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Unwritten   Listen
adjective
Unwritten  adj.  
1.
Not written; not reduced to writing; oral; as, unwritten agreements.
2.
Containing no writing; blank; as, unwritten paper.
Unwritten doctrines (Theol.), such doctrines as have been handed down by word of mouth; oral or traditional doctrines.
Unwritten law. That part of the law of England and of the United States which is not derived from express legislative enactment, or at least from any enactment now extant and in force as such. This law is now generally contained in the reports of judicial decisions. See Common law, under Common.
Unwritten laws, such laws as have been handed down by tradition or in song. Such were the laws of the early nations of Europe.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Unwritten" Quotes from Famous Books



... abasement of social, legal, and political proscription. The land of his birth proved herself equal to this imperative call of civilized Duty, regardless of customs and the laws, written as well as unwritten, which had doomed to life-long degradation every member of the progeny of Ham. Recognizing in the erewhile bondman a born leader of men, America, with the unflinching directness that has marked her course, whether in good or in evil, responded with spontaneous ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... been impossible. Alas! soon after the agreement with the publishers was signed and in the very month that the plan of the work was to have been shown to Wallace, his hand was unexpectedly stilled in death; and the book remains unwritten. But as the names of Darwin and Wallace are inseparable even by the scythe of time, a slight attempt is here made, in the first sections of Part I. and Part II., to take note of their ancestry and the diversities and similarities in their respective characters and environments—social ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... Longfellow's poems one would never suspect that they were produced in an age of turmoil. To be sure, one finds a few poems on slavery (sentimental effusions, written on shipboard to relieve the monotony of a voyage), but these were better unwritten since they added nothing to the poet's song and took nothing from the slave's burden. Longfellow has been criticized for his inaction in the midst of tumult, but possibly he had his reasons. When everybody's ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... we call it "Lucky" by any standard of honesty? In this world full of highly developed psi talent, the Gimp could pick a pocket and get away with it because he often literally could not remember where and how he'd acquired the wallet for longer than a half minute. And it was a sort of general unwritten rule that any citizen so utterly befogged as to permit his wealth to be lifted via light fingers should lose it as ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith

... enter the debate, represented on both sides by such able disputants in Congress and before the people and in the press, as to the extent to which the legislation of any one nation can control this question, even within its own borders, against the unwritten laws of trade or the positive laws of other governments. The wisdom of Congress in shaping any particular law that may be presented for my approval may wholly supersede the necessity of my entering into these considerations, ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson

... with nature [the conception of a natural law binding upon all peoples was one of the fixed ideas of the age]. (2) To show that it is not a matter of terrible labor to live according to our positive laws if a man has the will to do so; seeing that the patriarchs spontaneously followed the unwritten principles before any of the particular laws were written. So that a man may properly say that the code of law is only a memorial of the lives of the patriarchs. For the patriarchs, of their own accord and impulse, chose to follow nature, and, regarding her ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... the roundup boss. To bring it to pass, he would be obliged to impress the roundup cook and part of the crew. It was breaking an unwritten law of the rangeland, and worse, it was doing something unbusiness-like and foolish. But not even the owner of the Rocking R may withstand the pleading of a pretty woman. Uncle Peter squirmed, ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... and Jim, snatching up a matchlock, levelled it at the head of the mulatto Pedro, but at that very moment," etc., etc., etc., though I much fear that the remainder of Bob, the Boy Buccaneer of the Bahamas will remain unwritten. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... put the (to her) nauseous bubbles to her lips. Sir Purcell had not been told of her tribulations, and he had not expressed any doubt of her truth; but sentimentalists can read one another with peculiar accuracy through their bewitching gauzes. She read his unwritten doubt, and therefore expected her unwritten misery to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... him, and in a vague sort of way she, too, seemed to be letting herself drift, to be giving color to his unconscious assumption by her lowered tone, by the light in her eyes which answered his, by all those little nameless trifles which go to the sealing of unwritten compacts. ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... thing," browbeat and ride rough-shod over all their fellows. It is in the want of that wholesome corrective, public opinion, that this pestilence is possible. Of public opinion the Continent knows next to nothing in any shape; and yet it is by the unwritten judgments of such a tribunal that society is guided in England, and the same law that discourages the bully supports and encourages the timid, without either the one or the other having the slightest power to corrupt the court, or coerce its decrees. ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... would be easier to produce than the other more serious and terrible drama. With this idea in my mind I informed Liszt of my purpose, and offered the Weimar management to compose a score for Junger Siegfried, which as yet was unwritten, in return for which I would definitely accept their proposal to grant me a year's salary of fifteen hundred marks. This they agreed to without delay, and I took up my quarters in the attic-room evacuated the previous year by Karl Ritter, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... toils of youth unfinished! And songs unwritten, left By young and passionate hearts! O melodies Unheard, whereof we ever stand bereft! Clear-singing Schubert, boyish Keats — with these He roams henceforth, one with the starry band, Still paying to fairy call and far command His spirit heed, ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... assemble in the evening to pack their purchases on their beasts of burden, and finally climb to the top of all themselves. For it is not etiquette to ride in or out of the gates upon one's wares; and a breach of this unwritten law would immediately arouse the suspicion of the courteous toll-officer, who fingers delicately with a tobacco-stained hand the bundles and baskets submitted to ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... had ever been? It built up towns in New England that half a century of lethargy has been unable to kill. And so if its brigs—and its men—now molder, if its records are scanty and its history unwritten, still Americans must ever regard the whale fishery as one of the chief factors in the building of the nation—one of the most admirable ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... that mankind has pursued during the whole of its history; it has never shown the least disposition not to take this advice and not to try this method to the full. And written history, to say nothing of unwritten history, is there to tell us how well it ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... I announce to hall and hovel Lord Asterisk's unwritten novel. It's full of wit, and full of fashion, And full of taste, and full of passion; It tells some very curious histories, Elucidates some charming mysteries, And mingles sketches of society With precepts of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various

... along which he wished to guide that of the hearer or reader. Herein is the source of much of the power of Bjrnson's patriotic songs and poems of public agitation. Those who read or hear or sing them are made to think, or at least to feel, the unwritten poetry between the lines. Scarcely less notable is this paucity in the expression of wealth of thought and feeling in the memorial and other ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... ideas, that we can call them language. They are indeed potential language, and the symbols employed presuppose nouns, verbs, and the other parts of speech; but for the most part it is in what we read between the lines that the profounder meaning of any letter is conveyed. There are words unwritten and untranslatable into any nouns that are nevertheless felt as above, about and underneath the gross material symbols that lie scrawled upon the paper; and the deeper the feeling with which anything is written the more pregnant will it be of meaning which can be conveyed ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... You must not mention the word or refer to the subject in the presence of a feudist. It would be more reprehensible than commenting upon the mole on the chin of your rich aunt. I found, later on, that there is another unwritten rule, but I think that belongs solely ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... anxiety, Sire, I have considered whether or no I should write this to your Majesty, but necessity and not my wish obliges me. For some reasons I would like to leave it unwritten, particularly because I do not care to contradict myself and appear, in what I am about to write and ask of your Majesty, to change my ground from what I have written to your Majesty before about some of my affairs. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair

... the car, flickering like the tongue of a snake, seeming to cover every passenger at once. Beneath its deadly insistence, hands were upraised one after the other. Resistance at that moment meant instant death. The unwritten law of the West had to be obeyed. He "had ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... that while it was essentially orderly, it was still literally lawless. That is, the emancipation of the commons had already advanced very far, but it had not yet advanced far enough to be embodied in a law. The custom was "unwritten," like the British Constitution, and (like that evolutionary, not to say evasive entity) could always be overridden by the rich, who now drive their great coaches through Acts of Parliament. The new peasant was still legally a slave, and was to learn it by one of those turns of fortune ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... of moment, and yet the days passed on and nothing was done. His last idea was to send the will to Mr Apjohn with a letter, in which he would simply declare that he had just found it amongst the sermons, and that he was prepared to go away. But as the days flew by the letter was left unwritten, and the will was ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... manner fail of its effect upon their victims. The middle of the seventeenth century was the golden age, not only of the robber, but of the robbed. The game was played upon either side with a scrupulous respect for a potent, if unwritten, law. Neither might nor right was permitted to control the issue. A gaily attired, superbly mounted highwayman would hold up a coach packed with armed men, and take a purse from each, though a vigorous remonstrance might have carried him to Tyburn. But the traveller knew his place: ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... closed the meeting with an eloquent unwritten peroration which told of her last hours with Miss Anthony as the great soul was about to take its flight and ended: "The object of her life was to awaken in women the consciousness of the need of freedom and the courage to demand it, not as an end but as a means of creating higher ideals ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... object to direct their proceedings, and must have a view to some point of external utility, even in the choice of their virtues. The discipline of Sparta was military; and a sense of its use in the field, more than the force of unwritten and traditionary laws, or the supposed engagement of the public faith obtained by the lawgiver, may have induced this people to persevere in the observance of many rules, which to other nations do not appear necessary, except in ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... at last, in self-defense, to fix at one piaster an hour. We frequently shared with them our frugal, and even scanty meals; and in turn they assisted us in our purchases and arrangements for lodgings, for their word, we found, was with the common people an almost unwritten law. Then, too, they were of great assistance in crossing streams where the depth would have necessitated the stripping of garments; although their fiery little steeds sometimes objected to having an extra rider ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... by sheer will power and the pride of the Princess, which she had inherited from her long line of ancestors, extending back into the unwritten pages of history. ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... Government are reserved to the States and to the people; if it has been viewed by them as the first great step in the march of latitudinous construction, which unchecked would render that sacred instrument of as little value as an unwritten constitution, dependent, as it would alone be, for its meaning on the interested interpretation of a dominant party, and affording no security to the rights of the minority—if such is undeniably the case, what rational grounds could have been conceived for ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... brought her. In fancy she saw him food for carrion at the end of a rope; she saw his body swaying to the night breeze, an ominous, hideous shadow, a warning to all of the fate awaiting those who sinned against the unwritten laws of the cattle world. She heard the pitying tones of the village women, she saw their furtive side glances, heard their whispering comments as they passed her, these women whom she had always lived amongst, whom she had always counted as friends. Oh, the horror of ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... such a code of its own. Without it social life would be impossible, for no man would know what to expect of his neighbors, nor be able promptly to interpret the words and actions of his fellow-men. It is in obedience to an unwritten law of this kind that an American takes off his hat when he goes into a church, and an Asiatic, when he enters a mosque, takes off his shoes; that Englishmen shake hands, and Africans rub noses. Where etiquette is well understood and well adapted to the persons ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... point only a few miles below their old camp on the river to look after some smuggling there. One afternoon, while they were riding through a dense mesquite flat, they came upon a patch of open hog-wallow prairie. There they rode upon the scene of an unwritten tragedy. ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... a new land in which we are to abide for a time, has still the peculiarity, both pleasant and foreboding, that the whole lies before us like an unwritten tablet. As yet no sorrows and joys which relate to ourselves are recorded upon it; this cheerful, varied, animated plain is still mute for us; the eye is only fixed on the objects so far as they are intrinsically important, and neither affection nor passion has especially to render prominent ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... Mary hesitated, knowing that only the unwritten law of Western hospitality compelled that speech; it was the crackle and flare of the bright fire which overcame ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... Meaning of the Word "Law,"; Modern Importance of Statute Law; Representative Government and the Right to Law; Enforcement of the Common Law; Origin of Representative Legislatures; Customary or Natural Law; No Sanction Necessary; The Unwritten Law and Outlawry; Early Parliament Merely Judicial; Contrast of Common Law with Roman Law; Theory that the King Makes Law; Parliament Retains the Right to Tax; Parliament Recovers ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... and the unwritten tradition that it is a matter of honour never to seek to hold an unwilling partner quite negatives the law that a marriage can only terminate when ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... Barracks, of date March 2, 1862, in which the date of our arrival at St. Louis is given as February 28th. And I well know that we were only two days on the trip. And besides the date given in my letter, I distinctly remember several unwritten facts and circumstances that satisfy me beyond any doubt, that the day we left Carrollton was February 27, 1862. Early in the morning of that day, the regiment filed out at the big gate, and marched south on the dirt road. Good-bye to old ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... of unwritten and written acts, customs, judicial decisions, and traditions; the written part of the constitution consists of the Constitution Act of 29 March 1867, which created a federation of four provinces, and the Constitution Act of 17 April 1982, which transferred formal control ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... law is partly written, partly unwritten, as among the Greeks. The written law consists of statutes, plebiscites, senatusconsults, enactments of the Emperors, edicts of the magistrates, and answers of those learned ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... some people to dinner; rather an interference, isn't it? Julia lives so in public. But it's all for you." And after a moment she added: "It's a wonderful constitution." Nick at first failed to seize her allusion—he thought it a retarded political reference, a sudden tribute to the great unwritten instrument by which they were all governed and under the happy operation of which his fight had been so successful. He was on the point of saying, "The British? Wonderful!" when he gathered that the intention of his ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... man!" Every one looked to that point,—"I see a man of Tarsus; and he says, Make mention of me!" It must not be supposed that the discourses of "Uncle Ebenezer," with these abrupt appeals and sudden starts, were unwritten or extempore; they were carefully composed and written out,—only these flashes of thought and passion came on him suddenly when writing, and were therefore quite natural when ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... with the last word. He knew the rites and customs of Yale, at least by hearsay, and was willing to abide by the unwritten laws that make a first-year man demean himself to the upperclassmen. It would ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes

... the right to vote on account of sex. And as respects that suggestion I shall deal with a single phase of the matter. It seems to be supposed in some quarters that if such an amendment were to be adopted it would involve a breach of faith with the dissenting States, or violate some unwritten principle of local self-government, or conflict with the historic ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various

... as he was, there were those in whose company he found pleasure, cadets who had studied subjects not included in the West Point course, and from whom there was something to be learned. It was an unwritten law of the Academy that those of the senior year should not make companions of their juniors. But Jackson paid no heed to the traditionary code of etiquette. His acquaintances were chosen regardless of standing, as often from ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... of present day Hopi culture and an examination into the myths and traditions constituting the unwritten literature of this people, this bulletin proposes to show that an intimate connection exists between their ritual acts, their moral standards, their social organization, even their practical activities of today, and their myths and tales—the ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett

... to rebel against the unwritten rule that seats are not to be made use of, but a moment's reflection convinced her of the ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... with rainbows!—grant us yet this grassy lap of thine— We would be still thy children, through the shower and the shine! So pray we, lisping, whispering, in childish love and trust With our beseeching hands and faces lifted from the dust By fervor of the poem, all unwritten and unsung, Thou givest us in answer, while the heart ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley

... state she was in; from the depths of his greenness he trusted her, from the depths of his softness he pitied her; his poetic nature was fiercely indignant on account of the poor girl's wrongs, and the wife spoke for her. Then he thought of his unwritten romance, and regarded August in the light of copy, and that settled it. While he talked the matter over with his wife, August "hid in the dark of her hair," awaiting her doom. The teacher put his hat on, walked up to the pa, and saw her aunt. She denied ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... was the turning of the tide; His five-act play is still unwritten; The dreams that now his soul divide Are more of Lubbock than of Lytton; "Ballades" are "verses vain" to him Whose first ambition is to lecture (So much is man the sport of whim!) ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... be gotten from the books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS}" The same writer gives also other accounts which he says came to him through unwritten traditions, certain strange parables and teachings of the Saviour and some other more mythical things. Among these he says that there will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, when the kingdom of Christ will be set up in a material ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... laws, nor Justice that dwelleth with the gods below. I judged not that thy decrees had such authority that a man should transgress for them the unwritten sure commandments of the gods. For these, indeed, are not of today or yesterday, but they live forever, and their beginning no man knoweth. Should I, for fear of thee, be found guilty against them? That I should die I knew. Why not? All men must die. And if ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... Government had satisfied itself beforehand that, acting on some unwritten code of Parliamentary procedure, the Speaker would rule out such an amendment as unconstitutional. At any rate, this is ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... The unwritten laws of social usage would hardly permit him to carry the Pixley mansion by assault and insist on seeing Miss Brandt. Besides, that might expose her to annoyance, and that he would ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... lightly, so slowly, that at the age of ten a human countenance should present a mere fleshy tabula rasa, but now and then we are startled by meeting a child as unlike the round, rosy, pulpy, dimpling, unwritten faces of ordinary life, as the churubs of Raphael to the rigid forms of Byzantine mosaics, or the stone ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... which could not be affirmed to be illegal, but which no one would deny to be altogether inconsistent with the principles and practice of the constitution, since a great part of the constitution rested on unwritten law, on long-continued usage, Lex et consuetudo Parliamenti. And they affirmed that this measure was so opposed to that usage, that "no instance had occurred within a period of four hundred years in which a commoner had been raised to a seat in ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... mission at the end of 1801, the reports of prefects under the Consulate, the Empire, and the Restoration down to 1823. There is such a quantity of unknown and instructive documents besides these that the history of the Revolution seems, indeed, to be still unwritten. In any event, it is only such documents, which can make all these people come alive. The lesser nobles, the curates, the monks, the nuns of the provinces, the aldermen and bourgeoisie of the towns, the attorneys and syndics of the country villages, the laborers and artisans, the officers and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... their weird beauty, until lost in the splendour of the coming day. A description of them has often been attempted by writers of northern scenes, and I have to confess, that I have been rash enough to try it elsewhere; but their full glories are still unwritten and perhaps ever will be. They appear to belong to the spiritual rather than to the earthly; and there are times when they so dazzle and overwhelm, that it does seem as though only the language of spirits is adequate to the task of describing them. Then they are so changeable. Never have I ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... performance—incorrectly termed a sacred concert—on Sunday nights: and it had been one o'clock in the morning before the concert scenery could be moved out of the theatre and the first act set of "The Rose of America" moved in. And, as by some unwritten law of the drama no dress-rehearsal can begin without a delay of at least an hour and a half, the curtain had not gone up on Mr Miller's opening chorus till half past two. There had been dress-parades, conferences, interminable arguments between the stage-director and a mysterious man in shirtsleeves ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... with information, aided me in other ways and protected me afterwards, I dare not name any names for fear that some survivor or some son or grandson of some participant in these doings might learn through me of long suspected but never verified treason to the unwritten law of the country-side and might bloodily avenge it on a surviving helper of mine or on any such helper's children or grandchildren. The Umbrian mountaineers are spleenful, tenacious of ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... means of adding another chapter to his commenced romance. He did not yet know how many commenced life-romances are doomed never to get beyond the first, or at most the second chapter. His Saturday half-holiday he spent in the wood with his book of fairy legends, and that other unwritten book of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... the fringes on the borders of their garments, Numbers 15:37,] were literally meant by God, I much question. That they have been long observed by the Pharisees and Rabbinical Jews is certain; however, the Karaites, who receive not the unwritten traditions of the elders, but keep close to the written law, with Jerome and Grotius, think they were not literally to be understood; as Bernard and Reland here take notice. Nor indeed do I remember that, either in the ancienter books of the Old Testament, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... before him. Lightbody, without knowing what he did, took it up and mechanically on an unwritten sheet jotted down $15,000, drawing the dollar sign with a careful, almost caressing stroke. The sheet was the back of his wife's letter, but ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... And, although there were many expressions of welcome spoken and called out to Curly John when he passed into the room and took his seat at the table, nobody in all that throng offered to approach him, for it was an unwritten law of the underworld that a man who reappears for the first time among his associates after imprisonment is left alone to make his own advances when he ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter

... sympathy. Medical students who came intending to tell her to go home and mind the baby, remained to wonder if man really was the undoubted sovereign of the world, born to look upon woman as his willing subject; to wonder whether under some unwritten whispered law it might not be the other way about. Perhaps she had the right—with or without the baby—to move about the kingdom, express her wishes for its care and management. Possibly his doubts may not have been brought about solely by the force and logic of her arguments. Possibly ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... mistaken. If you were sick, and needed Phyllis for your comfort, or for your business, she would not leave you. Men may leave father and mother for their wives, that is their duty; but women have a higher commandment given them. It may be an unwritten Scripture, but it is in ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... own little community when they wanted a wife or a husband, but if at any time their affections travelled outside this sanctified boundary, the two potentates were assiduous in their warnings that if the new comer in any way transgressed the unwritten code of laws that were framed in order that the estate might be kept free from contamination they would have to leave it peremptorily. Ranters, Wesleyans, and other Nonconformists were regarded as heretics. A religious test was ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... were pursued and at the brink of the hill, overtaken. The stake was too large for the young artist to risk its loss by adhering to the unwritten rules of combat. He released Rachel, whirled about, and as the foremost descended on him, ducked, seized the man about the middle, and pitched him head-first down into the valley. The second, the tall Nubian that wore the striped tunic, halted, dismayed, and Kenkenes, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... maid this was the time the ages had been waiting for. What anxious nights she spent upon her pillow or before the looking-glass; what former triumphs she reviewed; and what plans for the conquest she had made, shall still remain unwritten history. When she was ready to appear, we used to hear her nervous call, "Doctor! Can I come over?" Poor old maid! She couldn't even wait till she was asked. How patiently she stirred the hot tomato soy the captain made; O yes! She could be useful and domestic. How tenderly she leaned ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... now rose in strength and volume, he seemed to be in quite the mood. Now Tarzan felt no fear of Taug, nor did the unwritten law of the jungle demand that he should flee from battle with any male, unless he cared to from purely personal reasons. But Tarzan liked Taug. He had no grudge against him, and his man-mind told him what the mind of an ape would never have deduced—that ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... I entirely agree with the speaker! But it is not the British military way, and the unwritten laws of the Service stand firm. So let me only remind you that General Horne led the artillery at Mons; that he has commanded the First Army since September, 1916; that, in conjunction with Sir Julian Byng, ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Pollyanna sent Jimmy a letter. It was confused and incoherent—a series of half-completed, illogical, but shyly joyous sentences, out of which Jimmy gathered much: a little from what was written; more from what was left unwritten. After all, did he ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... to them because when they set out on their periodical migration to the plains they left their villages unguarded, and found their property safe on their return. I suppose this resulted partly from an unwritten—may I say?—honourable understanding, that as in their sparse and widely-scattered population it was well-nigh impossible to guard their goods, the rights of property should be respected; and partly from the circumstance ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... blessed thing it were to be old— A little past "forty-five;" 'Twere better indeed than a purse of gold At a premium yet unwritten, untold, For what poor devil that's now "enrolled" Expects to get ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... sixty, and had proved his prowess with the shillalah. It was the unwritten law at Donnybrook that no soldiers should be allowed to attend the Fair. The managers, however, still continued to sell tickets to soldiers, yet to keep the enterprise from being wiped out of existence, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... no mean positions that you are destined to hold. The pages of the history of the future may hold your names in a high and honored place. Do well your part today. The work of today is the history of tomorrow, and we are its makers. So let us strive to show just as grand names on the pages yet unwritten as are inscribed on those that we ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... of brooding over thought, whether it be our own or that of others, will tend to disclose new and deeper meanings, and consequently deeper shades and depths of feeling. The speaker will diligently search for unwritten meanings in words; he will study, whenever possible, masterpieces of painting and sculpture; he will closely observe the natural feeling of well-bred children, as shown in their conversation; and in many other ways that will suggest themselves, he ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... not sure whether this preface had not better have remained unwritten; whether the parable had not better be left without an interpretation. But it is written and it shall stand. And so this simple story goes from my hands, I trust to do some little good, by hinting to clerical ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... Act); originally, the machinery of the government was set up in the British North America Act of 1867; charter of rights and unwritten customs ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... was an Appius Claudius, son of the haughty patrician of the same name, and equally as haughty as he ever was. The laws of Rome before this time had been in a mixed condition, partly written and partly unwritten and traditional; but now all were to be reduced to order, and incorporated with those two laws that could not be touched—that giving the Aventine to the plebeians, and the sacred law settled on the Roman Runnymede after the first secession to the Sacred Mount. After ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... palms of the old man's hands were as white as his own, and the fact was such a source of wonder that he at last made it the subject of remark. The response of Uncle Remus led to the earnest recital of a piece of unwritten history that must prove interesting ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris

... because I did not wish to punish her, and any blow at you would have reached her heavily. The second reason, subordinate to the first, is obvious: decent men, in these days, have tacitly agreed to suspend a violent appeal to the unwritten law as a concession to civilisation. This second reason, however, depends entirely upon the first, as ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... all alike) painfully pshaw-ing over some new and uncut barley sugar in rime, which a man in the street asked us if we had read, or it may be some learned lucubration about the site of Troy by some one we chanced to meet at dinner. It is an unwritten chapter in the history of the human mind, how this literary prurience after new print unmans us for the enjoyment of the old songs chanted forth in the sunrise of human imagination. To ask a man or woman who ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... the impression, however, that this reckless lawlessness was attended with insubordination or lack of discipline. On the contrary, they were rigorously governed by an iron hand and by the unwritten "code of honor." A pirate entered upon "the account" (a term meaning piracy) by taking the oath of fealty to the cause, abjuring all social ties, pledging himself never to desert his ship or defraud ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann

... to be administered. The place of these was taken by public opinion and tradition, that is, by the ideas handed down from one generation to another and constantly discussed around the camp-fire and the council-fire. Every decent Indian was singularly obedient to this unwritten code. He wanted always to do what he was told his fathers had been accustomed to do, and what was expected of him. Thus there was a certain ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... of observations were read aloud at the meetings, particulars recorded of nests that had been built in the school grounds, with data as to the number of days in which eggs were hatched and the young ones fledged. It was an unwritten law at The Woodlands never to disturb the birds. The girls were not allowed to take any eggs from the nests, and were taught not to frighten a sitting bird or to interfere with the fledge-lings. After several years of such consideration The Woodlands ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... in this chapel,—but at its eastern end where the altar might have been, was a dark purple curtain against which blazed in brilliant luminance a Cross and Seven-pointed Star. The rays of light shed by this uplifted Symbol of an unwritten Creed were so vivid as to be almost blinding, and nearly eclipsed the summer glory of the sun itself. Awed by the strange and silent solemnity of my surroundings, I was glad to be hidden under the folds of my enshrouding ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... Derbyshire, where, if by chance the boys saw a man with a moustache, with one accord they commenced calling after him, "Jew, Jew, Jew," or "Frenchy, Frenchy, Frenchy," and, if that did not make any impression, they commenced stoning the offender against the unwritten laws of the land. In later years our barber at Wakefield was somewhat of a dandy, and would, perhaps, have preferred being called a tonsorial artist. He was the first to cultivate a moustache in that West Riding town, ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews

... afternoon tea-party, the launching of the Berinthia Brandon, the ride in the pung. She had received several letters from him, which were laid carefully away in her writing-desk. Many times had they been read and with increasing pleasure. He had not declared his undying love for her; the declaration was unwritten, but it was between the lines. He wanted to be more than he was, and she could help him. He wanted to do something for justice, truth, and liberty; to stand resolutely with those who were ready to make sacrifices for their fellow-men. What a sentence was this: "I want ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... hidden under a fallen tree-top and one day, while the doe was gone, he fell upon the helpless fawn, which, according to the unwritten law of the forest, was his ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... to do. Even I would not write this article, were not the publication-day hard on my heels. I should read Hawthorne and Emerson and Holmes, and dream in my arm-chair, and project in the clouds those lovely unwritten stories that curl and veer and change like mist-wreaths in the sun. So, also, however dignified, however invigorating, however really desirable are habits of life involving daily physical toil, there is a constant evil demon at every one's elbow, seducing him to evade it, or to bear its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... all the horrors of that march,—the pangs of hunger that we suffered, the greed for food, the sights that I saw, nor what men did in their despair. Some things had better remain unwritten. ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan

... reveal. Still the immemorial cult rules all the land. Still the family-law, the communal law, and (though in a more irregular manner) the clan-law, control every action of existence. I do not refer to any written law, but only to the old unwritten religious law, with its host of obligations deriving from ancestor-worship. It is true that many changes—and, in the opinion of the wise, too many changes—have been made in civil legislation; but ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... rule, they amused themselves by shouting rude chaff. The school regarded them with a lofty contempt, much as an Oxford man regards the townee. The school was always anxious for a row, but it was the unwritten law that only in special circumstances should they proceed to active measures. A curious dislike for school-and-town rows and most misplaced severity in dealing with the offenders when they took place, were among the few flaws in the otherwise admirable character of the headmaster ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... read between the lines. Adj. latent; lurking &c.v.; secret &c. 528; occult; implied &c. v.; dormant; abeyant. unapparent, unknown, unseen &c. 441; in the background; invisible &c. 447; indiscoverable[obs3], dark; impenetrable &c. (unintelligible) 519; unspied[obs3], unsuspected. unsaid, unwritten, unpublished, unbreathed[obs3], untalked of[obs3], untold &c. 527, unsung, unexposed, unproclaimed[obs3], undisclosed &c. 529, unexpressed; not expressed, tacit. undeveloped, solved, unexplained, untraced[obs3], undiscovered &c. 480a, untracked, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... a breastwork; self-abnegation is the first of her duties; however much she may suffer, she must present as calm and serene a countenance as a warrior in the hour of danger, and fall, if necessary, upon the spot, with death in her heart and a smile upon her lips. In order to obey this unwritten law, Madame de Bergenheim, after a slight interruption, seated herself at the piano to accompany three or four young girls who were each to sing in turn the songs that they had been drilled ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... the important point, "Van threatened publicity which would embarrass the Patrol and he was legally within his rights. We're outside the law now—but publicity might help again. How many earth-side people know of the unwritten law about open war on plague ships? How many who aren't spacemen know that we could be legally pushed into the sun and fried without any chance to prove we're innocent of carrying a new disease? If we could talk loud and clear to the people at large ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... wash their faces with the same vehemence as they did each other's, but there was no public evidence of partiality. However, if any boy was too rough or took advantage of a girl smaller than himself, he was promptly thrashed by his fellows. There was an unwritten law and public sentiment in that little Academy world that enabled us to study and play together with ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... unwritten; the great deeds are undone; in no biographical dictionary will you find the name of our cousin the curate. Is his life, therefore, lost? Have his ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... be regulated in the absence of any express stipulation with regard to the matter dealt with by such rules. This is done either by statutory enactment, as by that part (Part VIII.) of the Merchant Shipping Act 1804 which deals with the liability of shipowners; or by established rules of the unwritten law, the "common law'' as it is called, as, for instance, the rule that the common carrier is absolutely responsible for the safe delivery of the goods carried, unless it is prevented by the act ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of some kind of equitable arrangement was so strongly felt by American publishers that a kind of unwritten law gradually established itself among them. It was tacitly understood, that, when a publisher had paid an English author for advance sheets, no rival American edition should be published. But it already appears too plainly that an arrangement with no guaranty but a private sense of honor is ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... shall ye not do; and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do; neither shall ye walk in their ordinances." They have not obeyed this command in its letter, but continue to obey its spirit in its unwritten continuation: "After the doings of the English and French and Americans shall ye not do, nor walk in their ordinances, but shall still ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... to go back to Scripture for his defense. It is martial law, unwritten but valid, that if a delinquent soldier, fugitive from justice, or breaking prison, reaches the battle-field and takes his place gallantly, no more would be said about the hanging charge, even though it ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... Indian songs'; though one may reply that he has made use of English writers and collectors of frontier folklore, and indeed he acknowledges his debt to Mr. Thorburn's excellent book on Bannu or our Afghan Frontier. However that may be, we have here, in these unwritten lays, the stuff out of which is developed, first, the established tradition, and, secondly, not only poetry but also the beginnings of history, for these lays are the oral records of contemporary events—'c'est le cri meme de l'histoire.' They ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... new movements. Milton, it need hardly be said, is the master of those who know how to place and displace the stress and accent of the English heroic line in epic poetry. His most majestic hand undid the mechanical bonds of the national line and made it obey the unwritten laws of his genius. His blank verse marches, pauses, lingers, and charges. It feels the strain, it yields, it resists; it is all-expressive. But if the practice of some of the poets succeeding him had tended to make it rigid and tame again, ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... Hercules. Of course he, too, bade the sun to stay a while unmoving, and it did. Joshua, the son of Nun, whose astronomical exploit at Gibeon brought him immortal fame, was a glorious warrior; but Haui's unwritten achievements, as chanted by the orero at the marae where Tetuanui, Brooke, and I stood, would have forced the successor of Moses to have withdrawn his book from circulation, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... of these we are to remove the erroneous opinion of the Socinians. They deny that the image of God consisted in any habitual perfections that adorned the soul of Adam, but, as to his understanding, bring him in void of all notion, a rude, unwritten blank; making him to be created as much an infant as others are born; sent into the world only to read and to spell out a God in the works of creation, to learn by degrees, till at length his understanding grew up to the stature of his body; also without any inherent ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser

... it expresses for the permanent establishment of Afghanistan with our assistance and sympathy under the joint protection of the British and Russian Empires. This suggestion, which is more fully developed in the Sirdar's unwritten message, cannot be entertained ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... remedies to be applied. And all who have read him closely and noticed how, month by month, he grew greater and brighter, will surely join in saying, that the loss of such a work from such a man, at the meridian of his intellectual life, is only second, if not equal, to the loss of the unwritten volumes of Buckle's ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... there are some lines just faintly hinting themselves about your mouth, Messer Oratore! Ah, mind is an enemy to beauty! I myself was thought beautiful by the women at one time—when I was in my swaddling-bands. But now—oime! I carry my unwritten poems in cipher on ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... LORD ARCHBISHOP,—There are some important proposals which I wish to make to the Electors, and as it is an unwritten rule that I should not communicate with them separately, I beg of you to convene a meeting to-morrow, in the Wahlzimmer, at the hour of midday. Perhaps it is permissible to add, for your own information, ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... I think, when the spirit receives Whole volumes of thought on its unwritten leaves; When the folds of the heart in a moment unclose, Like the innermost leaves from the heart of ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... poet, "of that part of the history of king Arthur of England which archbishop Turpin left unwritten, together with the history of the quest of the Sangreal, the whole in heroic measure,—part rhymes, part blank-verse; and in dactyles moreover, that is to say, in dactylic noun substantives, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... headquarters of the Army of the Rhine. Among the resident correspondents who attended the gatherings at the Grand Cafe were Captain Bingham, Blanchard (son of Douglas) Jerrold, and the jaunty Bower, who had once been tried for his life and acquitted by virtue of the "unwritten law" in connection with an affaire passionelle in which he was the aggrieved party. For more than forty years past, whenever I have seen a bluff looking elderly gentleman sporting a buff-waistcoat and a white-spotted blue necktie, I have instinctively thought of Bower, who wore ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... and a pen within thy hand; And thy fingers sweep the paper, and a light is in thine eyes, Whilst I read thy secret fancies, whilst I hear thy secret sighs. What they are I will not whisper, those are lovely, these are deep, But one name is left unwritten, that is only breathed in sleep. Is it wonder that my passion bursts at once from out its nest? I have bent my knee before thee, and my love is all confessed; Though I knew that name unwritten was another name than mine, Though I ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... more concise form, and partly because the principal actor could be spoken of more freely by a third person, than he could speak of himself. Moreover, he had a more dramatic way of telling a story than he had of writing it; and I have tried to embody his unwritten style as nearly as I could remember it. Where-ever incidents or expressions have been added to the published narratives, I have ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... or to vaticinate a reign of socialistic terror for the immediate future. We have to recognize that man cannot be other than what he makes himself; and he makes himself in obedience to immutable although unwritten laws, whereof he only of late years became dimly conscious. It is well, then, while reflecting on the lessons of some deeply studied epoch in world-history, to regard the developments with which we ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... knew him; and of late the attention of the heads of the university had become attracted towards him. Quite unaware of this, he pursued the even tenor of his way, seeking to inspire devotion and love of purity and truth in all with whom he came into contact, but never overstepping the written or unwritten laws of the college, save perhaps that he knew something of the spread of heretical books and doctrines without betraying his knowledge to those ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... then, snugly tucked away underneath all these reasons that might be and ought to be and pretend to be but aren't, hides the real reason, the real moving cause of action. By tacit agreement among human beings there is an unwritten law against the exposing of this real reason, whose naked and ugly face would put in sorry countenance professions of patriotism or philanthropy or altruism or virtue of whatever kind. Stillwater, the Attorney-General and Craig's chief, had a dozen reasons for letting ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... does not define the functions of THE UNITED AMATEUR beyond making imperative the publication of certain official documents. The rest is left to an unwritten combination of tradition and editorial judgment. Any editor, once elected, is absolutely in control of the magazine aside from the essential official matter; his only external obligation being a tacit recognition of the prevailing objects of the Association. In the present case a narrow circle ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... for out of their own salaries) and shipped him back to his people in England. Nevertheless, at Goboto, they tried to be gentlemen. For that matter, though something was wrong with them, they were gentlemen, and had been gentlemen. That was why the great unwritten rule of Goboto was that visitors should put on pants and shoes. Breech-clouts, lava-lavas, and bare legs were not tolerated. When Captain Jensen, the wildest of the Blackbirders though descended from old New York Knickerbocker stock, surged in, clad in ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... he had had borne away the memory of most outrageous insult gratuitously offered and rubbed home. But this particular Jew was a money-lender on occasion, and his rates had proved as reasonable as his acceptance of Alwa's unwritten promise had been prompt. A man who holds his given word as sacred as did Alwa respects, in the teeth of custom or religion, the man who accepts that word; so, when the chance had offered, Alwa had done the Jew occasional favors and had won ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... of Jersey conventional short form: Jersey Digraph: JE Type: British crown dependency Capital: Saint Helier Administrative divisions: none (British crown dependency) Independence: none (British crown dependency) Constitution: unwritten; partly statutes, partly common law and practice Legal system: English law and local statute National holiday: Liberation Day, 9 May (1945) Political parties and leaders: none; all independents Suffrage: universal adult at age NA Elections: Assembly of the States: last held NA (next to be held ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... won't," said Henry, soothingly. He saw that it troubled Sylvia, and it had always been an unwritten maxim with him that Sylvia should not be troubled if it could be helped. He knew that he himself was about to trouble her, and why should she be vexed, in addition, about an uncertainty, as possibly this incipient love-affair might be. After all, why ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... person was somewhat short and thick, whence "lewd fellows of the baser sort" sometimes irreverently called him the "The Jack of Clubs." But he was a really good man, with the most powerful voice I remember to have heard, and he preached, always an unwritten sermon, but with heads set down, anything but smooth things to his numerous congregation. Towards the close of his life he used to remark, that when he first came to this country, the topic of sermons was "Jesus Christ and ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous

... at that time unwritten, or it is possible that the shop assistant might have misunderstood me so far as to produce a copy of Man and Superman. As it was, she knew quite well what he wanted; for this was before the Education Act of 1870 had produced shop assistants ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... the strangest journeys in the vast unwritten history of commercial advance was that made by the five men from the camp of the main expedition across the lower slopes of a mountain range—unmarked on any map, unnamed by any geographer—to the mysterious Simiacine ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... who had lost a sergeant through a German sniper; and the fact was duly reported. Now when a German sniper takes the life of a man in a battalion which goes in for the art itself, it is an unwritten law that from that moment a blood feud exists between the German and English snipers opposite. Though it takes a fortnight to carry out, yet death ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... chapter, I do not observe that an actual Hymen with Nicette "covers the fault" which, after long innocence, she has at last committed or permitted. But perhaps it would have been indecent to contract a second marriage so soon, and it is only postponed to the unwritten first chapter ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... outings, she was generally met in the passage by one or other of the men. Polly liked to receive the homage of real gentlemen, and set her white cap at all indifferently. Thus, just before Clara knocked on that memorable Sunday afternoon, Polly, being confined to the house by the unwritten code regulating the lives of servants, was amusing ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... patriots. Scores who were here despised for cowardice, will there receive the plaudits that await the brave. Legions who have perished in ignominious cells, will there be found crowned heroes. For who knows the yet unwritten record of the horrible war between the States, but the heroes who perished here and passed ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott

... expansion, and short-lived conquest, followed by shrinkage, expulsion, or absorption by another invader. To this constant shifting of races and peoples the name of historical movement has been given, because it underlies most of written history and constitutes the major part of unwritten history, especially that of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... spare, clear brilliancy that the recent removal of ashes imparts to a wood fire. All the world was still beclouded with mists, and the windows and doors looked forth on a blank white nullity—as inexpressive, as enigmatical, as the unwritten page of the unformulated future itself. The present seemed eliminated; he stood as it were in the atmosphere of other days. But whither had blown the incense of that happy time? The lights on the ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... with the evolutions of the Christian Church. In its divergence from Judaism and its beneficent laws, both social and moral, the Christian Church was but illy fit to cope with its persecutors of Pagan tendencies, or to enforce an unwritten law or code of morality or hygiene among an idolatrous, barbarous, and ignorant population such as it had to encounter. To its professors, the formation of that monachism which has been so much misunderstood and abused was but an inevitable condition.[32] These men had not the steady compass ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... breakfast and claimed the coat as belonging to Mrs. Ladley. But she refused to give it up. There is a sort of unwritten law concerning the salvage of flood articles, and I had to leave the coat, as I had my kitchen chair. But it was Mrs. Ladley's, beyond ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... this one, and others with less happy endings, are common, not only in the written history of Connecticut, but in the unwritten traditions of Connecticut families. Whenever there was trouble with the Indians the settlers were exposed to these dangers. In the long wars between France and England for the possession of America, the Indians were often allies of the French, ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton

... reconstructed it, experimenting with his experts in the safety of a different city, for points of evidence that would clinch the case against the accused man beyond all shadow of a doubt? Instinctively Houston felt that he just had heard an unwritten, unmentioned phase of his own murder case. Yet—if that had been Worthington, if those experts had found evidence against him, if the theories of the district attorney had been verified on that gruesome night in the "dead ward" ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... Constitution. Were the case one referring to our British Constitution, a plain man, knowing little of parliamentary usage and nothing of law lore, would probably feel some hesitation in expressing any decided opinion on such a subject, seeing that our constitution is unwritten. But the intention has been that every citizen of the United States should know and understand the rules under which he is to live, and that ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... of the hundred and eighty days allotted to the feast for the nobles, Ahasuerus arranged a great celebration for the residents of Shushan, the capital city of Elam. From the creation of the world until after the deluge the unwritten law had been in force, that the first-born son of the patriarchs was to be the ruler of the world. Thus, Seth was the successor to Adam, and he was followed in turn by Enosh, and so the succession went on, from first-born son to first-born son, down to Noah and his oldest son Shem. Now, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... then, the demeanor of one who knows that he is doomed alone to unwritten responsibilities. He lagged, with tragic ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... the masses of the believers around them, few will probably be willing to take the next step, and, leaving that charmed circle, accept as the depository of their sacred learning the Mysteries of the Early Church. Yet we have S. Paul providing for the transmission of the unwritten teaching, himself initiating S. Timothy, and instructing S. Timothy to initiate others in his turn, who should again hand it on to yet others. We thus see the provision of four successive generations of teachers, spoken of in the Scriptures themselves, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... into the pattern of streets and faces, watching as before the emptiness of life make geometrical figures of itself. Yes, it was better to have her go—simpler. Perhaps a desire would remain, a breath, a moonlit memory of her loveliness to mumble over now and then, like a line of poetry always unwritten. Let her go. Beautiful ... wonderful.... These were words. Was he even sad? ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... and designed to furnish the historical key to the great Elizabethan writings), though now for a long time completed and ready for the press, and though repeated reference is made to it in this volume, is, for the most part, omitted here. It contains a true and before unwritten history, and it will yet, perhaps, be published as it stands; but the vivid and accumulating historic detail, with which more recent research tends to enrich the earlier statement, and disclosures which no invention ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... "Unwritten books in my brain?" Yes, but also in how many other brains of quiet people, books unthought of, "In the Book and Volume" which will be read some day in Heaven, aloud, "When saw we thee?" Yes, and ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin

... this end I have inscribed certain words upon his namepaper. To everyone this person will now return the paper which has been entrusted to him, folded so that the nature of its contents shall be an unwritten leaf to all others. Nor shall the papers be unfolded by any until he is within his own chamber, with barred doors, where all, save the one who shall find the message, shall remain, not venturing forth until daybreak. I, Tung Fel, have spoken, and assuredly ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... and talk over the incidents of the campaigns they had made together. Peter, as a boy, loved to hear them tell their stories, and, as he listened, the thought occurred to him one evening, Why should all this be forgotten? Boy as he was, he began to write them down, under the title of "The Unwritten History of the War in New Jersey." He made considerable progress in it, but unfortunately the manuscript was lost. The taste then formed grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength. At ten he left school ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... next to Adamo and the marchesa, loved Enrica with all the strength of her warm heart, sings all day those unwritten songs of Tuscany that rise and fall with such spontaneous cadence among the vineyards, and in the olive-grounds, that they seem bred in the air—Pipa sings all day for gladness that the signorina is going to marry a rich and handsome gentleman. Marriage, to Pipa's ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... case, it is a futile device. It may work with the haughty Purdaisee, but suppose your Ghorawalla is a Mahar, whose caste is a good way below that of his horse? I have nothing to do with any of these devices. I establish a compact with my man, the unwritten conditions of which are, that I pay him his wages, and supply a proper quantity of provender, while he, on his part, must see that his horse is always fat enough to work, and himself lean enough to run. ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... women's moral acts now fall wholly upon her in the case of disobedience to law. There is still, it is true, in some parts of the civilized world respect for "an unwritten law" that excuses a man for killing a rival in his wife's affections, but for the most part she stands on her own feet and he on his when there is question of ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... By an ancient, unwritten law the whole country is roughly divided among the hunters. Each has his own recognised hunting ground, usually a given river valley, that is his exclusive and hereditary property; another hunter may follow ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... abundance. The Bishop, with characteristic ardour, commenced learning the language, Mr. Waller began building, and Mr. Scudamore improvised a sort of infant school for the children, than which there is no better means for acquiring an unwritten tongue. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... language, thus formulates his fearful indictment: "It is such violation of human and written law as this, carried on for the purpose of violating every other law, unwritten and eternal, human and divine; it is the wholesale persecution of virtue, when united with intelligence, operating upon such a scale that entire classes may with truth be said to be its object, so that the Government is in bitter and cruel, as ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... spelled or written. It meant what civilization could not understand, and the Englishman could not understand—freezing and slow starvation rather than theft, and the living of the tenth commandment above all other things. It came naturally and easily, this "honor of the Beeg Snows." It was an unwritten law which no man cared or dared to break, and to Jan, with his Cree and his French and his "just white" blood, it was in full measure just what the good ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... unwritten. Perhaps she had not yet "absorbed" the "local color"; perhaps inspiration was tardy. At all events she had not written a word. But she was beginning to realize the possibilities; deep in her soul something was moving that would presently flow ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer

... friend this he may do. Pray mark me. Having a law within (great spirits feel one) He cannot, ought not to be bound by any Positive laws or ord'nances extern, But may reject all these: by the law of friendship He may do so much, be they, indifferently, Penn'd statutes, or the land's unwritten usages, As public fame, civil compliances, Misnamed honor, trust in matter of secrets, All vows and promises, the feeble mind's religion, (Binding our morning knowledge to approve What last night's ignorance spake); The ties of blood withal, and prejudice of kin. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... to have less liberty than the slaves. How carefully guarded their position was by unwritten law Mary had reason to know. A girl-wife employed a slave-man to do work for a day. His master unexpectedly sent for him, and he asked the girl for the food which was part of his wage. She at first declined; her husband ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... estates, some of which date from Norman times; I am thinking of the aristocracy, which we Americans repudiated in order to set up a plutocracy instead. Let us hope that what is fine in it will be preserved, for there is much. By the theory of the British constitution —that unwritten but very real document—in return for honours, emoluments, and titles, the burden of government has hitherto been thrown on a class. Nor can it be said that they have been untrue to their responsibility. That class ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill



Words linked to "Unwritten" :   unwritten law, common-law, oral, written, unscripted



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