"Random" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... influence. It is further stated that their orbits so intersect each other, that if they were imagined to be material rings, they would be inseparable, and the whole could be suspended by taking any one of them up at random. Here, then, is presented to us a kind or order of celestial phenomena for whose well-being and effectual working the Centripetal Force or the Attraction of Gravitation cannot possibly account. In ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... these obstacles Benvenuto roamed about at random, cursing his bad luck, when suddenly he hit his foot against a long pole which lay hidden in the straw. With a good deal of effort he managed to raise it against the wall and to scramble up to the top. Here he found a sharply sloping coping stone which made it impossible ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... so, Master Guy, but I would rather fight by day than by night; it is random work when you can neither see your mark nor look straight along your arrow. If we had a moon we should do well enough, but on these dark nights skill does not go for much; still, I doubt not that we shall ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... sophist this you speak of, who is able to compel those who have no wisdom to be rightly wise. But (for thou art arguing too refinedly on no suitable occasion) I fear, O father, lest thy tongue be talking at random through ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... the bulbous-rooted fumitory," said the young man, pulling a piece at random in the reckless way in which men do disfigure forest flower-beds. "It isn't strictly indigenous, but it is naturalized in many places, and you must have seen it before, though you fancy ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... using my scissors somewhat at random on my author's paragraphs, since one place is as good as another for entering a ring by, and the expert reader will discern at once the authentic dialectic circling. Other paragraphs show Mr. Blood as more Hegelian still, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... bars, which he cautiously removed, and, when he had passed through them, as deliberately replaced. He then proceeded along an obscure path, which led across stubble-fields, to a wood. The path continued through the wood, but he quickly struck out of it, and made his way, seemingly at random, through a most perplexing undergrowth of ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... several large and small trees of the Weschcke variety are located in orchard and random locations, some having been grafted in 1926 and later. Also, there is a sprinkling of Bridgewater variety, grafted in 1936 and later, all ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... disinfectants, tobacco and leather. Wade made himself comfortable in a big padded armchair, one of those genuinely comfortable chairs which modern furnishers have thrust into oblivion, picked up a magazine at random, slapped the dust off it and filled his pipe. He was disturbed by the sound of brisk footsteps on the bricks outside. Then a key was inserted in the lock and the Doctor entered from the ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... his right hand. He waved it up and down rapidly. He opened his eyes for an instant as if to find somebody. He seemed to be closing imaginary windows—and so he was. It leaked out the next day at Mr. Gray's that Dr. Peewee was telegraphing the sexton at random—for he did not know where to look for him—to close the windows. Nobody better understood the danger of draughts from windows, during thunder-storms, than the Doctor; nobody knew better than he that the lightning-rod ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... scene of the disaster was approached there was revealed upon the plates a confused mass of debris; a mass whose individual units were apparently moving at random: yet which was as a whole still following the orbit of Roger's planetoid. Space was full of machine parts, structural members, furniture, flotsam of all kinds; and everywhere were the bodies of men. Some were encased in space-suits, and it was ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... blows, which descended on or about his ears. On the contrary, his blows were all received straightforward, and my nose and face were soon covered with blood. As I warmed with pain and rage I flung out my arms at random, and Barnaby gave me a knock-down blow. I was picked up and sat upon my second's knee, who whispered to me as I spat the blood out of my mouth, "Take it coolly, and make sure ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... (Chap. 24, No. 5) that in New Testament usage many words have a technical and therefore peculiar meaning. We are not at liberty, however, to determine such technical meanings at random, or in accordance with any preconceived opinions. It can only be done, as in the case of all other writings, in accordance with the acknowledged laws of interpretation. The general result, then, at which we arrive is, that in determining the meaning of scriptural terms ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... The air is filled with the screaming of their bullets, and a wild storm sweeps over the heads of the men from Nebraska, who lose but ten men killed and wounded in this terrible contest. The Nebraska men are old hunters, and do not fire at random, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... turning east. Now all plans concerning Broadway were given up; also, he felt no anxiety about getting lost. For he went at random. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... minutes after came in a friend with a young lady, the former of whom asked Mr. Random why he was not ready to go with them to the concert that evening, as he had promised. Mr. Random replied that it was but six o'clock, which, however, he was soon convinced was a mistake of Richard's, who, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... fooleries wherein he was the butt. Whether it was devised by some wicked rhymester and contemner of royalty in the neighbourhood, or placed there by some of the wits of his own company, was never ascertained, though he challenged them at random, and swore lustily that he would know the originator of this ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... from a dim motive of politeness towards him that Mrs. Ellison chose the excursion; though this did not prevent her from wondering aloud afterward, from time to time, why she had chosen it. He was restless and absent, and answered at random when points of the debate were referred to him, but he eagerly assented to the conclusion, and was in haste ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... sicknesses. This is an emblem of their minds; at first they have no principles laid down within them as a foundation for the intellect to build upon: they have no discriminating convictions, and no grasp of consequences. And therefore they talk at random, if they talk much, and cannot help being flippant, or what is emphatically called "young." They are merely dazzled by phenomena, instead of perceiving things as ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Roman army, in reply to a few questions which I had put to him. All who have heard his statements may judge whether his account of facts be not marked with every note of accuracy. They will believe that his power of oratory DOES NOT betray him into random declamation. Under date of March 20th, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... it is not to be supposed that this episode at the Thing in 1031 is brought in at random and without any cause. There are two obvious reasons for assigning twenty years to the length of Grettir's outlawry, and for bringing into the tale a discussion on that subject just where it is done. The one we may call the reason of traditional ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... at random. Mr. Fernald quietly walked up the aisle to the platform. Mr. Moller arose and for a moment the two spoke in low tones. Then the principal nodded, smiled and turned to retrace his steps. As he did so his smiling regard fell upon the occupants ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Sindai; for he has a Sinda city on the coast close to this position, though his Sindai islands are dropt far away. But it would not be difficult to show that Ptolemy's islands have been located almost at random, or as from a pepper castor." (Yule, Oldest Records, p. 657.)] The group consists of a larger island about 12 miles long, two of 2 or 3 miles, and some half-dozen others of insignificant dimensions. The large one is now specially called Pulo ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... ruin done by Scamp, the Bishop's wire-haired fox-terrier, and then, going across, he put on his spectacles and wondered what had been at work. For the level which had been so carefully established was all undone. At first the Doctor thought it was the mischief of some random beast, this confusion of hills and valleys which had taken place of the billiard-table of the night before. And then it reminded him of the raised maps which he had seen in the Diocesan Training Schools, and then it reminded him more ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... still happen daily by hundreds. Greater or smaller pogroms with murder, rape, and plunder have thus taken place in the districts of Warsaw, Random, Petrikow, and Kelts. ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... desire to show ingenuity, no matter whether just or unjust.—Most deeply, too, do I feel the honor of having a suggestion such as mine adopted,—I thought when my letter had gone that I had written in a strange, random humor, and that had I got a "Mind your own business" sort of answer, it was no more than such unasked-for meddling might expect. I am glad with all my heart at what you tell me about the success of the tale. But we really will not wait so long for ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... myself here principally with literature, because, in England at all events, literature plays the largest part in general culture. It may be said that we owe some of the best literature we have to amateurs. To contrast a few names, taken at random, Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, Dr. Johnson, De Quincey, Tennyson, and Carlyle were professionals, it is true; but, on the other hand, Milton, Gray, Boswell, Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, Shelley, Browning, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... woodland scene beneath the cliff opposite the present inhabited portion of New York, at a spot now traversed or closely approached by the river road, but then readily accessible only by water. Hamilton fell at the first fire, mortally wounded, his pistol-shot striking at random a twig some seven feet above the head of his antagonist. Burr fled, a wanderer over the earth. Hamilton was carried across the river, supported by Pendleton and Dr. Hosack, to the house of his friend, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... thorn and cherry being all in full bloom. We were received at the door by a middle-aged woman, with the ruddy glow of health on her cheeks, and dressed in coarse, plain, but remarkably neat and suitable, attire. As this was a cottage selected at random, and visited without previous intimation of our intention, I took particular notice of every thing I saw, because I regarded its appearance as a fair specimen of its ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... carried a copy, for company, in the side-pocket of my coat for a week, and just peeped into it at odd times. I remember that I thought so little of the volume that I read it with a lead-pencil and marked it all up and down and over, and filled the fly-leaves with random thoughts, and disfigured the margins with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... white liveries were still waiting—patiently waiting—under the gray hillside, and the wind brought me a mocking echo of the words I had just heard. Kitty bantered me a good deal on my silence throughout the remainder of the ride. I had been talking up till then wildly and at random. To save my life I could not speak afterwards naturally, and from Sanjowlie to the Church wisely ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... more. He bowed me politely out, and I walked down the street, and realised that I was restless and wretched. I wandered at random for a while. trying to think what else I could do, for my own peace of mind, if not for Sylvia's welfare. I found myself inventing one worry after another. Dr. Overton had not said just when he was going, and suppose she were to need someone at once? Or suppose something ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... We passed the huge brown Moultrie House, in summer a gay resort, at present a barrack; passed the hundred scattered cottages of the island, mostly untenanted now, and looking among the sand-drifts as if they had been washed ashore at random; passed the low walls of Fort Moultrie, once visibly yellow, but now almost hidden by the new glacis, and surmounted by piles of barrels and bags of sand, with here and there palmetto stockades as a casing for the improvised ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... Marutta). 'I too am quite able to do all that.' Then, O prince, that Brahmana, raving like a lunatic, and repeatedly scolding Marutta with rude words, again accosted him thus, 'I am afflicted with a cerebral disorder, and, I always act according to the random caprices of my own mind. Why art thou bent upon having this sacrifice performed by a priest of such a singular disposition? My brother is able to officiate at sacrifices, and he has gone over to Vasava (Indra), and is engaged in performing his sacrifices, do thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... but also the new hats and the Waltham watches. Why do they not read? All have been taught, and curious as the inconsistency may seem, they all value the privilege of being able to read and write, and yet they do not exercise it, except in a casual, random way. I for one, when the public schools began all through the rural districts, thought that at last the printing-press was going to reach the country people. In a measure it has done so, but in a flickering, uncertain ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... will be interested in other books of a nature similar to that which you have just finished reading, the publishers have reproduced on the following pages a few extracts from other Star books. These are pages picked at random. Although there is no continuity, we hope that they will give you some idea of the style in which the books are written and perhaps the character of the subject from which you may form an opinion as to its place ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... made jottings in pencil (with Baudin's pencil, which I had with me); I registered facts at random; I reproduce this page here. These living facts are useful for History; the coup d'etat is there, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... greatest it is liable to, is, that we study Form, and neglect Matter. We are often very flowing, and under a full Sail of Words, while we leave our Sense fast aground, as too weighty to float on Frothiness; We run on, upon false Scents, like a Spaniel, that starts away at Random after a Stone, which is kept back in the Hand, though It seem'd to fly before him. To speak with Freedom on this Subject, is a Task of more Danger than Honour; for few Minds have real Greatness enough to consider a Detection of their Errors, ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... long time we could find no indication of a house, until, at last, the barking of a dog gave us a clue. After some dispute as to which side of the road it was on, we struck off over a field. Our only guide were the random flashes of lightning that gave us a momentary view of the country around. The better to prosecute our search, we formed a line within hearing distance of each other, and thus swept around in all directions. At last we found a barn, but were so wet ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... dog-carts and traps and wagons With hampers of lunches, pies and flagons, Bucks from city and flash young bloods With vests "cut saucy" to show their studs, Hawbuck Towler and Spicey Random Tooled in style in a rakish tandem. Blood Dick Haggit and Bertie Askins Had dancers' skirts on their horses' gaskins; Crash Pete Snounce with that girl of Dowser's Drove a horse that was wearing trousers; The waggonette from ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... his bedroom, and before a small oil-lamp he murmurs, shortly before the feast takes place, the following prayer or incantation: "Grandfather and Grandmother Sroekoel" (the name seems to be taken at random; others are sometimes used), "return to your country. Akkemat is your country. Put down your water-cask, close it properly, that not a drop may fall out." While he utters this prayer the sorcerer looks upwards, burning incense the while. So among the Toradjas the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... horrible mixtures which I had been forced to consume while there, and which now began to tell on my constitution. Notwithstanding repeated doses of cognac, taken from time to time as I walked the decks, the sea began to whirl all round, the clouds overhead to swing about at random through the rigging, and the odor of the machinery to produce the strongest and most disagreeable sensations. I went below to see how things looked there; but, finding the atmosphere dense and the prospect gloomy, returned in great haste and looked over the bulwarks to see how fast we were ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... known by gentlemen in this city to recite this poem with fine effect, and cry all the while. This was on the principle of "guilty people sitting at a play." His pocket-book was generally full of little selections picked up at random, and he had considerable ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... the men proceed at random, and it is not unusual for a suitor who has been refused in one place and another to proceed at once to a third or fourth.... Many a bridegroom sees his bride for the first time at the ceremony of the priestly ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... hunted gesture. How could he have left her to that, he who had sworn that he would never leave her? In every one of those letters beneath her linked fingers he had sworn it—in every one perjured—false half a hundred times. Pick up any one of them at random— ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... functioning government; the United Somali Congress (USC) ousted the regime of Major General Mohamed SIAD Barre on 27 January 1991; the present political situation is one of anarchy, marked by interclan fighting and random banditry ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... provisions, he sailed round to the coast of Xaragua, where he arrived in February. Here he was well received by the Spaniards resident in that province, who supplied all his wants. Among them were many of the late comrades of Roldan; loose, random characters, impatient of order and restraint, and burning with animosity against the admiral, for having again brought them under the wholesome authority ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... following her or if his presence were due to accident. Having now arrived at the residential part of the town, where every house stood back from the road and was sheltered by a garden, she coolly opened a gate at random and walked boldly in. The man was still some way behind, and she had ample time to pass through the garden and reach the veranda before he ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... verging on excessive. Said of hardware or (esp.) software designs, this has many of the connotations of {elephantine} or {monstrosity} but is less extreme and not pejorative in itself. "Metafont even has features to introduce random variations to its letterform output. Now *that* ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... in which Field at this time viewed the methods, duties, and responsibilities of journalism may be gleaned from the following specimens taken at random from his "Tribune ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... had taken to flight for injuries often less serious than hers. He could have mentioned names: his head was full of those who let their anger, or their folly, get the better of them and escaped at random, and who went back to every-day life—through the door of scandal—sometimes to meet with worse: martyrdom of the heart, base exploitation in the name of love. Oh, he pitied them from the bottom of his soul! No, Lily shouldn't run away: it was impossible! But what a pity, all the same, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... was swept and washed. Sunlight poured into it at one end through a window that opened on an inner courtyard, and there were flowers everywhere— arranged in an enormous brass bowl on a little table—scattered at random on the floor—hung in plaited garlands from the hooks intended to support lamps. Of furniture there was little, only a long cushioned bench down the length of the wall beneath the window, and a thing like a throne on which Jinendra's high ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... the purpose, will, when his imagination has once learned to entertain the notion, find no difficulty in conceiving that in some one, for instance, of the many firmaments into which sidereal astronomy now divides the universe, events may succeed one another at random, without any fixed law; nor can any thing in our experience, or in our mental nature, constitute a sufficient, or indeed any, reason for believing that this is nowhere the case. The grounds, therefore, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... staircase. He did not see any one in the hall, nor was there any sound just then. He called out "Who's there?" The answer was a bullet, which struck the wall behind them. Then Crosland fired down into the hall, but at random. He saw no one, but as a fact he shot the ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... the first man who flinches.' And so they set off, but very slowly, like men whose legs were of very little use to them. I sent four of them three hundred yards ahead, to scout, and the others followed pellmell, walking at random and without any order. I put the strongest in the rear, with orders to quicken the pace of the sluggards with the points of ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... is high time! Let us not sink into slumber and call it prudence: up to now I have been content to see you sitting patiently at my feet; but I no longer want you there. Enough of this! I dream of roaming with you at random in the open fields, I dream of making you laugh and cry, of feeling your young soul fresh and sensitive as your cheeks. I dream of stirring your heart and rousing your imagination. We will go far across the countryside; together we shall see the light wane and the darkness ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... Near us frown Ceraunia's rocks, whence shortest lies the way To Italy. And now the sun goes down, And darkness gathers on the mountains grey. Close by the water, in a sheltered bay, A few as guardians of the oars we choose, Then stretched at random on the beach we lay Our limbs to rest, and on the toil-worn crews Sleep steals in silence down, and sheds her ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... the memory in solitude?" hazarded Sara flippantly. She was still nervous and talking rather at random, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... buzzard of an English Minister, who has not common sense." [Schoning, iii. 480 (To Henri: "Peterswaldau, 17th October, 1762").] Never fear, your Majesty: a man with Havanas and Manillas of that kind to fling about at random, is certain to bring Peace, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and answered at random. They did not know that their teacher was trying to say the "Isthmus ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... marvellous ability to discover and communicate a fresh gladness about the commonest experiences. We cannot but rejoice with him in all sights and sounds. But though we cannot deny him truth, his truth is honesty and not understanding. The experiences in which he discovers so much worth, are random and capricious, and do not constitute a universe. To the solution of ultimate questions he contributes a sense of mystery, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... lies at first through the fern lands beyond Riverhead, and we soon lose sight of the settlement. We appear to be travelling at random across the moor, for not a trace of what our English eyes have been taught to regard as a road can we discern. The country is all a rugged wilderness of range and gully: "gently undulating," you say, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... farmer who was riding home a cob he had bought that day at Launceston, and the farmer and he began to have a chat about horses suggested by that circumstance. Oddly enough, their random talk came round to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Ruyter back to camp for the dogs. Presently he returned with Wolf and Boxer, very much done up with the sun. I rode forward, and on looking over the bank, the leopard started up and sneaked off alongside of the tall reeds, and was instantly out of sight. I fired a random shot from the saddle, to encourage the dogs, and shouted to them; they, however, stood looking stupidly round, and would not take up his scent at all. I led them over his spoor again and again, but to no purpose; the dogs seemed quite stupid, and yet ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... also discover their peculiarities in their jokes; for they are taught never to talk at random, nor to utter a syllable that does not contain some thought. As, when one of them was invited to hear a man imitate the nightingale, he answered, "I have heard the original;" and the man who read ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... spoken at random, and he wondered that Dahlia should feel it pleasurable to be inquired after, she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... overjoyed or grateful. In the same way, I felt that the daylight was bronze, and I did not wonder at it: nay, I reasoned on the probability of a composition of sun and mould producing that colour. The truth was, the powers of my heart and will were frozen; I thought and felt at random. And I crave excuses for dwelling on such trifling phenomena of the sensations, which have been useful to me by helping me to realize the scene, even as at ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he could only act at random—he returned to the datcha. Great disorder reigned there. The guard had been doubled. The general's friends, summoned by Trebassof, surrounded the two poisoned sufferers and filled the house with their bustling devotion and their protestations ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... and rode away. He wanted the clear air and freedom of expanse, motion, anything that would distract his thoughts, and bring back the self-control that had almost departed from him. He rode at random along the highway leading to the city, down cross roads and by the shore, sometimes at a sharp gallop, sometimes giving his well-trained horse the head, till both steed and rider flashed like an arrow between ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... beside yourself. Know you not that Freedom is a glorious thing and of great worth? But that what I desired at random I should wish at random to come to pass, so far from being noble, may well ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... streets became deeper and deeper, and narrower and narrower; every vacant place was covered and disappeared. The houses at length overleapt the wall of Philip Augustus, and merrily scattered themselves at random over the plain, like prisoners who had made their escape. There they sat themselves down at their ease and carved themselves gardens out of the fields. So early as 1367 the suburbs of the city had spread so far as to need a fresh enclosure, especially on the right bank; this was built ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... winter day was nearly ended. The streets were deserted, save for a few random stragglers, and these hurried straight along, with the intent look of people who were only anxious to accomplish their errands as quickly as possible, and then snugly house themselves from the rising wind and the gathering twilight. They looked neither to the right nor to the left; they paid no ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... are many young ladies that Beaton's afraid of," said Fulkerson, giving himself the respite of this purely random remark, while he interrogated the faces of Mrs. Leighton and Colonel Woodburn for some light upon the tendency of their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... said, in mechanical acknowledgment: her mind was set so strenuously to break from her dishonest reticence that she did not know really what she was saying. "Why—why do you call him a dreamer?" She cast about in that direction at random. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... shots had been fired at the troops, the latter entered ten or twelve houses, at random, and despatched with their bayonets every one they found. In all the houses on the boulevard, there are metal pipes by which the dirty water runs out into the gutter. The soldiers, with no idea why it was so, conceived a feeling of mistrust or hatred for such and such a house, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... was spent, after adding slightly to her nest-egg—for she did hope and believe that some day people would cease to want to read of wickedness, and then Frederick would need supporting—on helping the poor. The parish flourished because, to take a handful at random, of the ill-behavior of the ladies Du Barri, Montespan, Pompadour, Ninon de l'Enclos, and even of learned Maintenon. The poor were the filter through which the money was passed, to come out, Mrs. Arbuthnot hoped, purified. She could ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... success in it. But it is true of everyone, and true in every corner of the stage. Let me strike into the medley at random. The anti-feminists, where are they? They have changed their garb and their "lines" so thoroughly that it is difficult for even a practised eye to recognize them in their new parts. Lord Curzon is a member of a Cabinet which established the women's vote, and such stalwarts as ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... soiled clothes by tale, diving into each pocket to see if you have left rupees in it; but he sends a set of studs to be washed. Then he sits down to execute repairs. He has an assorted packet of metal and cotton buttons beside him, from which he takes at random. He finishes with your socks, which he skilfully darns with white thread, and contemplates the piebald effect with much satisfaction; after which he puts them up in little balls, each containing a pair of different colours. Finally he will arrange all the ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... undid the last bolt the gate opened and the soldiers rushed in, firing at random as they did so. Bathurst had stepped behind the gate as it opened, and as the soldiers ran up the yard he took Isobel's hand, and, passing through the gate, ran with her round the building until he reached ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... at random, knowing not whether he was near the secret or not, but determined that he ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... they want to if they come as wide of the mark as that," said Frank; "they are shooting at random to ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... screen, at random, he got a view, from close up, of the great fires that were raging where the Company people were burning off the dead forests on what used to be Big Blackwater Swamp. Little Fuzzy cried out in alarm, flung his arms around Pappy Jack's neck and buried his ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... every line of boxes, heaps and windrows of gravel. Above, high on log-cabin staging, windlasses. Stretching away on either side, gentle slopes, mossed and flower starred. Here and there upon this ancient moose pasture, tents and cabins set at random. In the bed of the creek, up and down in every direction, squads of men sweating in the sun—here, where for untold centuries herds of leisurely and majestic moose had come to quench their thirst. In the older cabins their horns still lorded it. Their bones were bleaching ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... thronged the daily mart, Let fall a word of hope and love, Unstudied from the heart, A whisper on the tumult thrown, A transitory breath, It raised a brother from the dust, It saved a soul from death. O germ! O fount! O word of love! O thought at random cast! Ye were but little at the first, But mighty at ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... by striking at random; and knowing that I must strike, and strike heavily, I would fain see exactly where the stroke ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... and me's the first person singular, nominative case, agreeing with the verb "it's", and governed by Squeers understood, as a acorn, a hour; but when the h is sounded, the a only is to be used, as a and, a art, a ighway,' replied Mr Squeers, quoting at random from the grammar. 'At least, if it isn't, you don't know any better, and if it is, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... shower of missiles, which missed their aim. The rioters were too far off—our spiked iron railings, eight feet high or more, being a barrier which none had yet ventured to climb. But at length one random stone hit John on ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... possessions or the book-closet was high, to have been any esprit de corps or emulation tending to constitute schools or coteries, and to raise certain books or series to an artificial standard. Men at first acquired at random what happened to fall in their way; booksellers there were few or (except at London or in the Universities) next to none; and auctions were long unknown. Except for topography and the classics, there was, down to the ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... his narrative. That narrative is constructed on a plan which, we venture to say, is without a parallel in literature. Like whatever else is strikingly original, it cannot be described; we can only hope to convey a faint idea of it by some random illustrations. To nearly every statement which he notices in the works before him Mr. Wilson offers a flat contradiction. When these statements relate to numbers, his method of treating them is a systematic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... hole, smiling and watching the struggle below. Then she went, and the guards began to get the best of it, because the crowd's enthusiasm waned when they could see her no more. Then suddenly the guards began to loose random volleys at the roof and brought down hundredweights of splintered stalactite. Within a minute there were a hundred men busy on sweeping up the splinters. In another minute twenty Zakka Khels had begun a sword dance, yelling like ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... lightly, "don't do that! Why, you are a great hunter. You got your game. And it was a splendid shot. We'll have him skinned when we get back home, and we'll cure the skin, and you can make something out of it—a spectacle case," he suggested at random. "I know how you feel," he went on, to give her time to recover, "but all hunters feel that way occasionally. See, I'll put him just here until we get ready to go home, where nothing ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... rarely gives any data by which the statements of James can be disproved, and it is for this reason that I have been obliged to criticise the latter's work very fully. Many of James' remarks, however, defy criticism from their random nature, as when he states that American midshipmen were chiefly masters and mates of merchantmen, and does not give a single proof to support the assertion. It would be nearly as true to assert that the British midshipmen were for the most part ex-members ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... experience that falls to the lot of the sailor before the mast of our day. His sailor-talk flows from his pen with the sure touch and the ease and confidence of a person who has lived what he is talking about, not gathered it from books and random listenings. ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... cried, "Hurrah! we have them! March, my friends." The drummer thundered away, and the Germans charged. The Poles fell into disorder, some random shots were fired on both sides, then the rebels took to flight, pursued by their enemies. Many sought refuge in the houses, others ran out of the town; while, on the other hand, armed citizens began to present themselves, and the dilatory members of the militia corps now joined the rest. The ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... old Cathedral rising between the two), and is the natural channel in which the Cloisterham traffic flows, a certain awful hush pervades the ancient pile, the cloisters, and the churchyard, after dark, which not many people care to encounter. Ask the first hundred citizens of Cloisterham, met at random in the streets at noon, if they believed in Ghosts, they would tell you no; but put them to choose at night between these eerie Precincts and the thoroughfare of shops, and you would find that ninety-nine declared for the longer round and the more frequented way. The cause of this is not to be found ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... boy," a small boy who was sickly and delicate, and could take but little part in the rougher sports of his school companions, but read much, as sickly boys will—read the novels of the older novelists in a "blessed little room," a kind of palace of enchantment, where "'Roderick Random,' 'Peregrine Pickle,' 'Humphrey Clinker,' 'Tom Jones,' 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' 'Don Quixote, 'Gil Blas,' and 'Robinson Crusoe,' came out, a glorious host, to keep him company." And the queer small boy had read Shakespeare's "Henry ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... of a hillside meadow I was hunting for the entrance of a path into a patch of woods. Auber, instead of helping me, kept gazing back at the fading light while he made random observations on the nature of the sky-line,—one of his cant hobbies. "See how crudely the character of everything is defined up there against the sky," I heard him say, while I continued to search for the path. "Now even a sheep or a cow, or ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... asking him something; he said, "Yes," entirely at random—and was at once involved in a snarl of other questions, and other random answers. Under his breath he thought, despairingly, "Won't she ever stop talking! ... Edith, I'll give you fifty cents ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... flattering a female audience. Armstrong's remarks on taste, written in imitation of the simplicity and clarity of the rational tradition, are personal assertions and opinions rather than well-defined or clearly thought-out critical positions. They are random thoughts rather than a ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... Skarbina, Bantzer, Slevogt, Waldemar Roesler, is a follower of Max Liebermann, whose influence is easily discernible in the work of these younger men. To be sure, there are no landscapists in Germany, such as Davies, Ernest Lawson, Alden Weir, Childe Hassam, Metcalf—I mention a few at random—but the younger chaps are getting away from the sentimental panoramas of Hans Thoma and other "idealists" who ought to be writing verse or music, not painting, as too many ideas, like too many cooks, spoil ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... a circle of fine, large houses, each standing in its own grounds, highly rented, and furnished with every convenience money can supply. If any one will look at the trees and shrubs growing in the grounds about such a house, chosen at random for an example, and make a list of them, he may then go round the entire circumference of Greater London, mile after mile, many days' journey, and ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... case and leaving the abstract principle to the theorist, there are certain obvious things to be said for and against jury trial. The jury represents the opinion of the common or ordinary man—the vox populi. Twelve men picked at random are probably neither all capitalists nor all laborers. They are made up of a few of both, but the majority, if not all, are the small tradesmen or the great middle class. These men are not ignorant, prejudiced, or unintelligent. They have a limited experience, but their judgment is the ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... Zealand, waited on him to pay his official respects. The king, taking him apart from the other attendant nobles, recommended him to hasten the execution of several gentlemen and wealthy citizens attached to the newly introduced religious opinions. Then, quite suddenly, whether in the random impulse of suppressed rage, or that his piercing glance discovered William's secret feelings in his countenance, he accused him with having been the means of thwarting his designs. "Sire," replied Nassau, "it was the work of the national ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... was conversing with the Emperor Alexander, from whom he was only distant half a horse's length. It is likely, that they perceived from the place this brilliant staff, and fired on it at random. Moreau alone was struck; a cannon-ball broke his right knee, and passing through the horse's side, carried off the flesh of his left leg. The generous Alexander shed tears. Colonel Rapatel rushed towards Moreau, who uttered a long sigh, and then fainted. Returned to himself, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... were a mere random stripping of the room of its pictures, all would have suffered. Look," indicating a spot in the wall, "here is a place where the plaster is broken. A hook had been driven here to hold one of the portraits; and ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... copious tears, we had Miss Edgeworth's writings, those of Mrs. Grant, of Laggan, the novels of Charlotte Smith, the Memoirs of Baron Trenck, and, perused a little stealthily, Peregrine Pickle and Roderick Random; and in poetry Henry Kirke White and Montgomery were favorites; nor am I ashamed to say, that Cottle's "Alfred" was read aloud at our fireside of evenings, with an interest due to the story, perhaps, as much as to ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... persons who visited the farm at this period was large. I was too young to appreciate the positions they held, in literature, the church or the nation, but append a list of names, selected almost at random, mostly of distinguished persons who were occasional visitors. Horace Greeley, Parke Godwin, Henry James, Freeman Hunt, Charles Kraitsir, Henry Giles, S. P. Andrews, all of New York; Rev. O. A. Brownson, Rev. James Freeman ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... what we want!" and the whole gang, numbering three times as many as our party, uttering savage shouts, came rushing on, till, when they were within twenty yards of us, the Kroomen, without waiting for orders, fired at them. They, on this, hesitated for a moment, and then there came a random volley from muskets and pistols, the shots whistling past our ears. A dreadful ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... unreasonable exaltation. Several times I put to myself the questions: Why is it that you feel so cheerful and so gay? Why have you the inclination to whistle and to dance in your room? Why do you light a cigar, and let it go out through forgetfulness? Why do you answer your grandmother at random, and feel an inclination to take a long walk by yourself, although you know there are people ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... be as glorious as that he had just brought to a close, but it was to be far otherwise. Before entering on a recital of the events of the year 1810, I shall narrate some recollections, jotted down at random, which, although I can assign them no precise date, were, nevertheless, anterior to the period we have ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... talk about church-music, through which words ran at random, Mrs. Edgar broke at last, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... (explained that) he could not be so presumptuous; but as Pao-yue would not listen to any such thing, but went on to address him as brother and to call him by his style Ch'ing Ch'ing, he had likewise himself no help, but to begin calling him, at random, anything and anyhow. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... impressed on suitable paper and then obliterated is restored by exposure to the fumes of mercury. But if an indefinite number of impressions were superimposed on the same paper, could the fumes of mercury restore any one called for at random? Yet man's memory is a plate with a hundred millions of impressions all cleanly preserved, and he can at will select and evoke the one he wants. No conceivable relationship of materialistic forces can account ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... dislimned. But Markheim did not pause to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream, random as chance-medley—a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on the further side he perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... rating symbols are explained at several random points in the text, though not in the introductory section: Those with the figure are first-class houses, with second-class. The asterisk signifies that they are especially good of ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... wild cattle; and thistles grew deep on acres where wheat had been planted, and weeds sprouted thickly in the orchards, and blight and mildew competed for the crops. But though here and there I could see a dugout, with traces of fire and abandoned tools flung about at random, nowhere in all that dismal world did ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz
... we see the Foreign Department. Here we watch with rapt attention the arrival of countless business telegrams from all parts of the world. We choose one or two at random and see for ourselves the ramifications of Pryce's far-flung booking service. This one from China: "Puttee fifty taels Boko Lanchester Cup;" another from distant Siberia, emerging from the primeval forests of that wondrous land of the future: "Tenbobski Quitter Ebury Handicap." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... these remarks will convince intelligent Apiarians, that I have not spoken boastfully or at random, in asserting that natural swarming can be carried on with much greater certainty and success, by the use of my hives, than in any other way; and that they will see that many of the most perplexing embarrassments and mortifying discouragements under which they ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... solidly. Instead of grouping themselves together, which would have given them the advantages of union both against the attacks of savages and for the circumstances of life in which man has need of the aid of his fellows, the colonists had built their dwellings at random, according to the inspiration of the moment, and sometimes at long distances from each other; thus there existed, as late as 1678, only twenty-five fixed livings, and it promised to be very difficult to found new ones. To give a pastor the direction of parishioners ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... sitting up in bed, turning over and over in his hands the fellow of the little shoe which he had cherished for so many years as the dearest memento of his lost child. Could there be any doubt? Was it not his own handiwork? It had evidently received several random slashes with a knife, and it still bore traces of mud. But he knew his own work too well; and had he not looked upon the fellow of this shoe every day for ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... his side avoiding both; but, making a false step, he at last received a terrible blow from the horse's foot, and at the shock almost fainted away. A second such blow would have killed him, but the horse kicked at random, and a second blow did not reach Rinaldo, who in a moment recovered himself. Thus the contest continued until by chance Bayard's foot got caught between the branches of an oak. Rinaldo seized it and putting forth all his strength and ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch |
