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More "Causeless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there are mines of treasure in your breast, Seen by that jealous sun, but not possest. He, like a devil, among the blest above, Can take no pleasure in your heaven of love. Go, take her; and thy causeless fears remove; [To the King. Love her so well, that I with rage may die: Dull husbands have no right to jealousy: If that's allowed, it ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things, supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors; ensconcing ourselves in a seeming knowledge when we should submit ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... in Europe has been described as "The Causeless War," but since no one would be bold enough to lay the blame for such an unholy situation upon an overruling Providence, it must find its origin in acts for which man, and man ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me—to certain low ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the bombardment of our cities. Does any one seriously believe that a powerful nation intent on peace—the strongest power in the world, the friend of all mankind, ready to submit any international question to arbitration—would be in danger of an unjust, lawless, causeless assault from the Christian nations of Europe, who have so much to lose and nothing to gain by war, and who have already, in their groaning, tax-burdened people, a sufficient reminder of the folly and criminality of war? They have not money for another war, which would ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... a rebellious rebel. Yes,' she added, rising, 'I detest with all my heart this wicked, causeless rebellion. I detest the very names of the leaders of it. And yet I am compelled to go about with lies upon my lips, and to act lies, till I detest myself more than all else! I have consoled myself somewhat ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... almost terrified me. We so rely upon the orderly operation of familiar natural laws that any seeming suspension of them is noted as a menace to our safety, a warning of unthinkable calamity. So now the apparently causeless movement of the herbage, and the slow, undeviating approach of the line of disturbance were distinctly disquieting. My companion appeared actually frightened, and I could hardly credit my senses when I saw him suddenly throw his gun to his shoulders ...
— The Damned Thing - 1898, From "In the Midst of Life" • Ambrose Bierce
... we find few of those splendid phrases in which, as the Chinese[6] say, "it is only the words which stop, the sense goes on,"—phrases like Kalidasa's[7] "there are doors of the inevitable everywhere," or Bhavabhuti's[8] "for causeless love there is no remedy." As regards the predominance of swift-moving action over the poetical expression of great truths, The Little Clay Cart stands related to the Latter Acts of Rama as Macbeth does to Hamlet. Again, Shudraka's style is simple and direct, a rare quality in a Hindu; ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... name of God, had got into her? He grew increasingly irritated at her arbitrary manner. Lee had kept forgetting that, where Fanny was concerned, it was causeless, or no better than a wild surmise, a chance thrust at random. He made up his mind that he wouldn't submit to a great deal of her bad humor. And, in this spirit, he ignored a query ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... approach of evening, in place of that physical contentment which usually heralds the dinner-hour, at sea, I experienced a fit of the seemingly causeless apprehension which too often in the past had harbingered the coming of grim events; which I had learnt to associate with the nearing presence of one of Fu-Manchu's death-agents. In view of the facts, as I afterwards knew them to be, I ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Not causeless were you christened, gentle flowers, The one of faith, the other fancy's pride; For she who guides both faith and fancy's power, In your fair colors wraps her ivory side. As one of you hath whiteness without stain, So spotless is my love and never ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... mystery, counting them on my fingers: the pavilion secretly prepared for guests; the guests landed at the risk of their lives and to the imminent peril of the yacht; the guests, or at least one of them, in undisguised and seemingly causeless terror; Northmour with a naked weapon; Northmour stabbing his most intimate acquaintance at a word; last, and not least strange, Northmour fleeing from the man whom he had sought to murder, and barricading himself, like a hunted creature, behind the door of the pavilion. Here were at ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... won renown, By these two sisters here; The third had causeless banishment, Yet was her love more dear. For poor Cordelia patiently Went wandring up and down, Unhelp'd, unpity'd, gentle maid, Through many ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... a sadness of youth into which the old cannot enter. It seems to them unreal and causeless. But it is even more bitter and burdensome than the sadness of age. There is a sting of resentment in it, a fever of angry surprise that the world should so soon be a disappointment, and life so early take on the look ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke
... races, not yet risen to power, and the Celts, who had fallen from it. It is not difficult to account for this latter omission. The Celts, driven from the plains into the mountains and islands, preserved their liberty, and hated their oppressors with fierce, and not causeless, hatred. A proud and free people, isolated both in country and language, were not likely to adopt customs which implied brotherhood ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... British sway, and inhabited chiefly by a horde of semi-barbarian ignoramuses of African descent. If the world had not by this time thoroughly assessed the intrinsic value of Mr. Froude's utterances, one who knows Grenada might have felt inclined to resent his causeless depreciation of the intellectual capacity of its inhabitants; but considering the estimate which has been pretty generally formed of his historical judgment, Mr. Froude may be dismissed, as regards Grenada and its people, with a certain degree of scepticism. ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... and that the organic change created by the Thirteenth Amendment might be practically set aside by State legislation. In this belief they exhibited their policy towards the Negro. Considering all the circumstances, it would be hard to find in history a more causeless and cruel oppression of a whole race than was embodied in the legislation of those revived and reconstructed State governments. Their membership was composed wholly of the 'ruling class,' as they termed it, and, in no small degree, of Confederate ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... had arrived there, I found Marcus Cato, whom I did not know to be there, sitting in the library, surrounded by a number of the books of the Stoics. For he had, as you know, a boundless desire for reading, one which was quite insatiable,—so much so, indeed, that he was not afraid of the causeless reproaches of the common people, but was accustomed to continue reading even in the senate-house itself, while the senate was assembling, without, however, at all relaxing in his attention to the affairs of the republic. And now, being in the ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... man shall dream of what has been so whispered in his ear; nay, I can assure you, those insinuating devils can do this even when we are awake, which I call impulses of the mind: for from whence, but from these insinuators, come our causeless passions, involuntary wickedness, or sinful desires? Who else form ideas in the mind of man when he is asleep, or present terrible or, beautiful figures to his fancy: Mr. Milton represents the devil tempting Eve in the shape of a toad, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... and enough to keep, as large a daily alms as a deacon gives would never be missed by me. Your father gets old for daily toil; he would live with us, as I should truly hold him for my father also. I would be as chary of mixing in causeless strife as of thrusting my hand into my own furnace; and if there came on us unlawful violence, its wares would be brought to an ill ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... balance, and several other things, which cannot fall or incline either one way or the other without some cause or difference, either wholly within them or coming to them from without; for that what is causeless (he says) is wholly insubsistent, as also what is fortuitous; and in those motions devised by some and called adventitious, there occur certain obscure causes, which, being concealed from us, move our inclinations to one side or other. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... not know how to believe all this now," said Margaret; "it seems so causeless and ridiculous! In Birmingham we could never have given credit to the story of ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... applied to a beggar who, like most negroes, has a dread of dogs, and his repeated, and often causeless, cry of 'Chain me up that dog!' earns for him ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... been no sufficient cause, the terrified crew wet their powder and ceased to fire on the British works. The panic spread to the other batteries, and from them to the forces on shore, even the commander-in-chief being affected by the causeless fear. At one moment the assailants were enthusiastic with expectation of success. Not many minutes afterwards they were so overcome with unreasoning terror that an insane order was given to burn the batteries, and these were fired with such precipitate ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... shew, in wordes few, That men have an ill use (To their own shame) women to blame, And causeless them accuse." —The ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Count's rhodomontade, acknowledged himself obliged to me, and allowed that at that time my fears were not wholly causeless. He behaved with ease and good humour, and left me without appearing to have taken any offence. I shall be with thee on Tuesday. I know it will be a day of feasting to the family, and I will do my best endeavour not to cast a damp on the hilarity ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... you are; you can do nothing to me. I am your friend, not your enemy, Peace!" If he be strong enough to take up that position, the great wave of elemental force will roll aside and let him through. The seemingly causeless fears which some feel at night are largely due to this hostility. You are, at night, more sensitive to the astral plane than during the day, and the dislike of the beings on the plane for man is felt more strongly. But when the elementals find ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... each other in the ties of amity and brotherhood, to form a blessed league against the marauders of the road. I see amongst you, my Lords, many of the boasts and pillars of the state; but, alas! I think with grief and dismay on the causeless and idle hatred that has grown up between you!—a scandal to our city, and reflecting, let me add, my Lords, no honour on your faith as Christians, nor on your dignity as ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... with an express disavowal of any intention to be impertinently inquisitorial, and for the sole purpose of arriving at the truth, so as to correct misapprehensions and allay all causeless irritation, a committee be appointed of one from each of the synods of Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Virginia, who shall be requested to report to the next General Assembly on the following points:—1. The number of ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... to rid themselves of painful regrets, took refuge in forgetfulness, and closed their eyes to the past—duty banished some abroad, and duty imprisoned others at home—estrangements there were, at first unconscious and unintended, yet erelong, though causeless, complete—changes were wrought insensibly, invisibly, even in the innermost nature of those who being friends knew no guile, yet came thereby at last to be friends no more—unrequited love broke some bonds—requited love relaxed ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... and both sexes? Truth does not allow us to answer these inquiries in a manner that does credit to the wisdom or the justice of the times. This was not the flight of guilt, but of virtue. It was an humble and peaceable religion, flying from causeless oppression. It was conscience, attempting to escape from the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts. It was Robinson and Brewster, leading off their little band from their native soil, at first to find shelter on the shore of the neighboring continent, but ultimately to come hither; ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... door, to CLINIA within.) There is nothing, Clinia, for you to fear as yet: they have not been long by any means: and I am sure that she will be with you presently along with the messenger. Do at once dismiss these causeless apprehensions ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... was a momentary rigor. At the seventh her lids began to droop. At the tenth her eyes were closed, and her breathing was slower and fuller than usual. I tried as I watched to preserve my scientific calm, but a foolish, causeless agitation convulsed me. I trust that I hid it, but I felt as a child feels in the dark. I could not have believed that I was still ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Gibe? Attentive Truth and Nature to descry, And pierce each Scene with Philosophic Eye. To thee were solemn Toys or empty Shew, The Robes of Pleasure and the Veils of Woe: All aid the Farce, and all thy Mirth maintain, Whose Joys are causeless, or whose Griefs are vain. ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... retribution from a superhuman power upon the person against whom they are uttered. Anathema is a solemn ecclesiastical condemnation of a person or of a proposition. Curse may be just and authoritative; as, the curse of God; or, it may be wanton and powerless: "so the curse causeless shall not come," Prov. xxvi, 2. Execration expresses most of personal bitterness and hatred; imprecation refers especially to the coming of the desired evil upon the person against whom it is uttered. Malediction is a general wish of evil, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... of the general of the interior, with a request of a nature unusually interesting. He stated his name to be Eugene Beauharnois, son of the ci-devant Vicomte de Beauharnois, who, adhering to the revolutionary party, had been a general in the republican service upon the Rhine, and falling under the causeless suspicion of the committee of public safety, was delivered to the revolutionary tribunal, and fell by its sentence just four days before the overthrow of Robespierre. Eugene was come to request of Bonaparte, as general of the interior, that his father's sword ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... filled with beauty, and the heart Rejoiced with sense of life and peace renewed; And yet at such an hour as this, upstart Vague myriad longing, restless, unsubdued, And causeless tears from melancholy mood, Strange discontent with earth's and nature's best, Desires and yearnings ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... possessions, and watched him till he staggered into safety to the doors of the "Green Dragon," which was the sign of the house. Thence I walked briskly into Aylesbury, rejoicing in my freedom and the causeless good spirits that belong to a snowy morning; though, to be sure, long before I had arrived the snow had again ceased to fall, and the eaves of Aylesbury were smoking in the level sun. There was an accumulation of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so hasty, or given to causeless anger," said Alcinous; "excess in all things is evil."[1] Then he looked earnestly at Odysseus, and continued, after a pause: "I would to heaven that thy thoughts were as mine; then wouldst thou abide ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... which you were the subject, and in which she spoke of you with an earnestness of old affection and regard that did me good. I date my recovery (which has been slow) from that hour. I am still feeble, and liable to sudden outbursts of causeless rage and demoniacal gloom, but I shall be better presently. What a thing it is, that we can't be always innocently merry and happy with those we like best without looking out at the back windows of life! Well, one day perhaps—after a long night—the blinds ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... intire submission to the Gracious Off-spring of this Royal Martyr: yet You, Great Sir, denying Yourself the Rights and Priviledges the meanest Subject Claims, with a Fortitude worthy Your Adorable Vertues, put Yourself upon a voluntary Exile to appease the causeless murmurs of this again gathering Faction, who make their needless and self-created fears, an occasion to Play the old Game o're again; whil'st the Politick self-interested and malitious few betray the unconsidering Rest, with the delicious ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... the sleeping sword, And force revenge from their offended lord? How long, ye gods, how long Can royal patience bear The insults and wrong Of madmen's jealousies, and causeless fear? ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... its root In reason, is judicious, manly, free; Yours, a blind instinct, crouches to the rod, And licks the foot that treads it in the dust. Were kingship as true treasure as it seems, Sterling, and worthy of a wise man's wish, I would not be a king to be beloved Causeless, and daubed with undiscerning praise, Where love is more attachment to the throne, Not to the man who ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... the stream, and the softly-gurgling but rapid flow with which it hurried itself on beneath the black abyss of the building. She had often shuddered as she watched it, indulging herself in the luxury of causeless trepidation. But now, were she there, she would surely take that plunge into the blackness, which would bring her to the end of all ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... on went this noble maid, Until the presence of the king she gained, Nor for he swelled with ire was she afraid, But his fierce wrath with fearless grace sustained, "I come," quoth she, "but be thine anger stayed, And causeless rage 'gainst faultless souls restrained — I come to show thee, and to bring thee both, The wight whose fact hath made thy heart ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... I protest by heaven and earth That her suspect is causeless and unjust, And that I ne'er had such a vild[440] intent; Harm she imagin'd, where as ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... should grant; and not a short reprieve, But length of certain life, to Turnus give? Now speedy death attends the guiltless youth, If my presaging soul divines with truth; Which, O! I wish, might err thro' causeless fears, And you (for you have ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... she bade me speed, Her urgent prayer I would not heed. I bade her in thy strength confide, And thus with tender words replied: "No giant roams the forest shade From whom thy lord need shrink dismayed. No human voice, believe me, spoke Those words thy causeless fear that woke. Can he whose might can save in woe The heavenly Gods e'er stoop so low, And with those piteous accents call For succour like a caitiff thrall? And why should wandering giants choose The accents of thy lord to ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... elapsed since the day when, incensed at the flogging received—this cruel as causeless—he ran away, resolved to risk everything, life itself, rather than longer endure the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... my fire, talking his broken talk or singing his odd, endless, wordless songs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes with an affectionate manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me an embarrassment of which I was ashamed. But for all that, he was capable of flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy sullenness. At a word of reproof, I have seen him upset the dish of which I was about to eat, and this not surreptitiously, but with defiance; and similarly at a hint of inquisition. I was not unnaturally curious, being in a strange place and surrounded by ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mad; Ophelia is insane. Her sweet mind lies in fragments before us—a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies; her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to sadness—each equally purposeless and causeless; her snatches of old ballads, such as perhaps her nurse sung her to sleep with in her infancy—are all so true to the life, that we forget to wonder, and can only weep. It belonged to Shakspeare alone so to temper such a picture that we can endure ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... supposed would be brief, was still undetermined. While affairs were in this uncertain and inchoate condition, and the Administration had no declared policy on some of the most important questions, Congress came together fired with indignation and revenge for a war so causeless and unprovoked. A large portion of the members, exasperated toward the rebels by reason of the war, and dissatisfied with delays and procrastination, which they imputed chiefly to the Administration, were determined there should be prompt and ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... work at night. He resumed his haunted prowlings through the streets. But he took care that he did not pass Francey Wilmot's house again. He knew now that he was afraid. He was ill, too, with a secret, causeless malady that baffled him. There were nights when he suffered the unspeakable torture of a man who feels that the absolute control over all his faculties, which he has taken for granted, is slipping from him, and that his whole personality ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... face changed expression, and it was with difficulty that he restrained his temper. His life had been made up of a constant recurrence of these scenes, and he was wholly weary of them; and the thought of the absolute want of reason in the causeless jealousy, and the misery that these little bickerings made of his life, exasperated him beyond measure. The dinner proceeded in silence, and every slight remark was a presage of storm. Hubert hoped ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... inclines to reveries; she seeks solitude; her mother surprises her in causeless tears; her teacher discovers an unwonted inattention to her studies, a less retentive memory, a disinclination to mental labor; her father misses her accustomed playfulness; he, perhaps, is annoyed by her listlessness and inertia. What does it all mean? What is the matter ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... testifies with his earliest cries, when, "drowned in tears," he first beholds the light; for, as the sparks fly upwards, so is man born to trouble, and woe doth he bring with him into the world, even thyself, dark one, terrible one, causeless, unbegotten, without a father. Oh, how unfrequently dost thou break down the barriers which divide thee from the poor soul of man, and overcast its sunshine with thy gloomy shadow! In the brightest days of prosperity—in the midst of health and wealth—how sentient is the poor human creature of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... considering a certain fatal event. But I give my free and hearty consent, providing the settlements are drawn in such an irrevocable form as may secure my child from suffering by that state of dependence, and that sudden and causeless revocation of allowances, of which I have so much reason to complain. Of Sir Frederick Langley, I augur, you will hear no more. He is not likely to claim the hand of a dowerless maiden. I therefore commit you, my dear Isabella, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... "was an exceedingly proud woman, belonging to a family of social prominence in the East. She felt deeply the causeless gossip connecting her name with the case, as well as the open disgrace of her husband's conviction. She refused to receive her former friends, and even failed in loyalty to your father in his time of trial. It is impossible ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Spinoza means by this not caprice, nor the monstrous miracle of causeless action, but independence of external force or of any disproportionate and illegitimate passion. The freedom to which he aspires is the freedom of God, who eternally acts in accordance with the mutual harmony of the whole ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... causeless change permeated even to the columns of the Argus. It had been observed by more than one of us that these had of late suffered from the depression of their editor. Their general tone had been negative. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... King Oswy's wife, King Edwin, his daughter, full of goodnesse, For Oswyn's soule a minster, in her life, Made at Tynemouth, and for Oswy causeless That hym so bee slaine and killed helpeless; For she was kin to Oswy and Oswin, As ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... either that the author has written for himself the favourable notice, or that pecuniary bribes have made the honest editor his tool? Verily, my public, thou art not generous here; ay, and thou art grievously deceived, as well as sordid: for by careless praise, causeless censure, credit given for corrupt bribery, and no allowance made for unamiable criticisms, poor maltreated authors speak to many wrongs: and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... unchanging unison, that gave The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, That yielded to the wanderers of the deep The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, 95 And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust With spirit, thought, and love; on Man alone, Partial in causeless malice, wantonly Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul Blasted with withering curses; placed afar 100 The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp, But serving on the frightful gulf to glare, Rent wide beneath his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... bridegroom is forbidden to strike "three causeless blows." Of course he disobeys. According to the "Cambro-Briton" version it happened that one day, preparing for a fair, he desired his wife to go to the field for his horse. Finding her dilatory in doing so, he tapped her arm thrice with his glove, saying, half ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... meant to be unkind, or that her chidings were always undeserved or her complaints causeless. Her mother could not have been more careful than her aunt was, that Christie should not put her hand to work beyond her strength. But probably her mother would have felt that a child might become weary, even to disgust, of a never-ending, never-changing ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... may not be awakened by the seizure, but pass into deeper sleep. Intermittent wetting of the bed, occasional temporary mental stupor in the morning, irritability, temporary but well-marked lapses of memory, sleep-walking, and causeless outbursts of ungovernable temper ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... side with this extravagant, apparently causeless merriment, there was also an extravagant, apparently causeless, terror. The drug produced the laughter, I knew; but what brought in the terror I could not imagine. Everywhere behind the fun lay the fear. It was terror masked by cap and bells; and I became the playground for two opposing emotions, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... than all) unkind. This behavior on the part of his former ally did not injure Balfour in the regards of Agnes; she resented Charley's conduct, and did her best to redress it by manifesting her own good-will; she had herself had experience of his shifting moods and causeless changes of demeanor, and perhaps she was willing to show what small importance she attached to his capricious humors. Thus it happened that Richard and herself "got on" together much better (as well, of course, as much ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... narrative. At the time, this person's conduct only inspired me with contempt, and confirmed me in an opinion which I already entertained, that of all the propensities which teach mankind to torment themselves, that of causeless fear is the most ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... be so unlike; That still another and another comes, And at the matron's tables smiles and blooms; That all appear as if they meant to stay Time undefined, nor name a parting day; And yet, though all are valued, all are dear, Causeless, they go, and seldom more appear. Yet let Suspicion hide her odious head, And Scandal vengeance from a burgess dread; A pious friend, who with the ancient dame At sober cribbage takes an evening game; His cup beside him, through their play he ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... the youth; "even in your presence I return to this gay man's face, the causeless dishonour—which he has flung on my name. My brave father, who fell in the cause of his country, demands that justice at the hands of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... she was shorn of her darlings, Of bairns and brothers: they bent to their fate 25 With war-spear wounded; woe was that woman. Not causeless lamented the daughter of Hoce The decree of the Wielder when morning-light came and She was able 'neath heaven to behold the destruction [38] Of brothers and bairns, where the brightest ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... idea of what was going on around her, retained, however, in her bosom, amidst the rapture that made up her life, a vague feeling of sorrow, of some weight that made her heart bleed despite herself. At times, when she was plunged in one of those causeless transports which made her melt with tenderness, an anxious thought would come to her—she imagined that some misfortune was hovering behind her. She turned round, however, and then smiled. People are ever in a tremble when they are too happy. There was nothing ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... facts; and the latter sets before our eyes the venerable figures of a Soranus and a Thrasea, intrepid in their fate, and only moved by the melting sorrows of their friends and kindred. What sympathy then touches every human heart! What indignation against the tyrant, whose causeless fear or unprovoked malice gave rise to such ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... and he said, "Not a bit of it—I shall be glad of your company, old boy." Presently he said, "Do you know what it is to feel sad? I suppose not. I don't mean troubled about anything in particular—there's nothing to be troubled about—but simply sad, in a causeless, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... exceedingly bitter to him, so that he sat musing for some time on the unutterable sadness which the ghosts of perished joys bring to man in his misery, and a line of Virgil buzzed in his brain; but not, as of yore, did it afford him the luxury of causeless melancholy, but like a cruel finger it touched his open wound. The ancients, he thought, ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... amende, neither to reproach himself so bitterly, nor to blame others; and he knew it was better to accept any sad earthly lot, any cruelty, deceit, or wrong inflicted by others, than to have hardened his heart against any living soul by acts of causeless suspicion ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... just to be too lenient, any more than it is just to be unreasonably strict. To allow impertinence or sloppy work is inexcusable, but it is equally inexcusable to show causeless irritability or to be overbearing or rude. And there is no greater example of injustice than to reprimand those about you because you happen to be in a bad humor, and at another time overlook offenses that are greater because you ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... soon eased of her causeless fright by the entry of the noble peer, who was not only an intimate acquaintance of Mrs Fitzpatrick, but in reality a very particular friend of that lady. To say truth, it was by his assistance that she had been enabled to escape from her husband; for this nobleman ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... or unfear never yet warded off misfortune," she said gravely. "It is better to entertain causeless concern ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... She had always been so trusting and so innocent, but now she became queer and suspicious, wanting to know where I had been and what I had been doing, and whom my letters were from, and what I had in my pockets, and a thousand such follies. Day by day she grew queerer and more irritable, and we had causeless rows about nothing. I was fairly puzzled by it all. Sarah avoided me now, but she and Mary were just inseparable. I can see now how she was plotting and scheming and poisoning my wife's mind against me, but I was such a blind beetle that I could ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... antecedents is not to destroy them: granted that they are—a man does not cease to be a man when we reflect that he has had a father and mother, neither do will and memory cease to be will and memory on the ground that they cannot come causeless. They are manifest minute by minute to the perception of all people who can keep out of lunatic asylums, and this tribunal, though not infallible, is nevertheless our ultimate court of appeal—the final arbitrator in all ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... how to regard a man's jealousy. It flatters her, yet it pains her. She is the cause of it, yet she would believe it causeless. She deplores it, yet she would not have it quite away. It is proof of love, yet it is fatal to love. How to treat it, puzzles her. Implicit obedience to the man's wishes lowers her in her own ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... best to succeed, and contented himself with pointing out, quietly and courteously, how failure might have been avoided. "But if he believed," says his chief of the staff, "that his subordinates were self-indulgent or contumacious, he became a stern and exacting master; ...and during his career a causeless friction was produced in the working of his government over several gallant and meritorious officers who served under him. This was almost the sole fault of his military character: that by this jealousy of intentional inefficiency he diminished the sympathy between himself and the general ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Domestication," vol. ii., p. 275): "No doubt, in every case there must have been some exciting cause." And again, six or seven pages later: "No doubt, each slight variation must have its efficient cause." The repetition within so short a space of this expression of confidence in the impossibility of causeless effects would suggest that Mr. Darwin's mind at the time of writing was, unconsciously to himself, in a state of more or less uneasiness as to whether effects could not occasionally come about of themselves, and without cause of any sort,—that he may have been standing, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... art, that lay down but one twelve pence a' th' board, 'twill appear as if there were twenty; now should you wear a pair of these spectacles, and see your wife tying her shoe, you would imagine twenty hands were taking up of your wife's clothes, and this would put you into a horrible causeless fury. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... third place, we saw that even if Mr. Spencer's argument were fully subscribed to, and Mind in its substantial essence were conceded to be causeless, the central position of Materialism would still remain unaffected. For Mr. Spencer does not suppose that his "units of Force" are themselves endowed with consciousness, any more than Professor Clifford supposes his "moving molecules of inorganic matter" to be ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... my condition—a not unpleasant one—when suddenly the now well-known symptoms of the visitation to which I had become subject suddenly seized upon me,—the leap of the heart; the sudden, causeless, overwhelming physical excitement, which I could neither ignore nor allay. I was terrified beyond description, beyond reason, when I became conscious that this was about to begin over again: what purpose did it answer; what good was in it? My father indeed understood ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... of death upon his face," Mannering answered. "The men who are traitors to their country to-day are those who, healthy enough themselves, talk causeless and shallow optimism which is fed alone by their own prosperity. The doctrine of Christ is the care of others. If you do not believe, the sick-room is open also to you; go there unprejudiced, and with an open mind, and you will come away as ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the only reason that you are unable to think of or picture a Causeless Cause, is because everything that you have experienced in this relative world of the senses has had a cause—something from which it sprung. You have seen Cause and Effect in full operation all about you, and quite naturally ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... I was not so happy: and I looked back fondly to the days of the greenwood and the fellowship of the Dry Tree, and the days before that, of my flight with my lord. And moreover with the wearing of the years those murmurs against me and the blind causeless hatred began to grow again, and chiefly methinks because I was the king, and my lord the king's cloak: but therewith tales concerning me began to spring up, how that I was not only a sorceress, but even one foredoomed from ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... November Sunday inspired Eustace Reynolds with a melancholy too insistent to be ignored and too causeless to be enjoyed. The grey sky overhead between the house-tops, the cold wind round every street-corner, the sad faces of the men and women on the pavements, combined to create an atmosphere of ineloquent ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... her her stifled laugh; but I hastily made an imperious sign which abashed her and inspired respect for her neighbor. She sat down beside me. The old man did not choose to leave the charming creature, to whom he clung capriciously with the silent and apparently causeless obstinacy to which very old persons are subject, and which makes them resemble children. In order to sit down beside the young lady he needed a folding-chair. His slightest movements were marked by the inert heaviness, the stupid hesitancy, which characterize the ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... the theory of universal momentariness, origination from the non-existent, causeless cognition, and so on, it would follow that persons also not making any efforts may accomplish all their ends. It is a fact that the attainment of things desired and the warding off of things not desired is effected through effort, and so on. But if all existences momentarily perish, a previously ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... Osmyn left him, his rage subsided in his fears, and his fears were mingled with remorse: 'Which way soever I turn,' said he, 'I see myself surrounded by destruction. I have incensed Osmyn by unreasonable displeasure, and causeless menaces. He must regard me at once with abhorrence and contempt: and it is impossible, but he ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... of artful intelligence came into Nott's eyes, which had remained blankly staring at Renshaw's apparently causeless hilarity. Turning to him he winked solemnly. "That keerless kind o' hoss-laff jist fetched her," he whispered, and vanished before his chagrined ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... (in the Shakespearean sense) to permit any rational continuous plan of study. Like the young man to whom Coleridge addressed a poem of rebuke, I was abandoned, a greater part of the time, to "an Indolent and Causeless Melancholy"; or to its partner, an excessive and not always tasteful mirth. I spent hours upon hours, with little profit, in libraries, flitting aimlessly from book to book. With something between terror and hunger I contemplated the opposite sex. In short, I was discreditable and harmless ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... the Yonne.[93] While these victims of a blind bigotry were floating on under the windows of the Louvre toward the sea, Conde addressed to the queen mother a letter of warm remonstrance, and called upon her to avenge the causeless murder of so many innocent men and women; expressing the fear that, if justice were denied by the king and by herself, the cry of innocent blood would reach high heaven, and God would be moved to inflict those calamities with which the unhappy realm ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... had time to exult in his victory. The trumpeters, all the while, blew their blasts shriller and shriller; each soldier shouted a battle cry and often fell with it on his lips. It was the strangest spectacle of causeless wrath, and of mischief for no good end, that had ever been witnessed; but, after all, it was neither more foolish nor more wicked than a thousand battles that have since been fought, in which men have slain their brothers with just ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Union. Mr. Shellabarger gave an answer to that question, which, as a caustic summary, is worthy to be quoted in full. "I answer him," said the member from Ohio, "in the words of the Supreme Court, 'The causeless waging against their own Government of a war which all the world acknowledge to have been the greatest civil war known in the history of the human race.' That war was waged by these people as States, and it went through long, dreary years. In it they ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... a causeless deprivation settled it. Captain Pharo seized Miss Pray, blushing with alarm and amaze at such sudden retributive lightning on the part of her long-delayed charms, and bore her out ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the Blackfeet have much that is common to many Plains tribes, and also some customs that are peculiar to themselves. Like most Indians, they are subject to sudden, apparently causeless, panics, while at other times they display a courage that is heroic. They are firm believers in luck, and will follow a leader who is fortunate in his expeditions into almost any danger. On the other hand, if the leader of a war ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... Not causeless is this journey to the abyss; Thus is it willed on high, where Michael wrought Vengeance upon the ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... have no mercy for ill-health in others. There are invalids who are objects of sympathy indeed, guiltless heirs of ancestral disease, or victims of parental folly or sin,—those whose lives are early blighted by maladies that seem as causeless as they are cureless,—or those with whom the world has dealt so cruelly that all their delicate nature is like sweet bells jangled,—or those whose powers of life are all exhausted by unnoticed labors and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... by Darwin's critics. In its original and philosophically-correct usage, the term "accident" signifies a property or quality not essential to our conception of a substance: hence, it has come to mean anything that happens as a result of unforeseen causes—or, lastly, that which is causeless. But, as we know that nothing can happen without causes of some kind, the term "accident" is divested of real meaning when it is used in the last of these senses. Yet this is the sense that is sought to be placed upon it by the objection ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... disturb the peace of such a morning by their miserable, causeless hate! Where is Madison's love for his mother? Why don't they remember the distress and horror that would follow their mad act? Zany, wake up. It is time ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... feels as toothache, they cannot enter into a social group. Yet it is no less confusing and no less antisocial if the world which one sees as a system of causes and effects is to another a realm of capricious, causeless, zigzag happenings. The mental links which join society are threatened if some live with their thoughts in a world of order and natural law, and others in ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... summoned to settle a case in the lapse of years, which would have been decided in a day by "twelve good men and true," in a box in the city. It was in this ardour of spirit that he adopted the Romish cause. No man knew more thoroughly the measureless value of an established church, the endless, causeless, and acrid bitterness of sectarianism, and the mixture of unlearned doctrine and factious politics which constitute their creeds. Against Popery in power, Italian, German, or French, in the days of Louis Quatorze, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... go back to his tribe. At other times a vague and indescribable longing seizes a young person, a morbid appetite possesses them, or they fall a prey to an inappeasable and aimless restlessness, or a causeless melancholy. These signs the old priests recognize as the expression of a personal spirit of the higher order. They take charge of the youth, and educate him to the mysteries of their craft. For months or years he is condemned ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... one who found himself alone, beyond the limits of the village and beyond the hearing of its voices,—the vast silence, the vast light, seemed full of weirdness. And these hushes, these transparencies, do not always inspire a causeless apprehension: they are omens sometimes—omens of coming tempest. Nature,—incomprehensible Sphinx!—before her mightiest bursts of rage, ever puts forth her divinest witchery, makes more ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... some of her moods. She was always wayward and capricious, but as gay and happy as the day was long—as full of sunshine as a May morning. Whence come, then, all these vapours and reveries and bursts of causeless weeping? I have found her in tears more oft these last three months than in all the years of her life before; and though she strives to efface the impression by wild outbreaks of mirth, such as we used of old to know, there is something hollow and forced about ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... father must feel towards the deception which had led her into such a position, and made such a tragedy possible. He foresaw her recoil, her bitter condemnation, the final ruin of the relation between himself and her; and yet more than these did he dread her pain, her causeless, innocent pain. To stab the hand which had helped him, the heart which had already suffered so much, in the very first hours of his own shock and misery, he had shrunk from this, he had tried his best ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... chanced that there flitted over the infant-face one of those smiles that we see sometimes in young children—strange, causeless smiles, which seem the reflection ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... miserably deceived myself! Long since, doubtful of the situation of my heart, I dreaded a scrutiny;-but now, now that I have so long escaped, I began, indeed, to think my safety insured, to hope that my fears were causeless, and to believe that my good opinion and esteem of Lord Orville might be owned without suspicion, and felt without danger;-miserably deceived, indeed! His sight is baneful to my repose;-his society is death to my future tranquillity! Oh, Lord Orville! could I have believed ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... mind—the minority that is right—is, I hope, the case. I hope we know assuredly that the arts we have met together to further are necessary to the life of man, if the progress of civilisation is not to be as causeless as the turning of a ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... mind. His distress was infinitely increased by attending some services at a Mission which then happened to be proceeding which, instead of inspiring him with hope, convinced him that his case was past recovery. For some weeks he tasted, day by day, the dreary bitterness of the cup of dark and causeless depression, and laboured under an agonising dejection of spirit. This intensity of suffering seemed to shake his whole life to its foundation. It made havoc of his work, of his friendships, of the easy ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... your physician, sir; Doctor Parkes, sir; the owner of this house, sir," replied he, with all the sternness he could command, and yet white as a specter with agitation. "For shame, sir, for shame, to give way thus. What do you mean by creating this causeless alarm, and disturbing the whole household at so unseasonable an hour? For shame, sir; go to your bed; undress yourself ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... is also the goddess of the night, the dampness, and the cold; she engenders the miasmatic poisons that rack our bones; she conceals in her mantle the foe who takes us unawares; she rules those vague shapes which fright us in the dim light; the causeless sounds of night or its more oppressive silence are familiar to her; she it is who sends dreams wherein gods and devils have their sport with man, and slumber, the twin brother of the grave." [377] So farther south, "the Brazilian mother carefully shielded ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... eager for certainties and those enjoyments which do not betray. It is vast and sonorous; let it be stirred ever so little, and from it go forth deep vibrations which render the sound of the infinite. Augustin, before his conversion, had the apprehensions of our Romantics, the causeless melancholy and sadness, the immense yearnings for "anywhere but here," which overwhelmed our fathers. He is really ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... separation from his sister; and to the astounding (for him naturally incomprehensible) change that had come over the demeanor and the language of nearly all the people placed about the persons of himself and his family. An idiocy resulting from what must have seemed a causeless and demoniac conspiracy would be more likely to melt away under the sudden transfer to kindness and the gayety of forest life than any idiocy belonging to original organic imbecility. Mr. Williams describes his own confusion of mind as continuing ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... instructions of your rash-advised charge?... I never yet loved you so little as not to moan your infamous dealings, which you are in mind, we see, that myself shall possess more princes witness of my causeless injuries, which I should have wished had passed no seas to testify such memorials of your wrongs. Bethink you of such dealings, and set your labor upon such mends as best may, though not right, yet salve some piece of this ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... magnanimity!—May ne'er again Unkind returns thy generous ardor chill, Nor causeless censure give thy bosom pain, Nor thankless hearts reward ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... of days long past I sing, When Pride gave place to mirth without a sting; Ere tyrant customs strength sufficient bore To violate the feelings of the poor; To leave them distanc'd in the mad'ning race, Where'er Refinement shews its hated face: Nor causeless hated;... 'tis the peasant's curse, That hourly makes his wretched station worse; Destroys life's intercourse; the social plan That rank to rank cements, as man to man: Wealth flows around him, fashion lordly reigns; Yet poverty ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... of them was perhaps as faithful. The passions of nations, like those of men, furnish reason with its slowest and latest conquests. The great wars of the French Revolution, and the short and sharp ones which have, after an indispensable breathing-spell, recently followed it, were as causeless and as defiant of the compacts designed to prevent them as those of the Reformation period or of the Thirty Years. They were so many confessions that an efficient international code is one of the inventions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... with her hands folded and her heart filled with unutterable tender woe, that so much causeless cloud had settled upon the home of her refuge. She could not experience that relief many of us feel in deep adversity, that it is all illusion, and will in a moment float away like other dreams. Brought to this house an orphan, and twice deprived of ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... down under the porch, at Hollingsworth's feet, entirely contented and happy. What charm was there in his rude massiveness that so attracted and soothed this shadow-like girl? It appeared to me, who have always been curious in such matters, that Priscilla's vague and seemingly causeless flow of felicitous feeling was that with which love blesses inexperienced hearts, before they begin to suspect what is going on within them. It transports them to the seventh heaven; and if you ask what brought them thither, they neither can tell ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... whose deck he awaited her coming, Pierrot saw the apparently causeless accident which had befallen the gem, and watched with dry lips and burning eyes the vain endeavors of the search. His hands trembled and his heart was bitter against the girl for a few moments; but as the boat drew near, and he ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... window seat to scare her, and on placing a hand against the shutter, felt the strongest conviction of the wind's force. A glance at the old chest, as she turned away from this examination, was not without its use; she scorned the causeless fears of an idle fancy, and began with a most happy indifference to prepare herself for bed. "She should take her time; she should not hurry herself; she did not care if she were the last person ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... back. Whether I have succeeded in this attempt, I leave to Englishmen, who know and value freedom and constitution, to determine. For myself I shall only say, that my mind is incapable of feeling a greater degree of moral certainty, than that the people of Ireland are innocent of causeless discontent and of ingratitude; and that all the evils which now lacerate that unhappy country, (for the mere suppression of present discontents will not end the danger,) and threaten the mutilation of the empire, are the necessary and ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... slept Secure beneath a coverlet[5] of stone.[6] Then godlike Alexander thus replied. Oh Hector, true in temper as the axe Which in the shipwright's hand the naval plank 70 Divides resistless, doubling all his force, Such is thy dauntless spirit whose reproach Perforce I own, nor causeless nor unjust. Yet let the gracious gifts uncensured pass Of golden Venus; man may not reject 75 The glorious bounty by the Gods bestow'd, Nor follows their beneficence our choice. But if thy pleasure be that I engage With Menelaus in decision fierce Of desperate combat bid the host of Troy 80 And ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... his miseries on himself 'by having set his affections unreasonably on trifles.' To others it might appear so; but to himself the labour of a whole life was hardly a trifle. His passion was not a causeless one, though carried to such frantic excess. The story of Sir Isaac Newton presents a strong contrast to the last-mentioned one, who, on going into his study and finding that his dog Tray had thrown down a candle on the table, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... careful, you wear flannel, a heavy great coat and thick shoes, but all this does not prevent you from passing two months in bed. But when spring returns, with its leaves and flowers, its warm, soft breezes, and its smell of the fields, which cause you vague disquiet and causeless ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the brief interview with Stewart and dwelt upon it. Little things which had at the time made no impression upon him began to recur and to take on significance. He remembered the elder man's odd and strained manner at the beginning, his sudden and causeless change to ease and to something that was almost like a triumphant excitement, and then his absurd story about Ste. Marie's flirtation with a lady. Hartley thought of these things; he thought also of the fact that ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... a divorce from you that's what you'll have to do, and what you ought to do—if I understand your story. For by your own showing, a more causeless, heartless, and utterly inexcusable desertion than yours, I ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... them. Her health, her tiredness, her apparently causeless moral collapse, paralyzed her. Through the long years of anxiety and ceaseless toil, exhausting body and soul, the positions of the brother and sister had been inverted: now it was she who felt far removed from the world, far from everything and everybody, so far!... ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Bacon, "are ever ready to usurp the style, 'Non ego, sed Dominus;' and not only so, but to bind it with the thunder and denunciation of curses and anathemas, to the terror of those who have not sufficiently learned out of Solomon, that the 'causeless curse shall not ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... appalling reflections that came before my mind, as I stood facing my determined antagonist. It would scarcely be true to say, that I felt not fear; and yet it was less cowardice, than a sort of vague vexation at risking my life in so causeless a conflict. There was something absolutely ludicrous in standing up to be shot at, merely to square with the whim of this eccentric squatter; and to shoot at him seemed equally ridiculous. Either alternative, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... giants' hate when Rama slew Their chieftain Khara, and the shade Of Janasthan in ruin laid. Through all this mighty wood they rove With varied cries from grove to grove On rapine bent they wander here: But O, dismiss thy causeless fear." ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... that the morrow would be her birthday. James felt uneasy. He had never given birthday presents, but he well knew that presents were the correct things on birthdays. He went to bed in a state of the most absurd and causeless mental disturbance. He did not know what to do. Whereas it was ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... than I do—tamn her, I will have amends on her, if there be whipping-post, or ducking-stool, or a pair of stocks in the parish!" And so saying, the Captain trudged off, his spirits ever and anon agitated by recollection of the causeless aggression of Meg Dods, and again composed to a state of happy serenity by the recollection of the agreeable arrangement which he had made between Mr. Tyrrel, and his ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... but I worked harder than ever. I was either in an exalted state of mind or pining away under a spell of yearning and melancholy—of causeless, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... songs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes with an affectionate manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me an embarrassment of which I was ashamed. But for all that, he was capable of flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy sullenness. At a word of reproof, I have seen him upset the dish of which I was about to eat, and this not surreptitiously, but with defiance; and similarly at a hint of inquisition. I was not ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lord, the character of Richard earl Temple, was not that of causeless suspicion. He proved himself, in a thousand instances, honest, trusting, and sincere. He was not, like some men, that you and I know, dark, dispassionate, and impenetrable. On the contrary, no man mistook him, no man ever charged ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... with its inner soul, and he discerns the opposition, and knows not with which to sympathize. Such contrarieties argue want of power or want of freedom in the poet, who should never suffer the clanking of his rhythmical chains to be heard. Such causeless breaks proceed from want of truth to the subject, and prove a lack of the careful rendering of love in the author. The poet must listen to the naive voice of nature as he moulds his rhythms, for the ingenious and elaborate constructions of the intellect ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... instruments for his own aggrandizement and for conquering the Mysians and Pisidians[28]—as Cyrus had experienced while he was alive. Klearchus concluded his protest by requesting to be informed, what malicious reporter had been filling the mind of Tissaphernes with causeless ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... for to fulfil In this will not refuse; Trusting to show, in wordes few, That men have an ill use— To their own shame—women to blame, And causeless them accuse. Therefore to you I answer now, All women to excuse— Mine own heart dear, with you what cheer? I pray you, tell anone; For, in my mind, of all mankind I love ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... in a cheerful, common-sense mood, as you were then, even if your high spirits do lead you into a little too much frivolity. I think it a more wholesome, and therefore ultimately a more useful, frame of mind than this causeless depression, which leads you to take such a ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Causeless, with neither warning nor the slightest premonition of danger, the greatest curse which can befall a man came upon my friend Eric Hamilton. However fond a husband may be, there are things worse for his wife than death which he may well dread, and it was one of these tragedies ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... said, regretfully, "was an exceedingly proud woman, belonging to a family of social prominence in the East. She felt deeply the causeless gossip connecting her name with the case, as well as the open disgrace of her husband's conviction. She refused to receive her former friends, and even failed in loyalty to your father in his time of trial. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... by suggesting the probability of the jar being cracked, or that the Indians might have returned for it; but Louis was not one of the doubting sort, and Louis was right in not damping the ardour of his mind by causeless fears. The jar was there at the deserted camp, and though it had been knocked over by some animal, it was sound and strong, and excited great speculation in the two cousins, as to the particular material of which it was made, as it was unlike any sort of pottery they had ever before seen. ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... power of endurance. 8. Flank'ing, overlooking or commanding on the side. 9. Jack-o'-lan'tern, a light seen in low, moist grounds, which disappears when approached. 9. Cov'ert, a covering place, a shelter. 10. Pan'ic, sudden fright (usually, causeless fright). 11. Pro-mis'cu-ous, mingled, confused. 15. Marred, interrupted, spoiled. Mer-cu'ri-al, sprightly, full ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... feels when yet unborn, and whose workings he testifies with his earliest cries, when, 'drowned in tears,' he first beholds the light; for, as the sparks fly upward, so is man born to trouble, and woe doth he bring with him into the world, even thyself, dark one, terrible one, causeless, unbegotten, without a father. Oh, how unfrequently dost thou break down the barriers which divide thee from the poor soul of man, and overcast its sunshine with thy gloomy shadow. In the brightest days of prosperity—in the midst ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... so many ways have deserved well of the apostolic see. This we say ought to have been motive sufficient with you, without need of petition on our part; and if we had added our entreaties, it should have been but as men yielding to a causeless anxiety, and wasting words for which there was no occasion. Since, however, neither the merit of the cause nor the recollection of the benefits which you have received, nor the assiduous and diligent supplications of our prince have availed anything ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... girl inclines to reveries; she seeks solitude; her mother surprises her in causeless tears; her teacher discovers an unwonted inattention to her studies, a less retentive memory, a disinclination to mental labor; her father misses her accustomed playfulness; he, perhaps, is annoyed by her listlessness ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... snapped Mr. Smith, with an irritability that was as sudden as it was apparently causeless. "I didn't suppose you had to tell any woman on this earth how to be contented—with a ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... curling incense blaz'd, His suppliant hands to Jove almighty rais'd. "All potent Jove! those eyes that view the Moor 260 From painted coaches full libations pour, See they not this? Or when thy thunder rolls Do causeless fears, O Father, shake our souls? Is there no vengeance in the bolt you poise? Is all but fancied horror, empty noise? 265 A woman, wand'ring outcast on our shore, Bargains a petty spot and owns no ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... has elapsed since the day when, incensed at the flogging received—this cruel as causeless—he ran away, resolved to risk everything, life itself, rather than longer endure the tyrannous treatment of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... of treasure in your breast, Seen by that jealous sun, but not possest. He, like a devil, among the blest above, Can take no pleasure in your heaven of love. Go, take her; and thy causeless fears remove; [To the King. Love her so well, that I with rage may die: Dull husbands have no right to jealousy: If that's allowed, it must ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... buds of teeth In peals of causeless laughter; They hide their trustful heads beneath Your heart. And stumbling after Come sweet, unmeaning sounds that sing To you. The father warms And loves the very dirt they bring Upon ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... or three days and then marched on in the track of the army. While at Shelbyville, the first and only causeless stampede of our pickets and false alarm to the camps which occurred during our squadron organization, took place. Ten or fifteen men were posted on picket some eight miles from the town toward Nashville, near a small bridge, at the southern end of which the extreme outpost vidette stood. From ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... been some exciting cause." And again, six or seven pages later: "No doubt, each slight variation must have its efficient cause." The repetition within so short a space of this expression of confidence in the impossibility of causeless effects would suggest that Mr. Darwin's mind at the time of writing was, unconsciously to himself, in a state of more or less uneasiness as to whether effects could not occasionally come about of themselves, and without cause of any sort,—that he may have been standing, in fact, for a ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... papers, a ceaseless string of interrogations was kept up by the Master, to which I returned no answer, merely returning the papers, and remarking that he had given himself and us also, some really causeless detention. "Have you any news, captain?" I asked. "Yes, I have some news; news that some three or four of you would like to be acquainted with, but news that one of you would rather not know. But I'd see you Yankees sunk ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... to the type of the newspapers on the tables—and the whole apartment swang to and fro like a hammock, with an exhilarating motion. For some while I was so extremely pleased with these particulars that I thought I could never be weary of beholding them: then dropped of a sudden into a causeless sadness; and then, with the same swiftness and spontaneity, arrived at the conclusion that I was drunk and had better get ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... diamonds is the chief addition to the old tale, in which we already see the curse of lawless love, fallen upon the jealous Queen and the long-enduring Lancelot. "This is not the first time," said Sir Lancelot, "that ye have been displeased with me causeless, but, madame, ever I must suffer you, but what sorrow I endure I take no force" (that is, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... too richly entertaining, and I was too green and soft and humorous (in the Shakespearean sense) to permit any rational continuous plan of study. Like the young man to whom Coleridge addressed a poem of rebuke, I was abandoned, a greater part of the time, to "an Indolent and Causeless Melancholy"; or to its partner, an excessive and not always tasteful mirth. I spent hours upon hours, with little profit, in libraries, flitting aimlessly from book to book. With something between terror and hunger I contemplated the opposite sex. In short, I was ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... most unpleasant impression upon my mind. The violent and causeless excitement, followed by this brutality of speech, so far removed from his usual suavity, showed me how deep was the disorganization of his mind. Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable. I sat in ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... refused, and 'the king,' according to Roper, 'conceiving great indignation towards him, could not be satisfied until he had in some way revenged it. And for as much as he (Thomas) nothing having, nothing could lose, his grace (the king) devised a causeless quarrel against his father (the elder More), keeping him in the Tower till he had made him pay a ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... Though the North was overwhelmed with mortification and shame, the South really had not much to boast of, for in the three or four hours of fighting their organization was so broken up that they did not and could not follow our army, when it was known to be in a state of disgraceful and causeless flight. It is easy to criticise a battle after it is over, but all now admit that none others, equally raw in war, could have done better than we did at Bull Run; and the lesson of that battle should not be lost on a people ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... he, "do you call it?—what strange abuse of words! what causeless trifling with honesty! is language of no purpose but to wound the ear with untruths? is the gift of speech only granted us to pervert the use of understanding? I can give you no pleasure, I have no power to give ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... folly! Oh! vain and causeless melancholy! 20 Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young Lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast Thou to do with sorrow, Or the injuries ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... loaded two pistols, one for the first student who should again insult him, and the other to blow out his own brains. It was no idle threat. The man Guizot had nicknamed ‘Werther’ was capable of executing his plan, for this causeless unpopularity was anguish to him. After his death, I found those two pistols loaded in his bedroom, but justice had been done another way. All opposition had vanished. Every student in the ‘Quarter’ followed ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... and suspicious, wanting to know where I had been and what I had been doing, and whom my letters were from, and what I had in my pockets, and a thousand such follies. Day by day she grew queerer and more irritable, and we had causeless rows about nothing. I was fairly puzzled by it all. Sarah avoided me now, but she and Mary were just inseparable. I can see now how she was plotting and scheming and poisoning my wife's mind against me, but I was such a blind beetle that I could not understand it at the time. Then I broke ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... some services at a Mission which then happened to be proceeding which, instead of inspiring him with hope, convinced him that his case was past recovery. For some weeks he tasted, day by day, the dreary bitterness of the cup of dark and causeless depression, and laboured under an agonising dejection of spirit. This intensity of suffering seemed to shake his whole life to its foundation. It made havoc of his work, of his friendships, of the easy philosophy of his ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... verdict of her own conscience, the assertion of his own lips. She remembered the wearing life of alternate hope and fear she had caused him. She remembered how eagerly he hung on her smiles and sugared nothings, and how her equally causeless frowns would darken all the world to him. She saw day after day how she had developed in a strong, true heart, with its native power to love unimpaired, the most intense passion, and all that her own lesser light might burn a little more brightly. Then, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... particular weekly that you want is not taken in; the dinner is execrable, and the ventilation a farce. All these evils oppressed me to-night. And yet I was puzzled to find that somewhere within me there was a faint lightening of the spirits; causeless, as far as I could discover. It could not be Davies's letter. Yachting in the Baltic at the end of September! The very idea made one shudder. Cowes, with a pleasant party and hotels handy, was all very ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... disturbing him, and he said, "Not a bit of it—I shall be glad of your company, old boy." Presently he said, "Do you know what it is to feel sad? I suppose not. I don't mean troubled about anything in particular—there's nothing to be troubled about—but simply sad, in a causeless, listless way?" ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... on whose deck he awaited her coming, Pierrot saw the apparently causeless accident which had befallen the gem, and watched with dry lips and burning eyes the vain endeavors of the search. His hands trembled and his heart was bitter against the girl for a few moments; but as the boat drew near, and he caught the misery and fathomless self-reproach ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... my Lord—Clementina, Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the Master is all I know of the devil; I have known hints of him, in the world, but always cowards: he is as bold as a lion, but with the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much surprise in my two cowards. 'Tis true, I saw a hint of the same nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to attend to; the Master has nothing else but ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... that while many sided with the king for what they could get, there were others whose minds could not conceive a country without a king, or a subject with inalienable rights. The best of the Tories honestly believed the Whig agitation to be "unnatural, causeless, wanton, and wicked."[10] Such Americans were, in the inevitable struggle, ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... is our portion. Yet a whisper rose, Foolish and causeless, half in jest, half hate. Now wake we and remember mighty blows, And, ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... Lacy, "I am sorry for thee—sorry, from my soul, to see such a predominating and causeless jealousy occupy the brain of a gallant old soldier. Here, in this last misfortune, to recall no more ancient proofs of his fidelity, could he mean otherwise than well with us, when, thrown by shipwreck upon the coast of Wales, we would have been doomed to instant ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... due; While Albany, with feeble hand, Held borrowed truncheon of command, 125 The young King, mewed in Stirling tower, Was stranger to respect and power. But then, thy Chieftain's robber life! Winning mean prey by causeless strife, Wrenching from ruined Lowland swain 130 His herds and harvest reared in vain— Methinks a soul, like thine, should scorn The spoils from such foul ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... alone did they agree; they were unanimous that if Young Denny Bolton's bearing that morning—the angle at which he held his chin, and the huge cut that adorned it, and his causeless mirth—was not entirely damning, it was at least suspicious enough to require more than a little explanation. But that verdict, too, was none other than the very one which the Judge had already ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... Hollingsworth's feet, entirely contented and happy. What charm was there in his rude massiveness that so attracted and soothed this shadow-like girl? It appeared to me, who have always been curious in such matters, that Priscilla's vague and seemingly causeless flow of felicitous feeling was that with which love blesses inexperienced hearts, before they begin to suspect what is going on within them. It transports them to the seventh heaven; and if you ask what brought them thither, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... roundly, Mana's maiden scolded loudly: "O thou fool, of all most foolish, Man devoid of understanding. Tuonela, thou seekest causeless, Com'st to Mana free from sickness! Better surely would you find it Quickly to regain your country, 270 Many truly wander hither, Few return to ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... stones. Brick-red ant-hills higher than his knees dotted themselves over the veldt, their shell-like surface shielding a crowded insect colony within. Ant-bear holes lurked unseen in his pathway, tripping his heedless steps; and an occasional partridge went whirring upward, making him start aside in causeless terror at the unwonted sound. And over it all rested the glaring, shimmering, blinding light, laden with myriad particles of dazzling red-brown dust. Later still, the red-brown color vanished, and he walked for weary leagues over the fire-blackened veldt where the ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... protest by heaven and earth That her suspect is causeless and unjust, And that I ne'er had such a vild[440] intent; Harm she imagin'd, where as none ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... read that Hecuba of Troy Ran mad for sorrow: that made me to fear; Although, my lord, I know my noble aunt Loves me as dear as e'er my mother did, And would not, but in fury, fright my youth: Which made me down to throw my books, and fly,— Causeless, perhaps: but pardon me, sweet aunt: And, madam, if my uncle Marcus go, I will most ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... to be too lenient, any more than it is just to be unreasonably strict. To allow impertinence or sloppy work is inexcusable, but it is equally inexcusable to show causeless irritability or to be overbearing or rude. And there is no greater example of injustice than to reprimand those about you because you happen to be in a bad humor, and at another time overlook offenses that are greater because you are ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... to endure the apparently causeless fluctuation of spirits incidental to one compelled to dwell for long periods of time in the ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... the morbus eruditorum, to which I am as little subject as most folks, and have it less now than when young. It is a tremor of the heart, the pulsation of which becomes painfully sensible—a disposition to causeless alarm—much lassitude—and decay of vigour of mind and activity of intellect. The reins feel weary and painful, and the mind is apt to receive and encourage gloomy apprehensions and causeless fears. Fighting with ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... one of the important features of later American history. The Republicans succeeded in the next national election; but General Garfield, who was chosen President, was mortally wounded by an assassin (July 2, 1881), a few months after his inauguration. Guiteau, who committed the causeless and ruthless deed, claimed to be "inspired by the Deity," but was judged to be morally and legally responsible, and died on the gallows. Chester A. Arthur, the Vice-president, filled the highest office for the remainder ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... were shivered she was shorn of her darlings, Of bairns and brothers: they bent to their fate 25 With war-spear wounded; woe was that woman. Not causeless lamented the daughter of Hoce The decree of the Wielder when morning-light came and She was able 'neath heaven to behold the destruction [38] Of brothers and bairns, where the brightest ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... the heroic struggles of the Confederates and the "general sympathy" of England for their cause; dwelt upon the "governmental tyranny, corruption in high places, ruthlessness in war, untruthfulness of speech, and causeless animosity toward Great Britain" of the North; and declared that the interests of America and of the world would be best served by the independence of the South. The effect of a full year's penetration in England of Lincoln's emancipation proclamation is shown in the necessity felt by the framers ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... came into Nott's eyes, which had remained blankly staring at Renshaw's apparently causeless hilarity. Turning to him he winked solemnly. "That keerless kind o' hoss-laff jist fetched her," he whispered, and vanished before his chagrined companion ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... the way in which he timidly avoids and flies from the object of his envy, who stands the more completely alone, the more brilliant he is; and this is the reason why pretty girls have no friends of their own sex. He betrays himself, too, by the causeless hatred which he shows—a hatred which finds vent in a violent explosion at any circumstance however trivial, though it is often only the product of his imagination. How many such men there are in the ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... clap, What shall become of me, where shall I hide my head? O, what a death is it to live for him that would be dead? But since it chanceth so, whatever wight thou be, That findeth me here in heavy plight, go, tell her this from me. Causeless I perish here, and cause to curse I have. The time that erst I lived to love, and now must die her slave, The match was over-much for me, she understood, Alas, why hath she this delight to lap in guiltless blood? How did I give her cause to show me this despite, To ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... menstruation seems to be troubling several of you. I am sorry that you did not all have the advantage of having this explained at an early age. You might have been saved a great deal of suffering and causeless worry. ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... scampering along cornices and narrow ledges. They swing it to the right or the left by way of counterpoise when they lean over to the one side or the other; hence the constant switching which appears so causeless. When one observes Nature carefully, one readily comes to the conclusion that she does nothing that is unnecessary, and that one ought to be very careful in attempting to improve ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... had, in a fit of causeless despair, told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and she tortured to tell; whether Durga Charan knew his name and what became of Bisesa—Trejago does not know to this day. Something horrible had happened, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... Enfled, that was King Oswy's wife, King Edwin, his daughter, full of goodnesse, For Oswyn's soule a minster, in her life, Made at Tynemouth, and for Oswy causeless That hym so bee slaine and killed helpeless; For she was kin to Oswy and Oswin, As ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... knew the effect of her words; the chief HATED causeless killing; and to hear a lady talk of shooting a high-soaring creature of the air as coolly as of putting on her gloves, was nauseous to him. Ian gave him praise afterwards for his unusual self-restraint. But it was a moment or two ere ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... of stone.[6] Then godlike Alexander thus replied. Oh Hector, true in temper as the axe Which in the shipwright's hand the naval plank 70 Divides resistless, doubling all his force, Such is thy dauntless spirit whose reproach Perforce I own, nor causeless nor unjust. Yet let the gracious gifts uncensured pass Of golden Venus; man may not reject 75 The glorious bounty by the Gods bestow'd, Nor follows their beneficence our choice. But if thy pleasure be that I engage With Menelaus in decision fierce ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... never call myself a Frenchman again!" he panted, his eyes gleaming with wrath. "What think you, Corinne? They are flying from the camp at Beauport as sheep fly before wolves. It is no retreat, it is a rout—a disgraceful, abominable, causeless rout. There is no enemy near. The English are up on the heights, intrenching themselves no doubt, and resting after their gallant enterprise. Our uncle has exhausted his powers of persuasion. He has shown them again and again how strong is their position still, how little it would even now ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... chose to be a moderator in that debate: and he performed his trust with much mildness, patience, and reason; but all proved ineffectual: for there be some prepossessions like jealousies, which, though causeless, yet cannot be removed by reasons as apparent as demonstration can make any truth. The place appointed for this debate was the Savoy in the Strand: and the points debated were, I think, many; some affirmed to be truth and reason, some denied to be either; and these debates being ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... besides the sorrows which he heaped upon the fatherless and widows at home: and besides the vain enterprises abroad, wherein it is thought that he consumed more treasure than all our victorious kings did in their several conquests; what causeless and cruel wars did he make upon his own nephew King James the First? What laws and wills did he devise to cut off, and cut down those branches, which sprang from the same root that himself did? And in the end (notwithstanding ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... morn to dewy eve," provided a flask of Gascon wine, or a stoup of good English ale, remained on the board. It may be remembered that De Walton, when he dismissed the minstrel from the dungeon, was sensible that he owed him some compensation for the causeless suspicion which had dictated his imprisonment, more particularly as he was a valued servant, and had shown himself the faithful confidant of the Lady Augusta de Berkely, and the person who was moreover likely to know all the motives and circumstances of her Scottish journey. To ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... night, the dampness, and the cold; she engenders the miasmatic poisons that rack our bones; she conceals in her mantle the foe who takes us unawares; she rules those vague shapes which fright us in the dim light; the causeless sounds of night or its more oppressive silence are familiar to her; she it is who sends dreams wherein gods and devils have their sport with man, and slumber, the twin brother of the grave. In the occult philosophy of the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Mighty Poet, nor despise My causeless, yet not impious, surmise. But I am now convinc'd, and none will dare Within thy Labours to pretend a share, Thou hast not miss'd one thought that could be fit, And all that was improper dost omit: So that no room is here for Writers ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... he knew what she and her father must feel towards the deception which had led her into such a position, and made such a tragedy possible. He foresaw her recoil, her bitter condemnation, the final ruin of the relation between himself and her; and yet more than these did he dread her pain, her causeless, innocent pain. To stab the hand which had helped him, the heart which had already suffered so much, in the very first hours of his own shock and misery, he had shrunk from this, he had tried his best to protect Madame ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when he was quite a young man, within three years from receiving his degree at Harvard College. After about seven years, during which he buried his wife and three children, and encountered a bitter and turbulent opposition,—so far as we can see, most causeless and unreasonable,—he relinquished the ministry altogether, and spent the residue of his life in another ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... of Shakespeare's suffering. It is not to be called a work of art, it is hardly even a tragedy; it is the causeless ruin of a soul, a ruin insufficiently motived by complete trust in men and spendthrift generosity. If there was ever a man who gave so lavishly as Timon, if there was ever one so senseless blind in trusting, then he deserved his fate. There is no gradation ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... imperious sign which abashed her and inspired respect for her neighbor. She sat down beside me. The old man did not choose to leave the charming creature, to whom he clung capriciously with the silent and apparently causeless obstinacy to which very old persons are subject, and which makes them resemble children. In order to sit down beside the young lady he needed a folding-chair. His slightest movements were marked by the inert heaviness, the stupid ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... not go away, and that irritated me. This time she understood it all. I had insulted her finally, but ... there's no need to describe it. She realised that my outburst of passion had been simply revenge, a fresh humiliation, and that to my earlier, almost causeless hatred was added now a PERSONAL HATRED, born of envy.... Though I do not maintain positively that she understood all this distinctly; but she certainly did fully understand that I was a despicable man, and what was worse, ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... a beggar who, like most negroes, has a dread of dogs, and his repeated, and often causeless, cry of 'Chain me up that dog!' earns for him this ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... wrathful if they still think themselves right. Meanwhile, let them learn that Occultism differs from Magic and other secret Sciences as the glorious Sun does from a rush-light, as the immutable and immortal Spirit of Man—the reflection of the absolute, causeless, and unknowable all,—differs from the mortal ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... dark, an attempt to reach a goal never clearly seen. Wandering in a labyrinth of fanaticism, agonizing in the effort to distort nature, the biographical record of religious aspiration serves to show how nearly multitudes may approach the boundary line of insanity in their protracted periods of causeless mental agony and in their fierce hostility to heresy and to science. Alike in Brahmin, Buddhist, Mohammedan, and Christian nations have we seen the vast expenditure of spiritual energy in the blind ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... green what another calls sour, and one feels as noise what another feels as toothache, they cannot enter into a social group. Yet it is no less confusing and no less antisocial if the world which one sees as a system of causes and effects is to another a realm of capricious, causeless, zigzag happenings. The mental links which join society are threatened if some live with their thoughts in a world of order and natural law, and ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... Josephine during her second marriage, it cannot be assumed that mere lack of adaptability was the cause of unfruitfulness between them. There may have been some cause that history has not recorded, or unknown to the state of medical science of those days. There are doubtless many cases of apparently causeless unfruitfulness in marriage that even physicians, with a knowledge of all apparent conditions in the parties, cannot explain; but when, as elsewhere related in this volume, impregnation by artificial means is successfully practised, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... undetermined. While affairs were in this uncertain and inchoate condition, and the Administration had no declared policy on some of the most important questions, Congress came together fired with indignation and revenge for a war so causeless and unprovoked. A large portion of the members, exasperated toward the rebels by reason of the war, and dissatisfied with delays and procrastination, which they imputed chiefly to the Administration, were determined there should be prompt and aggressive action against ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... of this mind—the minority that is right—is, I hope, the case. I hope we know assuredly that the arts we have met together to further are necessary to the life of man, if the progress of civilisation is not to be as causeless as the turning of a wheel ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... that the organic change created by the Thirteenth Amendment might be practically set aside by State legislation. In this belief they exhibited their policy towards the Negro. Considering all the circumstances, it would be hard to find in history a more causeless and cruel oppression of a whole race than was embodied in the legislation of those revived and reconstructed State governments. Their membership was composed wholly of the 'ruling class,' as they termed it, and, in no small ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... this causeless throbbing, O mine arm[18]? All hope has fled for ever; mock me not With presages of good, when happiness Is lost, and ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... seem, with all knowledge, here uses the word 'causeless' in its strict philosophical sense;—cause being truly predicable only of 'phenomena', that is, things natural, and not of 'noumena', ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... has been drawn from her heart, she is quite happy; but she had no children but daughters, and would like a boy. This little drama of unjust suspicions, this comedy of the conjectures to which Mother Mahuchet gives rise, these phases of a causeless jealousy, are laid down here as the type of a situation, the varieties of which are as innumerable ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... keen and enthusiastic than their Free State companions, and evinced no signs whatever of despondency or depression. There was a very pathetic note in the conversation of one of the Transvaalers, a mere boy of seventeen. He said to me in broken English, "It is such a causeless war. What are we fighting for, sir?" and I referred him for his answer to three Johannesburg Uitlanders who were standing by. Accursed as war always is, it is thrice accursed when young boys and old men are called upon to fight. At ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... Wilson 'had secured'—was the very one with whom he was most unsatisfied.' Thurloe also felt that it was an awkward affair; and to avert suspicion from his Master and himself, he reverted to a mean trick, the causeless accusation of an innocent man. He reproved Wilson for neglecting to warn Whitehall of the detention of such a noted suspect as Mr. Wright; although Thurloe was in no ignorance of that event, and knew all about the prisoner. For besides the knowledge which he shared with Cromwell, of the near advent ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... my fingers: the pavilion secretly prepared for guests; the guests landed at the risk of their lives and to the imminent peril of the yacht; the guests, or at least one of them, in undisguised and seemingly causeless terror; Northmour with a naked weapon; Northmour stabbing his most intimate acquaintance at a word; last, and not least strange, Northmour fleeing from the man whom he had sought to murder, and barricading himself, like a hunted creature, behind the door of the pavilion. Here were at least ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... fugitives, of all ages and both sexes? Truth does not allow us to answer these inquiries in a manner that does credit to the wisdom or the justice of the times. This was not the flight of guilt, but of virtue. It was an humble and peaceable religion, flying from causeless oppression. It was conscience, attempting to escape from the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts. It was Robinson and Brewster, leading off their little band from their native soil, at first to find shelter on the shore of the neighboring continent, but ultimately to come hither; and having surmounted ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... beyond the cloud of materialism, and behind the mechanism of nature, to an Infinite Spirit, to a God, to a Father. All things are moved by infinite Love. Life is not merely a phenomenon, it is a Lesson. Its events do not come and go, in a causeless, arbitrary manner; they are meant for our discipline and our good. In whatever aspect they come, then, let their appropriate lesson be heeded. This is the religious view of life, and is wide apart from the philosophy that lets events happen as they will, as though we were ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... to believe all this now," said Margaret; "it seems so causeless and ridiculous! In Birmingham we could never have given credit to the story of ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... announced that the morrow would be her birthday. James felt uneasy. He had never given birthday presents, but he well knew that presents were the correct things on birthdays. He went to bed in a state of the most absurd and causeless mental disturbance. He did not know what to do. Whereas it was enormously ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... severe, when it is said that he brought his miseries on himself 'by having set his affections unreasonably on trifles.' To others it might appear so; but to himself the labour of a whole life was hardly a trifle. His passion was not a causeless one, though carried to such frantic excess. The story of Sir Isaac Newton presents a strong contrast to the last-mentioned one, who, on going into his study and finding that his dog Tray had thrown down a candle on the table, and burnt some papers of great value, contented himself with exclaiming, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... come into the room, and Clara explained to her what had happened. As Heidi continued her weeping, the lady, who was evidently getting impatient with her, went up to Heidi and said with decision, "Now, Adelaide, that is enough of all this causeless lamentation. I will tell you once for all, if there are any more scenes like this while you are reading, I shall take the book away from you and shall not ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... absent. Tics are of cortical origin, being coordinated and synergic, clonic or at times tonic[*] muscular movements, physiologically and not anatomically grouped, premeditated, purposive, of abnormal intensity, apparently causeless and inopportune. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... such a fierce aversion. How she wondered who he was, and what he had done, to be so detested; and it seemed to her gentle nature that no man, not the worst criminal, could, with justice, be so dealt with by a fellow-creature; but a kind of instinct told her that the hate was causeless, and therefore did it seem to wound her, as if herself had been injured. She followed Lady Randolph through the long galleries, and she whose step had been so fearless on the dangerous mountains, now shrank from the shadows on the wall; for it seemed to her as if this house, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... tended one way, and had exerted the same delusive influence over her mind. It was impossible for her any longer to resist the conviction that she had distrusted appearances without the slightest reason, and that she had permitted purely visionary suspicions to fill her with purely causeless alarm. In the firm belief that she was in danger, she had watched through the night—and nothing had happened. In the confident anticipation that Geoffrey had promised what he was resolved not to perform, she had waited ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... neither did I love you, though I was able to hide it from you. And it has often irritated me that you were so unobservant. You know now the cause of many of my difficult moods, which have seemed causeless. ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... away everything she had safeguarded so she might run with empty hands. A score followed her. Men began to run. They thrust the women aside, cursing; and ran. And for over two miles the road was covered thick with coats and bags, with packages and jewel cases. The greed of possession died out in the causeless fear. ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... remarkable than the facts, that the general selected to command an army so critically placed was a poor old man, feeble in body and mind, and that the wives and children of many of the officers were present with their husbands and fathers, as if the causeless invasion of a country, and the massacre of thousands of its inhabitants, had been a party of pleasure! The moment of retreat at length came; snow covered the ground; the dreary passes of Khoord-Cabool were before them; and as they turned their backs upon ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... I suppose for a few wonderful moments, now and then, a glow of seemingly causeless happiness, in which the earth and its people are glorified—peace and sunlight rest on everything—the spirit of music and love is in the air, and the heart itself sings for joy. In the light of this celestial illusion she stood now by the piano, turning over the pages ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... left with the Chieftain and Waverley, the rest of his attendants being at some distance, than he said, 'If I owed less to your disinterested friendship, I could be most seriously angry with both of you for this very extraordinary and causeless broil, at a moment when my father's service so decidedly demands the most perfect unanimity. But the worst of my situation is, that my very best friends hold they have liberty to ruin themselves, as well as the cause they are engaged in, upon the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... are women The world deem mad, or worse, whose life but seems One vile caprice, a freakish thing of whims And restless nothingness; yet if we pierce The soul, may be we'll touch some cause profound For what seems causeless. Early love despised, Or baffled, which is worse; a faith betrayed, For vanity or lucre; chill regards, Where to gain constant glances we have paid Some fearful forfeit: here are many springs, Unmarked by shallow eyes, and some, ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... head and listened. In the ancient woodwork of the manse, somewhere in the crumbling wainscoting, the little boring creature called a death-watch ticked like the ticking of an old verge watch. Mr. Welsh broke off with a sudden causeless auger very appalling in one so sage ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... girl, very white, and trembling visibly, said: "I hope you will forgive us, Mr. W——, but from causeless jealousy my father deserted mother, and—and he stole my little brother, mamma's only son! We have never heard of either of them since. Widowhood seemed a sort of protection to poor mamma, and she has hidden behind ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... Hark, the monkeys, how they prate! All ye gods who rule the soul:[5] Styx, through Hell whose waters roll! Let me be allow'd to tell What I heard in yonder Hell. Near the door an entrance gapes,[6] Crowded round with antic shapes, Poverty, and Grief, and Care, Causeless Joy, and true Despair; Discord periwigg'd with snakes,'[7] See the dreadful strides she takes! By this odious crew beset,[8] I began to rage and fret, And resolved to break their pates, Ere we enter'd at the gates; Had not Clio in the nick[9] Whisper'd me, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... last whom I should have thought likely to be acceptable to him, considering a certain fatal event. But I give my free and hearty consent, providing the settlements are drawn in such an irrevocable form as may secure my child from suffering by that state of dependence, and that sudden and causeless revocation of allowances, of which I have so much reason to complain. Of Sir Frederick Langley, I augur, you will hear no more. He is not likely to claim the hand of a dowerless maiden. I therefore commit you, my dear Isabella, to the wisdom of Providence and to your own ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... what if that request, your tongue denies, Your heart should grant; and not a short reprieve, But length of certain life, to Turnus give? Now speedy death attends the guiltless youth, If my presaging soul divines with truth; Which, O! I wish, might err thro' causeless fears, And you (for you have ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... a little softness, a little womanly gentleness and sympathy, and, above all, a wise forbearance from probing into his still open wounds, might have won a certain amount of gratitude and affection from him. But Helen was unequal to this. She only drove him wild with causeless and senseless jealousy, and goaded him almost to madness by endless ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... change in her constitution. Her first fine flush of health was over, the equability of her temper was disturbed, and she became subject to hysterical outbursts of garrulity, to fits of moody silence, to apparently causeless paroxysms of laughter or tears; and she was always anxious. She had real cause for anxiety, however, for, in her efforts to realise her romance to Charlotte's satisfaction, she had run up little bills all over the place. What would happen when they were presented, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... retained, however, in her bosom, amidst the rapture that made up her life, a vague feeling of sorrow, of some weight that made her heart bleed despite herself. At times, when she was plunged in one of those causeless transports which made her melt with tenderness, an anxious thought would come to her—she imagined that some misfortune was hovering behind her. She turned round, however, and then smiled. People are ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... I am a rebellious rebel. Yes,' she added, rising, 'I detest with all my heart this wicked, causeless rebellion. I detest the very names of the leaders of it. And yet I am compelled to go about with lies upon my lips, and to act lies, till I detest myself more than all else! I have consoled myself somewhat by making a flag and worshiping ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... years. I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, Lord of thy house and hospitality; And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest But when she sate within the touch of thee. O too industrious folly! O vain and causeless melancholy! Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast thou to do with sorrow, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... should in after years feel anxious as to what had become of those letters, or should feel some compunction for groundless hopes excited and for causeless caprice, I undertook to tell you as a message from this young man, that, considering you to be completely under the dominion of your sister-in-law, he does not at all blame you, he does not admit that you are in fault; in one sense, now that he can look back ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Bettie, longer shed Pearly showers of causeless grief, Why bend down that lovely head, Like the autumn's ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... to freedom, Spinoza means by this not caprice, nor the monstrous miracle of causeless action, but independence of external force or of any disproportionate and illegitimate passion. The freedom to which he aspires is the freedom of God, who eternally acts in accordance with the mutual harmony of the whole attributes of His ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... and was seized with sudden spasm of seemingly causeless merriment. For looking up as M'Adam was speaking, he had caught a glimpse of a boy's fair head, peering cautiously round the cow-shed, and, behind, the flutter of short petticoats. They disappeared as silently ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... made an imperious sign which abashed her and inspired respect for her neighbor. She sat down beside me. The old man did not choose to leave the charming creature, to whom he clung capriciously with the silent and apparently causeless obstinacy to which very old persons are subject, and which makes them resemble children. In order to sit down beside the young lady he needed a folding-chair. His slightest movements were marked by the inert heaviness, the stupid hesitancy, which characterize ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... change created by the Thirteenth Amendment might be practically set aside by State legislation. In this belief they exhibited their policy towards the Negro. Considering all the circumstances, it would be hard to find in history a more causeless and cruel oppression of a whole race than was embodied in the legislation of those revived and reconstructed State governments. Their membership was composed wholly of the 'ruling class,' as they termed it, and, in no small degree, of Confederate officers ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... by side with this extravagant, apparently causeless merriment, there was also an extravagant, apparently causeless terror. The drug produced the laughter, I knew; but what brought in the terror I could not imagine. Everywhere behind the fun lay the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... of the radiations of a crystal of hoarfrost or of sapphire, concerning any of which matters men, so called of science, are necessarily and forever silent, because the distribution of colors in spectra and the relation of planes in crystals are final and causeless facts, orders, that is to say, not laws. And more than this, the infidel temper which is incapable of perceiving this spiritual beauty has an instant and constant tendency to delight in the reverse of it, so that practically its investigation is always, by preference, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... womanly gentleness and sympathy, and, above all, a wise forbearance from probing into his still open wounds, might have won a certain amount of gratitude and affection from him. But Helen was unequal to this. She only drove him wild with causeless and senseless jealousy, and goaded him almost to madness by endless ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... observers strike, That such fair sisters should be so unlike; That still another and another comes, And at the matron's tables smiles and blooms; That all appear as if they meant to stay Time undefined, nor name a parting day; And yet, though all are valued, all are dear, Causeless, they go, and seldom more appear. Yet let Suspicion hide her odious head, And Scandal vengeance from a burgess dread; A pious friend, who with the ancient dame At sober cribbage takes an evening game; His cup beside him, through their play ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... it as a most causeless one," once said an Austrian officer to me, "for had the Federals stood but half an hour longer—which, with their position and supports, there was no earthly reason for their not doing—there could have been but one result. Smith's ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... frequently to see me during those weary days. Her engagement to Mr. Bainrothe was never by her acknowledged, or by me alluded to, and she seemed to have taken up the impression in some way that I was the victim of an unfortunate attachment to that subtle person, which had degenerated into a morbid and causeless hatred on ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... Kembal testified, that Susanna Martin, upon a Causeless Disgust, had threatned him, about a certain Cow of his, That she should never do him any more Good: and it came to pass accordingly. For soon after the Cow was found stark dead on the dry Ground, without any Distemper to be discerned upon her. Upon which he was followed with a strange ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... of excellent hope. But besides the sorrows which he heaped upon the fatherless and widows at home: and besides the vain enterprises abroad, wherein it is thought that he consumed more treasure than all our victorious kings did in their several conquests; what causeless and cruel wars did he make upon his own nephew King James the First? What laws and wills did he devise to cut off, and cut down those branches, which sprang from the same root that himself did? And in the end (notwithstanding these his so many irreligious provisions) it pleased God to ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... influences of the tepid air, the mysterious dimness, the wands of gold, the floating brief dust-motes. He wanted to touch Celia; and he found himself diffident. He wanted to hear her voice; and he suddenly discovered in himself an embarrassment in addressing her which was causeless and foolish. He wanted to look at her; and he did so; but it was not frankly and openly, as he had always looked at people before. His shy side-glances delighted in the clear curve of her cheeks; the soft wheat-colour of her curls; the dense black of ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... grant; and not a short reprieve, But length of certain life, to Turnus give? Now speedy death attends the guiltless youth, If my presaging soul divines with truth; Which, O! I wish, might err thro' causeless fears, And you (for you have pow'r) prolong ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... and the latter sets before our eyes the venerable figures of a Soranus and a Thrasea, intrepid in their fate, and only moved by the melting sorrows of their friends and kindred. What sympathy then touches every human heart! What indignation against the tyrant, whose causeless fear or unprovoked malice gave rise ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... of menstruation seems to be troubling several of you. I am sorry that you did not all have the advantage of having this explained at an early age. You might have been saved a great deal of suffering and causeless worry. ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... shall become of me, where shall I hide my head? O, what a death is it to live for him that would be dead? But since it chanceth so, whatever wight thou be, That findeth me here in heavy plight, go, tell her this from me. Causeless I perish here, and cause to curse I have. The time that erst I lived to love, and now must die her slave, The match was over-much for me, she understood, Alas, why hath she this delight to lap in guiltless blood? How did I give her cause to show me this despite, To match me where she ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... adjusting difficulties of Constitutional interpretation. Yet, as it was almost universally asserted, of course, by the Northern partisan presses, and by Northern Congressmen, that the Rebellion was utterly causeless, and as the writer was therefore exceedingly anxious to obtain, concerning their grievances, the latest opinions of the Southern leaders, as stated by themselves, he ventured to propose, in a pause of Mr. Toombs's somewhat rapid rhetoric, a question which, at that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... I desire, Suspicion you pretend, Causeless you yourself retire Whilst I in vain attend, Thus a lover, as you say, Still made more eager by delay. Is this fair excusing? ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... the tragedy—whether Bisesa had, in a fit of causeless despair, told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and she tortured to tell; whether Durga Charan knew his name and what became of Bisesa—Trejago does not know to this day. Something horrible had happened, and the thought of what it must have been, comes upon Trejago ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the author has written for himself the favourable notice, or that pecuniary bribes have made the honest editor his tool? Verily, my public, thou art not generous here; ay, and thou art grievously deceived, as well as sordid: for by careless praise, causeless censure, credit given for corrupt bribery, and no allowance made for unamiable criticisms, poor maltreated authors speak to many wrongs: ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... see, back of the warfare of the elements, an inscrutable malevolent intelligence which took this method to express its displeasure. But every other line of scientific observation leads equally, following back a sequence of events, to seemingly causeless beginnings. Modern science can explain the lightning, as it can explain a great number of the mysteries which the primeval intelligence could not penetrate. But the primordial man could not wait for the revelations of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... and my Lord—Clementina, Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the Master is all I know of the devil; I have known hints of him, in the world, but always cowards: he is as bold as a lion, but with the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much surprise in my two cowards. 'Tis true, I saw a hint of the same nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to attend to; the Master has nothing ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... vengeance or retribution from a superhuman power upon the person against whom they are uttered. Anathema is a solemn ecclesiastical condemnation of a person or of a proposition. Curse may be just and authoritative; as, the curse of God; or, it may be wanton and powerless: "so the curse causeless shall not come," Prov. xxvi, 2. Execration expresses most of personal bitterness and hatred; imprecation refers especially to the coming of the desired evil upon the person against whom it is uttered. Malediction is a general ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... earth asleep, So our extinguished passions too, should rest. Dust are those relics also; let us keep Our hands from violence to their ashes blest. Why, in this story of keen pain, my friend, Wilt thou refuse naught but a dream to see? Does Nature causeless act, to no wise end? Think'st thou a heedless God afflicted thee? Mayhap the blow thou weepest was to save. Child, it has oped thy heart to seek relief; Sorrow is lord to man, and man a slave, None knows himself till he has walked with grief,— A cruel law, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... fanaticism, agonizing in the effort to distort nature, the biographical record of religious aspiration serves to show how nearly multitudes may approach the boundary line of insanity in their protracted periods of causeless mental agony and in their fierce hostility to heresy and to science. Alike in Brahmin, Buddhist, Mohammedan, and Christian nations have we seen the vast expenditure of spiritual energy in the blind struggle of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... your company, old boy." Presently he said, "Do you know what it is to feel sad? I suppose not. I don't mean troubled about anything in particular—there's nothing to be troubled about—but simply sad, in a causeless, listless way?" ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and appertaining to human feelings, and entering into the soul.'—The 13th Sonnet for exquisite delicacy of painting; the 19th for tender simplicity; and the 25th for manly pathos, are compositions of, perhaps, unrivalled merit. Yet while I am selecting these, I almost accuse myself of causeless partiality; for surely never was a writer so equal in excellence!—S. T. C. [In this note as it first appeared in the Morning Chronicle a Greek sentence preceded the supposed English translation. It is not to be found in the Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius, but the following ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... only weapon which could be employed against her; but in that he and his partisans had long been adept. Every old libel and pretext for detraction was diligently revived. The old nickname of "The Austrian" was repeated with pertinacity as spiteful as causeless; even the king's aunts lending their aid to swell the clamor on that ground, and often saying, with all the malice of their inveterate jealousy, that it was not to be expected that she should have the same feelings as their father or Louis XIV., since she was not of their blood, though ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... contented himself with pointing out, quietly and courteously, how failure might have been avoided. "But if he believed," says his chief of the staff, "that his subordinates were self-indulgent or contumacious, he became a stern and exacting master; ...and during his career a causeless friction was produced in the working of his government over several gallant and meritorious officers who served under him. This was almost the sole fault of his military character: that by this jealousy of intentional inefficiency he ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... counsels, and not in positions and oppositions. But men are now over-ready to usurp the style, non ego, sed dominus; and not so only, but to bind it with the thunder and denunciation of curses and anathemas, to the terror of those which have not sufficiently learned out of Solomon that "The causeless curse shall ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... shrilling Of the knife in the killing That ends, when it must, (O the throb and the thrust!) In a death, in the dust, The silence, the stillness, of satiate lust, The solemn pause When the veil withdraws And man looks on his god, on the Causeless Cause. Still, still, Under the hill! The hunter is dead - this is ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, 15 Lord of thy house and hospitality; And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest But when she sate within the touch of thee. O too industrious folly! O vain and causeless melancholy! 20 Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast thou to do with sorrow, 25 Or the injuries of to-morrow? ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... man of her choice, and that in penance her ghost is condemned to haunt the Old Palace of Berlin and that of Bayreuth. It is believed by some that this apparition of "the White Lady" appears to a member of the Hohenzollern family as a sure forerunner of death; and Carlyle's picture of the causeless fright of one of the royal rulers when he thought he had seen this ghost, will recur to all who have read "Frederick the Great." We have heard of no visitor so fortunate as to get a sight of the apparition. One enters through an inner court; and parties who wish to see the interior are taken ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... effect of her words; the chief HATED causeless killing; and to hear a lady talk of shooting a high-soaring creature of the air as coolly as of putting on her gloves, was nauseous to him. Ian gave him praise afterwards for his unusual self-restraint. But it was a moment or two ere ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... gentleman, "mind you, I do not approve of petty jealousies and quarrelings, nor of causeless assaults. But, when any person is assailed, it is his peculiar privilege, sir, to hit back. And when he hits he should hit hard. He should use both strategy and force. He should see to it, sir, that his enemy is punished. Have your two hostile bodies yet met ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... without cause," you would not have understood him, although the correctness of 386:30 the assertion might afterwards be proved to you. So, when our friends pass from our sight and we lament, that lamentation is needless and causeless. We shall 387:1 perceive this to be true when we grow into the under- standing of Life, and know that ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the Count's rhodomontade, acknowledged himself obliged to me, and allowed that at that time my fears were not wholly causeless. He behaved with ease and good humour, and left me without appearing to have taken any offence. I shall be with thee on Tuesday. I know it will be a day of feasting to the family, and I will do my best endeavour not to cast a damp on the hilarity ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... sooner left with the Chieftain and Waverley, the rest of his attendants being at some distance, than he said, 'If I owed less to your disinterested friendship, I could be most seriously angry with both of you for this very extraordinary and causeless broil, at a moment when my father's service so decidedly demands the most perfect unanimity. But the worst of my situation is, that my very best friends hold they have liberty to ruin themselves, as well as the cause they are engaged in, upon the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... said Lois, driving back the tears at this causeless injury. "Mr. Leverich said it was best not to. Nobody knows about your being away at all. You're not going ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... I refused, by fear and awe restrain'd, Lest thou should'st feel displeasure at that sight 380 Thyself; for we are all, in ev'ry clime, Suspicious, and to worst constructions prone. So spake Ulysses, to whom thus the King. I bear not, stranger! in my breast an heart Causeless irascible; for at all times A temp'rate equanimity is best. And oh, I would to heav'n, that, being such As now thou art, and of one mind with me, Thou would'st accept my daughter, would'st become My son-in-law, and dwell contented here! ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... are mines of treasure in your breast, Seen by that jealous sun, but not possest. He, like a devil, among the blest above, Can take no pleasure in your heaven of love. Go, take her; and thy causeless fears remove; [To the King. Love her so well, that I with rage may die: Dull husbands have no right to jealousy: If that's allowed, it ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... of Frank Osbaldistone, who carried the portmanteau. Osbaldistone says, concerning him, "Of all the propensities which teach mankind to torment themselves, that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, painful, pitiable."—Sir W. Scott, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... condition—a not unpleasant one—when suddenly the now well-known symptoms of the visitation to which I had become subject suddenly seized upon me,—the leap of the heart; the sudden, causeless, overwhelming physical excitement, which I could neither ignore nor allay. I was terrified beyond description, beyond reason, when I became conscious that this was about to begin over again: what purpose ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... as coolly as if he had been chatting about an every-day concern, and concluded that all depended upon my coolness and steadiness of nerve when the final struggle came, and resolved to sell my life dearly if it must be sacrificed to the fury of a causeless persecution. To my proposition to escape then, having a fleet horse, he would not assent, as he had pledged his honor to take me to the Vigilance Committee. Honor is as essential among lynchers as among thieves, and all I could ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... without a cause, in many places alleges the die and the balance, and several other things, which cannot fall or incline either one way or the other without some cause or difference, either wholly within them or coming to them from without; for that what is causeless (he says) is wholly insubsistent, as also what is fortuitous; and in those motions devised by some and called adventitious, there occur certain obscure causes, which, being concealed from us, move our inclinations to one side or other. These are some of those things which ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... world of nations free to work out their several destinies, self-determining, not subject any more to the threat of causeless war at the hands of a government steeled to barbarity. A world cemented by the blood the monster itself had caused to be shed; by the memory of brave sons fallen that others might live; by the tears of countless women and children made widows and orphans; by a new understanding between all ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... passage, knowing the ground better than I do—tamn her, I will have amends on her, if there be whipping-post, or ducking-stool, or a pair of stocks in the parish!" And so saying, the Captain trudged off, his spirits ever and anon agitated by recollection of the causeless aggression of Meg Dods, and again composed to a state of happy serenity by the recollection of the agreeable arrangement which he had made between Mr. Tyrrel, and ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of the Empire is tremendous. I have no pity for the melodramatic villain who ends as he began, in causeless and wanton blood." Lord Coleridge, Life, ii., ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... then, my dear friend, embark our happiness and our affections on the ocean of slander, of falsehood, and of malice, on which our credulous friends are floating. If you have been made to believe that I ever did, said, or thought a thing unfriendly to your fame and feelings, you do me injury as causeless as it is afflicting to me. In the present contest in which you are concerned, I feel no passion, I take no part, I express no sentiment. Whichever of my friends is called to the supreme cares of the nation, I know that they will be wisely and faithfully administered, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... at sea. I recapitulated the elements of mystery, counting them on my fingers: the pavilion secretly prepared for guests; the guests landed at the risk of their lives and to the imminent peril of the yacht; the guests, or at least one of them, in undisguised and seemingly causeless terror; Northmour with a naked weapon; Northmour stabbing his most intimate acquaintance at a word; last, and not least strange, Northmour fleeing from the man whom he had sought to murder, and barricading ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with every thing that exists or has existed. Thus the whole universe co-operates to produce the minutest stroke of every letter, save only that I myself, and I alone, have nothing to do with it, but merely the causeless and effectless beholding of it when it is done. Yet scarcely can it be called a beholding; for it is neither an act nor an effect; but an impossible creation of a something nothing out of its very contrary! It is the mere quick-silver plating behind a looking-glass; and in this alone consists ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... with me,—though a certain tremulous key, into which her usually sweet and steady voice broke while she declared he had never spoken to her of love, it was only friendship, witnessed against her that she was apprehensive, sad, perhaps visited with a tinge of that causeless shame which even in a pure and good woman conventionality constrains, when she has loved a man before he says in plain English, "I love you," though every act and look and tone of his may have carried that significance unmistakably for years. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... influence over her mind. It was impossible for her any longer to resist the conviction that she had distrusted appearances without the slightest reason, and that she had permitted purely visionary suspicions to fill her with purely causeless alarm. In the firm belief that she was in danger, she had watched through the night—and nothing had happened. In the confident anticipation that Geoffrey had promised what he was resolved not to perform, she had waited to see what excuse he would find for keeping ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... march false alarms had been given and the soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and abused each other for their causeless panic. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... entreating her to give him a meeting," and many others in which both the proper names and the situations suggest the artificial romances. None of the missives reveals emotions of any but the most tawdry romantic kind, warm desires extravagantly uttered, conventional doubts, causeless jealousies, and petty quarrels. Like Mrs. Behn's correspondence with the amorous Van Bruin these epistles have nothing to distinguish them except their excessive hyperbole. There is one series of twenty-four ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... for me. I gave way to a, seemingly, quite causeless impulse of curiosity, I went out into the street, just as I was, to see for myself. It was, perhaps, not the most sensible thing I could have done, and papa would have been shocked; but I am always shocking papa. It had been raining in the night, and the shoes which I had on were not so ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... seen the mark of death upon his face," Mannering answered. "The men who are traitors to their country to-day are those who, healthy enough themselves, talk causeless and shallow optimism which is fed alone by their own prosperity. The doctrine of Christ is the care of others. If you do not believe, the sick-room is open also to you; go there unprejudiced, and with an open mind, and you will come away as ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tranquillity and order of a State in which talent and action and industry are a certain capital,—why, Messrs. Coutts, the great bankers, had better encourage a theory to upset the system of banking! Whatever disturbs society, yea, even by a causeless panic, much more by an actual struggle, falls first upon the market of labour, and thence affects prejudicially every department of intelligence. In such times the arts are arrested; literature is neglected; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... than from rational conviction. He was as superstitious as Herodotus, but in a way far more offensive. The very peculiarities which charm us in an infant, the toothless mumbling, the stammering, the tottering, the helplessness, the causeless tears and laughter, are disgusting in old age. In the same manner, the absurdity which precedes a period of general intelligence is often pleasing; that which follows it is contemptible. The nonsense of Herodotus ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in solitude, with her hands folded and her heart filled with unutterable tender woe, that so much causeless cloud had settled upon the home of her refuge. She could not experience that relief many of us feel in deep adversity, that it is all illusion, and will in a moment float away like other dreams. Brought to this house an orphan, and twice deprived of a ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... the child again in some of her moods. She was always wayward and capricious, but as gay and happy as the day was long—as full of sunshine as a May morning. Whence come, then, all these vapours and reveries and bursts of causeless weeping? I have found her in tears more oft these last three months than in all the years of her life before; and though she strives to efface the impression by wild outbreaks of mirth, such as we used of old to know, there is something hollow and forced about these merry ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Collège de France. Returning home he loaded two pistols, one for the first student who should again insult him, and the other to blow out his own brains. It was no idle threat. The man Guizot had nicknamed ‘Werther’ was capable of executing his plan, for this causeless unpopularity was anguish to him. After his death, I found those two pistols loaded in his bedroom, but justice had been done another way. All opposition had vanished. Every student in the ‘Quarter’ ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... services at a Mission which then happened to be proceeding which, instead of inspiring him with hope, convinced him that his case was past recovery. For some weeks he tasted, day by day, the dreary bitterness of the cup of dark and causeless depression, and laboured under an agonising dejection of spirit. This intensity of suffering seemed to shake his whole life to its foundation. It made havoc of his work, of his friendships, of the easy philosophy of his life. He began ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... encounters, the Blackfeet have much that is common to many Plains tribes, and also some customs that are peculiar to themselves. Like most Indians, they are subject to sudden, apparently causeless, panics, while at other times they display a courage that is heroic. They are firm believers in luck, and will follow a leader who is fortunate in his expeditions into almost any danger. On the other hand, if the leader of a war party loses his young men, or any of them, the people ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... emotionality. One person suffers this explosion in a periodic lawsuit—a rare action for the Hill; another in an almost insane family quarrel, another in an occasional fury of futile violence, another in periods, increasing in frequency as he grows older, of causeless and uncontrolled anger, or extravagant grief; and when weightier occasion is lacking, in torrents of language poured forth from the treasuries of an exhaustless memory. The very serenity and placidity which Quaker worship and industry produce in the true Quaker have resulted in the ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... insane. Her sweet mind lies in fragments before us—a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies; her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to sadness—each equally purposeless and causeless; her snatches of old ballads, such as perhaps her nurse sung her to sleep with in her infancy—are all so true to the life, that we forget to wonder, and can only weep. It belonged to Shakspeare alone so to temper such a picture that we can ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... eve," provided a flask of Gascon wine, or a stoup of good English ale, remained on the board. It may be remembered that De Walton, when he dismissed the minstrel from the dungeon, was sensible that he owed him some compensation for the causeless suspicion which had dictated his imprisonment, more particularly as he was a valued servant, and had shown himself the faithful confidant of the Lady Augusta de Berkely, and the person who was moreover likely to know all the motives and circumstances ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... industrious folly! Oh! vain and causeless melancholy! 20 Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young Lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast Thou to do with sorrow, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... not be awakened by the seizure, but pass into deeper sleep. Intermittent wetting of the bed, occasional temporary mental stupor in the morning, irritability, temporary but well-marked lapses of memory, sleep-walking, and causeless outbursts of ungovernable temper all suggest ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... control; but, after one of his fierce, volcanic bursts of ill-humour, he would be acutely miserable and angry with himself for days, particularly if the object of it had been Jim or Sam, his two especial favourites. On one occasion, after a causeless fit of anger with Jim, while the three were at Major Buckley's together, he got his pony and rode away home, secretly speaking to no one. The other two lamented all the afternoon that he had taken the matter ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... weep; I would not weep; Our mother needs no tears: Dry thine eyes, too; 'tis vain to keep This causeless ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... for all those idle words and actions which have inflicted on any of our fellow-creatures pains we have no right to bestow, or tempted them to sins they had no inclination to follow; the petty tyrannies of our whims, changes, and fancies—of our scoldings, complainings, peremptory orders, and causeless contradictions, will all one day swell that awful list of sins, of which it may be truly said, 'we cannot answer one ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... ties of amity and brotherhood, to form a blessed league against the marauders of the road. I see amongst you, my Lords, many of the boasts and pillars of the state; but, alas! I think with grief and dismay on the causeless and idle hatred that has grown up between you!—a scandal to our city, and reflecting, let me add, my Lords, no honour on your faith as Christians, nor on your dignity ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and wider. Each man smote down his brother, and was himself smitten down before he had time to exult in his victory. The trumpeters, all the while, blew their blasts shriller and shriller; each soldier shouted a battle cry and often fell with it on his lips. It was the strangest spectacle of causeless wrath, and of mischief for no good end, that had ever been witnessed; but, after all, it was neither more foolish nor more wicked than a thousand battles that have since been fought, in which men have slain their ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... extremity of Shakespeare's suffering. It is not to be called a work of art, it is hardly even a tragedy; it is the causeless ruin of a soul, a ruin insufficiently motived by complete trust in men and spendthrift generosity. If there was ever a man who gave so lavishly as Timon, if there was ever one so senseless blind in trusting, then he deserved ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... fatal event. But I give my free and hearty consent, providing the settlements are drawn in such an irrevocable form as may secure my child from suffering by that state of dependence, and that sudden and causeless revocation of allowances, of which I have so much reason to complain. Of Sir Frederick Langley, I augur, you will hear no more. He is not likely to claim the hand of a dowerless maiden. I therefore commit you, my dear Isabella, to the wisdom of Providence and to your ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... De Lacy, "I am sorry for thee—sorry, from my soul, to see such a predominating and causeless jealousy occupy the brain of a gallant old soldier. Here, in this last misfortune, to recall no more ancient proofs of his fidelity, could he mean otherwise than well with us, when, thrown by shipwreck ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... I wrote, when thus my life had no commerce with the outside, when I was engrossed in the contemplation of my own heart, when my imaginings wandered in many a disguise amidst causeless emotions and aimless longings, has been left out of that edition; only a few of the poems originally published in the volume entitled Evening Songs finding a place there, in ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... the rebellion, yet they checked it considerably for some time, and prevented many thousands from plunging into it who otherwise would certainly have done so. . . . The present rebellion is certainly one of the most causeless, unprovoked and unnatural that ever disgraced any country; a rebellion marked with peculiarly aggravated circumstances of guilt and ingratitude. . . . About the middle of April, Mr. Washington—commander-in-chief of the rebel forces, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... one of those characters of self-will and passion which deteriorate in later life, and in which no new moral beauties spring up to replace the impulsive graces of youth. Regarding Aurore now as the work of another's hands, she made her the victim of ceaseless and causeless petulance. Her gross abuse of her mother-in-law gave Aurore many tears to shed in private, while her persecution of poor Deschartres drove her daughter to the expedient of shielding him—with a lie. The poor tutor had administered the affairs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... Erbprinz's fainting fits were more frequent than ever, and the Erbprincessin sank into a deep and brooding melancholy, which was varied by attacks of painful excitement and sudden bursts of causeless anger. It was whispered at Ludwigsburg that ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... that, good Sir? O there are women The world deem mad, or worse, whose life but seems One vile caprice, a freakish thing of whims And restless nothingness; yet if we pierce The soul, may be we'll touch some cause profound For what seems causeless. Early love despised, Or baffled, which is worse; a faith betrayed, For vanity or lucre; chill regards, Where to gain constant glances we have paid Some fearful forfeit: here are many springs, Unmarked by shallow eyes, and some, or all Of these, or none, ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... regretfully, "was an exceedingly proud woman, belonging to a family of social prominence in the East. She felt deeply the causeless gossip connecting her name with the case, as well as the open disgrace of her husband's conviction. She refused to receive her former friends, and even failed in loyalty to your father in his time of ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... one of them, saying "dos, dos, go, go," when she reminded him of the terms on which she consented to marry him, and warned him to be more cautious in the future, as he had now given her one causeless blow. ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... brown beach with a sound as of kisses and whispers. To one who found himself alone, beyond the limits of the village and beyond the hearing of its voices,—the vast silence, the vast light, seemed full of weirdness. And these hushes, these transparencies, do not always inspire a causeless apprehension: they are omens sometimes—omens of coming tempest. Nature,—incomprehensible Sphinx!—before her mightiest bursts of rage, ever puts forth her divinest witchery, makes more manifest ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... to the brief interview with Stewart and dwelt upon it. Little things which had at the time made no impression upon him began to recur and to take on significance. He remembered the elder man's odd and strained manner at the beginning, his sudden and causeless change to ease and to something that was almost like a triumphant excitement, and then his absurd story about Ste. Marie's flirtation with a lady. Hartley thought of these things; he thought also of the fact that Ste. Marie had disappeared immediately after hearing ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... free to loaf, but I worked harder than ever. I was either in an exalted state of mind or pining away under a spell of yearning and melancholy—of causeless, meaningless melancholy. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... her pupils. At the sixth there was a momentary rigor. At the seventh her lids began to droop. At the tenth her eyes were closed, and her breathing was slower and fuller than usual. I tried as I watched to preserve my scientific calm, but a foolish, causeless agitation convulsed me. I trust that I hid it, but I felt as a child feels in the dark. I could not have believed that I was still open ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... terror, this downfall into ruin of the loftiest bravery which ever astounded history,—is that causeless? No. The shadow of an enormous right is projected athwart Waterloo. It is the day of destiny. The force which is mightier than man produced that day. Hence the terrified wrinkle of those brows; hence ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Dry should be the hero. And then we ran on, jointly planning a succession of ridiculous scenes;—he lashing himself pretty freely though not half so freely, or so much to the purpose, as I lashed him; for I attacked him, through the channel of Mr, Dry, upon his ennui, his causeless melancholy, his complaining languors, his yawning inattention, and his restless discontent. You may easily imagine I was in pretty high spirits to go so far: in truth, nothing else could either have prompted or excused my facetiousness : and his ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... two or three days and then marched on in the track of the army. While at Shelbyville, the first and only causeless stampede of our pickets and false alarm to the camps which occurred during our squadron organization, took place. Ten or fifteen men were posted on picket some eight miles from the town toward Nashville, near a small bridge, at the southern end of which the extreme outpost vidette stood. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... however, in her bosom, amidst the rapture that made up her life, a vague feeling of sorrow, of some weight that made her heart bleed despite herself. At times, when she was plunged in one of those causeless transports which made her melt with tenderness, an anxious thought would come to her—she imagined that some misfortune was hovering behind her. She turned round, however, and then smiled. People are ever in a tremble when they are too happy. There was nothing ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... flattering speeches won renown By these two sisters here; The third had causeless banishment, Yet was her love more dear: For poor Cordelia patiently Went wand'ring up and down, Unhelp'd, unpitied, gentle maid, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... reached my hands by chance, and by mistake, and should have accounted to you (as I am told) for my son's not answering some other note of yours. God forbid, Miss Haredale,' said the good gentleman, with great emotion, 'that there should be in your gentle breast one causeless ground of quarrel with him. You should know, and you will see, that he was in ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... fears For what may be thy lot in future years. I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, Lord of thy house and hospitality; And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest But when she sate within the touch of thee. O too industrious folly! O vain and causeless melancholy! Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast thou to do with sorrow, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... in wordes few, That men have an ill use (To their own shame) women to blame, And causeless them ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... later with corroboration, or actually to be present in the turret, and then escape. Or perhaps the King told his man-in-the-turret tale merely 'in the air;' and then Henderson, having run away in causeless panic, later 'sees money in it,' and appears, with a string of falsehoods. 'Chance loves Art,' says Aristotle, and chance might well befriend an artist so capable and conscientious as his Majesty. To be sure Mr. Hill Burton says 'the theory that the whole was ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... uncle's will. I do not come to make you offers; you would not accept them: I do not come to vindicate myself, it is beneath me; and we have never been as brothers, and we know not their language: but I do come to demand you to retract the dark and causeless suspicions you have vented against me, and also to assure you that, if you have doubts of the authenticity of the will, so far from throwing obstacles in your way, I myself will join in the inquiries you institute and the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dampness, and the cold; she engenders the miasmatic poisons that rack our bones; she conceals in her mantle the foe who takes us unawares; she rules those vague shapes which fright us in the dim light; the causeless sounds of night or its more oppressive silence are familiar to her; she it is who sends dreams wherein gods and devils have their sport with man, and slumber, the twin brother of the grave." [377] So farther south, "the Brazilian mother carefully shielded ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, harkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me—to certain low and indefinite ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... chapel; this eager nosing out and tracking down of every scent of Popery; this fanatical satisfaction in such a kindred soul as that of Elizabeth Mason. Some mild Ritualism at Whinthorpe had given him occupation for years; and as for Bannisdale, he and the Masons between them had raised the most causeless of storms about Mr. Helbeck and his doings, from the beginning; they had kept up for years the most rancorous memory of the Williams affair; they had made the owner of the old Hall the bogey of ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... me I was not so happy: and I looked back fondly to the days of the greenwood and the fellowship of the Dry Tree, and the days before that, of my flight with my lord. And moreover with the wearing of the years those murmurs against me and the blind causeless hatred began to grow again, and chiefly methinks because I was the king, and my lord the king's cloak: but therewith tales concerning me began to spring up, how that I was not only a sorceress, but even one ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... insult. Christine, fully aware of the obloquy that pressed upon her race, had only consented to adopt this unusual mode of changing her condition, under a sensitive, apprehension that any other would have necessarily led to the exposure of her origin. This fear, though exaggerated, and indeed causeless, was the result of too much brooding of late over her own situation, and of that morbid sensibility in which the most pure and innocent are, unhappily, the most likely to indulge. The concealment, as has already been explained, was that of her intended husband, who, with the subterfuge of an interested ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the enterprise that his master had in hand, saying that he would rather die than do what he had promised. For (he told her) just as there was no living man whom he would not venture to attack in anger, although he would rather die than commit a causeless and wilful murder unless his honour compelled him to it; even so, unless driven by extreme love, such as may serve to blind virtuous men, he would rather die than break his marriage vow to ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... morning the sun shone, and Mercy was herself again. Her depression of the evening before seemed to her so causeless, so inexplicable, that she recalled it almost with terror, as one might a temporary insanity. She blushed to think of her unreasonable sensitiveness to the words and tones of Stephen White. "As ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... get, there were others whose minds could not conceive a country without a king, or a subject with inalienable rights. The best of the Tories honestly believed the Whig agitation to be "unnatural, causeless, wanton, and wicked."[10] Such Americans were, in the inevitable struggle, truly martyrs to ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... touch of the morbus eruditorum, to which I am as little subject as most folks, and have it less now than when young. It is a tremor of the heart, the pulsation of which becomes painfully sensible—a disposition to causeless alarm—much lassitude—and decay of vigour of mind and activity of intellect. The reins feel weary and painful, and the mind is apt to receive and encourage gloomy apprehensions and causeless fears. Fighting with this fiend ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Absolute of Western philosophers, the Parabrahm of the Hindus, the Tao of the ancient sages of China, the causeless Cause of all that has been or ever will be manifested in concrete time ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... jealous rage inspir'd, Before the gods, while curling incense blaz'd, His suppliant hands to Jove almighty rais'd. "All potent Jove! those eyes that view the Moor 260 From painted coaches full libations pour, See they not this? Or when thy thunder rolls Do causeless fears, O Father, shake our souls? Is there no vengeance in the bolt you poise? Is all but fancied horror, empty noise? 265 A woman, wand'ring outcast on our shore, Bargains a petty spot and owns no more, Accepts a portion of our coast to till, ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
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