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Unthinking   /ənθˈɪŋkɪŋ/   Listen
Unthinking

adjective
1.
Not exhibiting or characterized by careful thought.  Synonyms: unreflective, unthoughtful.
2.
Without care or thought for others.  Synonyms: thoughtless, uncaring.
3.
Mentally sluggish.  Synonyms: lumpen, lumpish.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Unthinking" Quotes from Famous Books



... it was the wrong of an unthinking child—not of a realizing woman. Would you, a realizing man, tear her now from home, from her child, from her place in the community and my heart—make her despicable as well as unhappy, ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... they permit impunity to deaden their sense of right and wrong, and go on in their course without any serious thought of God's blessings, to jostle Him out of their mind; they 'despise the riches of His long-suffering goodness,' and never suffer it to 'lead them to repentance.' To the unthinking minds of most of us, the long continuance of impunity lulls us into a dream of its perpetuity. Man's godless ingratitude is as deep a mystery as is God's loving patience. It is strange that, with such constant failure of His love to win, God should still persevere in it. For more than ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Independence of the Ancient Kingdom of Poland. The echo of this patriotic declaration rang throughout all the provinces, whether Russian, Prussian or Austrian, and for several days it was believed that there would be an uprising which would probably favour Napoleon, but this unthinking exaltation did not last long among the Poles, of whom only a few hundred came to join us. The cooling off was so rapid that the town of Wilna and its surroundings could provide no more than twenty men to form a guard of honour for the Emperor. If the Poles had displayed at this time, a ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life. Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, My night shall be remembered for a star That outshone all the suns of all men's days. Shall I not crown them with immortal praise Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke

... primitive, childlike mood, like a savage's, seeing, yet unthinking, gave way to the encroachment of civilized thought. The world had not been made for a single day's play or fancy or idle watching. The world was old. Nowhere could be gotten a better idea of its age than in ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... without which no thought is possible, and advance civilization by undermining its foundation. The condemnation of their views and movements by the Holy Father in the Encyclical, which has excited so much hostility, may seem to superficial and unthinking Americans even, as a condemnation of our American system—indeed, as the condemnation of modern science, intelligence, and civilization itself; but whoever looks below the surface, has some insight into the course of events, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... of his parts be never so contemptible, his inward man is ten times more ridiculous; it being impossible that his outward form, though it be that of downright monkey, should differ so much from human shape as his unthinking, immaterial part does from human understanding." Thus began the hostility between Pope and Dennis, which, though it was suspended for a short time, never was appeased. Pope seems, at first, to have ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... that simple-looking word which lightly comes tripping from the lips of unthinking men, and even women." So writes a famous war-correspondent, a man in the midst of war and telling of war as it really is. Now hear a woman war-correspondent, writing about this same war: "I was so proud to see the first gun fired ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... the cloud no bigger than a man's hand amidst a broad expanse of blue ether? The faint, scarce perceptible menace of that one little cloud is lost in the wide brightness of a summer sky. The traveller jogs on contented and unthinking, till the hoarse roar of stormy winds, or the first big drops of the thunder-shower, startle him with a sudden consciousness of ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... more than equal," said Ellinor, with spirit, and a warm and angry tone. "And indeed, Madeline," she continued, after a pause, "I lose something of that respect, which, passing a sister's love, I have always borne towards you, when I see the unthinking and lavish idolatry you manifest to one, who, but for a silver tongue and florid words, would rather want attractions than be the wonder you esteem him. Fie, Madeline! I blush for you when you speak, it is unmaidenly so to love ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... weaken and rob him, but that he did need enemies because he could grow rich and powerful destroying and despoiling them. To him friends suggested the birds living in a tree. They might make the tree more romantic to the unthinking observer; but they in fact ate its budding leaves and its fruit and rotted its bough joints with ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... me, for he laughed after he had looked at me for a minute, and took me in his arms and said some of the fine things with which he had previously won my heart, but not with the old fire and not with the old effect upon me. Yet my love had not grown cold, it had only changed from the unthinking stage to the thinking one, and I was quite in earnest when I said: 'I know I am not as pretty or as nice as the ladies you are accustomed to. But I have a heart that has never known any other passion than its love for you, and from such a heart you ought to expect ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... that there are which, with unthinking people, pass for shallow things, merely because they are clear as well as deep. My fable of the other day, for instance—which instead of producing any moral effect upon you two, only seemed to make ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps

... room, heard his voice, and her first unthinking thrill of pleasure was quickly followed by a sinking of her heart which chilled and saddened her happy face. Intuitively she knew what ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... it. If this is true, his extreme youth goes far to palliate some of the wrongs which he perpetrated—wrongs which would have been far more inexcusable if committed with the deliberate purpose of middle life, than if prompted by the unthinking impulses and ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... slaves of your reason. You're dominated by the head, not by the heart. You're little better than calculating-machines. Are you ever known, now, for instance, to risk earth and heaven, and all things between them, on a sudden unthinking impulse?" ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... Santoris, calmly—"But if the pairs that are joined in marriage have no spiritual bond between them and nothing beyond the attraction of the mere body—they people the world with more or less incapable, unthinking and foolish creatures like themselves. And supposing these to be born in tens of millions, like ants or flies, they will not carry on the real purpose of man's existence to anything more than that stoppage and recoil which is called Death, but which in reality is only a turning back of the wheels ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... shame and failure which I feel to-night are always to be mine. I was born to be of the minority. Please don't give another thought to me or my play. Go your own way. Get back to the plays that please people. Be happy. You have the right to be happy, and I am a selfish, unthinking criminal whom you would better forget. Don't waste another dollar or another moment on my play—it is madness. I am overwhelmed with my debt to you, but I ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... hanged, beheaded, whipt, and otherwise punished on this occasion: But, from the end of June 1553, to the end of November of the same year, the court sat daily, and every day four, five, or six were tried and condemned, who were all punished according to their sentences next day. The unthinking people styled Alvarado a Nero, who could thus condemn so many of a day, yet amused himself afterwards with the attorney-general in vain and light discourses, as if those whom he condemned had been so many capons ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... what the Church must determine. We already know how to reach the heathen, the unbookish, the unthinking—but how reach the educated—the science-bitten? It is useless to deny that the brightest, biggest minds are outside the Church—indifferentists or downright opponents of it. I am not willing to believe that God meant men ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... were sounded to the very depths, this intimate closely hidden wretchedness, following upon her unthinking, girlish first love, had roused in her an abhorrence of passion; possibly she had no conception of its rapture, nor of the forbidden but frenzied bliss for which some women will renounce all the laws of prudence and the principles of conduct upon which society ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... extremely unthinking about such a number of interesting things, Lady Ethelrida," he said, "their speculative faculties seem only to be able to roam into cut and dried channels. We have had great scientists like Darwin investigating our origin, and among the Germans there are several who study the atavism of ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... superiority mingled with a bitter consciousness of inferiority in nearly all which the spirit of the age declares constitutes true greatness. It is almost needless to say, that with such motives goading them on, with an ignorant, unthinking mass for soldiers, and with unprincipled politicians who have to a want of principle added the newly acquired lust for blood, any prospect of conciliation becomes extremely remote. We may hope for it—we may and should proceed cautiously, so that ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... the sphere of my prerogative, I feel a special sorrow doth becloud The sunny pathway which I late have trod. I find it difficult to blaze my way; The competent among my teaching corps Are those who dare opinions firm to form; If loyalty alone shall be test, 'Twill leave us but a small unthinking host, And then efficiency will find its grave Within the tomb of our ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... enough to afford materials for as deep tragedies as ever poet fancied or stage exhibited; and visiters of relief would act the part of angels descending from Heaven among men, whose chief affliction is the neglect of unthinking affluence. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various

... we went slowly to that other temple which unthinking people and guide-books have named the Maison Carree, the most lovely temple out of Greece, and the one which has suffered most from sheer, uncompromising stupidity in modern days. Now it rests from persecution, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... foresee, or foreseeing, was I not to endeavor to save you from all these multiplied mischiefs and disgraces? Would the little, silly, canvass prattle of obeying instructions, and having no opinions but yours, and such idle, senseless tales, which amuse the vacant ears of unthinking men, have saved you from "the pelting of that pitiless storm," to which the loose improvidence, the cowardly rashness, of those who dare not look danger in the face so as to provide against it in time, and therefore throw themselves headlong into the midst of it, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... never have spoken with the eloquence of this empty space! The men exchanged no words; the solitude of the cabin, instead of drawing them together, seemed to isolate each one in selfish distrust of the others. Even the unthinking garrulity of Union Mills and the Judge was checked. A moment later, when the Left Bower entered the cabin, his presence was ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... weakness may come to be the parent of great sin. In a world like this, where there are always more voices soliciting to wrong than to right, to be weak is in the long run to be wicked. Fatal facility of disposition ruins hundreds of unthinking men. Nothing is more needful than that young people should learn to say 'No,' and should cultivate a wholesome obstinacy which is afraid of nothing but of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... her room, she turned to the advertisement pages. She knew that life was full of what the unthinking call coincidences; but the miracle of Ashe having selected by chance the father of Aline Peters as an employer was too much of a coincidence for her. Suspicion ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... of his type were unable to prevent or even delay the draft, they yet managed to enlist the sympathies and secure the adhesion of many uneducated and unthinking men by means of secret societies, known as "Knights of the Golden Circle," "The Order of American Knights," "Order of the Star," "Sons of Liberty," and by other equally high-sounding names, which they adopted and discarded ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... upon leaving prison have been led away by old evil companions. Others have found no place to stay and no work open for them because a cold, unthinking public had called them "jail birds." Mrs. Booth wanted these men to have a chance. Today a man who belongs to the league can, upon leaving prison, be directed to the nearest Hope Hall. There he can stay in comfortable quarters until he gets work. ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford

... hope. Hymns of saints! odes of poets! who are we to measure the chances and opportunities, the means of doing, or even judging, right and wrong, awarded to men; and to establish the rule for meting out their punishments and rewards? We are as insolent and unthinking in judging of men's morals as of their intellects. We admire this man as being a great philosopher, and set down the other as a dullard, not knowing either, or the amount of truth in either, or being certain of the truth anywhere. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... judgment, he never loses his temper with the author whom he is criticising. He never bludgeons or scalps or scarifies; but serenely indicates, with the calm gesture of a superior authority, the defects and blots which mar perfection, but which the unthinking multitude ignores, or, at ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... on the open heath, never saw the face of the enemy, or saw them at such a distance that they could not distinguish more than the hats and the arms of the British regiments with which they were engaged. With respect to the imputation of cowardice levelled at lord George by the unthinking multitude, and circulated with such industry and clamour, we ought to consider it as a mob accusation which the bravest of men, even the great duke of Marlborough, could not escape; we ought to receive it as a dangerous suspicion, which strikes at the root ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... noisy and demonstrative, and appeared to receive this news with a wild rapture that was eminently encouraging, doing his best to knock Roderick down, in the tumult of his delight. The lovers and the dog were alike childish in their infinite happiness, unthinking beings of the present hour, too happy to look backward or forward, this little space of time called "now" holding all things ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... gorge overlooking the river. Deep canons attract like high mountains; the deeper they are, the more surely are we drawn into them. On foot, of course, there is no danger whatever, and, with ordinary precautions, but little on animals. In comfortable tourist faith, unthinking, unfearing, down go men, women, and children on whatever is offered, horse, mule, or burro, as if saying with Jean Paul, "fear nothing but fear"—not without reason, for these canon trails down the stairways of the gods are less dangerous than they seem, less dangerous than home ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir

... that. Pierre was hoarding every shining dollar that came to his hand. Was he lavish in his garnishment of the Blue Goose? It was only for the more effective luring of other gold from the pockets of the careless, unthinking men who worked in mines or mills, or roamed among the mountains or washed the sands of every stream, spending all they found, hoping for and talking of the wealth which, if it came, would only smite them with more rapid destruction. And ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... as useless and oppressive as undigested food; and as in the dyspeptic patient the appetite for food often grows with the inability to digest it, so in the unthinking patient an overweening desire to know often accompanies the inability to know to any purpose. Thought is to the brain what gastric juice is to the stomach,—a solvent to reduce whatever is received to a condition in which all that is wholesome and nutritive ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... lately with some very important-looking testimony from very distinguished witnesses; and some rather comprehensive minds consider its issues supreme—the principal issues now upon the horizon, between the gross, luxurious, unthinking, unaspiring, uncreating life of today, and everything that has, in happier ages, given us the heritage of the soul—the issues between increasing comforts and ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... Sense, than to any half-dozen items in the whole catalogue of imposture. To awaken curiosity and to gratify it by slow degrees, yet leaving something always in suspense, is to establish the surest hold that can be had, in wrong, on the unthinking portion of mankind. ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... Reason quickly replaced the unthinking rage of the moment, and Marsh sat down as the other directed. But his mind was made up to one thing—Newman would not leave that room now except as a prisoner ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne

... not unmixed with regret that the tone in which it was uttered was sportive rather than serious. He was consoled, however, by the reflection that national differences could not be expected to oppress the heart of unthinking youth as it did that of ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... one should perpetually cherish in his thoughts, will banish from us all that secret heaviness of heart which unthinking men are subject to when they lie under no real affliction, all that anguish which we may feel from any evil that actually oppresses us, to which I may likewise add those little cracklings of mirth and folly, that are apter to betray virtue than support it; and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... your millions," she said calmly. "Our civilization will have made such progress by that time that people will merely wonder why we, in our day, tolerated men of your class so long. Now it is different. The world is money-mad. You are a person of importance in the eyes of the unthinking multitude, but it only envies you your fortune; it does not admire you personally. When you die people will count your millions, not your ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... hundred deaths rather than have had one acre of the beautiful green diadem of woods felled by the ax of the timber contractor, or passed to the hands of a stranger; but no one among them ever thought that this was the inevitable end to which they surely drifted with blind and unthinking improvidence. The old Viscount, haughtiest of haughty nobles, would never abate one jot of his accustomed magnificence; and his sons had but imbibed the teaching of all that surrounded them; they did but do in manhood what they had been ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... creative work; and at last a long sleep so that she might be fresh for such another round of delight. So went the days. Yet all through them she found amusement, laughed now and then, and proved the heroism as well as the unthinking ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... patient's mind is temporarily clouded through infection or suffering, he may be reacting to a delusion, an obsession, a fixed idea of disability, a terrifying fear. Sometimes he persistently refuses food, and gives no reason for it. The unthinking nurse is tried, puzzled, and irritated. In other ways, perhaps, the patient seems quite normal. But, after all, the explanation is very simple. He probably is as confident that the food is poisoned as you are that it is as it should be. No arguing ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter

... Grace,' in which wonderful expression we note the Apostle's passionate accumulation of epithets which he yet feels to be altogether inadequate to his theme. It would carry us too far to attempt to bring out the whole wealth contained in these words which glide so easily over unthinking lips, but we may lovingly dwell for a few moments upon them. Grace, in Paul's language, means love lavished upon the undeserving and sinful, a love which is not drawn forth by the perception of any excellence in its objects, but wells up and out like a fountain, by reason of the impulse ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... With fountain ardour, fountain play, To reach the shining tops of day, And drink in everything discerned An ecstasy to music turned, Impelled by what his happy bill Disperses; drinking, showering still, Unthinking save that he may give His voice the outlet, there to live Renewed in endless notes of glee, So thirsty of his voice is he, For all to hear and all to know That he is joy, awake, aglow; The tumult of the heart to hear Through pureness filtered crystal-clear, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... bull of the Bharata race, if thou will grant me a boon, I ask the handsome Yudhishthira, obedient to every duty, be freed from slavery. Let not unthinking children call my child Prativindhya endued with great energy of mind as the son of a slave. Having been a prince, so superior to all men, and nurtured by kings it is not proper that he should be called the child ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... seemed to have drawn nearer in spirit to each other, and that, maybe, it was that prompted Valerie to sigh, and in her sweet, unthinking innocence ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... deserto." Usually these voices have fallen on unheeding ears; but again and again some delver in books, some student of men, some inspired, self-effacing, or altruistic one has taken up the cry; and at last unthinking, unheeding, superficial, self-satisfied humanity has turned ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long

... "Unthinking, idle, wild, and young, I laughed and danced, I talked and sung, And proud of health, of freedom, vain, Dreamt not of sorrow, care, or pain. Oh! then, in those bright hours of glee, I thought the world was ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... Certain honest but unthinking people often commit the grievous mistake of "speaking their mind" on all occasions and under all circumstances, and oftentimes to the great mortification of their hearers. And especially do they take credit to themselves ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... thought silenced her. She stopped crying, and a kind of tearless horror and dread came over her face. She was not very wise, but her heart was tender and full of love in its way. What if perhaps this life, which had gone so smoothly over her unthinking head without any complications, should turn out to be a lie, and her happiness a mere delusion? She could not have put her thoughts into words, but the doubt suddenly came over her, putting a stop to all her ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... rich men won't have art, and poor men can't, there is, nevertheless, some unthinking craving for it, some restless feeling in men's minds of something lacking somewhere, which has made many benevolent people seek for the possibility ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... One of the most superb fugues in free style is the last movement of Cesar Franck's Prelude, Choral and Fugue in B minor for Pianoforte. This movement alone would refute all charges of dullness or dryness brought against the fugue by the unthinking or the unenlightened. A good fugue, in fact, is so full of vitality and demands such active comprehension[39] on the part of the listener that it is not difficult to imagine where the dullness and ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... of babes and sucklings the heedless and unthinking are condemned; would God I could bring the little creatures back, for your sake. And mine, yes, and mine; for I have been unjust. There, there, don't cry—nobody could be sorrier than your poor old friend—don't ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... judge men by the drinks they take, Nor by unthinking oath, nor what they wear, For look! the mitered liars protest make And drinking know they lie, and knowing swear. No oath is round without the rounded fruit, Nor pompous promise hides the ultimate. In scarlet as in ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... of the Duke of Derwent, now came into the room, and afforded her some relief by the sprightliness of her conversation. This young lady, who was a relation of the Delviles, and of a character the most airy and unthinking, ran on during her whole visit in a vein of fashionable scandal, with a levity that the censures of Mrs Delvile, though by no means spared, had no power to [controul]: and, after having completely ransacked the topics of the day, she turned suddenly to Cecilia, with whom during her residence ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... whole building redolent of the slum; but in the stuffy little room where the pedler lived there was, in spite of it all, an atmosphere of home that set it sharply apart from the rest. One of these visits I will always remember. I had stumbled in, unthinking, upon their Sabbath-eve meal. The candles were lighted, and the children gathered about the table; at its head, the father, every trace of the timid, shrinking pedler of Mulberry Street laid aside with the week's toil, was ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... Bank of England commenced preparations for the return to specie payments. Immediate "tightness" in the money market was the result. Prices fell. Trade became dull. Credit was injured. The return of peace seemed, to the unthinking, a curse rather than a blessing. Alarming riots were frequent, and general distress and discontent existed. The Government, in some alarm, resolved to postpone the resumption of cash payments ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... upon whose Account he had began the War? The Titular King of St. Germains, and the Real one at Whitehall, were not irreconcileable, and the continuation of the Pension was regarded as an unquestionable mark of the French King's Sincerity, and the unthinking Crew spoke well of the Master that cramm'd them, never dreaming that they were but fatten'd for Slaughter, and that under the Disguise of Succouring their Persons, he might Prey upon their Interest. The Spanish Monarchy was what France ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe

... before, and so gained the Watling Street. Many people were upon it, and Bartlemy, following the instructions of him who had planned for him, managed to ride near enough to a merchant's party to be mistaken as members of it by an unthinking observer. ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... passion, "I speak as a physician, and my duty as a physician requires me to do so. The knowledge of, and the experience in diseases, which I possess, enable me to understand better than other men the causes that produce them, and to give, as I should give, to the unthinking, a warning of danger. And this I give ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... air magnified everything. Slone lost track of time. The strange, solemn, lonely days and the silent, lonely nights, and the endless pursuit, and the wild, weird valley—these completed the work of years on Slone and he became satisfied, unthinking, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... fix'd the wedding-day, The morning that must wed them both; But Stephen to another maid Had sworn another oath; And with this other maid to church Unthinking Stephen went— Poor Martha! on that woful day A cruel, cruel fire, they say, Into her bones was sent: It dried her body like a cinder, And almost ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... winter's day, Thou standest by the margin of the pool, And, taught by God, dost thy whole being school To Patience, which all evil can allay. God has appointed thee the fish thy prey; And giv'n thyself a lesson to the fool Unthrifty, to submit to moral rule, And his unthinking course by thee to weigh. There need not schools, nor the professor's chair, Though these be good, true wisdom to impart: He, who has not enough, for these, to spare, Of time, or gold, may yet amend his heart, And teach his soul, by brooks, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... begin. But me perhaps The glowing hearth may satisfy a while With faint illumination, that uplifts The shadow to the ceiling, there by fits Dancing uncouthly to the quivering flame. Not undelightful is an hour to me So spent in parlour twilight; such a gloom Suits well the thoughtful or unthinking mind, The mind contemplative, with some new theme Pregnant, or indisposed alike to all. Laugh ye, who boast your more mercurial powers That never feel a stupor, know no pause, Nor need one; I am conscious, and confess. Fearless, a soul that does not always think. Me oft has fancy ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... and shining spires (Uneasy feats of high desires) Let the unthinking many croud, That dare be covetous, and proud; In golden bondage let them wait, And barter happiness for state: But oh! my Chloe when thy swain Desires to see a court again; May Heav'n around his destin'd head The choicest ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... thought of him, wearing his life away in the solitude of the forest, or in waiting on a crowd of unthinking lumber jacks, but I could do little to aid him. I had sent him books and loaned him money whenever he would accept it (which was seldom), and I had offered each year to bring him back to the Middle West ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... submarine war is that unthinking persons in the U. S. may start a crusade against the President's policy, encourage the Germans in the belief that we are divided and lead them to resume reckless acts in that belief. The continuance of a strong front is the very best way ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... conditions that a black man is able to secure Pullman accommodations. Dr. Washington, however, was generally treated with marked consideration whenever he applied for Pullman car reservations. He was sometimes criticised, not only by members of his own race, but by the unthinking of the white race who accused him of thus seeking "social equality" with ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... their stables, coursed homewards, While beneath their powerful hoofs the dust rose in thick clouds. Long there stood the youth, and saw the dust rise before him, Saw the dust disperse; but still he stood there, unthinking. ——- VII. ERATO. ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... the Grey Friars might still often seem what their predecessors had been, and might thus retain a powerful influence over the unthinking crowd, and to sheer worldlings appear as heretofore to represent a troublesome memento of unexciting religious obligations; ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... To my mind these unthinking judgments about our great college do harm, and I determined, therefore, that anything that I said about Oxford should be the result of the actual observation and real study based upon a bona fide residence in ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... trader's overbearing manner. He acquiesced without further demur. But then this spoilt boy was only spoiled and weak. His temper was hot, volcanic. His reckless disposition was the outcome of a generous, unthinking courage. In his heart the one thing that mattered was his father's peril, and the sadness in his mother's eyes. Then he had read ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... words Theano spake: "Wherefore, ah wherefore for the toil and strain Of battle's fearful tumult do ye yearn, Infatuate ones? Never your limbs have toiled In conflict yet. In utter ignorance Panting for labour unendurable, Ye rush on all-unthinking; for your strength Can never be as that of Danaan men, Men trained in daily battle. Amazons Have joyed in ruthless fight, in charging steeds, From the beginning: all the toil of men Do they endure; ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... Cherokee practitioner what the microbe theory is to some modern scientists. The tsgya live in the earth, in the water, in the air, in the foliage of trees, in decaying wood, or wherever else insects lodge, and as they are constantly being crushed, burned or otherwise destroyed through the unthinking carelessness of the human race, they are continually actuated by a spirit of revenge. To accomplish their vengeance, according to the doctors, they "establish towns" under the skin of their victims, ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... sure infinitely removed from all those human weaknesses which we express by the words, captious, apt to take offence, &c. But an unthinking world does not consider what may be absolutely due to Him from all Creatures capable of considering themselves as His Creatures. Recollect the idea, inadequate as it is, which we have of God, and the idea of ourselves, ...
— Some Remains (hitherto unpublished) of Joseph Butler, LL.D. • Joseph Butler

... and vulgar ineptitude of the Salvation Army, still the Church was making no effort to provide the sensible, thinking, educated people of England with an equivalent as suitable to their requirements as the Salvation Army was to the requirements of the foolish, the hysterical, the unthinking people who played the tambourines and brayed on the tuneless trombones. Thus it is that one man says to another nowadays, when he has got nothing better to talk about, "Are you a man of intelligence, or do you ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... is filled, my pipe is lit, My den is all a cosy glow; And snug before the fire I sit, And wait to FEEL the old year go. I dedicate to solemn thought Amid my too-unthinking days, This sober moment, sadly fraught With much of ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... conscription had at length torn from his family. The impression produced in France, however, by either of these measures, cannot be judged of from a comparison with the feelings so often manifested in this country, under circumstances of less aggravated affliction. The same careless, unthinking, constitutional cheerfulness, which is so commendable in those Frenchmen whose sufferings are all personal, displays itself in a darker point of view, when they are called on to sympathise with the sufferings of their friends. It is a disposition, allied indeed to magnanimity ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... for Buonaparte, with a vain And an unthinking grief! The tenderest mood [1] Of that Man's mind—what can it be? what food Fed his first hopes? what knowledge could he gain? 'Tis not in battles that from youth we train 5 The Governor who must be wise and good, And temper with the sternness of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... a large, dull-looking Butterfly with one wing in tatters, crawling from under a cabbage, and limping by reason of the deficiency of several legs, "let me entreat you not to deduce our scientific status from the inconsiderate assertions of the unthinking vulgar. I am proud to assure you that our race comprises many philosophical reasoners—mostly indeed such as have been disabled by accidental injuries from joining in the amusements of the rest. The Origin of our Species has always occupied a distinguished place in their ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... Mr. Rowe, I envy you the pleasure of reading 'Don Quixote' in the original." Pope asks, "Is not that cruel?" But {32} others have held that it was unintentional on Lord Oxford's part, and merely one of his unthinking oddities. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... That won't be necessary, Mr. Jordan. Eight hundred thousand, give or take a few paltry thousand, is close enough. Eight hundred thousand endless, lonely revolutions about an unthinking, uncaring, ungrateful world is quite enough. Quite enough, Mr. Jordan. Now sir; (squinting over his glasses) what do you think is the proper action to be taken in the matter of retrieving this historic satellite from its orbit so that it ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy

... became sociable and talkative. They were not very much dressed, their garments being composed of a very supple, dark kind of skin and hair, which was so thickly smeared over with fat and red ochre, that if any one attempted to hold them, it left a tell-tale mark of red fat all over their unthinking admirers. The following day they wanted to accompany us, but I would not permit this, and they departed; at least, we departed, and with us came two men, who would take no denial, or notice of my injunction, but kept creeping up after us every ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... forward—the liberation of Italy from foreign yoke before all things—to Gioberti's mystical outpourings, much as they pleased the general. Gioberti, once a follower of Mazzini, and afterwards a priest, imagined a United Italy, with the Pope at its head, which, to unthinking souls, seemed to be on the road to miraculous realisation when the amiable and popular Cardinal Mastai Feretti was invested with the tiara. Cavour never had any hope in the Papacy as ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... coffee-shops of the metropolis, which were, for the greater part, little better than a rendezvous for thieves of every description, depots both for the 343plunder and the plunderer; where, if an unthinking or profligate victim once entered, he seldom came out without experiencing treatment which operated like a severe lesson, that would leave its moral upon his mind as long as he continued an inhabitant of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... her desk, her back was turned and she did not speak. But little by little her father's mood changed. Of course she was right, he admitted. For now they were gone, the spell they had cast was losing a part of its glamor. Yes, their talk had been pretty raw. Sheer unthinking selfishness, a bold rush for plunder and a dash to get away, trampling over people half crazed, women and children in panicky crowds, and leaving behind them, so to speak, Laura's joyous rippling laugh over their own ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... under the power and influence of his antagonist, consequently be rendered incapable to provide for his friends; and that he himself, fraught with wiles and experience as he was, could not fail to make himself amends for what he had suffered among a people equally rich and unthinking. ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... anybody with the old credulity; their theories and their dogmas are mined, as were those of the early eighteenth century in France by the Encyclopaedists, by a select class of destructive critics, in whose wake the whole public irregularly follows. The ordinary unthinking man accepts the change with exhilaration, since in this country the majority have always enjoyed seeing noses knocked off statues. But if we are to rejoice in liberation from the bondage of the Victorian Age we ought to know what those ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... power can she be dethroned. Each person, after anxious examination, without haste, without passion, solemnly for himself must decide this great controversy. Any other rule attributes infallibility to human laws, places them beyond question, and degrades all men to an unthinking, passive obedience. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... equal ardour (Telamon returns) My soul is kindled, and my bosom burns; New rising spirits all my force alarm, Lift each impatient limb, and brace my arm. This ready arm, unthinking, shakes the dart; The blood pours back, and fortifies my heart: Singly, methinks, yon towering chief I meet, And stretch the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... ever should be, all noble and elevating,—worship as well as devotion,—annihilating only selfishness, sanctifying, not sacrificing, duty. There is no yielding to a depraved popular taste, no abdication of an inherited throne to stand on a level with the unthinking crowd and receive its worthless applauses. Rather the crowd is bidden higher, to enter upon its own rightful, royal possessions. This is the true missionary work. Manhood and womanhood in their best development are the theme of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... paganism is almost never dogmatic—accepts the outward cultus with everybody else, and speculates at his leisure on the nature of the deity. The great bulk of the uneducated are naturally content to accept the old stories and superstitions with unthinking credulity. It is enough to know that one must pray to Zeus for rain, and to Hermes for luck in a slippery business bargain. There are a few philosophers who, along with perfectly correct outward observance, teach privately that the old Olympian system is a snare ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... died, and her safest guide, the one who understood her best, went from her. The years passed. She lived with her embittered father; and drifted into the unthinking worldliness of the life of her order. Her home was far from ideal. Yet she would not marry. The wreck of her parents' domestic life had rendered her mistrustful of human relations. She had seen something of the terror of love, and could not, like other women, regard ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... is, if ever he should bring himself by marriage to limit the freedom to which man, the crown of the world, the blossom of nature, the cauliflower of the spine, was predestined or doomed, without will in himself or beyond himself, from an eternity of unthinking matter, ever producing what was better than itself in the prolific darkness ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... most inclined to yield to what he showed me. Oh! if he had relented but a little more; if he had thrown himself in my way for but one other quarter of an hour; if he had extended his compassion for a vain, unthinking, miserable girl, in but the least degree; he might, and I believe he would, have saved her! Tell him that I don't blame him, but am grateful for the effort that he made; but ask him for the love of God, and youth, and in merciful consideration ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... able if he had, is capable of sniffing scornfully at Friedrich Wilhelm's projects on the matter, and dismissing them as moonshine. [Dubourgay Despatches and the Answers to them (more than once).] To a wise much-meditative House-Mastiff, can that be pleasant, from an unthinking dizened creature of the Ape species? The troubles of Mecklenburg, and discrepancies thereupon, are capable of becoming ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... but in one word let me say, I feel everything that hurts the sensibility of a gentleman, and consequently, upon the present occasion, I feel for you and for our good and great allies the French. I feel myself hurt, also, at every illiberal and unthinking reflection which may have been cast upon the Count d'Estaing, or the conduct of the fleet under his command; and, lastly, I feel for my country. Let me entreat you, therefore, my dear marquis, to take ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... I ever remember, as we wandered in the park-lands, she began to say—half unthinking—that it was truly an elves-night. And she stopped herself immediately; as though she thought I should have no understanding; but, indeed, I was upon mine own familiar ground of inward delight; and I replied in a quiet and usual voice, that the Towers of Sleep would grow that night, ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... cried inwardly, for such infinite consequences to proceed from unthinking anger! A great or tragic result should spring from great or tragic causes, the suffering and price measured by the error. He could see that Nettie was patiently waiting for him to solve the whole miserable problem of their future; she had an ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... himself that her manner was too free—that she had led him on too quickly; no, that expression was dishonourable and unjust; he repented it instantly; she had been too unself-conscious, too girlish, too unthinking, in what she said and did. "But she's a widow after all, though she's only two and twenty," he went on to himself. "Hang it! I wish she were not! If her heart were in her husband's grave I should be moaning at that; and because I ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... will leave out of account altogether," said His Excellency, "the unwise and hard things said by reckless and unthinking white men about Natives; I will only ask white men to consider whether they have ever calculated the cumulative effect on the Natives of what I may call the policy of pin-pricks? In some places a Native, however personally clean, or however hard he may have striven ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... southern Australia, and settlement had followed, it is not to be supposed that Great Britain would have opposed the plans of France; for Australia then was not the Australia that we know, and England had very little use even for the bit she secured. Unthinking people might suppose that the French Revolution meant very little to us. Indeed, unthinking people are very apt to suppose that we can go our own way without regarding what takes place elsewhere. They do not realise ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott

... the hardest thing in the world to do good with money!" he mused, sorrowfully. "Of course if I were to say this to the unthinking majority, they would gape upon me and exclaim—'Hard to do good! Why, there's nothing so easy! There are thousands of poor,—there are the hospitals—the churches!' True,—but the thousands of real poor are not so easily found! There are thousands, ay, millions of 'sham' poor. ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... tightened into two small clenched fists—and then tumult died in her ringing ears, the brightness of the eyes was quenched, her hands relaxed, her head sank low, lower, never again to look on this man undismayed, heart free, unafraid—never again to look into this man's eyes with the unthinking, unbelieving tranquillity born of the most harmless skepticism in ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... waiting for the call of Judgment Day, a handful of evil dust which once had been a man—one whose each day of life from his youth upward had seemed, as it had passed, to leave black dregs in some poor fellow-creature's cup. One frantic, unthinking blow struck in terror and madness had ended him and all his evil doing, but left her standing frenzied at the awfulness of the thing which had fallen upon her soul in her first hour of Heaven. And all her being had risen in revolt ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... fighting fool, this thick-skulled hero, This blunt, unthinking instrument of death, With plain dull virtue has outgone my wit. Pleasure forsook my earliest infancy; The luxury of others robbed my cradle, And ravished thence the promise of a man. Cast out from nature, disinherited Of what her meanest children claim by kind, ...
— All for Love • John Dryden

... in respect to Shakespeare, and not the French alone, but almost the whole Continent. In short, in your friend's letter, I am condemned for the very thing for which I ought to have been praised, viz., that I have not written down to the level of superficial observers and unthinking minds. Every great poet is a teacher: I wish either to be considered as ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various



Words linked to "Unthinking" :   stupid, unreflective, inconsiderate, thoughtfully



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