"Undesigned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on 'designed laws' and 'undesigned results.' I see a bird which I want for food, take my gun and kill it, I do this DESIGNEDLY. An innocent and good man stands under a tree and is killed by a flash of lightning. Do you believe (and I really should like ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... specific projects for its realisation been set afoot. That anything conclusive along that line could now be reached would seem extremely doubtful, in view of the ardent patriotic temper of all these peoples, heightened just now by the experience of war. Still, an undesigned and unguided drift in that direction has been visible in all those nations that are accounted the vanguard among modern civilised peoples, ever since the dynastic rule among them began to be displaced by a growth ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... passages were probably not undesigned; but if we suppose them to have been thrown off without conscious notice of their tendencies, then, according to the superstition of the ancient Grecians, they would have been regarded as prefiguring words, prompted by ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... either to luck or cunning. In some cases a decided preponderance of the action, whether seen as a whole or looked at in detail, is recognised at once as due to design, purpose, forethought, skill, and effort, and then we properly disregard the undesigned element; in others the details cannot without violence be connected with design, however much the position which rendered the main action possible may involve design—as, for example, there is no design in the way in which individual pieces of coal may hit ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... which is involved in the idea of God creating a common progenitor, lying at the base of Darwin's series of evolution, possessing all the causes of all effects in nature, without designing those effects? What wonderful undesigned results! ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... His Omnipotence, is selected as that from which, or near to which, He is to bid adieu to his sorrowing Church on earth. Although there seem to be no special reasons for this selection, we cannot think it was altogether undesigned or insignificant. Our Lord was still MAN—participating in every tender feeling of our common nature; and just as many are known in life to express a partiality for the place of their departure, where they would desire their last hours to be spent, or for the sepulchre or churchyard where they ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... perhaps an undesigned coincidence, but none the less unfortunate, that the statesmen in the Aberdeen Government who were directly concerned with the war were former colleagues of Sir Robert Peel. Lord Aberdeen's repugnance to hostilities with Russia was so notorious that the other Peelites in the ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... hearsay into positive assertion, and fortifying his falsehoods by a pretentious parade of figures and official documents. It is hardly going too far to say that, in (p. 207) Cooper's opinion, the remarks of James on American affairs combined all possible forms of misstatement from undesigned misrepresentation to deliberate falsehood. There may be difference of opinion on this point; on another there can be none. The period covered by the British writer is on the whole the most glorious in the long and brilliant naval history of ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... things and be the clue of unravelment? We need not go far to learn that a prophet is not made by erudition. Lentulus at least had not the bias of a school; and if it turned out that he was in agreement with any celebrated thinker, ancient or modern, the agreement would have the value of an undesigned coincidence not due to forgotten reading. It was therefore with renewed curiosity that I engaged him on this large subject—the universal erroneousness of thinking up to the period when Lentulus began that process. And here I found him more copious than on the theme ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... finest works of English literature are purely and directly historical; what has been said is intended to refer more particularly to those that are not—the unconscious, undesigned teachers of history, such as fiction, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... not equally hold that the black and pied ones were specifically made of these colors in order that they might be more liable to be caught? And would an explanation of the mode in which those woodpeckers came to be green, however complete, convince him that the color was undesigned? ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... This undesigned voyage of the Tyrian ship seems to have been made previous to the building of Gadir, or Gades. Perhaps they made other voyages to that region, but it was a custom of the Phoenicians to be very secret in regard to the methods ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... record the effect of an actual though undesigned experiment, which I prosecuted for upwards of twelve years among you. For the greater part of that time I could expatiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villany of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny; in a ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... handkerchief, embroidered with gold, fell from her hands, and that the earl, after he had taken it up and presented it to the queen, had thrust his hand for a moment, with a motion wholly accidental and undesigned, into his ruff, which was just as white as the small neatly-folded paper which he concealed in it, and which he had found in ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... without embarrassment and peril. I suddenly determined to withdraw, and this, the attention of the company being otherwise engaged, I did without notice. I returned to my inn, and shut myself up in my chamber. Such was the change which, undesigned, unforeseen, half an hour had wrought in my situation. My cautious projects had perished in their conception. That which I had deemed so arduous, to require such circumspect approaches, such ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... through the senses. When we perceive, for example, {232} a white object, the recollection remains when the object is gone. And when many similar recollections have accumulated, we have what is called experience. Besides the ideas which we get in this natural and quite undesigned way, there are other ideas which we get through teaching and information. In the strict sense only these latter ought to be called ideas; the former should rather be called perceptions. Now the rational faculty, in virtue of which we are called reasoning beings, ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... warmth of the feeling it had inspired its writer with; its very incidents created a necessity at first not seen; and it was carried to a close only contemplated after a full half of it had been written. Yet, from the opening of the tale to that undesigned ending,—from the image of little Nell asleep amid the quaint grotesque figures of the old curiosity warehouse to that other final sleep she takes among the grim forms and carvings of the old church aisle,—the main purpose ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... enough things in ancient sites; by no means so common are the grotesque heads found at Dumbuck and Langbank. They have recently been found in Portugal. Did the forger know that? Did he forge them on Portuguese models? Or was it chance coincidence? Or was it undesigned parallelism? There is such a case according to Mortillet. M. de Mortillet flew upon poor Prof. Pigorini's odd things, denouncing them as forgeries; he had attacked Dr. Schliemann's finds in his violent way, and never apologised, to ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... above instances it will be observed that destruction or disappointment of enemies was the primary, and amusement the secondary object. It must be admitted that all such jokes are of a very poor and severe description. They have not the undesigned coincidence of the ludicrous nor the fanciful invention of true humour. Samson was evidently regarded as a droll fellow in his day, but beyond his jokes the only venture of his on record is a riddle, which showed very little ingenuity, and can not be regarded as humorous ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... opinions were tried. New rules of criticism were introduced, new standards of proof. When Fontenelle observed that the existence of Alexander the Great could not be strictly demonstrated and was no more than highly probable, [Footnote: Plurality des mondes, sixieme soir.] it was an undesigned warning that tradition would receive short shrift at the hands of men ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... successor of Hyginus, so that he wrote exactly at the time when, as appears from other evidences, the transition from presbytery to prelacy actually occurred. His words furnish a very strong, but an undesigned, attestation to the novelty of the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... of Flattery. Such was that which Germanicus enjoyed, when, the Night before a Battle, desirous of some sincere Mark of the Esteem of his Legions for him, he is described by Tacitus listening in a Disguise to the Discourse of a Soldier, and wrapt up in the Fruition of his Glory, whilst with an undesigned Sincerity they praised his noble and majestick Mien, his Affability, his Valour, Conduct, and Success in War. How must a Man have his Heart full-blown with Joy in such an Article of Glory as this? What a Spur and Encouragement still to proceed ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... by an unconscious and loving wife, in a singular disposition of patches: three on his blouse fortuitously representing eyes and nose, and a long horizontal one, lower down, combining with these in an undesigned ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene |
