"Accident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a deep breath and went on. "I am convinced," she said, "that sometimes the accused received what she deserved, but generally by accident. The judges were swayed by politics or expediency or clan-feeling or popular clamor or ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... was over. That day was over. Not another axle, not another, not another. He laid his head against the chute and shut his eyes.... Presently he staggered to his feet and walked blindly to the stairway. At the bottom stood Malcolm Lightener, not there by accident, but with design to test Bonbright's metal to the utmost. He placed himself there for Bonbright to see, to give Bonbright opportunity to beg off, ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intentions of the Supreme that we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, as only a succession of meaningless and monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says, it has been wet; and another, it has been windy; and another, it ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... beard, but rose to the roots of the hair. Moses at first feared that the useless waste of these drops of holy oil on Aaron's beard might be considered sacrilege, but a Divine voice quieted him. A Divine voice quieted Aaron, also, who likewise feared the accident that had turned the holy oil to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... we went directly to Ashantee to visit Nelka's Aunt Martha, who had been quite ill for sometime after a car accident. We arrived on a Saturday. The next Tuesday Aunt Martha died. This was again a terrible shock for Nelka. Once again death had struck suddenly and this time her last close relative was gone. Both Aunt Susie and Uncle Herbert had died without ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... telling us, that an accident fell out in the early part of the Earl's life, which in its consequences confirmed him in the pursuit ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... man is his soul, it becomes his duty to know it. He must know whether it is substance or accident, whether it will die when it is separated from the body, and for what purpose it was brought into union with the body. In order to learn all this one must first study the preparatory branches, grammar, ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... pinafores made either of woollen or of stuff materials. The dreadful deaths from burning, which so often occur in winter, too frequently arise from cotton pinafores first taking fire. [Footnote: It has been computed that upwards of 1000 children are annually burned to death by accident in England.] ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... anger, snatched the magic ribband, and, peradventure it might be from none other design than to rid herself of the mystical love-knot, but she tossed it from her with an air of great contumely, when, by some disagreeable and untoward accident, it chanced to fly over the self-same shoulder to which Timothy had referred. He made no reply, but followed the token with his little grey eyes, apparently without any sort of aim or concernment. Kate's eyes followed too; but verily it were a marvellous ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... magistrates was not enlarged; and there thus devolved on eight magistrates to be annually nominated—apart from all else—at least twelve special departments to be annually occupied. Of course it was no mere accident, that this deficiency was not covered once for all by the creation of new praetorships. According to the letter of the constitution all the supreme magistrates were to be nominated annually by the burgesses; according to the new order or rather disorder—under which the vacancies that arose were ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... from the cruise early this morning, and the rather because he was informed that Koningsmark intended to come hither this morning to visit him, which Whitelocke did not desire, in regard of the late accident at Bremen, where Koningsmark was governor, and that his conferring with him, upon his immediate return from Sweden, might give some jealousy to those of Bremen, or to the Hanse Towns, or some of the German ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... mind with the force of conviction, I no longer doubted that his presence there was the result of design, and not a mere accident. He was after Aurore. My ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... fourteenth day after Natalie's accident. Every day after the first week had shown a slight improvement in her condition; and every day had therefore lessened the hold Rina had over them; until now Garth felt, should it be necessary, he could bring the patient safely back to health ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the dead body of Blazen in a vain endeavor to bring the hunter back to life. A doctor was called, but nothing could be done for Blazen, for the shot had killed him instantly, taking him squarely in the heart. Of course it was an accident, but my father couldn't get over it. He raved and wept by turns, and at last the doctors had to place him in confinement for fear that he would try to do himself some injury. My mother was prostrated by the news, and you can ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... the various scenes and adventures in my book, endeavouring to ascertain how I came originally to devise them, and by dint of reflecting I remembered that to a single word in conversation, or some simple accident in a street or on a road, I was indebted for some of the happiest portions of my work; they were but tiny seeds, it is true, which in the soil of my imagination had subsequently become stately trees, but I reflected that without them no stately ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Kinloch's MSS., 'from the recitation of T. Kinnear, Stonehaven.' Child remarks of it that 'probably by the fortunate accident of being a fragment' it 'leaves us to put our own construction upon the weird seaman; and, though it retains the homely ship-carpenter, is on the whole the most ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... immense weight of the coffins, and the unevenness of the road, rendered the utmost carefulness necessary throughout the whole distance. Colonel Trelawney commanded in person the small detachment of artillerymen who conducted the car, and, thanks to his great care, not the slightest accident took place. From the moment of departure to the arrival at the quay, the cannons of the forts and the 'Belle Poule' fired minute-guns. After an hour's march the rain ceased for the first time since the commencement ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... augrym, algram, agram, algorithm), owes its name to the accident that the first arithmetical treatise translated from the Arabic happened to be one written by Al-Khowarazmi in the early ninth century, "de numeris Indorum," beginning in its Latin form "Dixit Algorismi...." ...
— The Earliest Arithmetics in English • Anonymous
... on a fence with others, and have it fall under you, denotes an accident in which some ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... queerer because, when it comes to the King, she worships the 'accident of birth,' as you might call it. To her King Edward is nothing less than ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Lord Sherbrooke rapidly; for a sudden apprehension had crossed his mind immediately the words were pronounced, "He has shot the lady," lest by some accident Lady Laura had fallen into the hands of the people who were approaching, and that she it was who had been wounded or killed by the rash act of his friend. The moment he came up, however, he perceived that the lady's face was unknown ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... that I would send you an account of my uncle's[140] death, in order to transmit a more exact relation of it to posterity, deserves my acknowledgments; for, if this accident shall be celebrated by your pen, the glory of it, I am well assured, will be rendered forever illustrious. And notwithstanding he perished by a misfortune, which, as it involved at the same time a most beautiful ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... and forbids to terminate war by conquest, and to obtain a security for peace. Thus, after surrendering the individual to the collective will, the revolutionary system makes the collective will subject to conditions which are independent of it, and rejects all law, only to be controlled by an accident. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... companionless rides; and in the flat and dreary country around our university, the cheerless aspect of nature fed the idle melancholy at my heart. In the second year of my college life, I roused myself a little from my seclusion, and rather by accident than design—you will remember that my acquaintance was formed among the men considered most able and promising of our time. In the summer of that year, I resolved to make a bold effort to harden my mind and conquer its fastidious reserve; and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... himself, he was also the master of his fellows. There was no detail of civil war that he had not made his own, and he still remains, after nearly two centuries, the greatest captain the world has seen. Never did he permit an enterprise to fail by accident; never was he impelled by hunger or improvidence to fight a battle unprepared. His means were always neatly fitted to their end, as is proved by the truth that, throughout his career, he was arrested but once, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... courage to turn to the company and say, "Gentlemen, I fear very much that Mr. George will not be here to-day; something hath happened—and—and—I very much fear some accident may befall him, which must keep him out of the way. Having had your noon's draught, you had best pay the reckoning and go home; there can be no game where there is no ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... what we were doing. They were afraid some accident had befallen us—God forbid! Who could tell? A little bridge, a water, a stream, a stream, a stream! Curious father ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... seen the mark of one of the earlier roofs. The choir is thought to have received a groined vault of oak after the rebuilding of the east end, but this vault was probably renewed more than once, especially after the accident to the tower about 1450, and the fall of the spire in 1660. Sir Gilbert Scott found a vault of lath and plaster (probably the work of Blore) for which he substituted the present roof, a groined wooden vault, admirable in its lofty ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... in her hand, that is a feature which up till now we have met in none of our cases, but which, as a glance into literature teaches me, is by no means infrequently found with sleep walkers. It can hardly be considered a mere accident that Shakespeare discovered just this characteristic, which is really atypical. One would be much more inclined to suspect in it a secret, hidden meaning. Then at once a connection forces itself. We know from the infantile history ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and to incorporate the English garrisons in their army. It occurred also to the king, that even the payment of the forty thousand pounds a year was precarious, and depended on the accident that the truce should be renewed between Spain and the republic: if war broke out, the maintenance of the garrisons lay upon England alone; a burden very useless, and too heavy for the slender revenues of that kingdom: ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... introduction. I will not deny but that some offered; only when they did my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth; and I think I might have been carrying about my packet till this day, had not a fortunate accident delivered me from all my hesitations. This was at night, when I was once more leaving the room, the thing not yet done, and myself in despair at my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been left at San Juan to build more canoes, since that island grows lofty trees, better adapted for canoe building than are those of the island of Santa Cruz. The Caribs being still on the island, the Spaniards who arrived from Hispaniola encountered them by accident. When the interpreters had made known this recent crime, the Spaniards wished to exact satisfaction, but the cannibals, drawing their bows and aiming their sharpened arrows at them, gave it to be understood with menacing glances that they had better keep quiet unless they wished to provoke a disaster. ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... him, for it had nothing to do with the miracle, and then awakening a little from his reverie he assured himself that his father must never know, for Dan could never understand Jesus in his extravagant moods. But if some accident should bring the knowledge to his father? It wasn't likely that this could happen, for who knew it? Hardly was it known among those whom he had met that morning as he crossed the Plain of Gennesaret. He had seen the disciples with Jesus, Jesus walking ahead with Peter and with James and ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... Bend country in the early morning—scene of a strange and tragic accident in the old times, Captain Poe had a small stern-wheel boat, for years the home of himself and his wife. One night the boat struck a snag in the head of Kentucky Bend, and sank with astonishing suddenness; water already well above the cabin floor when the captain got aft. So he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... should be disfigured with fierce heresy; upon the reader who chuckles with sectarian glee when the "much talkers" are mocked and confounded; upon Mr Kipling himself who has been encouraged to mistake an accident of his career as the essence of his achievement and to regard himself as a sort of Imperial laureate. The origin of this misconception is not obscure. Mr Kipling has written intimate tales of the British Army: he is, therefore, a "militarist." He has ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... hour after we entered the interior court an accident occurred which, though not serious in itself, threw consternation into our ranks, as well as among those who were pressing against the grating of the Carrousel. We saw flames issuing from the chimney of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... inevitable necessity, it must ultimately be realised in spite of the opposition of the whole world; it must show itself to be indissolubly bound up with forces which will give it the victory over prejudice, ill-will, and adverse accident. Thus alone would proof be given that the work in which we are engaged is something more than the ephemeral fruit of fallible human ingenuity—that rather those men who gave it the initial impulse and watched over its development were ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... the Articulation.—This may occur either as a result of the suppurative changes or as an accident in excision of the diseased cartilage. Unless it is followed by a severe purulent arthritis, it is not so grave a complication as at first sight ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... obsession with the fact of physical pain, accident, and sudden death. Wherever a misfortune has befallen a man, there is nailed up a little memorial of the event, in propitiation of the God of hurt and death. A man is standing up to his waist in water, drowning in full stream, his arms in the air. The little ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... his great fleet through the old Bahama channel instead of the usual route around the south side of Cuba. This was justly considered a great feat in those days of poor surveys, and was accomplished without an accident. Lookout and sounding vessels went first, frigates followed, and boats or sloops were anchored on shoals with carefully arranged signals for day or night. Having good weather, the fleet got through in a week and appeared before ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... sickness and accident, and free and adequate State pensions or provision for aged and disabled workers. Public assistance not to entail any forfeiture ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... Men were killing tunny in the surf; the work was bloody and dangerous; and in the midst of the excitement, one of the fishermen struck his killing-spike into the head of a boy. Everybody knew that it was a pure accident; but accidents involving danger to life are rudely dealt with, and this blunderer was instantly knocked senseless by the men nearest him,—then dragged out of the surf and flung down on the sand to recover himself as best he might. No word was said about the ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... short-story instinct, though stifled, was still present. Isaak Walton as a diarist had it; Thomas Fuller as an historian had it; John Bunyan as an ethical writer had it. Each one was possessed of the short-story faculty, but only manifested it, as it were, by accident. Not until Daniel Defoe and the rise of the newspaper do we note any advance in technique. Defoe's main contribution was the short-story essay, which stands midway between the anecdote, or germ-plot, buried in a mass of extraneous ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... of our family have felt for poor Angelica most deeply. And furthermore, she is sensitive about her deafness—which, I may add, was caused by the same accident. And her various misfortunes have made her extremely shy, so the less attention that is paid to her, the happier the ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... direct interest in her death? Knowing what I knew of him—believing him, as I did, to be capable of any atrocity—I trembled at the bare idea of what might have happened if I had failed to find my way back to her until a later date. Thanks to the happy accident of my position, the one certain way of protecting her lay easily within my reach. I could offer to lend the scoundrel the money that he wanted at an hour's notice, and he was the man to accept my proposal quite as easily as ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... man would have done, Excellency. He struck, and death was an accident. Foorgat's temple struck the corner of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Her stability of defence, even as it stood, was remarkable and beyond expectation. Then the sure climax rolled in upon poor Phoebe. Twice she sought Clement Hicks with purpose to send an urgent message; on each occasion accident prevented a meeting; her father was always smiling and droning his desires into her ear; John Grimbal haunted her. His good-nature and kindness were hard to bear; his patience made her frantic. So the investment drew to its conclusion and the barriers crumbled, for the forces besieged were ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... grieved to hear of the death of Lord Amberley; I read it by accident in the newspaper of yesterday. I fear it must be a terrible blow both ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... Twain!" People came out on the street to see him pass. That marvelous miracle which we variously call "notoriety," "popularity," "fame," had come to him. In his notebook he wrote, "Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... long the most conspicuous literati in the capital of Lombardy, but neither was Lombard. Monti was educated in the folds of Arcadia at Rome; Foscolo was a native of one of the Greek islands dependent on Venice, and passed his youth and earlier manhood in the lagoons. The accident of residence at Milan brought the two men together, and made friends of those who had naturally very little in common. They can only be considered together as part of the literary history of the time in which ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... nothing whatever to do with the theft.—Reflect a little, Mary. The shoes gave the dogs the scent and they were set on to seize the man who had worn them, but whom no judge had examined. The shoes were found in the hall; perhaps he had dropped them by accident, or some one else may have carried them there. Now think of yourself in the place of an innocent man, a Christian like ourselves, hunted with a pack of dogs like a wild beast. Is it not frightful? No good heart should ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... character, and the twenty or thirty lines that follow are so much evidence or proof of overt acts of jealousy, or pride, or whatever it may be that is satirized." (Table-Talk, 192.) Some of Dryden's best satirical hits are let fall by seeming accident in his prose, as where he says of his Protestant assailants, "Most of them love all whores but her of Babylon." They had first attacked him on the score of ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the accident which had befallen their king were the Pans and Satyrs who inhabited the country about Chemmis (Panopolis); and they immediately acquainting the people with the news gave the first occasion to the ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... soon as Obadiah quitted the room: but this second attack of Obadiah's, in opening the door and laying the whole country under water, was too much.—He let go his compasses—or rather with a mixed motion between accident and anger, he threw them upon the table; and then there was nothing for him to do, but to return back to Calais (like many others) as wise as he ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... thinks the French custom the best. You may legally go at thirty kilometres an hour, and no more. If you exceed this you do it at your own risk. If an accident happens it may go hard with you, but if not, all is well, and you have the freedom of the road in all that the term implies. In the towns you are often held down to ten, eight, or even six kilometres an hour, but ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... large enough to hold both victims of the accident and the attendant took them in charge, and signaled the driver, who headed for the city hospital, leaving the crowd ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... they are broke and it is a real problem for them actually to get food. Mary Jane Smith is the heroine with the ankle. The three pals meet her first as a solicitor of funds for the poor and again as the victim of an automobile accident. ...
— The Ghost of Jerry Bundler • W. W. Jacobs and Charles Rock
... obtained in loose debris around the hill and in its center. I have not been able to locate the vein or veins from which it has come, but persistent search will probably reveal it, or it may be stumbled upon by accident. Some of the residents of the vicinity have some fine specimens, and it is possible that they can direct to a plentiful locality. However, some specimens are well worth a thorough search, and possess considerable value as mineralogieal specimens. The specific gravity of the mineral is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... world all seems full of chance and change. One man rises, and another falls, one hardly knows why: they hardly know themselves. A very slight accident may turn the future of a man's whole life, perhaps of a whole nation. Chance and change—there seems to us, at times, to be little else than chance and change. Is not the world full of chance? Are not people daily crushed in railways, burnt to death, shot with ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... spoke whatever came into my head to the man who seemed foremost among them. I spoke in English, though I was very sure that he would not understand. I said that I had no idea what country I was in; that I had stumbled upon it almost by accident, after a series of hairbreadth escapes; and that I trusted they would not allow any evil to overtake me now that I was completely at their mercy. All this I said quietly and firmly, with hardly any change of expression. They ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... said, 'Gimme de k'yarpet-bag, Mars' Jones,' and the next moment we were standing up the river again, all serene. I reflected deeply awhile, and then said—but not aloud—'Well, the finding of that plantation was the luckiest accident that ever happened; but it couldn't happen again in a hundred years.' And I fully believed it was an ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... omen birds are not consulted in the hope of obtaining favourable omens; but rather special events are regarded as of evil omen; such are any outbreak of fire in the house, any fatal accident to any member of the house, the repeated crying of the muntjac (the barking deer) about the house. In one instance known to us the attractive daughter of a Kenyah chief had three times been compelled by series of bad omens to break ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... before Gordon was able to sit up, and meanwhile he learned that his assailant and rescuer had been every day to make inquiry about him, and his father, Mr. Wentworth, had written to Gordon's father and expressed his concern at the accident. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... the statement of the other side of the question. It would be a great mistake to suppose that the places alluded to are meant to be ports of refuge for our ships. Though they were to serve that purpose occasionally in the case of isolated merchant vessels, it would be but an accident, and not the essence, of their existence. What they are meant for is to be utilised as positions where our men-of-war can make reasonably sure of finding supplies and the means of refit. This assurance will largely depend ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... nervous breakdown. He will retire to bed and not emerge for six months, and when he does he'll be a hopeless and helpless cripple for life. Tom is an artist, he is, in his own line. They tell me he made sixty thousand last year out of his accident practice alone. Why, the case he gave you twenty to keep out of may net ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... never a very strong one, according to all accounts, against the stone arch of a little doorway and died a few hours after. We were shown the entrance to the Galerie Hacquelebac where the King met with his fatal accident as he was on his way to the tennis court with the Queen and his confessor, the Bishop of Angers. The door, which was very low at that time, was later raised and decorated with the ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... August 1] from Paris, where I sped on Sunday night, in a horrid state of alarm from a cursed blundering telegram which led me to believe that Leonard (you know he got his first class to our great joy) who had left for the continent on Saturday, was ill or had had an accident. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... permit my enemies to destroy me, or if I perish by accident, see that my body is conveyed to the Paraclete. There, my daughters, or rather my sisters in Christ, seeing my tomb, will not cease to implore Heaven for me. No resting-place is so safe for the grieving soul, forsaken in the wilderness of its sins, none so full of hope as that which is dedicated ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Fantosina had the power to do what she had always longed to do, she did not feel at all sure she should do it. The reason was, that she feared lest any accident should prevent her from reaching a cowslip field and so becoming a princess again. For although she thought it would be very nice to be a bird for a few hours now and then, she would have been sorry to remain a bird always, especially as the prince was on his way ...
— The Bountiful Lady - or, How Mary was changed from a very Miserable Little Girl - to a very Happy One • Thomas Cobb
... of this work was being done Pennington, as an apparent accident due to excess of zeal, dropped the red-hot end of his implement across the ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... artist who is reputed to love beauty above all else in the world, but who, when blinded through an accident, gains life's greatest happiness. A rare story of the great passion of two real people superbly capable of love, its sacrifices and ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... very different strain.... In pronouncing these [sentences from the Tusculan Questions, etc.] he was one day so eager that he unfortunately bit his tongue ... this accident gave Thwackum, who was present, and who held all such doctrines to be heathenish and atheistical, an opportunity to clap a judgment on his back."—The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Bk. V. chap. ii. 1768, i. 234. See, too, Letter to Murray, November 23, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 142; Life, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... thought, springing up within him with an emphatic oath of relief "Now there's nothing to prevent me from breaking away from that old woman." And that the secret of her envenomed rage, not against this miserable and attractive wretch, but against fate, accident and the whole course of human life, concentrating its venom on de Barral and including the innocent girl herself, was in the thought, in the fear crying within her "Now I have nothing to hold him with . ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... This terrible accident threw the pirate fleet into great confusion for a time; but Morgan soon recovered himself, and, casting about to see what was the best thing to be done, it came into his head that he would act the part of the wolf in the fable of ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... the same smooth course of flattery as before—but with what a different result! Emily's face reddened with anger the moment they were spoken. Having already irritated Alban Morris, unlucky Francine, by a second mischievous interposition of accident, had succeeded in making Emily smart next. "Who has told you," she burst ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... stories which appear and disappear like butterflies, it is a curious question what vogue and circulation one can have over others. By an accident I broke one of the tendons of my heel and was laid up in my house for some time, unable to walk. The surgeon fixed the bandage in place by a liquid cement which ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... at those boys," the philosopher was accustomed to say, "with a perfectly impartial eye; I dismiss the unimportant accident of their birth from all consideration; and I find them below the average in every respect. The only excuse which a poor gentleman has for presuming to exist in the nineteenth century, is the excuse of extraordinary ability. My boys have been addle-headed from infancy. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... they again set out, and so tramped, hunted, and investigated with varying success for ten Saturnian days. They found that in the animal and plant forms of life Nature had often, by some seeming accident, struck out in a course very different from any on the earth. Many of the animals were bipeds and tripeds, the latter arranged in tandem, the last leg being evidently an enormously developed tail, by which the creature propelled itself as with a spring. ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... prickled as he came out, but he fought down the sickness in his stomach. A few drops of rain were beginning to fall, and the crowd around the accident was thinning out. That might help him—or it might prove more dangerous. He had to ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... and one of the first delights of that season was the Sunday school picnic which had started off so well but which seemed likely now to end in an accident. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair • Laura Lee Hope
... accident would not particularly affect the bankers? And therefore whether a national bank would not be a security even to ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... indifference of the Japanese to the exposure of the unclothed body is an interesting fact. In the West such indifference is rightly considered immodest. In Japan, however, immodesty consists entirely in the intention of the heart and does not arise from the accident of the moment or the need of the occasion. With a fellow missionary, I went some years since to some famous hot springs at the foot of Mount Ase, the smoking crater of Kyushu. The spot itself is most charming, situated in the center of an old crater, said to be the largest in ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... stared at me; the beau, I know not his name, looked quite enraged. "Refrain-Madam," said he, with an important air, "a few moments refrain!-I have but a sentence to trouble you with.-May I know to what accident I must attribute not having the honour of ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... production of new stations from the elevation of the land, an island would be a far more fertile source, as far as we can judge, of new specific forms than a continent. The new forms thus generated on an island, we might expect, would occasionally be transported by accident, or through long-continued geographical changes be enabled to emigrate ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... other hand, by borrowing from nature a definite basis, they thought to take from the definition of the unit some of its arbitrary character, and to ensure the means of again finding the same unit if by any accident the standard became altered. Their confidence in the value of the processes they had seen employed was exaggerated, and their mistrust of the future unjustified. This example shows how imprudent it is to endeavour to fix limits to progress. It is an error to think the march of science can ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... to be regarded as worthy to disturb my peace, while the happiness I hoped for in my marriage wore a greater appearance of certainty as the day fixed for its solemnization drew nearer and I heard it continually spoken of as an occurrence which no accident could possibly prevent. ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... me. I was mistaken. The train started, and mine puffed up: there he was still. In the crowd I hoped I should not be discovered, but as I stepped from the door his eyes met mine, and he rushed up to me with the exclamation, 'In the name of Heaven, how did you get here? Was there an accident? Are you hurt? What ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... this was more or less of an accident, for the Mud Turtles hadn't asked Mr. Merry Sun to help them. But when they saw what he had done, they were delighted, and at once sent out invitations to all the Barnyard Folk to spend ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... It's very slight—an accident, I believe—somewhere abroad. But they wouldn't have him for the Army, and he was awfully cut up. He used to come and sit with Mummy every day and pour out his woes. I suppose she was the only person to whom he ever talked about his private affairs—he ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... breathed these fears to him—she kept hoping that some accident, or some remark from Mrs. Montague, would throw light on the ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Blakeley," she said earnestly. "You must rouse yourself. There has been a terrible accident. The second section ran into us. The wreck is burning now, and if we don't move, we will catch fire. Do ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... arms of iron to one centre, that, being divided {and} of equal length, the one part might stand fixed, {and} the other might describe a circle. Daedalus was envious, and threw him headlong from the sacred citadel of Minerva, falsely pretending that he had fallen {by accident}. But Pallas, who favours ingenuity, received him, and made him a bird; and, in the middle of the air, he flew upon wings. Yet the vigour of his genius, once so active, passed into his wings and into his feet; his name, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... all over then,"—she ended, with a sigh, "I never was quite myself again—I think my nerves got a sort of shock such as the great novelist, Charles Dickens had when he was in the railway accident—you remember the tale in Forster's 'Life'? How the carriage hung over the edge of an embankment but did not actually fall,—and Dickens was clinging on to it all the time. He never got over it, and it was the remote cause of his death five years later. Now ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... on that trip until its unfortunate end. We only killed two elephants, but of other game we found plenty. It was when we were near Delagoa Bay on our return that the accident happened. ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... not consider: First, that, besides board, washing, fuel, and lights, which she would have in a family, she would have also less unintermitted toil. Shop-work exacts its ten hours per diem; and it makes no allowance for sickness or accident. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... 'Pa.' Every reader can appreciate the truth and humour of Pa, but I doubt if anyone without technical experience can realise how the atmosphere is made and completed, and rounded off by Pa's beer, Pa's meals, and Pa's accident, how he binds the bundle and makes the whole thing one, and what an ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... 127. Toombs also stated that the submission clause had been put in his bill in the first place by accident, and that it had been stricken from the bill ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... until the 35th polling of the delegates. Chief Justice Roger Taney administered the oath of office on the East Portico of the Capitol. Several weeks before arriving in Washington, the Pierces' only surviving child had been killed in a train accident.] ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... say it was only by accident that I discovered my possession of this faculty. About 1906, a water diviner visited the Winton district, and one day several friends and myself went with him in his quest for water. He explained his methods to the party, and naturally we all ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... power in a single person; and the other is to show how ridiculously futile it is to refer to Prussia as an example of the success of social legislation. The state ownership of railroads, old-age pensions, accident and sickness insurance, and the like are one thing in Prussia which is a close corporation, and quite another in any community or country under democratic government. What takes place in Prussia would certainly not take ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... chance he gets puts out for the woods, where he lives just as a wolf would do, by the chase. Sometimes farmers' watchdogs that are thought to be honest get this sheep-killing habit, and play tricks, covering their tracks so they go a long time without being found out, and then only by accident." ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... satisfied with this flow of blood and passions were not subdued with these public wreakings. Nat Turner was still at large. He had eluded their constant vigilance ever since the day of the raid in August. That he was finally captured was more the result of accident than of design. A dog belonging to some of Nat Turner's acquaintances scented some meat in the cave and stole it one night while Turner was out. Shortly after, two Negroes, one the owner of the dog, were hunting with the same animal. The dog ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... well-being of man considered generally, as a spiritual, immortal nature. The essential law of this nature cannot be abrogated by men's being placed in humble and narrow circumstances, in which a very large portion of their time and exertions are required for mere subsistence. This accident of a confined situation is no more a reason why their minds should not require the best attainable cultivation, than would be the circumstance that the body in which a man's mind is lodged happens to be of smaller dimensions ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... Jonathan steered steadily on, and got safe up, with her colors flying; and coming to anchor in the upper river, she triumphantly saluted admiral Holmes with a discharge from all her swivels. She met with no accident, except one man being slightly wounded on board. During this, says captain Knox, our batteries fired briskly on the town, to favor her as she passed. While the officers and gunners were enraged at what they deemed a contempt of their formidable batteries, other officers apologized ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... cached valuable goods, among them several large cases of books and other heavy articles belonging to my father. As will be seen later, the load in our family wagon thus lightened through pity for our oxen, also lessened the severity of an accident which otherwise might have been fatal ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... some spots distant from human dwellings, but whenever such cases have been subjected to a closer scrutiny, it appears that evidently, or at least probably, huts had formerly existed in their neighborhood, but having been destroyed by some accident, had left the palm trees uninjured. Even in South America, where it may be found in forests at great distances from the sea-shore, it is not at all certain that true native localities occur, and it seems to be quite lost in ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... calls for course-correction, you float around in the blast-cubicle with damn little to do between blast-away and moon-down, except sweat out the omniscient accident statistics. If the beast blows up or gets gutted in space, a statistic had your name on it, that's all, and there's no fighting back. You stay outwardly sane because you're a hog for punishment; if you weren't, you'd ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller
... and while doing this he discovered that there were a great many seeds from the rushes scattered about in the mud at the bottom of the Smiling Pool, and that these also were good to eat. Then quite by accident he got hold of a tender root in the mud and found that ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... harbour in the hands of the Northern Government, a few miles from the entrance to Savannah, were as bright as in the time of peace, and served as a capital guide to the river's mouth. After two days' run from Nassau we arrived without accident to within twenty miles of the low land through which the Savannah river runs, and at dark steered for the light-vessel lying off Port Royal. Having made it out, in fact steaming close up to it, we shaped our course for Fort Pulaski, using the light ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... poetic imagination reveals itself suddenly and unexpectedly in strange forms and circumstances. At the close of the passage in the third satire describing the perils of the Roman streets, Juvenal imagines the death of some householder in a street accident. All is bustle and business at home ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... doing what they couldn't; but ordinary directive ability is not born in a man; it's acquired by habit and training. Suppose fortune had reversed them at birth, the Gaunt or Tryst would by now have it and the Malloring would not. The accident that they were not reversed at birth has given ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Dingo Creek Bridge was accomplished without any accident, though the new method of travel and the new country passed through were full of interest to the two boys. Each evening the long line of stately animals was coiled round in a big circle at the camping-place, and the ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... her feminine nerves recoiled from the implied consequences. "But only a chance, surely. You were never in an accident, never were hurt?" ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the king was thrown from the saddle, and his hat and wig were thrown to a little distance from him: he got on his feet again immediately, and began to look about for the hat and wig, which he did not readily see, being, as we all know, short-sighted. P——, very much alarmed by the accident, rides up in great haste and arrives at the moment when the king is peering about and saying to the attendants, 'Where's my wig? where's my wig?' P—— cries out, 'D—n your wig! is your ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... gracefully for their timely help on the previous evening, and, though making light of her accident, owned that it would keep her a prisoner to her sofa for a few days; and then she begged them to waive ceremony and come to her for an hour or two ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... apple-trees?' and James scornfully laughed. 'There was no back-door, I suppose! I could forgive you anything but such a barefaced falsehood, when you know it was your own intolerable carelessness that was the only cause of the accident!' ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge |
