"Unread" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sitting out under the blossoming trees on the old Worden seat, her book lying, unread, in her lap, and her eyes having a dreamy, far-away look in them, when, from the balcony overhead, sounded ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... no one of these was signed by Lyveden, Valerie tossed them aside unread. Then she propped herself on her elbow and poured ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... or to express his own. These three days had been dreadful to Sir Peregrine. He had not left the house, but had crept about from room to room, ever and again taking up some book or paper and putting it down unread, as his mind reverted to the one subject which now for him bore any interest. On the second of these three days a note had been brought to him from his old friend Lord Alston. "Dear Orme," the note had run, "I am not ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... arose from the multiplication of saints' offices (officia de sanctis), which after the canonization of saints gradually grew to such a huge number that very often the Dominical and Ferial Office remained unread, and hence not a few psalms were neglected, which yet are as the rest, as St. Ambrose says, "the benediction of the people, the praise of God, the praise offering of the multitude, the acclamation of all, the expression of the community, the voice of the ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... sarcasm," Mr. Horser said. "I'm talking facts, and you've got to know them. Will you give up that report? You can find out all there is in it for yourself. But I'm going to give it you straight. If I don't have that report back unread, you'll never ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... within the largest imaginable Glass bell,—what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for the world! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all the four winds, impinge against thy Glass walls, but have to drop unread: neither from within comes there question or response into any Post-bag; thy Thoughts fall into no friendly ear or heart, thy Manufacture into no purchasing hand: thou art no longer a circulating venous-arterial Heart, that, taking and giving, circulatest ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... And yet a little story of a shipwrecked sailor, with not a tenth part of the style nor a thousandth part of the wisdom, exploring none of the arcana of humanity and deprived of the perennial interest of love, goes on from edition to edition, ever young, while "Clarissa" lies upon the shelves unread. A friend of mine, a Welsh blacksmith, was twenty-five years old and could neither read nor write, when he heard a chapter of "Robinson" read aloud in a farm kitchen. Up to that moment he had sat content, huddled in his ignorance, but he left that farm another man. There were day-dreams, it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by a hair's breadth from his own he damned the whole of his work. He had to his credit a vast fund of quaint out-of-the-way reading; not to be acquainted with this was dense unpardonable ignorance: what he had not read was scarcely knowledge. He was not what one could fairly call unread in the classical authors, for in a survey of his reviewers he compared himself complacently enough with Cervantes, Bunyan and Le Sage. He had the utmost suspicion of literary models; to try to be like somebody else was the too popular literary precept that he held in the greatest ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... although the letter may come from an entirely reliable house and contain an excellent business proposition on good, substantial paper. For this reason, the letter that departs from the usual standards must assume unnecessary risks of being thrown away unread. ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... toilette. I here send you a companion to that work—not a direct translation, but a very minute abstract from a similar dissertation by Hartmann, (weeded of the wordiness which has made the original unreadable, and in consequence unread,) on the toilette and the wardrobe of the ladies of ancient Palestine. Hartmann was a respectable Oriental scholar, and he published his researches, which occupy three thick octavos, making in all one thousand four hundred and eighty-eight ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... pity to Fan to tear them up unread; for some were so long and so beautifully written, with pretty little crests at the top of the page; but Mary knew her own mind, and would not relent so far as even to look at one of these wasted specimens of calligraphic art. In less than an hour's time the whole heap had been disposed of, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... and indigestion which succeeds a middle-class dinner. Georgy read a great many books; but they were all novels, procured from the Bayswater branch of a fashionable circulating library, and were condemned unread by Mr. Sheldon, who considered all works of fiction perfectly equal in demerit, and stigmatised them, in a general way, as "senseless trash." He had tried to read novels in the dreary days of his Bloomsbury probation; but he had found that the heroes of them were impracticable beings, who were always ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... consists in going over and over again in my mind the tale of my miseries. This time I will write it, writing only to tear up, to throw the manuscript unread into the fire. And yet, who knows? As the last charred pages shall crackle and slowly sink into the red embers, perhaps the spell may be broken, and I may possess once more my ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... not strange that the riddle was unread. The old problem, Given the Greek alphabet, to find an Iliad, differs from this rather in degree than in kind. The sentence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... surrounded by a halo of religion. She never passed by a chapel or heard the name of God, or the singing of a hymn, without thinking of her former mistress. To have looked into this Bible would have reminded her of Mrs Starvem; that was one of the reasons why the book reposed, unopened and unread, a mere ornament on the table in ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... it from another distance, the clew to the puzzle would be seized, and the words would stand forth clear and legible in your sight. But the clew never had been discovered, and the motto, if there was one, remained unread. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... growth to its present colossal, mammoth-like, and almost unwieldy grandeur. We do not, however, whilst re-establishing facts in their purity, dream the practical impossibility of confounding and disarming the ignorance of men unfortunately so ill educated and unread, and with intellect so incapable, apparently, of appreciating instruction, if not wilfully perverse, as the Cobdens, or of restraining the less coarse but more fluent flippancy and equally unscrupulous assurance of friend Bright, from resort to that stock and stale ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... be a favorite seems to us a safe prediction.... There is no part of it which, once begun, is likely to be left unread."—The Dial. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... to her sorrow and her tears. Since that day I have often smiled to think how foolishly do the wisest men deport themselves when they first begin to love. Their little starts of passion, their petty angers and their sweet repentances—all were unexplored by me, for Love to me was yet an unread book. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... they were to part he could not trust himself to see her. He called a waiter, asked for pen and paper, and pushed aside a pile of unread newspapers on the corner of the table where his coffee had been served. As he did so, his eye lit on a Daily Mail of two days before. As a pretext for postponing his letter, he took up the paper and glanced down the ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... gracious and serene By gift of God, in human lore unread, May pluck these holy blooms and grasses green That now I wreathe for thine immortal head, I that may walk with thee, thyself unseen, And by thy ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... impression remains that the greater part of this volume has been passed over and left unread by at least two generations of readers. Old play-goers recall Macready as "Werner," and many persons have read Cain; but apart from students of literature, readers of Sardanapalus and of The Two Foscari are rare; of The Age of Bronze ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... misunderstandings among the Federal commanders. Fearful that Pickens was about to fall, reasoning that whatever happened he dared not lose both forts, Lincoln became peremptory on the subject of the Sumter expedition. This was on April sixth. On the night of April sixth, Lincoln's signatures to the unread despatches of the first of April, came home to roost. And at last, Welles found out what Seward was doing on the day of ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... have liked to get a peep into the letters, too. But Aunt Olivia would not allow that. They must be burned unread, she declared. She took the wedding dress and veil, the picture case, and the letters away with her. The rest of the things were put back into the chest, pending their ultimate distribution. Aunt Janet gave each of us boys a handkerchief. The ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... pay a greater compliment than by buying your Marguerites unread. In six months' time you will be a great poet. You will be written up; people are afraid of you; I shall have no difficulty in selling your book. I am the same man of business that I was four days ago. It is not I who have changed; it is you. Last ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... with unread meaning, gave the name into the nation's keep, albeit its formal christening and national adoption was not to come until the soil beneath its folds should be deep-dyed with the blood of conflict ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... different from the other," the boy's mother sighed, as she took up an unread letter—there were but two more. There was no harm in reading such letters as these, she thought with relief, and noticed as she drew the paper from the envelope that the postmark was two ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... in uncertain stories, legends, responds, verses, vain repetitions, commemorations, and synodals that commonly, when any book of the Bible was begun, before three or four chapters were read out all the rest were unread. And in this sort the Book of Esaie was begun in Advent, and the Book of Genesis in Septuagesima, but they were only begun and never read through . . . And moreover, whereas St. Paul would have such language spoken to the people in the Church ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... maturest wisdom, in relation to any capital wound inflicted on the happiness; "it is finished, and life is exhausted." How? Could it be exhausted so soon? Had I read Milton, had I seen Rome, had I heard Mozart? No. The "Paradise Lost" was yet unread, the Coliseum and St. Peter's were unseen, the melodies of Don Giovanni were yet silent for me. Raptures there might be in arrear. But raptures are modes of troubled pleasure; the peace, the rest, the lulls, the central security, which belong to love, that is past all understanding, those could ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... you, ... it was right for me to be melancholy, in the consciousness of passing blindfolded under all the world-stars, and of going out into another side of the creation, with a blank for the experience of this ... the last revelation, unread! How the thought of it used to depress ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... brings about its revenges. Problems settled in a rough and ready way by rude men, absorbed in action, demand renewed attention and show themselves to be still unread riddles when men have time to think. The beneficent demon, doubt, whose name is Legion and who dwells amongst the tombs of old faiths, enters into mankind and thenceforth refuses to be cast out. Sacred customs, venerable dooms of ancestral wisdom, hallowed by tradition ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... sent to the magazines of to-day are, in every case, read, and frequently more carefully read than the author imagines. Editors know that, from the standpoint of good business alone, it is unwise to return a manuscript unread. Literary talent has been found in many instances where ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... I read the letter aloud to him ... said it was a fine effort as a composition in rhetoric, but I might expect nothing of it—if the perpetually drunk jailer really brought it to its destination—except that it would be tossed unread into the wastebasket.... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... first National Conference on Infantile Mortality held in 1906.[22] I only wish it were possible to reproduce in full here Dr. Ballantyne's paper on the Ante-Natal Causes of Infantile Mortality. The unread critic who is so ready with the word fanatic whenever alcohol is attacked might begin to derive from it some faint idea of the quality and massiveness of the evidence upon which our case is based. Here ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... presence—and I was with her very often, for she continued to treat me with a playful patronage that wakened no jealousy in my brother—I spent my time chiefly in wandering, in strolling, or taking long rides while the daylight lasted, and then shutting myself up with my unread books; for books had lost the power of chaining my attention. My self-consciousness was heightened to that pitch of intensity in which our own emotions take the form of a drama which urges itself imperatively on our contemplation, and we begin to weep, less under the ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... on the porch sitting with Richard Hall's letter in my hand, still unread, Nell herself came down the front walk and sat ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a Shakspeare, which he found splendidly bound and gilt, but unread and worm-eaten, in ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Island, and after reading it she must have amused herself by copying the people passing over the nearest bridge. Ergo, she must have been alone.' My detective instincts were rousing themselves; already I was half unconsciously handling that unread letter as if it were a 'feature' ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... in words of not more than three syllables had begun to tell on me. I bade the artist good-bye, wandered away up the half-dozen steps to the Parade, sat down on a bench, and opened the morning paper that I had brought out unread. During the War one felt it a duty to know the worst before breakfast; now that the English polity is threatened merely from within, one is apt to dally.... Merely from within? Is that a right phrase when the nerves of unrestful Labour in any one land are interplicated ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... living dead Whose sensibilities were slain By tyros, oft unskilled, unread, In all the workings of the brain; Whose concepts of the avenues That reach the mind of tender youth, Are labyrinths of tangled views Devoid of art, science, and truth; Touch but that chord of magic power Which gives the soul augmented bliss, And lifts it for the present hour Above ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... I had sat by ancient shelves upon hard chairs, I had sneezed with the ancient dust, and I had not put my finger upon a trace of the right Fanning. I should have given it up, left unexplored the territory that remained staring at me through the backs of unread volumes, had it not been for my Aunt Carola. To her I owed constancy and diligence, and so I kept at it; and the hermit hours I spent at Court and Chancel streets grew worse as I knew better what rarely ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... The great and loving Father had not forgotten the children who had so long forgotten Him; this little island, so far from the eyes of human watchers was not unseen nor unregarded by Him. His messengers, the books which tell of Him, were still there, though forgotten and unread; but the time was now come when they were to speak again, and were to be heard ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... a while on our table unread, our attention was specially called to it by noticing how savagely ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Come storm, come shine, nothing can tarnish the pure and gleaming robes in which our vision clothes them. We know the worst of them; their faults and failings cannot vex us afresh, their errors are all forgiven. It is their best part only that remains unrealised and unread, their purest aspirations which we follow with leaden wings, their deepest thoughts that we still strive to plumb with the short line of our imagination or experience, and to weigh in our ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... the depravity of evil conduct would appear no less clearly. The Emperor who, when the head of his rebellious general was brought to him, grieved because that general had not lived to be forgiven; the ruler who burned unread all treasonable correspondence, would not, nay, could not believe in the existence of such an inhuman monster as Commodus proved himself to be. The appointment of Commodus was a calamity of the most terrific character; but it testifies in trumpet tones to the nobility of the Emperor's heart, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... reading for its admirable literary criticism (contained in pages 1 to 4 and 189 and 191 of this volume) and you may have listened, not knowing yet that literary criticism is rarely admirable, nor suspecting that those are the pages which most people leave unread. But you are fortunate in having being born in a generation which is not afraid to say frankly what it likes, and you will, I imagine, say frankly that you have read Petronius, and intend to read him again because he tells a rattling good story, and, unlike certain contemporary novelists ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... The same story has been imitated in the "Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," and in the "Berceau" of La Fontaine. Horne's removal from the tale of everything that would offend a modern reader was designed to enable thousands to find pleasure in an old farcical piece that would otherwise be left unread. ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Zealanders into their first fight. I am feeling awfully fagged to-day, so hope you will, in reading this letter, make allowance for extenuating circumstances. If you only knew, I think you do, what these letters mean, the self-denied slumbers and washes, fatigues shirked, books and papers unread, and other little treats which comrades have indulged in when the rare and short opportunities have occurred—you would forgive much. On Tuesday (August 21st) we had five Sussex men and three Somerset in the ranks of our troop of the Composite Squadron of Yeomanry, the rest ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... your life bespeaks concealment," she resumed. "Look at those letters you received in your dressing-room on Friday night: you just opened them and thrust them unread into your pocket, because I happened to be there. And yet you talk of caring for me! I know those letters contained some secret or other ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... resisting an officer, and a few other things, read by a clerk; and I saw myself across in Blackwell's Island. Oh, I knew the game. I lost all interest in explanations. I didn't stop to pick up my precious, unread book. I turned and ran. I was pretty sick, but I ran. And run I shall, to my dying day, whenever a bull begins to ...
— The Road • Jack London
... desk and idly read the titles of the books; there were a logger's manual, a few text-books on surveying and timber estimating, several of the latest novels, apparently unread and a well-thumbed ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... of my kind, as the moon in the night. "A truce to your idle discourses!" I cry, "What's knowledge, indeed, unattended by might?" If you offered me, knowledge and wisdom and all, with my inkhorn and papers, in pawn for a mite, To buy one day's victual, the pledge they'd reject And cast, like an unread petition, from sight. Sorry, indeed, is the case of the poor, And his life, what a load of chagrin and despite! In summer, he's pinched for a living and cowers O'er the fire-pot in winter, for warmth and for light. The curs of ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... her life, Magdalen would have passed over the narrative of the execution, and the printed confession which accompanied it unread; the subject would have failed to attract her. She read the horrible story now—read it with an interest unintelligible to herself. Her attention, which had wandered over higher and better things, followed every sentence of the murderer's hideously direct confession from beginning to end. If ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... from other places, but he was cheap and other workmen were not better, and thus he remained there two years. His life was uneventful. One day he received a letter, written in Esthonian, but as he himself was illiterate, and as the others did not understand Esthonian, the letter remained unread; and as if not understanding that the letter might bring him tidings from his native home, he flung it into the manure with a certain savage, grim indifference. At one time Yanson tried to make love to the cook, but he was not successful, and was ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... idolatry, neither will you suffer the fury of Bishops to murder and devour.' The Queen Regent was not disposed to go very far with the bishops, but still less was she fervent for God's glory and public Reformation. Accordingly, on the first Court day she handed Knox's letter, perhaps unread, to the Bishop of Glasgow, with the words, 'Please you, my Lord, to read a Pasquil.' The unwise jest came to Knox's ears, and some years after he published his letter with resentful additions and interpolations. In these he assumed—much too soon—that there was no ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... unconversant[obs3]. uninformed, uncultivated, unversed, uninstructed, untaught, uninitiated, untutored, unschooled, misguided, unenlightened; Philistine; behind the age. shallow, superficial, green, rude, empty, half-learned, illiterate; unread, uninformed, uneducated, unlearned, unlettered, unbookish; empty- headed ,dizzy, wooly-headed; pedantic; in the dark; benighted, belated; blinded, blindfolded; hoodwinked; misinformed; au bout de son latin, at the end of his tether, at fault; at sea &c. (uncertain) 475; caught tripping. unknown, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... me, for one, absolutely incredible. A "concealed poet" looking about for a "nom de plume" and a mask behind which he could be hidden, would not have selected the name, or the nearest possible approach to the name, of an ignorant unread actor. As he was never suspected of not being the author of the plays and poems, Will cannot have been a country ignoramus, manifestly incapable of poetry, wit, and such learning as the plays exhibit. Every one must judge for himself. Mr. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... place, the letter could not be found; and though Mrs. Kaye assured them that there was probably very little of importance in it, her children could not help imagining something quite to the contrary; and to learn the unread message became the great desire ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... her hand already outstretched. With one quick movement he snatched it from the floor, and forced himself to hold it aloft and laugh a little. He might have spared himself all that finesse, for she ran to him, clinging to his arm, laughing, coaxing, pouting, begging him to give it to her—unread! ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... she ran over her morning mail at breakfast. She usually put their letters by to read "when she was feeling up to it" and hastened to open others which might possibly contain something gracious or pleasant. Sometimes these family unburdenings lay about unread for several days. Any other letters would have got themselves lost, but these bulky epistles, never properly fitted to their envelopes, seemed immune to mischance and unfailingly disgorged to Cressida long explanations as to why her sisters ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... least a chapter in Marsh's masterly book, "The Earth as modified by Human Action." To "work like a beaver" is an almost universal expression for energetic persistence, but who realizes that the beaver has accomplished anything? Almost unread of and unknown are ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... had given into the keeping of old Hagar, a package, to be delivered to little Madeline when she should become a woman, and with the express wish that, should John Arthur prove a kind guardian meanwhile, she would burn the journal it contained, unread. ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Gilfil, were in the drawing-room when the proposition was made; and when Miss Assher rose to go, she looked towards Captain Wybrow, expecting to see him rise too; but he kept his seat near the fire, turning his eyes towards the newspaper which he had been holding unread in his hand. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... hostile spirit, the most mistrustful and least sympathetic, to read it through without being glad of having done so, or, having begun it, or even glanced at almost any one of its 854 pages, to pass it away unread.—New Monthly (London) Magazine. ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... this volume were contributed by Mr. Runciman to the pages of The Family Herald. In the superfine circles of the Sniffy, this fact is sufficient to condemn them unread. For of all fools the most incorrigible is surely the conventional critic who judges literary wares not by their intrinsic merit or demerit, but by the periodical in which they first saw the light. The same author may write in the same day two articles, putting his best work and thought into ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... column remained uncommonly steady. Arrangements for a concentrated party engrossed my attention so fully this day, with the insertion also of our late work on the general map, that even the newspapers from the colony lay unread. Mr. Kennedy took a ride across the river in a S. S. E. direction, and found a fine grazing country with open forest, as far as he went, which was about twelve miles. On the banks of the Balonne, during my absence, they had found, besides a small bearded CYPERUS, a new creeping ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... at George. He was sleeping peacefully. It was too early to wake him, but I could not lay that letter down unread; was not my name on it? Tearing it open, I devoured its contents,—the exclamation I made ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... which I tell you I did not wish my sister to write to you. If it is some mistaken sense of loyalty to Vava, I may as well tell you that she has told me what was in it, and knows that I am asking for it back unread,' she said. ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... of dishonor to read the private correspondence of another without a sufficiently grave reason. It belonged to Peggy, who, in all probability, had been acquainting the General with its contents as Mr. Anderson and herself intruded upon the scene. She therefore resolved to return it unread. ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... more sincere the lover, the more timid he became; and besides, the lady inspired awe, and it was a difficult matter to find enough courage to speak to her. Finally, if a few of the bolder sort wrote to her, their letters must have been burned unread. It was Mme. Willemsens' practice to throw all the letters which she received into the fire, as if she meant that the time spent in Touraine should be untroubled by any outside cares even of the slightest. She might have come to the enchanting retreat to give herself ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... conversation (which does not take place), and of the guests assembled at the table. I am informed that the proprietor of the Cornhill, and the host on these occasions, is "a very good man, but totally unread;" and that on my asking him whether Dr. Johnson was dining behind the screen, he said, "God bless my soul, my dear sir, there's no person by the name of Johnson here, nor any one behind the screen," and that a roar of laughter cut him short. I am informed ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... nothing to him of the unread letter lying on her dressing-table upstairs, and not till long after he had gone did she pick up the envelope and turn it over and over in her fingers. Then, at last, she ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... a letter and handed it to the director. At the bottom of the testimonial, which was written in official language and handwriting, stood the signature of the Governor. Everything pointed to the Governor's having signed it unread, simply to get rid of some ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... with the boy, Jane,' said her husband, when they were alone, and she had sat for some time with a book open but unread before her; 'I really do ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Muse, the cause of thy decline; Why reign no more the once-triumphant Nine? Alas! new charms the wavering many gain, And rival sheets the reader's eye detain; A daily swarm, that banish every Muse, Come flying forth, and mortals call them NEWS: For these, unread, the noblest volumes lie; For these, in sheets unsoil'd, the Muses die; Unbought, unblest, the virgin copies wait In vain for fame, and sink, unseen, to fate. Since, then, the Town forsakes us for our foes, The smoothest numbers for the harshest prose; Let us, with generous scorn, ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... of Jude Rush?—and she curled her lip with contempt for both father and son. She ceased to mention his name, and revealed to no one that he still lived. Moreover, she disdained answering his letter, even had she not destroyed his written, but unread address and fictitious name. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... choice of titles is in making them commonplace and uninteresting. When an editor takes out a script and reads the title, "The Sad Story of Ethel Hardy," would he be altogether to blame if he did put the script back into the return envelope utterly unread, as so many editors are accused of doing yet really do not do? To anyone with a sense of humor, there is more cause for merriment in the titles that adorn the different stories that a photoplay editor reads in the course of a day than is to be found in a humorous ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... I dare say, at the long disappearance of the French paper. I had got such an accumulation of them unread that I thought I would not wait to send the old ones; now you will receive them regularly. I am writing in haste. It is almost inexplicable to me that I seem so often hurried now; but the fact is, whenever Arthur ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... novel in the rack, with passages marked in pencil, had afforded the plot of a love story; or the germ of a romance had been found in an obscure news paragraph which, under less listless moments, would have passed unread. On the other hand, he recalled these inconvenient and inconsistent moments from which the so-called "inspiration" sprang, the utter incongruity of time and place in some brilliant conception, and wondered if sheer vacuity of mind were really ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... leaving me and this your home), You should find favour, too, at Rome. That is, they'll like you while you're young, When you are old, you'll pass among The Great Unwashed,—then thumbed and sped, Be fretted of slow moths, unread, Or to Ilerda you'll be sent, Or Utica, for banishment! And I, whose counsel you disdain, At that your lot shall laugh amain, Wryly, as he who, like a fool, Thrust o'er the cliff his restive mule. Nay! there is worse behind. In age They e'en may take your babbling ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... forth before the multitude Divinely human, raising worship so To higher reverence more mixed with love— That better self shall live till human Time Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb, Unread forever. This is life to come, Which martyred men have made more glorious For us who strive to follow. May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... recently had scarce spoken to me at all. He was a man of perhaps fifty years of age, with the countenance of one who had suffered and gained a victory of contemplation—a look as if no suffering could be new to him, and before whom no riddle of human vicissitudes could stay unread; but over all this penetration and sagacity was diffused a cast of genial philanthropy and good-fellowship which told of his forgiveness of the world for what he had suffered in it. With a curiosity more at leisure, I should have sought him out, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... been given her by an amba, and came from Davilo's substitute on the estate. It said simply: "You and you alone were recognised among the rescuers of your friend. Before two days have passed an attempt will be made to arrest you." The other came from Esmo, and Eveena had brought it to me unread, as was indeed her practice. I could not bear to look at her, though I held her closely, as I read aloud the brief message which announced the death, by the sting of two dragons (evidently launched by some assassin's hand, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... movements of international politics. He was a striking, handsome, indomitable figure, and aggressively American. When he went away, he left with my father a book which he had written, with an engraved portrait of the author for frontispiece. This volume, faded and shelf-worn, but apparently unread, bound in the execrable taste of a generation and a half ago, I recently found among my father's volumes. It bore on the title-page the dashing signature of George Francis Train. Train saw things in the large—in their cosmic ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... led me across the street. "Charley," said he, "the curtain's rising; the piece is about to begin; a new commander-in-chief is sent out,—Sir Arthur Wellesley, my boy, the finest fellow in England is to lead us on, and we march to-morrow. There's news for you!" A raw boy, unread, uninformed as I was, I knew but little of his career whose name had even then shed such lustre upon our army; but the buoyant tone of Power as he spoke, the kindling energy of his voice roused me, and I felt every inch a soldier. As I grasped his hand in delightful enthusiasm ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Eliot and martyrdom were as far off as ever. After all, he had given up 5,000 pounds a year and V.C.'s and happy endings. Was it his fault if he was making more money than ever and the inner circles of the unread elect seemed more firmly ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... a more cosmopolitan standard to the works of American writers, and may disregard many a minor author whose productions would have cut some figure had they come to light amid the poverty of our colonial age. Hundreds of these forgotten names, with specimens of their unread writings, are consigned to a limbo of immortality in the pages of Duyckinck's Cyclopedia and of Griswold's Poets of America and Prose Writers of America. We may select here for special mention, and as most representative of the thought ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... the mother and father. Uncle Jimmie was afraid to go and get his mail all summer, although he had a great many letters on blue and lavender note paper scented with Roger et Gallet's violet, and Hudnut's carnation. We used to go down to the beach and make bonfires and burn them unread, and then toast marshmallows in their ashes. He said that they were communications from the spirits of the dead. I should have thought that they were from different girls, but he seemed to hate the sight of girls so much. Once I asked him if he ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... from the fear that enclosed may contain some allusion to the rubbish, a perusal of which might check the wholesome convalescence of your thoughts. If you take my advice, you will throw the packet into the fire unread. At least, if you do examine it, postpone the duty till you feel yourself absolutely impervious to any mental trickery, and—bear in mind that you are a worthy member of a particularly matter-of-fact ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... upon the cover; and, as she received it with a trembling hand, Madame Cheron hastily enquired from whom it came. Emily, with her leave, broke the seal, and, observing the signature of Valancourt, gave it unread to her aunt, who received it with impatience; and, as she looked it over, Emily endeavoured to read on her countenance its contents. Having returned the letter to her niece, whose eyes asked if she might examine it, 'Yes, read it, child,' said Madame Cheron, in a manner less severe ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... does not clothe them, what anguish Must be known in the world of the dead, If the future lies open before them, And fate has no secret unread. And yet, oh how rarely our vision May know the lost presence is nigh; How seldom its purpose be gathered, Be it comfort, ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... Copied out (three times) December, 1896. Submitted to Messrs. Kesteven, Sydney; but they say they are publishing very little at present, as times are depressed. To James & James, Melbourne; returned. And unread, I am sure; the package had hardly been touched. To Brown & McMahon, Melbourne. A most polite note, but they do not care to publish so long a story. Shortened it, and copied again (July, 1898). Sent again to Brown & McMahon. A ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... quite through. To be sure I often broke this rule, as people are apt to do with rules of the kind; it was not possible for a boy to wade through heavy articles relating to English politics and economics, but I do not think I left any paper upon a literary topic unread, and I did read enough politics, especially in Blackwood's, to be of Tory opinions; they were very fit opinions for a boy, and they did not exact of me any change in regard to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... other mail with eager fingers, anxious to devour their contents, had, after the two ladies had descended from the train, almost forgotten his anxiety to get the news from home, and stood there, now, with opened letters in his hands, unread. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... unplowed his furrow, He leaves his books unread For a life of tented freedom By lure of danger led. He's first in the hour of peril, He's gayest in the dance, Like the guardsman of old England Or the beau sabreur ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... slowly slid the unread letter back into the envelope and tucked it into his shirt. "You bet we'll find that cow if we have to comb every draw on the ranch! Hello, pardner! Here's her ole head. She was sure ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... on the feed-in tape of the computer. Sections of the tape are chosen at random by someone who is blindfolded. They are fed unread into the computer, together with instructions to multiply, subtract, extract roots, et cetera, which are similarly chosen at random and not known to anyone. Once in twenty times or so, Schweeringen predicts the result of this ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... who in spite of their reputation are better left unread, are: Giovanni Pietro Maffei, Historiarum Indicarum Libri XVI, Florence, 1588; Antonio de San Roman, Historia General de la India Oriental, Valladolid, 1603; Joseph Francois Lafitau, Histoire des Decouvertes et des Conquetes des Portugais dans ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... "Just consider, Shorty: In this envelop is the name of some individual who was the victim of injustice, large or small, at the hands of Pyramid Gordon, someone who got in his way, perhaps years ago. Now I am to do something that will offset that old injury. While the name remains unread, we have a bit of mystery, an unknown adventure ahead of us, perhaps. And that, my dear McCabe, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Birralong gossip, he yearned to fathom the secret of its source, even at the cost of opening it. During all the years which had elapsed since Slaughter first came upon the scene the struggle had gone on, and still the mystery was unsolved and the riddle unread. Never had an occasion offered itself when anything could be learned from an outside source, and Slaughter himself was too cold and isolated an individual to be ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... His invention was a work of the purest originality. He was unread, uneducated, and had never so much as heard of a steam-engine when the idea of propelling boats by steam came to him. After repeated rebuffs—the lot of every inventor—he at length secured from the State of New Jersey the right to navigate its waters ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... immutable as the sacred triad of the Graces or Destinies, would negative without a division such a work as the "Vicar of Wakefield" were it now to undergo probation. "Robinson Crusoe" or "Paul and Virginia" would be returned unread to their authors, with a civil note of "extremely sorry to decline," &c. "The Man of Feeling" would be made to feel his insignificance. "Thinks I to Myself" might think in vain; and the "Cottagers of Glenburnie" retain their rural obscurity. So much ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... with equal ease. I do not need to tell you who wins out, but neither will I intimate how it is done. I can only say that I envy anybody who is fortunate enough to have a long evening before him and The Slayer of Souls at his elbow, still unread. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... a moment before had beat audibly to my own ear, sank like a stone in my breast, and I sat for a time holding the letter mutely, uncertain how to proceed. Should I return it unread, and thus hurl the gauntlet in the traitor's face, or be governed by expedience (word ever so despised by me of old), and trace the venom of the viper, by his trail, back to his ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... something more than a small mahogany bookcase with a hundred volumes hidden behind glass doors. I think there is nothing more amusing than the unused library of the nouveau riche, the pretentious room with its monumental bookcases and its slick area of glass doors and its thousands of unread volumes, caged eternally ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... walked, and those hidden things of life came back to mock him. He might forget, sometimes, bending above his desk, or struggling against the perplexing problems of his profession in the field, but not here; not in the glare of the footlights, amid the hum of the crowd. He crushed the unread programme within his hand, striving to converse carelessly with the lady sitting next to him, whom he was expected to entertain. But his thoughts were afar off, his eyes seeing a gray, misty, silent ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... full well one frequent consequence of the broad-mindedness which results. I realize how promptly the unread man, filled to the lips with the frothy spirit of his own infallibility, will condemn him whose knowledge of men and motives makes him pause and suspend his judgment. But what of that? Some one has said that thinking makes you wise but weak, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... deplorable, but not unnatural. A man imbued with the idea of a chosen people, and unread in any book save the one which cultivates this very idea, could not be expected to have learned the historical lessons of the advantages which a State reaps from a liberal policy. To him it was as if the Ammonites and Moabites had ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... otherwise. The attorney and the doctor joined our society that their families of ten or twelve sons and daughters might keep under the sixpences and shillings of the circulating library; but they soon became jealous of new books, although they often returned them uncut and unread; and so far from knitting the bonds of acquaintance, we at last thought our plan served to estrange the members, by affording the little aristocracy frequent opportunities for venting their splenetic pride; the books were like ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... seemed to her to convey a rebuke. But he was never rough. She loved to be caressed by those who were dear and near and close to her, and his manner was always caressing. She often loved, if the truth is to be spoken, to be idle, and to spend hours with an unread book in her hand under the shade of the deanery trees, and among the flowers of the deanery garden. The Dean never questioned her as to those idle hours. But at Cross Hall not a half-hour would be allowed to pass without enquiry as to its purpose. At Cross Hall there ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... anxieties started afresh; I stood in great need of money, and had not the vaguest notion whither to go in search of it. I then examined very thoroughly the answer I had received during the preceding winter to my petition for a higher salary. I had left it unread, as the modifications made in it had already disgusted me. If I had till now believed that it was Herr von Luttichau who had brought about the increase of salary I had demanded, in the shape of a supplement which I was to receive annually—in itself a humiliating ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... in the life of her hostler accomplished what his warning had failed to do; it caused her to neglect her correspondence with the major. His letter lay in a hollow willow-tree on the river road unread for nearly a week. And when, one afternoon, she finally rode by to claim it, her interest was strangely dulled. The spice of ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... was so huge and shadowy, with only shaded lights here and there. It had such tempting crannies. I loved its deep quiet, so pleasantly broken now and then by a step, a whisper, the sound of a book being moved from its shelf where perhaps it had stood unread for years, or occasional voices passing outside or snatches of song from the campus. And here I thought I was finding myself. That French prof had introduced me to Voltaire, Hugo, Balzac, Maupassant ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... so resolved, had you but seen the proud, bitter soul he conquered, you would have said, "This, which he thinks is degradation,—this is heroism." Oh, strange human heart! no epic ever written achieves the Sublime and the Beautiful which are graven, unread by human ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... very important way, I assure you!" exclaimed Helen. "It eliminates this man—this Talpers—as a personal menace. But when you are so eager to get every thread of evidence, how is it that you can give this letter to me, unread? You must feel sure it has some bearing on the awful thing—the tragedy that took place ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... touched by a young soul. My distress is the keener for my interest in you. I am naturally tender-hearted and kindly, but circumstances force me to act unkindly. Another woman would have flung your letter, unread, into the fire; I read it, and I am answering it. My answer will make it clear to you that while I am not untouched by the expression of this feeling which I have inspired, albeit unconsciously, I am still far from sharing it, and the step which I am about to take will show you still more ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... sensation about the heart, and an eagerness of interest I have rarely experienced. I had no idea what a mere letter—a mere unopened unread letter—would mean to a family ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... peoples, a coward in battle; capable of magnanimous actions which, when uncovered of all romance, are worthy of the best days of Roman virtue, yet more cunning, false, and cruel than the Bengalee,—this copper-colored sphinx, this riddle unread of men, equally fascinates and ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... groan, however great the provocation. And in moments of stress he would shake hands with people and turn away to hide his emotion. And it wasn't only in gestures, he became dramatic in conduct. When compromising letters came into his hands, he used to burn them unread and without any one looking on, which is manifestly absurd. I forget what happened to him in the end, but I expect he was charged with something he hadn't done to save the husband of the woman he wanted to marry—and ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... in streets and gardens drooped, brownishyellow, and heavy with dust. The sun met the eyes blindingly, and was reflected from every house-wall. Maurice went for a walk in the woods. In his pocket he had a letter, still unread, which he had found waiting for him that day. It was from his mother, and his eyes slid carelessly over the pages. There were the usual reproaches for his prolonged silences, the never-failing reminders ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... to his own university; two or three college libraries would purchase copies out of respect to the learned professor; and Litton would give away a few more. The rest would stand in an undisturbed stack of increasing dust, there to remain unread as long perhaps as the myriads of Babylonian classics that Assurbani-pal had copied in brick volumes for his great library ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... handsome woman who appeared in the circle, and complimented her in the florid style of Gascony on the bloom of her cheeks and the lustre of her eyes. When he had enjoyed the fear and anxiety of his suppliants he dismissed them, and flung all their memorials unread into the fire. This was the best way, he conceived, to prevent arrears of business from accumulating. Here he was only an imitator. Cardinal Dubois had been in the habit of clearing his table of papers in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fashion without appearing a caricature, which is another way of saying that each woman should learn to recognise her own type. The discussion of silhouette has become a popular theme. In fact it would be difficult to find a maker of women's costumes so remote and unread as not to have seized and imbedded deep in her vocabulary ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... most decided failures. Of this class was the translation from Pulci, so frequently mentioned by him, which appeared afterwards in the Liberal, and which, though thus rescued from the fate of remaining unpublished, roust for ever, I fear, submit to the doom of being unread.] ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... read and attend to them; but, if you consider them in their opposite, and very false light, as the dictates of a morose and sermonizing father, I am sure they will be not only unattended to, but unread. Which is the case, you can best tell me. Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least. I hope that your want of experience, of which you must be conscious, will convince you, that you want advice; ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... honour, are seldom so careful of their rest of fame, as those who have a stock entire; and Sylvia believed after she had entrusted the secret of one amour to her discretion, she might conceal none. 'See, madam,' says Antonet, 'here is a letter yet unread:' Sylvia, who had been a great while impatient for the return of Octavio's answer from Philander, expecting from thence the confirmation of all her doubts, hastily snatched the letter out of Antonet's hand, and read it, hoping ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... read far enough through this to see who has signed it, but if you do, and care to know why I wish I had left your work unread, I will tell you as briefly as possible if you will ask ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... polite, and observed the oiled floors, hard-wood staircase, unused fireplace with tiles which resembled brown linoleum, cut-glass vases standing upon doilies, and the barred, shut, forbidding unit bookcases that were half filled with swashbuckler novels and unread-looking sets of Dickens, Kipling, O. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... arranging them, and yet make a narrative out of it all, so protracted here, so huddled together there, the purpose so buried or confused, that men would agree to acknowledge the merit of the book and leave it unread. There must be a natural line of associations for the narrative to run along. The separate threads of the narrative must be treated separately, and yet the subject not be dealt with sectionally, for that is not the way in which the things occurred. ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... gossip—these are the rewards of genius which constitute a modern literary success. Not to reach the moderate competence in literature is, for a professional man of letters of all work, something like failure. But in poetry to-day a man may succeed, as far as his art goes, and yet may be unread, and may publish at his own expense, or not publish at all. He pleases himself, and a very tiny audience: I do not call that failure. I regard failure as the goal of ignorance, incompetence, lack of common sense, conceited dulness, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... possibly, it might be of farther use than for the entertainment of the Writer: Yet so little express Intention was there of Publishing the Product of those leisure Hours it employ'd, that these Papers lay by for above two Years unread, and almost forgotten. After which time, being perus'd and Corrected, they were communicated to some Friends of the Authors, who judging them capable to be useful, they are now sent into the World ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... advocates immoral tenets, or prefers evil to good, it is not, but it is unquestionably a dangerous book, which (to quote Kingsley's words used in another connection) "the young and innocent will do well to leave altogether unread." It is dangerous because it ignores resistance and presumes submission to passion; it is dangerous because, as Byron admitted, it is "now and then voluptuous;" and it is dangerous, in a lesser degree, because, here and there, the purport of the quips and allusions is gross and offensive. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... for a few nursemaids and children. He went wandering around it and suddenly caught sight of Queenie Crood. She was sitting on a rustic bench in an angle of the walls, a book in her hand; it needed little of Brent's perception to convince him that the book was unread: she was anxiously ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... done nothing toward understanding the care of my property. I had used the cheque-book to give a little money in charity and to pay some bills, but the pile of financial pamphlets lay on the shelf of my desk still unread. I had not had time to devote myself to them, or rather the time had slipped away before ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... a thick letter from Cossie, which her ungrateful and distracted relative tore up unread. Already, in his mind's eye, Shafto could see Cossie permanently established in Rangoon, informing everyone that she was his cousin, bombarding him with chits, worrying him for visits, treats and attentions. Heaven be praised! neither ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... all its adventures, having been found, we shall never know where, by a gentleman in the days of Queen Elizabeth, having lain on his bookshelves unknown and unread for a hundred years and more, having been nearly destroyed by fire, having been still further destroyed by neglect, Beowulf at last came to its own, and is now carefully treasured in a glass case in the British ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... are meant for us. In art as in the complex details of living, there is need of selection; and criticism helps toward that. In literature alone, to name but a single art, there is so much to be left unread which the length of our life would not otherwise permit us to escape, that we are grateful to the critic who aids us to omit gracefully and with success. But the most serviceable criticism is positive and not destructive. The lesser works may have a message for us, and it is that message in its ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... grew aware of the streets of London looming on either hand it became a torment, an anguish. Small-folded, crushed within her palm, the piece of paper with its still unread inscription seemed to burn her. Once, twice, thrice she met the look of her friend. He smiled cheerily, bravely, with evident purpose of encouragement. She knew his face better than that of any oldest acquaintance; she saw in it a manly beauty. Only by a great ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... the grave of him who blazed The Comet of a season, and I saw The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed With not the less of sorrow and of awe On that neglected turf and quiet stone, With name no clearer than the names unknown, Which lay unread around it; and I asked The Gardener of that ground, why it might be That for this plant strangers his memory tasked, Through the thick deaths of half a century; 10 And thus he answered—"Well, I do not know ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... comfortable, I'm sure!" It was Esther's laughing voice. She had come so quietly that neither of them had heard her. Aunt Amy's vagueness vanished in a pleased smile and Callandar, as he sprang to open the gate, forgot all about the unread letter and everything else, ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... twice as much as a Parisian or an Italian in the same rank of life, with a very indifferent result. There are handbooks of instruction, it is true, both for the middle and for the lower classes. These books are at everybody's command. But they are either left unread, or if read, they are not understood. I have before me the eleventh edition of Esther Copley's "Cottage Comforts," 1834; it embraces all the points which demand attention from such as desire to render ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... availed himself of that opportunity, two days later, personally to hand his letter to Her Majesty. But chance brought the Comptroller-General into the room before she had opened it, and as a result the jeweller departed while the letter was, still unread. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... of that charge, but she saw such a terrified appeal in her step-mother's face that she kept her peace, let Hale suffer for that, too, and walked out into her garden. Never once had her piano been opened, her books had lain unread, and from her lips, during those days, came no song. When she was not at work, she was brooding in her room, or she would walk down to Uncle Billy's and sit at the mill with him while the old man would talk ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... head And on his mind's bedarkened space, What characters unheard, unread, Doth ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... that this continent possesses. The most faithful work on the part of the scholars of all lands has not as yet succeeded in clearing up the mystery connected with it. We can tread the courts of their ancient citadel, clamber up to the ruined temples and altars, and gaze on the unread hieroglyphics, but, with all our efforts, we know but little of its history. There was a time when the forest did not entwine these ruins. Once unknown priests ministered at these altars. But cacique, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... golden age of letters as well as her age of military glory. Her libraries and archives are filled with unread, musty manuscripts, comprising treatises on philosophy and metaphysics, histories, biographies, and poems, rich in the classic erudition of the Orient. In 1336, Sultan Orkan found leisure from war and conquest to establish, at Brusa, a literary institution, which became ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a few minutes before the sacrifice, she had received her first letter from Egypt. It lay unread on her dressing-table, and came into her mind whenever she attempted to pray. She could not help wondering what news it might bring her. How were her parents? and how had Tachot borne the parting from herself, and from the prince she loved ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thinking of how the dialogue looked upon paper; besides, they were in blank verse. I hadn't a notion how prose dialogue would look upon paper. Shakespeare I had never opened; no instinctive want had urged me to read him. He had remained, therefore, unread, unlooked at. Should I buy a copy? No; the name repelled me—as all popular names repelled me. In preference I went to the Gymnase, and listened attentively to a comedy by M. Dumas fils. But strain my imagination ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... tenderness they entertained for each other! With what wearied impatience both prince and princess received the 'Wedding Odes' and 'Epithalamiums,' written by first-class and no-class versifiers for the occasion! What shoals of these were cast aside unread, to occupy the darkest dingiest corner of one of the Royal 'refuse' libraries! The writers of such things expected great honours, no doubt, each and every man-jack of them,—but apart from the fact that the greatest literature has always lived without any official recognition ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Cabinet he brought out the paper that he had sealed up in the dark days of August; he reminded his ministers of how they had endorsed it unread, and he read it them. Its contents ran thus: "This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President-elect as to save ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... which had been opened and read; but as he unfolded it, there appeared another—unopened, unread; its dainty seal unbroken, and on the back in fair tracery, the words, "Miss Faith Derrick." As Faith read them and saw the hand, her eye glanced first up at Mr. Linden with its mute burden of surprise, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... household were still further cheered by learning that 'Agnes Grey' and 'Wuthering Heights' had found acceptance at the hands of a publisher. Acceptance; but upon impoverishing terms. Still, for so much they were thankful. To write, and bury unread the things one has written, is playing music upon a dumb piano. Who plays, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson |
