"Coincidence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... When we contemplate the coincidence of circumstances and wonderful combination of causes which gradually prepared the people of this country for independence; when we contemplate the rise, progress, and termination of the late war, which gave them a name among ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... determined. The bamboo is filled with water while in the vertical position. It is then tilted till it points towards a certain star, when of course some water escapes. After it has been restored to the vertical, the level of the surface of the remaining water is noted. The coincidence of this level with the mark mentioned above indicates that the time ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... demand, that such phratries as are spread over wide areas should in the main follow the lines of linguistic or cultural areas. Our knowledge of these is hardly sufficient to enable us to say at present how far the presumption of coincidence is fulfilled; but it is certain that in more than one large area the facts are as Mr Lang's theory requires ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... Sir S. might think it was my fault, their coming to stay at the pretty hotel he'd chosen for us because it overlooked the river; but it wasn't a bit. It was just as much a coincidence as Mrs. West and Basil finding three Canadian friends already there—perhaps even more of a coincidence; for it didn't seem to me that Mrs. West was really astonished at finding these people at a Dumfries hotel, or they ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... which proved a bar to his union with Laura. With regard, however, to "one piece of documentary evidence," namely, Laura de Sade's will, Dr. Garnett admits that, if this were producible, and, on being produced, proved genuine, the coincidence of the date of the will, April 3, 1348, with a note in Petrarch's handwriting, dated April 6, 1348, which records the death of Laura, would almost establish the truth of the abbe's theory "in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... me; it seemed like some immortal wisdom come from another world. Remember that I was on the point of going. Nor is this all. If nothing else had happened, I might have looked upon Father Moran's visit as a coincidence. But why should the wind rise? So far as I can make out, it began to rise between eleven and twelve, at the very time I should have been swimming between Castle Island and the Joycetown shore. I know that belief in signs and ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... passage did show that one hindrance to Hamlet's action was his conscience, it by no means follows that this was the sole or the chief hindrance. And, thirdly, let him observe, and let him ask himself whether the coincidence is a mere accident, that Hamlet is here almost repeating the words he used in vain self-reproach some time before (IV. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... footlights and had fled—or had fallen—to the Black Rim country. Like many another, she had gone as far as her money would take her. That it took her to the end of the little branch railroad that stopped abruptly with its nose against a mountain twenty miles from the Devil's Tooth ranch was a coincidence,—or the whim of Fate. There she was, as strange to the outland as young Tom would have been to the city whence she had come; thinking perhaps to start life afresh in some little Western town; with no money to carry her back to the outskirts ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... first of Ibsen's plays in which the puppets have no visible wires." It may even be said that it was the first modern drama in which no wires had been employed. Not that even here the execution is perfect, as Ibsen afterwards made it. The arm of coincidence is terribly shortened, and the early acts, clever and entertaining as they are, are still far from the inevitability of real life. But when, in the wonderful last act, Nora issues from her bedroom, dressed ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... inexplicable and half-superstitious uneasiness that this coincidence awakened in Mulrady's unimaginative mind, he was almost on the point of disclosing his good fortune to the driver, in order to prove how preposterous was the parallel, but checked ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... transported thence several hundred miles to its present site. It measures sixty-eight feet in height, and is not less than eight feet square at its base—one solid shaft of granite; but this is exceeded by the one still at Thebes, which is a hundred feet high. It struck me as a notable coincidence that the ingenious Frenchman who first proved the truth of the supposed hieroglyphic alphabet should have done so by assuming that the name repeated so frequently upon a certain stone extolling the virtues of Ptolemy Soter, must be that of the ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Mr. Barker deplored this coincidence, which put a stop to "Attila." "But have you never yourself been the victim of these odd coincidences, and, just as you had fixed upon a subject or a title, found yourself superseded—a thing next in atrocity ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... adequate knowledge of itself, nor of its body, nor of external bodies, but only a confused knowledge, as often as it perceives things in the common order of Nature, that is to say, as often as it is determined to the contemplation of this or that externally—namely, by a chance coincidence, and not as often as it is determined internally—for the reason that it contemplates several things at once, and is determined to understand in what they differ, agree, or oppose one another; for whenever it is internally disposed in this or in ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... nature, that now when her trouble had overtaken her, and that she had lost the love which had suddenly sprung from her heart—full-grown and clad in power as Athena sprang from the head of Jove—Jess had no further inclination to use her divine gift of song. Probably it was nothing more than a coincidence, although a ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... answer. He was, in fact, looking towards the doorway, and the group on the porch were surprised to see a gleam of mirthful understanding start in his eyes. An answering gleam was in Victoria's, who had at that moment, by a singular coincidence, come out of the house. She came directly down the steps and out on the gravel, and held her hand to him in the buggy, and he flushed with pleasure as he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the paradoxes of the situation, both in Austria and in Germany, is the coincidence of the great gold hunt, which is clearing out the trinkets of the humblest, with the roaring trade in jewelry in Berlin and Vienna. As an instance I can vouch for the ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... of this find meaning anything at all to her against the coincidence of another author using the quotation in writing a scenario. She did not know what to think. Which supposition was the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... population are distributed pretty regularly along the line, so that their influences are nearly equalized. But occasionally some large impulse may serve to start a swing and if this impulse is somewhat regularly repeated, it may serve to keep up the rhythmic motion. True, the lack of coincidence in the impact of various influences which occur accidentally, such as political changes, wars, and the rapid opening of new routes of transportation, would serve to hasten or to retard, perhaps for a time quite to alter, what would otherwise ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... as due to hysteria, and in a small number of instances there are signs which justify such an explanation. But in the larger proportion the mode of origin is complex, and depends on the coincidence of a variety of evils, none of which are of hysterical character. I am not here concerned so much with the exact nature of these troubles as I am with the avoidable errors in the management of sick childhood. If I can ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... this coincidence of names there ran through his mind one of those snatches of song which Hervey Willetts was ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... As I noted how the main bunch of roses and lilies was connected by long satin ribbons to the lesser clusters which hung from it, I recalled with conceivable horror the use to which a similar ribbon had been put in the room below. In the shudder called up by this coincidence I forgot to speculate how a bouquet carried by the bride could have found its way back to this upstairs room when, as all accounts agree, she had fled from the parlor below without speaking or staying foot the moment she was told of the catastrophe which had taken place in the library. ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... too, and the coincidence gave colour to the rest of the woman's tale, as would have happened if the whole story had been an invention instead of being quite true. Nella was combing the girl's thick hair, an operation peculiarly conducive to a maid's chattering, for she ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... savage passion, "you are aware, I believe, that the immortal gods have a hand in human affairs: what did they do but lead these scoundrels aboard this ship in ignorance of the owner and then warn each of us alike, by a coincidence of dreams, of what they had done? Can you then see how it would be possible to let off those whom a god has, himself, delivered up to punishment? I am not a cruel man; what moves me is this: I am afraid I shall have to endure myself whatever I ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... that at Billinsgate, they had a new Wallfleet Oyster bed. The fact that Wallfleet oysters were marketed at Billinsgate, always the big fish market of the Londoners, and that our Wellfleet was at first known as Billingsgate, seems more than a mere coincidence. ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... and as there didn't seem any real need of grieving because there was no one to meet me, I thought I might as well enjoy myself. I did. I could not help the train being late, and I didn't forget to mail my letter on purpose; and it was an accident, or coincidence, that a nice man should be on the same train I was, who lived in the place I was going to spend the summer in, and knew very well the house I wanted to get to. I didn't know he had been engaged to the niece of the house and hadn't been to the latter ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... purchaser.' It is difficult to say which is most astounding, the law or the morals of this position. At all events, 'the foreign holders' of Confederate bonds are informed by Jefferson Davis, that this is the law. Indeed it is a singular coincidence, that one of the objections made to the payment of the Union Bank bonds by the Governor, was, as he alleged, 'the monstrous assumption of power on the part of the bank, in seeking to monopolize the cotton crop of the State, and becoming a factor and shipper of our great staple.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... curious coincidence! I was about to tender you the same advice, Sir Robert," I told ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... a curious coincidence, but you never seemed to me more delicious or more lasciviously excellent in your fucking than you did just now. As it is but once let us take more care in future, and hope nothing will come of this little and ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... Thompson had felt an impulse to speak to the man that morning. If any legitimate excuse had offered he would have done so. To find the man apparently at home on the boat in which he himself was taking brief passage was a coincidence of which Thompson proceeded to take immediate advantage. He climbed into the cockpit. The man ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... forty-five. By a strange coincidence Mr. Carve has suggested to me that we set out for England to-morrow. At Dover I will telegraph you with a rendezvous. In great haste. Till then, my dear ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... a moment, Mr. Henry Bannerworth did incidentally mention something of the sort. It's a most singular coincidence." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... the Orchestra—quite a coincidence, isn't it? You were so absorbed, you see!—No, I won't keep you out here, thanks; my sister will take care ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... as if he were talking to himself: "It is ver-y singular. Yes... very strange. A curious coincidence." Then he began to ask questions, and went over the whole ground from the beginning, we answering. By and by he said: "Eleven hundred and six ducats. It is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were now opening to them. In conclusion, he admitted in their full extent the reasons which had been given by the noble lords for their several resignations, and the statements which they had made in accounting for that remarkable coincidence; but he could not help expressing his surprise that government had been able to go on so long, being conducted, as it now appeared, by ministers who did not think proper to communicate with one another upon the most important question ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... chamber, I said nothing of all this. He was, by an odd coincidence, looking over a portfolio of Fayal sketches made by himself during his late voyage. Among them were a dozen studies of just such capotes as I had seen,—some in profile, completely screening the wearer, others disclosing women's faces, old or young. He seemed to ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... presented to us respecting its symptoms and its course, yet these are sufficient to throw light upon the form of the malady, and they are worthy of credence, from their coincidence with the signs of the same ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... is a language of flowery metaphors. It means, I suppose, that when you touch the drums they bite. In journeying from one spot to another they always leave misfortune behind, as I understand it. Just coincidence; but you couldn't drive that into an Oriental skull. This is what makes the study of precious stones so interesting. There is always some enchantment, some evil spell. To handle the drums is to invite a minor accident. Call it twaddle; probably ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... the coat? Ah! true, the colour is lilac.' He held it out at arm's length. Doubtless I had been staring at the coat, but I had not even given it a thought. 'The lilac shadow!' he went on, with a sneer. 'Believe me, it is the purest coincidence.' And as he prepared to slip his arm into the sleeve I flashed the knife out of my belt. He was too quick for me, however. He flung the coat over my head. I felt the knife twisted out of my hand; he stumbled ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... "Is this another coincidence?" he asked. "Did the man who left you his clothes and the barred silk handkerchief and the tight shoes leave you ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... character which it is impossible to mistake. What shall we think of him who never differed from a certain set of men until the moment they lost their power, and who never agreed with them in a single instance afterwards? Would not such a coincidence of interest and opinion be rather fortunate? Would it not be an extraordinary cast upon the dice that a man's connections should degenerate into faction, precisely at the critical moment when they ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... last, is an action of unseen, uncomprehended forces which can be made the subject of actual experiment. Nay, more, the very fact that in this special direction experiment turns out to be possible, is in itself an augury that we are on a true scientific track; for it involves a remarkable coincidence between a theoretical conclusion and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... "What a delightful coincidence! We were girls together at Albany. You must remember Judge Warne?" she said, turning to Mr. Langhope, who, twirling his white moustache, murmured, a shade less cordially: ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... flashed into his mind. It was no coincidence that he had a copy of the very book to which his unknown correspondent referred him. For the note had been written in this very room, on stationery conveniently at hand, on the noiseless typewriter which had been far more considerate about ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... one of the party of four in our compartment. Great was his joy when a conjuring trick of coincidence revealed that the jolly sister who came to ask what we would like to drink proved to be not only a Canadian, but actually from his own little township in Manitoba. While they discussed mutual friends the rest of us felt highly ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... anticipated in pointing out this fact by the author of the biographical essay on "Spenser" in this series—an essay to which I cannot help taking this opportunity of offering a tribute of sincere admiration. It may not be an undesigned coincidence that the inconsolable widower of the "Daphnaida" is named Alcyon, while Chaucer's poem begins with a reference to the myth of Ceyx and Alcyone. Sir Arthur Gorges re-appears in Alcyon in "Colin Clout's come home again."); but it is ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... before I had seen his picture in our Sunday-school quarterly, and now, confused in my eyes with the dancing trees, I saw him, as I had seen him in the picture, suspended from a limb by his long hair, quietly waiting to be taken down. There was something more than a mere coincidence in that Sunday-school lesson. Here was another warning neglected. With Mr. Pound and Stacy Shunk, Miss Spinner took a place as a prophetess. She had taught me that boys who mocked their respectable elders were eaten by bears, and I believed her. She had demonstrated ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... and no doubt, if she thought it would flatter, would tell, a beautiful young girl that her destiny was to be a queen; but there is in this prediction a minuteness of detail, that cannot be accounted for on the ground of accidental coincidence. It is a brief history of her life. Unless we are prepared to believe that an ignorant old mulatto woman was gifted by divine Providence with supernatural power, constituted a second Witch of Endor, and able by "examining ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... Mabel was married to Sir Hubert, we cannot take it upon us to say. At any rate, we prefer the Scotch poet's description, as somewhat the more pithy, and graphic, and intelligible of the two. The coincidence, however, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... odd coincidence that Baroni should be acquainted both with Miss de Gervais and with Errington, and at her next lesson she ventured to comment on the former's visit. Baroni's answer, however, furnished a perfectly simple ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... strange coincidence through which the fame of the Dyn Hyspys became greatly increased. An event of this kind is related by Mr. Edward ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... intelligence, but he also has a singular capacity for perpetrating dreadful blunders. Over in the town of Nockamixon one of the churches last year called a clergyman named Rev. Joseph Striker. In the same place, by a most unfortunate coincidence, resides also a prize-fighter named Joseph Striker, and rumors were afloat a few weeks ago that the latter Joseph was about to engage in a contest with a Jersey pugilist for the championship. Our sheriff considered it his duty to warn Joseph against the proposed ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... appearance of so large a comet as is now interesting the astronomical world, almost contemporaneously with our victory in Egypt, would have been looked upon as an omen of great portent, and it is a curious coincidence that the first glimpse Sir Garnet Wolseley had of this erratic luminary was when standing, on the eventful morning of September 13, 1882, watch in hand, before the intrenchments of Tel-el-Kebir, waiting to give the word to advance. As may be seen in our sketch, the comet ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... Chris," Lute said. "You know that. It's merely coincidence that two horses in two days should have ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... automatically, like marionettes, the one from pleasure, the other from surprise. Had he seen? Had he noticed? The light blue eyes stared coolly ahead. For pure callous indifference their expression could not have been beaten. Coincidence! Nothing more. ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... newspaper correspondent," Duncombe said. "He has many interests and many friends with whom he is constantly exchanging information. It is a coincidence, I admit. But the wildest flight of imagination could not make any more ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... replied: "The coincidence of circumstances which led to this auspicious crisis, the confidence reposed in me by my fellow-citizens, and the assistance I may expect from counsels which will be dictated by an enlarged and liberal policy, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... mentioned the birrus of Laodicea, an imitation of the birrus of the Nervii, which was a very fine linen cloth, worn by ladies of fashion. Laodicea was one of the most ancient centres of Oriental textile fabrics; the Nervii were one of the most remote of the Gallic peoples, living—the coincidence is noteworthy—about where Flanders is now. If at Laodicea they made at the end of the third century an imitation of Nervian linen, that means that the Nervii had succeeded in manufacturing and finding market for cloth so desirable as to rouse the Laodiceans, competing for trade, to ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... only we must restrict intellect to the comparing or interlacing of single perceptions.' But man transcends in his mental powers the barriers of the brute intellect at a point which coincides with the starting-point of language. And in this coincidence Professor Mueller endeavors to find a sufficiently fundamental explanation of the problem of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... variations, and the public declaration of the calendar for each year, was a very serious and important task, affecting all kinds of legal contracts. The pontiffs to whom the duty was assigned abused their power for political ends, and so little care had they taken to regulate the civil year and keep it in coincidence with the solar year that in the time of Julius Caesar the civil equinox differed from the astronomical by three months, the real spring equinox occurring, not at the end of what was called March by the calendar, ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... be easy enough to ignore Jevons. In fact, if Jevons hadn't given Viola away just now I should have thought that she was travelling in Belgium on her own account and that his being here in the same town with her was a coincidence, an accident. I could have got over Withers and ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... hinted that Narcissus, like the Catholic Church, worshipped many saints. At this time, one of them, by a thrilling coincidence, chanced to have her shrine at a boarding-school, some fifteen miles or so from the mill-pond on whose banks the Miller's Daughter had drawn into her lovely face so much of the beauty of the world. Alice Sunshine, shall we call ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... when we had altered the inscriptions on the trees. The gale which had wrecked the pirate had driven the Triton somewhat to the southward of her course for the Bonins, whither she was bound to look for us; and thus, by a wonderful coincidence, she appeared at the very moment her coming was of most importance to rescue us from slavery, if not, more probably, from ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the stranger. "Well, it is a curious coincidence, but neither am I alone—I have brought a little lad here to show him the cathedral—he has gone into the Whispering Gallery, and I am waiting for him. Perhaps your friends have also gone into the gallery. While we are both waiting, shall we look round this delightful ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... great when we discovered Captain Wedderburn dressed out in the garb of a Junker of the middle ages, and "bonny Girzie Sinclair," the Laird of Roslin's daughter, masquerading as a German Frauelein. The coincidence, if it be not plagiary, is so curious, that we have translated the ballad with a much freer hand than usual, confessing at the same time that the advantage, in point of humour and gallantry, is clearly on the side ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... said Tom, "they must very well have known my phiz, as I have been sketched and caricatured all over the shop. When I told them who I was they had the decency to let me go. They thought they'd scored off me enough, I reckon. Yes, it certainly is a strange coincidence that I might actually have had something to do with the poor fellow's death, which has cut me up as much as anybody; though if they had known I had just come from the 'scene of the crime,' and actually lived in the house, they would probably have—let me alone." He laughed ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... examples among others which he brings to explain the better what he means by his first philosophy. The first is this axiom, "If to unequals you add equals, all will be unequal." This, he says, is an axiom of justice as well as of mathematics; and he asks whether there is not a true coincidence between commutative and distributive justice, and arithmetical and geometrical proportion. But I would ask in my turn whether the certainty that any arithmetician or geometrician has of the arithmetical or geometrical truth will lead him to discover this coincidence. ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... Luke, 'I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected,' 'I must walk to-day and to-morrow and the day following,' points to the very duration of our Lord's ministry, as indicated by the fourth Gospel. If so, the coincidence is the more remarkable because it does not appear that St. Luke himself, while wording these prophetic words, was aware of ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... Feast of Dedication. What was he doing—outside the Ghetto gates—in that great, dark, narrow-meshed city of Rome, defying the Papal law, and of all nights in the year on that sinister night when, by a coincidence of chronology, the Christian persecutor celebrated the birth of his Saviour? Through misty eyes she saw her husband's face, stern and rugged, yet made venerable by the flowing white of his locks and beard, as with the supernumerary taper he prepared to light the wax candles in the nine-branched ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... general use, embroidered hangings mostly disappeared. Whatever may have been the cause, there is no doubt of the coincidence. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and by the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and co-ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg's wrongs, the movement of troops into Prussia—undertaken (as it seemed to Napoleon) only ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... only what K. had suspected before. But a sense of impending danger to Sidney obsessed him. If Carlotta would do that, what would she do when she learned of the engagement? And he had known her before. He believed she was totally unscrupulous. The odd coincidence of their paths ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... fallen from his tie. He was maladroit about picking it up, trying with thumb and forefinger to seize the pin itself, instead of the more readily grasped design of small pearls at the top, so that he pushed it a little deeper into the gravel; and then occurred a tiny coincidence: the elderly man, passing, let fall the apple from his hand, and it rolled toward the pin just as Corliss managed to secure the latter. For an instant, though the situation was so absolutely commonplace, so casual, Cora had a ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... I see! What a strange coincidence, Mr. Wilfer, that I should see your really admirable Rubens in the afternoon, and run against—or perhaps I should say, ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... they met people from home—the McGanums. They laughed, shook hands repeatedly, and exclaimed, "Well, this is quite a coincidence!" They asked when the McGanums had come down, and begged for news of the town they had left two days before. Whatever the McGanums were at home, here they stood out as so superior to all the undistinguishable strangers absurdly ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... was faded and dim; but he saw again the child's eyes lifted to it—the lips half-parted, the eager question and swift demand—that he should tell her of Athens and the Parthenon—and the same love and the wonder that dwelt in his own heart for the city of his birth. It was a strange coincidence that the child should have come to him. Perhaps she was the one soul in the great, hurrying city who could care. They did not understand—these hurrying, breathless men and women—how a heart could ache for something ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... ally Petion should be the chief. We know from his own nauseating account of his conduct while journeying back from Varennes to Paris with the unfortunate royal family, how unbridled were Petion's dreams of his own probable share in this regency; and by a very curious coincidence a passage in the diary of Gouverneur Morris confirms, on the authority of Vicq d'Azyr, the Queen's physician, Petion's odious revelations of his own ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Cape Jervis, has been furnished me by the kindness of Mr. Kent, who accompanied the lamented officer to whom the further exploration of that part of coast unhappily proved fatal. There is a melancholy coincidence between Captain Barker's death and that of Captain Cook, which cannot fail to interest the public, as the information that has been furnished will call for their serious consideration. I shall leave for their proper place, the remarks I ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... permitted to control the Congress or the Executive, but have only such influence as the force of its reasoning may discover. It is believed that this part of the message, which gave scandal to legalists, was supplied by Taney, the Attorney-General. It is a curious coincidence, if this be so, that more than twenty years later we shall find another great President, though bred in the anti-Jacksonian Whig tradition, compelled to take up much the same attitude in regard to a Supreme Court ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... It is a coincidence, accidental, yet noteworthy for its significance, that the date of the first hostile action against the United States, July 31, was also that of the official promulgation of treaties of peace between Great ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... It was merely coincidence that a near flash of lightning flamed from the heavens as she lifted the knife,—but it inspired every Indian to a crashing ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... doubt with a cynical eye on possible black-type headlines of future domestic discord. Among those mentioned by the enterprising society reporters of the papers had been the same Miss Violet Winslow whose picture I had admired. Evidently Garrick had recognized the coincidence. ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... been convicted but for a curious coincidence: A dissipated young lawyer, named Sydney Carton, sitting in the court room, had noticed with surprise that he himself looked very much like the prisoner; in fact, that they were so much alike they might almost have been taken for twin brothers. He called the attention of Darnay's lawyer to ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... most notable political action of the Fair Play settlers is their declaration of independence, which Meginness calls "a remarkable coincidence" because "it took place about the same time that the Declaration was signed in Philadelphia!"[42] Aware, as were many of the American colonists in the spring and summer of 1776, that independence was being debated in Philadelphia, these West Branch pioneers decided to absolve themselves ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... try it out!" he exclaimed suddenly, gripped by the amazing coincidence between this case and that so aptly described by Hugo. "I said I would if ever I had a chance. It worked miracles in the story; perhaps it may in real life, Anyway, it's going to be worth while, and give me a heap of enjoyment ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... to a useless martyrdom without averting the fall of his priory. It may be mentioned, as having some bearing on our history, that part of the wealth released by the Act was applied to the foundation of six new bishoprics, thus by a strange coincidence bringing up the English dioceses to the number of twenty-four, originally fixed upon by Pope Gregory the Great, while his successor was set at defiance by the measures through which they ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... strikingly suggestive of the Elephant Mound of Wisconsin, with the peculiarities of which the sculptor, whether ancient or modern, might almost be supposed to have been acquainted. It certainly must be looked upon as a curious coincidence that carvings found at a point so remote from the Elephant Mound, and presumably the work of other hands, should so closely copy the imperfections ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... secondly, as the tutelary emblem under which his conquering legions had so often obeyed his voice; and, thirdly, as the bird of Jove. To this triple relation of the bird his dream covertly appears to point. And a singular coincidence appears between this dream and a little anecdote brought down to us, as having actually occurred in Rome about twenty-four hours before his death. A little bird, which by some is represented as a very small kind of sparrow, but which, both to the Greeks and the Romans, was known by a ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... seemed, had driven him into exile at the age of ten, because of his liberal opinions; since when he had travelled the world for his instruction and pleasure... a philosopher prince. By a remarkable coincidence the prince had spent three years in Tarascon, but when Tartarin expressed astonishment at never having seen him at the club or on the promonade, "I didn't go out much" Said the prince in a somewhat evasive manner, and Tartarin discretely asked no more questions. Important ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... thought that they both knew everything, but she seemed so calm and quiet, that I set aside my suspicions, and thought it was only some strange coincidence, as I could not believe in such dissimulation on her part, and so, after half-an-hour's friendly talk, which was, however, interrupted a dozen times by her little girl coming in and out of the room. I went away, very much annoyed. Just imagine the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... wasn't a certainty. This mother and daughter were always together. What was to befall the one might anywhere—anywhere—befall the other. But a like fate, in an equally near future, was in store for that other lady. The coincidence was curious, very. Here we all were together—here, they and I—I who was narrowly to escape, so soon now, what they, so soon now, were to suffer. Oh, there was an inference to be drawn. Not a sure inference, I told myself. And always I was talking, talking, and the train was swinging and swaying ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... she neared the city; whereupon she fired three guns to leeward, hoisted the private signal, and showed the Union Jack. Then, at last, a cheer went up that told both friend and foe of British victory and American defeat. By a strange coincidence the parole for this triumphal day was St George, while the parole appointed for the victorious New Year's Eve had been St Denis; so that the patron saints of France and England happen to be associated with the two great days on which the stronghold ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... as if to strike her with its club. They both reached the bottom of the flight at the same time,—the woman insensible from the fright. Her child, born some little time afterward, was club-footed. However—on second thought,—if the reader sees any coincidence in this, he must do it at ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... eyes lighted on an account of this very affair—Abraham Thornton's challenge to battle when he was accused of murder, in 1817. According to Mark Twain, Dr. Holmes was disposed to accept "Mental Telegraphy" rather than mere chance as the cause of this coincidence. Yet the anecdote of the challenge seems to have been a favourite of his. It occurs in, "The Professor," in the fifth section. Perhaps he told it pretty frequently; probably that is why the printed version was sent to him; still, he was a little staggered by the coincidence. There ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... (except in the formal titles to some of them) told in the first person by Jeremiah himself,(39) while from 604-3 onwards the biographical narratives are much more numerous and, except in three of them,(40) the Prophet appears only in the third person. This coincidence of the first appearance of Baruch as the Prophet's associate with the start of a numerous series of narratives of the Prophet's life in which he appears in the third person can hardly ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... exactly the way I feel!" Lemuel was proud of the coincidence. He said, to commend himself further to Miss Carver, "I have just ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... from some odd coincidence with the name of their authors. Thus, De Saussay has written a folio volume, consisting of panegyrics of persons of eminence whose Christian names were Andrew; because Andrew was his own name. Two Jesuits made a similar collection of illustrious men whose Christian names were Theophilus ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... "The Marble Faun" is original sin. It is a story of the fall of man, told again in the light of modern science. It is a wonderful coincidence that almost in the same months that Hawthorne was writing this romance, Charles Darwin was also finishing his work on the "Origin of Species;" for one is the moral counterpart of the other. Hawthorne did ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... was with Mr. Leroux, and Mr. John Exel, M. P., at the time that the murder was discovered. The executors of the late Mr. Horace Vernon are faced with extraordinary difficulties in administering the will of the deceased, owing to the tragic coincidence of his wife's murder within twenty-four ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... he said, "I believe that she has reasons for desiring her present whereabouts to remain unknown. I should perhaps not have mentioned her name at all. It was, I fancy, indiscreet of me. The coincidence of hearing you mention the name of the place where I believe she resided surprised my question. With your permission we will ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lest his own senses gave him false intelligence, and that he had really assumed some frightful and revolting shape. It was curious that, partly by his own fault, and largely, no doubt, through the operation of mere coincidence, he was once or twice strongly confirmed in this fantastic delusion. He came one day into a lonely and unfrequented byway, a country lane falling into ruin, but still fringed with elms that had formed an avenue leading to the old manor-house. It was now the road of communication ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... the most rational explanation of the cause of the earth's elliptical orbit that I have ever seen in print. It is because the earth presents its watery hemisphere to the sun at one time and that of solid land the other; but why has he made his Oxonian astonished at the coincidence? It is what I taught in my attic ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... locked up in the new church, now so nearly completed, on the spot where they picked up the eagle! How shall it be dedicated to Desmotes in Desmotes' lifetime? Were it not a most blissful and appropriate coincidence if the day of the consecration were that of the saint's migration to a better world? I shall submit this view of the case to my uncle: he is accustomed to hear reason from me, of whom, between ourselves, he is not a little afraid. Thou mayest rely upon it that about the ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... pierced with most beautiful patterns, some quite Gothic, but the majority almost Moorish in design, not unlike the slabs in the circles over the cloister arcades at Alcobaca, but though this is probably only a coincidence, still more like those at Tarragona in ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... mariner; [144:1] and it can be shewn that, with such a gale as was then blowing, the sea still dashes with amazing violence against the very same point of land off which Paul and his companions were that night labouring. In the depth of the water at the place there is another most remarkable coincidence. We are told that the sailors "sounded and found it twenty fathoms, and when they had gone a little farther, they sounded, and found it fifteen fathoms." [144:2] "But what," observes a modern writer, "are the soundings at this point? They are ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... name was Zaphnath-paaneah, meaning a revealer of secrets! When I heard that name this morning, I thought it was strangely familiar. Pharaoh called him that when he appointed him ruler, because he had interpreted his dream," I said, just realizing the very peculiar coincidence. ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... Solitude, where he had fought the good fight and won it, and invited him to take up the breast-plate of faith that now fell off his own shrunken body, Clement said within himself: "Heaven itself led my foot hither to this end." It struck him, too, as no small coincidence that his patron, St. Bavon, was a hermit, and an austere one, a cuirassier of the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... and father which gave him a horror of human love was now renewed. It was renewed, moreover, with the light of a miracle to throw it into high relief. And this miracle could not be explained away as a coincidence, but was an old-fashioned miracle that required no psychical buttressing, a hard and fast miracle able to withstand any criticism. It was a pity that out of regard for Esther he could not publish it for the encouragement of the faithful and the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... some reason for Florent's presence, and at the same time avoid exciting the suspicion of the police. He told them that in order to return to France he had availed himself of the papers of a poor fellow who had died in his arms at Surinam from yellow fever. By a singular coincidence this young fellow's ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... spoken for /me,/ and I sensed a strange secret service intrigue around me. Then, in an instant this impression, which had got the better of my common sense, gave way. Evidently a pure coincidence. Still I was left with the vague apprehension that they were going to notice that I /knew,/ and were going ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... front of the church quacks used to harangue the mob and give advice gratis. Westminster elections are held also on the same spot—that's a coincidence. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... his chin. "By the Lord Harry," says he, "'tis a case that lacks precedents! But the coincidence of the Christian names is devilish awkward; the service takes no cognizance of surnames; and I have merely united a ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... precept may be noted. It was not coincidence merely, but related cause and effect, that Ferdinand Foch was one of the ablest military writers of the twentieth century before he won immortality on the field of war, that the elder von Moltke was as skilled with ink as with powder, and that we still ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... Gaston Max, foremost criminologist in Europe, who now lay dead and mutilated in an East-End mortuary? The telephone message which had summoned Dunbar away had been too opportune to be regarded as a mere coincidence. Mlle. Dorian was, therefore, an accomplice ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... strode off. The tinker watched him as he had watched Leonard, and then dogged the uncle as he had dogged the nephew. I don't presume to say that there was cause and effect in what happened that night, but it was what is called "a curious coincidence" that that night one of Richard Avenel's ricks was set on fire; and that that day he had called Mr. Sprott an incendiary. Mr. Sprott was a man of very high spirit and did not forgive an insult easily. His nature was inflammatory, and so was that of the lucifers which he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... his supremacy in the state, had laid before him this great manual for his guidance. Caesar evinced the deepest respect for Varro, and must have carefully studied his views. At least it can be no mere coincidence that Augustus, in carrying out his predecessor's plans for the restoration of public worship, should have followed so closely on the lines which we see from Augustine Varro struck out. To consider Varro's labours as undirected to any practical object would be to misinterpret them altogether. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... was born on the same day as the Count of Chambord, the 29th of September, 1820. He was greatly struck with this coincidence, indulging himself in a vague dream, in which he established a connection between the king's return to France and his own private fortunes. He never said exactly what he was expecting, but he led people ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... these developments. They took some time to come to formation. Although the converter was ready by September 1862, the blowing engine was not completed until the spring of 1864 and the first "blow" successfully made in 1864. It may be no more than a coincidence that the start of production seems to have been impossible before the arrival in this country of a young man, L. M. Hart, who had been trained in Bessemer operations at the plant of the Jackson Brothers at St. Seurin ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop
... volume, is the result of many years of labour. Thousands of children have been attentively observed, and for the necessities that arose in their instruction, provision has been made. Others have doubtless reached some of the conclusions at which I have arrived, but this is only another instance of the coincidence in judgment and effort, often discoverable in persons far apart, whose attention has been directed to similiar subjects; but with the exception of the elliptical plan, devised by Dr. Gilchrist, I am not aware that ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... Gospel of St. Mark. That the development should have been on the same lines in all essential matters of symbol and (in the most important respects) of doctrine, modified only by Eastern habits of thought and environment, is a miracle of coincidence which cannot be paralleled in the world unless it be granted that Christianity filtering along the great trade routes of an earlier world joined hands with Buddhism in many unsuspected ways and places. Evidence is accumulating that this is so, and in a measure at present almost incredible. And if ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... Revolution. Accordingly, we find that all these great European characters—for so they all are more or less—made the all-important passage from youth into manhood during the ferment of the years that followed that ominous date, 1789. This coincidence explains the celebrity of the famous biographical year 1769—Walter Scott was born in that year, Wellington and Napoleon, as every body knows—and the elder Aristarchus of the Romantic school, the translator of Shakspeare, Augustus William Von Schlegel was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... responsible for the lamentable death of Prince Robin. The people were to be given swift, uncontrovertible proof that he had no hand in the unforeseen transactions of the anarchists, who, he would make it appear, had by curious coincidence elected to kill the Prince almost at the very hour when he planned to seize ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and the presence of M. Fauchelevent in the barricade, was a coincidence which occurred to him. He pointed out ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... background, from which position he winked occasionally at the parson over the minister's shoulder. "Ah, Robarts, delighted to see you. How odd, by the by, that your brother should be my private secretary!" Mark said that it was a singular coincidence. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... from the same vital mood, into the most diverse and incommunicable images. Interlocutors speaking prose, on the contrary, pelt and besiege one another with a peripheral attack; they come into contact at sundry superficial points and thence push their agreement inwards, until perhaps a practical coincidence is arrived at in their thought. Agreement is produced by controlling each mind externally, through a series of checks and little appeals to possible sensation; whereas in poetry the agreement, where it exists, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Feminine softness and delicacy were in this lovely creature deliciously combined with an appearance of health and abounding physical vitality too often lacking in the maidens with whom alone I could compare her. It was a coincidence trifling in comparison with the general strangeness of the situation, but still striking, that her name should ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... accident—extraordinarily and suspiciously opportune for Dudley as it would have been—could not be altogether ruled out but for the further circumstance that Lady Robert had removed everybody from Cumnor on that day. To what can this point—unless we accept an altogether incredible chain of coincidence—but to some such ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... figure of speech transferred from the sphere of mathematics, may be doubted. That Plato and the most subtle philosopher of the nineteenth century should have lighted upon the same notion, is a singular coincidence of ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... was Juste-Romain-Cyrille, and their ages were identical—forty-seven years. This coincidence caused them satisfaction, but surprised them, each having thought the other much older. They next vented their admiration for Providence, whose ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... very day on which the law about me was carried. I arrived at Brundisium on the 5th of August. There my dear Tulhiola met me on what was her own birthday, which happened also to be the name-day of the colony of Brundisium and of the temple of Safety, near your house. This coincidence was noticed and celebrated with warm congratulations by the citizens of Brundisium. On the 8th of August, while still at Brundisium, I learnt by a letter from Quintus that the law had been passed at the comitia centuriata with a surprising enthusiasm on the part of all ages and ranks, and ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... seems strange, indeed," said Richard, "as showing she attached importance to the affair herself. It was a most curious coincidence, to say the least of it. But what is this Flying Dutchman, of which you also spoke? I did not know he ever came so far out of ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Those who hold that the sacraments do not cause grace save by a certain coincidence, deny the sacraments any power that is itself productive of the sacramental effect, and hold that the Divine power assists the sacraments and produces their effect. But if we hold that a sacrament is an instrumental cause of grace, we must needs allow that there is in the sacraments ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... domain of pathology, which is as doomful as you please; but in our ordinary modern life ninety per cent. of the tragedies are determined by sheer million to one fortuities. The history of our great criminal trials, for instance, is a romance of coincidence. It is your melodramatist and not your Aristotelian purist that knows what he's talking about when he writes a play. He only has to look about him and draw what happens in real life. That there may be an Eternal Puckish Malice arranging and deranging human destinies is another question. I am neither ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... you a second Letter (which will reach you, I suppose, by the same Post as that which I posted on Thursday Jan. 22) to tell you that not half an hour after I had posted that first Letter, arrived yours! And now, to make the Coincidence stranger, your Brother Charles, who is now with us for two days, tells me that very Thursday Jan. 24 (? 22) is your Birthday! I am extremely obliged to you for your long, kind, and interesting Letter: yes, yes: I should have liked to be on the Voyage ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... and there I lay thinking of you, spending your nights up here all alone, and no one to look after you. I wondered what you could be doing and what might be happening to you. I said to myself at once, 'Either this is a coincidence or the caper sauce.' But I made sure it was you. I felt I MUST do something anyhow, and up I came just as soon as ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... She told me over again the story that little Doris had told me of the big Daddy who had felt the call to go to France in the Y.M.C.A. to help the poor "coolies," several hundred of whom were, by strange coincidence, going back to China on the same boat with us, and with that brave mother and those dear children. These "coolies" were going back alive, but he who went to serve them died. "Others he saved; Himself he could not save," echoed in my soul as ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... a coincidence—an odd coincidence. When the ship tossed in an unusually rough crossing he was prepared to admit to himself that it was an ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... a free agent and at liberty to go where he willed. If it so chanced that his fancy took him to the city of Matanzas at the same time O'Reilly happened to be traveling thither, the circumstance might be put down to the long arm of coincidence. If his company were distasteful to the elder man, O'Reilly was free to wait and follow later; it was a matter of complete indifference to Jacket. He had business in Matanzas and he proposed to attend to it. The boy lied gravely, unblushingly. Nevertheless, ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... prominent Englishman noted for boasting of his ancestry. Taking a coin from his pocket, the Englishman said: "My great-great-grandfather was made a lord by the king whose picture you see on this shilling." "Indeed!" replied the governor, smiling, as he produced another coin. "What a coincidence! My great-great-grandfather was made an angel by the Indian whose picture you see ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers |
