taken from the troop-ship when it reached harbor and the spontaneous welcome given him there and at Washington was not surpassed by the prearranged demonstrations for ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... been Lady Exmoor; 'and most of these people that come here don't either. They have galleries, and they get artists and people who understand about pictures to talk with them, and so they learn what's considered the proper thing to say of each of them. But as to saying anything spontaneous or original of their own about a picture or any other earthly thing—why, you know, Mr. Le Breton, they couldn't possibly do it to ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... Geary thought, and she glanced knowingly at her husband, for they both realized Marjorie's flow of good spirits was forced,—not spontaneous. ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... wild with their own impulses, unable to control the fierceness of instinct. It is a sadder barbarism when men yield to every impulse from without, with no imperial dignity in the soul, which closes the apartments against the violence of the world and frowns away unseemly intruders. We have no spontaneous enthusiasm, no spiritual independence, no inner being, obedient only to its own law. We do not plough the billows of time with true beak and steady weight, but float, a tossed cork, now one side up and now the other. We live the life of an insect accidentally caught within a drum. Every steamer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... singular, it would still loudly call for the interference of the legislature. In instances of this kind no injury can possibly be done to the owner by confirming to the slave his resumption of his natural rights. It is the master's spontaneous act to bring him to this country; he knows when he brings him that he divests himself of his property; and it is, in fact, a minor species of slave trading, when he has thus enfranchised his slave, to re-capture ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... president not as that of absolute monarch but as that of constitutional ruler; not as that of master, but as that of leader. Readers of the dean's report for the Sabbatical year of Miss Hazard's absence, in which Miss Pendleton was acting president, will not have failed to notice the spontaneous expression of this sense of comradeship in Miss ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... beginning of the verse. As regards the destroying, [Hebrew: hHrvM], it is the forced devoting to God of that which would not spontaneously serve Him; compare remarks on Mal. iii. 24. Objects of such devoting can properly be persons only, because they only are capable of spontaneous sanctification to God, as well as of wilful desecration. The fact that it is here transferred to the sea may be accounted for by its being personified. The destruction which is inflicted upon the sea is, in it, inflicted upon the enemies of God thereby represented, inasmuch ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... good-manneredly and with his shaggy-browed gray eyes studied me across the table. I, too, studied him. Despite his violent past, killer and driver that he was, I could not help liking the man. He was honest, genuine. Almost more than for that, I liked him for the spontaneous boyish laugh he gave on the occasions when I reached the points of several funny stories. No man could laugh like that and be all bad. I was glad that it was he, and not Mr. Mellaire, who was to sit opposite throughout the voyage. And ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... as in dreams, he knew that what he saw was unreal, he knew that the changing walls and streets and houses and public places were built up of gravestones which in truth were deeply planted in the ground, immovable and incapable of spontaneous motion; he knew that the crowds of men and women were not human beings but gnarled and twisted trees rooted in the earth, and that the hum of voices which reached his ears was but the sound of dried branches bending in the wind; he knew ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... Summer had spread her richest treasures upon the lap of Nature; and the fairy hands of Beatrice transformed the bare walls of the dilapidated edifice which they inhabited into bowers of luxuriant foliage; the most delicious fruit also, the spontaneous product of the garden, cooled at some crystal fount and heaped with flowers, tempted her brother's languid appetite; and, waking the soft notes of her lute, she soothed his desponding spirit with music's gentlest sound. Fondly trusting that Francesco ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... Except for this spontaneous uprising, which continued unabated in July, the Democratic Party could not have been induced at Baltimore to ratify the proceedings at Cincinnati and formally to make Greeley its candidate. The leaders dared not resist it. Some of them halted, a few held out, but ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... his a sweet reply." After giving these slight hints, he pushes forth from the moorings of realism and sets sail on the ocean of the sonneteer's fancy, meeting the usual adventures. His sonnets, while showing versatility and ingenuity, lack spontaneous feeling and have serious defects in form; yet these defects are in part offset by their conversational ease ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... his old master, when, as he bent his eyes upon the book of the ancient Rhymer, he was astonished to observe it slowly removed from the desk on which it lay by an invisible hand. The old man looked with horror at the spontaneous motion of the book, for the safety of which he was interested, and had the courage to approach a little nearer the table, in order to discover by what means it ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... broke in unmistakable merriment, wholly spontaneous, as of relief, even of mischievous triumph; and Mr. Iglesias, looking up, found himself confronted by a young woman. She advanced slowly, her trailing string-coloured lace skirts gathered up lazily in ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... take any definite action which would bind the Institute to a settled policy on this question. Mr. Louis H. Sullivan, of Chicago, in a thoughtful paper complained that education stifles and kills the spirit of modern architectural work, and that the natural and spontaneous love for beauty found in all human beings gives place, under our modern systems of instruction, to the dry formalities of ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 7, - July, 1895 • Various
... boldness; and,—to his credit be it said,—he was quick to perceive that, however indifferent the Girl seemed to the customary formality of introduction, there was no suggestion of indelicacy about her. All that her frank and easy manner suggested was that she was a child of nature, spontaneous and untrammelled by the dictates of society, and normally and healthily at home in the company of ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... your eloquence the fruit of meditation and study; it savors not, like that of Demosthenes, of the midnight oil. It is fresh and spontaneous, such as ought to be at the command of men ever ready to speak to the people of their rights and duties in democracies. It abounds always in that cold reasoning and that inflexible logic which alone can ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... History of the Old English Letter Foundries; with Notes Historical and Bibliographical on the Rise and Progress of English Typography" (Elliot Stock, 1887), the preparation of which cost him ten years of research and labour. His boys' books were the spontaneous utterance of his joyous nature, and their production he regarded in the light of a recreation amid the more serious affairs of life. He had an ambition, which the results of his labour fully justified, to be regarded as an authority on Typography. I can remember his amusement, and perhaps annoyance, ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... by the method of a "superior person" making a drawing of them, and an inferior person laboriously translating them in facsimile into the material? They are what they are because they were the spontaneous and allowed license and play of a craftsman who knew his craft, and could be trusted to use it wisely, at any rate in ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... impressibility, and his keen perception. He received the gifts of the passing hour so happily that to produce pure and lasting poetry it was enough for him to utter in natural words something of the fulness of his heart. He says on every occasion exactly what he wanted to say, in clear, forcible, spontaneous language.' —Sellar. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... of Queen Victoria in January, 1901, called forth a spontaneous burst of loyal gratitude, devotion and appreciation from all parties and all sections of the country. Every leading statesman among her councillors dwelt on the extraordinary penetration of her mind, her wide political ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... However low a man may sink, honor and chivalry, has he ever possessed them, are never entirely eradicated from his character, and though Albert Werper had long since ceased to evidence the slightest claim to either the one or the other, the spontaneous acknowledgment of them which the girl's speech had presumed had ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of breathless expectation. A moment more, and Jenny Lind, clad in a white dress, which well became the frank sincerity of her face, came forward through the orchestra. It is impossible to describe the spontaneous burst of welcome which greeted her. The vast assembly rose as one man, and for some minutes nothing could be seen but the waving of hands and handkerchiefs, nothing heard but a storm of tumultuous cheers. The enthusiasm of the moment, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Weak transactions, but the foam of love's great deep, are many of these matches. Still there is such a thing as marriage based on spontaneous love. It may occur at a chance meeting, not, I allow, to be consummated without the revision of calm judgment, but still the fruit of a moment's impression. There is a kind of love, which is not natural, impulsive, and cordial, but the result of an unnatural predisposition, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... are they not evidence that the public feeling and opinion are against them? And that, perhaps, they will by and by succeed in rousing the "stubborn enthusiasm of the people" against themselves? Where has there been called one single spontaneous public meeting of any importance, and where exhibited a spark of enthusiasm, for the total repeal of the Corn-laws? Surely the topic is capable of being handled in a sufficiently exciting manner! But no; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... did not confine himself to mere spoken words. A few days after his interview with the Empress, he wrote to her a long letter on large paper, in which he set forth all the arguments he had already brought forward, to urge upon her the spontaneous sacrifice which would be the more meritorious, the more painful it was. Josephine, who received this letter in the evening, summoned M. de Rmusat at midnight to show it to him. "What shall I do," she asked, "to ward off this storm?" "Madame," replied the First Chamberlain, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... On the view that many quasi-magical acts are spontaneous reactions of the man to his environment see I. King, Development of Religion, chap. vii. According to this view the thought suggests the act. The warrior, thinking of his enemy, instinctively makes the motion of hurling something at him (as a modern man shakes his fist at an absent ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... by a singular perversion of propriety, to prepare for the exercise of the most sacred of all functions, by making a declaration which, though it ought, in a spiritual sense, to be strictly correct, is extremely subject, at best, to be considered as not altogether sincere: but, in truth, the spontaneous and felt sense of that dignified delicacy of honourable conduct, by which his lordship was ever directed; and of which persons of vulgar intellect, who are by no means fitted to form any just estimate of the actions of so exalted a character, will probably be weak ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... Towson's artillery was served. I have never seen it equalled. This officer has so often distinguished himself, that to say simply that he is in action, is a volume of eulogium; the army, only to be informed he is there, by a spontaneous assent, are at once satisfied that he has performed well his part. I have no idea that there is an artillery officer in any service superior to him in the knowledge and performance ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... harmony of the eternal sea, or, if we may call fancy to our aid, the music of the spheres, telling us that like these the blind bard sang, because song was his nature—was within, and must out—not bound by laws, or measured by pedantic rules, but free, unfettered, and spontaneous as the billows, which in its wild and many-cadenced ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the father of the gods, bless these palaces, by giving to his images a spontaneous splendor. May he watch over the issue even to the remote future. May the sculptured bull, the protector and god who imparts perfection, dwell in day and in night-time in his presence, and never stir from ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... history than the creation of a hierarchy out of the principle of headship and subordination contained in our Lord's charge to Peter. It has been pointed out that the constitution of the Nicene Council itself manifested this principle, and was the proof of its spontaneous action in the preceding centuries, while its overt recognition, as seated in the Roman Pontiff, is seen in the ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... a people are a product of the mind; and if the early and spontaneous products of mind are everywhere of the same general pattern as the later manifestations, only less developed, refined, and specialized, it may well be that failure to progress equally is not due to essential unlikeness of mind, but to conditions ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... cause of man and France has wonderfully triumphed during the past three days is, no doubt, most true. But this victory, love, I foresaw. Indeed, it was but the inevitable result of an irresistible cause. It was neither chance, love, nor a spontaneous burst of patriotism that, on the first day, filled the boulevards with fifty thousand blouses, which on the second won over to the people eighty thousand National Guards, and on the third choked the streets of Paris with barricades constructed by engineers and defended by ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... at all; it is a wedding present to a newly married couple—a bouquet of flowers, of intellectual blossoms, culled from their native Apulian meadows. One notes with pleasure that the happy pair are neither dukes nor princes. There is no trace of snobbishness in the offering, which is simply a spontaneous expression of good wishes on the part of a few friends. But surely it testifies to most refined feelings. How immeasurably does this permanent and yet immaterial feast differ from our gross wedding ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Sicily and Naples." (See Giannone, Istor. Civ. del R. di Napoli, ii. 245.) This raillery, which malice has, perhaps, falsely imputed to Frederick, is inconsistent with truth and piety; yet it must be confessed that the soil of Palestine does not contain that inexhaustible, and, as it were, spontaneous principle of fertility, which, under the most unfavorable circumstances, has covered with rich harvests the banks of the Nile, the fields of Sicily, or the plains of Poland. The Jordan is the only navigable river of Palestine: a considerable ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... her—his audacious, often witty way of putting things, and the irrepressible bubble of laughter that would keep breaking from him. He disclosed his past, such as it was, freely—public-school and college life, efforts at the bar, ambitions, tastes, even his scrapes. And in this spontaneous unfolding there was perpetual flattery; Gyp felt through it all, as pretty women will, a sort of subtle admiration. Presently he asked her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of pity from the heart, which was so pitiful because it was so pure, and laid on itself every man's sorrow because it carried no burden of its own sin or self-regard. That touch had deep meaning, but it was not done for the sake of a meaning. It was the spontaneous expression of love, and revealed the delicate quickness of perception of another's feelings which flows from love only. The leper had almost forgotten what the touch of a hand felt like. He had lived, ever since his disease was manifest, apart ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... concealed, that Stuart himself is "not satisfied with this exegesis of the passage;" which, according to his own statement, was the universal interpretation from "the early ages" down to the sixteenth century. This change, says he, "seems to have been the spontaneous prompting of the spirit of liberty, that beat high" in the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... "The spontaneous effusion of our heart, on laying the book down, was: 'May every church, member in our land possess this book, and be blessed with all the happiness which conformity to its evangelical sentiments and directions is ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... the officer earnestly, "how long do you remember yourself? Do you remember yesterday morning? You must have come into existence by some sort of spontaneous combustion in the hold. Or were you fired aboard from the enemy, last night, in a cartridge? Do ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... and often with equally disastrous results. The call of the street is irresistible. It is the simplest, most convenient avenue for the satisfaction of that hunger for pleasure, excitement, amusement, and recreation, common to all ages, all races, and both sexes. It is the avenue for the spontaneous outpouring of the spirit of democracy. No matter how thickly the city may scatter its playgrounds, its athletic fields, boating and swimming centers and recreation buildings, the street will always have to be reckoned with as the one great all-engulfing ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... mills, but most of the workers were unorganized except for the fact that the I.W.W. had, about eight months before, gathered several hundred into an industrial union. Yet it does not appear that this union started the strike. It was a case of spontaneous combustion. No sooner had it begun, however, than Joseph J. Ettor, an I.W.W. organizer, hastened to take charge, and succeeded so well that within a few weeks he claimed 7000 members in his union. Ettor proved a crafty, resourceful general, quick in action, magnetic ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... a mother's, in this great wild heart of Luther;" and adds: "I will call this Luther a true Great Man; great in intellect, in courage, affection, and integrity; one of our most lovable and precious men. Great not as a hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain, so simple, honest, spontaneous; not setting up to be great at all; there for quite another purpose than being great. Ah, yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the Heavens; yet, in the clefts of it, fountains, green, beautiful valleys with flowers. A right Spiritual Hero and Prophet; once more, a true Son of ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... her part, it was with some surprise that he saw her assume the initiative in cordiality. He called it cordiality, because he dared not make it a stronger word. Her manner went back to the spontaneous friendliness that had marked their intercourse before she began to see what he was aiming at, while into it she threw an infusion of something that had not hitherto been there. When he came with the information that a fresh bit of evidence ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... carbide is only useful as a means of preparing acetylene, it should be bought under a guarantee (1) that it contains less impurities than suffice to render the crude gas dangerous in respect of spontaneous inflammability, or objectionable in a manner to be explained later on, when consumed; and (2) that it is capable of evolving a fixed minimum quantity of acetylene when decomposed by water. Such determination, however, cannot be carried out by the ordinary consumer for himself. ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... just been reading of were bound to lead to immediate action. But it is most interesting to find that William Booth's first regular service for Christ was not called forth by any church, but simply by the spontaneous efforts of one or two young Converts like himself. No one could be more inclined towards the use of organisation and system than he always was, and yet he always advocated an organisation so open to all, and a system so elastic, that zeal might never ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... flash of perception in nothingness was not spontaneous. There was something behind it. I was something before that moment, in another era of time, perhaps a creature of substance. ...
— Cogito, Ergo Sum • John Foster West
... either heartily approves or frankly disapproves of those things that cross her path or claim her attention. But with the coming of the teens those closely associated with the girl often become conscious of the loss of that spontaneous response which has made her such a delight. The teacher is puzzled by this change, wonders if she has offended the girl, redoubles her efforts to make the lesson interesting and seeks to win the girl's confidence. Sometimes ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... Roman Catholic districts, everywhere receiving addresses in favour of the Union from corporations, grand juries, leading residents, and especially from Roman Catholic bodies. And, if we may believe Lord Cornwallis's own letters, these addresses were entirely spontaneous, and represented the real feelings of the community. Before Parliament met in March 1800, twenty-two counties had passed resolutions in favour of the Union; and Lord Castlereagh was able to say in the House that the great body of the landed property of Ireland, and all the great ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... seems the very ecstasy of fancy; as if the haunting apparition inspired the poet more than it appalled the man. We can call to mind no one who has ever played with an inexplicable horror more daintily or more impressively; and, whether premeditated or spontaneous, it is an epitome of the life of the writer, for the marked traits of his character are there, and almost the prevailing expression of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... moment would explode and sweep the crowd with resistless fire. Usually the fuse was timed to explode on the morning of the third day. Sometimes, when sermons of extraordinary power had followed each other in rapid succession, the fire broke out by a sort of spontaneous combustion on the night of ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... consulship conferred by the "codicils" may have been, it is not easy to discover.[110] But there is no doubt that the authority which Clovis up to this time had exercised by the mere right of the stronger, over great part of Gaul, was confirmed and legitimised by this spontaneous act of the Augustus at Constantinople, nor that this eager recognition of the royalty of the slayer of Alaric was meant in some degree as a demonstration of hostility against Alaric's father-in-law, with whom Anastasius had not then ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... to the particular man on whom she depended for subsistence. The third yoke was an intellectual and moral one, and consisted in the slavish conformity exacted of her in all her thinking, speaking, and acting to a set of traditions and conventional standards calculated to repress all that was spontaneous and individual, and impose an artificial uniformity upon both the inner and ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... to disturb this old order of tendencies. But against that disturbance, and in defiance of the unexampled liberality shown to Papists upon every mode of national competition, there is still in action (and judging by the condition of the Irish bar, in undiminished action) the old spontaneous tendency of Protestantism to 'go ahead;' the fact being that the original independency and freedom of the Protestant principle not only create this tendency, but also meet and favour it wherever nature ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... its borders, and clamorously announce the progress of the Truth. Neat villas, trim gardens, shaven lawns, spires, and cupolas arise, while the poor savage soon finds himself an interloper in the country of his fathers, and that too on the very site of the hut where he was born. The spontaneous fruits of the earth, which God in his wisdom had ordained for the support of the indolent natives, remorselessly seized upon and appropriated by the stranger, are devoured before the eyes of the starving inhabitants, or sent on ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Shakespeare naturally said what every artist must feel; for what is an artist? That is hardly a question to be asked in such an assembly, where I have only to look round to find plenty of people who realize the ideal artist, persons who are simple, unconventional, spontaneous, sweet-natured [laughter], who go through the world influenced by impressions of everything that is beautiful, sublime, and pathetic. Sometimes they seem to take up impressions of a different kind [laughter]; but still this is their main purpose—to receive ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... of the doctor had been all that was natural and spontaneous, though it was impossible for me, knowing him as I did, not to be aware that he was subconsciously very keenly alert and already receiving upon the ultra-sensitive surface of his mind various and vivid impressions; and there was now something in the gravity of ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... comradeship with Avice, the verge of the engagement to which they had reached, and its unexpected rupture by him, merely through his meeting with a woman into whom the Well-Beloved unmistakably moved under his very eyes—by name Miss Marcia Bencomb. He described their spontaneous decision to marry offhand; and then he put it to Somers whether he ought to marry or not—her or ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... modern, excepting always two towers of great antiquity. Lord Ravensworth manages his woods admirably well, and with good taste. His castle is but half-built. Elections[52] have come between. In the evening, plenty of fine music, with heart as well as voice and instrument. Much of the music was the spontaneous effusions of Mrs. Arkwright, who had set Hohenlinden and other pieces of poetry. Her music was of a highly-gifted character. She was the daughter of Stephen Kemble. The genius she must have inherited ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... It was a spontaneous uprising of the people of Washington. Hungry, homeless in the sharpening autumn weather, and nearly all bereft of members of their families, too often of the breadwinner, now lying deep beneath the rubble that littered the streets, they had gathered in their ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... mortal, hast thou from thy eyes Washed out all sense of shame? Dost thou believe That to have silvery tresses is a crime? If so, thy head is covered with white hair; And were not both spontaneous gifts from Heaven? Although the boy was hateful to thy sight, The grace of God has been bestowed upon him; And what is human tenderness and love To Heaven's protection? Thou to him wert cruel, But Heaven has blest him, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the opposition of opinions. It has always been a favourite with those writers who have something to censure or to impart, but who love to stand outside the pulpit, and to encourage others to pursue a train of thought which the author does not seem to do more than indicate. The dialogue is so spontaneous a mode of expressing and noting down the undulations of human thought that it almost escapes analysis. All that is recorded, in any literature, of what pretend to be the actual words spoken by living or imaginary people is of the nature ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... western parts of the world, in return for the articles carried thither, iron, tin, lead, and copper: by the sale of these various commodities, they enriched themselves at the expense of all nations; and put them under a kind of contribution, which was so much the surer as it was spontaneous. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of unintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to work so much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he had been tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all these, even or uneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one, must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, multum in parvo, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior — though a ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... said. His blue eyes sparkled and flashed, his clean-cut mobile features were an index to his slightest shades of feeling and expression. He bubbled with enthusiasms, and his faintest smile or lightest laugh seemed spontaneous and genuine. But it was only occasionally at first that he spoke, for Von Blix told their story and ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... spontaneous and ringing, proving a devotion that few men have ever been able to command. Stern and unflinching as Jackson invariably was in inflicting punishment, his soldiers always regarded him as one of themselves, the best man among them, one fitted ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... expression of misery and discontent. His quick, penetrating glance wandered incessantly from place to place, perceiving all things, but resting on none. In his attention to the scene before him, he appeared to have been led more by the influence of example than by his own spontaneous feelings; for ever and anon he looked impatiently round upon his friend as if expecting him to speak—but no word or movement escaped his thoughtful companion. Occupied exclusively in his own contemplations, he appeared wholly insensible to ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... affects the shape and proportions of the whole body. It is probable that some breeds, such as the semi- monstrous niata cattle, and some peculiarities, such as being hornless, etc., have appeared suddenly owing to what we may call in our ignorance spontaneous variation; but even in this case a rude kind of selection is necessary, and the animals thus characterised must be at least partially separated from others. This degree of care, however, has sometimes been taken even in little-civilised districts, where we should least have expected ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... Catholic festivity; and does it phaze him? It does not! He is a newspaper man, and if his city editor sent him to hell, he would take the assignment and write like the devil. To read him now you might think he had been reared in a convent; his soul is uplifted, and he bursts forth in pure spontaneous ecstacy: ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... big girl. If it had been possible she would have detained her daughter forever in the physique of a child; she feared the time when Mary would become too evidently a woman, when all kinds of equalities would come to hinder her spontaneous and active affection. A woman might object to be nursed, while a girl would not; Mrs. Makebelieve feared that objection, and, indeed, Mary, under the stimulus of an awakening body and a new, strange ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... there in love? Does Nature rebel against the social yoke? Does she need that impulse of her given life to be spontaneous, free, the dash of an impetuous torrent foaming against rocks of opposition and of coquetry, rather than a tranquil stream flowing between the two banks of the church and the legal ceremony? Has she her own designs as she secretly ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... vivid picture has been presented of the private soldier in camp, on the march, or in action. It was written evidently not with any commercial view, but was an undertaking from a conviction that its performance was a question of duty to his comrades. Its unlabored and spontaneous character adds to its value. Its detail is evidence of a living presence, intent only upon truth. It is not only carefully planned, but minutely finished. The duty has been performed ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... is an exotic, a far-fetched, costly, sickly, imitation of that which elsewhere may be found in healthful and spontaneous perfection. The soils on which this rarity flourishes are in general as ill suited to the production of vigorous native poetry as the flower-pots of a hot-house to the growth of oaks. That the author of the Paradise Lost should have written ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is a story so touched with delicacies, and with such shades of humor, too, as to defy any re-telling; even to outline it seems crude, because the effect lies all in the details of trifles, phrases, and spontaneous things. The Peabody family was of a type that flourished in that period, as good as was ever produced on this soil, with the most sterling qualities, and blending an intellectual culture of transcendental kinship with practical and hospitable duties. ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... of its return to human labor, it was a national characteristic to felicitate ourselves upon the general prosperity, and boastingly to compare our growing resources and our unlimited and almost spontaneous abundance, with the hard-earned and dearly purchased productions of other and more exhausted countries. Our population, swollen by streams of immigration from the crowded continents of the old world, has spread over the boundless plains of this, with amazing rapidity; and the physical ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... once lived on the spontaneous fruits of the earth, just as other animals do. In that stage of existence a man was just like the brutes. His existence was at the sport of Nature. He got what he could by way of food, and ate what he could get, but he depended on finding what Nature gave. He ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... imitate French architecture and literature, so France in the nineteenth century acquired the habit of speaking German in music. As most men speak more than they think, even thought itself became Germanised; and it was difficult then to discover, through this traditional insincerity, the true and spontaneous form of ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... Consequently, while responsible state action is an essential condition of any steady approach to the democratic consummation, such action will be wholly vain unless accompanied by a larger measure of spontaneous individual amelioration. In fact, one of the strongest arguments on behalf of a higher and larger conception of state responsibilities in a democracy is that the candid, courageous, patient, and intelligent attempt to redeem those responsibilities ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... early education under the leaders of the stucco and plaster school of the later Georgian reigns, had had their ideas purified and refined by the art-teachings of the Victorian Gothicists. The result was a spontaneous movement to develop a new system of construction, with lintelled openings and square fenestration,—Queen Anne modified and elevated by mediaeval teachings and traditions. A traditional manner, but a sensible one; a sudden fashion, if you will; a craze, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... the Eagle was given," said old Lestoype, deeply gratified by the spontaneous tribute. "Gentlemen and comrades, be seated, if you please. I have called you here for the honor of the regiment to consult as to what is to ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to such pleader, the repetition of his spontaneous vow? Already were his lips opened to swear, before high Heaven, that, in all things earthly, he would obey her will, when he was interrupted by a well known voice, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the law, and not the law for men, in a society where the lawyer was considered the greatest citizen, and subtle technicality paramount to justice or commonsense, this was a tremendous step. At that moment, and by that spontaneous and unconsidered statement, Keith, unknown to himself, passed from one side to the other in the great social struggle that ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... the position of the sun; and he knew not but that every effort of his almost exhausted strength was removing him farther from the home he sought. His scanty sustenance was supplied by the berries and other spontaneous products of the forest. Herds of deer, it is true, sometimes bounded past him, and partridges frequently whirred up before his footsteps; but his ammunition had been expended in the fight, and he had no means ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her, of their confidence in her, of their conviction that she would do what was right in the cause, and, at the same time, as an evidence of the detestation in which the system of slavery was held in this free country. That penny offering now, he was happy to say, by the spontaneous efforts of the inhabitants of this and other towns, amounted to a considerable sum; to certain gentlemen in Edinburgh forming the committee the whole credit of this organization was due, and he believed one of their number, the Rev. Mr. Ballantyne, would present ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... not known him before marriage. Meilhan had carried no letters between them. She had married Lacoste of her own free will. Lacoste had not asked any attentions from her that were not ordinarily sought by a husband, and her care of him had been spontaneous. It was true he was jealous, but he had not formally forbidden her pleasures. She had renounced them, knowing he was easily upset. It was true that she had seldom gone out, but she had never wanted to. Lacoste was no more avaricious than most, and it ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... do but to organize itself afresh upon an eternal basis, that is, upon the acknowledgment of a force in man infinitely transcending his moral force, because it forever unites instead of disjoining him with God, being the force of spontaneous or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... 'Introduction to the study of Foraminifera,' that appeared in the "Athenaeum" of March 28, 1863 (page 417). The reviewer attacks Dr. Carpenter's views in as much as they support the doctrine of Descent; and he upholds spontaneous generation (Heterogeny) in place of what Dr. Carpenter, naturally enough, believed in, viz. the genetic connection of living and extinct Foraminifera. In the next number is a letter by Dr. Carpenter, which ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... a magnetic sort of way there arose a spontaneous response of voices from all parts of the stand, joining ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... hostility dropped from the girl like a mask, and she laughed—a spontaneous outburst of mirth that kindled new lights in the blue-black eyes, and caused a fanlike array of little wrinkles to radiate from their corners: "I'll answer your question now," she said. "I'm Mrs. Nobody, thank you—I'm Janet McWhorter. But what are you ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... said it must be quite evident that the principle of knightly honor has no essential and spontaneous origin in human nature. It is an artificial product, and its source is not hard to find. Its existence obviously dates from the time when people used their fists more than their heads, when priestcraft had enchained the human intellect, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... in Swedenborg's matrimonial excursions, for "life and nature are right, but closet speculations are bound to be vicious when persisted in." Max Mueller's little book, "A Story of German Love," showing the intellectual and spiritual uplift that comes from the natural and spontaneous friendship of a good man and woman, is worth all the weighty speculations of all the virtuous bachelors who ever lived and raked the stagnant ponds of their imagination for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... parties to a divorce, and this case was no exception. It is a terrible ordeal for a woman to face a divorce-court and ask the State to grant her a legal separation from the father of her children. Divorce is not a sudden, spontaneous affair—it is the culmination of a long train of unutterable woe. Under the storm and stress of her troubles Mrs. Osbourne had been stricken with fever. Sickness is a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... not a deeper meaning in this spontaneous welcome which comes so evidently from the hearts of the onlookers, and one which is reflected in the popularity of Colonel Walter Scott's New York kilted Highlanders, and by the many find bodies of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... dinner Kedzie ceased to try to find in him what was not there. She accepted him as the least affected person she had ever met. He could afford to be unaffected and careless and spontaneous. He had nothing to gain. He had everything already. Kedzie would have said that he ought to have been happy because of that, as if that were not as good an excuse for discontent as any. In any case, Kedzie said ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... seem that slavery completely destroyed every vestige of spontaneous movement among the Negroes. This is not strictly true. The vast power of the priest in the African state is well known; his realm alone—the province of religion and medicine—remained largely unaffected by the plantation ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... have been disputing, one about the spontaneous origin of organisms, another as to what else there is in protoplasm, and so on, the common people have been in need of spiritual food; and the unsuccessful and rejected of art and science, in obedience to the mandate of adventurers ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... residence, but it is now in a most wretched plight, suffering from a chronic scarcity of the most necessary articles of food. The attention of the settlers was formerly devoted almost entirely to the collection of the spontaneous produce of the forests and rivers; agriculture was consequently neglected, and now the neighbourhood does not produce even mandioca-meal sufficient for its own consumption. Many of the most necessary articles of food, besides all luxuries, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... fair, slight, girlish body of the child-soldier there lived a courage as daring as Danton's, a patriotism as pure as Vergniaud's, a soul as aspiring as Napoleon's. Untaught, untutored, uninspired by poet's words or patriot's bidding, spontaneous as the rising and the blossoming of some wind-sown, sun-fed flower, there was, in this child of the battle, the spirit of genius, the desire to live and to die greatly. To be forever a beloved tradition in the army of her country, to have her name remembered in the roll-call; to be once shrined ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... moments in the vestry before service the next day, or at early candlelight, before the meeting of the Bible class. I told him that as my sole purpose had been the creation of an evangelical brotherhood and the exclusion of merely doctrinal views, nothing could be more gratifying to me than his spontaneous and unsolicited testimony to my motives. He appeared for an instant to be deeply affected, and, indeed, quite overcome with emotion, and then gracefully retired, with some agility and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... vagueness of his supreme effort—the Lincoln burial hymn—serves as a nebulous buffer between sheer over-praise and serious criticism. He contrives atmosphere with facility, and can achieve magical pictures of the sea and the "mad naked summer night." His early poem, Walt Whitman, is for me his most spontaneous offering. He has at times the primal gift of the poet—ecstasy; but to attain it he often wades through shallow, ill-smelling sewers, scales arid hills, traverses dull drab levels where the slag covers rich ore, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Liberty. If the master passion of Pitt's mind was enthusiasm for his country, Fox was swayed by the still nobler enthusiasm of Humanity. His style of oratory was the exact reflex of his mind. He was unequalled in passionate argument, in impromptu reply, in ready and spontaneous declamation. His style was unstudied to a fault. Though he was so intimately acquainted with the great models of classical antiquity, his oratory owed little to the contact, and nothing to the formal arts of rhetoric; everything to inborn genius and the greatness of the ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Foundations and the Building-up 5 Of thy own Spirit, thou hast lov'd to tell What may be told, to th' understanding mind Revealable; and what within the mind May rise enkindled. Theme as hard as high! Of Smiles spontaneous, and mysterious Feard; 10 (The First-born they of Reason, and Twin-birth) Of Tides obedient to external Force, And currents self-determin'd, as might seem, Or by interior Power: of Moments aweful, Now in thy hidden Life; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... craving for a higher life. England rather lagged behind than was a leader in the race of discontent. In Germany, all classes shared the common feeling; in England it was almost confined to the lowest. But, wherever it existed, it was a free, spontaneous growth in each separate breast, not propagated by agitation, but springing self sown, the expression of the honest anger of honest men at a system which had passed the limits of toleration, and ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... unfavourable circumstances. The first kind is widely diffused; the second is very rare, except in the earlier portion of life. Most men and women, as they pass middle age, lose the elasticity required for easy and spontaneous enjoyment, and, even if they keep the appearance of health, have too little animal spirits for enjoyment under cheap and ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... of the lack of moral and intellectual elevation, in spite of frivolity and make-believe, this art was infinitely better than the pompous imitation of foreign example set up by Louis XIV. It was more spontaneous, more original, more French. The influence of Italy began to fail, and the painters began to mirror French life. It was largely court life, lively, vivacious, licentious, but in that very respect characteristic ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... Florence, then, as never since, the Lily of the Arno: so cunningly and with such felicity are innumerable details individualized, massed and blended. And yet, somehow it all seems a splendid experiment, a worthy performance rather than a spontaneous and successful creative endeavor: this, in comparison with the fiction that came before. The author seems a little over-burdened by the tremendousness of her material. Whether it is because the Savonarola episode is not thoroughly ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... She remained alone for about ten minutes, during which time, she afterwards told me, she was more than once near fainting away. At last a step was heard in the adjoining apartment; a door opened, and the Emperor appeared. On seeing him, she, by a spontaneous movement, fell upon her knees, and, unable to find words, clasped her hands ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... with another passage from Khanikoff, though put forward in special illustration of what I believe to be a mistaken reading (Arbre Seul): "Where the Chinar is of spontaneous growth, or occupies the centre of a vast and naked plain, this tree is even in our own day invested with a quite exceptional veneration, and the locality often comes to be called 'The Place of the Solitary Tree.'" (J. R. G. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Saint Dunstan at Mayfield, and to sundry holy wells, notably that one in the glen near Hastings, well known to modern holiday makers. But while she was thus striving to work out her own salvation she knew little of the vital power of religion. It was the mere formal fulfilment of duty, not the spontaneous offering of love; and her burdened and anxious spirit ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... various attempts at the entertainment of friends, but they all lacked that element of spontaneous fun which makes such occasions successful, and we gave it up. On pleasant days we threw open the windows on the street to let in the warm air and sunshine, but this did not seem to drive away the musty odors of ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... features in Haydn's works are three: (1) The wealth of spontaneous and sparkling melodies, for he was born with this lyric gift and never had to cudgel his wits for a tune. That instrumental melody could make such sudden progress as we find between the dryness ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... now, however, less spontaneous, I thought, than earlier in the night. His voice had lost its hearty ring, and he seemed preoccupied, as if talking of one matter while he thought upon another. Yet he would not let me go; and presently he confirmed my suspicion, ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... a naive and spontaneous delight in Nature, as free from sentimentality as from any grasp of landscape as ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... With a spontaneous movement he sprang to the armchair in which Juve sat, seized and wrung ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... has recently taken place on the subject of medical education in the United States. To a foreigner, or to one not acquainted with the influences that have led to and have kept up this discussion, it might seem to be the result of a spontaneous outburst of popular feeling, earnestly demanding much-needed progress. Really, however, the very reverse is the case; and the revolutionists are those whose kind and sympathetic interest in the welfare of the community is prompted solely by selfish considerations. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... off his hat, stuffed it down beside him, and threw back his head, shaking his hair to the wind in a gesture so soon to become familiar to Linda. She glanced across at him and found him looking at her. A smile broke over her lips. One of her most spontaneous laughs bubbled ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... sensible change on the pile, and no single act constitutes, however much it may exhibit, a man's character." But it is from simple things that the sum of life is made up —from those acts which are most spontaneous and usually least observed that human nature may best be determined and most justly estimated. This man made no preachment of his virtues, believing that "the years are seldom unjust." He was the Navarre of modern journalism, and his white plume ever showed in the thickest ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... believe it is pure goodnature on Mrs. Huntsford's part, but if we go, it must be from Rachel's spontaneous movement. I will not press her on any account. I had rather the world said she was crazy at once than expose her to the risk of one of the dreadful nights that haunted us till we came here ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which, with my own recollections, leads me to adopt the opinion of Heinrich von Sybel concerning the much discussed and still unanswered question, whether the Berlin revolution was the result of a long-prepared conspiracy or the spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm for liberty among the citizens. He says: "Both these views are equally well founded, for only the united effort of the two forces could ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... superstition." Church History, b. ix., p. 60. But the virtues of the primate, however mild and unostentatious, were looked upon with an envious eye by the maligant observer of human nature; and the spontaneous homage which he received from some of the first noblemen in the realm was thus lampooned in the satirical composition just ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... had their trees and plants as well—such as those we see before us—and from these they drew both necessary food, and luxurious fruits and beverages. Indeed the early colonists did the same; and many settlers in remote places make use to this day of these spontaneous productions of Nature." ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... our modern kitchen-gardens is a semi-artificial plant, the produce of our agricultural ingenuity quite as much as of the niggardly gifts of nature. Spontaneous vegetation supplied us with the long-stalked, scanty-leaved, ill-smelling wilding, as found, according to the botanists, on the ocean cliffs. He had need of a rare inspiration who first showed faith in this rustic clown and proposed to improve it ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... have never arrested the further spread of erysipelas, nor effected a resolution of the inflammation of the cellular tissue, more certainly; nor, if the termination in suppuration was no longer avoidable, have I ever succeeded in effecting the formation of laudable pus, the spontaneous discharge of the pus, the radical healing of the sore without any scar—how important is all this in erysipelatous inflammation of the mammae—with more certainty and thoroughness, than by means of Apis! No remedy possesses equal ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... dominion abroad. In the time of Cicero, each private citizen enjoyed the privilege of anarchy; each minister of the republic was exalted to the temptations of regal power, and their virtues are entitled to the warmest praise, as the spontaneous fruits of nature or philosophy. After a triennial indulgence of lust, rapine, and cruelty, Verres, the tyrant of Sicily, could only be sued for the pecuniary restitution of three hundred thousand pounds sterling; and such was the temper of the laws, the judges, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... mother of dead Empires weeps. And lo! Clad in white robes the long procession moves; Youths throng around the bier, and high in front, Star of our hope, the glorious cross is reared, Triumphant sign. The low, sweet voice of prayer, Flowing spontaneous from the spirit's depths, Pours its rich tones; and now the requiem swells, ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird |
