"Unexplained" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many instances the notes have been altered and added to from later information, and in these cases no mark is affixed. A large number of additional notes are now supplied, but still much has had to be left unexplained. Many persons are mentioned in the Diary who were little known in the outer world, and in some instances it has been impossible to identify them. In other cases, however, it has been possible to throw light upon these persons by reference to different portions ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... a meadow, not far removed from the high-road, is a block of granite, nearly flat, of great height, standing upright on the narrowest end: there is no quarry of similar stone in this part of the country; and its isolation and quality render it a subject of surprise—as much so as the unexplained wonders on Salisbury Plain. The fairies, no doubt, if any fortunate individual could make friends with them now, could set the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... possessed of a physique sufficiently formidable to inspire a cowardly man with fear—had such been her object—but I could perceive no signs of menace in her manner. Neither could cowardice be an attribute of my travelling-companion. There was an unexplained something, therefore, to account for his present display ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... instruments for the elevation of human nature is "mutual slaughter" amongst men; yes, that "Carnage is God's daughter." Not deriving my own views in this matter from Wordsworth,—not knowing even whether I hold them on the same grounds, since Wordsworth has left his grounds unexplained,—nevertheless I cite them in honor, as capable of the holiest justification. The instruments rise in grandeur, carnage and mutual slaughter rise in holiness, exactly as the motives and the interests rise on behalf of which such awful powers are invoked. Fighting for truth in its ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... by Glenfernie, felt kindness for him. If, also, there ran a tremor of feeling that it was very fair to be Elspeth Barrow and walking so, she was young and it was natural. But beyond that was a sense, vague, unexplained to herself, but disturbing. There was feeling in him that was not in her. She was aware of it as she might be aware of a gathering storm, though the brain received as yet no clear message. She felt, struggling with that diffused kindness and young vanity, something ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... had also been arrested on suspicion, but no decisive proof had been found against him. This robbery of unusual importance remained, if not inexplicable, at least unexplained. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... on the coast, bad seasons for fishing came now and again. These occur when the ice holds inshore so long that the best run of cod has passed before the men can get at them; or because for some unexplained reason the cod do not appear at all along certain sections of the coast. When two bad seasons come in succession, starvation ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... punishment, and so on, but endeavoured to bring all human actions whatsoever into practical harmony with supposed natural laws; that is to say, to make them as regular, as comprehensible, as beneficent, and as workable, as the perfectly manifest but totally unexplained celestial movements were; as were the rotation of seasons, the balancing of forces, the growth and waning of matter, male and female reproduction, light and darkness; and, in short, to make human actions as harmonious as were all the forces ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... female readers, whom only I contemplate in every line of this little work, and who would have a right to consider it disrespectful if I were to leave a single word of Latin or Greek unexplained, must understand that the Greeks, according to that universal habit of viewing remote objects in a relation of ascent or descent with respect to the observer, whence the 'going up to Jerusalem,' and our own 'going up to London,' always figured a journey eastwards, that is, directed ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... For some cause, unexplained in a general sense, the white people in the Colonies and in the States, came to entertain against the colored races therein a prejudice, that showed itself in a hostility to the latter's enjoying equal civil and political rights with themselves. Various reasons ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... sons, were unworthy in the eyes of parents, and probably Mungo's unprejudiced attitude towards the conspiring lovers was quite justified by the wooer's real character in spite of the ill repute of his history. He reflected that this confidence of Doom's left unexplained his own masquerade of the previous night, but he gave no whisper to the thought, and had, indeed, forgotten it by evening, when for the first time Olivia joined them ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... the death of Madame de Beaufort at Easter, that I have several times dwelt on the strange coincidence, and striven to find the connecting link. But I never hit on it; and the King's death, and that unexplained tendency to imitate great crimes under which the vulgar labour, prevailed with me to keep the matter secret. Nay, as I believed that d'Evora had played the part of an unconscious tool, and as a hint pressed home sufficed to procure the withdrawal of the chaplain ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... Directors had thought fit to examine their records, they would have found matter at least strongly urging them to a suspension of this appointment, until the charges against Mr. Stuart should be fully cleared up. That matter remained (as it still remains) unexplained from the month of May, 1775, where, on the Bengal Revenue Consultations of the 12th of that month, peculations to a large amount are charged upon oath against Mr. Stuart under the following title: "The Particulars of the Money ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... most abundant formation known to the cave. Being a newly discovered addition to geology it has no scientific name and therefore is simply called box work, because it resembles boxes of many shapes and sizes. The formation of the box work is generally regarded as an unexplained and unexplainable mystery, but a careful study of various portions of the cave shows it in all stages of development and suggests a reasonable theory as to the cause of its origin and variety of development. The volcanic disturbances which have ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... examined on oath at home for the last time, but he declared he would prefer to fall down dead in the court than to sit at home while the destroyer of his property was allowed to escaped scot-free. Whom he meant by this phrase he left unexplained—only that it was not the accused servant, he gave one plainly ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... (in a way that our limited faculties necessarily fail to grasp adequately);[1] and so that, the type once reached, a certain degree of variation, but never transgression of the type, is possible. Further, that on this supposition we are able to account for some of the unexplained facts in evolutionary history, such as reversion and the sterility of hybrids; and to see why there are gaps which cannot be bridged over, and which by extreme theorists are only feebly accounted for on the supposition that as discovery progresses ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... construction only when it is on its way to completion, which happens about the age of seven—is influenced by the forms of the new surroundings, and at times copies them, more or less, and we may ask ourselves if the unexplained fact of negro children being born to a white woman—the widow of a negro—remarried to a white man is in no way connected with the reproduction of a mental image of the coloured children ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... unnecessary to add anything to their testimony in point of fact, or to observe upon it by way of illustration. It is, I trust, sufficient to do away any suspicion which may have fallen upon me, and to remove every implication of guilt which, while unexplained, might by possibility have attached to me. It is true I have, by the absence of Captain Bligh, Simpson, and Tinkler, been deprived of the opportunity of laying before the Court much that would at least have been grateful to my feelings, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... was foreign to the ancestral hearth. What will become of that infinitesimal spark of childish fancy? It will die out, beyond a doubt, unless education intervene, giving it the fuel of example, fanning it with the breath of experience. In that case, schooling will explain what heredity leaves unexplained. This is what we will examine in ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... lighthouse fancied indeed, as they acknowledged afterwards, that they had heard some shouts; but strange, mysterious, inarticulate voices are often borne upon the wind, and haunt always the lonely wastes of foamy sea. The lighthouse men had often heard these unexplained wailings and weird screams. Many a time they had looked out, and been so continually deceived, that unless human accents were unmistakable and well-defined, they attribute these sounds to other agencies, or to the secret phenomena of the worst storms. And even if they had heard, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... chuckle when they note that the name by which Canada has called her capital and the centre of her political life, Ottawa, is an Indian name which signifies 'buying and selling.' And the wanderer in this land will always be remarking an unexplained fragrance about the place-names, as from some flower which has withered, and which he ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... specimen of the simple ditty style which leaves nothing unexplained, and never goes out of its course for the sake of a ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... legislation desired by the interests is framed and brought forth. There is not enough debate of it in open house, in most cases, to disclose the real meaning of the proposals made. Clauses lie quietly unexplained and unchallenged in our statutes which contain the whole gist and purpose of the act; qualifying phrases which escape the public attention, casual definitions which do not attract attention, classifications ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... reimbursed for the delay caused in sending the case before a prize court; Captains of the American steamers Navajo, Joseph W. Fordney, and Llama appeal to American Embassy at London to procure their release from British marine authorities at Kirkwall; British collier Newlyn is damaged by an unexplained explosion off the Scilly Islands, but makes port; a French battleship, assisted by French aeroplanes, bombards ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... what Happiness, or rational well-being, is, and what conduct is conducive to rational well-being. It may be found convenient to follow Aristotle, and avow that the business of Ethics is not Duty, not Obligation, not Law, not Sanction, but Happiness. That fiery little word ought goes unexplained in Ethics, except in an hypothetical sense, that a man ought to do this, and avoid that, if he means to be a happy man: cf. p. 115. Any man who declares that he does not care about ethical or rational happiness, stands to Ethics as that man stands to Music who "hath no ear for concord ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... has not been forbidden to her, under certain conditions, to identify herself completely with her offspring. When she has not merely given life, but given of her whole life, you behold that wonderful, unexplained, and inexplicable thing—the love of a woman for one of her children above the others. The outcome of this story is one more proof of a proven truth—a mother's place cannot be filled. A mother foresees danger long before a Mlle. Armande can admit the possibility ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... it from her, took it and more. "We're to sit together at the Ambassador's then—or at least you two are—with this new complication thrust up before you, all unexplained; and to look at each other with faces that pretend, for the ghastly hour, not to be ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... study of Milton's poetry compels the study of his time; and Professor Masson's six volumes are not too much to enable us to understand that there were real causes for the intense passion which glows underneath the poet's words—a passion which unexplained would ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... the awards must be made, if made at all, without the approval necessary to give them legal effect. This approval the Commission could not give without investigation, in the presence of unexplained charges of irregularity and fraud in ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... one of three things: it is what it pretends to be, an unexplained and as yet incomprehensible physical influence; it is delusion, or it is ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of others, but abjure crocodiles, monkeys, snakes and rats. Many of them have now given up eating cow's flesh in deference to Hindu feeling. They will take food from almost any caste except sweepers, and one or two others, as Joshi and Jasondhi, towards whom for some unexplained reason they entertain a special aversion. They will admit outsiders belonging to any caste from whom they can take food into the community. They are generally considered as impure, and live outside the village, and their touch conveys pollution, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... caught quickly at his remark, as she always did at any unexplained allusion to herself, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and the practical man of affairs find relaxation in the mystery of the detective story. Real life often furnishes events sufficiently mysterious to make a special feature story that rivals fiction. Unexplained crimes and accidents; strange psychical phenomena, such as ghosts, presentiments, spiritism, and telepathy; baffling problems of the scientist and the inventor—all have elements of mystery that fascinate the ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... sending my compliments to the Count of Holstein, with a request that I might be allowed to call upon him. He consented to receive me, and I hastened to the Count's palace, where I found the old nobleman prostrated with grief at the continued and unexplained illness of his only child; but when Anna had seen me, and satisfied herself of my return, she recovered so rapidly that her father, on hearing from me my improved condition, and the sentiments which I entertained for his daughter, gladly gave ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... cryptic, obscure, unexplainable, enigmatical, unfathomed, unfathomable, abstruse, mystic, inexplicable, recondite, cabalistic, occult, unexplained. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... his cigar from him and plunged again into the work of the day. The afternoon wore to evening, to the accompaniment of wearying and clamorous endeavour. In some unexplained fashion, the labour of putting the great barn in readiness for the dance was accomplished; the last bolt of cambric was hung in place from the rafters. The last evergreen tree was nailed to the joists of the walls; the last lantern hung, the last nail driven into ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... science, he produces on me the effect of those story-tellers of the school of Edgar Poe, who end by going mad through constantly reflecting on queer cases of insanity. He has set forth some nervous phenomena, which are unexplained and inexplicable; he makes his way into that unknown region which men explore every day, and not being able to comprehend what he sees, he remembers perhaps too well the explanations of certain mysteries given by speaking on these subjects, that would be quite ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... divined something of the public man in his bearing, a suggestion, perhaps, of the confirmed orator, a notion in which I was somehow further set by the gesture with which he swept back his carelessly falling forelock. I was not surprised, then, to hear him referred to as the "Senator." In some unexplained manner, the Honourable George, who is never as reserved in public as I could wish him to be, had chummed up with this person at one of the race-tracks, and had thereafter been almost quite too pally with him and with the very curious other members of his family—the ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... with another body possessed of that quality. We must allow that this is only an explanation of elasticity, by an assumption of elasticity, and that we thus only remove the difficulty one step farther, and that the nature of elasticity, and the reason for caloric being elastic, remains still unexplained. Elasticity in the abstract is nothing more than that quality of the particles of bodies by which they recede from each other when forced together. This tendency in the particles of caloric to separate, takes place even at considerable distances. We shall ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... says: "To readers who care for a really good detective story 'The Circular Staircase' can be recommended without reservation." The Philadelphia Record declares that "The Circular Staircase" deserves the laurels for thrills, for weirdness and things unexplained ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... gunpowder with which they were freighted. Four hundred and twenty persons were killed on the spot, about 800 more were wounded, and a number of houses were leveled with the ground. The cause of the disaster remained unexplained, as not a human being was left alive who could tell the tale.——The city of Canton has been visited with a severe fever which has been very destructive, though it had spared the European factories.——The great Oriental ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... and bleak plains of the Cotswold Hills, shone forth the strange, mysterious, zodiacal light, towering upwards into a point among the stars, and shaped in the form of a cone. It was the first occasion this curious, unexplained phenomenon had ever come under my notice, and it was awe inspiring enough in itself. But before I had gone more than two miles of my solitary journey, great black clouds came up behind me from the south, and I knew I was racing with the storm. Then, as "the great organ of eternity began to play" ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... given to talkativeness; moreover, he was a considerate man, and he respected Harboro. Therefore it may be doubted if he ever said anything about that unexplained drama which occurred on the main street of Eagle Pass on a Sunday morning, before the town was astir. But there was the bartender at the Maverick—and besides, it would scarcely have been possible for any man to do what Harboro had done without being seen by numbers of persons looking out ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... can have, I equally trust, but one common object in view in their different stations, I know no better way than by minuteness and accuracy of detail to remove whatever may have appeared doubtful in conduct, while unexplained, or inconsistent in principle ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... the publication of which the title is prefixed to this article. It contains, it seems, the earliest and the latest productions of the author; the first of them having been purchased, we are told, many years back by a bookseller, who, for some reason unexplained, thought proper to alter his mind and withhold it. We do not much applaud his taste; for though it is decidedly inferior to her other works, having less plot, and what there is, less artificially wrought up, and also less exquisite nicety of moral ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... received information that the Prussian Minister of War had telegraphed to the Military Inspector of Railroads to take charge of us on our arrival a Cologne, and send us down to the headquarter of the Prussian army, but the Inspector, for some unexplained reason, instead of doing this, sent us on to Berlin. Here our Minister, Mr. George Bancroft, met us with a telegram from the German Chancellor, Count Bismarck, saying we were expected to come direct to the ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Orchard Street, and there it must be supposed her one child—a little boy—was born in the autumn, to be named Hastings after her own godfather. The Comte, who was himself detained by business in France, had, for some unexplained reason, desired that their child might be born in England. Whether she went again to Steventon at Christmas is uncertain, for her next letter is dated April 9, 1787. Eliza was then in town and expecting a visit from her cousin, Henry Austen—by this time a youth of sixteen ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... for the air of Owlkirk, she was going to occupy her old quarters with Mrs. Puckridge during the holidays. They were not much surprised, for they had remarked a change in her manner, and it was not long unexplained: for, walking from the Old House together one evening rather late, they met her with the doctor in a little frequented part of the park. When she left them, they knew she would not return; and her tears betrayed ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... they all arrived safely at Boonesborough "without having encountered," as Boone writes, "any other difficulties than such as are common to this passage." As they approached the fort, Boone and his family, for some unexplained reason, pressed forward, and entered the fortress a few days in advance of the rest of the party. Perhaps Boone himself had a little pride to have it said, that Mrs. Boone and her daughter were the first ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... dead, while the twisted handkerchief round the neck, and the gag in his mouth, showed the silent way in which the hell-hounds had done their work. The clue which explained every event of our voyage came upon me like a flash of light as I gazed on poor Harton's corpse. Much was dark and unexplained, but I felt a great dim perception of ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... indulged in an unexplained digression at this point. He discovered literature and became acquainted with the works of one Charles Dickens, of whose genius he made himself the sounding trumpet- call for the ears of ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... really pretty fair. Luckily, some other people came in, and later I went with Jim to the nursery. Then he said to me, 'Do you think Julia's position is equivocal, Bab?' And I said, 'Jim, I never knew any one to care so little for public opinion as Julia. But all the rumour and gossip, the unexplained mystery of it, are very, very hard for her.' I said, 'Jim, aren't you going back?' and he said, 'Never.' Then he said, 'I think Francis is right. This way is neither one thing nor the other. It ought to be settled. Not,' he said, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... up there in St. Georges, that this Tako was a ghost. How could one say but that all or most manifestations of the occult were not something like this. The history of our Earth abounds with superstition. Ghosts—things unexplained. How can one tell but that all occultism is merely unknown science? Doubtless it is. I can fancy now that in the centuries of the past many scientists of this realm of the Fourth Dimension ventured ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... thoughts about Christmas. She had been terribly frightened at first, when she was brought home from the church; but when her papa kissed her and promised her a sugar dog she was quite sure that, whatever the unexplained mystery might be, he did not think the lovely scene of the night before a wicked one. And when Mrs. Cushing came and covered the little girl up warmly in bed, she only said to her, "Dolly, you must never get out of bed again at night after you are put there; you might have caught ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... unexplained influence on meat, rendering it less savoury and less agreeable than meat which has been roasted. "Those who have travelled in Germany and France," writes Mr. Lewis, one of our most popular scientific authors, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... things that he had told her. He felt rather than perceived, the agitation that seized her at those last words of his. Her hand slowly withdrew from his, it fell back on to her lap and he felt her whole body draw, as it were, into itself, as though it had come into contact with some terror, some unexplained alarm. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... looking down, "I don't know what has come over me, but for some unexplained and inexplicable reason I am inclined to give Lazarus a lead—across that gulf, the first one, I mean, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... of the real greatness of man. We are too big to be quite comprehended by another. There is always something in us left unexplained, and unexplored. We do not even know ourselves, much less can another hope to probe into the recesses of our being. Friendship has a limit, because of the infinite element in the soul. It is hard to kick against the pricks, but they are meant to drive us toward the true ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... a slight movement which might have meant dissent, but which remained unexplained. For a little she stood passive, leaning against him as though she lacked the energy to go, but at length she made a move. Glancing round, she saw that Bertrand ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... to reduce incessantly the number of unexplained phenomena. It is observed, for instance, that fleshy fruits are not liable to fermentation so long as their epidermis remains uninjured. On the other hand, they ferment very readily when they are piled ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... gesture, or otherwise. We read of such feats in tales of 'glamour,' like that of the Goblin Page in The Lay of the Last Minstrel, but to psychological science, I repeat, they are absolutely unknown. The explanation is not what is technically styled a vera causa. Mr. Aide's story is absolutely unexplained, and it is one of scores, attested in letters to Home from people of undoubted sense and good position. Mr. Myers examined and authenticated the letters by post marks, handwriting, and ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... which, on one hypothesis, was that of the dead, but to help to ascertain whether or not there were any genuine facts of an unusual nature, which some persons explained by the animistic hypothesis. To mere 'bellettristic triflers' the existence of genuine abnormal and unexplained facts seems to have been the object of inquiry, and we must penitently admit that if genuine communications could really be opened with the dead, we would regard the circumstance with some degree of curious zest, even if the dead were ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... temple which formed the top story of the Legislative building. This theory took a very strong hold upon certain of the most influential of the nobles, who quickly developed extreme jealousy of the two strangers, whom they vaguely suspected of being in some unexplained way inimical to them and their interests; and for a time Dick and Grosvenor undoubtedly went in danger of ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... your secret home." And then she looked out over the misty clover-grown pleasance to the country beyond bathed in brilliant moonlight. And something in the beauty of it stilled the wild ache in her heart. She would not admit into her thoughts the least fear, but some unexplained, unconquerable apprehension stayed in her innermost soul. She knew, only she refused to face the fact, that all ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... overcrowded classes even the best institutions suffered from the loss of individual contact between the European teacher and the Indian scholar. Western education had been started in India at the top, whence it was expected to filter down by some strange and unexplained process of gravitation. Attention was concentrated on higher and secondary education, to which primary education was at first entirely sacrificed. Whereas Lord William Bentinck had declared the great object of ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... vol ii. p. 200, 2d ed., where the words stand, "Memory, inherited or acquired." I submit that this was unintelligible when Mr. Spencer wrote it, for want of an explanation which he never gave; I submit, also, that he could not have left it unexplained, nor yet as an unrepeated expression not introduced till late in his work, if he had had any ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... strangers, she formed fresh acquaintances, and found new interests and occupations which filled her leisure time. Mrs. Churton often took her when going to call on the few friends she had in the neighbourhood—friends who, for some unexplained reason, seldom returned her visits. At the vicarage, where they frequently went, Fan became acquainted with Mr. Long the vicar, a large, grey-haired, mild-mannered man; and Mrs. Long, a round energetic woman, with reddish cheeks and keen eyes; and the three ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... sensible to the pulses of his audience. Justice compels at times. In truth, there are times when the foggy obscurities of the preacher are by comparison broad daylight beside the whirling loose tissues of a woman unexplained. Aminta was one born to prize rectitude, to walk on the traced line uprightly; and while the dark rose overflowed the soft brown of her cheeks, under musings upon her unlicenced heart's doings overnight, she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I saw you last, that there was something unexplained, which might perhaps influence you. I have come this evening to explain it. I hope you will not judge of me by my hesitating manner when I speak to you. You see me at my greatest disadvantage. It is most unfortunate for me that I wish you to see me at my best, and that I know ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... island being of volcanic origin, coarse grass is everywhere, and at about 1500 feet is an area of tree ferns and subtropical vegetation, extending up to nearly the highest parts. The withered trees of a former forest are everywhere and their existence unexplained, though Lillie had many ingenious theories. The island has been in our hands, the Germans', and is now Brazilian. Nobody has been able to settle there permanently, owing to the land-crabs. These also exclude mammal life. Captain Kidd made a treasure depot there, and some ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... for themselves. My own belief is that their feelings at the beginning of the first act are a very subtle and complex mixture, of which they could not then have given a very clear account even to themselves, and that the poet has therefore, with consummate artistic skill, purposely left them unexplained. ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... rigging of an opponent's vessel; in the second, it is looked upon as a common hay-fork. The resemblance to a hay-fork seems satisfactory enough, though the three prongs are much longer than the two of the implement used nowadays, and the hook attached remains unexplained; but if the implement must be supposed to be a military weapon, it seems singularly ill-contrived and inadequate for such rough service. It might conceivably be a trident for spearing fish, but, on the whole, the ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... passes in silence all the rest. I do not conclude from this fact that the earlier features of the scene possessed no spiritual significance, or that their meaning cannot be ascertained. But it is undeniable that when Christ himself gives the meaning of his own parable, the part that he leaves unexplained cannot be as surely and clearly understood as the part which he has explained: and further, the portion of a parable on which he maintained silence while he explained another part, is not for us in the same position as ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... reflections cast on the Slave Market by those whom I consulted as to its merits. It was not unusual, I was told, for slaves who were hired on a Monday to turn up again on Tuesday morning, either from incompatibility of temper on the part of domestic and superior, or from other causes unexplained. Tuesday morning is, in fact, to a large extent, the mere residuum either of Monday's unhired incapables, or of "returns." And yet, as I looked around, I saw—as where does one not see?—some fair young faces; girls who might have played with ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Miss," he resumed, as if unwilling to leave anything unexplained, "you use friction-matches at home? Now you know how cheap they are,—two boxes for a cent. But I remember when one box sold for twenty-five cents. People were then careful how they used them, and it was not everybody who could afford to do so. The flint and tinder-box ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... the exact question? What is the reason he will not tell you anything about How it was made, BY WHOM it was made, or that he remembers it being made at all? Why does he stand playing upon the meaning of words and quibbling around the edges of the evidence? If he can explain all this, but leaves it unexplained, I have the right to infer that Judge Douglas understood it was the purpose of his party, in engineering that bill through, to make a constitution, and have Kansas come into the Union with that constitution, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... overthrown system, it had been accorded to him to have Charles Darnay brought before the lawless Court, and examined. That, he seemed on the point of being at once released, when the tide in his favour met with some unexplained check (not intelligible to the Doctor), which led to a few words of secret conference. That, the man sitting as President had then informed Doctor Manette that the prisoner must remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... foregoing (in fact we apologize for this attempted definition). So it seems that "substance" is too indefinite to analyze, in more specific terms. It is practically indescribable. Intuitions (artistic or not?) will sense it—process, unknown. Perhaps it is an unexplained consciousness of being nearer God, or being nearer the devil—of approaching truth or approaching unreality—a silent something felt in the truth-of-nature in Turner against the truth-of-art in Botticelli, or in the fine thinking of Ruskin against the fine soundings ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... had reached the end of my sentence, I became aware of something ominous in the faces of the guests. I felt I had said something which I had better have left unsaid, and that for some unexplained reason my words had evoked a general consternation. I sat confounded, not daring to utter another syllable, and for at least two whole minutes there was dead silence round the table. Then Captain Prendergast came ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... winter roses standing in soft circles of lamp-light. Raymond felt himself in the presence of an effect in regard to which he remained in ignorance of the cause—a mystery that required a key. Cousin Maria's success was unexplained so long as she simply stood there with her little familiar, comforting, upward gaze, talking in coaxing cadences, with exactly the same manner she had brought ten years ago from California, to a tall, bald, bending, smiling young man, evidently a foreigner, who had just come in and ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... tropics the heavens appear lower, and we never sight blue or purple water save after a tornado. The normal colour is a dirty, brassy yellow-brown, here and there transparent, but ever unsightly in the extreme. It must depend upon some unexplained atmospheric conditions; and the water-aspect is often at its ugliest when the skies are clearest. I have often seen the same tints ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... moral sense. It is, moreover, to obscure the tragic fact that the consequences of action cannot be limited to that which would appear to us to follow 'justly' from them. And, this being so, when we call the order of the tragic world just, we are either using the word in some vague and unexplained sense, or we are going beyond what is shown us of this order, and ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... the end of six months Herbert Bly's discretion and devotion were duly rewarded by Cherry's hand. But Tappington did NOT give her away. That saintly prodigal passed his period of probation with exemplary rectitude, but, either from a dread of old temptation, or some unexplained reason, he preferred to remain in Portland, and his fastidious nest on Telegraph Hill knew him no more. The key of the little door on the side street passed, naturally, into the ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... went so far as to declare in public that honours far higher than a seat in the Privy Council were due, and would soon be paid, to the man who had saved the British dominions in Asia. Hastings now confidently expected a peerage; but, from some unexplained cause, he ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... shadows grew long and luminous, toward evening, the ram, following some unexplained instinct, again mounted the topmost point of Ringwaak, and stood like a statue gazing over the vast, warm-coloured solitude of his new domain. His yellow eyes were placid with a great content. A little below him, the white lamb wobbling on weak legs at her side, the ewe pastured confidently, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the arteries of man are filled with the unknown. The habits of the Esquimaux, the customs of the dwarfs of Central Africa, the ways of the baboons of Sumatra are minutely set to book, but the wars of the phagocytes remain indeterminate, unexplained. With microscope to his eye the bacteriologist is now examining the constituent parts of the blood, isolating, breeding, and minutely studying the germs of fevers, the growths of tumors, and other ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... weeks later from one of his sudden, unexplained absences from town, and making an early morning visit to his attorney, was admitted by a young man whom he recognized, but pretended ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... stray notebook of Cavour's, some clue that would give Alan a lead. He wanted to visit the area in Siberia that Cavour had used as his testing-ground, and from which the last bulletin had come from the scientist before his unexplained disappearance. ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... whenever and wherever opportunity offered. The Fugitive-Slave Law was powerless before the law written on the enlightened consciences of those devoted men and women. These rifles had been forwarded previously to the National Committee at Chicago, for the defense of Kansas, but for some unexplained reasons had never proceeded farther than Tabor, in the State of Iowa. Later on, Mr. Stearns, in his individual capacity, authorized Captain Brown to purchase two hundred revolvers from the Massachusetts Arms Company, and paid for them from his private funds, thirteen or ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... Bascom in number ten of the Pelican, the rent of either of which would swallow the legislative salary in no time. The Honourable Nat Billings, senator from the Putnam County district, is comfortably installed, to be sure. By gradual and unexplained degrees, the constitution of the State has been changed until there are only twenty senators. Noble five ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... correctness: Manning expanded his vision: Hazlitt gave him daring: perhaps even poor George Dyer, like some unrecognized virtue, may have kept alive and nourished the pity and tenderness which were originally sown within him. We must leave the difficulty, as we must leave the great problems of Nature, unexplained, and be content with what is self-evident before us. We know, at all events, that he had an open heart, and that the heart is ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... generations, no pains were taken to make explanations that were not called for by the learned public. All other readers were ignored. They formed a mob, for whom no provision was made. And that many difficulties should be left entirely unexplained for them, was superciliously assumed to be no fault at all. And yet any sensible man, let him be as supercilious as he may, must on consideration allow that amongst the crowd of unlearned or half-learned readers, who have had neither time nor opportunities for what is called 'erudition' ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... innumerable. ortt, wrong. ortt (-en), injustice, wrong. osedd, unseen. oskadd, uninjured. oskapelig, unshapely. oskuld (-en), innocence. oskuldsfull, innocent. oss, us. osviklig, unfailing. osdd, unsown. outsglig, unspeakable. outtydd, unexplained. ovan, above. ovan, unaccustomed, unusual. ovanfrn, from above. ovanfr, above. ovanom, above. ovanupp, above. oviss, uncertain. ovn (-nen, -ner), ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... pushed the writing-pad from him, and, leaning back in his chair, puffed at his cigar. In the moment of reflection, the impression of Alicia's unexplained ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... moment will we mislead our reader. Are we not sworn confidants? What is he to think, then, of this abrupt introduction, unheralded, unexplained? Be it at once confessed that Mr. Helwyse travelled unattended, that there was no slave or other person of any kind in the room, and that this high-sounding order of his was a mere ebullition ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... of an antediluvian race; or else that Nature's own hand has here recorded a mystery, which, could I read her language, would make mankind the wiser and the happier. How many a thing has troubled me with that same idea! Pass on, and leave it unexplained. Here is a narrow avenue, which might seem to have been hewn through the very heart of an enormous crag, affording passage for the rising sea to thunder back and forth, filling it with tumultuous foam, ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the poor quarters. To know how people die, you have to know how they live. So I cultivated my beggar friend and listened to the gossip of quick funerals and unexplained disappearances. I'd have had some real arguments to present to Mr. Brewster if he ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... were our fellow-guests, and when in secret I showed her several places on board the yacht where valuables were secreted, she also became convinced that the men were expert thieves to whom her father, for some unexplained reason, rendered assistance and asylum. She told me that since she had left school she had been on quite a number of cruises, and that the same party always accompanied her father. She had, however, never suspected ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... a dull submission to dictation from without nor an unexplained necessity of thought? What if it be a bold adventure, an experimental sally of a Will to live, to know and to control reality? What if its principles were frankly risky, and their truth had to be desired before it was tested and assured? In a word, what if first principles were ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... those sudden flashes of intuition, that this choice of hers was a hideous mistake. The situation repelled me. But the very strangeness of it seemed to attract the morbid Alice. And it was this one curious strain of unexplained foolishness marring her otherwise strong and in many ways beautiful character which prevented my loving her completely and safely. Nevertheless, I cared for her enough to enter my feeble and futile protest; but it was waved aside with the superb effrontery of a woman who ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... rose from his squatting posture at the stern of the boat, while Phil and Jack amiably made way for the newcomer at the edge of the wharf, where, for some unexplained reason, men always like to stand. Claud, finding himself between Gerald and his father, turned toward the latter with an air ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... square yards in extent, that resemble, at a little distance, pieces of crimson carpeting, and nearer at hand, sheets of crimson bead-work, and of which almost every point and particle is a gem. From some unexplained circumstance, connected apparently with the specific gravity of the substance, it separates in this style from the general mass, on coasts much beaten by the waves; but the garnets of these curious pavements, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... difficult practice? 'Ego puto medicum.' The medicus next to the scholar: though I have not to my recollection required him next me, nor ever expected child of mine to be crying for that milk. Daughter she is—of the unexplained sex: we will send a messenger for Corney. Change, my dear, you will speedily have, to satisfy the most craving of women, if Willoughby, as I suppose, is in the neoteric fashion of spending a honeymoon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... referred before. {244b} He says, “A mile away from Woodhall is one of the loveliest little gems of architecture in the country, a pure, little, Early English church, now dreadfully dilapidated, which belonged, in some unexplained way,—probably as a chantry chapel,—to the Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstead.” As this little gem is now locked away from public view, I will here give extracts from the description of it given by the late Bishop Suffragan, Dr. Edwd. Trollope, one of our greatest authorities, on the occasion of the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... Gasparin is little more than a virtual admission, that, during convulsion, by some sudden change, the bodies of the patients did, as they themselves declared, become, to a marvellous extent, invulnerable,—with the suggestion added, that the nervous fluid may, after some unexplained fashion, have been the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... things, the professor suggested that the huge grizzly be flayed. If the proposed scheme should really be undertaken, that mighty pelt, if uncomfortable to convey, would serve as a fair excuse for the young brave's as yet unexplained absence ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... that winter; and, as their significance remained unexplained, public interest in them soon died out. The observatories at Harvard, Flagstaff, Cordoba, and the newer one on Table Mountain, near Cape Town, all reported the appearance of several new stars, flaring ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... always been at a loss to account for my having plunged thus headlong into an act so monstrous. There is something in it of unexplained and involuntary sympathy. One sentiment flows, by necessity of nature, into another sentiment of the same general character. This was the first instance in which I had witnessed a danger by fire. All was confusion around me, and all changed into hurricane ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... uncomfortable kind of chamber which, in some unexplained way, always gave Adrian the impression that people, or presences, were stirring in it whom he could not see. Also in this place there happened odd and unaccountable noises; creakings, and sighings which seemed to proceed from the walls ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... they were," and Frank went on to explain how it came there was a second vacation for the academy boys of Centerville, and also the unfortunate fact of Andy, known among his chums as "Butch" for some unexplained reason, having determined to take an outing in the same region at the identical time they ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... in infants, more frequently than too much clothing. It is generally customary to use from the time of birth and during the period of infancy a flannel band around the child's abdomen. Just how this acts is not clear, but there seems good reason for the belief that in some unexplained way the practice has the effect of warding off intestinal disturbances, and is, therefore, ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... as they stood looking out at the west, where some cirro-stratus clouds were waiting to see the sun down beyond the horizon, and keep his memory golden for half an hour. Bones was affecting ability to answer conundrums, asked by an unexplained person with a banjo, who treated him with distinction, calling him "Mr. Bones." Both were affecting an air of high courtesy, as of persons familiar with the Thrones and Chancelleries of Europe. The particulars of these conundrums were inaudible, from distance, but the scheme ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... overpowering in tenderness and pathos; but she has, also, words that cause the brows to draw together, the mind to pause uneasily, then to cry "Not so!" Of such is the analysis of her own blank ignorance with regard to the marriage-state. This, wholly acceptable while left unexplained, loses its verisimilitude when comparisons are found in her mouth with which to delineate it; and the particular one chosen—of marriage as a coin, "a dirty piece would purchase me the praise of those I loved"—is actually inept, since the essence of her is that she does not know anything at all ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... May. Pitt's birthday was on the 28th. Would not all who foresaw ruin for England in the supremacy of "the Doctor" welcome a demonstration on behalf of his predecessor? For more than a year Pitt's friends had been puzzled and abashed by his unexplained retirement, witness the uncharitable surmise of the usually benevolent Dr. Burgh—"Can I see Addington climb upon the stooping neck of Mr. Pitt, and not believe that it is done in hostility or in a masked confederacy? If the former, how am I to estimate the man who comes ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... preparation for it is undoubtedly of earlier date, is perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon in the religious history of antiquity. This is not the place to inquire into its causes, which still remain largely unexplained; there is even no reason to enter more closely into its outer manifestations, as the thing itself is doubted by nobody. It is sufficient to mention as instances authors like Suetonius, with his naive belief in ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... the subject of the unexplained disappearances of men in the bush of Australia, he told the incidents of the forgotten dead to which these writings have special reference. I use my own words, so do not bind myself ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... scientific discovery goes to assure us that the discovery of the cause of variation will be only a resolution of variation into two factors: one, the immediate secondary cause of the changes, which so far explains them; the other an unresolved or unexplained phenomenon, which will then stand just where the product, variation, stands now, only that it will be one step nearer to the efficient cause. This line of argument appears to me so convincing, that I am bound to suppose that it does not meet your case. Although you introduced ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... hissing invisibly through the rain. The Wabbly backed cautiously away from the spot where they landed, because they were wholly invisible and they made a sound which those in the Wabbly could not understand. Always, to a savage, the unexplained is dangerous. Modern warfare has reached the same high peak of wisdom. The Wabbly drew off from the sparks because it could not know what made them, and because it had used its power-beam and the bomber had dropped its bombs without stopping or ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... without tickets, fighting and rioting in the streets, following military companies, walking on the battery contrary to law, bathing horses at forbidden places, theft, or other violation of the city and state laws" advanced for some unexplained reason to an aggregate of 1424. Of those taken into custody 274 were discharged after examination, 330 were punished in the workhouse, 33 were prosecuted or delivered to warrant, 26 were fined or committed until the fines were paid, for ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... you a bundle of proposals, which, I think, do not profess more than I have hitherto performed. I have printed many of the plays, and have hitherto left very few passages unexplained; where I am quite at a loss, I confess my ignorance, which is seldom ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Charles X. was also observed by another foreigner, who was making agreeable personal notes at that time in Paris, but who is not referred to by Irving, who for some unexplained reason failed to meet the genial Scotsman at breakfast. Perhaps it is to his failure to do so that he owes the semi-respectful reference to himself in Carlyle's "Reminiscences." Lacking the stimulus to his vocabulary of personal acquaintance, Carlyle ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... still unexplained in the dread which an elephant always exhibits on approaching a fence, and the reluctance which he displays to face the slightest artificial obstruction to his passage. In the fine old tank of Tissa-weva, close by Anarajapoora, the natives cultivate grain, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Saint John gives the motive of Christ's conduct, which is left unexplained by the other evangelists, who have ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... character. Such attempts are the result of a tendency to regard the printed page as a fetich—to think that if one knows his alphabet and can call the printed words one after another as his eye runs along the line, some unexplained good will result, or at least that he has performed a praiseworthy act, has "accumulated merit" somehow or somewhere, like a Thibetan with ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... on the mail route to Fort Reno, and only a few miles north of the Chisholm Crossing. The letter was characteristic of my employer. It contained but one imperative order,—that I should touch, either with or without the herd, at Camp Supply. For some unexplained reason he would make that post his headquarters until after the Buford herds had passed that point. The letter concluded with the injunction, in case we met any one, to conceal the ownership of the ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... Latkin had snapped a profitable bit of my father's business, as Nastasa did afterward, he would have been no more angry with him than he was with Nastasa, perhaps even less. But Latkin, under the influence of some unexplained, incomprehensible feeling of envy or greed, and perhaps also moved by a momentary feeling of honesty, had played him false in exposing him to their patron, a rich young merchant, by opening the careless young man's eyes to some sharp practice by which my father expected ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... i.e., laced in a thrum, or warp. 10.4: 'Misaunter [ misadventure] have' was used in imprecations: cf. in the Merlin romance, 'Mysauenture haue that it kepeth eny counseile.' 11.3: 'Each at the other's heart.' 13.3: 'sanchothes': unexplained; but it obviously means that the arrow struck between his legs. 16.1: 'yelp,' boast. ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... leaving it there, all that she had done, unacknowledged, unexplained between them, as she would have it left. And instead of going he stood rooted to that doorstep, and to his amazement he heard himself saying, "I wish I could do something ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... new light on many events before the war. Among them the long-unexplained declaration of Emperor William at Damascus in 1898 that all Mohammedans might confidently regard the German Emperor as "their friend forever." There also is a complete understanding now of Germany's ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... giddily with that flight in the old rug for much thought; perhaps because I did not yet fully realise the thing that had happened. But, anyhow, there is the fact, which, like so many others in my narrative, must, alas! remain unexplained for the moment. The rug, by the way, had completely disappeared, my friend comforting me on this score, however, by saying he had seen it rolled up and taken away by one whom ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... doubt this. There are men who believe that democracy, as a form of Government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future—and that freedom is ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... nor Bertram knew or cared what had become of Aunt Hannah and Pete. There were just two people in their world—two people, and unutterable, incredible, overwhelming rapture and peace. Then, very gradually it dawned over them that there was, after all, something strange and unexplained in it all. ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... of that one muskeg hundreds of thousands of little pelts have been taken since 1754 when Anthony Hendry, the smuggler, came the first of the fur-traders inland from the Bay. And the game—save in the year of the unexplained rabbit pest—shows no sign ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... with a mastery and feeling of which he had never before been conscious. While attributing this improvement very largely to the beauty of the instrument on which he was performing, yet he could not but believe that by his illness, or in some other unexplained way, he had actually acquired a greater freedom of wrist and fluency of expression, with which reflection he was not a little elated. He had had a lock fixed on the cupboard in which he had originally found the ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... him, as is related (if not feigned) of Pylades and Orestes, that they would gladly have died for each other or together, not to live together being to them worse than death. But in me there had arisen some unexplained feeling, too contrary to this, for at once I loathed exceedingly to live and feared to die. I suppose, the more I loved him, the more did I hate, and fear (as a most cruel enemy) death, which had bereaved me of ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... these head-lines ran "Startling Disclosures!!!!" and then followed "Tremendous Excitement in Metropolisville!" "Official Rascality!" "Bold Mail Robbery!" "Arrest of the Postmaster!" "No Doubt of his Guilt!" "An Unexplained Mystery!" "Sequel to the Awful Drowning Affair of Last Week!" Having thus whetted the appetite of his reader, and economized in type-setting by nearly a column of such broad and soul-stirring typography, ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... operated and a survey of the results of the many studies that were made of the mass of UFO data we had collected. Also covered were our interviews with a dozen North American astronomers, the story of the unexplained green fireballs of New Mexico, and an account of how a committee of six distinguished United States scientists spent many hours attempting to answer the question, "Are ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... some years since, lost a coach-dog in France, which he in vain endeavoured to find. He returned to England, where he had not long arrived before the dog appeared; but the mode of his return remained for ever unexplained, though it is more than probable that the dog's sagacity, when he had made his escape from confinement, prompted him to go to the sea-coast, where he found means to get on board some vessel bound for ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... surprise at much remaining as yet unexplained in regard to the origin of species and varieties, if he make due allowance for our profound ignorance in regard to the mutual relations of the many beings which live around us. Who can explain why one species ranges widely and is very numerous, and why ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... outstanding error or discrepancy; the stars were still subject to an unexplained displacement—not, indeed, a displacement that repeated itself every year, but one that went through a cycle of changes in a ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... world—he was a book-hunter. How with his poor income, much of which went to feed the necessities of those still poorer, he should have accomplished anything in a pursuit generally considered expensive, is among other unexplained mysteries. But somehow he managed to scrape together a curious and interesting collection, so that his name became associated with rare books, as well ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... such a history of even one line of the human race, you would probably think him insane. Even if he succeeded in giving a fairly clear view of the different stages, the successive stages would be so remote from one another, such vast changes would necessarily remain unnoticed or unexplained that you would hardly believe that they could have any genetic relation or belong to one ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... the simple reader to wonder over this, taking it as an unexplained marvel. I think, however, I will turn over a furrow of subsoil in it. The explanation is, of course, that in a great many thoughts there must be a few coincidences, and these instantly arrest our attention. Now we shall probably never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... however, to do this; and to tell the full story of Pascal’s life is no longer possible. Its records, numerous as they are, are incomplete; all fail more or less at an interesting point of his career. They leave much unexplained; and the most familiar confidences of his sisters and niece, who have preserved many interesting details regarding him, have not entirely removed the veil from certain aspects of his character. The well-known life by Madame Périer, his elder sister, ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... as the present. His wide reading, his shrewd practical judgment, his large experience in labour movements in the Old Land, gave him a position of commanding influence which enabled him to dominate the executives and direct their activities. His sudden and unexplained acceptance of the more radical program won for him an enthusiastic following of the element which had hitherto recognised the leadership of Brother Simmons. Day and night, with a zeal that never tired, he laboured at the work of organising and disciplining the various ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... general, written immediately after his arrival at Paris. But it was plain that it must have been written before Lady Cecilia's letter, forwarded by Madame de St. Cymon, could have reached him. It was evident that matters were as yet unexplained, from his manner of writing about "the death-blow to all his hopes," and now he was setting off with Lord Beltravers for Naples, to follow M. de St. Cymon, and settle the business of the sister's divorce. Lady Cecilia could only hope that her letter would follow ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... us already shunned, disdained, And for re-acceptance have not once striven; Whatever offence our course has given The brunt thereof we have long sustained. Well, let us away, scorned unexplained. ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... harmless things, the professor suggested that the huge grizzly be flayed. If the proposed scheme should really be undertaken, that mighty pelt, if uncomfortable to convey, would serve as a fair excuse for the young brave's as yet unexplained absence ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... But it couldn't be true, you know, as Herbert reported it to me. He said Miss Morley had left Mayberry, had gone away for some unexplained reason, and was not coming back—that you did not know where she had gone, that she had asked not to be hindered or followed or something. And he said—My word! he even said you, Knowles, had declared yourself to be neither her uncle nor her guardian. THAT couldn't ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... different measure in each, Behmer finds Sterne copied stylistically, in the constant conversations about the worth of the book, the comparative value of the different chapters and the difficulty of managing the material, in the fashion of inconsequence in unexplained beginnings and abrupt endings, in the heaping up of words of similar meaning, or similar ending, and in the frequent digressions. Sterne also is held responsible for the manner of introducing the immorally suggestive, for the introduction of learned ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... been suggested by very excellent people that these resemblances are due to some unexplained necessity of adherence to type, as though, the power that they assume created these animals originally, as they are now, coupled creative ability with a plentiful lack of ideas, and so perforce repeated itself with impotent variations. On the ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... about your experience at all, you are irresistibly driven on to endless further reflection. If you try to stop short anywhere in the process, the results of your reflection are found to contain unexplained contradictions, just because you have not yet fitted on the fact on which you are reflecting to everything else there is to know. All the assumptions of every-day 'common sense' and all the more recondite assumptions of the sciences are saturated with these contradictions, because both 'common ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... the Norman conquest the Wantsum remained a navigable channel, and the usual route to London by sea was in at Sandwich and out at Northmouth. It was thus that King Harold's fleet sailed on its plundering expedition round the coast of Kent (a small unexplained incident of the early English type, only to be understood by the analogies of later Scotch history), and thus too, that many other expeditions are described in the concise style of our unsophisticated ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen |
