"Unnatural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which are more or less unhappy ones. There is frequently an attitude towards them combined of wonder, misgiving, fear, aversion—a vague feeling or belief that the deaf are more or less distinct in their thoughts and actions from other people, that they are somehow "unnatural" or "uncanny."[137] ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... hang down on each side by their own weight. With its curious feathers and misshapen body, the young bird is anything but handsome. They never open their mouths when approached, as many young birds do, but sit perfectly still, hardly moving when touched." He also notes the unnatural indifference of the mother bird when her nest and young are approached. She makes no sound, but sits quietly on a near branch in apparent ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... "that there's a great difference between reviving and retaining; it may be natural to retain, even while the use fails, unnatural to revive when it has failed; but this is a question ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... his chair and seated himself. His face was curiously white. It was in an unnatural voice that he said: "How old ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... with articles for barter, as he had taken them off to the ships, with the assistance of two natives of Cuba. Near the place of the engagement, there were three buildings of stone and lime, in which were several idols of clay in strange unnatural postures, with diabolical countenances, and several wooden chests containing smaller idols, some vessels, three diadems, and several figures of birds and fish, all of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... passions from the mind, Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish, Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense, And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone. We not require the dull society Of your necessitated temperance, Or that unnatural stupidity That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc'd Falsely exalted passive fortitude Above the active. This low abject brood, That fix their seats in mediocrity, Become your servile minds; but we advance Such virtues ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... probably she was a year or two younger than that age. Any other king than Henry would have pardoned her, if for no other reason, then for this, that he had coupled her youth with his age, and so placed her in an unnatural position, in which the temptation to error was all the greater, and the less likely to be resisted, because of the girl's evil training,—a training that could not have been unknown to the King, and on the incidents of which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... destroyed. Alas! the work of her destruction was left unfinished by him. The blows and contumelies of a misjudging and implacable parent, who scrupled not to thrust her, with her new-born infant, out of doors; the curses and taunts of unnatural brothers, left her no alternative but death.——But I must not think of this; I must not think of the wrongs which my mother endured in the person of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... a dream-road. It had the unnatural quietness of dreams. In days of peace it would have been choked with country carts bringing food to fill the wide-open mouth of Paris. Now, the way to the capital was silent and empty, save for gray military motors and lumbering army camions. The cheap bowling alleys and jerry-built ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... under for so many years, embracing her in the miserable condition to which she was then reduced, said to her with tears in his eyes: "I come to entreat your pardon for the injustice I have done you, and to make you the reparation I ought; which I have begun, by punishing the unnatural wretches who put the abominable cheat upon me; and I hope you will look upon it as complete, when I present to you two accomplished princes and a lovely princess, our children. Come and resume your former rank, with all ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... permission to address the club at the conclusion of the regular program." There was a little applause, and Sidney, very rosy, walked rapidly forward, to stand just below the platform. She was nervous, obviously, and spoke hurriedly and in a rather unnatural voice. ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... recommending a female to put on an unnatural reserve toward those she sees thus frequently; but let her recollect, that the mere fact of her interchanging so many thoughts and feelings with another, predisposes both to a more intimate connection. It is better, if the connection would be an improper one, to prevent such a consummation, by ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... love of God, man! Have you gone mad?—Forgive me, my dear fellow, if a case like this excites me to the point of being discourteous. You have certainly given the lie to the saying: natura non facit saltus by the unnatural leap that you've taken. I must first get my breath after that! And now let's put an end to this at once. Believe me, if we were both to discuss the question now we wouldn't come to any conclusion in two or three weeks, or rather, let us say years.—You are ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... should at Paris be thought too liberal in his religious views (having been complimented for it) which he was very proud of—and thought it necessary to tell the Emperor he was a good Catholic. This is not unnatural in his peculiar position. When Lord Clarendon goes to Paris, he will be able to silence any further allusion to these idle stories which only lead to mischief, and which even Lord Cowley seems to have made more of (as to his own feelings upon ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... various tortuous and unnatural windings, swept in the direction of a pun, as a carriage after following the artificial curves of a deceptive approach nears a villa. Hester had seen the pun coming for half a page, as we see the villa through the ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... said; "the chimney smokes so. Mr. Percombe, you look as unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-hedge. Surely you have not come out here ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Any unnatural part is long taking up, and as long laying aside; therefore Mr. Sturdy may assure himself, Platonica will fly for ever from a forward behaviour; but if he approaches her according to this model, she will fall ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... evening away, and Denas listened and watched the handsome yachtsman, kindling and laughing to the tales he told. And when he went away she felt, as others did, the sudden fall in the mental temperature and the chill and silence that follow any unnatural excitement. But Denas, as well as John and Joan, were too simple for such considerations. They only felt the change, and were sure that it was Tris who brought the sunshine, and so, when he went, took it ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... personal, animal view of life to the socialized view, imagine that that transition was an inevitable and natural one; but this transition though which we have been passing for the last eighteen hundred years seems arbitrary, unnatural, and alarming. But we only fancy this because that first transition has been so fully completed that the practice attained by it has become unconscious and instinctive in us, while the present transition is not yet over and we ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... attentions, he had previously excited; and what had been terror and dislike before, was now absolute aversion. Yes, aversion! His cruelty to such a charming woman made him odious to her. She had often read of such characters, characters which Mr. Allen had been used to call unnatural and overdrawn; but here was ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... courteously indicated the localities in which they are likely to do well. And it only seems fitting and appropriate here to remark that Australia's road to prosperity lies through her agriculture; the hydro-cephalic growth visible in every colony is unnatural and ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... then turns cumbrously in his chair, permitting his eye to rove round the room in search of the unwary prey. He smiles cynically at the intense concentration of the Auction parties; winces at the renewed and unnatural efforts of those who make music; glares unamiably at the feverish book-worms, and suddenly breaks into little chuckles of satisfaction. The Ante-Room peers cautiously round to discover the identity of the unfortunate victim, and chuckles in its turn. The Adjutant, checked in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... to your profession, all right," Claude remarked, in the unnatural tone in which people sometimes speak of things they ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... something too unnatural in these blazing torches, agitated by the night breeze—but more especially in the strange lights that shone through the windows—now red, now blue, and then of a pale violet colour, and in an instant changing from one hue to another—something ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... of refined salt, and a thousand other articles of commerce produced or stored in the workshops of Phoenicia. These the chapmen bartered for raw gold by weight, tusks of ivory, ostrich feathers, and girls of approved beauty, slaves taken in war, or in some instances maidens whom their unnatural parents or relatives did not ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... in a tone which shows that he looked at it as something portentous and prodigious; as a thing to wonder at—but scarcely as deserving the admiration which we pay to actions properly within the scope of humanity—and as if the energy which was displayed in it was like the unnatural strength of madness. He does not say this, but he appears to feel it; and he scarcely would have felt it if he had cared more deeply to saturate himself with the temper of the age of which he was writing. At the time, all England and all the world rang with the story. It struck a deeper terror, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... doubt she thought to better in life by her experienced guidance and undoubted worldly wisdom. We may be as deep as Jesuits, know the world ever so well, lay the best-ordered plans, and the profoundest combinations, and by a certain not unnatural turn of fate, we, and our plans and combinations, are sent flying before the wind. We may be as wise as Louis Philippe, that many-counselled Ulysses whom the respectable world admired so; and after years of patient scheming, and prodigies of skill, after coaxing, wheedling, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Frank said, in a low and unnatural voice. "I received the note in an envelope; here it is, sir, with, as you see, only the words 'From a friend.' I showed it when I had got it to Harris, Travers, James, and Barkley, and had not the remotest idea ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... did gripe and hold it from his breast, He cut my blade with fifty pallid fingers, On his knees, crying out He had at home an old and doating father; And yet I slew him! There was a ribbon round his neck That caught in the hilt of my sword. A stripling, and so long a dying? Why 'Tis most unnatural! ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... them for their stupidity, he was deliberately withholding the key, half from love of effect, half in a spirit of mischief. He was planning something theatrical. He saw himself at the centre of the stage in this tragic drama, and it was not unnatural that he should desire to figure there effectively after taking so much trouble. Thus, while Sir Walter still opposed, he was surprised to hear Mary plead on the visitor's behalf, and his nephew ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... barons, such as the Umfraville earls of Angus, kept up the name, if not the state of earls, and we have seen the reward of the victor of Dundalk in the creation of a new earldom of Louth in Ireland. But there were certain hereditary dignities whose suspension seemed unnatural. Conspicuous among these was the Gloucester earldom which, from the days of the valiant son of Henry I. to the death of the last male Clare at Bannockburn, had played a unique part in ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... earth, but a poet whose like the world had not produced before. And so he struggled, raged, played, sang, changed his plan, changed his quotations, changed his life and the world into a dream absurd, fantastic, dreadful, into an uproarious hunt composed of unnatural expressions, bad verses, groans, tears, and blood; but meanwhile the cloud in the west was increasing and thickening every day. The measure was exceeded; the insane comedy was nearing ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... child. Feminine youth and beauty are no aegis against the barbed javelins of justice and the District Solicitor (Mr. Churchill) and I, have no doubt of the guilt of the woman, who will soon be put on trial here for her monstrous and unnatural crime." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... as the foot doth that which belongeth unto it to do, and the hand that which belongs unto it, their labour, whatsoever it be, is not unnatural. So a man as long as he doth that which is proper unto a man, his labour cannot be against nature; and if it be not against nature, then neither is it hurtful unto him. But if it were so that happiness did consist in pleasure: how came notorious robbers, impure ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... that the active and accomplished young gentleman whom I had the misfortune to succeed regards himself as still responsible to the people of this country for the disposition and control of the Fleets. At least that is the not unnatural impression which I derive from his frequent ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... have I shown the nature of a brother, Though you have proved unnatural to me. He's gone in heat to publish out the theft, Which want and your unkindness forc'd us to: If now I die, that death and public shame Is a corsive to your soul, blot ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... you have been good, good in it all. If you had not been—if you had trifled with me—I think I should be at the bottom of the river to-day. But since no one has wronged me," he went on more quietly, "since nothing monstrous or unnatural has befallen me, everything I believed in has the same claim on ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... were concerned with the description of strange and unnatural sins. In this woman there was something of Locusta and something of Messalina as well: antiquity could ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... embracements (where sin is turned into art), maketh marriage a dull thing, and a kind of imposition or tax. They hear you defend these things, as done to avoid greater evils; as advoutries, deflowering of virgins, unnatural lust, and the like. But they say, this is a preposterous wisdom; and they call it Lot's offer, who to save his guests from abusing, offered his daughters; nay, they say further, that there is little gained in this; for that the same vices ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... out a reward for hard endeavor. This is the highest goal. I distrust the wisdom of the judges. There is an honester repute to be gained in the general estimate of one's fellows. These societies cut an unnatural cleavage across the college. They are the source of dishonest envy and of mean lick-spittling. For three years, until the election is announced, there is much playing for position. A favored fellow, whose election is certain, is courted by others who stand ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... proved quite useless, for there beneath the blankets the raps sounded louder than ever. Moreover, of a sudden the bed seemed to be filled with a cold and unnatural air, which blew all about him, especially upon his hands, though he tried to protect these by placing them under his back. Now Godfrey knew something of the inadequate and clumsy methods affected by alleged communicating spirits, and half automatically began to repeat the alphabet. ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... explanation of circumnutation is not universally accepted. Personally I believe that circumnutation is automatic—is primarily due to internal stimuli. It is however in some way connected with gravitational sensitiveness, since the movement normally occurs round a vertical line. It is not unnatural that, when the plant has no external stimulus by which the vertical can be recognised, the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... from his resting-place, and turned to the spot whence the voice proceeded. There was such an unnatural fire in his eyes, that Vivian's spirit almost quailed. His alarm was not decreased, when he perceived that the master of the cottage did not recognize him. The fearful stare was, however, short, and again ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... frog to be bent upon eating the flesh of a heavenly goose!" ejaculated P'ing Erh. "A stupid and disorderly fellow with no conception of relationship, to harbour such a thought! but we'll make him find an unnatural death!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... emotion, her cheeks becoming crimson, her blue eyes flashing with an unnatural light, "if that codicil could be found it would save my life. Jan, in his rough, stupid way, tells me I am fretting myself into my grave. Perhaps I am. I want to go back to ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... features were too pale—the eyes large and hollow, while black lashes of unusual length gave them a wild depth of color that was absolutely fearful. Still there was something in the expression of those wan features indescribably touching—a look of meek suffering and of moral strength unnatural in its development. It was the face of a child, suffering, feeble, with the expression of a holy spirit ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... held, their legs stiff and in unnatural positions, their necks half bent towards their tails, and ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... Israelites changed their habits of living from those of wanderers in the wilderness to those adapted to their early settlements in Canaan and afterward to the settled conditions under the monarchy, they would still base their laws upon these earlier principles. Hence it was not unnatural to ascribe the origin of these laws to Moses, nor is it to-day inaccurate to speak of them as the Mosaic code, even though they may have been put into their present form at different periods remote from ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... shouts of praise, and joyous meetings of loving and long parted friends in realms of endless life and boundless blessedness; but all were gone. A sullen gloom, a deathlike stupor, a horrible and unnatural paralysis of hope had come in place of those sweet visions of celestial glories. My only comfort was, that though I had ceased to believe in the divinity of Christianity myself, she had retained her faith, and had lived and died in ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... girls brought up in a town are naturally different to one like Mabel. They go to school, and are taught to sit upright and to behave discreetly, and to be general unnatural. Mabel has been brought up at home and allowed to do as she liked, and she has consequently grown up what nature intended her to be. Perhaps some day all girls will be allowed the same chance of being ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... of no savage custom or habit of thought which has not its mate in civilized countries. For every mischievous or absurd practice of the natural man I can name you a dozen of the unnatural which are essentially the same. And nearly every custom of our barbarian ancestors in historic times survives in some form today. We make ourselves look formidable in battle—for that matter, we fight. Our women paint their faces. We feel it obligatory to dress more or less alike, inventing ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... him courage, so that he exclaims: "Shall I be of so untoward a disposition, as to refuse to lead the blind into the right way? Shall I be so unnatural, as not to give bread to the hungrie, or uncharitable, as ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... long would the material elements of our science and art or general culture remain with power to enlighten the barbarous tribes that would inherit the earth? Human progress has more than once been set back for centuries by such natural or unnatural causes, leaving the sites of once splendid civilizations to be overrun with barbaric hordes knowing nothing of the better ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... the ordinary face, and even the very play of the lips permitted. That strange red light which had seemed to permeate the whole face and affect even the eyes, had merely been the red metallic glitter of the gold, leaving little work for the imagination to complete a picture fascinating as unnatural. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... humble sacrifice. The great hope that perhaps he would be considered worthy to imitate, even in the feeblest manner, the atonement that his Master had made was filling him and lending his arm an unnatural strength. Behind him the waters surged and the piling logs boomed threateningly. But to Duncan there was no menace in the sound. It brought to his mind the words of his favourite psalm, as Peter McNabb sang it in the little church ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... an assent and Dane dropped the cat in the small hammock which was his particular station, fastening the safety cords. For once Sinbad made no protest but rolled into a ball and was promptly fast asleep. For a moment or two Dane thought about this unnatural behavior and wondered if he should call it to the Cargo-master's attention. Perhaps on Sargol Sinbad had had his equivalent of a friendship cup and needed a check-up ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... annoyed by her very blessings. I looked into her face: it was a strange face, which had once been beautiful; but ill-health, and care, and grief, had marked it now with deep lines, and coloured it with unnatural tints. Tears had washed out the roses from her cheeks, and set large purple rings about her eyes; the mouth was hard and pinched, but the eyelids swollen; while the crossed wrinkles on her brow told the same tale of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... fairly up to deliver it, our people only grumbled at him, and cursed him, and called him insulting names—for misery and hardship do not make their victims gentle or charitable toward each other. But as he neither tried humbly to conciliate our people nor swore back at them, his unnatural conduct created surprise, and several of the party crawled to him where he lay in the dim light that came through the grating, and examined into his case. His head was very bloody and his wits were gone. After about an hour, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sleep sound, an' I heard her. I wondered what step she'd take, an' the breakfast-table grins an' rose-bud and buggy-ride proposition showed her hand. This mad spell is part of the game. She has set in to make you do your courtin' over ag'in, an' you'll find that about as unnatural as wearin' yore vest under yore shirt. No man can court the same woman twice an' put his heart in the job, but a woman is just so constituted that she could have it done over an' over by one or ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... infinitely remote, yet shadows the human: in the case of these the human resemblance had greatly increased: while their owners had sunk towards them, they had risen towards their owners. But the conditions of subterranean life being equally unnatural for both, while the goblins were worse, the creatures had not improved by the approximation, and its result would have appeared far more ludicrous than consoling to the warmest lover of animal nature. I shall now explain how it was that just then these animals began to show ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... and unnatural of crimes. Even the cubs of wild beasts follow their sires; the offshoot of the vine serves the parent stem: shall man war against him who gave him being? It is for our little ones that we lay ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... that one of the heirs to Barcroft was of weak intellect, and that he was fastened by a younger brother with a chain in one of the cellars, and there in a most cruel manner gradually starved to death. It appears that this unnatural conduct on the part of the younger brother was prompted by a desire to get possession of the property; and it is added that, long before the heir to Barcroft was released from his sufferings, he caused a report to be circulated that he was dead, and by this piece of deception made himself ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... loving peace rather than war, compromised the question with him, and relinquished to him a part of his kingdom. Two years after this he died, leaving Ethelbald the entire possession of the throne. Ethelbald, as if to complete and consummate his unnatural conduct toward his father, persuaded the beautiful Judith, his father's widow, to become his wife, in violation not only of all laws human and divine, but also of those universal instincts of propriety which no lapse of time and no changes ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... to meet you from the city with dishevelled hair, as they did formerly to Coriolanus. At that time the legions of the Volscians, because they had a Roman for their leader, ceased from hostilities; will not ye, a Roman army, desist from an unnatural war? Titus Quinctius, under whatever circumstances you stand on that side, whether voluntarily or reluctantly, if there must be fighting, do you then retire to the rear. With more honour even will you fly, and turn your ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... Morris argued that an election by the national legislature would be the work of intrigue and corruption, like the election of the king of Poland by a diet of nobles; but Mason declared, on the other hand, that "to refer the choice of a proper character for a chief magistrate to the people would be as unnatural as to refer a trial of colours to a blind man." A decision was first reached against an election by Congress, because it was thought that if the chief magistrate should prove himself thoroughly competent he ought to be reeligible; but if ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... dropped into from Somewhere is mystically aware whether the seed is going to grow up a bush or is going to grow up a tree, if left to itself. Of course, the mind to which the seed is intrusted may play it false, and wilfully dwarf the growth, or force it to unnatural dimensions; but the critical observer will easily detect the fact of such treasons. Almost in the first germinal impulse the inventive mind forefeels the ultimate difference and recognizes the essential simplicity or complexity of the motive. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... believer in the ring, she finally burst into tears and confessed having given me poison at three different times. On her knees, she begged my forgiveness, and thanked God that my life had been spared. She was so broken down by the thought of her unnatural and wicked purpose, that I feared that she would have a relapse into sickness. She seemed so wholly contrite, that I thought she would never undertake such a terrible crime again, and I freely ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... does Dr. Leland's History of Ireland sell?' JOHNSON. (bursting forth with a generous indignation,) 'The Irish are in a most unnatural state; for we see there the minority prevailing over the majority. There is no instance, even in the ten persecutions, of such severity as that which the protestants of Ireland have exercised against the Catholicks. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... and Mohammedan dervishes unite with Jesuits and Franciscans in idealizing poverty as the loftiest individual state, it is worth while to examine into the spiritual grounds for such a seemingly unnatural opinion. And first, of those which lie closest to common ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... glittering accumulation of ungraceful ornaments; they strike rather than please; the images are magnified by affectation, the language is laboured into harshness. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence. Double, double, toil and trouble. He has a kind of strutting dignity and is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... felt somehow that it was not accidental. Though she could never be anything to George Fairfax, though all possibility even of friendship was at an end between them, she would have liked to gain his mother's regard. It was an idle wish perhaps, but scarcely an unnatural one. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... from another came the shrill tones of a scolding woman. Every here and there was a town garden full of sickly flowers, or a pile of crockery inside upon the window-seat. But you do not grasp the full connection between these houses of the dead and the living, the unnatural marriage of stately sepulchres and squalid houses, till, lower down, where the road has sunk far below the surface of the cemetery, and the very roofs are scarcely on a level with its wall, you observe that a proprietor has taken advantage of a tall monument and trained a chimney-stack ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... branches still on it, was stretched somewhat out of the wood: on this I sat, lighted a cigar, and meditated on this characteristic specimen of Irish life. The sun was setting beautifully behind the trees, and its imperfect light through the foliage gave the unnatural ruin a still stronger appearance of death and decay, and brought into my mind thoughts of the wrong, oppression, misery, and despair, to which some one had been subjected by what ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... took place in one of the lecture rooms of Grace Hall. There was a full attendance of the entering class, while the absence of sophomores was considered by those who had heard of former freshman elections at Erskine as something unnatural and of ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... was conducting a tavern he put his barmaids into "bloomers." This daring stroke had its reward; and, by swelling the consumption of beer, perceptibly increased his bank balance. Hence, it is not perhaps unnatural that such widely spread activities should have inspired ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... enemies enough besides such unnatural fishermen; as namely, the Otters that I spake of, the Cormorant, the Bittern, the Osprey, the Sea-gull, the Hern, the King-fisher, the Gorara, the Puet, the Swan, Goose, Duck, and the Craber, which ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... on the smoothness of a polished wall. All blows fall soundless on the softness of a padded cell. For madness is a passive as well as an active state: it is a paralysis, a refusal of the nerves to respond to the normal stimuli, as well as an unnatural stimulation. There are commonwealths, plainly to be distinguished here and there in history, which pass from prosperity to squalor, or from glory to insignificance, or from freedom to slavery, not only in silence, but with serenity. The face still smiles while the limbs, literally ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... maybe it is worse than morbid. Sometimes I think I am unnatural, out of drawing, but I did not make myself, and how can I help it?" Cynthia spoke ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... girl chirruped, cooed, and sang; all in vain. She danced the baby "up, up, up, and down, down, downy," till its blue cloak was twisted like a shaving. Still it cried, and its unnatural mother refused ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... you come from? Where have you been? Do you know that I have not seen you for seven years, you unnatural boy? Think of his being my son, Miss Carew. Give me another kiss, my own," she ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... attributed to Seneca. But the genius of the author never grasps, in their wholeness, the characters which he attempts to copy; they are distorted images of the Greek originals, and the shadowy grandeur of the godlike heroes of Aeschylus stands forth in corporeal vastness, and appears childish and unnatural, like the giants of a story-book. The Greeks believed in the gods and heroes whose agency and exploits constituted the machinery of tragedy, but the Romans did not, and we cannot sympathize with them, because we see that they ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... His unnatural ruthlessness and prompt obedience were of no avail to him. Soon after his return from the western provinces he perished under ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... have seen a mystery, a riddle, in anything so unnatural as—all things considered and when it came to the point—my attitude. So he gouged out his conviction, and on his ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... disagreeable to Nature, puts her in a capacity of enjoying what is most suitable for her. For thirst does not call for a superfluity of moisture, but only for so much as sufficeth Nature; and therefore, though a man had plenty of disagreeable and unnatural moisture, yet he wants still, for that stops the course of the natural, which Nature is desirous of, and hinders a due mixture and temperament, till it be cast out and the pores receive what is ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... rapid clashes of the long straight swords. There is no interest in watching the fight: there is no movement, no skill, no grace (I am speaking of my own impressions.) The strongest man wins; the man who, with his heavily-padded arm, always in an unnatural position, can hold his huge clumsy sword longest without growing too weak to be able either to ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... been in my unnatural position for many minutes before I began to suffer agonies, agonies not only physical but mental; for standing there like some prisoner of the Inquisition, it came to me how this dismantled apartment ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... D'Ormond", which was written 24 years before its publication in 1822, that is in 1798, soon after Mr, Lloyd's residence at Stowey, has great merit as a dramatic poem, in the delineation of character and states of mind; the plot is forced and unnatural; not only that, but what is worse, in point of effect, it is tediously subjective; and we feel the actions of the piece to be improbable while the feelings are true to nature; yet there is tragic effect in the scenes of the 'denouement'. I understand what ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... a word. He had affected me. The invocation in which he had indulged, and which, from another man, and other circumstances, would have struck me as a theatrical attempt upon my sympathy as forced as it was unnatural, was in him so appropriate, and in such keeping with the grandeur of the scene by which we were surrounded, that I was disarmed of criticism, and succumbed without resistance to ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... spent at least a quarter of an hour hunting for that stamp. In reality about two minutes elapsed before it was found sticking to Mrs. Bryant's damp pocket handkerchief. It was removed thence with great care, clinging to her fingers by the way, after which it showed a not unnatural disinclination to adhere to the paper. But even that difficulty was at last overcome: a shaky signature and a date were laboriously penned, and Percival's heart beat high as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... some weeks following the date of the last chapter. Mr. Rhys was a wonderful pleasant addition to the family. He was entirely at home, and not a person be trammelled by any ordinary considerations. He was silent when he felt like it; he kept alone when he was busy; he put no unnatural force upon himself when he was fatigued; but silent, or weary, or busy, there was always and at all times where he was, the feeling of the presence of one who was never absent from God. It was in ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... man's emaciated, unshorn face had the ghostly, ashen hue of death. From cavernous sockets his eyes gleamed with a terribly vindictive light, akin to insanity, and, in a harsh, high voice, as unnatural as his appearance and words, he continued: "Remember what I have gone through! what I have suffered! how often the cup of success that I was raising to my lips has been ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Rachel Emmons came softly into the room. I believe I should have known her anywhere. Though from Eber Nicholson's narrative she could not have been much over thirty, she appeared to be at least forty-five. Her hair was streaked with gray, her face thin and of an unnatural waxy pallor, her lips of a whitish-blue color and tightly pressed together, and her eyes, seemingly sunken far back in their orbits, burned with a strange, ghastly—I had almost said phosphorescent—light. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... combatant, but it represents only one. In the case of these "swordsmen" a number of successful fights might in the end secure freedom and something more for slave or prisoner, and a competence for the volunteer. It was not unnatural that men of courage and strength should frequently offer themselves for this service. Their physical training was indeed severe both in the way of exercise and of diet, and their personal treatment was harsh and ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... enabled me, in the day of trial, to perform that sacrifice which my honour demanded, in a strain so loud as to drown the cries of nature, love, and compassion. Yes, they espoused that glory which humanity would have betrayed, and my revenge was noble, though unnatural. ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... 'See here!' pointing to his temple, where the second pimple—either from the change of air, or because, in the excitement of the last few days, he had forgotten it—was actually healed. 'My blood is at last pure. The struggle between the natural and the unnatural is over, and I am beyond the depraved, influences of my former taste. My instincts are now, therefore, entirely pure also. What is good for man to eat, that I shall have a natural desire to eat: what is bad will be naturally repelled. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... standard pelvis of Churchill, and, in consequence of this pelvic development, her legs were bowed. The mammae and labia had all the appearance of established puberty, and the pubes and axillae were covered with hair. She was lady-like and maidenly in her demeanor, without unnatural constraint or effrontery. A case somewhat similar, though the patient had the appearance of a little old woman, was a child of three whose breasts were as well developed as in a girl of twenty, and whose ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... people to be served lose the benefit of cheapness which usually results from wholesome competition. These aggregations and combinations frequently constitute conspiracies against the interests of the people, and in all their phases they are unnatural and opposed to our American sense of fairness. To the extent that they can be reached and restrained by Federal power the General Government should relieve our citizens from their interference ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... a few Americans and came over towards them. His advance was measured, almost abnormally slow. His manner would have been melodramatic but for its intense earnestness. He stood at their table for a few seconds before speaking, his eyes fixed upon Jocelyn Thew's in a curious, almost unnatural stare. ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and splendour and these scenes of starvation and brutality ought not to be possible; but I am afraid there is more vice, more misery and penury in this country than in any other, and at the same time greater wealth. The contrasts are too striking, and such an unnatural, artificial, and unjust state of things neither can nor ought to be permanent. I am convinced that before many years elapse these things will ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... a little gasp, all to herself. "Do you take coffee with your breakfast, my Lord?" she asked—and declared to her last day it seemed like another person speaking, her voice sounded so faint and unnatural. ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... abnormal increase in population which took place in the first forty years of the nineteenth century was in itself out of all proportion to the increase of productive capacity in the country, and was closely related to the unnatural inflation of prices, and consequent spurious appearance of prosperity, due to the great war. When the climax came this was rapidly followed by a reaction, and when emigration reduced the numbers of eight million people who were in the island in 1841, the modified ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... unshaken beliefs. She knew it was her winter time and she must bear it until the spring should come, though it was none the less hard to support. But she got through the hours with perfect surface calm—and her stepsisters thought her stupid and dull, while Mrs. Anderton decided there was something unnatural about a girl who took not the slightest interest in shopping, and was perfectly indifferent about all the attractive garments which were put upon her back. She always expressed her thanks so gently, and was ever sweet and willing to be ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... old father, and you will soon be safe against your enemies. What a calm and steady air he has, amid it all! Ah! Maud, Hugh Willoughby ought, at this moment, to be at the head of a brigade, helping to suppress this accursed and unnatural rebellion. Nay, more; he may be there, if he will only listen ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... he hoped that Ellas Droom—who knew too much—might refuse to go into the new territory with him, but the gaunt, old clerk took an unnatural and malevolent delight in clinging to his employer. He declined to give up his place in the office, and, although he hated James Bansemer, he came like an accusing shadow into the new offices near the Chicago River, and there he toiled, grinned and scowled with ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... resemble nature more closely. The size ranged from a few inches in length to about two feet. Numbers of these beginnings in advertising have been recovered from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and in one case an entire establishment, even to the instruments used in gratifying unnatural lusts, was recovered intact. In praise of our modern standards of morality, it should be said that it required some study and thought to penetrate the secret of the proper use of several of these instruments. ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... small. There was something forbidding in their expression, which was not bettered by the cruel mouth and wide jaw. The nose was well enough, as noses go; one does not expect much of noses. All that was sinister in the man's face seemed accentuated by an unnatural pallor—he ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... contrary to nutriment, as coals, rubbish, chalk, etc., which desire often occasions abortion and miscarriage. Some women have been so extravagant as to long for hob nails, leather, horse-flesh, man's flesh, and other unnatural as well as unwholesome food, for want of which thing they have either miscarried or the child has continued dead in the womb for many days, to the imminent hazard of their lives. But I shall now proceed to show by what means ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... from one to the other with a rather unnatural laugh. One would have thought that she was engaged in carrying off a difficult situation and, for so practised a woman of the world, not doing it very well. Her cheeks were flushed, which made her look younger, and a subtle uncertainty ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... who brings forth the morning and perishes herself in the act, and the West, the spirit of darkness as the East is of light, precedes and as it were begets the latter as the evening does the morning. Straightway, however, continues the legend, the son sought the unnatural father to revenge the death of his mother, and then commenced a long and desperate struggle. "It began on the mountains. The West was forced to give ground. Manabozho drove him across rivers and over mountains and lakes, and at last he came to the brink of this ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... arm round her protector's neck, her cheeks wet with tears, the mite would gaze round-eyed and in saddened silence at her unnatural father. It is no wonder that she grew up to love Richards. What stories he used to tell her! what fun he used to make for her! how he entered heart and soul into all her games and romps, as if he himself were but a boy in ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... eyes shone with unnatural anger, and there was a presage of wrathful words in her quivering lips. Mrs. Frump was desperately trying to keep back certain private opinions that she had long entertained, but proved unequal to the effort. She burst ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... from the bottom of their truly generous womanly souls they meant it. Donna knew they did, and was deeply grateful. In the case of Mrs. Pennycook, however, she had no such illusion. She knew that disappointed vengeance had served to sharpen Mrs. Pennycook's unaccountable and unnatural dislike for her, and it was with secret relief that she watched the members of the committee on social purity ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... breathing man it had strangled in my grip. By the gods, a knightly feat and most bravely done! And I laughed at my former fear, not loud, but such as laughed the fiends of hell when Lucifer rose against his Prince. Low I chuckled, then shivered at my own unnatural voice. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... mare, had been sent, with her weather-worn cart, to Howgate, and had doubtless her own dim and placid meditations and confusions, on the absence of her master and Rab, and her unnatural freedom from the road ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... were a queer lot. Their history is one of the strangest in the whole Bible. They dwelt amongst a people whose debauchery has become a by-word, and in a city which has given a name to the vilest of unnatural crimes. Lot, his wife, and their two unmarried daughters, were the only persons preserved from the terrible fate which Jehovah, in one of his periodic fits of anger, inflicted upon the famous Cities of the Plain. They witnessed a ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... landed his mariners to rush the fort. But the rough bush lopers inside the palisades were expert marksmen. Their raking cross fire kept the English at a distance, and the father could neither drive nor coax his men to the sticking point of courage to scale palisades in such an unnatural war. Claude de La Tour was now in an unenviable plight. He dare not go back to France a traitor. He could not go back to England, having failed to win the day. The son built him a dwelling outside the fort; and there this famous courtier of two great nations, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... to not unnatural annoyance. With habitual caution, he glanced around to assure himself that no other person was within ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... the tramp, looking up into the face of his companion, with blood-stained countenance, and eyes that were sodden with pain and passion. He looked like some prisoner of state doomed to the martyr's stake, as he sat there in the dim light and talked in a solemn monotone that was weird and unnatural. ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... to keep warm on the fender; and after an hour or two he re-entered, when the room was clear, in no degree calmer: the same unnatural—it was unnatural!—appearance of joy under his black brows; the same bloodless hue; and his teeth visible now and then in a kind of smile; his frame shivering, not as one shivers with chill or weakness, but as a tight-stretched cord vibrates—a strong ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the ignobiles, i.e. the villeins, the ordinary citizens and burgesses. The widely prevalent notion that a gentleman was a person who had a right to wear coat armour is apparently of recent growth, and is possibly not unconnected with the not unnatural desire of the herald's office to ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... relations that could rightfully exist between fallen humanity and its Creator. Here Satan has blinded the minds of the lost lest they should believe, and he has made that which is reasonable and natural seem to be unreasonable and unnatural. They are unable to abandon their Satan-inspired sense of self-sufficiency and independence of God and receive from Him, as a gift, every possession ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... second excited general astonishment. Such a thing had not been heard of in the annals of Roman society, and many ancient wisdom-mongers severely censured the course he had pursued. Could anything be more abominably unnatural? Was it possible to conceive of the hard-heartedness of a man who could stand quietly and see his son ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... live potent creator of righteousness in us, so that we, with our wills receiving his spirit, shall like him resist unto blood, striving against sin; shall know in ourselves, as he knows, what a lovely thing is righteousness, what a mean, ugly, unnatural thing is unrighteousness. He is our righteousness, and that righteousness is no fiction, no ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... with his handkerchief. "A hard tussle," thought he, "and with my own unnatural, ungrateful flesh and blood, but I have won it: he hasn't told the Dodds; he never will; and, if he did, who ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... into the great subject of population. He showed that in all countries, where there were no unnatural hardships, mankind would support themselves. He applied this reasoning to the Negro population in the West Indies; which he maintained could not only be kept up, but increased, without ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... forgotten. There is something in the faces of the very, very old which hardly suggests age at all, but rather the vague possibility of a returning prime. Only the hands tell the tale, with their huge, shining, fleshless joints, their shadowy hollows, and their unnatural yellow nails. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... the means of grace was strong. She went to every meeting, even after she could not reach the chapel without help. Her emaciated form, her hollow cough, her eye bright with unnatural lustre, all told that she was passing away, but, combined with her sweet singing and heavenly spirit, led her companions sometimes to whisper, as she took her seat in the chapel, "Have we not an Elizabeth Wallbridge among us?"—"The Dairyman's Daughter," ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... What did he mean? What did he want? The whole scheme had been planned to give him pleasure, and here he was, silent, disapproving, throwing cold water. The effort at restraint made her voice sound unnatural even in her ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... to tell you, that it goes against me, in my cooler moments, unnatural as my brother is to me, to have you, my dear, who are my other self, write such very severe reflections upon him, in relation to the advantage Lovelace had over him. He is not indeed your brother: but remember, that you write to his sister.—Upon my word, my dear Miss Howe, you dip ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... made their nests in the lofty trees that surrounded his house; and yet this gentleman must be a farmer, forsooth! But I am anticipating my history. These facts must, however, convince every rational mind, that this was such an unnatural state of things as could not exist for any lengthened period. It did, nevertheless, drag on to the end of the war, when all these apron farmers were brushed off their farms, as one would brush from off one's leg a fly that was stinging it. These gentry long since quitted the turmoil and difficulty ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... causes of sterility. There, immense tracts sloping gradually upward show a desolation so peculiar, so utterly unlike every common solitude of Nature, that one enters upon it with the shudder we give at that which is wholly unnatural. On all sides are gigantic serpent convolutions of black lava, their immense folds rolled into every conceivable contortion, as if, in their fiery agonies, they had struggled and wreathed and knotted together, and then ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... serious trouble, either mental or bodily; and as the days wore on and there was no change for the better in her, but rather the contrary, I began to share Claudia's anxiety. Ideala grew paler and thinner, and more nervous. She was oftenest depressed, but occasionally had unnatural bursts of hilarity that would end suddenly in long fits ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... individual cases. As a general rule, when only practiced at rare intervals, and faute de mieux, in order to obtain relief for physical oppression and mental obsession, it may be regarded as the often inevitable result of the unnatural circumstances of our civilized social life. When, as often happens in mental degeneracy,—and as in shy and imaginative persons, perhaps of neurotic temperament, may also sometimes become the case,—it is practiced ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... cried Matty, giving her a shove towards the door. "Well, now, do you think I'll be turned out of my son's house so quietly as that, you unnatural baggage?" cried Mrs. Rooney, facing round, fiercely. Upon which a bitter altercation ensued between the women; in the course of which the widow soon learnt that Andy was not the possessor of Matty's charms: whereupon the old woman, no longer having ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... its animality you would expect would be heightened, you realize—and it is strange to you that you do so realize—first of all its pathos, and again its pathos, and always, the scene through, its pathos. Had Molly gone with old Martin it would have revolted you, for it would have been unnatural, but since she did not, and since she was not the sort to be easily insulted, you only wonder at the power of passion and realize its pathos, and the ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... conversation invariably reflecting the beauty and poetical imagery of his mind. He may be said to have lived and moved and had his being in a state of blissful unconsciousness of anything unclean or impure, or unnatural. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... those machinations which warred against all established order, and all sanctioned usage, by a novel, and unnatural opposition, is attributable to any other cause, than that of a misjudging principle, must be decided by Him, whose mighty hand suspended the balance of the battle, and whose eye can, at a glance, pierce through the ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... for style, of which it may generally be said that you cannot be too obscure, unnatural, involved, vulgar, slipshod, and metaphorical. See to it that your metaphors are mixed, though, perhaps, this attention is hardly needed. The free use of parentheses, in which a reader gets lost, and of unintelligible allusions, and of references to unread authors—the Kalevala and ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... Ayyub, who occupied Damascus. Ayyub conquered Egypt, but, in his absence, his uncle Ismail, Prince of Balbek, seized upon Damascus and made a league with the Franks in Palestine and several of the Syrian princes. Through this unnatural league, Ismail, however, estranged not only the Moslem inhabitants of Syria, but also his own army. Part of the army deserted in consequence to Ayyub, who was thus enabled easily to subdue the allied army ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... should be brought to the house, if only for a day or two, if only that people in Brothershire might know that there had been no quarrel between her and her husband. That she should have visited her father might be considered as natural. It need not be accounted as quite unnatural that she should have done so without her husband. But now,—now it was imperative that Brothershire should know that the mother of the future Lord Popenjoy was on good terms with the family. "Of course her position is very much altered," Lady Susanna had said ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... he is more like your uncle; he has just that air; he seems just of that time of life. Can You then be so unnatural as to prosecute him ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... right, of course. But Thibault's position was not altogether unnatural, nor unfamiliar. All over the world, for the past hundred years, people have been kicking against the sharpness of the pricks that drove them forward out of the old life, the wild life, the free life, grown dear to them because it was so easy. There has been ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke |
