"Causeless" Quotes from Famous Books
... man of her choice, and that in penance her ghost is condemned to haunt the Old Palace of Berlin and that of Bayreuth. It is believed by some that this apparition of "the White Lady" appears to a member of the Hohenzollern family as a sure forerunner of death; and Carlyle's picture of the causeless fright of one of the royal rulers when he thought he had seen this ghost, will recur to all who have read "Frederick the Great." We have heard of no visitor so fortunate as to get a sight of the apparition. One enters through an ... — In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... queer and suspicious, wanting to know where I had been and what I had been doing, and whom my letters were from, and what I had in my pockets, and a thousand such follies. Day by day she grew queerer and more irritable, and we had causeless rows about nothing. I was fairly puzzled by it all. Sarah avoided me now, but she and Mary were just inseparable. I can see now how she was plotting and scheming and poisoning my wife's mind against me, but I was such a blind beetle that I could not understand it at the time. Then ... — The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... "was an exceedingly proud woman, belonging to a family of social prominence in the East. She felt deeply the causeless gossip connecting her name with the case, as well as the open disgrace of her husband's conviction. She refused to receive her former friends, and even failed in loyalty to your father in his time of trial. It ... — Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... sent for Sir Launcelot, and prayed him of mercy, because she had been wroth with him causeless, and he willingly ... — Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... and whispers. To one who found himself alone, beyond the limits of the village and beyond the hearing of its voices,—the vast silence, the vast light, seemed full of weirdness. And these hushes, these transparencies, do not always inspire a causeless apprehension: they are omens sometimes—omens of coming tempest. Nature,—incomprehensible Sphinx!—before her mightiest bursts of rage, ever puts forth her divinest witchery, makes more ... — Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... shivered she was shorn of her darlings, Of bairns and brothers: they bent to their fate 25 With war-spear wounded; woe was that woman. Not causeless lamented the daughter of Hoce The decree of the Wielder when morning-light came and She was able 'neath heaven to behold the destruction [38] Of brothers and bairns, where ... — Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... piped on: "I'm happy now. Always happy." He broke into thin, causeless laughter. "When I wake up in the middle of the night, instead of feeling miserable like I used to, and remembering things that happened at Dawlish when I was a kid, and wishing I hadn't ever been born as I wasn't any good for anything, I just think of ... — The Judge • Rebecca West
... as to freedom, Spinoza means by this not caprice, nor the monstrous miracle of causeless action, but independence of external force or of any disproportionate and illegitimate passion. The freedom to which he aspires is the freedom of God, who eternally acts in accordance with the mutual harmony of the whole attributes of His nature, not one of which ... — Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... in the ties of amity and brotherhood, to form a blessed league against the marauders of the road. I see amongst you, my Lords, many of the boasts and pillars of the state; but, alas! I think with grief and dismay on the causeless and idle hatred that has grown up between you!—a scandal to our city, and reflecting, let me add, my Lords, no honour on your faith as Christians, nor on your dignity ... — Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... who had to endure the apparently causeless fluctuation of spirits incidental to one compelled to dwell for long periods of time in the fitful ... — Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... long dark passage, knowing the ground better than I do—tamn her, I will have amends on her, if there be whipping-post, or ducking-stool, or a pair of stocks in the parish!" And so saying, the Captain trudged off, his spirits ever and anon agitated by recollection of the causeless aggression of Meg Dods, and again composed to a state of happy serenity by the recollection of the agreeable arrangement which he had made between Mr. Tyrrel, and his ... — St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... to shew, in wordes few, That men have an ill use (To their own shame) women to blame, And causeless ... — The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... without the slip of your own disgrace? Shall ambassage be sent to foreign princes laden with instructions of your rash-advised charge?... I never yet loved you so little as not to moan your infamous dealings, which you are in mind, we see, that myself shall possess more princes witness of my causeless injuries, which I should have wished had passed no seas to testify such memorials of your wrongs. Bethink you of such dealings, and set your labor upon such mends as best may, though not right, yet salve some piece of this overslip; and be assured that you ... — Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... mines of treasure in your breast, Seen by that jealous sun, but not possest. He, like a devil, among the blest above, Can take no pleasure in your heaven of love. Go, take her; and thy causeless fears remove; [To the King. Love her so well, that I with rage may die: Dull husbands have no right to jealousy: If that's allowed, it ... — The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... uneasiness in those round her; the Spanish priest who took them in walked quickly and interrupted them before they were done, and seemed glad to see the last of them. It was explained to Marjorie that the ambassador did not wish to give causeless ... — Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... found life very bright around him. His courtiers called him "the rising sun," and his ambition was to justify the title, to be what with his enormous wealth and authority was scarcely difficult, the Grand Monarch. He rushed into causeless war and snatched provinces from his feeble neighbors, exhausted Germany and decaying Spain. He built huge fortresses along his frontiers, and military roads from end to end of his domains. His court was one continuous ... — The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... is this: "For mine own part, I must confess myself so lost in the intricacies of these relations, that I know not what to assent to. On the one side, I am loath to load the Lord Cobham's memory with causeless crimes, knowing the perfect hatred the clergy in that age bare unto him, and all that looked towards the reformation in religion. Besides, that twenty thousand men should be brought into the field, and no place assigned whence they should have been raised,[293-a] or where mustered, is clogged ... — Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... victim of such a fierce aversion. How she wondered who he was, and what he had done, to be so detested; and it seemed to her gentle nature that no man, not the worst criminal, could, with justice, be so dealt with by a fellow-creature; but a kind of instinct told her that the hate was causeless, and therefore did it seem to wound her, as if herself had been injured. She followed Lady Randolph through the long galleries, and she whose step had been so fearless on the dangerous mountains, now shrank from the shadows on the wall; for it seemed to her as if this house, and every heart within ... — The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the Master is all I know of the devil; I have known hints of him, in the world, but always cowards: he is as bold as a lion, but with the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much surprise in my two cowards. 'Tis true, I saw a hint of the same nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to attend to; the Master has ... — Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... teach mankind to torment themselves, that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, painful and ... — The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... well for Americans to remember, therefore, that while many sided with the king for what they could get, there were others whose minds could not conceive a country without a king, or a subject with inalienable rights. The best of the Tories honestly believed the Whig agitation to be "unnatural, causeless, wanton, and wicked."[10] Such Americans were, in the inevitable struggle, truly ... — The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... slept Secure beneath a coverlet[5] of stone.[6] Then godlike Alexander thus replied. Oh Hector, true in temper as the axe Which in the shipwright's hand the naval plank 70 Divides resistless, doubling all his force, Such is thy dauntless spirit whose reproach Perforce I own, nor causeless nor unjust. Yet let the gracious gifts uncensured pass Of golden Venus; man may not reject 75 The glorious bounty by the Gods bestow'd, Nor follows their beneficence our choice. But if thy pleasure be that I engage With Menelaus in decision ... — The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... are made. That fervent emotion—akin to the passion of love rather than to intellectual or moral conviction—finds voice through singers of a very different tone. It is fed by an inward anguish, and felicity which, to those who have not felt them, seem as causeless as a lover's moods; by wrestlings not with flesh and blood; by nights of despairing self-abasement; by ecstasies of an incommunicable peace. How great the gulf between Wordsworth and George Herbert!—Herbert ... — Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... theory of Chances; bookmaking; assurance; speculation, gaming &c. 621. V. chance, hap, turn up; fall to one's lot; be one's -fate &c. 601; stumble on light upon; take one's chance &c. 621. Adj. casual, fortuitous, accidental, adventitious, causeless, incidental, contingent, uncaused, undetermined, indeterminate; random, statistical; possible &c. 470; unintentional &c. 621. Adv. by chance, accidentally, by accident; casually; perchance &c. (possibly) 470; for aught one knows; as good would have it, as bad would ... — Roget's Thesaurus
... conversations with Mad. de Coulanges, the same feelings of irritation and contempt recurred; and Emilie, who was a clear-sighted bystander, suffered continual uneasiness upon these occasions—uneasiness, which appeared to Mad. de Coulanges perfectly causeless, and at which she frequently expressed her astonishment. Emilie's prescient kindness often, indeed, "felt the coming storm;" while her mother's careless eye saw not, even when the dark cloud was just ready to burst over her head. With all the innocent address of which ... — Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... his apparently causeless emotion, he stepped to the clerk who always stood next to Arthur, and inquired if he knew where ... — The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... tortured, and even killed! This was the verdict of her own conscience, the assertion of his own lips. She remembered the wearing life of alternate hope and fear she had caused him. She remembered how eagerly he hung on her smiles and sugared nothings, and how her equally causeless frowns would darken all the world to him. She saw day after day how she had developed in a strong, true heart, with its native power to love unimpaired, the most intense passion, and all that her own lesser light might burn a little more ... — Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... first lecture at the Collège de France. Returning home he loaded two pistols, one for the first student who should again insult him, and the other to blow out his own brains. It was no idle threat. The man Guizot had nicknamed ‘Werther’ was capable of executing his plan, for this causeless unpopularity was anguish to him. After his death, I found those two pistols loaded in his bedroom, but justice had been done another way. All opposition had vanished. Every student in the ‘Quarter’ followed the modest ... — The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... to dewy eve," provided a flask of Gascon wine, or a stoup of good English ale, remained on the board. It may be remembered that De Walton, when he dismissed the minstrel from the dungeon, was sensible that he owed him some compensation for the causeless suspicion which had dictated his imprisonment, more particularly as he was a valued servant, and had shown himself the faithful confidant of the Lady Augusta de Berkely, and the person who was moreover likely to know ... — Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... a side-door; he seemed agitated, and so absorbed in some anxiety that he forgot to remove his hat. The beadle caught him by the arm, and his face became livid, but, turning round, he saw at once that his fears were causeless. ... — The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... the brief interview with Stewart and dwelt upon it. Little things which had at the time made no impression upon him began to recur and to take on significance. He remembered the elder man's odd and strained manner at the beginning, his sudden and causeless change to ease and to something that was almost like a triumphant excitement, and then his absurd story about Ste. Marie's flirtation with a lady. Hartley thought of these things; he thought also of the fact that ... — Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... had, in a fit of causeless despair, told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and she tortured to tell; whether Durga Charan knew his name and what became of Bisesa—Trejago does not know to this day. Something horrible had happened, and the thought of what ... — Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... evening, in place of that physical contentment which usually heralds the dinner-hour, at sea, I experienced a fit of the seemingly causeless apprehension which too often in the past had harbingered the coming of grim events; which I had learnt to associate with the nearing presence of one of Fu-Manchu's death-agents. In view of the facts, as I afterwards knew them to be, I cannot account ... — The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... cause, the terrified crew wet their powder and ceased to fire on the British works. The panic spread to the other batteries, and from them to the forces on shore, even the commander-in-chief being affected by the causeless fear. At one moment the assailants were enthusiastic with expectation of success. Not many minutes afterwards they were so overcome with unreasoning terror that an insane order was given to burn the batteries, and these were fired with such precipitate haste that the crews were allowed no time ... — Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... effect without a cause, in many places alleges the die and the balance, and several other things, which cannot fall or incline either one way or the other without some cause or difference, either wholly within them or coming to them from without; for that what is causeless (he says) is wholly insubsistent, as also what is fortuitous; and in those motions devised by some and called adventitious, there occur certain obscure causes, which, being concealed from us, move our inclinations to one side or other. These are some of those things which are most evidently ... — Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... timidly avoids and flies from the object of his envy, who stands the more completely alone, the more brilliant he is; and this is the reason why pretty girls have no friends of their own sex. He betrays himself, too, by the causeless hatred which he shows—a hatred which finds vent in a violent explosion at any circumstance however trivial, though it is often only the product of his imagination. How many such men there are in the world may be recognised by the universal praise of modesty, that is, of a virtue invented ... — The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... seen that I was jealous, without being able to see any just cause for my jealousy. It was, however, quite enough for a proud spirit like my own, that its secret fear should be revealed. It did not much matter, after this, whether my suspicions were, or were not causeless. It was enough that they were known—that busy, meddling women, and men about town, should distinguish me with a finger—should say: "His wife is ... — Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Even now a little softness, a little womanly gentleness and sympathy, and, above all, a wise forbearance from probing into his still open wounds, might have won a certain amount of gratitude and affection from him. But Helen was unequal to this. She only drove him wild with causeless and senseless jealousy, and goaded him almost to madness by endless suspicions and ... — Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... as it might seem, with all knowledge, here uses the word "causeless" in its strict philosophical sense;—cause being truly predicable only of phenomena, that is, things natural, and not of ... — Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... take this letter. It reached my hands by chance, and by mistake, and should have accounted to you (as I am told) for my son's not answering some other note of yours. God forbid, Miss Haredale,' said the good gentleman, with great emotion, 'that there should be in your gentle breast one causeless ground of quarrel with him. You should know, and you will see, that he ... — Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... equally true that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. When I was engaged in a controversy with the CLARION on the matter of free will, that able writer Mr. R.B.Suthers said that free will was lunacy, because it meant causeless actions, and the actions of a lunatic would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse in determinist logic. Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is ... — Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... laughter during this speech, at length broke out into a fit of mirth, so hearty and so resistless, that, angry as he was, the call of sympathy swept Nigel along with him, and despite of himself, he could not forbear to join in a burst of laughter, which he thought not only causeless, but ... — The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the mark of death upon his face," Mannering answered. "The men who are traitors to their country to-day are those who, healthy enough themselves, talk causeless and shallow optimism which is fed alone by their own prosperity. The doctrine of Christ is the care of others. If you do not believe, the sick-room is open also to you; go there unprejudiced, and with an open mind, and you will come away as I have ... — A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... first sorrows. Furthermore, these are troublous days. Saw you not the temper of the assembly to-night? Egypt is a-quiver with irritation. Every little ripple in the smooth current of life seems magnified—each man seeketh provocation to vent his causeless exasperation. And when such ferment worketh in the gathering of the young, it is portentous. It bodeth evil! You are but caught in the fever, my Kenkenes, and your little vexations are inflamed until they hurt, ... — The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... hereditary expressive movements. The signs are in great part themselves unabridged imitations. The agreement, or "convention," which many teachers of deaf-mutes assume, and which would introduce an entirely causeless, not to say mysterious, principle, consists in this, that all deaf-mutes in the beginning imitate the same thing in the same way. Thus, through this perfectly natural accord of all, it comes to pass that they understand one another. When they ... — The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... another calls sour, and one feels as noise what another feels as toothache, they cannot enter into a social group. Yet it is no less confusing and no less antisocial if the world which one sees as a system of causes and effects is to another a realm of capricious, causeless, zigzag happenings. The mental links which join society are threatened if some live with their thoughts in a world of order and natural law, and others ... — Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... Susanna Martin, upon a Causeless Disgust, had threatned him, about a certain Cow of his, That she should never do him any more Good: and it came to pass accordingly. For soon after the Cow was found stark dead on the dry Ground, without any Distemper to be discerned upon ... — The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... physician, sir; Doctor Parkes, sir; the owner of this house, sir," replied he, with all the sternness he could command, and yet white as a specter with agitation. "For shame, sir, for shame, to give way thus. What do you mean by creating this causeless alarm, and disturbing the whole household at so unseasonable an hour? For shame, sir; go to your bed; undress yourself this moment; ... — The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... question. His supporters cheered defiantly. 'None o' that! None o' that!' came from the Back Benches. I saw the Speaker's face stiffen like the face of a helmsman as he humours a hard-mouthed yacht after a sudden following sea. The trouble was barely met in time. There came a fresh, apparently causeless gust a few minutes later—savage, threatening, but futile. It died out—one could hear the sigh—in sudden wrathful realisation of the dreary hours ahead, and the ship of ... — A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... words, such is her woe; But old Fitzwater, for his girl and him, Begs nothing but world's plague for such a foe, Which causeless harm'd a virtuous nobleman, A pitier of his griefs, when he felt grief. Therefore, bethink thee of thy hateful deed, Thou faithless Prior, and ... — A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the Erbprinz's fainting fits were more frequent than ever, and the Erbprincessin sank into a deep and brooding melancholy, which was varied by attacks of painful excitement and sudden bursts of causeless anger. It was whispered at Ludwigsburg that she was ... — A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... dark soul by jealous rage inspir'd, Before the gods, while curling incense blaz'd, His suppliant hands to Jove almighty rais'd. "All potent Jove! those eyes that view the Moor 260 From painted coaches full libations pour, See they not this? Or when thy thunder rolls Do causeless fears, O Father, shake our souls? Is there no vengeance in the bolt you poise? Is all but fancied horror, empty noise? 265 A woman, wand'ring outcast on our shore, Bargains a petty spot and owns no more, Accepts a portion of our coast to till, Ev'n from our ... — The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... Sophie's pure judgment. So plain would this be to Bressant himself, that Cornelia would be able to rule him (as she argued) merely with the threat of accusation. And, since his desertion of Sophie would appear to her causeless, the indignation she would feel thereat would save her from repining. Cornelia would have him all ... — Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... without those outbursts of fierce and bitter sorrow that purify the soul and uplift the brow in a splendid renewal of hope and courage? Better a thousand times to suffer, to toil, to fight and weep, than to let life exhale itself in a ceaseless irresponsible gayety, causeless, objectless, and imperturbable! Better to stand bleeding on the breach than to lie dreaming ... — Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... beginning, although later it may be absent. Tics are of cortical origin, being coordinated and synergic, clonic or at times tonic[*] muscular movements, physiologically and not anatomically grouped, premeditated, purposive, of abnormal intensity, apparently causeless ... — The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... my fire, talking his broken talk or singing his odd, endless, wordless songs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes with an affectionate manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me an embarrassment of which I was ashamed. But for all that, he was capable of flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy sullenness. At a word of reproof, I have seen him upset the dish of which I was about to eat, and this not surreptitiously, but with defiance; and similarly at a hint of inquisition. I was not unnaturally curious, ... — The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... see anything so impolite in that. Perhaps he wasn't European in his manners," suggested Mrs. Mortimer dryly. She had evidently arisen in the grasp of a mood, not uncommon with her, when an apparently causeless irritability drove her to say things for which she afterward suffered an honest but fruitless remorse. Dr. Melton had recently evolved for this characteristic of hers one of the explanations which the Emerys found so enigmatic. "Marietta," he said critically, ... — The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... beating against the trees, the blackness of the enshrouding forest, the low, melancholy wind,—all things seemed strange, and yet deadly old, as though we had seen and heard them since the beginning of the world. All at once a fear fell upon me, causeless and unreasonable, but weighing upon my heart like a stone. She was in a palisaded town, under the Governor's protection, with my friends about her and my enemy lying sick, unable to harm her. It was I, not she, that was in danger. I laughed ... — To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... little, hurrying steps. He would feel the light breath behind him, and instantly he would be conscious of a soothing, rejuvenating influence. She would throw her plump little arms around his neck with affectionate warmth, with her artless, causeless laugh, and a kiss from that little mouth which never had lied. Claire Fromont, standing in the doorway, would smile as she looked ... — Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... know how to believe all this now," said Margaret; "it seems so causeless and ridiculous! In Birmingham we could never have given credit to the story of ... — Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... I am a rebellious rebel. Yes,' she added, rising, 'I detest with all my heart this wicked, causeless rebellion. I detest the very names of the leaders of it. And yet I am compelled to go about with lies upon my lips, and to act lies, till I detest myself more than all else! I have consoled myself somewhat by making a flag and worshiping it in secret. I will get ... — Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... unpleasant impression upon my mind. The violent and causeless excitement, followed by this brutality of speech, so far removed from his usual suavity, showed me how deep was the disorganization of his mind. Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable. I sat in silent dejection until the stipulated time had passed. ... — The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... downfall into ruin of the loftiest bravery which ever astounded history,—is that causeless? No. The shadow of an enormous right is projected athwart Waterloo. It is the day of destiny. The force which is mightier than man produced that day. Hence the terrified wrinkle of those brows; hence all those great souls surrendering their swords. Those who ... — Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... smote down his brother, and was himself smitten down before he had time to exult in his victory. The trumpeters, all the while, blew their blasts shriller and shriller; each soldier shouted a battle cry, and often fell with it on his lips. It was the strangest spectacle of causeless wrath, and of mischief for no good end, that had ever been witnessed; but, after all, it was neither more foolish nor more wicked than a thousand battles that have since been fought, in which men have slain their brothers with just as ... — Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... alone did they agree; they were unanimous that if Young Denny Bolton's bearing that morning—the angle at which he held his chin, and the huge cut that adorned it, and his causeless mirth—was not entirely damning, it was at least suspicious enough to require more than a little explanation. But that verdict, too, was none other than the very one which the Judge had already ... — Once to Every Man • Larry Evans |