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Peradventure   Listen
adverb
Peradventure  adv., conj.  By chance; perhaps; it may be; if; supposing. "If peradventure he speak against me." "Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Peradventure" Quotes from Famous Books



... in the Resurrection of Jesus converts the Greek peradventure into a fact. It gives that belief solidity and makes it easier to grasp firmly. Unless the thought of a future life is completed by the belief that it is a corporeal life, it will never have definiteness and reality enough to sustain itself as a counterpoise to the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... petter that friends is the sword, and end it: and there is also another device in my prain, which peradventure prings goot discretions with it:—there is Anne 40 Page, which is daughter to Master Thomas Page, ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... to last demonstrated beyond peradventure the beneficial results accruing from a strongly centralized, and, at the same time, most liberal ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... possibilities of matter and motion, "that in the beginning when matter in fermentation gradually brought our universe bursting into being, blind creatures like myself were very common. But why should I not believe of worlds what I believe of animals? How many worlds, mutilated and imperfect, were peradventure dispersed, then re-formed, and are again dispersing at each moment of time in those far-off spaces which I cannot touch and you cannot behold, but where motion combines and will continue to combine masses of matter, until they have chanced ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... you cutting off the parts of your dead father or mother, and sending it to your absent friends, and calling upon and inviting your present friends to eat the rest freely and heartily—shall we not smile? Nay, peradventure we offend at this instant time while we touch these books, without having first cleansed our hands, eyes, feet, and ears; if it be not (by Jupiter) a sufficient purgation of them to have discoursed of these matters in potable and fresh language ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... for adults; and that he had already bethought him of a way wherein he might be serviceable to us—viz. in procuring for me certain youth of the upper kinds, to be by me instructed in the learned tongues, and such other branches as I had proficiency in; and, in addition thereto, he said, that peradventure he might obtain a similar charge for my excellent wife in superintending the perfectionment of certain young ladies of his acquaintance in samplers, and millinery, and cookery, and such other of the fine and useful arts as she was known to excel in; and he subjoined thereto, that the charges ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... sat upon the threshold of the hut to rest, where he no longer found the servant, for the hostler boys had carried her off and put her among the horses. Zbyszko lay down upon the fur which Hlawa brought. He resolved to keep awake and wait until daybreak; peradventure then some happy change might ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... singing now. The flags are green along the Avon river; O, would I were a rambler in the fields. This poor machine is racing to its wreck. This grist of thought is endless, this old sorrow Sprouts, winds and crawls in London's darkness. Come Back to your landscape! Peradventure waits Some woman there who will make new the earth, And crown the ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... shoulder and lays his ear upon it, as if listening for his key-note amidst the tones that are serpentining through his brain. When to the audience 'nothing lives 'twixt these and silence,' a strain which has at first a dying fall imperceptibly swells on the ear. It is the instrument, beyond all peradventure; and from that moment you are 'all ear.' While you are wondering why you never knew before that there was such a volume of sound in a violin, a passage of infinite pathos arrests your heart, and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... bin in Mr. Sheldon's carefully arranged cellar. When the physician was called in, and wrote his harmless little prescription, it was Mrs. Woolper who carried the document to the dispensing chemist, and brought back the innocent potion, which might, peradventure, effect some slight good, and was too feeble a decoction to do any harm. Charlotte duly appreciated all this kindness; but she repeatedly assured the housekeeper that her ailments were not worthy of so ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... "And peradventure other eyes may see, From Casa Guidi windows, what is done Or undone. Whatsoever deeds they be, Pope Pius will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... that monster. And Peredur gave the head to the young men, and they offered him in marriage whichever of the three sisters he might choose, and half their kingdom with her. "I came not hither to woo," said Peredur, "but if peradventure I took a wife, I should prefer your sister to all others." And Peredur rode forward, and he heard a noise behind him. And he looked back, and saw a man upon a red horse, with red armour upon him; and the man rode up by his side, and saluted ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... day appointed, and proposing their diuers opinions and iudgements, at length it seemed best vnto the whole company to besiege the city Sagitta, which is also called Sidon, if peradventure, through God's helpe, and by the strength of this new army, by land and sea it might be ouercome. Whereupon all they which were there present and required that this city should be besieged, because it was one of those cities of the Gentiles which continually rebelled, were ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... asked him if he had met anybody on the road? "You are the first person I have seen," answered the king, "and I cannot comprehend how so fine and large a city comes to be without inhabitants." "Come in, sir; stay no longer upon the threshold," replied the old man, "or peradventure some misfortune may happen to you. I will satisfy your curiosity at leisure, and give you a reason why it is necessary you should ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... fling of Fast Day at one who went into service as a mere boy, it remains a fact that rank, without the devoted study of years and a single eye to truth, will not enable any one to write history. It was proven beyond a peradventure on Fast Day, that the command of a corps, let alone a division, will not of itself breed a historian. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... coming forth from the door in the courtyard of his house which opened on the river bank, to embark in his official boat on the river. And this peasant said, "I earnestly wish that it may happen that I may make glad thy heart with the words which I am going to say! Peradventure thou wilt allow some one to call thy confidential servant to me, in order that I may send him back to thee thoroughly well informed as to my business." Then Rensi, the son of Meru, the steward, caused his confidential servant ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... of some magnate of the city, peradventure an alderman or a sheriff, and now the patter of many feet announces it procession of charity scholars in uniforms of antique cut, and each with ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... have set out upon an exodus from the tedious realm of the definite, the fixed, the must-certainly-come-to-pass. They are on a holiday in the free country of peradventure. They do not know at this moment whether the next turn of Fortune's reel will bring up a perch or a pickerel, a sunfish or a black bass. It may be a hideous catfish or a squirming eel, or it may be a lake-trout, the grand prize in the Lake George lottery. There they sit, those gray-haired ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... mysticism himself by the hour, but snubs it in every one else. "It has trout, at least; and they stand, I suppose, for its soul, as the raisins did for those of Jean Paul's gingerbread bride and bridegroom and peradventure baby." ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... Homer returned to life, no one would dispute with him his claim to be the author of the Iliad, and each would vie with the rest to do honour to the father of epic poetry. But if peradventure some rich landowner of that day came back to assert a claim to the fields, the woods, the pastures of which he used to be so proud, ten to one he would be received like a thief and perhaps ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... her bearing. The selection of the gown was a matter for profound deliberation, and ended in a mood of dubiety. That passed, however, when at last she surveyed her length in the cheval glass. Then, she became aware, beyond peradventure of doubt, that the white lacery of silk, molded to her slender form and interwoven with heavy threads of gold, was supremely becoming. The gleam of precious metal in the fabric scorned to transmute the amber of her eyes into a glory of gold. The pearls of her necklace ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... Baal's did on Carmel in old time, "Either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is on a journey; or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked." At least, the only fire by which he has answered his votaries, has been that of English cannon: and the Armada, "gathering itself into a roundel," will fight no more, but make the best of its way to Calais, where perhaps the Guises' faction may have ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... with splinters of black sea-ice, clattered and sloshed, waiting patiently for their harvest from the vast and treacherous fields beyond. A grim harvest! Grim fields to garner from, wherein he who sows peradventure shall not reap, and wherein Death is the farmer! Aye, and grim gleaners those who stand under the broken cliff of Nolan's Cove, waiting and ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... deluded adherents. As I was at some pains to elucidate for her understanding, I could never countenance any recognition, however remote, of an individual of the type of Robin Hood, who, however noble and generous he may have been in certain aspects, was beyond peradventure a ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... is known as employers' liability. Under the old strict common-law rule, a servant or employee could never recover damages for any injury caused in whole or in part by his own negligence, by the negligence of a fellow servant or even by defective machinery, unless he was able to prove beyond peradventure that this existed known to the employer and was the sole and direct cause of the accident. As is matter of common knowledge, the tendency of all modern legislation, particularly the English and our own, has been to chip one corner after another off these principles. ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... then, Rose, let us seek even after we have found! Whether we be denied or heard, let us go on seeking! When we have lovingly performed the little things necessary that a flower may peradventure blossom, if it does not give us what we hoped for, does that prevent us from loving another exactly like it and from tending it with all the greater ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... something in the middle of the valley that looked like a tall, grisly skeleton. It seemed to have legs and arms, an odd mushroom-shaped head, and endless ribs. Below and at its feet were other and vaguer shapes—flat domes or cupolas, bombproofs perhaps, buildings of some sort—Pax's home beyond peradventure. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... dear friend, and acknowledge its promptitude," said Mr. Mordacks; "and now be quick about your orders, peradventure a second flight might be less agreeable. Now don't show any airs; you have been well treated, and should be thankful for the facilities you have to offer. I know a poor man without any legs at all, who would be only too glad if he could ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... arms that every one was surprised that he held in his hand a sword only instead of a baton of command! Alas! we shall find him changed into a broken down old man, with garnet nose and eyes that slobber; we shall find him extended on some lawn, whence he will look at us with a languid eye and peradventure will not recognize us. God knows, Planchet, that I should fly from a sight so sad if I did not wish to show my respect for the illustrious shadow of what was once the Comte de la Fere, whom we loved ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... perfectly at home, and who had paid for his passage. At dinner time he took his seat beside his master, giving him a glance now and then out of a corner of his eye, which bespoke perfect confidence that he would not be forgotten. Nor was he—every now and then a huge morsel would be thrown to him, peradventure the half-picked leg of a fowl, which he would receive with a snap like the springing of a steel-trap—one gulp, and all was down; and a glance of the eye told his master that he was ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... trifles peradventure chance You to be readers, and the hands of you 25 Without a shudder unto us be offer'd * ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... pentekosto. Penultimate antauxlasta. Penurious avara. Penury malricxeco. Peony peonio. People popolo, homoj. Peopled homhava. Pepper pipro. Pepper-box piprujo. Pepper-caster piprujo. Peradventure eble, hazarde. Perambulate promeni, trairi. Perambulator infanveturilo. Perceive (to see) ekvidi. Perceive senti. Percentage procento. Perceptible palpebla, sentebla. Perception (by sight) vido, videco. Perception sento. Perch (for ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... the experiments, or the heroism of the men—officers and rank and file of the United States Army; they knew all the time that they were playing with death, and some of them had to pay the penalty! The demonstration was successful—beyond peradventure—that yellow fever could be transmitted by mosquitoes, and equally the negative proposition—that it could not be transmitted by fomites. An interval of twelve or more days was found to be necessary after the mosquito has bitten a yellow fever patient before it is capable ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... sons, Deemster Christian had a girl in his household, but to his own consciousness the fact was only a kind of peradventure. She was his niece, the child of his only brother, who had died in early manhood. Her name was Ann Charlotte de la Tremouille, called after the lady of Rushen, for the family of Christian had their share of the heroic that is in all men. She had fine eyes, a weak mouth, and great ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... their want of success. His grim sarcasms become more and more bitter. "Cry with a loud voice!" said he, "yea, louder and yet louder! for ye cry to a god; either he is talking, or he is hunting, or he is on a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awakened." And they cried aloud, and cut themselves, after their manner, with knives and spears, till the blood gushed out ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... simply the making of a speech at that Convention, by a woman. By her speaking something more was implied, for if woman could speak there and for that object, she might speak elsewhere for another object, and she might, peradventure, as my friend does, proceed to occupy a pulpit and settle over a congregation. In fact, there is no knowing where the precedent would lead; reminding me of the man who hesitated to leave off his profanity, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... faith should go with fighting-men among men of war, as if to do battle. But, friend, if we should fall upon the angry red-men, truly, there will bloodshed come of it; and thee will say to me, 'Nathan, lift up thee gun and shoot;' and peradventure, if I say 'Nay,' thee will call me hard names, as thee did before, saying, 'If thee don't, I will blow thee brains out!'—Friend, I am a man ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... said, "I am lately thinking that peradventure the Lord sends not pain to our earthly bodies, or else that pain would be a trial and a punishment; whereas I may look around and see dumb animals and little singing birds die of suffering and pain; and surely the Lord ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... thee not, as my father understood not thine," he replied. "My father was wont to say that Mar Shalmon was strange and peradventure not possessed of all his senses to neglect his ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. . . . And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is musing, or he is gone aside, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked. And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lances, till the blood gushed out upon them. . . . But there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... poor Wamba, "and for hanging up by the feet, my brain has been topsy-turvy ever since the [v]biggin was bound first around my head; so turning me upside down may peradventure restore it again." ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... quadrangular edifice, enclosed within high walls and towers and constructed in most noble style, and tho it was all most beautiful to look upon, there were three parts of transcendent beauty: the Audientia, the Capella major, and the terraces: and these were so admirably planned and contrived that peradventure no palace comparable to it was to be found in the whole world. The terraces referred to were those raised over the great chapel, and were formed of stone, bedded in asphalt and laid on a staging of stout oak joists; the view from the terraces was ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... Amrillah was riding out in state one day, when he came to a garden, in which he saw a man, surrounded by slaves and servants. He asked him for a draught of water, and the man gave him to drink, saying, 'Peradventure, the Commander of the Faithful will honour me by alighting in this my garden.' So the Khalif dismounted and entered the garden with his suite; whereupon the man brought out to them a hundred carpets and a hundred leather mats and a hundred cushions and set before them a hundred dishes of ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... be some goddess, endowed with the power and the will to punish his intrusion on her realm; or peradventure his superstitious imagination dwelt on the tales which sailors told in those times—how mermaids who fed on human flesh dwelt on the coasts of uninhabited islands, and assuming the most charming female forms, lured into their embrace the victims whom shipwreck cast upon their strand, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... decreed? Peradventure, hast thou altogether forsaken thy nation and thy people? Hast thou verily determined that it utterly perish, and that there be no more memory of it in the world, that the peopled place become a wooded hill, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... and yeasaid him, and thought in her heart that such work which would keep her hands and her head both busy, would solace the grief of her heart, and wear away the time, that she might live till hope might peradventure arise in her. ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... "Peradventure I may. It will be dull without thee, Chris; and with the rest of the boys making the master out a witch, they'll have no ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... lest my father leave caring for the asses, and take thought for us. And he said unto him, Behold now, there is in this city a man of God, and he is an honourable man; all that he saith cometh surely to pass: now let us go thither; peradventure he can show us our way that we should go. Then said Saul to his servant, But, behold; if we go, what shall we bring the man; for the bread is spent in our vessels, and there is not a present to bring to the man of God; what have we? ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... sides: and though one gentleman with a flippant ignorance has denounced this new law as inferior to the pre-existing system, and a curse to the country, we, the magistrates of the proud county of Surrey, must enter our protest against such a doctrine being promulgated. Peradventure, you are all acquainted with my prowess as a shooter; I won two silver tankards at the Red House, Anno Domini 1815. I mention this to show that I am a practical sportsman, and as to the theory of the Game Laws, I derive my information from the same ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... immunity from arrest without legal cause, but if you saw a seedy character sneaking down a side street at three o'clock in the morning, his pockets bulging with jewelry and silver! Would you have the policeman on post insist on the fact that a burglary had been committed being established beyond peradventure before arresting the suspect, who in the meantime would undoubtedly escape? Of course, the worthy officer sometimes does this, but his conduct in that case becomes the subject of an investigation on ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... should do so. I have not so far forgotten the days of my youth, or those affections which bind poor frail humanity but too much to the things of this world. Will you find no words to ask of me the great boon which you seek, and which, peradventure, you would not have hesitated to have made your own, without my knowledge, and against my consent?—Nay, never vindicate thyself, but mark me farther. The patriarch bought his beloved by fourteen years' hard service to her father Laban, and they seemed to him ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... vigorously, and wounded him through the eyeball. "A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly! As long as I remain alive, my eyesight will be the worse. Whenever I go against the wind, my eyes will water; and peradventure my head will burn, and I shall have a giddiness every new moon. Like the bite of a mad dog is the stroke of this poisoned iron. Cursed be the fire in which it was forged!" And they went ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... influence or assistance, but knowing it to be morally impossible to get through a story without the assistance of a lady, I pressed one into the service, and took other liberties with the original, till it became what peradventure the reader will find it. Many stories are told of the skirmishes, or as sailors call them, "scrammidges," between our "free-traders" and the guarda-costas in different parts of the Pacific. In particular, the ship D——, of Boston, is ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... with them, although he was so constituted from the first institution, which hath been an opinion only of some to keep him at a distance, least he might be thought too forward if he had joynt power in discovering or argueing against that which peradventure private interest would have concealed; it is certaine no man sees more of the Navye's Transactions than himselfe, and possibly may speak as much to the project if required, or else he is a blockhead, and not fitt for that imployment. But why he should not make as able a Commissioner ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... one word, security. What are votes, and statutes, and resolutions? They have no eyes to see, no hands to strike and avenge. They must have some safeguard from without. Many things, therefore, which in themselves were peradventure hurtful, was this Parliament constrained to ask, lest otherwise good laws and precious rights should be without defence. Nor did they want a great and signal example of this danger. I need not remind you that, many years before, the two Houses had presented to the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... breath, as she hung over him while painting, suggested to him that smoking might, peradventure, be a sin against nature as well ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade

... of Socrates were peradventure a certain impulsion or will which without the advice of his discourse presented itself unto him. In a mind so well purified, and by continual exercise of wisdom and virtue so well prepared as his was, it is likely his inclinations (though rash and inconsiderate) were ever of great moment, and ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... Hall-face; 'and I pray thee, brother, let me have an hundred of men and thy Dallach, and let us go somewhat deep into the wood towards Rose-dale, and see what we may come across; peradventure it might be something better than hart ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... Tennessee, are the only sounds to be heard. Thoughts of home and the quiet evenings; of youth and the gay visions; of the thousand and one pleasant scenes in life; of what we might have been and where we might have been, had the cards of our life been shuffled differently; of the deeds we might do, if peradventure the opportunity were offered, and the little we have done; all come up to-night, and we chew the cud over and over, without being able to determine whether it is bitter ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... to overbid his partner's call, should remember that one of the greatest pleasures of the game is facing the Dummy, especially when the declaration is apt to be successful, and he should assure himself beyond peradventure that, in bidding his own suit in preference to advancing his partner's, he is not in any way influenced by his own selfish desires. He should be sure that, with the positions reversed, he would thoroughly approve of just such action by his partner; and, if his partner be the better player, he ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work

... against his will. But it shall be a marvellous good medicine, and work as a willingly taken pain the purgation and cleansing of his soul with gracious remission of his sin, and of the far greater pain that otherwise would have been prepared for it, peradventure forever in hell. For many there are undoubtedly who would otherwise drive forth and die in their deadly sin, who yet in such tribulation, feeling their own frailty so effectually and the false flattering world failing them, turn full goodly to God and call for mercy. And so by grace they make ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... hold thee fast bound by them to thy condemnation; he needs no other defence but to call out thy own conscience against thee, and bind thee over to destruction. Therefore, as one saith well, "Let the rashness of men be restrained from seeking that which is not, lest peradventure they find that which is." Seek not a reason of his purposes, lest peradventure thou find thy own death ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... merits of their orders. Even Hilary says of the foolish virgins: And as the foolish virgins could not go forth with their lamps extinguished, they besought those who were prudent to lend them oil; to whom they replied that they could not give it because peradventure there might not be enough for all; i.e., no one can be aided by the works and merits of another, because it is necessary for every one to buy oil for his own lamp. [Here he points out that none of us can aid another by ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon

... zeal of Davies would not permit Dr. Beaumont to finish his harangue. "And ye planted in your edifice," said he, "a poisonous scion, an abominable branch of the tree of evil; but our friend Humphreys speaks not unadvisedly, or at peradventure. Your Anti-christian bishops are all sent to prison; they are caged vultures, jackdaws stripped of their Babylonish trappings, their robes and square caps, their lawn formalities, their hoods and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... consulted, Yea, or expounder of dreams, (for the dream, too, comes from Kronion,) Who may interpret the wrath unrelenting of Phoebus Apollo; Whether for forfeited vow we are plagu'd, or for hecatomb wanting: If peradventure by savour of lambs or of goats without blemish Anger divine may be sooth'd, and the pestilence turn'd from the people." He, having spoke, sat down; and arose Thestorian Calchas, Prophet supreme among all, in the secrets of augury foremost; He ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... fashion—in other words—painting the lily-gilding refined gold? But, alas! Simpson, the tutelar deity, departed ('died,' some say, but we don't believe it), and, at the moment he made his last bow, Vauxhall ought to have been closed; it was madness—the madness which will call us, peradventure, superstitious—which kept the gates open when Simpson's career closed—it was an anomaly, for, like Love and Heaven, Simpson was Vauxhall, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... patterns that wavered over the unfrequented paths. She leaned back, staring at the dark bulk of the mansion with the darker streak at the doorway, which one divined to be the sinister mark of death. Suddenly she sat erect, her aching weariness forgotten. She knew, past peradventure, that she had sat there upon that very seat the night before. The memory was but a flash. Already delirium was returning. She was powerless to move. Hours passed, and still she sat staring, unseeing, straight ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... longer upon the threshold,' replied the old man, 'or peradventure some misfortune may happen to you. I will satisfy your curiosity at leisure, and give you the reason why it is necessary you should ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon

... thou altogether forsaken thy nation and thy people? Hast thou verily determined that it utterly perish, and that there be no more memory of it in the world, that the peopled place become a wooded hill, and A WILDERNESS OF STONES? Peradventure, wilt thou permit that the temples, and the places of prayer, and the altars, built for thy service, be razed and destroyed, and no ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... stage that the players sat up and knew beyond peradventure that big hands were out. Though their features showed nothing, each man was beginning unconsciously to tense. Each man strove to appear his natural self, and each natural self was different. Hal Campbell affected his ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... hath his serenity been doing? Doth he meditate to abolish Burgundy? If so, my faith! but we are, as you observe, little above the brutes. Or, peradventure, will he forbid laughing,—his highness being little ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled. In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral they most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from which not the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... extent, and are well fitted for public life, and are keen and ready, and particularly rich in all the charms of language, yet there no longer arise really lofty and transcendent natures unless it be quite peradventure. So great and world-wide a dearth of high utterance attends our age. Can it be,' he continued, 'we are to accept the common cant that democracy is the nursing mother of genius, and that great men of letters flourish and die with it? ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... when the high officials looked upon the horse, they laughed one to other and said, "Was it of the like of his horse that the youth spake? We cannot deem him other than mad; however, we shall soon see the truth of his case. Peradventure herein is some mighty matter, and he is a man of high degree." Then they lifted up the horse bodily and, carrying it to the King, set it down before him, and all the lieges flocked round to look at it, marvelling at the beauty of its proportions and the richness of its saddle and bridle. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Coleridge at Keswick in November 1802, Lamb wrote—"If you find the Miltons in certain parts dirtied and soiled with a crumb of right Gloucester, blacked in the candle (my usual supper), or peradventure, a stray ash of tobacco wafted into the crevices, look to that passage more especially: depend upon it, it contains good matter." To Lamb, a book read best ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... neared South Point light, which was not more than a mile and a half from his mother's house. He whistled merrily, to give expression to his satisfaction, as he passed the light, for he and the boat were now safe beyond a peradventure. Taking an extra turn in the foresheet, he laid the course of the boat a little closer to the wind, which soon brought her into the comparatively still ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams

... to partake of the ordinance, without saying anything respecting his baptism. But, on the whole, he concluded that it would be respectful to intimate his situation to one of the church, peradventure they had a rule favorable to such a case as his, or, at least, had agreed to shut their eyes, and ask ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams

... whether 'twould not be better for us to turn aside into the thickets and try to hide; peradventure the dogs and the horsemen would go past. But the negro said 'twould be useless; we could not deceive the dogs, and we should be no safer than ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... Cervantes's hero in all the pages of history or romance. Why cannot all men see it? Why must an infamous world be ever sneering at the sight, and smacking its filthy lips over some fresh gorge of martyrs? Society has non-suited hell to-day, lest peradventure it should not ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... wrath which savors of labor and which he pursues as a rhymester would a rebellious epithet. Besides, he is good enough to repent for it, as if this wrath burned the face over which it glowed. "I have presented some things," he murmurs, "a little sharply, even roughly said, which, peradventure, may offend the delicate ears of some. But, as I am aware there are some good persons who have conceived such affection for this dream of the sleep of souls, I would not have them offended with me." Where Calvin is concerned we must not allow our admiration to be too easily awaked; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... no power, nay, had no wish, to resist its influence. When on such jobs as these it was his habit to observe an unusual sobriety. He was glad now to think of his adherence to that rule. Had he been drunk, he might, peradventure, have insulted this divinity. What had come over him? He felt almost pleased to know he was in her power, and yet she treated him like the ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... hiding his features. The distance from the podium wall to the center of the arena is so great, the distance from any other part of the audience so much greater, that, while many of the spectators were astounded, suspicious or curious, not one could be certain that Palus was, beyond peradventure, the Prince of the Republic in person. Palus stood there, alternately staring at his dead crony and talking ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... from the pen of Willard Glazier, the well-known soldier-author, is entitled 'Down the Great River.' It is a work of great geographical and historical value, and settles beyond peradventure the disputed question of the true source of the Mississippi. Aside from its scientific value, the work is a charmingly entertaining narrative of the thrilling adventures and amusing incidents of a canoe trip over the whole length of ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... evil from which they vow to turn. The loftiest lesson which prophets found Israel so slow to learn, 'A broken and a contrite heart Thou wilt not despise,' was learned by these heathens. We need it no less. Nineveh repented on a peradventure that their repentance might avail. How pathetic that 'Who can tell?' (ver. 9) is! We know what they hoped. Their doubt might give fervour to their cries, but our certainty should give deeper earnestness and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... of being delivered, that if, honourable young madam, you shall receive no answer, it will be necessary that you conclude that the man meaneth in silence to abandon that naughty contract, which, peradventure, he may be unwilling directly ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, I who would have been turned long since into dust of the ground by Amraphel and into ashes by Nimrod, had it not been for Thy grace.[163] Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous for Zoar, the smallest of the five cities. Wilt Thou destroy all the city for lack ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... and said: "Go and get yourselves new suits of clothes; I will pay when I hear at leisure how the whole thing happened." What caused me the most pain, and made me lose my senses, and take fright-so contrary to my real nature-was the dread lest peradventure folk should fancy I had trumped a story of the robber up to steal the jewels. It had already been paid to Pope Clement by one of his most trusted servants, and by others, that is, by Francesco del Nero, Zana de' Biliotti his accountant, the ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... reinstate themselves, the better to found a strong oligarchy, they should have honestly and diligently searched their Houses for men of the stamp that Napoleon used; they should have turned themselves inside out to see if peradventure there was a Constitutionalist Richelieu lurking in the entrails of the Faubourg; and if that genius was not forthcoming from among them, they should have set out to find him, even in the fireless garret where he might happen to be perishing of cold; they should have assimilated him, as the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... and accessible will show beyond peradventure that in many parts of the State corrupt and violent influences were brought to bear upon the registrars of voters, thus materially affecting the character of the voting or poll lists; upon the inspectors of election, prejudicially ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... hunt birds, and a partridge droops its wings, and hovers almost at my feet, inviting capture, I know beyond all peradventure that it is only love's ruse; that something she holds dearer than her own life, is thereby screened, saved. You are guilty of a great crime against yourself, you are submitting tacitly, consenting to an awful doom, in order to spare ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... fury, wherein the heights of the air and depths of the sea are pressed into the service of slaughter. Where was the Invisible King in July, 1914? Or, for that matter, what has he been doing since July, 1870? "Either he was musing, or he was on a journey, or peradventure he slept." Truly it would seem that he might have advised Mr. Wells to wait for the "Cease fire!" before ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... forefinger, go forth to a strange land to live amid sordid circumstances, and with uncongenial company, to work as a common, farm-labourer, to peddle strawberries at a railway station, passes belief. With respect to Mr. HARRIS, one feels inclined to quote Betsy Prig's remark touching one who may, peradventure, have been a maternal relation. "I don't believe," said Betsy, "there's no sich a person." But there was, and, stranger still, there was a LAURENCE OLIPHANT to bend the knee to him. Not the least striking thing in a book of rare value is the manner in which Mrs. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various

... home to his mother, Lalotte; and bear my last fond greetings to her and the little ones, whom I, peradventure, shall see no more," said Tell, bursting into tears. The mighty heart which had remained firm and unshaken in the midst of all his perils and trials, now melted within him at the sight of his child's tears, the remembrance of his home, and anticipations ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... describing the battle of Fair Oaks, he stated where he was when he received the wound that necessitated the amputation of his right arm. In the course of his statement he said that Lieut. McIntyre helped him off the field. This I knew beyond peradventure to be a mistake, and I wrote the Tribune an account of the matter so far as McIntyre was concerned, and said my object in so doing was to help put some man in the right who might claim that he had done this service ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller

... of vampires mouth to mouth or, as Virgilius saith, by the influence of the occident or by the reek of moonflower or an she lie with a woman which her man has but lain with, effectu secuto, or peradventure in her bath according to the opinions of Averroes and Moses Maimonides. He said also how at the end of the second month a human soul was infused and how in all our holy mother foldeth ever souls for God's greater glory whereas that earthly mother which was but a dam to bear ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... women are utterly wrapt up in gloom, mystery and self-denial.—Well, then, if I must neither stir out of the gate nor look out at window, I will at least see what the inside of the house contains that may help to pass away one's time—peradventure I may light on that blue-eyed laugher in some corner ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... ungentle son-in-law, truly. As long as I remain alive my eyesight will be the worse. Whenever I go against the wind my eyes will water, and peradventure my head will burn, and I shall have a giddiness every new moon. Cursed be the fire in which it was forged. Like the bite of a mad dog is the ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... thanked them, and ascended without much ceremony. We immediately began our journey, being seven in number; for, as the women wore no hoops, three of them were but equal to two men. Perhaps, reader, thou mayest be pleased with an account of this whole equipage, as peradventure thou wilt not, while alive, see any such. The coach was made by an eminent toyman, who is well known to deal in immaterial substance, that being the matter of which it was compounded. The work was so extremely ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding

... once; the man was so simple-minded, so transparently natural, one could not be angry with him. One could only smile at him, a superior cynical London-bred smile, for an unsophisticated foreigner. So the Civil Servant asked with a condescending air, "Well, what's your difficulty? I'll see if peradventure I can help you out of it." For he reflected to himself in a flash that as Ingledew had apparently a good round sum in gold and notes in his pocket yesterday, he was not likely to come borrowing money ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... all things to put his kingdom upon the hazard of a battle; for his brother being a greater lord of lands than he, and richer in money and more powerful in vassals, could maintain the war longer than he could do, who peradventure would find it difficult another year to gather together so good an army as he had now ready. For this cause he advised him to put his trust in God first, and then in the hidalgos who were with him, and without fear give battle to the King ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... in that direction, when the hag rather muttered, than said distinctly, "You are one of the initiated, Varangian; take heed whom you take with you, when you may hardly, peradventure, be ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... 'Peradventure he, you name, May know my shield. Let Gareth, an he will, Change his for mine, and take my charger, fresh, Not to be spurred, loving the battle as well As he that rides him.' 'Lancelot-like,' she said, 'Courteous in this, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... obtained his degree of doctor of medicine when he was scarcely more than twenty. This seems quite out of the question for us at the present time, but we have taken to pushing back the time of graduation, and it is not sure whether this is, beyond peradventure, so beneficial ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... within their sound remembrance. One is, the multitude of chimnies lately erected; whereas in their young days, there were not above two or three, if so many, in most uplandish towns of the realm; (the religious houses and manor-places of their lords always excepted, and peradventure some great personage;) but each made his fire against a reredosse in the hall where he dined and dressed his meat. The second is, the great amendment of lodging; for, said they, our fathers and we ourselves have lain full oft upon straw pallettes covered only with a sheet under coverlets made ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... occasionally. He recollects himself as he was at the time, young and gamesome; and forgets that his hearers have no other idea of the hero of the tale, but such as he may appear at the time of telling it; peradventure, a withered, whimsical, spindle-shanked old gentleman. With married men, it is true, this is not so frequently the case: their amorous romance is apt to decline after marriage; why, I cannot for the life of me imagine; ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... Abide, knight, for ye shall abide whether ye will or nill, and the shield that is to-fore you shall not help. When Balin heard the noise, he turned his horse fiercely, and said, Fair knight, what will ye with me, will ye joust with me? Yea, said the Irish knight, therefore come I after you. Peradventure, said Balin, it had been better to have holden you at home, for many a man weeneth to put his enemy to a rebuke, and oft it falleth to himself. Of what court be ye sent from? said Balin. I am come from the court of King Arthur, said the knight of Ireland, that come hither for to revenge the ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... turned the prow of the canoe toward the shore where she stood. Still she did not move. The cat waits for its victim until the victim beyond peradventure is within reach of its spring. Nearer and nearer drew the canoe. Still Manikawan stood, a graven image. She was looking out and beyond her intended victims. The roar of the distant rapids, and the monotonous, thunderous undertone of the falls ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace

... wisdom is so perversely blended with blindness, enlightenment with barbarism, strength with weakness, justice with oppression; her profound scrutiny into mystic forms of philosophy, her ancient culture of physics, borrowed from the primitive speculations of Brahminism;—Siam is, beyond a peradventure, one of the most remarkable and thought-compelling of the empires of the Orient; a fascinating and provoking enigma, alike to the theologian and the political economist. Like a troubled dream, delirious ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... Mona Nina,—Three letters, one on the top of another, and I don't answer. Shame on me. How I have thought of you, to make up! And you write to apologise to us, from a dreamy mystical apprehension that we may peradventure have lost eightpence on your account! Well, it would have been awful if we had. And so Providence interposed with a special miracle, and obliged the officials to accept the actual penny stamp for the fourpenny ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... with one another, in order that if we are not able to apprehend with perfect clearness the notions of being and not-being, we may at least not fall short in the consideration of them, so far as they come within the scope of the present enquiry, if peradventure we may be allowed to assert the reality of ...
— Sophist • Plato



Words linked to "Peradventure" :   maybe, possibly, dubiety, uncertainty, mayhap



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