"Unreasonable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be unreasonable. The poor fellows were desperate. Suppose you had been in such a ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... since we are subjects of one king, how do we suffer them to forbid us all our trade? Why do they bar us from Maluco, Sian, Camboja, Cochinchina, China, and all the rest of this archipelago? What are we to do then, if they wish to seize everything? Surely this is a very unreasonable proceeding. I have dwelt on this matter in order to express my feelings. Not until our departure shall I write to your Grace about the fertility and nature of the country, and of its greatness. Then I shall endeavor to give a full account ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... keeping his whole army with him; but when he learned what had befallen Sura, he called together the first men of the Hierapolitans and spoke as follows: "Whenever men are confronted with a struggle against an assailant with whom they are evenly matched in strength, it is not at all unreasonable that they should engage in open conflict with the enemy; but for those who are by comparison much inferior to their opponents it will be more advantageous to circumvent their enemy by some kind of tricks than to array themselves ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... supported by scarcely any pretext of grievances: but in a state which, in the course of nine months (from February to October, 1820), underwent fifteen changes in its government—each governor, according to the constitution, being elected for three years—it would be very unreasonable to ask for pretexts. In this case, a party of men—who, being attached to Rosas, were disgusted with the governor Balcarce—to the number of seventy left the city, and with the cry of Rosas the whole country took arms. The ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... her at night, and in every way devoted themselves to the poor consumptive, until death came to her relief. Such a sacrifice to a sense of duty was all the more admirable, as the invalid was unusually exacting and unreasonable, and felt apparently little appreciation of the trouble she gave. Angelina, being in the same house, was more with her than Sarah, and she could scarcely have shown her greater attention if the tenderest ties had existed ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... the leaf of pencilled paper on the table. The next minute his rapid footsteps crunched on the gravel path. Even after he was gone and she was left quite alone in her old condition, the dead, nerveless sense of despair did not return. An unreasonable lightness of spirit buoyed her—a feeling that after a desolate winter a new season was coming, that her little world was growing larger, lighting indefinably ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... provisions of his brother's will, thinking that Riverlawn should have been settled upon himself. When Noah Lyon gave up his home in the East to take charge of Riverlawn, Titus did not call upon him for several days, and for some time after that the unreasonable mason talked about being swindled out of five thousand dollars, he thinking he ought to have had half of the ten thousand given to Noah for supporting Cyrus's children, although he had never lifted a ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... derived from practice, and reason, and the laws of nations; but the chief stress was laid on passages and examples from the Old Testament,[v] which, if considered as a general rule of conduct, (an intention which it is unreasonable to suppose,) would lead to consequences destructive of all principles of humanity and morality. Matters were here carried further than Elizabeth intended; and that princess, satisfied with showing Mary the disposition of the nation, sent to the house her express commands not to deal any ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... his enemy, but to have made the slightest movement would have been to show that he had a kris beneath him, and his arm right through between the bamboos, so the young man lay perfectly still, mastered his emotion as best he could, and waited for what seemed an unreasonable space of time, till the Malay slowly moved off into the outer room, and sticking his torch in the floor, seated himself with his companions, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... and time that intervenes now, and with cooler thoughts and better knowledge, I feel it to be scarcely possible that you should comply with the request I was daring enough to make to you. I do not expect it. I have ceased to allow myself to hope for it. I think I was unreasonable to ask—and I will never think you unreasonable for refusing—so extravagant a demand. Even if you were willing, your friends would not allow it. And I would not disguise from you that the difficulties and dangers to be met in coming here, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... access to all; and it is probable that you might not only do a personal favour to the inquirer, but confer a benefit on the public, by correcting an erroneous statement. Of course you would subject yourself to unreasonable requests, but the remedy would always be in ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 2, November 10 1849 • Various
... usual form, from time to time, until it was broken down, in August, 1855, when the President left both office and the country, and has since resided abroad. The new revolution favored Federalism. Alvarez was chosen President, but he was too liberal for the Church party, being so unreasonable as to require that the property of the Church should be taxed. Plots and conspiracies were formed against him, and it being discovered that the climate of the capital did not agree with him, he resigned, and was succeeded by General Comonfort. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... me in a way that was unkind and unreasonable,—at least so I thought it at the time. It happened thus. I had been playing fives in the garden and got much heated. Although the day was cold, for autumn was now advancing, and Cold Harbour (as the name of the town in which my prison was should be translated) stood fully 3000 ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... supposition is by no means an unreasonable one, let me now point out what took place in the case of Seth Wright's sheep, where it happened to be a matter of moment to him to obtain a breed or raise a flock of sheep like that accidental variety that I have described—and I will ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley
... begins to get real mad—you an' I have both seen it only once, but we don't want to see it again! More than this there's the way he handles either a knife or a gun. He hasn't practiced much with shootin' irons, but I never seen him miss a reasonable mark—or an unreasonable one either, for that matter. I've spoke to him about it. He said: 'I dunno how it is. I don't see how a feller can shoot crooked. It jest seems that when I get out a gun there's a line drawn from the barrel ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... to think of her as anything but the same artless, gentle, winning little creature, that she had been in the days of Good Mrs Brown. In a word, Walter found out that to reason with himself about Florence at all, was to become very unreasonable indeed; and that he could do no better than preserve her image in his mind as something precious, unattainable, unchangeable, and indefinite—indefinite in all but its power of giving him pleasure, and restraining him like an angel's ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... presented to be changed, never, as he assured us, having seen such a bit of paper before; but kindly offering, if we would leave it a few hours, to have it seen and commented on, and then, if approved, and we liked to pay a somewhat unreasonable number of francs, the sum should be delivered to us. We thought the whole transaction so bizarre that we declined his offer, resolving rather to trust to chance till we reached La Rochelle,—our next destination—than put ourselves to the charges he recommended. He returned ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... He looks for a gift from your hands. He knows that it is so much sweeter to give than to receive. What happiness to suffer for Him Who loves us even unto folly, and to pass for fools in the eyes of the world! We judge others by ourselves, and, as the world will not hearken to reason, it calls us unreasonable too. ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... kept on and made the circuit, thus keeping every one well informed and breaking the monotony. These measures were expected to cause the rustling operations to cease at once, but the effect was to shift the losses to the Double Arrow, the line-houses of which boasted only one puncher each. Unreasonable ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... in an extremely unreasonable manner. He had no right to visit his spleen on a perfectly innocent bank that paid twenty-five per cent to its shareholders and a thousand a year each to its directors, and what trifle was left over ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... these names are foreign to the Hebrews, though sometimes adopted by them: and I readily grant it; for it is the whole, that I contend for. All, that I want to have allowed, is, that different nations in their several tongues had different modes of collocation and expression: because I think it as unreasonable to determine the usage of the Egyptians and antient Chaldeans by the method of the Hebrews, as it would be to reduce the Hebrew to the mode and standard of Egypt. What in Joshua, c. 19. v. 8. is Baaleth, is, 1 Kings, c. 16. v. 31. Eth-baal: so that even in the sacred writings we find terms of this ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... beauty was accomplished. Hence arises that species of comparative criticism which one great author usually makes of his own manner with that of another great writer, and which so often causes him to be stigmatised with the most unreasonable vanity. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... never a serious contender for the honor of discovering the atmospheric process of making steel. In the present state of the record, it is not an unreasonable assumption that his patent was never seriously exploited and that the Ebbw Vale Iron Works hoped to use it, in conjunction with the Mushet patents, ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop
... strange to say, there came no answer to those letters. O'Reilly chafed: he cursed the revolution which had made communication so uncertain; at length he cabled, but still the days dragged on with no result. Gradually his impatience gave way to apprehension. Unreasonable conjectures besieged his mind and destroyed ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... and may not see or understand his own vileness and sinfulness?" He paused again. "Who art thou? Thou dreamest that thou art wise because thou couldst utter those blasphemous words," he went on, with a somber and scornful smile. "And thou art more foolish and unreasonable than a little child, who, playing with the parts of a skillfully made watch, dares to say that, as he does not understand its use, he does not believe in the master who made it. To know Him is hard.... For ages, from our forefather Adam to our own day, we ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... generation responsible for these wrong judgments? True, the real Science of History—the sifting of evidence, and the discovery and unravelling of ancient documents—may be described as an essentially modern attainment, so it would be unreasonable to blame our older historians for errors which it was largely, if not wholly, beyond their power to overcome. And it is just here that I would emphasise my defence of the Romancist. If Historians themselves have differed (and still differ)! may it not be pleaded on behalf of the Historical ...
— A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales • Jonathan Nield
... of regular soldiers, is indescribable. The views of military obedience and command then taken both by officers and men confined their duties and obligations almost exclusively to the drill-ground and guards. In camps and marches they were scarcely known. Consequently, frequent and unreasonable delays caused so slow a rate of marching as to make me despair of joining General Beauregard in time to aid him." Johnston's Narrative.) They were already sleeping, when an officer reminded Jackson that there were no pickets round the bivouac. "Let the poor fellows ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... same—and of course we declared that we were going to come again, like King Arthur; but I think most of us realised in our hearts that the great British Public, having decided in its ponderous but not altogether unreasonable way that any change of government must be for the better, was now going to pull us down from the eminence to which we had been precariously clinging for five years, and set up another row of legislative ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... sea pink that had put out a scared little blossom right where we are sitting. I was shut in the better part of six hours and time proved a bit slow. I remember coming to the conclusion that perhaps the people I'd left behind weren't so utterly unreasonable after all. I fancy it's a rather sure sign that when you can't rub along with anybody, the trouble isn't ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... their bedroom, standing drearily in the centre of the floor, and looking about at his own loneliness. He lifted a bit of lace upon her dressing-table, and smoothed it between his fingers, noting the faint scent of orris which it held. Again that strange, unreasonable fear of her absence seized him, and he was glad to go out and find some pressing occupation to ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... himself unable do produce his wares ad a cost which will enable him do successfully gompede with the manufagdurers of other goundries, has been gombelled to glose his works and remove his gabidal and his energies to a spodt where he gan find workmen less unreasonable in their demands. There is no more capable or valuable workman in existence than the English artisan, if he gould only be induced to do his honest best for his embloyer; there is hardly any branch of industry in which he is nod ad leasd the equal, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... it is reasonable, not because it is an order. With advancing experience his compliance increases, but it is still because he better and better comprehends the reason. Give him an order that looks utterly unreasonable,—and this is sometimes necessary,—or give him one which looks trifling, under which head all sanitary precautions are yet too apt to rank, and you may, perhaps, find that you still have a free and independent citizen to deal with, not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... their curiosity by saying that when a person reads a book which creates a public sensation, and with which he is himself much pleased, it is natural he should desire to know to whom a grateful homage should be addressed. In this case the desire is so much the more unreasonable because it cannot be satisfied; first, because when death and proscription is the penalty, there has never been and there never will be a man of letters so imprudent, and, to speak plainly, so strangely daring, as to publish, or during ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... but in the Word of the Spirit; it is not seen in the law, nor in the reason or righteousness of the world. To punish 'the just for the unjust,' and to make him 'to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him,' seems unreasonable; so cross to the wisdom of man are the wards of this lock (1 Peter 3:18; 2 Cor 5:21). Wherefore usually, when they come at this doctrine, they belch out their frumps, their taunts, their scoffs, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the Government, is next in order. How are the great expenditures of the war to be recouped? Shall we, in addition to territory acquired, demand cash indemnity? If the care of these acquisitions is to be as costly as some suppose, it would not be an unreasonable requirement. While we shall lose the revenues derived from imposts upon importations into the United States from these possessions, which were not large, this will be more than compensated by the duties which we can impose upon importations from other nations into them. In ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... that Clara is true! But ah, we do not know to what sufferings she may be subjected by Le Noir, who I firmly believe has intercepted all our letters. Mother, I am about to ask a great, perhaps an unreasonable, favor of you! It is to go down into the neighborhood of the Hidden House and make inquiries and try to find out Clara's real condition. If it be possible, put yourself into communication with her, and tell her that I judge her heart by my ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... die, they will have taught it to another generation, who will not fail to repeat it,—I trust, with a hope brightened by the nearer prospect of its fulfilment. It may be said, that our demands are unreasonable, and our aims impracticable. But our demands only include the righteousness of the land, and our aims are addressed to the sanctification of the people by means of that religion which has shown that it is fitted to exercise universal dominion, by the triumphs it has secured in every condition ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... only in himself having removed the seat of government to the Shawnee Mission, but in again removing it to Pawnee City. If there was any departure from the letter of the law, therefore, it was his in both instances. But however this may be, it is most unreasonable to suppose that by the terms of the organic act Congress intended to do impliedly what it has not done expressly—that is, to forbid to the legislative assembly the power to choose any place it might see fit as the temporary seat of its deliberations. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... still have in you, in spite of having lost a little of it," Madame Merle continued with a smile, "to ask such a question as that!" She sat looking at her friend, to judge the effect of her words, and then went on: "Now don't be heroic, don't be unreasonable, don't take offence. It seems to me I do you an honour in speaking so. I don't know another woman to whom I would do it. I haven't the least idea that any other woman would tell me the truth. And don't you see ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... can tell us how many receptions she has in a year, how many weddings she attends, how many balls she participates in, how many dinners she gives, how many parties she goes to, how many operas and theatres she patronizes, we can approximate somewhat to the size and cost of her wardrobe. It is not unreasonable to suppose that she has two new dresses of some sort for every day in the year, or 720. Now to purchase all these, to order them made, and to put them on afterward, consumes a vast amount of time. Indeed, the woman of society does little ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... is declared to be "written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes," and there is no doubt that, in addition to being subjected to an unreasonable amount of ill-usage, Parson Adams has manifest affinities with Don Quixote. Scott, however, seems to have thought that Scarron's Roman Comique was the real model, so far as mock-heroic was concerned; but he must have forgotten that Fielding was already the author of Tom Thumb, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... me; you cannot apprehend the formalities of a treaty more than I do, nor so much the success of it. Yet in earnest your father will not find my brother Peyton wanting in civility (though he is not a man of much compliment unless it be in his letters to me), nor an unreasonable person in any thing so he will allow him, out of his kindness to his wife, to set a higher value upon his sister than she deserves. I know not how he may be prejudiced upon the business, but he is not deaf to reason when it is civilly ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... It seems not unreasonable to conjecture that the uniformly high physical standard of the Punans and their seemingly exceptional immunity from disease are due to their exposed mode of life, and to the consequently severe selection exercised upon them ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... exclaimed he, "that we should have permitted ourselves to be so disturbed and fluttered, by the prospect of a slight change in our affairs! Why should we distrust our destiny, or shrink from our mission? Why these nervous apprehensions, and these unreasonable doubts?"—(Hear! hear!) ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... 1, Plate III.), is so called from its being thick like a club. People possessing this class of Thumb belong to the Elementary type as far as Will is concerned. They are brutal and like animals in their unreasonable obstinacy. If they are opposed they fly into ungovernable passions and blind rages. They have no control over themselves, and are liable to go to any extreme of violence or crime during one of their tempers. In fact the clubbed-shaped Thumb has also been designated "the ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... performing so undignified a service, in the most footman-like terms; but unfortunately, as it generally happens, in families where there are pretty governesses and gallant sons, Miss de Vere has a protector in the Hon. Charles Norwold, who overhears her unreasonable demand, and with a degree of injustice enough to make the entire livery of London rave with indignation, inflicts upon his father's especial livery, and Nibble's illustrious person, a severe caning. The consequence of this "strike" is, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... Heemskirk? You shall see at once how unreasonable this dread of Heemskirk. . . . Certainly, his nature was malevolent enough. That was obvious, directly you heard him laugh. Nothing gives away more a man's secret disposition than the unguarded ring of his laugh. But, bless my soul! if we were to start at every ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... then about the will is that it is a force which we cannot measure, and that it is as unreasonable to say that it does not exist as to say that it is unlimited. It is foolish to describe it as free; it is no more free than a prisoner in a cell is free; but yet he has a certain power to move about within his cell, and to ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... back upon me with tenfold distinctness, and was accompanied with a feeling of exceeding horror. It seemed as if there was closing around me some evil influence, from which I could only escape by instant flight. For one moment I resisted the unreasonable terror, and made an attempt to explain, or at least analyze, a sensation so unwonted: the next, the loathing dread grew too strong. I turned and hurried across the damp floor, up the narrow stairs, and, opening the ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... it has been found impossible to educate captive wolves to the point where they show any affection for their masters, or are in the least degree useful in the arts of the household or the occupations of the chase. They are, in fact, indomitably fierce and utterly self-regarding. It seems unreasonable to believe that any savage would have found either pleasure or profit from an effort to tame any of the known species of wolves. Moreover, the fact that dogs show little or no tendency to revert to the form and habits of their brutal kindred, or to interbreed ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... not have read half of what the paper contains," said Baptiste peevishly; "your reading and writing are not such easy matters, that a squint of the eye is all-sufficient. Look at it again, and thou mayest yet find all in rule. It is unreasonable to suppose Signori of their rank would journey like vagabonds, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... connection; the men [this was spoken some years ago] are got by impressment; a press-gang goes out, knocks men down on the streets of sea-towns, and drags them on board,—if the ship were to be stranded, I have heard they would nearly all run ashore and desert. Can anything be more unreasonable than a Seventy-four? Articulately almost nothing. But it has inarticulate traditions, ancient methods and habitudes in it, stoicisms, noblenesses, true rules both of sailing and of conduct; enough to keep it afloat on Nature's veridical bosom, after all. See; if you ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... Patricia had run away that first night,—"my chance to prove to Patricia that even if I don't wear a cap and spectacles and all the paraphernalia of the good old-fashioned grandmother, at heart I really am one—just as soft-hearted and unreasonable as ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... because, these colonists being sent to guard the newly acquired country, by giving little land it became possible to send more men; and second because, as the Romans lived frugally at home, it is unreasonable to suppose that they should wish their countrymen to be too well off abroad. And Titus Livius tells us that on the capture of Veii, the Romans sent thither a colony, allotting to each colonist three jugera and seven unciae of land, which, according ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... thrown off his religion as easily as he had done his spectacles. Therefore he said simply, "Well, it is certainly a great pity that Rickeybockey is not of the Church of England; though, I take it, that would be unreasonable to expect in a man born and bred under the nose of the Inquisition" (the squire firmly believed that the Inquisition was in full force in all the Italian States, with whips, racks, and thumbscrews; and, indeed, his chief information of Italy was gathered from ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is the woman herself who must be accounted responsible, as much as a man, for securing the right conditions of a marriage she proposes to enter into. In practice, at the outset, that responsibility may no doubt be in part delegated to parents or guardians. It is unreasonable that any false delicacy should be felt about this matter on either side. Questions of money and of income are discussed before marriage, and as public opinion grows sounder none will question the necessity of discussing the still more serious question of health, alike that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Interior that he ought to be released, leads me to a conclusion exactly opposite to that which you express. It seems to me impossible to believe that any well-ordered government would fail to acknowledge such action to have been unreasonable. Moreover, "detention on suspicion" was a small part of what actually took place. To take a single illustration, you will recall that after many weeks' persistent effort to secure information, the Embassy was still kept so much in the dark about the facts, that it cabled the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... come away from the unreasonable people, come away from the men who can give no account of their attitude. Come away from those who pay benefits by carelessness, and a Love that died by an indifference that will not cast an eye upon that miracle of mercy, and let His love kindle the answering flame in your hearts. Then ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... well as I was able, under the circumstances, how I should act. I was young—life seemed full of charms. They were in earnest, and I saw nothing unreasonable in the oath they imposed on me. I had no longer any doubt that I was on board a piratical vessel. I could not expect her crew to act otherwise than they were doing towards me; and the true character of Caramitzo now appearing more evident, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the agents of the King, and were only subscribed to and sealed by the assistants—were addressed, not to the Pope, but to the college of cardinals. The despatch of the barons expresses rudely the tortuous and unreasonable enterprises of him who, at present, is at the seat and government of the Church, and declares that neither the nobility nor the universities nor the people require correction or imposition of any trouble, whether by the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Mr. Moss, still bowing and smiling, "would not be so unreasonable as to interfere with the career ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... at Hounslow for the purpose of overawing his capital be constantly kept up within the kingdom. The old national antipathy to permanent military establishments, an antipathy which was once reasonable and salutary, but which lasted some time after it had become unreasonable and noxious, has gradually yielded to the irresistible force of circumstances. We have made the discovery, that an army may be so constituted as to be in the highest degree efficient against an enemy, and yet obsequious to the civil magistrate. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and he urged the treasurer to waste no time in obtaining a force of detectives, in securing in Boston and New York all the operatives that could be hired, in order to break the impending strike. Save for this untimely and unreasonable revolt he was bent on stamping out, for Ditmar the world to-day was precisely the same world it had been the day before. It seemed incredible to Janet that he could so regard it, could still be blind to the fact that these workers whom he was determined ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... signed. Therefore they were forgeries. The speaker concluded by saying that as long as he lived he would never risk the independence of the country by granting the franchise, except in accordance with the law. It was unreasonable to ask him to give up his precious birthright in this thoughtless manner. He could not do it—he ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... actual words. But her manner betrayed her suspicions. You must not wonder if this girl is unreasonable. Her father's miserable fate must have been ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... said, "I will write and tell him how it was. It was not his fault, was it, Aimee? How could I have borne such a thing myself? It would have driven me wild, as it did him. It was not unreasonable at all that he should refuse to listen, in his first excitement, after he had waited all those hours and suffered such a disappointment. And then to see what he did. My poor boy! he was not to blame at all. Yes, yes," feverishly, "I will write ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... costume, which, from its rustic simplicity, becomes you so well; adieu. You go to be happy, for you go under the protection of worthy people, and you leave this house never to return. But—hold—I am not unreasonable," said Madame Armand, whose eyes were bathed in tears, "it is impossible for me to conceal from you how much I am already attached to you, poor child!" Then, seeing Fleur-de-Marie much affected, she added, "You do not wish me ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... to yield to some of their demands, which are utterly impossible and unreasonable. First, they demand an increase of wages that would force us into a receivership sooner or later and again they demand the adoption of a cooperative plan which eventually would make them owners of the mines, if there were any possibility of ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... in other women was not a passionate one: in it was always an element of the pale cast of thought, and Marie had no real cause for jealousy. But Terry tolerantly took it as a feminine weakness and tried to shield Marie from this unreasonable unhappiness. On her account he gave up many a desire to talk intimately with some female comrade. But Marie had no such tolerance for him. Not only was she quite free with other men and to the limit, but she often went into a ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... the dejection of Charles were not unreasonable. It will be found that there is special mention made, in the chronicles of the ninth and tenth centuries, of forty-seven incursions into France of Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Irish pirates, all comprised under the name of Northmen; and doubtless many other ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... a station, Mr. Wesley called the officer to one side, and, after expressing the satisfaction he had enjoyed in his company, told him he felt encouraged to ask of him a very great favor. "I shall take great pleasure in obliging you," replied the officer, "as I am certain you would not make an unreasonable request."—"Then," said Mr. Wesley, "as we are to travel together for some days, I beg that if I should so far forget myself as to use any profane language, you will kindly reprove me." The officer immediately perceived how faithfully ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... this head given me by Mr. Watson in a paper on Land Shells in United States, I have quite failed; but perhaps it would be difficult for you to give me even a brief answer on this head, and if so I am not so unreasonable, I ASSURE YOU, as ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... construction of my intellectual pretensions alarmed me beyond measure; because it pledged me in a manner with the hearer to support this first attempt by a second, by a third, by a fourth—O Heavens! there is no saying how far the horrid man might go in his unreasonable demands upon me. I groaned under the weight of his expectations; and, if I laid but the first round of such a staircase, why, then, I saw in vision a vast Jacob's ladder towering upwards to the clouds, mile after mile, league after league; and myself running up and down this ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the house shall be more surprisingly beautiful. Doubtless there is some ground for this poor opinion, but the architects are not alone in their folly, or wholly responsible; they attempt to supply an unreasonable demand, and are ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... before the British Consul. Though I spoke in English, he caught the familiar words "British Consul," and turning to the interpreter, demanded the explanation he should have listened to before he pronounced sentence. But even as the interpreter was jabbering away to the unreasonable functionary, the assembly was agitated with what the French term a "sensation." Judge, interpreter, and all fell upon their faces, doubling themselves up; and there stood the Premier, who took in the situation at a glance, ordered Moonshee to be released, and permitted ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... said Canon Wilton, with a strong ring in his voice. "An unreasonable love is generally a love with something rotten at ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Carey Thomas, the President of Bryn Mawr College, who attributes the industrial progress of the United States largely to the fact that the men of the country have such well-educated mothers. It seems to me a not unreasonable or extravagant suggestion. I am certainly of the opinion that the conversational fluency and mental alertness of the American woman, as well as in large measure her capacity for bearing her share in the civic labour, are largely the result of the fact ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... put life out of the world. Let the begetting of paupers be a crime; let the health and happiness of the community rise higher than the satisfaction of individuals; let the self-denial practiced by the reasonable few be made a legal necessity to the unreasonable many. Let the blighted, the malformed, the brainless go back to the earth from which they came. Let the world of humanity be cleansed and sweetened and purified as Nature cleanses and sweetens and purifies her own kingdom. She removes her failures; we put ours under glass and treat them ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... Superior. {86} Food, as always, played a large part in winning the soul of the redskin. On church fete days as many as three thousand people were fed and lodged at Ste. Marie. That the priests suffered many trials among the unreasonable savages need not be told. When it rained too heavily they were accused of ruining the crops by praying for too much rain; when there was drouth they were blamed for not arranging this matter with their God; and when the scourge ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... comfortable livelihood, not respecting one before another. He is to command them their work, and see they do it, and not suffer them to live idle; he is either to reprove by words, or whip those that offend; for the Rod is prepared to bring the unreasonable ones to experience and moderation. That so children may not quarrel like beasts, but live in Peace, like rational men, experienced in yielding obedience to the Law and Officers of the Commonwealth: every one doing to another as he would have ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... hoped I need not give up a suffering friend, especially at the instigation of those by whom she suffered. I told her, that it was very hard to annex such a condition as that to my duty; when I was persuaded, that both duties might be performed, without derogating from either: that an unreasonable command (she must excuse me, I must say it, though I were slapped again) was a degree of tyranny: and I could not have expected, that at these years I should be allowed now will, no choice of my own! where a woman only was concerned, and the devilish sex ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... reckless. A woman's jealousy of another woman is always sufficiently dreadful, but when the object of jealousy is hers by legal right, when the sense of personal property is added to it, then it is one of the most terrible and unreasonable ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... caricaturist—the representation of it in the picture is a bad one. We never find in the paintings of Vandyke, Velasquez, Gainsborough, or other great artists, however difficult the period of fashion with which they had to deal, anything preposterous—always something beautiful, however unreasonable in ornamentation and clothes. Sometimes it is said that beauty and simplicity are the same. But we have to remember that complexity remains simple whilst unconsciousness of complexity remains. There were several periods of dress that retained beauty and ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... looked in astonishment. Most of the family thought that Milly's hopes and ideas for the future of her proteges were rather quixotic and unreasonable, aiming at taking them out of their proper sphere. But here her clear judgment and good sense saw some objections to ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... away down to the anchorage, and so satisfy myself that the Golden Hind was a real brig and really was lying there; and it occurred to me that I might kill two birds with one stone, and also have a reason to give for a visit which otherwise might seem unreasonable, if I were to take down my luggage and put ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... be that I am entirely wrong. I do not know. But I do know that it seems utterly unreasonable to force me to abstain from wine if I wish it, just because there are a few heavy imbibers of whiskey in the world. I think it is a far more serious matter to have practically all of us law-breakers than to have one-half of one per cent ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... Passionate, impulsive, and often unreasonable, his mind was singularly well-balanced and never before had it succumbed to obsession. He had taken the war as a normal episode in the history of a world dealing mainly in war; not as a strictly personal experience designed ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... came into the cabin and requested me to make for him eight of the handsomest bead baskets before we landed; and, seeing an amused and incredulous smile upon my face, he said: "You work so dexterously and so rapidly that I did not realize that my demand was unreasonable." Explaining to him that it would require eight hours of the closest application to accomplish that amount of work, he apologized and left me. Nor did this specimen of the "genus homo" evince any unusual ignorance of woman's work, whose ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... "You are unreasonable," said he, addressing the brothers. "You have seen the paper; M. Sechard's father told you that he had shut his son up, and that he had made capital paper in a single night from materials that must ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... quieter manner, he addressed himself to the Aunt Clara and the "well-beloved Heer Dirk," saying that he owed them both an apology, which he must take this opportunity to make, for having detained the lady at his right during so unreasonable a time that afternoon. When, however, they had heard the facts they would, he was sure, blame him no longer, especially if he told them that this breach of good manners had been the means of ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... judgment { in all insanities; { in hysteria. { Ex.: Patient who accepts mental suggestion { of disability as reality. { Perverted judgment Disorders / in severe dementias—as influenced by unreasonable of < fear, hatred, etc.; Judgment in all acute insanities—as manifested in inability { of patient to rid himself of his delusions. { Absence of judgment { in all acute insanities; { in later ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... prejudice is broken up and destroyed that the Japanese, and all other Orientals, are "inferior" races. It is this prejudice which distorts all the facts and all the values, which makes Californians and British Columbians and Australians sheerly unreasonable, and causes them to jump at one argument after another, each more fallacious than the last, to defend an attitude which at bottom is nothing but the childish and ignorant hatred of the uncultivated man for everything ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... why. The story you have just finished taught me to expect some unreasonable refinement upon that head. To be hired, to be bribed, to do our duty is supposed by some ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... to Roosevelt of political honors in the new Western country, and to what extent he listened to them, are questions to which neither his correspondence nor the newspapers of the time provide an answer. It is not unreasonable to believe that the possibility of becoming a political power in the Northwest allured him. His political position in the East was, at the moment, hopeless. Before the convention, he had antagonized the "regular" Republicans by his leadership of the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... indeed chiefly aimed at by those who bestirred themselves at this time in behalf of the country, that the Government might perceive they'd lose more of the excise than they could gain by the malt tax: but what alarmed people most was the unreasonable article of surcharge, to be levied proportionately off such as entered and paid the duty of what was malted after 23rd of June, in so far as the clear produce (after deducing the charges of collecting) fell short of 20,000l. sterling, whereby those who submitted to the Government and ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... yours of yesterday; mine to you of the same date has before this time acquainted you with my resolutions and sentiments respecting the Ranny. I think every demand she has made to you, except that of safety and respect for her person, is unreasonable. If the reports brought to me are true, your rejecting her offers, or any negotiation with her, would soon obtain you possession of the fort upon your own terms. I apprehend that she will contrive to defraud the captors of a considerable part of the booty ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... leading incident, and turning it to a pleasant and useful account at last, was at once the most interesting and the most difficult part of my design. Its difficulty was much enhanced by the mode of publication; for, it would be very unreasonable to expect that many readers, pursuing a story in portions from month to month through nineteen months, will, until they have it before them complete, perceive the relations of its finer threads to the whole pattern which is always before the eyes of the story-weaver at his loom. Yet, that ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... how can one deny the supernatural? They say it is unreasonable. But what if one's reason is stupid; what then? There now, on Garden Street, you know ... why, well, it appeared every evening! My husband's brother—what do you call him? Not beau-frere— what's ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... unreasonable audacity. Those who dwell there could shoot down, from secure hiding-places, any who approached it, before the latter could do them any harm. I have a simpler plan: we two shall take our seats in the punt, row ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Hill—the first recorded instance of veneering or incrusting walls with marble. The discovery of this method of cutting marble into thin slices, and decorating structures of ordinary materials with them, was stigmatised by Pliny as an unreasonable mode of extending luxury. The use of Lunar marble, on account of its easy accessibility, speedily extended to every kind of building, public and private. So vast were the quantities sent to Rome, that Ovid expressed his fear lest the mountains themselves should disappear through the digging ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... house was only reached by a country lane; and to all appearances (though it was situated but two miles from the small town of Wigfield), it was buried in the depths of the country. It was a thoroughly unreasonable house, appearing outside to be more than half of it roof, the stables being so arranged as to seem almost imposing in ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... is to persuade sinners to repentance; if to prevent this be thy quarrel, let us fall to it as soon as thou wilt,' vol. iii., p. 210. Southey attempts to vindicate the justices in condemning Bunyan, and grossly mis-states the facts; deeming him to be unreasonable and intolerant; that preaching was incompatible with his calling, and that he ought not to have sacrificed his liberty in such a cause! The poet-laureate makes these assertions, knowing the vast benefits which sprung from the determined ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... little creeter want to do but to go too. Her father was well off and wuz able to send her, and she had relatives there on her own side, some of the Pixleys, so her board wouldn't cost nothin'. So it didn't look nothin' unreasonable, though whether I could get her there and back without her mashin' all down on my hands, like a over ripe peach, she wuz that soft, wuz a question that hanted me, and ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... said, he had expended all his calmness in that one meeting with San Giacinto when he had been persuaded of the justice of the latter's claims. Since then he had felt nothing but bitterness, and the outward expression of it was either an unreasonable irritation concerning small matters, or some passionate outburst like the present against life, against the world in which he lived, against everything. It is scarcely to be wondered at that he should have felt the loss so deeply, more deeply even than Giovanni. He had been for ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... did resent her fatal obstinacy, and all the obligations which it imposed upon himself. He stood chained in fetters of her forging, as it were to the stake, but he was prepared to stand there like a man, and he did not deserve the things she said to him in a fresh paroxysm of unreasonable wrath. He might be a baby, but he was not a complete coward, or simply trying to make her miserable, as she declared; neither, on this occasion, was he thinking only of himself. But Phillida seemed suddenly to realise ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... business of the scene, we have soliloquies and asides, the artful delivery of which, duly to secure attention and enlist sympathy, evokes the best abilities of the player, bound to invest with an air of nature and truth-seeming purely fictitious and unreasonable proceedings. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Octavian. There is a "controversy" between Cicero and Sallust which is palpably a forgery, though a quotation from it occurs in Quintilian.[14] Suspicion has been attached to the letters to Brutus, which in the case of two letters (i. 16 and 17) is not unreasonable since they somewhat resemble the style of suasoriae, or rhetorical exercises, but the latest editors, Tyrrell and Purser, regard ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... and his niece. Surely that old man was on the square. He couldn't be otherwise with her beside him, believing in him; and a suspicion of deeper plots behind these actions was groundless. So far, all was legal, he supposed, with his scant knowledge of law; though the methods seemed unreasonable. The men might be doing what they thought to be right. Why be the first to resist? The men on the mines below had not done so. The title to this ground was capable of such easy proof that he and Dex need have no uneasiness. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... exceedingly proud man, as if a haughty way were needful to a man of business and an American, in order to check the contempt with which he might be treated as either. His large business, his pride, his unreasonable hatred of England (which he never saw), and a very fine and imposing appearance, he passed down to our Mr. Faringfield, by whom all these inheritances were increased. This gentleman, sensible of the injustice ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... father," Robert consented to say, but with a savage air of giving way to the unreasonable demands of affected fools. Why indeed should it be necessary in conversation always to end one's sentence with the name or ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... that he would do the latter at an hour he fixed, and then did not show himself in the breakfast-room till Mr. Wharton was gone. "I've got to go to your father to-day," he said to his wife, "and I thought it best not to begin till we come to the regular business. I hope he does not mean to be unreasonable." To this she made no answer. "Of course you think the want of reason will be all on ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... surely unreasonable, of the song remained. Often, while he ate, Artois turned his eyes towards the mountain of Capri, and each time that he did so he saw, beyond it and its circling sea, Sicily, Monte Amato, the dying lights on Etna, the evening star above its ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... all of no use, there was no change in store for him. He had cast his lot in the land of beer and sausages, and he must work out his salvation and the support of his family without a ladleful of the old familiar brew to satisfy his unreasonable caprices. ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... answer those who may say—as I have heard it said—That a woman's intellect is not fit for business; that when a woman takes to business, she is apt to do it ill, and unpleasantly likewise, to be more suspicious, more irritable, more grasping, more unreasonable, than regular men of business would be: that—as I have heard it put—"a woman does not fight fair." The answer is simple. That a woman's intellect is eminently fitted for business is proved by the enormous amount of business she gets through without any ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... for, but I know not by what ill fate guided, everything went wrong with us afterwards, and that which was worse, my husband grew strangely altered, forward, jealous, and unkind, and I was as impatient of bearing his carriage, as the carriage was unreasonable and unjust. These things proceeded so far, that we came at last to be in such ill terms with one another, that I claimed a promise of him, which he entered willingly into with me when I consented to come from England with him, viz. that if I found the country not to agree with ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... characteristic of aristocracy. But few would now be found to deny that his indignation was both natural and just, and that the act of Lord Nugent was the act of a boor and not of a gentleman. It was certainly unreasonable to expect that a society which could rejoice in this method of rebuking republican pretension could itself be agreeable to a republican. Cooper could not but be offended by the prejudices he found existing against his country and the dislike usually felt ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... there is nothing more unreasonable than the so-called hunting privileges," said the Hunter, in order to pacify him. "For that reason I will take upon myself the sin of violating the game laws of the local nobility in the interest of your estate, although by so doing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... madam, you often provoke me to say severe things, by unreasonable commendation. If you would not call for my praise, I would not give you my censure; but it constantly moves my indignation to be applied to, to speak well of a ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... ill-fortune would fall to the lot of Monseigneur, le Duc de Bourgogne if he served under M. de Vendome at the army. When I first learned that he was going to Flanders with M. de Vendome, I expressed my apprehensions to M. de Beauvilliers, who treated them as unreasonable and ridiculous. He soon had good cause to admit that I had not spoken without justice. Our disasters at Oudenarde were very great. We had many men and officers killed and wounded, four thousand men and seven hundred officers taken prisoners, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the ranch, for fear she'll have another spell while I'm gone. The doctor said she might have, any time. Were you headed for our place? If you are, come on; I was just starting back. I don't dare be away any longer." If that were a real unburdening, Ward was an unreasonable young man. Billy Louise looked at him again, and this time her ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... which Lady Coryston drove home from the Atherstones' cottage would have seemed to most people unreasonable. She had obtained—apparently—everything for which she had set out, and yet there she was, smarting and bruised through all her being, like one who has suffered intolerable humiliation and defeat. A woman of her type and class is so well ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bill in both Houses. The Lords, back from brief holiday, protest against delay in introducing Amending Bill. In vigorous speech LANSDOWNE insists on early day being named. CREWE, wringing his hands over unreasonable ways of some people, promises Tuesday next. Adds that, if upon consideration of proposed amendments noble lords should require longer interval before Second Reading of parent measure than is provided by original fixture ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... earthen vessel in water. That king who is entirely destitute of courage, who hath no spark of manliness, who is the slave of procrastination, who always acts with indiscretion, who is addicted to sensual pleasures, is seldom respected by his subjects. Benefited as thou has been, whence is this unreasonable grief of thine? Do not undo this graceful act done by the sons of Pritha, by indulging in such grief. When thou shouldst joy and reward the Pandavas, thou art grieving, O king? Indeed, this behaviour of thine is inconsistent. Be cheerful, do not cast ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... air-brake cock at shorter intervals. Ford glanced back at the following car framed in the red glow from the opened fire-box door. It was surging and bounding alarmingly over the uneven track, not without threatenings of derailment. Ford was willing to give the president the full benefit of his unreasonable pertinacity; but there were others to be considered—and one above ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... are not to fall into the clumsy error of supposing that the things which are beyond the grasp of reason are necessarily unreasonable things. Immediate feeling, so far as it is true, does not oppose but transcends and completes the highest results of thought. It contains within itself the sum of all the processes through which thought would pass in the act of attaining the same goal: supposing thought to have reached—as ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... and generous nature, who had erred, who had seen his error, who had regretted the lost affections of his people, who rejoiced in the dawning hope of regaining them, would be peculiarly careful to take no step which could give occasion of offence, even to the unreasonable. On the other hand, a tyrant, whose whole life was a lie, who hated the Constitution the more because he had been compelled to feign respect for it, and to whom his own honour and the love of his people were as nothing, would select such a crisis for some appalling violation of the law, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was the face of his niece, which rather haunted him. There seemed no improvement in the relations of the pair, in spite of Zara having had ample cause to feel jealous about Lady Highford since their arrival. Elinka, too, had had strange and unreasonable turns in her nature, that is what had made her so attractive. What if Zara and this really fine young Englishman, with whom he had mated her, should never get on? Then he laughed, when he thought of the impossibility of his ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... trading an inspiration for a bad habit and finally that he is reaching fame, permanence, or some other under-value, and that he is getting farther and farther from a perfect truth. But, on the contrary side of the picture, it is not unreasonable to imagine that if he (this poet, composer, and laborer) is open to all the overvalues within his reach,—if he stands unprotected from all the showers of the absolute which may beat upon him,—if he is willing to use or learn to ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... in 1849 the action of the Rector and Fellows was heartily applauded by the Visitor, Bishop Phillpotts, the famous Henry of Exeter. Their behaviour was conscientious, and Dr. Richards, the Rector, was a model of dignified urbanity. It is unreasonable to blame men for not being in advance ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... on a barrel the elephants had been performing on and got the attention of the audience and told them not to be unreasonable. He said the management had found by experience that after the ourang outang had been trained to eat like a man and wear men's clothes, that his tail was in the way, so at a great expense the management had caused Dennis' tail to be amputated ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... to Gibraltar and Minorca. When the house examined the papers relating to the Spanish depreciations, many severe reflections were uttered against the conduct of the ministry; and a motion was made, to resolve that Hosier's expedition was an unreasonable burden on the nation; but this too was rejected, and occasioned another protest. Nor did the clause in the corn-bill, for granting one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds to his majesty, pass through ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... time that, irritated at what he called the captive Pope's unreasonable obstinacy, Bonaparte conceived, and somewhat openly expressed, his notion of making France a Protestant country, and changing the religion of 30,000,000 of people by an Imperial decree. One or two of the good sayings of the witty, accomplished, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... we are well toward middle life that we should have done a great deal better at something else. Our vocations are likely enough to be illy chosen, since few persons are fit to choose them for us, and we are at the most unreasonable stage of life when we choose them for ourselves. And what the Lord made some people for, nobody ever can understand; some of us are for use and more are for waste, like the flowers. I am in such a hurry to know what the next world ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... money to start in the fur business for himself in 1786 in a small store on Water street. It is not unreasonable to suppose that at this time he, in common with all the fur dealers of the time, participated in the current methods of defrauding the Indians. It is certain that he contrived to get their most valuable furs for a jug of rum or for a few toys or notions. Returning ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... natures in man, and man's body might be good or bad according as spiritual or carnal affections swayed it, and all the rest of the good old change-for-sixpence-and-a-ha'penny-out, you know. But the lesson had been from Isaiah, where the unreasonable old prophet is indignant with the ladies of Zion because they don't want to look like dowdies, you remember: 'Tremble, ye women that are at ease, strip you and make you bare and gird sackcloth upon ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... many proved to have been impressed only for a time. President Edwards considered it likely that, in such cases, the proportion of real conversions might resemble the proportion of blossoms in spring, and fruit in autumn. Nor can anything be more unreasonable than to doubt the truth of all, because of the deceit of some. The world itself does not so act in judging of its own. The world reckons upon the possibility of being mistaken in many cases, and yet does not cease to believe ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... of literature. The man who disparages the beauty of flowers and birds and love and laughter and courage will never be counted among the lyric poets; and the man who questions the beauty of the inhabited world the imaginative writers have made—a world as unreasonable in its loveliness as the world of nature—is not in the way of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... allowance. The conflict which ensued with the stomach, when I announced this resolution, required great firmness to carry through. I tried wheedling and coaxing and promising; failing in these, I threatened to part company with a comrade so unreasonable, and he made ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... An unreasonable world, sacrificing bird-song and tranquil dusk and high golden noons to selling junk—yet it rules us. And life lives there. The office is filled with thrills of love and distrust and ambition. Each alley between desks quivers with secret romance as ceaselessly as a battle-trench, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... keeping up with her as she walked: "this is all rot. I didnt mean to offend you. I dont know what you mean, or what you want me to do. Dont be so unreasonable." ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... for one sou; to get her a herring for dinner and a bit of cold veal; she had a pound cooked to last her the week—of course, for the days when she dines at home and alone. She will not spend more than ten sous a day for her food. It is unreasonable. If I were to say anything about it to Monsieur le Marechal, he might quarrel with Monsieur le Baron and leave him nothing, whereas you, who are so kind and clever, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... longer than it is hoping, experiencing, or remembering something that refers to the body; but will not have it either to receive or seek for any congenial joy or satisfaction from within itself? Though what can be more absurd and unreasonable than—when there are two things that go to make up the man, a body and a soul, and the soul besides hath the perogative of governing—that the body should have its peculiar, natural, and proper good, and the soul none at ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... is included in righteousness. But it is often rejected as impracticable because fanciful teachers who substitute subtle definitions for simple duties have twisted its plain words until righteousness is made something so unreasonable as to be repulsive to a right mind. As a matter of fact, it means no more than rightness; the hunger and thirst for righteousness is but the earnest, supreme desire and endeavour to be right and to do right at all times, ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... I had to own that I was sick. She came up directly looking so anxious! And here I have been shut up ever since; only to day I am sitting up a little. Poor mother has had trouble enough with me; I know I have been cross and unreasonable, and it was all my own fault that I was ill. Another time I ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... Cyn, and I am poor; I have nothing to offer you but an honest, loving and true heart. I suppose a man who is in love is naturally unreasonable—I never was in love before, you know—but an extravagant hope will whisper to me, that even this little might not ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... at all unreasonable, considering the vast extent of the cavern—considering the distance which they knew they had penetrated—considering the various devious and like ways through which they had passed while in pursuit of the ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... hoped to find favour in the eyes of their young master, and now that I was raised to so high a position their hatred was terrible. I did my utmost: I obtained all kinds of favours for them; but all to no purpose, for they were unjust and unreasonable. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... How unjust and unreasonable is the heart of man, which feels it disagreeable to be obliged to do in regard to one man what in some measure it were right to do to all men! For is it right ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... evident astonishment at my behaviour, nor Pesca's fervid enumeration of the advantages offered to me by the new employment, had any effect in shaking my unreasonable disinclination to go to Limmeridge House. After starting all the petty objections that I could think of to going to Cumberland, and after hearing them answered, one after another, to my own complete discomfiture, I tried to set up a last obstacle ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... kind that I freely forgave him all; and I was beginning to think my lot too happy, and my husband actually too good for me, if not too good for this world, when, on the second Sunday after our arrival, he shocked and horrified me by another instance of his unreasonable exaction. We were walking home from the morning service, for it was a fine frosty day, and as we are so near the church, I had requested the ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the Greeks who were inclined to accept the doctrines of Cynicism, it was held that, while shame is not unreasonable, what is good may be done and discussed before all men. There are a number of authorities who say that Crates and Hipparchia consummated their marriage in the presence of many spectators. Lactantius (Inst. iii, 15) says that the practice was ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... hurry. All that she was going to was an empty and silent house, where nobody awaited her. What was that look on Elinor's face? Relief! to have it over, to get away again, away from her old home and her fond mother, away to her new life. Mrs. Dennistoun was not a jealous mother nor unreasonable. She said to herself—Well! it was no doubt a trial to the child to come back—to come alone. All the time, perhaps, she was afraid of being too closely questioned, of having to confess that he did not want to come, perhaps ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... manner in which men are brought into this condition; its continuance, and the means adopted for securing the authority and claim of masters, are all incidental and variable. They may be reasonable or unreasonable, just or unjust, at different times and places. The question, therefore, which the abolitionists have undertaken to decide, is not whether the laws enacted in the slaveholding States in relation to this subject are just or not, but whether ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... no one—wanted no one, but Daisy. Again his secret ill-humour waxed and justified itself. It was unreasonable and selfish that she should not be able to think for herself and the child better; after all, he was slaving for her as ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... proscriptive measures was called fresh rebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back a little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy: 'Mamma, make Bob 'have hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... that were inconceivable, to his contemporaries. But his contemporaries were able enough to appreciate his sordid exterior, and his cruel and treacherous spirit. To the whole nobility of France he was a fatal and unreasonable phenomenon. All such courts as that of Charles at Blois, or his friend Rene's in Provence, would soon be made impossible: interference was the order of the day; hunting was already abolished; and who should say ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with no loving Mentor to guard him from blunders or to help to retrieve the consequences of his false positions. Had he been surrounded with a few true friends, who could appreciate what was great in him and pity what was weak, his life would have been different. His father was hard, exacting, and unreasonable; hence he had no influence. His mother had neither the wisdom to influence him, nor the courage to rebuke her husband; and alas! poor woman, she was in such thraldom herself to conventionalisms, that she could not understand a youth who set ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Synod had readily agreed to Mrs. Cliff's plan to leave them at Nassau and let them return by a regular passenger steamer, and they all preferred to go by sea to Savannah and then to their homes by rail. With expenses paid, none but the most unreasonable of men could have objected to ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... make the whole journey with equal success. I therefore picked myself up, highly disconcerted, and started afresh. The very same thing happened a second and a third time, and I don't think I shall be considered unreasonable for becoming furiously angry. I should certainly have committed cervicide had any weapon been at hand. I seized the animal by the horns, shook, cuffed, and kicked him, but all to no purpose. Long Isaac, who was passing in his ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... to be in want, and being afraid lest I should die and the sacrifices not be offered to my ancestors, I accept the grain as an alms. But the spirits and the dried flesh which you offer to me are the appliances of a feast. For a poor man to be feasting is certainly unreasonable. This is the ground of my refusing your gift. I have no thought of asserting my independence [3].' To the same effect is the account of Tsze-sze, which we have from Liu Hsiang. That scholar relates:— 'When Chi was living ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... care about him," said Hal. "I have taken an unreasonable dislike to him. I have a certain repellent feeling ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... these nocturnal expeditions and anxieties that on lying down I fell asleep, and on waking found more than the usual assemblage in the room, and the men were obviously agog about something. They have a singular, and I hope an unreasonable, fear of the Japanese Government. Mr. Von Siebold thinks that the officials threaten and knock them about; and this is possible; but I really think that the Kaitaikushi Department means well by them, and, besides removing the oppressive restrictions by which, as a conquered race, they ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... in themselves extremely trifling; but are intended to recall to my recollection (if it pleases God to restore me again to my dear native land) other particulars, illustrative of the manners and customs of the natives, which would have swelled this bulky communication to a most unreasonable size. ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park |
