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Unwittingly   /ənwˈɪtɪŋli/   Listen
Unwittingly

adverb
1.
Without knowledge or intention.  Synonyms: inadvertently, unknowingly.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Unwittingly" Quotes from Famous Books



... love of sport had induced him to fling his first half-bantering challenge into the face of Concombre Bateese, but that sentiment was gone. The approaching fight was no longer an incident, a foolish error into which he had unwittingly plunged himself. In this hour it was the biggest physical thing that had ever loomed up in his life, and he yearned for the dawn with the eagerness of a beast that waits for the kill which comes with the break of day. But it was not ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... they rode in silence, the sorrowing lover, with his precious burden leading the way, and the young American oppressed by the sadness of the incident for which he felt wholly, though unwittingly to blame, following with the spare horse. Mingled with our hero's self-reproach was also a decided curiosity as to how del Concha would explain the double part he ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe

... Had I unwittingly provoked this fit of anger? Did this incomprehensible person imagine that I had discovered some forbidden secret? No; I was not the object of this hatred, for he was not looking at me; his eye was steadily fixed ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... continued his wanderings, but unwittingly he trespassed on the land of a farmer named Hineline, who threatened to take him to the village of Simonton and throw him and his Junk-in jail. Finally he made his peace, but he had to leave his ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various

... spacemen would give him any more trouble now. He pushed slightly to the left and shot over to the valve that Mason had unwittingly turned off. Tom turned it on and clung to an overhead pipe until he felt the reassuring grip of the synthetic gravity pull him to the deck. Loring and Mason, in the same positions they had been in when Tom fired, settled slowly ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell

... doubt of that," I replied unwittingly, and not at first observing (so much had I been absorbed in reflection) the extraordinary manner in which the speaker had chimed in with my meditations. In an instant afterward I recollected myself, and my ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... nineteenth century, commercial, practical, convenient, and an important factor in civic aesthetics. Not that the parlor is beautiful in itself. It is a cave without architectural pretensions, but it accomplishes unwittingly an important mission: it removes from public view the man who is having ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... nurse, with some very highly seasoned scandal sauce, and here the honor of the nurse must come into play; let her forget it if possible, as woe will betide the poor girl if in her next place she unwittingly lets out any of the secrets she has heard in these long talks. Try then to steer clear of the neighbors. If your patient be a cultivated person, and you yourself know anything about books, you have a never-failing topic. All the latest books, the famous books, the most entertaining ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery

... we were engaging the foe. While the fight was going on I took nine men to occupy a certain hill. This hill was already in the possession of the enemy, but we were not conscious of that, and thus unwittingly rode on to ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... descended unwittingly into one of the darkest regions of German life, and one which foreign publics had persistently missed or voluntarily overlooked in their chorus of approbation of ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... Pan's trust, Who turned from mating and the sweets thereof, To make of labor an eternal lust, And with pale thrift destroy the red of love, The curse of Pan has sworn your destiny. Unloving, unbeloved, you go your way Toiling forever, and unwittingly You bear love's precious burden every day From flower to flower (for your blasphemy), Poor eunuch, making ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... worse, I knew. It would gradually spread and widen. The Erentz circulation would fail. All our power would be drained struggling to maintain it. This brigand who had unwittingly committed suicide by his daring act had accomplished more than he had perhaps realized. I could envisage our weapons, useless from the lack of power. The air in our buildings turned fetid and frigid; ourselves forced to the helmets. A rush out to abandon the camp ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... were Englishmen. The uniform was unfamiliar to me, but they all spoke perfect French. Unwittingly I gave them the requested information, and they asked me to bring up some good wine. Then they threw a gold piece on to the table, and when I had poured out my Burgundy, they begged me to touch ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard

... prison should marry a woman who was ignorant of this cloud on his life, trusting to chance that his criminal record would never be discovered? The two cases are somewhat parallel. What would the woman say if she learned later that she had unwittingly married an ex-convict? Would she not prefer that he had told her the truth ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... cautiously up the hill, from round the corner, but there were not many of them. Still crouching, he began once more to mount the hill. As he neared the top, he dropped on his hands and knees in the long grass, as he feared that he might unwittingly appear over the enemy's skyline, and be ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... minister had not ingrafted upon it one babe of any divinity; that coarser matrix received the sacred flame as mere mud extinguishes the lightning. He fell into this reminiscence of personal disappointment unwittingly, as in the process of his prayer he strove to comfort Agnes. The moment he did so the cold magistracy of the prayer ceased, and his voice began to tremble, and there ran between the ecclesiastic and his parishioner the electric spark of mutual ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... the nerves of his lips twitched, his face was haggard as by a night's deep gambling; there was a heavy dew on his forehead—it was not the face of a wholly guiltless, of a wholly unconscious man; often even as innocence may be unwittingly betrayed into what wears ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... deemed disgraceful. Such a stigma seems necessary to promote the general happiness of mankind. If men be induced to marry from the mere prospect of parish provision, they are not only unjustly tempted to bring unhappiness and dependence upon themselves and their children, but they are tempted unwittingly to injure all in the same class as themselves. Further, the poor laws discourage frugality, and diminish the power and the will of the common people to save, and they live from hand to mouth without thought of the future. A man who might not be deterred ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... conspired and fought for a generation in the cause of national unity, were despite their valour little fitted for the responsible parliamentary and official positions they subsequently attained; and who by their ignorance of foreign affairs and of internal administration unwittingly impeded the political development of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... upon the student's attention, apart from the entertainment it affords. Steele, who lived from hand to mouth, and wrote, as he lived, on the impulse of the moment, had unwittingly begun a work destined to form an epoch in English literature. The Essay, as we now understand the word, dates from the Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff, and Steele and Addison, who may boast a numerous progeny, have in Charles Lamb the ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... liquor traffic; and I, as its author, was chosen a committee to present the same for consideration at the coming legislative session. Woman suffrage gained a new impetus all over the Northwest through this victory. Everybody congratulated its advocates, and the good minister who had unwittingly caused the commotion seized the first opportunity to explain that he had always been an advocate of the cause. I was by this time so thoroughly advertised by the abuse of the press that I had no difficulty in securing large audiences in all parts ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... crisis, when a look or word would cost me more than death and my dear lady her honor, it was the colonel who, all unwittingly, stood my friend. A breath of doubt upon my lie and we were lost; and once I thought he would have breathed it. But he did not. Instead, he broke out in a laugh, with a gibe flung first at Gilbert ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... His strength had been about to fail him, when he was thus led, unknown to himself, to a spot where his life might yet be possibly prolonged for a few more hours, or days. He had leisure to look about him, and to reflect on what was next to be done. Almost unwittingly, he turned in quest of his terrible companion, in whose voracious mouth he had actually believed himself about to be immolated, a few seconds before. There the two horn-like fins still were, gliding ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... you'll see Lady Maude Bickerstaffe, his lordship's niece.' He stopped as if he had unwittingly uttered an awkwardness, and then added—'I mean she has not been well, and may not appear while you are at the castle; but if you should—and if, which is not at all likely, but still possible, you should be led to talk of Kilgobbin and the incident that has got into the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... post of Twenty Mile, came Jees Uck, to trade for flour and bacon, and beads, and bright scarlet cloths for her fancy work. And further, and unwittingly, she came to the post of Twenty Mile to make a lonely man more lonely, make him reach out empty arms in his sleep. For Neil Bonner was only a man. When she first came into the store, he looked at her long, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... announcing the fact that he had dropped a distance of several feet. In an instant the younger man realised what had happened. The corridor had a purpose, after all; and the door at the end was probably secured by a concealed spring of some sort which Drake must have unwittingly pressed when he flung himself back against ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... ill-bred to rise and leave the hall while the play is drawing to a close, yet this severely exasperating practice has of late been followed by many well-meaning people, who, if they were aware of the extent to which they outraged the feelings of many of the audience, and unwittingly offered an insult to the actors on the stage, would shrink from repeating ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... denominations in the devout and simple worship of the Chapel in Junker Strasse, where the Union American and British service is held. One of the first places we essayed to find in Berlin was the chapel at present used by this organization. Our German landlady had unwittingly misdirected us, and we insisted on her direction, to the bewilderment of our cabman. Up one strange street and down another he drove, with sundry protests and shakes of the head on our part. We insist on "Heulmann Strasse." He stops and inquires. "Nein! ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... party of red raiders had unwittingly followed his trail, only to turn in flight as if the devil was nipping after them once they glimpsed his bulky figure, heard his whimpering or his loud laughter. The men followed him to the Davis Cabin, each eager to contribute to the general gossip ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... seasonings. The boy's playroom was a veritable toy-shop, with its hundreds of useless and unused playthings. Long before any capacity for understanding enjoyment had come, this unfortunate child had lost all love for the simple. With Mrs. Abbott, it was always "the best that money can buy"—unwittingly, the worst for her child's character. It was a home of formal morality. Sunday morning services were religiously attended; charities of free giving, the giving which did not cost personal effort, were never failing. It was a home of selfish unselfishness. All weaknesses ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... party, including De Stancy, drove about the streets. Here they looked at the house in which Goethe had lived, and afterwards entered the cathedral. Observing in the south transept a crowd of people waiting patiently, they were reminded that they unwittingly stood in the presence of the popular clock-work ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... with oil, the life-blood of the stricken submarine. Presently the concavity in the ocean mounted to level, and its rotation slowly died away. The American found that his arms had unwittingly clasped something which proved to be an empty tin canister with a screw top. He hung to it apathetically. His ears bled from the concussion of the torpedo, and it was with difficulty that he focussed his ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... and unwittingly placed many of the most serious disabilities of life upon their women. And the greatest evil of it is that the woman has become so hardened to her lot that, like the prisoner of Chillon, she has become enamoured of her chains and is most loathe to ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... Rousseau were still at work. These fermentations of Europe had bubbled and exploded around Chicago. The concrete thing known as negro slavery heard the rumble of the ground. The tariff, the bank, imperial power in Congress unwittingly renewed their strength—unwittingly on the part ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... only took the responsibility of stripping his own station to the verge of bareness in favor of the general interest, but in so doing he came very near traversing, unwittingly, the plans of the general government by his local action, laudable and proper as that certainly was. He was, however, professionally lucky to a proverb, and escaped this mischance by a hair's breadth. The purposed detachment had already ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... to tide him over the next week, thoroughly determined that the man's good name should be cleared. The crocodile partner must disgorge, and the eyes of my benevolent friend and of Conn must be finally opened to the injustice they had unwittingly sanctioned. Again I wrote to my friend. As usual, Sir Asher replied kindly and without a trace of impatience. Would I get some intelligible written statement from Quarriar as to what ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... scouts just perched and watched him. He was not actually reading, for he had not turned a page for about ten minutes, and it was not a picture book. The difficulty was, however, to get him started. If only Mother would help them! Then Mother, unwittingly, did so. For she dropped her ball of wool, and finding no one at hand to recover it, she looked vaguely round the room—and saw them. And she shook her head ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... have slain thy son, it would seem, but it was unwittingly that we did the deed. We will give a recompense for the death ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum

... because it enters every house. Let a centralized electrical service enjoy a like privilege, and it will offer a current which is heat, light, chemical energy, or motive power, and all at a wage lower than that of any other servant. Unwittingly, then, the electrical engineer is a political reformer of high degree, for he puts a new premium upon ability and justice at the City Hall. His sole condition is that electricity shall be under control at once competent and honest. Let us hope that his ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... some dainty herb for his growthful Pegasus; or, we should rather say, some new bricks for his posthumous pyramid. And wherever he goes he is flattered by perceiving that his book is the very desideratum for which the world is unwittingly waiting; and in his sleeve he smiles benevolently to think how happy mankind will be as soon as he vouchsafes his epic or his story. It is delightful to us to think of all the joys with which, for twenty years, that Expositor filled the dear ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... sometimes unwittingly repeated to remove those symptoms which it has itself produced. Some incidental pain and uneasiness, some slightly greenish appearance of the motions, leads the mother to believe that more purging is necessary, when, in fact, both circumstances ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.

... the lie ye'd be givin' me?' threatened Lon. 'Ye'd better be askin' that Siwash wife of yours. I'll lave it to her, for the truth I spake.' Bettles flared up in sudden wrath. The Irishman had unwittingly wounded him; for his wife was the half-breed daughter of a Russian fur-trader, married to him in the Greek Mission of Nulato, a thousand miles or so down the Yukon, thus being of much higher caste than the common Siwash, or native, wife. It was a mere Northland nuance, which none but the Northland ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... unwittingly offended a conceited puppy, the latter told him he was no "gentleman."—"Are you a gentleman?" asked the droll one. "Yes, sir," bounced the fop. "Then, I am very glad I ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... only offered me a tremendous experience, but all unwittingly he made it easily possible for me to defy the tradition of his picture language, and risk Jane Gray as ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... honor to remain, and refused. In March, 1867, this unfortunate prince was made prisoner by the republicans, and was unscrupulously shot. His calamities and death excited the compassion of Europe; and with it was added a profound indignation for the man who had unwittingly lured him on to his ruin. Louis Napoleon's military prestige received a serious blow, and his reputation as a statesman likewise; and although the splendor of his government and throne was as great as ever, his fall, in the eyes of the discerning, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... Two young gentlemen lodge the night with an innkeeper, whereof one goeth to lie with the host's daughter, whilst his wife unwittingly coucheth with the other; after which he who lay with the girl getteth him to bed with her father and telleth him all, thinking to bespeak his comrade. Therewithal they come to words, but the wife, perceiving her mistake, entereth ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... boy," chimed in his mother, anxious to sustain this buoyant change in his humour, and drive away the somewhat melancholy tone she had unwittingly introduced into their last parting conversation. "You'll be a regular little travelled monkey, like the one belonging to the Dutchman that we were reading about the other day which could do everything almost but speak, although I don't think ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... was one grouse—and he the very wildest of all that I have ever met in the woods—who showed me unwittingly many bits of his life, and with whom I grew to be very well acquainted after a few seasons' watching. All the hunters of the village knew him well; and a half-dozen boys, who owned guns and were eager to ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long

... soldiers and sailors. We soon find western satraps cultivating cordial relations with the Ionian cities, hospitably entertaining Greeks of distinction and conciliating Greek political and religious prepossessions. They must have attained considerable success, while thus unwittingly preparing disaster. When, a little more than a century later, western Europe would come eastward in force, to make an end of Persian dominion, some of the greater Ionian and Carian cities would offer a prolonged resistance to it which is not ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... got up and looked out. He saw at a glance that it was a servant girl engaged in picking flowers. Her deportment was out of the common; her eyes so bright, her eyebrows so well defined. Though not a perfect beauty, she possessed nevertheless charms sufficient to arouse the feelings. Y-ts'un unwittingly gazed at her with fixed eye. This waiting-maid, belonging to the Chen family, had done picking flowers, and was on the point of going in, when she of a sudden raised her eyes and became aware of the presence of some ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... indifferent eye. Yet I will confess that as I moved through so much sumptuousness, and breathed such strangely scented air, I was stirred all of a sudden with strange and base envy of those great personages for whom this brave show was spread, and found myself wishing unwittingly that I were some great prince of the Church or adventurous free-companion who might not, indeed, command—for there were none who could do that—but hope for the lady's kindness. Although I assured myself lustily that a poet ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... a dim mass that loomed in the distance, and which he took to be Mooifontein Hill. And so it was, only instead of keeping to the left, where he would have arrived at the house, or rather where the house had stood, unwittingly he bore to the right, and thus went half round the hill before he found out his mistake. Nor would he have discovered it then had he not chanced in the mist and darkness to turn into the mouth of the ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... and begging her not to go with her to make her death yet more bitter by her cries. The faithful old creature was unable for a long time to say a word for tears. Howbeit at last she begged forgiveness of my child for that she unwittingly accused her, and said, that out of her wages she had bought five pounds' weight of flax to hasten her death; that the shepherd of Pudgla had that very morning taken it with him to Coserow, and that she should wind it closely round her body; for that she had seen how old ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold

... while, he begins to wobble; no more Gibraltar there; no, sir, a mighty ordinary commonplace weakling wobbling—around on stilts. That's Lord Berkeley to a dot, you can see it look at that sheep! But,—why are you blushing like sunset! Dear sir, have I unwittingly offended in some way?" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the seaman mentioned was the one Darrin had been trying to get him to name. The German had unwittingly allowed himself to name the base port from which the mines were shipped. As soon as the German realized his blunder he used some ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... who has just left us will most certainly be one of those preyed upon. I pity him because he will not have the smallest grain of pleasure in his life. You, Mr. Hatteras, on the other hand, will, unwittingly, be in the other camp. Circumstances will arrange that for you. Some have, of course, no desire to prey; but necessity forces it on them. Yourself, for instance. Some only prey when they are quite sure there will be no manner of risk. Our German friend who played the previous game is an example. ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... who had gone through waters so deep that she had lost the foibles of sex. Love to her was only a word of ill omen, a threat on the lips of brutes, an extra battalion of peril in an army of perplexities. He felt like some homely rustic who finds himself swept unwittingly into the moonlight hunt ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... and begging her not to go with her to make her death yet more bitter by her cries. The faithful old creature was unable for a long time to say a word for tears. Howbeit at last she begged forgiveness of my child, for that she had unwittingly accused her, and said, that out of her wages she had bought five pounds' weight of flax to hasten her death; that the shepherd of Pudgla had that very morning taken it with him to Coserow, and that she should wind it closely round her body; for that she ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... in his eyes, which he tried to keep back.... I thought of the beginning of the eucharist: 'Do this as often as ye drink in memory of me.' I heard the organ and stood before the altar. Suddenly I remembered that, it was your birthday. Unwittingly we had celebrated it with a holy rite. Dearest friend, had you seen your glorification in our faces, heard it in our tear-choked voices, at that moment you would have forgotten even your betrothed; you would have envied no happy mortal under the sun. Heaven has strangely brought us together, but ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... to maternal tenderness, the strongest feelings in woman, fall before the dire prostratiou of this malady. A young lady will recline unwittingly in the arms of a perfect stranger, and the bride of three months, deserted by her husband, will offer no resistance to the uncouth seaman, who, in his kindness, would loosen the laces that confine her ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... I, 'he has done it unwittingly; I never heard before that he was a favourer of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... case. His chance was poor; though I had no more animosity towards him than a virulent disease has against the victim it lays low. He really would have nothing to reproach me with; he had run up against me, unwittingly, as a man enters an infected place, and now he was very ill, very ill indeed. No, I had no plans against him. I had only the feeling that ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... bonde, astounded, and stroking his white beard in some embarrassment. "I never knew of this! It is true that in the hot days of youth, mischief is often done unwittingly. But why trouble yourself with these memories, Lovisa? If it be any comfort,—believe me, I am sorry harm ever came to you through ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... Birney, Owen Lovejoy, and others, was that the Constitution in so far as it recognised slavery (which it did only by implication) was a compact with evil. They held that the Fathers had been led into this compact unwittingly and without full realisation of the responsibilities that they were assuming for the perpetuation of a great wrong. They refused to accept the view that later generations of American citizens were to be bound for an indefinite period by this ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam

... the supernatural agency that works old Scrooge's moral regeneration—the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and to come, that each in turn speaks to the wizened heart of the old miser, so that, almost unwittingly, he is softened by the tender memories of childhood, warmed by sympathy for those who struggle and suffer, and appalled by the prospect of his own ultimate desolation and black solitude. Then the episodes: the scenes to which these ghostly ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... had been cabling frenziedly. How much of the story was written? I recalled his wild talk at Easter about putting into the novel the whole of human life. I had jested with him, calling it a megalomaniac notion. But suppose, unwittingly, I had been right? I thought of the ghastly name physicians give ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... left the inn that night, after seeing my husband's body in the little upstairs room, I said to myself that the one who took his life had unwittingly done me a service. He was my husband; I loved him, I adored him. To the end of my days I could have gone on loving him in spite of the cruel return he gave for my love and loyalty. I shall not attempt to ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... you are about to vanish out of my sight. But you shall not escape me this time. I have got you tighter than I ever had you before, and no fiend shall separate us now. No fiend!" he repeated in a shout, glaring at a spot in the bushes where Ebony, unable to restrain his feelings, had unwittingly come into sight. ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... of Christian Danes had been taken prisoners in the forest. They had come, peaceably and without arms, into the country; for they wanted to tell the Frisians about the new religion, which they had themselves received. In the cold night air, they had, unwittingly, cut off some of the dead branches of a tree sacred to the god Fos-i-te to kindle ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis

... not given to foolish conversation. They are too sensible to indulge in mere twaddle about the weather. Their talents raise them to a higher plane of thought and remark. Josiah Franklin only observed the custom of his ancestors, no doubt unwittingly, when he sought to improve the minds and hearts of his children by instructive conversation at the table and fireside. Benjamin had a right to claim for it a decided educational ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... Helena than Crisparkle is like Durdles. Mr. Cuming Walters says that Mr. Proctor was "unable to allude to the prophetic picture by Collins." As a fact, this picture is fully described by Mr. Proctor, but Mr. Walters used the wrong edition of his book, unwittingly. ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang

... my imaginary heroes are vaguely reminiscent of beings who actually exist. Subconsciousness is the novelist's principal instrument, and this subconsciousness frequently mocks us, leading us to mistake for our own creation the things which we have unwittingly observed in Nature. But despite this, it is unfair, as well as risky, for the reader to assign the names of real persons to the characters of fiction, saying, "This ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the protagonists walk through the passions without displacing a drapery. The ladies stood in unrelated attitudes calculated to isolate their effects, and the men hung about them as irrelevantly as stage heroes whose tailors are named in the programme. It was Selden himself who unwittingly fused the group by arresting the attention of one of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... magic of spiritual influence from heart to heart. If Browning multiplies and deepens the demarcations among material things, he gives his souls a rare faculty of transcending them. Bright spiritual beings like Pippa shed their souls innocently and unwittingly about like a spilth of "X-rays," and the irradiation penetrates instantly the dense opposing integuments of passion, cupidity, and worldliness. At all times in his life these accesses of spiritual power occupied his imagination. Cristina's momentary glance and the Lady of Tripoli's dreamed-of ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... Prussian State, reduced to half its former extent, devastated and impoverished by war, and burdened with the support of a French army, found in the crisis of its ruin the beginning of a worthier national life. Napoleon, in his own vindictive jealousy, unwittingly brought to the head of the Prussian Government the ablest and most patriotic statesman of the Continent. Since the spring of 1807 Baron Hardenberg had again been the leading Minister of Prussia, and it was to his counsel that the King's honourable rejection of a separate peace after ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... state of public opinion, which so profoundly influences both the courts and juries, has been done. But the laws themselves need strengthening in more than one important point; they should be made more definite, so that no honest man can be led unwittingly to break them, and so that the real wrongdoer ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... during the years 1771 and 1772, when if ever it appeared that others were "growing weary of altercations," these honorable men and trusted leaders did what they could to perpetuate the controversy. By giving or taking occasion to recall ancient grudges or revive fruitless disputes, wittingly or unwittingly they together managed during this time of calm to keep the dying embers alive against the day when some rising wind might blow ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

... Before the battle he disobeyed the will of God by performing the duties of a priest and was told he should lose his kingdom on account of it. At the close of the campaign he lost his temper and proposed to kill Jonathan, his son, the hero of the day because he had unwittingly disobeyed a foolish command. (3) Against Moab, Ammon, Edom and Zobah (I Sam. 14:47) of which there are no particulars given. (4) Against the Amalekites (I Sam. 15) in which, though he defeated Amalek, ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... the penitent wittingly or unwittingly is in the position of an accomplice, what then, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... too late now. The seeds of jealousy seemed to have been sown, though unwittingly, by Mrs. Watson. Helen walked on with her head high in the air, and as the clown's wife passed Joe's official tent a little later she heard, issuing from it, the jolly laughter and talk ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum

... out my game full heartedly, nursing my powers of belief back to their one-time vigor; nothing would occur to ease my lot—not even an occasion to pretend that I gave my blessing to a reunited and happy pair. Miss Kate could go on believing. Unwittingly I had given her the stuff for belief. I, too, must go on believing, and providing my own material, as had ever been my lot; all of which was why my dog seemed my most profitable companion at this time. His every bark at a threatening baby-carriage a block away, each fresh time he believed ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... be discovered; I can tell you nothing more than I have.... May I thank you for your hospitality, express my regrets that I should unwittingly have been made the agent of this disaster, and wish you good night—or, rather, good morning, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... the door you may be lost forever. Safety lies in not entering. Hegelians have anointed, so to speak, the entrance with various considerations which, stated in an abstract form, are so plausible as to slide us unresistingly and almost unwittingly through the fatal arch. It is not necessary to drink the ocean to know that it is salt; nor need a critic dissect a whole system after proving that its premises are rotten. I shall accordingly confine myself to a few of ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... a hard matter for me to set a price on you, Prince," I said gravely. "I have never held one of your rank to ransom before, so that you will forgive seeming discourtesy if I have unwittingly done what was not fitting in the matter. What would the men of your ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... All unwittingly, the miner, as well as the {109} trapper, was an instrument in the hands of destiny, an instrument for shaping empire; for it was the inrush of miners which gave birth to the colony of British Columbia. Federation with the Canadian Dominion followed ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... and he went on, "I greatly fear that I have been so unfortunate as to offend you; yet so repugnant to my very soul is the idea, that I know not how to suppose it possible I can unwittingly have done the thing in the world that, designedly, I would wish ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... him, he had unwittingly evaded Delaney by the simple act of stepping into the elevator and going to the room where his mother, having reached Baltimore an hour later than he, was waiting to hear how he had fared in his interview ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.

... the steep hillside, alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding from the water's edge, as old probably as the race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters, and still from time to time unwittingly trodden by the present occupants of the land. This is particularly distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... Leibnitz, and Saisset—have made the fatal admission that the universe is, in some sense, infinite and eternal. In making this admission they have unwittingly surrendered the citadel of strength, and deprived the argument by which they would prove the being of a God of all its logical force. That argument is thus presented by Saisset: "The finite supposes the infinite. Extension supposes first space, then immensity: duration supposes ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... injury has been done to the common faith in a future life, great disbelief has been provoked unwittingly, by writers who have sought to magnify the importance of revealed religion at the expense of natural religion. Many such persons have labored to show that all the scientific, philosophical, and moral arguments for immortality are ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... she had lived as a Gipsy, yet she tried to make him understand, too, that, in the days when she belonged to it, it all seemed natural to her, and that its sordidness, its vagabondage did not produce repugnance in her mind when she was part of it. Unwittingly she over- coloured the picture, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... who passed in was the King, whose heart was no longer proud. The others, who had entered unwittingly, could not speak for wonder. Some of them were poor, and some were lame or blind; but ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... reverend, an archbishop, and eminently saintly, as a matter of course, whatever the barbarous fanatics might say; and all that his figure seemed to want in order to make it complete, was just a halo of yellow ochre round the head. In Baillie's Letters we see him exhibited, though all unwittingly on the part of the writer, in his true character, and find that the yellow ochre would be considerably out of place. Rarely, indeed, does nature, all lost and fallen as it is, produce so consummate a scoundrel. ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... mysterious word had been dropped into a woman's heart. Hereafter she would be changed. She never again would be as she was before. Would her heart be hardened or softened by the experience? She did not love him; that was clear. She had done right; that was clear. But he had said he loved her. Unwittingly she was following him in her thought. She had rejected plain John Lyon, amiable, intelligent, unselfish, kindly, deferential. She had rejected also the Earl of Chisholm, a conspicuous position, an honorable family, luxury, a great opportunity in life. It came to the girl ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... day when I met you unwittingly, Dining where vagabonds came and went flittingly. Here's some Barbera to drink it befittingly, That day at Silvio's, Barney McGee! Many's the time we have quaffed our Chianti there, Listened to Silvio quoting us Dante there— Once more to drink Nebiolo Spumante there, How we'd pitch Pommery ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... you one piece of advice,' said Jane. 'Don't make yourself too great a favourite, as I unwittingly did, or you will have no cessation of "I have a pony; it can trot; ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that old red sweater to leave her possession. The very sight of it always made her sigh with satisfaction. It had undoubtedly had much to do with the savage attack of that animal, whose pasture she so unwittingly invaded; but had that event not happened, perhaps the mystery of that torn paper would ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes

... Andrews's fertile mind. The three box-cars behind him were a useless load. One of them might be usefully spared. The rear car of the train was uncoupled and left behind, with the hope that the pursuers might unwittingly dash into it and be wrecked. On they went, leaving a car standing ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... treasury, prevented his carrying out this design. And, indeed, as he reminded himself, were not these honest comedians, who had rescued him from his misery and despair, entitled in all fairness to profit, so far as they could, by this unexpected and overwhelming favour which he had all unwittingly gained? So, resigning himself as philosophically as he could to his fate, he buckled his sword-belt, draped his cloak over his shoulder, put on his mask and calmly awaited his call to ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... site is sometimes mentioned under various names. Every Pueblo language has its own geographical vocabulary, and when, as sometimes happened, several tribes met in council with the whites, the latter heard and unwittingly recorded several names for one and the same locality, thus apparently increasing the number of villages. Moreover, interpreters were not always at hand, and when they could be had both their competency and their sincerity were ...
— Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction • Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier

... are vague suggestions, memories, dreams, histories—wonderful things which hold me spell-bound! I wish I could analyze them, recognize them, or understand them. But I cannot, and there, perhaps, is their secret charm. Only one thing grieves me, and that is, that I have, perhaps, unwittingly, in some thoughtless way, given you pain; is ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... by sinful men themselves, to preserve their bodies and goods, and make trading easy. Religion has only to do with a man's private opinions, his single soul; the government has nothing to do with the Church: a Christian has nothing to do with politics.' And so these men most unwittingly open a door to all sorts of covetousness and meanness in the nation, and all sorts of trickery and cowardice in the government. Tell a man that his business has nothing to do with God, and you cannot wonder if he acts without thinking of God. If you tell a nation that it is selfishness ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... Bankrupt Law And emerged from it richer than ever Myself grown tired of toil and poverty And beholding how Old Bill and other grew in wealth Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor's Grove, Killing him unwittingly while doing so, For which I was tried and hanged. That was my way of going into bankruptcy. Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways Sleep peacefully side ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... gentleman out of the way, the lady came rubbing her treacherous nose against Bertha's, and called her "My friend, my treasure, my star of beauty"; trying every way to be agreeable to her, to make her vengeance more certain on the poor child who, all unwittingly, had caused her lover's heart to be faithless, which, for women ambitious in love, is the worst of infidelities. After a little conversation, the plotting lady suspected that poor Bertha was a maiden ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... clock struck seven. If it had not taken that position so early, it might have been incorporated with higher forms of life than that into which it eventually fell. Another artist was also on the wing early, and in pursuit of a tin pan in which to hide her precious compound, she unwittingly seized this one, and the rich white soup rolled down her raven locks like the oil on Aaron's beard, and enveloped her in a veil of filmy whiteness. I heard the splash and the exclamation of surprise and entered the butler's pantry just in time to see the heiress of the Smith estate standing like ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... spirit and morale by turning at Malvern Hill to inflict a bloody repulse on his enemy. In his official report he speaks of his movement from the Chickahominy to Harrison's Landing on the James as a change of base, previously determined. This his detractors sneer at as an afterthought, thereby unwittingly enhancing his merit. Regarded as a change of base, carefully considered and provided for, it was most creditable; but if suddenly and unexpectedly forced upon him, he exhibited a courage, vigor, and presence of mind worthy of the ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... length introduced it, in some instances, among a few of our writers. Even the venerable Oliver, although well acquainted with the symbolism of the acacia, and having written most learnedly upon it, has, at times, allowed himself to use the objectionable corruption, unwittingly influenced, in all probability, by the too frequent adoption of the latter word in the English lodges. In America, but few Masons fall into the error of speaking of the Cassia. The proper teaching of the Acacia is here ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... blow as though the hammer of Thor himself had suddenly lit upon his shoulder, and ruefully rubbing his tender skin, he turned on me mild, handsome eyes, answering after a moment, during which his native mildness struggled with the pain I had unwittingly given him— ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... and would have sent their loves to your lordship, I'm sure, if they'd any notion I should have met you, my lord, so soon. And I was very sorry to part with them; but the fact was, my lord,' said Mrs. Petito, laying a detaining hand upon Lord Colambre's whip, one end of which he unwittingly trusted within her reach,—'I and my lady had a little difference, which the best friends, you know, sometimes have; so my Lady Clonbrony was so condescending to give me up to my Lady Dashfort—and I knew no more than the child unborn that her ladyship had it in contemplation to cross the ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... day she unwittingly exposed a glimpse of the reverse side of the picture. She told the story of a young slave girl who had been accused of larceny. She had picked up some trifling article that ordinarily no one would have cared anything about; but at this ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... young maiden, that Pollio is her own spouse. The latter defies her, but she bids him leave. Though as he goes he begs Adalgisa to follow him, the young priestess turns from the faithless lover, and craves Norma's pardon for the offence she has unwittingly ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... Wellesley village, then a part of Needham, and planned to make the place his summer home. Every one who knew him speaks of his passion for beauty, and he gave that passion free play when he chose, all unwittingly, the future site for his college. There is no fairer region around Boston than this wooded, hilly country near Natick—"the place of hills"—with its little lakes, its tranquil, winding river, its hallowed ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... memory, always, one fantastic passage clung as a burr to sheep's wool. That fable, too, meant less to me than it was destined to signify thereafter, when the author of it was used to declare that he had, unwittingly, written it about me. Then ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... all so small in proportion to the vast population, that the keen edge of interest in its progress was gradually blunted, and political speculations as to the position of India after the war were unwittingly encouraged by the failure of Government to keep Indian opinion concentrated on the magnitude of the struggle which still threatened the very existence of the Empire. Circumstances, for which the British lack of imagination as well ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... greatly from his proper course, and the horizon was now too circumscribed to permit him to distinguish any of those guiding signs upon which he had relied for his progress. From a bald tract he had unwittingly passed into the mazes ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... one does not have to put himself through a whole criminal performance to apprehend its spiritual experiences. I understood all, and especially what he unwittingly betrayed even now; that deep thirst for the dramatic element in one's own life, which, when social conformity fails to supply it, becomes, to an eager soul, ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable

... Gilda had vouchsafed a single pregnant utterance—"Wait for the third appearance of the Queen of Spades." This was his cue; let him make the most of it if he would repair the mischief that he had unwittingly done. ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... roused that desire of pre-eminence which, though absolutely foreign to the principles of Dr. Beaumont, was not overlooked by all his family. She thought it became her to lecture Isabel on her preference, and unwittingly confirmed it by exhibiting, in opposition, two men of most dissimilar characters and endowments; the one, brave, generous, enlightened, accomplished, but unhappy; the other, lord of a vast demesne, but selfish, ignorant, scant of courtesy, and proud of wealth. "Tell ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... gratified vanity would be excited in one silly little breast, though he only stayed ten minutes, and casually asked whether the sisters were coming to Lady Flight's garden party. Everybody was going there. Miss Mohun even took Felicia, as it was on a Saturday's holiday; and, unwittingly, she renewed all the agitation caused by Wilfred's admiration, and that of others, to the all-unconscious girl. Vera could no longer think herself the reigning belle of Rock Quay, though she talked of Felicia as a schoolgirl or a baby, or a horrid little forward chit! Her excitement ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Eyre's Creek and Cooper's Creek; one of the tributaries of the latter was soon afterwards discovered by Mitchell, and named by him the Victoria, now called the Barcoo. In these two creeks, as he called them, on account of the absence of flowing water in their beds, Sturt unwittingly crossed the second and only other great inland river system of the continent. In the basin he traversed, in which these creeks lost their character, he was riding over the united beds of the Barcoo, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... outward expression of a diseased condition of the brain. This realization made it clear, as never before, how intimately the mind and the body are linked one to the other. And so it chanced that, in striking the shackles from the insane, Pinel and his confreres struck a blow also, unwittingly, at time-honored philosophical traditions. The liberation of the insane from their dungeons was an augury of the liberation of psychology from the musty recesses of metaphysics. Hitherto psychology, in ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... wife, as she was wandering with the nymphs, unwittingly trod upon a serpent in the grass. Surely, if Orpheus had been with her, playing upon his lyre, no creature could have harmed her. But Orpheus came too late. She died of the sting, and was lost to ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... the Hermit was not about. Gradually he closed in, and Pal, for the first time scenting this deadly enemy, gave a frightened bark, then bravely turned at bay with his back against a tree. He was no match for the wolf and all would have been over in a moment had not the big skunk unwittingly stepped between them. ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... doctrine and Christian practice. We cannot, however, accord to them the honor of being the successors of the covenanted witnesses, which they unwarrantably claim, seeing that they disowned the "civil part" of the public Covenants, and thus unwittingly, we charitably believe, passed an implied censure on the One Lawgiver for having given us a second table in ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery

... as to jar my nerves, and make me shudder with horror. I knew there was no such d—ting, as well as Macbeth—, but nevertheless it was with an indescribable feeling of curiosity, dashed with awe, that I stared intently at it, as if fascinated, while almost unwittingly I ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... there I have no doubt—knowing the strict sense of justice which is one of the praiseworthy features of the house of Firebrace—I have no doubt that he would have sent for Percy FitzPercy and apologised handsomely for the inconvenience he had so unwittingly caused. But the matter did not end there; it only began. And the finale, reviewed dispassionately, undoubtedly gives one to think—one ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... Helen was made an outcast by the Trojan women, and how OEnone, the old love of Paris, sent her son Corythus to him as her messenger, and how Paris slew him unwittingly; and of the curses of OEnone, and the coming of the Argive host ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... protective wings of Mr. King had been rudely extinguished upon the very day of its birth; he had learnt that Mr. King was a sinister protector; and almost hourly he lived again through the events of that night when, all unwittingly, he had become a witness of strange ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... but he loved his pipe, his song, his dogs, his horses, his troop, and certain soldier ways that, during his convalescence from wounds, she had not had opportunity to observe. She had nursed him back to life and love and, unwittingly, to his former harmless habits. These all she would have had him forswear, not for her sake so much, she said, but because they were in themselves sinful and beneath him. She sought to train him down too fine for the rugged metal of the ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... into the street wherein I now dwell and, seeing a large and magnificent mansion and a new made, they guessed it was mine. So they knocked and, on the porter opening, Sa'di marvelled to see such grandeur and so many folk sitting within, and feared lest haply they had unwittingly entered the house of some Emir. Then plucking courage he enquired of the porter, "Is this the dwelling place of Khwajah Hasan al- Habbal?"—And as the morn began to dawn Shahrazed held ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... raised his distorted face above the reedy bank for a last tremulous and half-frightened glance at the landscape he was leaving forever. A glint in the western sky lit up the front of his deserted dwelling in the distance, abreast of which the windings of the inlet had unwittingly led him. As he looked he started, and involuntarily dropped into a crouching attitude. For, to his superstitious terror, the sealed windows of his old home were open, the bright panes were glittering with ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... father died, three parts of Val's inheritance went to pay off debts nobody knew he had contracted. The worst is, he glides into these difficulties unwittingly, led and swayed by others. We don't say Elster's sin, or Elster's crimes; we say Elster's folly. I don't believe Val ever in his life did a bad thing of deliberate intention. Designing people get hold of him—fast fellows who are going headlong down-hill themselves—and Val, unable ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... the hands of some more formidable competitor; they made a practice of sending prospectuses and circulars —job-printing, as it is called—to the Sechard's establishment. So it came about that, all unwittingly, David owed his existence, commercially speaking, to the cunning schemes of his competitors. The Cointets, well pleased with his "craze," as they called it, behaved to all appearance both fairly and handsomely; but, as a matter of fact, they ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... you for your letter. The answers to questions (1), (2), (25), (27) and (28) are in the affirmative. With regard to the others you have, no doubt unwittingly, put me in rather a dilemma. You see, Anderson left my service when he was sixteen and I have not heard of him since, though it is true that I did see his father (who belongs to this neighbourhood) on the roof of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various

... Unwittingly they had been slowly sailing right for one of the sloop's boats, and their whispers had been heard, for from out of the darkness, and apparently a very little way off, came a hail ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... unless he always has in his pocket a Burke's Peerage to tell him who's who. What a waste of time, what an inconvenience, and what an unnecessary amount of irritation and annoyance all this causes. How much better to be able to address any person you meet simply as Mr. So-and-So, without unwittingly treading on somebody's sensitive corns! Americans have shown their common sense in doing away with titles altogether, an example which the sister Republic of China is following. An illustrious name loses nothing for having to stand ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... put in a white peg, at the same time unwittingly giving Woodpecker what he wanted—a gauge, for he knew Blackhawk was something more than five feet high; judging then as he stood there Sam ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... of Echo. "Nobody here respects me," she said. She had overlooked the fact that, in coming as a boy among other boys, she would be treated as a boy. The slight, though of her own causing, and self-explanatory, she was unable to dismiss as unwittingly shown, so sensitive had ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... consent to the use of one of his boats to convey stolen property of various kinds to this cave as a hiding place, and from here, occasionally, to places of disposal, principally in the United States. Well, Bill's band of hazers unwittingly brought me to these islands, and before long there was a pretty mix-up. The operators of this burglars' 'fence' found me on Friday Island and got the idea, I suppose, that I was spying on them. At first I hoped they would let me go, but I made some foolish ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield

... the last words he heard her say as he raised the revolver; and the next moment the merciful deed was done, and Hilda Ryder was safe for ever from the vengeance of the fanatics whom she had all unwittingly enraged. ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... much surprised at the interview to reason connectedly about the causes which had led to it, and accepted the duel with Sant' Ilario blindly, because he could not avoid it, and because whatever offence he himself had unwittingly given he had in turn been insulted by Giovanni in a way which left him no alternative but that of a resort to arms. His adversary had admitted, had indeed boasted, of having entered Gouache's rooms, and of having taken thence the letter and the pin. This alone constituted ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... of snow near. I went towards it while a terrible suspicion flashed into my mind. Yes, it was the very spot on which I had been sitting hours before, while I was making fruitless efforts to obtain a light from the flint of my gun! I had been doing that of which I had often read and heard, walking unwittingly in a circle, and had actually come back to the spot from which ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... nations of the west will form a new fatherland, which itself will be but a stage upon the road leading to a still greater fatherland, that of Europe. Do we not already see the dozen states of Europe, divided into two camps, unwittingly attempting to build a federation wherein war between nations will be no less sacrilegious than would now be war between provinces; a federation in which the duty of to-day will be the crime of to-morrow? Has not the need for ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... persuaded himself so thoroughly of these evils resulting from marriage of relatives, that he induced the Legislature of Kentucky to pass a law prohibiting it within certain degrees of consanguinity. Many a married couple have been rendered miserable by the information that they had unwittingly violated one of nature's most positive laws. Though their children may be numerous and blooming, they live in constant dread of some terrible outbreak of disease. Many a young and loving couple have sadly severed an engagement, which would have been a prelude to a happy marriage, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... the manner in which man unwittingly took one of his momentous and unprecedented first steps in civilization. Some restless primeval savage might find himself scraping the bark off a stick with the edge of a stone or shell and finally cutting into the wood and bringing the thing to a point. He might then ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... composition he complained. These statements have hitherto been unquestioned. Without doubting the veracity of the two authors, it may well be asked, whether the great master may not have relied too much upon the impressions received in childhood, and thus unwittingly have done injustice to Neefe. The appointment of that musician as organist to the Electoral Court bears date February 15, 1781, when Ludwig had but just completed his tenth year, and the sixth year ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... me to the cupboard which he called "his rooms." It was a raw, cold night, and among other efforts to show his gratitude for my help, to my amazement he offered me "a drop of Scotch." Astonishment so outran good-breeding that I unwittingly let him perceive it. "I am not a regular 'Y' man, Major," he explained. "I'm an Australian, and was living on my little pile when the war began. They turned me down each place I volunteered on account of my age. But I was crazy to do ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... appeals to a woman more than a sick man, and Shiel, in coming to Gladys in his present condition, had unwittingly played a trump card. Had he appeared well and strong she would probably have received him none too cordially—for she was very tired of men just then; but the moment her eyes alighted on his thin cheeks and she saw ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... you did," I said curtly, not sure whether I ought to be amused at the turn of events by which I had unwittingly brought the little ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... very poor this ambition is quite disproportionate to their resources. The percentage of infant mortality, owing to poor nutrition, is especially high; yet babe after babe whose mother unwittingly starved it to death is given a funeral in which the baby carriage hearse is preceded by a local band, and hired mourners stalk solemnly behind the little coffin in place of the mother, who is, in etiquette, required ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... are not responsible for being an Estenega; so, although I do not forgive the blood in you,—how could I, and be worthy to bear the name of Iturbi y Moncada?—I forgive you, yourself, for being what you cannot help, and for what you have unwittingly and mistakenly ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... every step she was followed, not by the old man's presence, but by what he had said to her, which she could not shake off as she had shaken off his detaining fingers. Was it the ravings of insanity, or had she stumbled unwittingly upon some secret—was it after all a SECRET? Perhaps it was something they all knew, or would know later. And she had come down here for this. For back of her indignation, back even of her disbelief in his insanity, there was an awful ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... to Lady Latimer again. My lady had lost herself in reverie too; her countenance had an expression of weary restlessness and unsatisfied desire. No doubt she had her private cares. Bessie felt afraid, as if she had unwittingly surprised a secret. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... was preparing Lilla unwittingly for an accentuation of the conflict that already had been ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... useful than it should be, because of this bad division of "work" and "play," between which two it finds no place. For Art—and the art we unwittingly practice whenever we take pleasure in nature—is without appeal either to the man who is straining at business and to the man who is dawdling ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... Leslie, that this is only the sequel of that attack in the wood, and that your enemies have unwittingly done you a service. Crawford was very much your height and build, and might easily have been mistaken for you in the dark. I fancy that blow ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... there? One need not bury one's self in a desert at twenty-three years of age, and you really are charming enough to inspire love; you understand, I do not say, to experience it; but when one is young and pretty conquests are made almost unwittingly. You are not the first of the family to whom that has happened; you are a Corandeuil. Now, then, my good Clemence, what troubled heart is pining for you in Paris? Is it ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... don't we unwittingly reproduce the phrasing of a story, as well as the story itself? It can hardly happen—to the extent of fifty words except in the case of a child: its memory-tablet is not lumbered with impressions, and the actual language can have graving-room there, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... political boundary between Montenegro and Hercegovina, between the kingdom of Serbia and Bosnia; it stretched from the Adriatic to the river Save right across the Serb territory. The Serbo-Croatian race unwittingly occupied a country that was cut in two by the line that divides East from West, and separates Constantinople and the Eastern Church from Rome and the Western. This curious accident has had consequences fatal to the unity of the race, since it ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... on hasty impulse in offering to come, but now, in the normal storm state of the household, the difficulties of the course appeared. He cudgelled his brain for some plan to account for his absence, and finally took refuge unwittingly in ancient wisdom: "When you don't know a thing to do, don't do a thing." Also, "If you can't find the delicate ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... between a Hercules and Apollo—grey-eyed, brown-haired, the finest specimen of physical manhood I have ever seen, and now his frail hold on life was endangered by the rage into which I had unwittingly thrown him. So I sat bathing and soothing him, looking ever and anon steadily into his eyes, ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... Unwittingly, and with entire innocence on the part of both parties, Andrew Jackson had placed his wife in an equivocal position by marrying her before a divorce had separated her from her husband[1]. Absolutely no blame, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... this reason they dispute the possibility, as well as the privilege, of Priests to remain single. But in making this assertion they impugn the wisdom of Jesus Christ and His Apostle, who lived in this state and recommended it to others; they slander consecrated Priests and nuns, and they unwittingly question the purity of their own unmarried sisters, daughters and sons. How many men and women are there in the world who spend years, nay, their whole lives, in the single state? And who shall dare to accuse such ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... attending his church, I found that I had unwittingly seen him before, and that without remark I had not passed him. I had extended one of my usual evening walks, shortly after commencing work at Niddry, in the direction of the southern suburb of Edinburgh, and was sauntering through one of the green lanes of Liberton, when I met a gentleman ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... record a book with such mistakes as to completely mislead a reader, that rules are imperatively necessary. And whatever rules are adopted, a rigid adherence to them is no less essential, to avoid misapprehension and confusion. A singular instance of imperfect and misleading catalogue work was unwittingly furnished by Mr. J. Payne Collier, a noted English critic, author, and librarian, who criticised the slow progress of the British Museum catalogue, saying that he could himself do "twenty-five titles an hour without trouble." His twenty-five titles when examined, were ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... mother Gave her, that her future lord, Gave her, that King Marc and she, Might drink it on their marriage-day, And for ever love each other— 140 Let her, as she sits on board, Ah, sweet saints, unwittingly! See it shine, and take it up, And to Tristram laughing say: "Sir Tristram, of thy courtesy, 145 Pledge me in my golden cup!" Let them drink it—let their hands Tremble, and their cheeks be flame, As they feel the fatal bands Of a love they dare not name, 150 ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... unfortunate natives, and assaulted even the gopa, or kotwal, of the village; and so severely was one of the coolies handled, that I was obliged to interfere in the cause of peace, and not without difficulty succeeded in stopping the stone I had thus so unwittingly set rolling. ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight



Words linked to "Unwittingly" :   advertently, unwitting, knowingly, unknowingly, wittingly



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