Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Accidental   /ˌæksədˈɛntəl/  /ˌæksədˈɛnəl/   Listen
Accidental

noun
1.
A musical notation that makes a note sharp or flat or natural although that is not part of the key signature.



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Accidental" Quotes from Famous Books



... even at the early age of fifteen, on the point of his descent, lest from his name he might be supposed of French extraction, that, even into the ears of George III. (that king having, in an accidental interview with him at Frogmore, suggested the possibility of his family having come to England at the time of the Huguenot exodus from France) he ventured to breathe the most earnest protest against any supposition of that nature, and boldly insisted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... he has been known, or can be imagined to exist; because it is discoverable by natural reason, and suitable to our natural constitution; because its fitness and wisdom are founded on the general nature of human beings, and not on any of those temporary and accidental situations in which they may be placed. It is with still more propriety, and indeed with the highest strictness, and the most perfect accuracy, considered as a law, when, according to those just and magnificent views which philosophy and religion open to us of the government of the ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh

... physiognomy of the being within,—its true image reflected and thrown out from the concave mirror."—With this may well be coupled Schlegel's remarks on the same point: "Form is mechanical when it is impressed upon any piece of matter by an outward operation, as an accidental addition without regard to the nature of the thing; as, for example, when we give any form at pleasure to a soft mass, to be retained after induration. Organic form on the contrary, is innate; it unfolds, itself from within, and attains its determinate character along with the full ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... misunderstanding. Sainte Aldegonde had stationed certain members of the munition-chamber in the cathedral tower, with orders to discharge three rockets, when they should perceive a beacon-fire which he should light in Fort Tholouse. The watchmen mistook an accidental camp-fire in the neighbourhood for the preconcerted signal, and sent up the rockets. Hohenlo understanding, accordingly, that the expedition was on the point of starting from Antwerp, hastened to perform his portion of the work, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... to hear," the latter concluded, with some slight asperity in his manner, "that the circumstance to which I have alluded was accidental and will ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... whose art was 'joy in widest commonalty spread.' Mr. Crane began his lecture by pointing out that Art had two fields, aspect and adaptation, and that it was primarily with the latter that the designer was concerned, his object being not literal fact but ideal beauty. With the unstudied and accidental effects of Nature the designer had nothing to do. He sought for principles and proceeded by geometric plan and abstract line and colour. Pictorial art is isolated and unrelated, and the frame is the last relic of the old connection between ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... interesting features in this connection. Admitting such inoculation may secure immunity, recent experiments in the action of this as well as kindred poisons give no grounds for believing it at all universal or even common, but as depending upon occult physiological or accidental phenomena. For instance, the writer and his father are equally proof against the contagion and inoculation of vaccination and variola, in spite of repeated attempts to secure both, while their respective mothers ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... but not exceed the compass of your imagination. But how shall I convey to you an idea of the ever-varying and accidental beauties of this majestic scenery! Sometimes the vapour-winged tempest, flitting along some lonely vale, embrowns it with a solemn shade, whilst every thing around glitters in the fullness of meridian splendour. On a sudden, all is dark and gloomy; the thunder rolls from rock to ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... moment he realised that he had heard the intonation of Miss Wycliffe's voice, or had imagined it. He would doubtless have thought it mere imagination, some accidental resemblance to which his ear had given identity, had not Cardington's manner registered a sudden emotional disturbance. He paused in his narration, like one smitten with mental atrophy and searching for the word that was about to reach ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... seemed to be descended from as good parentage, was as well dressed and fed, and held in as much estimation as those who employed him; they were once nearly related; their different degrees of prosperity is what has caused the various shades of their community. But this accidental difference has introduced, as yet, neither arrogance nor pride on the one part, nor meanness and servility on the other. All their houses are neat, convenient, and comfortable; some of them are filled with two families, for when the husbands are at sea, the wives require less house-room. ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... that there might be water to wash the statue'. JOHNSON. 'Nay, sir, the argument from the name is gone. The name is exhausted by what we see. We have no occasion to go to a distance for what we can pick up under our feet. Had it been an accidental name, the similarity between it and Anaitis might have had something in it; but it turns out to be a mere physiological name.' Macleod said, Mr M'Queen's knowledge of etymology had destroyed his conjecture. JOHNSON. 'You ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... admit, Mr. Langford," the chairman replied, "is a very strong point in your evidence. It is your only strong point, however, and there is just a possibility that we may all be misled by a mere accidental resemblance. Will you permit me to see ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... chameleonship that his greatest good fortune lies. He has only to change his habitat—his ASSOCIATIONS. But the impulse to do it must come from the OUTSIDE—he cannot originate it himself, with that purpose in view. Sometimes a very small and accidental thing can furnish him the initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a new idea. The chance remark of a sweetheart, "I hear that you are a coward," may water a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish, and ended in producing a surprising fruitage—in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... but momentary, and might have been accidental, the person inside having evidently given orders to let them pass. Leaning on his oar against the out-flowing tide, the gondolier took his hat off and bowed lowly, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... provoking a second edition of it. The Earl was grieved—so far as a nature like his could entertain grief—to lose his second wife; but to find that the first wife had been discovered, and by her daughter, possessed the additional character of insult. That the occurrence was accidental did not alter matters. Words would not content the aggrieved mourner: his hand sought the hilt of his sword, and Sir Richard, thinking discretion the better part of valour, made his way, as quickly as ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt

... more richly cultivated, or who was more calculated to adorn the highest station. And here he was wasting life in a secluded village in a foreign country! What would become of him after his present apparently slender resources should be exhausted, was painful to imagine. The more painful, that the accidental discovery of the direction of a letter had disclosed his former rank. It was part of an envelope addressed, "A Monsieur Monsieur le Comte Choynowski," and left as a mark in a book, all except the name being torn off. But the fact needed no confirmation. All his habits and ways of ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford

... that for fully an hour I felt ill; and I spoke quite wickedly to George the day after he arrived, because he said that Sholto had better not take me down to dinner, although his doing so was quite accidental. I know you will believe me when I tell you that I was quite unconscious that he had been unusually attentive to me; and I was about to write you an indignant denial, only I shewed Nelly your letter, and she crushed me by telling me she had noticed it too. We ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... a moment as this, a single accidental shot (several such have happened this morning; a woman standing at a window at the corner of the Rue Saint Marc was nearly killed by the carelessness, of one of the Guards),—a single shot, a cry even, or a menacing gesture would suffice to kindle the blaze. Nobody. moves or speaks. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... historians, was attracted to Ireland by a noble sympathy for the fallen which he shared with very few of his fellow-countrymen. We are told that he sympathized with the spirit of Irish nationality. "A State," he would say, "is accidental; it can be made or unmade; but a nation is something real which can be ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... mistakes," Bellamy assured her. "He saw Laverick enter that passage and come out. Afterwards he went back to his office, although he had closed up there and had been on his homeward way. The thing could not have been accidental." ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Neal, a member of the Royal Society of London.—Translator. Sir Paul Neal, whose lapsus suggested this fable, thought he had discovered an animal in the moon. Unluckily, however, after having made his "discovery" known, it was found that the ground of it was simply the accidental presence of a mouse in the object-glass of his telescope. Samuel Butler, the author of "Hudibras," has also made fun of this otherwise rather tragical episode in the early history of the Royal Society of London, vide his "Elephant in the Moon." [27] One philosopher.—Democritus, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... his son's infancy and boyhood Michael Gregoriev, disregarding all thought of his child, saw practically nothing of the boy. He had, in his heart, some faint satisfaction concerning Ivan's sex, mingled with a fancy, gained after one accidental interview, that nevertheless, considering his tastes and traits, Sophia's child should have been a girl. Later, as Ivan began to emerge a little from utter childishness, his father had resorted occasionally to his school-room to search the little dweller there for certain longed-for ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... ELLEN,—Arthur wishes you would burn my letters. He was out when I commenced this letter, but he has just come in. It is not "old friends" he mistrusts, he says, but the chances of war—the accidental passing of letters into hands and under eyes for ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... that a peculiarity appearing in a caterpillar (or in a child, as shown by the hereditariness of peculiarities in the milk-teeth) reappears in its offspring, so we can at once see that our common principle of the selection of slight accidental variations would modify and adapt a caterpillar to a new or changing condition, precisely as in the full-grown butterfly. Hence probably it is that caterpillars of different species of the Lepidoptera differ more than those embryos, at a corresponding early period of life, ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... butter and potatoes into the kitchen. This project of theirs at first comprehended vegetables of every description and fruits as well, but the sagacious house-maid vetoed anything so wholesale as all that. She agreed that the accidental delivery of a side of bacon, or a mistake in the counting of a dozen eggs, or the overweighing and undercharging of a pound of butter, or the perfectly natural error of sending a peck and a half of potatoes ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... human inconsistency that one of the interests of the new place to her was the accidental virtues of its lying near her forefathers' country (for they were not Blakemore men, though her mother was Blakemore to the bone). The dairy called Talbothays, for which she was bound, stood not remotely from some of the ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... I may never again be in a state of mind so unchristian as the mental frame in which I lived for some weeks, respecting the memory of Master B. Whether his bell was rung by rats, or mice, or bats, or wind, or what other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one cause, sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion, I don't know; but, certain it is, that it did ring two nights out of three, until I conceived the happy idea of twisting Master B.'s neck—in other words, ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens

... this history would have been written but for an accidental and highly interesting circumstance. In the first party young Jack Irons rode a colt, just broken, with the girl captive, now happily released. The boy had helped every one to get away; then there seemed to be no ridable horse for him. He walked for a distance by the stranger's mount ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... one I shouldn't be able to say for certain; because once a thing's done, no one ever knows how it happened. Oh! dear me, the mystery of life; The inaccuracy of thought! The ignorance of humanity! To show how very little control of our possessions we have—what an accidental affair this living is after all our civilization—let me just count over a few of the things lost in one lifetime, beginning, for that seems always the most mysterious of losses—what cat would gnaw, what rat would nibble—three ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf

... department is genuinely interested in declining "fraudulent and unworthy" copy, I would call their attention to the ridiculous claims of Dr. Shoop's medicines, which "cure" almost every disease; to two hair removers, one an "Indian Secret", the other an "accidental discovery", both either fakes or dangerous; to the lying claims of Hall's Catarrh Cure, that it is "a positive cure for catarrh", in all its stages; to "Syrup of Figs", which is not a fig syrup, but a ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... looked, but saw nothing different from the general surface in that quarter. The master beckoned the negro, and touching a stone not wider than his three fingers, but reddish in hue, and looking like mere chinking lodged in an accidental crevice, signed him to strike it with the end of the bar. Once—twice—the stone refused to stir; with the third blow it was driven in out of sight, and, being followed vigorously, was heard to drop on the other side. The wall thereupon, to the height of the sarcophagus and the width ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... arbitrarily chosen, and changeable at will, must therefore necessarily lead to error, and it has done so to a very great extent. For this designation makes it appear as though the Jewish element in the Christian religion were something accidental, while it is rather the case that all Christianity, in so far as something alien is not foisted into it, appears as the religion of Israel perfected and spiritualised. We are therefore not justified in speaking of Jewish Christianity, where ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... and improper to be in a room at all, but to have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible. He cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his business, careful as he went not to inflict any accidental injury on ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... Greek is [Greek: naulos] or [Greek: naulon], and in Latin naulum. Have these any connexion with the Arabic word, or are they to be traced to an independent source, and the coincidence in sense and sound with the Arabic merely accidental? If distinct, are the words now in use in the Mediterranean ports derived from the Greek or the Arabic? If the words be not identical, may not the Greek be derived from the Sanscrit, thus [Sanskrit: nau], nau, or in the pure form [Sanskrit: nawah], nawah, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various

... he was particularly against us at the start," said Edmund. "Only he was for treating us with less consideration than Ala was disposed to show. But after the first accidental shooting, and the drubbing that Juba gave him, naturally his prejudices were aroused, and he could hardly be blamed for thinking us dangerous. Then, when he found himself defeated, and his wishes ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... of the characters in Wilhelm Meister, "lies before us, like a vast quarry before the architect. He does not deserve the name if he does not compose with these accidental natural materials an image whose source is in his mind, and if he does not do it with the greatest possible economy, solidity, and perfection. All that we find outside of us, nay, within us, is object-matter; but deep within us lives ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... The accidental direction of the wind determines which way it falls; but either north or south it remains for the good of man. In like manner watch not for favorable winds; dispense on every side, north and south, of thy abundance; nor be too solicitous as to ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings

... medium, and the irritability of the organs which receive the impressions: it is because experiments have not been sufficiently multiplied with a view to these three variable elements, that, in the action of electric eels and torpedos, accidental circumstances have been taken for absolute conditions, without which the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... message from her father, and a reaction of disgust set in. Of what good were such encounters if they were to have no sequel? She would probably never meet Peter Van Degen again—or, if she DID run across him in the same accidental way, she knew they could not continue their conversation without being "introduced." What was the use of being beautiful and attracting attention if one were perpetually doomed to relapse again into the ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... for the day, boys, I wish to refer to an incident that happened here yesterday morning, which must be fresh in your memories. I mean the accidental discovery of the lost examination paper for the Nightingale Scholarship. I hope you will not draw hasty conclusions from what then occurred. The boy in whose book the paper was found is present here, and has assured me on his honour he never saw the paper before, and is quite ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... cried, thinking of Rachel's words. He looked so encouraged that I am afraid I have sent him post-haste to the Flossy girl, and gotten him into life-long trouble. But I had gone too far. I quite hurried, in my accidental endeavor to ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... with us. Then we lost sight of him, only to find him standing near the public library when we had emerged from it that afternoon, and now here he was sitting in the stalls of the theatre not half a dozen chairs from us. Whether this continual companionship was designed or only accidental, I could not of course say, but I must own that I did not like the look of it. Could it be possible, I asked myself, that Nikola, learning our departure for Australia in the Pescadore, had cabled from Port Said to this man ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... peasant, as I know him, and about people of lowly culture in general so far as I have learnt to know about them, is that the ethics of amity belong to their natural and normal mood, whereas the ethics of enmity, being but 'as the shadow of a passing fear,' are relatively accidental. Thus to the thesis that human charity is a by-product, I retort squarely with the counter-thesis that human hatred is a by-product. The brute that lurks in our common human nature will break bounds sometimes; but I believe that whenever man, be he savage or civilised, is at ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... designed or accidental violations of treaties and the laws of nations afford JUST causes of war, they are less to be apprehended under one general government than under several lesser ones, and in that respect the former most favors ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... understood to wear them around his soul, as he may the ancient armour or the modern uniform around his body; whilst it is easy to conceive a dress more graceful than either. The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise, and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume. Few poets of ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... to grasp at eternal life. He was not fit to carry water for her—he knew that; it was a miracle of luck and a fantastic stroke that had enabled him to see her and be with her and talk with her that night. It was accidental. There was no merit in it. He did not deserve such fortune. His mood was essentially religious. He was humble and meek, filled with self-disparagement and abasement. In such frame of mind sinners come to the penitent form. He was convicted of sin. But as the meek and lowly at the penitent ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... Weezee village," he tells us, "there are few sounds to disturb the traveller's night rest. The horn of the new-comers, and the reply to it from a neighbouring village, an accidental alarm, the chirping of crickets, and the cry from a sick child occasionally, however, broke the stillness. At dawn the first sounds were the crowing of cocks, the lowing of cows, the bleating of calves, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... dangerous things. He began shrewdly to suspect that the popular heresy was rapidly extending into higher regions; but it was not the President alone who discovered how widely the contamination was spreading. The meeting, the accidental small talk, which had passed so swiftly from gaiety to gravity, the rapid exchange of ideas, and the free-masonry by which intelligence upon forbidden topics had been mutually conveyed, became events of historical importance. Interviews between nobles, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... a basis, on which to rest their Chronology? Must we run back to the epoch of the original dispersion of man, or can we rest at a subsequent point? Has the era of christianity any definite relation to their migration? Was the migration designed, or accidental? Did it consist of one tribe, or twenty tribes? Did it happen at one epoch, or many epochs? Have they wandered here eighteen centuries, or double that period? These are some of the ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... fillip from an accidental meeting with Kilmeny, the first since the night of her engagement. Joyce and Moya were coming out of a stationer's when they came face ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... resolved to keep a strict silence respecting his interview with Theodora, and he entertained a belief that the fears of the unfortunate girl would induce her to follow a similar course. Thus he flattered himself there was nothing to apprehend farther than the danger of an accidental meeting. ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... characters but wrote that "it will be observed that the name Eutamias, proposed by Trouessart in 1880 as a subgenus of Tamias is here adopted as a full genus. This is because of the conviction that the superficial resemblance between the two groups is accidental parallelism, in no way indicative of affinity. In fact the two groups, if my notion of their relationship is correct, had different ancestors, Tamias being an offshoot of the ground-squirrels of the subgenus Ictidomys of Allen, and Eutamias ...
— Genera and Subgenera of Chipmunks • John A. White

... may be called accidental, had nearly done more than repay the Austrians for all their reverses. The left of their line, stationed still further down the Mincio,—at Puzzuolo, no sooner learned from the cannonade that the French were at Borghetto, than they hastened to ascend the stream, with the view of assisting ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... say for sure, but I think not," the professor replied. "I am inclined to believe that they got these tanks of gas to use in driving away any who might try to get at their secret—a useless secret as it proves now. But the accidental deaths, both of cattle and men, from the underground gas must have been going on here a long time," ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker

... a stamp around, and when we was separated it was only a question of shootin' on sight. He left Lagrange at sun up the next morning, and I struck across a bit o' buckeye and underbrush and came upon him, accidental like, on the Red Chief Road. I drawed when I sighted him, and called out. He slipped from his mare and covered himself with her flanks, reaching for his holster, but she rared and backed down on him across the road and into the grass, where I got in ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... conversation, had started a new covey of strange fancies. Lancelot followed them over hill and dale, glad to escape a moment from the mournful lessons of that evening; but even over them there was a cloud of sadness. Harry Verney's last words, and Argemone's accidental whisper about 'a curse upon the Lavingtons,' rose to his mind. He longed to ask Tregarva, but he was afraid—not of the man, for there was a delicacy in his truthfulness which encouraged the most utter confidence; but of the subject itself; but ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... We have seen how St. Paul was led on to grasp the conception of one church universal manifested in all the local churches. Its unity is not purely accidental in that individuals have been forced to act together under pressure of chance circumstances. Nor is the ideal of unity adopted simply because experience teaches that "union is strength." Nor is it even based on the philosophical conception ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... exchanged for lonely emotions excited by night reading. She was weeping over the dramatist's fifth act of tragedy, or the romancist's more morbid appeals to the passions, while nature demanded rest. Then an accidental meeting with the young harper—he recovering a book she had dropped into the Tivy out of her hand, from having fallen asleep through exertion, and restoring it with a grace quite romance-hero like—produced a new era, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... producing animals similar to themselves in their general structure, but with frequent additional improvements; which the preceding parent might in some measure have acquired by his habits of life or accidental situation. ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... looked I seemed to see this question written: Was Page Hanaford's absence at the time of the detectives' visit accidental or planned? Try as I would to put the hateful thought away from me, it came ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... more frequent opportunities of displaying his learning, he arose, in a short time, to a high reputation, of which the great number of his auditors was a sufficient proof, and which the proficiency of his pupils showed not to be accidental ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man.—It is not, then, to be supposed that any one, who holds that sublime notion of Poetry which I have attempted to convey, will break in upon the sanctity and truth of his pictures by transitory and accidental ornaments, and endeavour to excite admiration of himself by arts, the necessity of which must manifestly depend upon the assumed ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... Hiram, boring the Cap'n with inquisitive gaze. "But you never can tell what's what in this world, and so long as we're looking for clues we might as well have an understandin', so's to see if there's any such thing as two wimmen meetin' accidental and comparin' notes and ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... "photographic artist," and you see at once that the thing is a mask, as silly as the old tragic and comic mask. The only expression allowable in great portraiture is the expression of character and moral quality, not of anything temporary, fleeting, and accidental. Apart from portraiture you don't want even so much, or very seldom: in fact, you only want types, symbols, suggestions. The moment you give what people call expression, you destroy the typical character of heads and degrade them into ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... prairie districts of the United States, though many of them come north as far as southern Kansas and southwestern Missouri to spend the summer and rear their families. In winter they go as far south as Costa Rico. Restricted as their habitat is, it is curious to note that they are "accidental" in a few unexpected places, such as Key West, Fla., Norfolk, Va., and also in several localities in New England, Manitoba, and Hudson Bay Territory. Prof. W. W. Cooke, of Colorado, says they are "rare, if not accidental," ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... the dark he was conscious of only a blob of faces and the grip of one hand that was quite too hot. Even in the dark he felt embarrassed, as the conscious caller exposed nakedly to the world. What had she done this for? It was not too considerate of her. Perhaps it was purely accidental. He began to speculate on how soon the crowd might break up, and found himself dangling uncomfortably on the porch railing close beside the chair of a shadowy girl who was buried in its depths. He could look down into ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... to prove that her father was a white man who had penetrated into these regions and lived for some little time at least among the blacks—much as I myself was doing. My interest in the matter was first of all roused by the accidental discovery of a cairn five feet or six feet high, made of loose flat stones. My experience was such by this time that I saw at a glance this cairn was not the work of a native. Drawings and figures, and a variety of curious characters, were faintly discernible on some of the stones, but were ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... discouraged and disgruntled men and the cheerfulness of the lot actually digging. Nobody had any scientific system to go on. Often a divining-rod was employed to determine where to dig. Many stories were current of accidental finds; as when one man, tiring of waiting for his dog to get through digging out a ground squirrel, pulled the animal out by the tail, and with it a large nugget. Another story is told of a sailor who asked some miners resting at ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... prints taken from Europe by missionaries. Major Strange says: "The European art of chiaroscuro engraving is in all essentials identical with that of Japanese colour-printing.... It seems, therefore, not vain to point out that the accidental sight of one of the Italian colour-prints may have suggested the process to the Japanese." The Italians aimed more at expressing "relief" and the Japanese at flat colour arrangements; the former used oily colours, and the latter fair distemper tints; these are ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher

... of Pig No. 3 rolling down hill in the churn and the Lambikin in the Drumikin can scarcely be accidental, though, it must be confessed, the tale has undergone considerable modification before it ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... other hand, Say Koitza, when she began to question her son, had in view a certain object. She was anxious to find out who the maiden was whose looks had at once charmed her. Next she was curious to know whether the meeting of the two was accidental or not. Therefore the leading question, "And you go with that girl?" Under ordinary circumstances his affirmative reply might have filled her motherly heart with joy, for Mitsha's appearance had struck her fancy; but now it filled her with dismay. ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot

... "at first some of them would go up like pop corn, higher than my head. But I never once have been injured by one of them except perhaps an accidental stepping on my foot. They never kick; they don't know how to kick. You can go behind them as ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... few days will complete them,—not to show my innocence,—the improbability of your charge, and inconsistency of your own conduct, making that unnecessary; but to show to what lengths a rancorous heart, puffed up by sudden and accidental wealth, can push a man of weak judgment and ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various

... which variations, man made a Fantail, cannot, I think, logically argue that the tail of the woodpecker was formed by variations providentially ordained. It seems to me that variations in the domestic and wild conditions are due to unknown causes, and are without purpose, and in so far accidental; and that they become purposeful only when they are selected by man for his pleasure, or by what we call Natural Selection in the struggle for life, and under changing conditions. I do not wish to say that God did ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... when in the Koran he informs his followers that birds, beasts, and the rest are 'nations' like themselves, nor does any intrinsic distinction exist between them and the human species, except what accidental diversity the 'King,' the 'Proud One,' the 'Mighty,' the 'Giant,' etc., as he styles his God, may have been pleased to make, just as he willed it, and so long as he ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... would pluck it out. I suppose you think, and baith o' you farmers too, that there's no necessity for praying for rain the nicht? You'll be content, will ye, if Mr. Dishart just drops in to the kirk some day, accidental-like, and ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... had already started homewards, with the tin bath balanced once more on the top of the mattresses and boxes; when the house was empty, and I was waiting, my hat and jacket on, and flax-stick in hand, eager to set out, a doubt arose about the expediency of our return home. Some accidental delay had prevented the dray from arriving in time to start for Christchurch with the last load, and between two and three hundred pounds worth of wool still remained in the shed,—packed and labelled indeed, but neither insured nor protected from the ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... mornings Wade had surprised Jack Belllounds in the blacksmith shop. The meetings were accidental, yet Wade ever remembered how coincidence beckoned him thither and how circumstance magnified strange reflections. There was no reason why Jack should not be tinkering in the blacksmith shop early of a morning. But Wade followed an uncanny guidance. Like his hound Fox, ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... of this legend is its Norse-like breadth or grandeur and its genial humor, which are very remarkable characteristics for the fictions of savages. Its resemblance to the Scandinavian tales is, if accidental, very remarkable. The two heroes are, like Thor and Odin, giant heroes who make war on Jotuns and Trolls; that is, giant-like sorcerers. It is their profession; they live in it. No one can read Beowulf or the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... jutting rocks, and timeworn boulders of granite, one doesn't feel much astonishment to see some one stone set on end a little more obviously than the rest, or to find out by dint of perseverance a little arrangement, which may or may not be accidental: added to this, the cottages, and walls, and field enclosures are built of such immense blocks cleared off the surface of the fields, that one's mind is prepared for far more than the Druids ever did: many a Stonehengeified doorway, many a Titanic pigstye, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... reply was 'Vary nigh a hundred years'!" In 1845 there died at Buxton, at the age of ninety-six, a woman named Pheasy Molly, who had been for many years an inveterate smoker. Her death was caused by the accidental ignition of her clothes as she was lighting her pipe at the fire. She had burned herself more than once before in performing the same operation; but her pipe she was bound to have, and so met ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... Pollution opened for signature - 17 February 1978 entered into force - 2 October 1983 objective - to preserve the marine environment through the complete elimination of pollution by oil and other harmful substances and the minimization of accidental discharge of such substances parties - (115) Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burma, Cambodia, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... was leanin' over the rail, When his footing some way slipped, An' (this is the woefulest part o' my tale), He was accidental unshipped! ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... cases of this nature, that the fate of the convicts has depended more upon the accidental circumstance of their being brought earlier or later to trial than to any steady principle of equity applied to their several cases. Without great care and sobriety, criminal justice generally begins with anger and ends in negligence. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... her that Mr. Lee had no alternative in reporting to the commandant his discovery "down the road," but she had believed herself of sufficient value in that officer's brown eyes to induce him to at least postpone any mention of that piece of accidental knowledge; and though, in her heart of hearts, she knows she respects him the more because she could not prevail against his sense of duty, she is stung to the quick, and, womanlike, has made him ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... calling upon all native and patriotic Porto Ricans who hold liberty dearer than life, to join them and accomplish the overthrow of the Spanish government and the death of the governor and his officials. The plans of the conspirators were so carefully laid that had it not been for the accidental discovery of Castillo's letter, they would unquestionably ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall

... dear, it would mortify your family, who have a right to be proud, and then there is Mr. Millard, who, I suppose, would feel that it would be a lasting disgrace." These words were spoken in a relaxed and indifferent tone, as though it was an accidental commonplace of the subject ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... accidental home-shot, but kept still; he was learning his part; and he was playing it well, too, for a pretty dull beginner. I struck up a diversion. I offered the woman food and liquor, but she refused both. She would allow nothing to come between her and the release of death. Then I slipped ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... that could, except by great stretching of charity and the imagination, be called Christianity. One might find, perhaps, a parallelism with the system ascribed to some Gnostics, but that is far more probably an accidental rather than a sympathetic coincidence. Of that the reader shall presently have an ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... enable me to procure them. For the situation of affairs in England I refer you to Mr Rogers, Aid de Camp to Mons. du Coudray. I have presented a number of memoirs, which have been very favorably received, and the last by his Majesty, but my being wholly destitute of other than accidental and gratuitous assistance will not permit my sending you copies. Indeed I was obliged to make them so as to explain the rise, the nature, and the progress of the dispute. I have been assured by the Ministers, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... and I are like to like. We come of the same race, we speak the same language, we worship the same God, we have the same ideas of culture and of pleasures. The difference is one that is not patent to the eye or to the ear. It is a difference of accidental incident, not ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... than the simple truth, when on his departure from Rome he declared that, if he had only gold enough, he would undertake to buy the city itself. But the whole external and internal government of this period bore the same stamp of miserable baseness. In our case the accidental fact, that the war in Africa is brought nearer to us by means of better accounts than the other contemporary military and political events, shifts the true perspective; contemporaries learned by these revelations nothing but what everybody knew long before and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... and deep matters. Presently she heard a step behind her, and Elsie's father came up and joined her. Since his introduction to Helen at the distinguished tea-party given by the Widow Rowens, and before her coming to sit with Elsie, Mr. Dudley Venner had in the most accidental way in the world met her on several occasions: once after church, when she happened to be caught in a slight shower and he insisted on holding his umbrella over her on her way home;—once at a small party at one of the mansion-houses, where ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... getting up several times between that hour and the breaking of dawn Owen slept sounder than he had done for many a day; he seemed to feel a new confidence in himself, as if matters had taken a turn for the better, and in this accidental meeting with his benefactors his fortunes had begun to ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... This ancient homestead of the Carroll family is very well described by Mr. Russell in his "Diary:" his visit, however, was to the late Professor, who died last year. The law of primogeniture does not prevail here, and it was only an accidental succession of single heirs, that brought an undivided patrimony down to the present generation. One cannot help regretting that the estate is to be cut up now into five shares or more. Eleven thousand acres of fertile hill and dale, sinking ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... what he called "barber-shop chords." He used a beautiful accidental at the word "be," of which he was very fond, and he used to hang on that note for a long time, so that those in the extreme rear of the hall, as he was wont to explain, should get the full benefit of it. And it was his custom to emphasize "for" in the last line by speaking instead ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, —master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... of Probabilities, theory of Chances; bookmaking; assurance; speculation, gaming &c 621. V. chance, hap, turn up; fall to one's lot; be one's fate &c 601; stumble on light upon; take one's chance &c 621. Adj. casual, fortuitous, accidental, adventitious, causeless, incidental, contingent, uncaused, undetermined, indeterminate; random, statistical; possible &c 470; unintentional &c 621. Adv. by chance, accidentally, by accident; casually; perchance &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... subsequently acquire considerable magnitude in the bladder, it may be inferred, that the formation of this compound is connected with a distinct diathesis, excluding the existence of other diatheses, and that is not an accidental occurrence, happening in common with ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... life makes us perfectly assured, come over us like the soft pulsations of a west wind in summer, laden with the sweets of a new-mown field; or like the clear, streaming moonlight in the brief interval between the broken clouds; or like remembered music, which some accidental word of a song has startled from its place and diffused through the soul. Thus departed Christian friends are the means of unspeakable happiness to survivors; thus "their works do follow them;" and we should make large account of this when ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... the French into literature. Most of the works of imagination published in France contain some opinions or some tinge caught from pantheistical doctrines, or they disclose some tendency to such doctrines in their authors. This appears to me not only to proceed from an accidental, but from ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... original plan of 1090, or thereabouts, the old tower—the southern tower—was given greater width than the northern. Such inequalities were common in the early churches, and so is a great deal of dispute in modern books whether they were accidental or intentional, while no one denies that they are amusing. In these towers the difference is not great,—perhaps fourteen or fifteen inches,—but it caused the architect to correct it, in order to fit his front to the axis of the church, by throwing his ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... who made themselves so strongly felt in the salons. SainteBeuve tells us that Fontenelle, with other friends of Mme. de Lambert, first gave it this tendency; but his mission was apparently an unconscious one, and strikingly illustrates the accidental character of the sources of the intellectual currents which sometimes change the face of the world. "If I had a handful of truths, I should take good care not to open it," said this sybarite, who would do nothing that was likely to cause ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... of this description, which are somewhat external, and as we say accidental, and certainly incidental, to a life in this world, and in all of which we are led in a way that we know not; there are unexpected changes of another kind, that we all have experienced. I now refer to changes in the inner man, and in the ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... individual isolated lives apart from our fellows. The parish is not the centre of the universe. The tendency of the uneducated mind is to isolate itself from the interests of others, and to look at all matters from a purely selfish point of view. The parish is an accidental collection of individual souls in a particular diocese. The diocese is an aggregation of separate parishes scattered through an assigned area. The members of the Church in a particular parish and diocese are members of the Holy Catholic Church, which by its very nomenclature abrogates individual ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry

... difficult to explain, but somehow by then I had grown aware that the long series of little obstacles, each one accidental and temporary, seemed to express something unseen, something impersonal, a kind of fate ... as if the verdict had gone forth from the lords of things that Paul was not to succeed. And everything seemed to hang in the balance that night. I thought that the fact ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley

... a critic," he said to him early in their accidental acquaintance. "Now, I want to experiment on you. I want you to see Irving to-night and write your impressions of it. I have a notion you'll ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... future and pregnant with the past. We should not do so, although every rag of printed paper swept from the gutter would have some connection with the past day's event. But its significance, the significance of the words printed upon it is so small, that we relegate it into the limbo of the accidental and meaningless. There is no vital connection between the many torn bits of paper—only an accidental connection. Each bit of paper has reference to some actual event: a bus-ticket, an envelope, a tract, a pastry-shop bag, a newspaper, a hand-bill. But take them all together, bus-ticket, torn envelope, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... the queen arose to crown the victor, Thomas Seymour, her handkerchief, embroidered with gold, fell from her hands, and that the earl, after he had taken it up and presented it to the queen, had thrust his hand for a moment, with a motion wholly accidental and undesigned, into his ruff, which was just as white as the small neatly-folded paper which he concealed in it, and which he had found in ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... like the Common Long Blood, is a popular winter sort, retaining its color well when boiled. It is of larger size than the last named, grows more above the surface of the ground, and has fewer fibrous and accidental small side-roots. While young, it compares favorably with the old variety; but, when full grown, can hardly be said to be much superior. To have the variety in its greatest perfection for winter use, the seed should not be sown ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... proceeding (instinctive, probably), which later I detected, to his infinite rejoicing. In company with my slender purse, and bunch of useless keys, a pencil, and a small memorandum-book, they remained perdu until that moment of accidental discovery arrived which was to test their value and place it ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... prosperity upon serving the people. He may get by for a while serving himself, but if he does, it will be purely accidental, and when the people wake up to the fact that they are not being served, the end of that producer is in sight. During the boom period the larger effort of production was to serve itself and hence, the moment the people woke up, many producers went to smash. ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... fancy that it was quite accidental that the six figures of this picture are so well arranged, and wonder why the art of Rembrandt should be so praised here, you may try an experiment with your camera upon a group of six figures. In posing six persons in any order which is not stiff, and getting them all to look with one accord ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... in that the body is not suspended. It may be effected by a ligature round the neck, or by direct pressure on the windpipe with the hand, in which case death is said to be caused by throttling. Strangulation is frequently suicidal, but may be accidental. When homicidal, much injury is done to the neck, owing to the force with which the ligature is drawn. In throttling, the marks of the finger-nails ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... Loth-to-stoop again, 'But, sir, may not my master, and great Lord, by letters, by passengers, by accidental opportunities, and the like, maintain, if he shall deliver up all unto thee, some kind of old friendship ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... did the Anglo-Saxons rase to the ground the early churches, that, until a few years ago, but few traces of these early buildings were thought to exist. An accidental discovery, however, in the year 1835, brought to light an undoubted relic of an early British church in the west, this being the remains of a little church which had been until the date above mentioned completely buried in the sand ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... knee in his hands, smiling. The semicircle had widened out from the fire, and in the midst Mr. Tarbox stood telling a story, of which Grande Pointe was the scene, Bonaventure Deschamps the hero, a school-examination the circumstance, and he, G. W., the accidental arbiter of destinies that hung upon its results. The big-waisted man had retired for the night, and half an eye could see that the story-teller had captivated the whole remaining audience. He was just at the end as Marguerite re-appeared at the door. The laugh suddenly ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... effect of the action of the primitive elements and laws originally implanted in humanity by the Creator, of the free causality and self-determining power of man, and of all the conditions, permanent and accidental, within which the national life has been developed. And in cases where physical and moral causes are blended, and reciprocally conditioned and modified in their operation;—where primary results undergo endless ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... Impatiens fulva, the spotted touch-me-not,—named from the sudden bursting of the pod when touched. The plant in question I had not seen for some time and the fitness of the symbolism to the bodily state was too close to be accidental. After a walk in the spring when the ground was white with the cotton-tufted seeds of the poplar and I thought if all germinated how overwhelmed we should be with poplars, I dream that I am sweeping a floor upon which cotton is scattered, some of which flies and is caught in my hair. I ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... be of a construction that will bear to take the ground; and of a size, which in case of necessity, may be safely and conveniently laid on shore, to repair any accidental damage or defect. These properties are not to be found in ships of war of forty guns, nor in frigates, nor in East India Company's ships, nor in large three-decked West India ships, nor indeed in any other ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... massive frame, with a profusion of red hair on his head and face, and a peculiarly humorous twinkle in his eye. His name was Kettle Flatnose. We have reason to believe that the first part of this name had no connection with that domestic utensil which is intimately associated with tea! It was a mere accidental resemblance of sound no doubt. As to the latter part, that is easily explained. In those days there were no surnames. In order to distinguish men of the same name from each other, it was usual to designate them by their complexions, or by some peculiarity of ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... of an exile population, a broad line must be drawn between the accidental offender and the hereditary robber. To the first no special description will be applicable: they are often not inferior to the ranks from which they sprung. Though a small section of the whole, they present not the least affecting picture ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... bride, together with the Abbot's resignation, his ignorance of the fate of their unhappy offspring, and above all, the good father's listless and inactive disposition, had suffered the matter to become totally forgotten, until it was recalled by some accidental conversation with the Abbot Ambrosius concerning the fortunes of the Avenel family. At the request of his successor, the quondam Abbot made search for it; but as he would receive no assistance in looking among the few records ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... temperance and care the human frame will exist as long in vigor in the latter as in Europe.—Another remark as a proof of the former has been made which is that the human mind sooner arrives to maturity in America than in Europe; but this if true may be more owing to accidental than ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher

... Yet even if we make the largest possible concession to happy coincidences, there cannot remain the slightest doubt that the experiments carried on under standard conditions yielded results the correctness of which endlessly surpasses any possible accidental outcome. We may take a typical illustration: I drew cards which she could not possibly see, while they were shown to the mother and sister sitting next to me, Beulah sitting on the other side of the room. The first was a nine of hearts; she ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... alarming for this country, separately, and as a part of the general system. After all, we may be looking in vain in the regions of politics for what is only the operation of temper and character upon accidental circumstances. But I never knew accidents to decide the whole of any great business; and I never knew temper to act, but that some system of politics agreeable to its peculiar spirit was blended with it, strengthened it, and got strength ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... a bird's tail of anything but common-place stuff, bought in the London market, and (if any dweller in a distant city is simple enough to order it from the unsophisticated vendor) charged with a good profit and the freight up. Naturally the provincial dealer, if he stumbles on a gem or two in an accidental way, takes care that it is sold in no corner, unless it be at the corner of Wellington Street in the Strand. He considers that the value may be a matter of doubt, and he leaves it to gentlemen to decide between them how much it is worth. Do ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... recognizable except in the form of an injury inflicted upon some person or persons. An offence against the State there could not be, simply because there was no State to be offended. Everything, from murder down to the smallest and most accidental injury, was compensated for by "erics" or fines. The amount of these fines was decided upon by the Brehon, who kept an extraordinary number of imaginary rulings, descending into the most minute particulars, such as what fine was to be paid in the case of one person's cat stealing ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... them, feigning, as geese will, that it suited them so to submit, and that in reality they were still quite independent. But in the peculiar eye of the Barnacle gander, who was leading, an observer with sufficient fancy might have deciphered a mild revolt against this triumph of the absurd, the accidental, and the futile; a passive yet Promethean spiritual defiance of ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... country, are very cheap. We paid two piasters (about nine cents) for an oche (two and a half pounds), but we soon made the discovery that a Turkish oche contained a great many "stones"—which of course was purely accidental. Eggs, also, we found exceedingly cheap. On one occasion, twenty-five were set before us, in response to our call for eggs to the value of one piaster—four and a half cents. In Asiatic Turkey we had some extraordinary dishes served to us, including daintily ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... Rome, and the works of Michael Angelo in particular, were to him an academy. On the site of the Capel la Sistina he immediately from a dry, Gothic, and even insipid manner, which attends to the minute accidental discriminations of particular and individual objects, assumed that grand style of painting, which improves partial representation by the general and invariable ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... lesson is a good one, proletaires; we should profit by it. It is not talent (which is also a force), it is not knowledge, it is not beauty which makes the man. It is heart, courage, will, virtue. Now, if we are equal in that which makes us men, how can the accidental distribution of secondary ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon



Words linked to "Accidental" :   unintended, inadvertent, musical notation, accident



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com