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Unaccountable   /ˌənəkˈaʊntəbəl/   Listen
Unaccountable

adjective
1.
Not to be accounted for or explained.  Synonym: unexplainable.  "An unexplainable fear"
2.
Free from control or responsibility.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Unaccountable" Quotes from Famous Books



... anxious history since our parting.—Mariamne had suddenly grown discontented with Poland; which to Mordecai himself had become a weary residence, from the ravages of the French war. For some reason, unaccountable to me, said the old man, she set her heart upon Spain, and had now been domiciled in this secluded spot for a year. But she was visibly fading away. She read and wrote much, and was even more attached to her harp ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... rival merits of a scarlet japonica and a double fuchsia, giving the palm of merit to the former, though the latter had some wondrous lobes; and I was also asked my opinion whether her favourite maidenhair fern would survive a sudden and unaccountable blight which had fallen upon ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... much fretted that you would hang yourself[517]. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment.'—I have already given my opinion of Fielding; but I cannot refrain from repeating here my wonder at Johnson's excessive and unaccountable depreciation of one of the best writers that England has produced. Tom Jones has stood the test of publick opinion with such success, as to have established its great merit, both for the story, the sentiments, and the manners, and also the varieties of diction, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... darkness and ignorance, when the principles of drawing, and of art in general, were comparatively unknown; and this attack, therefore, is entirely founded on the assumption that, although for some unaccountable reason we cannot at present produce artists altogether equal to Raphael, yet that we are on the whole in a state of greater illumination than, at all events, any artists who preceded Raphael; so that we ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... highest spirits over her unaccountable prank, and laughed girlishly. "Now I will gratify my curiosity. You know I admit my curiosity, sometimes. These men are not alone in their thirst for excitement. It is so tiresome at court, ever the ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... you good advice. You smile? No wonder! But I beg you to listen to me. Sometimes a shipwrecked sailor makes the best captain, for he knows the force of the tempest. I have no conscience for myself, but some unaccountable emotion impels me to bid you abandon this project. Somehow, as I look at you, I cannot bear to have you become what I am. You seem so young and innocent that I would like to have you stay as you are. I wish to save you. How ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... were debating the question, Steel Spring was apparently busy at work, although I noticed that he paid considerable attention to what was going on, and listened to every word uttered with an interest that appeared unaccountable. I thought it was from curiosity, and did not call any one's attention to it; but when I suggested that a small fire should be made, so that its light would enable us to work to more purpose, to my surprise he urged ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... for in the present state of feeling the neighborhood were willing to overlook many things which had before seemed dark and mysterious, while Mrs. Graham, for some most unaccountable reason, suddenly retracted almost everything she had said, acknowledging that she was too hasty in her conclusions, and evincing for the missing girl a degree of interest perfectly surprising to Mrs. Livingstone, who looked on in utter astonishment, ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... peaceful possession of his province. Not less remarkable was the fate of witchcraft in Pennsylvania. The Swedes and Finns believed in witches, upon the authority of their native traditions; and a woman of their race having acted in a violent and unaccountable manner, they put her on her trial for witchcraft. Both Swedes and Quakers composed the jury; there were no hysterics; the matter was dispassionately canvassed; impressions and prejudices were not accepted as evidence; and in the end the verdict was that though she was guilty of being ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... greeted the fighting party on their return. The troops were already on the way to suppress the sudden and unaccountable Indian rising. Eight hundred of the hard-riding United States cavalry had left the fort on receipt of the message from Beacon Crossing. The hotel-keeper imparted the news with keen appreciation; he had no desire ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... a marriage. Their common affection for Kenyon was a great element in their lives and in their correspondence. "I have a convenient theory to account for Mr. Kenyon," writes Browning mysteriously, "and his otherwise unaccountable kindness to me." "For Mr. Kenyon's kindness," retorts Elizabeth Barrett, "no theory will account. I class it with mesmerism for that reason." There is something very dignified and beautiful about the simplicity of these two poets vying with each other in giving adequate praise to the ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... village near the seat of Sir Arthur Acheson, where the Dean made a long visit. The tree, which was a remarkable one, was much admired by the knight. Yet the Dean, in one of his unaccountable humours, gave directions for cutting it down in the absence of Sir Arthur, who was, of course, highly incensed. By way of making his peace, the Dean wrote this poem; which had the ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... but he knew nevertheless that, however unaccountable in itself, it accounted for his companion's rapid promotion and success. Sympathy had stood Durrance in the stead of much ability. Sympathy had given him patience and the power to understand, so that ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... written better, had he lived. He knew this himself, or he would have lived. Great geniuses, like great kings, have too much to think of to kill themselves; for their mind to them also "a kingdom is." With an unaccountable power coming over him at an unusual age, and with the youthful confidence it inspired, he performed wonders, and was willing to set a seal on his reputation by a tragic catastrophe. He had done his best; and, like another Empedocles, threw himself into AEtna, to ensure ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... generous confidence, lasting trustfulness, love and confiding belief, I very readily associate that cardinal virtue with art. I decline to present the artist to the notice of the public as a grown-up child, or as a strange, unaccountable, moon-stricken person, waiting helplessly in the street of life to be helped over the road by the crossing- sweeper; on the contrary, I present the artist as a reasonable creature, a sensible gentleman, and as one well acquainted with the value of his time, and that of other people, as ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... the sullen reserve which closed over him like a visor when he approached one of the crises of life. He had made his confession and he stood to it. "I killed Bill Fletcher" he gave out flatly enough. What he could not give was an explanation of his unaccountable presence at the Hall so nearly upon midnight. When the question was first put to him he sneered and shrugged his shoulders with the hereditary gesture of the Blakes. "Why was he there? Well, why wasn't he there?" That was ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... my elevated and dreaded friend. I could not say I had ever received an office at his hand that was not friendly, yet these offices had been of a strange tendency; and the horror with which I now regarded him was unaccountable to myself. It was beyond description, conception, or the soul of man to bear. I took my printed sheets, the only copy of my unfinished work existing; and, on pretence of going straight to Mr. Watson's office, decamped from my lodgings at Portsburgh a little ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... befell that when my Lady Dunstanwolde's lacquey could not find him at his lodgings, and as the days went past neither his landlady nor his creditors beheld him again, his absence from the scene was not considered unaccountable by them, nor did it attract the notice it would have done in times ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... with a plot involving the affairs of a family established both in England and New England; and it seems likely that he had already begun to associate the bloody footstep with this project. What is extraordinary, and must be regarded as an unaccountable coincidence—one of the strange premonitions of genius—is that in 1850, before he had ever been to England and before he knew of the existence of Smithell's Hall, he had jotted down in his Note-Book, written in America, this suggestion: "The print in blood of ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that he has been talking nonsense. But apart from the vagueness and illogicalness of several of the statements, the foregoing effusion is curious as a whole: the thoughts turn up one does not know where, how, or why—their course is quite unaccountable; and if they passed through his mind in an unbroken connection, he fails to give the slightest indication of it. Still, although Chopin's philosophy of life, poetical rhapsodies, and meditations on love and friendship, may not afford us much light, edification, or pleasure, they help us substantially ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... of Kaptschak, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia, were covered with dead bodies; the Kurds fled in vain to the mountains. In Caramania and Caesarea, none was left alive. On the roads, in the camps, in the caravansaries, unburied bodies were seen; and a few cities only remained, in an unaccountable manner, free. In Aleppo, five hundred died daily; twenty-two thousand people and most of the animals were carried off in Gaza within six weeks. Cyprus lost almost all its inhabitants; and ships without crews were often seen in the Mediterranean, as afterward in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... purposes, the administration of them was, in most cases, entrusted to the particular town, parish, or lordship, in which they were levied; such communities being, in some way or other, supposed to be accountable for the application. The sovereign, who is altogether unaccountable, has in many countries assumed to himself the administration of those duties; and though he has in most cases enhanced very much the duty, he has in many entirely neglected the application. If the turnpike tolls of Great Britain should ever ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... soon settled. There is something there. She is not boundless, intangible. The School and the Church are different. With the first fresh breaths of the world tingling in him, the youth stands before them. They are entirely new to him. They are huge, immeasurable, unaccountable. They loom over him—a part of the structure of the universe itself. A mother can meet one in a door. The problem is concentrated. The Church stretches beyond the sunrise. The School is part of the horizon of the earth, and what after all ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... gentlewoman who takes care of the house. This lower room has a pavement of gray slabs of stone, which may have been rudely squared when the house was new, but are now all cracked, broken, and disarranged in a most unaccountable way. One does not see how any ordinary usage, for whatever length of time, should have so smashed these heavy stones; it is as if an earthquake had burst up through the floor, which afterwards had been imperfectly trodden down again. The room is whitewashed and very clean, but wofully ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... were up, and found Bertie's Nellie behind the black boys' humpy shyly peeping round a corner. With childlike impetuosity she had scampered along the four miles from the Warlochs, only to be overcome with unaccountable shyness. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... came in and asked if my friends understood the time that had been set. The dinner would be spoiled if it were kept much longer. I said that I was sure they knew all about the time set, and that there was nothing to be done but to wait. It was most unaccountable that ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton

... dimming eyes prove the admission—yet I declare, weighing each word, she has the wit, the spirit, the goodness, the loveliness to be the noblest of queens to the best of kings; and fails she such choice, it will be because destiny has been struck by some unaccountable forgetfulness." ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... of the board entering his own home, unsupported by the presence of his fellow-members and the scientific zeal of the Senior Surgeon, the business of the afternoon began to change its aspect. For some unaccountable reason—unless we take Fancy into the reckoning—this sudden abandoning of Ward C did not seem the simple matter of an hour previous; while in perspective even Margaret MacLean's outspokenness became less heinous ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... it. Instead, she turned from him and went into the house; and—he went directly to his club: an unaccountable gloom hung over him; he must have companionship; if not with his chosen and promised wife, then with the club. That was just what Ruth was to him; and it was one of the ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... a home-thrust. The conspirators shuddered and agreed to do the deed. Gertie, in virtue of her youth, was exempted from taking any active part, but an unaccountable fascination constrained her to follow and be a witness—in ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... was waking with a start. It seemed to me that some one had shut the door between my room and Braun's. I felt for the matches. The match-box was empty. Up to that moment—I cannot tell why—something—an unaccountable dread—had prevented me looking at the door. I made an effort and looked. It was shut, and through the cracks and through the keyhole I saw the glimmer of a light. Braun had lit his candle. I called him, not very loudly: there was no answer. ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... unchained simply that he may prepare for death, sits upon his bed, and, rubbing his leg gently where the iron had galled it, begins, not a complaint against fate, or his judges, or the misery of present death, but a grateful little reflection. "What an unaccountable thing, my friends, that seems to be which men call pleasure; and how wonderful it is related to that which appears to be its contrary—pain, in that they will not both be present to a man at the same time; yet if any ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... though more than enough for any one else. I want, and the world expects, a longer work from you; and I see in you what I never saw in poet before, a strange diffidence of your own powers, which I cannot account for, and which must be unaccountable, when a Cossac like me can appal a cuirassier. Your story I did not, could not, know,—I thought only of a Peri. I wish you had confided in me, not for your sake, but mine, and to prevent the world from losing a much better poem than my own, but which, I yet hope, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... school was named Sarah Lewis, and while there, something of a very extraordinary nature—to me, at least—took place. One day, while at my little desk, there came into my head with a strange and unaccountable intensity this thought: "I am I—I am Myself—I myself I," and so on. By forcing this thought on myself very rapidly, I produced a something like suspension of thought or syncope; not a vertigo, but that mental condition which is allied to it. I have several ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... by no means follows the profitable rule he here lays down. On the contrary, he sometimes betrays such a love of the marvellous as would seem unaccountable, had we not read bygone literature, and observed how strong the feeling was even as late as the days of the "Wonderful Magazine." Among his strange fancies we find in the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... be delivered to her when she was well enough to read it. The instants given to repentance are very sad, and I was truly a fit subject for pity. I longed to see Laura again, so as to hear what the doctor had said. I had very good cause for laughing at all sorts of oracles, yet through some unaccountable weakness I longed for that of the doctor; I wanted, before all, to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Worm-biting, which eats Ships Bottoms out; whereas at Bath-Town, there is no such thing known; and as for Muskeetos, they hinder us of as little Rest, as they do you in England. Add to this, the unaccountable Quantities of Fish this great Water, or Sound, supplies us withal, whenever we take the Pains to fish for them; Advantages I have no where met withal in America, except here. As for the Climate, we enjoy a very wholsome ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... the commissioners got their evidence for asserting that Captain Shortland, by quiet means and persuasion, endeavored to persuade the prisoners to retire into their respective yards, is unaccountable to us, as those who know Captain Shortland, know he is not a man of persuasion. It is correct that Dr. M'Grath used every exertion to persuade the prisoners to retire out of the square, which if Shortland had allowed sufficient ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... in different years, not only in the amount of ice it brings, but also in its direction. Unexpected effects depend upon this variation. It will be remembered that in 1863 several ships were wrecked on Cape Race, owing to some "unaccountable" disturbance of the currents. The Gulf Stream, it was found at length, ran thirty miles farther north than usual. Was this unaccountable? When Captain Handy, our whaling Mentor, was penetrating Hudson's Strait in June, 1863, he found vast headlands of floe ice resting against the land, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... extraordinary fallacy is the dread of night air. What air can we breathe at night but night air? The choice is between pure night air from without, and foul night air from within. Most people prefer the latter,—an unaccountable choice. What will they say if it be proved true that fully one-half of all the disease we suffer from, is occasioned by people sleeping with their windows shut? An open window most nights of the year can never hurt any one. In great cities night ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... believe that the Sunderbunds in Bengal do not contain monsters more hideous and terrible than are to be found in the eastern portion of Texas, over which nature appears to have spread a malediction. The myriads of snakes of all kinds, the unaccountable diversity of venomous reptiles, and even the deadly tarantula spider or "vampire" of the prairies, are trifles, compared with the awful inhabitants of the eastern bogs swamps, and muddy rivers. The former are really dangerous ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... is over, but the hurt of it stings yet. I never was dragged before an audience so utterly without thought or word as last night and, had there been any way of escape, would have taken wings or, what I felt more like, have sunk through the floor. It was the strangest and most unaccountable condition, but nothing save bare, bald points stared me in the face. Must stop; here is card of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... replied the general, who knew that Paymaster Bullen had obtained his present detail solely for the sake of furthering certain schemes of his own. "I understand that you are going to investigate the unaccountable disappearance of a red blanket and a plug of tobacco from the quartermaster's stores ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... red, his black eyes afire, his mustaches working up and down. His white teeth had closed with a click on the loud oath which had interrupted the Governor's speech. Honest Sir George and his circle stared at this unaccountable guest in amazement not unmixed with dismay. As for myself, I knew before he spoke what had caused the oath and the fierce triumph in that handsome face. Master Jeremy Sparrow had moved a little to one side, thus exposing to view that which his great body had before screened from observation,—namely, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... it in Romeo and Juliet, where he made Friar Laurence, in the concluding scene, retell the whole story of the tragedy. Even in so early a play, such a manifest redundancy seems unaccountable. A narrative of things already seen may, of course, be a trait of character in the person delivering it; but, in that case, it will generally be mendacious (for instance, Falstaff and the men in buckram). Or it may be introduced for the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... Captain Coke will not know I am aboard until Thursday, and I have arranged with a friend that this letter shall reach you about the same time. Please convey my apologies to Mr. Bulmer, and accept my regret for any anxiety you may have felt owing to my unaccountable absence. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... sure, he did not forget Masoud. After having been witness to those infamous actions, says he, I believed all women to be that way naturally inclined, and that they could not resist those violent desires. Being of this opinion, it seemed to me to be an unaccountable weakness in men to make themselves uneasy at their infidelity. This reflection brought many others along with it; and, in short, I thought the best thing I could do was to make myself easy. It cost me some pain indeed, but at last I effected it; and, if you ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... volumes of Burns and Scott. Bill also returned to his wonderful stories, though the captain and mate sneered at them more than ever; indeed, they were by far the most discontented of the company, and an unaccountable sort of distrust seemed growing between them and Bill. At length, fever and ague began to thin the ranks of the gold-seekers; we saw the working-parties around us diminish day by day, and graves dug in the shadows of the low coppice. Our company kept lip amazingly, perhaps ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various

... already narrated, Barry has showed an unaccountable indecision, it must be remembered that he was a simple seaman, straight and clean, unused to subterfuge and trickery. When action was afoot, he knew what to do; while waiting for action on the part of his adversary, he was at a disadvantage. But the fact made for increased vigilance, and with ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... reign of king Richard III gave occasion to Henry earl of Richmond to assert his title to the crown. A title the most remote and unaccountable that was ever set up, and which nothing could have given success to, but the universal detestation of the then usurper Richard. For, besides that he claimed under a descent from John of Gant, whose title was now exploded, the claim (such as it was) was through John earl of Somerset, a bastard ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... sight invariably directed to the object. The distracted victim, instead of flying its enemy, seems to be arrested by some invincible power; it screams; now approaches, and then recedes; and after skipping about with unaccountable agitation, finally rushes into the jaws of the snake, and is swallowed, as soon as it is covered with a slime or glue to make it slide easily down the ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... he was by no means excited, remained merely if deeply interested. And he could detect in his physical sensations no trace of that qualmish dread he always experienced in high places: the sense he had of security, of solidity, was and ever remained wholly unaccountable in his understanding. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... written at a very happy time of my life, and they were first published when I was a master at Eton with a boarding-house. A house-master is not always a happy man. It is an anxious business at best. Boys are very unaccountable creatures, and the years between boyhood and adolescence are apt to represent an irresponsible mood. From the quiet childhood at home the boys have passed to what is now, most happily, in the majority of cases, a carefully guarded and sheltered atmosphere—the private school. My own private ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... throw much light on the subject, and as for materialistic science, listen to what Huxley says: "How it comes about that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about by the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the genie when Aladdin rubbed ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... Still more unaccountable, upon any theory of development according to ordinary laws of reproduction, are those unique, isolated types limited to a single epoch, or sometimes even to a single period. There are some very remarkable instances of this in the Cretaceous deposits. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... the bridge, retracing his steps, and climbed a railing that fenced the wood. In a moment he disappeared among the trees, and Billy was left to watch and listen in unaccountable suspense. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... sitting at the mouths of their holes. They were quite white, without ears, and with scarlet noses. I made several desperate attempts to catch some of these singular animals, but though one or two allowed me to come pretty near, just as I thought my prize was secure, in some unaccountable manner—it made unto itself wings, and literally flew away! Moreover, if my eyesight did not share the peculiar development which affected that of the Doctor's, I should say that these rabbits flew in PAIRS. Red-nosed, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... sustained by the Sikhs it is impossible to calculate; according to themselves it was much less than that of the English; and this is credible when the strength of their position is considered, and the losses to which the unaccountable flight of Pope's brigade exposed the British light. The English loss, according to the official returns, was three thousand men in killed and wounded, nearly one-third of whom belonged to the former class; this, however, did not comprehend all the slain, for many were so horribly wounded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... we went to the Barberini picture-gallery to take a farewell look at the Beatrice Cenci, which I have twice visited before since our return from Florence. I attempted a description of it at my first visit, more than a year ago, but the picture is quite indescribable and unaccountable in its effect, for if you attempt to analyze it you can never succeed in getting at the secret of its fascination. Its peculiar expression eludes a straightforward glance, and can only be caught by side glimpses, or when the eye falls upon it casually, as it were, and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... showed so unusual a susceptibility; at the second, because it showed so unreasonable a blindness. All sin is a wonder to eyes that see into the realities of things and read the end; for it is all utterly unreasonable (though it is, alas! not unaccountable) and suicidal. 'Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this.' Unbelief in Christ is, by Himself, declared to be the very climax of sin, and its most flagrant evidence (John xvi. 9); and of all the instances of unbelief ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... was helped into circulation by many trivial eccentricities of manner, and by the unaccountable oddness of some of ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... there are peculiarities in your memory which would be quite whimsical and unaccountable if we were forced to regard them as the product of a purely spiritual faculty. Were memory such a faculty, granted to us solely for its practical use, we ought to remember easiest whatever we most needed to remember; ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... something very unaccountable, that People cannot put themselves in the Condition of the Persons below them, when they consider the Commands they give. But there is nothing more common, than to see a Fellow (who if he were reduced to it, would not be hired by any Man living) lament that he is troubled with ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... of baleful activity he is employed in poisoning the mind of the working-men against his real interests and real friends. This is perfectly easy, because the American working-man, though singularly shrewd and sensible in other respects, is the victim of an unaccountable obliquity of vision which keeps him from seeing his real interests and real friends—or, at least, from knowing them ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells

... dreaded supremacy of the Blacks, is the burden of his book; and as the Land Law in question distinctly forbids the owning by any white person of even one inch of the soil of the Republic, it might, but for the above explanation, have seemed unaccountable, in view of the implacable distrust, not to say hatred, which this stern prohibition so clearly discloses, that our author should, nevertheless, rely on the efficacy of white authority and influence ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... and mulatto race which exist within them, and the amount of the precious metals annually raised from their mines; subjects of vast importance to Great Britain, and especially its colonial and commercial interests, but which have hitherto been in an unaccountable manner neglected, even by those whose interests and fortunes were entirely wound up in the changes connected with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... For some unaccountable reason there was one vacant seat left in the car and she dropped into it with a little inward sigh of relief. With weary, unseeing, eyes she stared out of the window at the throng of people hurrying along through the mud and slush of the streets. Her tired brain refused ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright

... lost control of himself, and the temper, that had never been governed or held in check, lashed itself into a fury that made him for the moment unaccountable for his words ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... interval the city had disappeared. The roar of it no longer dinned upon his ears. Before him was smiling country, streaming with sunshine, lazy with quietude. But he had little time to marvel at the transformation. He accepted it as he accepted all the unaccountable doings and manifestations of the ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... everything, there is a marked absence of downright wholesome common-sense? Of course the effect is partly due to the region in which the old dramatists generally sought for their tragic situations. We are never quite at home in this fictitious cloudland, where the springs of action are strange, unaccountable, and altogether different from those with which we have to do in the workaday world. A great poet, indeed, weaves a magic mirror out of these dream-like materials, in which he shows us the great passions, love, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... she said, a deep and unaccountable relief in her voice, "I see. That odour has the strangest effect on me ever since——" she waited a long time. At last she said she would try to tell me something, if I would ask her questions ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... this fond election of evil, would appear perfectly unaccountable if we did not consider the composition of the national assembly. If we were to know nothing of this assembly but its title and function, no colours could paint to the imagination anything more venerable. But no artificial institution whatever can make the men of whom any system ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... at several places and left the greater part of the goods, when he found himself in a narrow road, scarcely wider than a lane. Why it had been made so narrow was unaccountable, for there was certainly land enough to be had, and that of little value, which could have been used. It was probably owing to a want of foresight on the ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger

... did I say that wasn't right?" I cried, the nature of their antics showing only too plainly that I had "put my foot in it" in some unaccountable manner. But they paid no attention. Mortified and utterly at sea, I watched their convulsed shoulders and heard their smothered giggles. Then in a few minutes they straightened up and resumed work with the utmost gravity of countenance and without ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... in 1284. Several times it was besieged by the Welsh and on one occasion came near falling into their hands while the king himself was in the castle. It was besieged during the Parliamentary wars, but for some unaccountable reason it was not destroyed or seriously damaged when captured. Its present dilapidated state is due to the action of its owner, Lord Conway, shortly after, in dismantling it to sell the lead and timber of ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... Rush. This was indeed his crowning attraction. Short silken curls of raven black clustered around it, shading a wide white forehead and delicately fashioned ear. He had a beautifully arched brow, heavily pencilled, within which a glittering black eye, too deep set, gleamed forth with unaccountable attraction. His nose was straight, small, but full of nerve. You would never guess from that handsome, firm-set mouth of his, where decision and resolution played about the cherry lips and dimpled chin, that he would have proved ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... of shame for this uncharitable attitude toward his most intimate college chum possessed Joe Smith before he had finished his humorous sarcasm, but he was in an unaccountable mood just then. ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz

... an entirely unaccountable impulse, she drew the reins slightly on Billy, slowing him, almost imperceptibly, so that both horses had traveled more than a quarter of a mile before the distance between ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... while the hands in Slocum's Yard were much exercised over the unaccountable disappearance of Blake. Stevens reported the matter to ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... in Australia. The Pleasant Creek News writes: "A singular and unaccountable feature in connection with our deep quartz mines is being developed daily, which must surprise those well experienced in mining matters. It is the decrease of water as the greater depths are reached. In the Magdala shaft at 950 ft. the water ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... mystery there was about Carstairs, Smeaton, or anybody else. A page lad came along with a telegram in his hand asking was there any gentleman there of the name of Moneylaws? I took the envelope from him in a whirl of wonder, and tore it open, feeling an unaccountable sense of coming trouble. And in another minute the room was spinning round me; but the wording of ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... their cab and returned to the boulevards which were ablaze with light and gaiety. Jefferson suggested going somewhere else, but Mrs. Blake was tired and Shirley, now quite irritated at what she considered Jefferson's unaccountable unsociability, declined somewhat abruptly. But she could never remain angry long, and when they said good-night ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... There was a continual coming and going, to and from Abbot's Manor,—some of the guests went away to be replaced by others, and some who had intended to spend only a week-end and then depart, stayed on, moved by unaccountable fascination, not only for their hostess, but for the general pleasantness of the house, and the old-world, tranquil and beautiful surroundings of the whole neighbourhood. Lord Charlemont and Mr. Bludlip ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... reasons for this, to her husband so unaccountable, trembled on Ellen's tongue, but she could not make up her mind to reprove him; and so bore in silence, and with some pain, what she felt as a reflection upon her want of frugality in ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur

... is, my dear!—so far as it is straining through me, Adolf Naumann: that stands firm," said the good-natured painter, putting a hand on Ladislaw's shoulder, and not in the least disturbed by the unaccountable touch of ill-humor in his tone. "See now! My existence presupposes the existence of the whole universe—does it not? and my function is to paint—and as a painter I have a conception which is altogether genialisch, of your great-aunt or second grandmother as a subject for a picture; therefore, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... became suspicious. Thelin's prolonged absence seemed unaccountable. A closer examination was insisted on, and the truth was discovered. Nobody was punished except Dr. Conneau, who suffered a ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... your spelling until I know it by heart. And you do make so many slips, you know, in your reviews as well as in your letters! I never correct them,—that would be a desecration, I think,—but send up your copy just as it comes to me. Indeed, I find myself imitating unawares some of your most unaccountable originalities. Only the other day I was in the reading-room and our head proofreader, a sour, wizened old man, cried out to me: "I say, Mr. Towers, what is the matter with your spelling? You write propotion[2] for proportion and propersition for proposition, and get your ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... noticing that, have you not seen that this annoying man never keeps his eyes off my father, no matter if he is near to him or far from him, and that he seems to have some spiteful secret intention in watching him with such unaccountable persistency?" ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... could reply Theo called out, "You here, Maggie, as usual?" adding, aside, to her companion: "She has the most unaccountable taste, so different from me, who cannot endure anything low and vulgar. Can you? But I need not ask," she continued, "for your associations have been of a ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... each other's hands, and danced a wild and unconventional dance, with no witness but a solitary eagle, which, passing high overhead, paused for an instant in his flight to wonder, probably, what those crazy, unaccountable human beings were ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... as to terrify the poor captive very much. He runs this way and that, around the interior of the box, wondering what has happened, and why he can not get out as he came in. He has no more appetite for the corn, but is in great distress at his sudden and unaccountable captivity. ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott

... the author need certainly have been in no hurry to disclose it. It is not improbable (though my memory is not clear on the point) that part of the strong interest we undoubtedly felt on the first night arose from the hope that Lord Windermere's seemingly unaccountable conduct might be satisfactorily accounted for. As this hope was futile, there was no reason, at subsequent performances, to keep up the pretence of preserving a secret which was probably known, as a matter of fact, to most of the audience, and ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... After long and unaccountable delay, two columns were formed for the pursuit of the Bourbonites, and a regular civil war began. At first the Republicans, supported by the French, had the best of the fight, and the strong towns of Andria and Trani ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... their extreme inattention to personal cleanliness, a circumstance which very much surprised Nicholas, as it seemed to present an unaccountable contrast to the neatness and order which were usually to be found both in their ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... your offer and will frankly tell you the nature of my suspicions, for they are nothing more than suspicions. I may first say that the news that my father was a shareholder in the Abchester Bank astounded me. For a time, I put it down to one of those sudden impulses that are unaccountable, but I may tell you, and here my confidence begins, that I have come across Cumming, the bank manager, and from him have obtained some curious particulars of this transaction—particulars ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... next experience was along a stream of very clear water. It did not appear to be a very large stream, but its remarkable character impressed me as singular. It flowed gently. It was not swift, but glided smoothly along, uphill and downhill the same. Its speed never varied, and this unaccountable characteristic struck me with surprise that waked me. This is my interpretation of my dream," said he: "The clear stream of water represents what the Christian should be. Its transparency symbolizes the clear thought and intelligent understanding that he should have respecting himself and ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... and Prince of Wales Banks, and although I also knew that, according to our position as determined that afternoon, and the course and distance since run, we ought to be far enough away from them to be perfectly safe, the thought for a moment seized me that in some extraordinary and wholly unaccountable manner we might have been mistaken. Flinging down my violin, I rushed out on deck, closely followed by ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... afterward upon the plains in Indian campaigning. Unfortunately a slight misunderstanding arose between them. This, while not serious in itself, was made bitter by the interference of others, and the unaccountable jealousies of garrison life. One night they openly quarrelled when heated by wine, and exchanged blows. The following evening, your father chancing to be officer of the guard and on duty, my father, whose wife had then been dead ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... collegiate career. It was probably while under the temporary shadow of the disgrace and disappointment of defeat, that the young man suddenly turned to Everett Gray, fastened upon him with an affection most enthusiastic, a devotion that everybody found unaccountable. He had energy enough for what he willed to do. He willed to have Everett's friendship, and he would not be denied. The incongruous pair became friends. Whereupon, the rollicking comrades, who had gladly welcomed Barclay into their set, for his fun and his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... that this "horrid proceeding" should have been permitted on board the English ship; and that Captain Cook, with his well-established character, should have stood by and witnessed it, is unaccountable. ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... that appeared unaccountable and weren't counted. We saw furnished rooms through open doors, and at last we came to a large room, high up under a tower, and looking out over the Plaza, and in another direction over the roofs of La Libertad. It seemed to be unused, and was ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... who received the following answer: "You be quite right, sir; you be quite right. I'd no ought to have said what I did; but I doeant mind telling you to your head what I've said so many times behind your back. We've got a good shepherd, I says, an excellent shepherd, but he's got an unaccountable ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... Marston might have felt on the receipt of the unexpected, and indeed unaccountable proposal, which had just reached him, he certainly had little reason to complain of any violation of early friendship in the neglect with which Sir Wynston had hitherto treated him. In deciding to decline his proposed visit, however, Marston ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... conception and of the variety and range of thought exhibited in the fertile minds of those who had first told it, Sir George Cox draws us back sharply to the assertion that all we have been hearing really meant another phase of sunset or sunrise, until we absolutely rebel and protest that the effect is unaccountable upon so meagre a cause. It is an easy method of dealing with folk-lore. If you take the rhyme of Mary and her little lamb, and call Mary the sun and the lamb the moon, you will achieve astonishing results, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... had orders to sally out and attack the village at the same hour. The Spaniards also arrived punctually, but just as they were preparing to burst upon the unconscious enemy, who were four thousand strong, they happened to come upon a picket of twenty horse. An unaccountable panic seized them; they broke their ranks and fled in such utter confusion that many of the terror stricken soldiers killed each other. The picket aroused the enemy, who quickly fell into their ranks, and Peterborough, seeing that it would be madness ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... writes on the general question with some force and talent, considering that his subject is incapable of being reduced into a regular form, and is of a nature particularly seductive to an excursive talent. He appears to have studied legerdemain for the purpose of showing how much that is apparently unaccountable can nevertheless be performed without the intervention of supernatural assistance, even when it is impossible to persuade the vulgar that the devil has not been consulted on the occasion. Scot also had intercourse with some of the celebrated fortune-tellers, or Philomaths, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... was rather stern at breakfast, and the vicar of Framley felt an unaccountable desire to get out of the house. In the first place she was not dressed with her usual punctilious attention to the proprieties of her high situation. It was evident that there was to be a further toilet before she sailed up the middle of the cathedral choir. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... old poem returned to her as it had not for years. She faltered over the words at the first attempt, but with the second they rushed vividly to her mind and seemed set to the music of that "pat-pat-pat" sound on the water. An unaccountable excitement seized her—that new but thrilling sense of nearness and kinship to life and the lovely meaning of spring. She was no longer a little girl looking on at life; she was part of it; and something was going to happen ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... when I aver, that these words of the baron gave me infinite distress, and for a moment deprived me of speech. I hardly knew what to say or do. At first I suspected that I had made some unaccountable mistake, and brought my letter to the wrong individual. H——, who was almost a Puritan in religious matters, could ever have spoken of his friend in such favourable terms, if he had been aware of the views which he so unscrupulously supported. A little reflection, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... that the provisions disappeared in an unaccountable way; therefore Wills ordered him back to report himself to Burke. But Gray was afraid to tell, and got King to do so for him. When Burke heard of it, he was very angry, and ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... give rise to that epidemic sect of AEolists, but succeeding also into a new and strange variety of conceptions, the fruitfulness of his imagination led him into certain notions which, although in appearance very unaccountable, were not without their mysteries and their meanings, nor wanted followers to countenance and improve them. I shall therefore be extremely careful and exact in recounting such material passages of this ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... will never try more. But you are abominable to reproach me with not letting you go to Houghton: have not I offered a thousand times to carry you there? I mean, since it was my brother's: I did not expect to prevail with you before; for you are so unaccountable, that you not only will never do a dirty thing, but you won't even venture the appearance of it. I have often applied to you in my own mind a very pretty passage that I remember in a letter of Chillingworth; "you would not do ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... proceedings. And why, if the civil authorities are too weak to resist the torrent, is there not a sufficient military force to stem it? is the next question that presents itself. No one seems to know where the blame lies, but every one foretells a dangerous result from this unaccountable state of things. ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... the double attack of fire and quake proved a blessing. Unaccountable as it may be to many people in the eastern states, the denizens of that part of the country had no especial fears of a recurrence of the catastrophe. They argued that seismic disturbances of such intensity come once in fifty or one ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... tenantless. The tightest ships, in a long voyage, from the constant strain which is upon the bowsprit, will leak more or less round the heel of the bowsprit and the bitts, which come down into the forecastle; but, in addition to this, we had an unaccountable leak on the starboard bow, near the cat-head, which drove us from the forward berths on that side, and, indeed, when she was on the starboard tack, from all the forward berths. One of the after berths, too, leaked in very bad weather; so that in a ship which ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... An unaccountable business depression affected pretty much the entire world. Money, that most sensitive of all things, began to show nervousness and a tendency to go into hiding. The bulk of the world was still asleep to the real meaning ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... savage, if you like; but from that hour to this I've hankered day and night for a chance to retrieve myself, to set myself right with the man I meant to be. I want to prove to that man that it was all an accident—an unaccountable deviation from my normal instincts; that having once been a coward doesn't mean that a man's cowardly... and I can't, ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... religion, in its highest and most inclusive and spiritually uplifting sense, and the possibility of communication between those in this life and those who have passed through the change we call death and have entered on the next round of experience. It is a fact—albeit a rather curious and unaccountable one—that organized religion, as a whole, has been largely opposed to the idea of possible communication between what is currently termed the living and the dead. Yet when one focusses the question to a matter of personal individuality, it does ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... lamp was burning at the end of the upper hall, and so I never thought of needing more. Well, as I moved over toward the window, still feeling that strange, unaccountable knowledge of some one there, a man stepped out from behind your desk, walked right up to me and held out those letters in one hand, while with the other he threw the light from a small bull's-eye or ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon

... her entirely at her ease, she would have felt strange and shy. As it was, she felt half afraid of losing herself in the house; to Fleda's unaccustomed eyes, it was a labyrinth of halls and staircases, set with the most unaccountable number and variety of rooms old and new, quaint and comfortable, gloomy and magnificent; some with stern old-fashioned massiveness of style and garniture, others absolutely bewitching (to Fleda's eyes and understanding) in the rich beauty and luxuriousness of their arrangements. ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... it as that of his inalienable charge. Then he began to preach at it as usual, but defiantly, and with yet a haste to be through and to get speech with it that he felt was ludicrous, and must appear unaccountable to his hearers. It seemed to him that he could not bring his sermon to a close; he ended it in a cloudy burst of rhetoric which he feared would please the nervous, elderly ladies—who sometimes blamed him for a want of emotionality—and knew must grieve ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... needed to prevent a competent opponent from imagining a design so contrary to sound military principle, having regard to Burgoyne's movements and to the well-understood general purpose of the British ministry. Accordingly Washington wrote, "Howe's in a manner abandoning Burgoyne is so unaccountable a matter, that till I am fully assured of it, I cannot help casting my eyes continually behind me." He suspected an intention to ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan

... came of it for some time. Days passed, and it was almost forgotten, only I became decidedly ill-tempered. A captious irritability possessed me, alternating with fits of unaccountable fatigue. At that time I was always either tired or cross, and sometimes both. I must have made Nurse Bundle very uncomfortable. I was so little happy, for my own share, that when after a day's headache I was put to ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... who were carried away with violent passions, followed hard after them as they were retiring, and applied ladders to the cloister, and got up to it suddenly; but the prudent part of them, when they understood this unaccountable retreat of the Jews, stood still where they were before. However, the cloister was full of those that were gone up the ladders; at which time the Jews set it all on fire; and as the flame burst out every where on the sudden, the Romans that were out of the danger were seized with ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... space required to be defended in time of war, and it rendered the whole of one face of the cantonment nugatory for purposes of defence. The profile of the works themselves was weak, being in fact an ordinary field-work. But the most strange and unaccountable circumstance recorded by Lieutenant Eyre respecting these military arrangements, is certainly the fact, that the commissariat stores, containing whatever the army possessed of food or clothing, was not within the circuit of these fortified cantonments, but in a detached and weak fort, the gate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... must own, dear E., it is a hard game, such a one as you have to play when you meet with such a lover. You cannot refuse but he is sincere, and yet though you use him ever so favourably, perhaps in a few months, or at farthest in a year or two, the same unaccountable fancy may make him as distractedly fond of another, whilst you are quite forgot. I am aware that perhaps the next time I have the pleasure of seeing you, you may bid me take my own lesson home, and tell me that the passion I have professed for you is perhaps one ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... the rest of the evening. The countess was too thoroughly well-bred to allow herself to look annoyed, or, even in secret, to acknowledge that she wished the marquis elsewhere; but she was disconcerted, and puzzled by the unaccountable ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... oldest friends, through an unaccountable mistake, turned into enemies. Both insist that under cover of a mask at the last veglione she insulted them. Unfortunately, her best friends are not kept by their actual knowledge of her from thinking it just possible she might desire to amuse herself ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... her from his wooden stool with a timidity that changed its character a little. He recognised the Hebrew baby, he was certain that he had a substantial woman before him; but there was still something strange and unaccountable in Romola's presence in this spot, and the Padre had a presentiment that things were going to change with him. Moreover, that Hebrew baby was terribly associated with the ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... least, none but an insignificant and misshapen little page, whose deformities were in everybody's way, and whose opinions were of the least possible importance. He—if his ideas are worth mentioning at all—had the effrontery to assert that his master never vaulted into the saddle without an unaccountable and almost imperceptible shudder, and that, upon his return from every long-continued and habitual ride, an expression of triumphant malignity distorted every ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the end of the unaccountable affair, and all I can say in explanation of it; for how these creatures, ingenious and knowing as they are, should have the intelligence to make laws,—as this case seems to pre-suppose,—get up a regular court, try, sentence, and execute offenders; what these offenders had done,—whether ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... talk and the evening advanced in an unaccountable manner toward bedtime, so delightful were the hours of getting acquainted. When she felt they must break up, Aunt Janice led the way ...
— The Quest of Happy Hearts • Kathleen Hay

... lukewarmness. Yes, making every allowance for your natural predilection for dog-fighting, and your present enamoured state of mind, your apathy at the commencement of such a movement is to me unaccountable." ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... which it was designed that the bride should appear at the altar. The fashion as to this point has often varied; but at that time, I believe the custom was for bridal parties to be in full dress. The lady, when the dress arrived, was, to all appearance, in good health; but, by one of those unaccountable misgivings which are on record in so many well-attested cases, (as that, for example, of Andrew Marveil's father,) she said, after gazing for a minute or two at the beautiful dress, firmly and pointedly, "So, then, that is my wedding dress; and it is expected ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... I tried and failed, swinging perilously at a rope's end below the dolphin-striker. And then the Ariadne, with one of those unaccountable movements which a ship will make at times in the flattest of calms, brought me victory, and the narrowest escape from extinction in one and the same moment. I swung lower than before, and the ship ducked suddenly. I not ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... prosperity his smiles were ghastly and his laughter was sardonic. Even when commenting on the prosperity of trade his sighs were frequent and deep. One of his friends thought and said that prosperity was turning the poor man's brain. Others thought that he was becoming quite unnatural and unaccountable in his deportment; and a few, acting on the principle of the sailor's parrot, which "could not speak much, but was a tremendous thinker," gave no outward indication of their thoughts beyond wise looks and grave shakes of the head, by which most people understood ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... pure, unselfish daring, in rescuing human life, the annals of our friend need not shun comparison with those of any other man within Her Majesty's dominion. It appears that, amid his wicked and wayward career, he had a 'deep and unaccountable impression' that one part of his mission into the world was to save human life. Beyond dispute, one of the best swimmers of his time, he was never, after his boyhood, satisfied with swimming as a mere art. It was naught to him if it did not ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock

... what to do with her. And no one outside the house had asked any questions. The inhabitants of that particular street must have been accustomed to strange behaviour on the part of their neighbours, unaccountable appearances and disappearances, strange flittings and arrivals. This strong-minded and active trio—Racksole, Nella, and Prince Aribert—might have been the lawful and accustomed tenants of the house, for any outward evidence ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... arbitrarily denied the privilege of even looking at the bicycle. Nothing would be more natural than to refuse to ride under these circumstances; but the crowd looks so gratified at the proprietor's sudden and unaccountable change of front, that I deem it advisable, in the interest of being permitted to finish my meal in peace, to take another short spin; moreover, it is always best to swallow such little ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... her cool, firm hand on his wrist, she sank down on all-fours and drew him on towards the door. It was impossible to make no noise, but at any rate their noise was disconcerting; the robbers could not guess what it betokened. Each of them had his stab, a tingling, unaccountable wound, a hurt to daunt a man, and they were separately standing guard each over his ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... colonial judge, well known for his ability and integrity, gave, through the columns of a Dublin newspaper, an account of the state of Mayo as he saw it. He found great dissatisfaction—in fact indignation, existing with regard to the unaccountable delay of the public works, which had been presented for in that county; and this not merely amongst the starving people, but amongst the most respectable and intelligent persons with whom he conversed. He—a man not likely to take a narrow or prejudiced view of any subject—was of opinion ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... footstep; only once did I meet some wood-gatherers, poor women carrying bundles of faggots, bent under their loads. And thinking that perchance I knew them—they were evidently from the village; if so, I must have known them when I was a boy—I was suddenly seized by an unaccountable dread or a shyness, occasioned no doubt by the sense of the immense difference that time had effected in us: they were the same, but I was different. The books I had pondered and the pictures I had seen had estranged me from them, simple ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... to say, witness," put in Lyon, "and that only a bit since, that ye did not know the prisoner's motive in coming into the Bay of Naples. Ye called his behavior unaccountable." ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Unaccountable though he was, I had no suspicion of what he was about to do. I think you will hardly believe me when I tell you what he did. 'A traveller's tale' you will say, with a shrug. Yet I swear to you that it is the plain and solemn truth. If you still doubt me, you have the excuse that I myself hardly ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... unaccountable goings-on. Whatever could possess these smugglers to start a fight among themselves, when such a disturbance was likely to be heard by any Coast Guard boat that might happen to be cruising within ten miles of the spot and bring down all manner ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... of the evening he gives himself up to Marian—devoting himself to her; telling himself he is knowing the old sweet happiness again, but always with a strange unaccountable sting at his heart. ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... with her anger. "This is strange insolence! unaccountable behaviour!—begone from my room! will you compel me to call ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... an instant, then, moved by some unaccountable impulse, drew out the chest containing the fancy-dress costumes they had used in so many plays and tableaux. One by one she shook them out and hung them over Rob's headless hobby-horse, when she had finished ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston

... wrong-doing as if it were his infirmity; they could not do otherwise; and they both insensibly assumed his irresponsibility in a measure; they dwelt in the fiction or the persuasion of a mental obliquity which would account for otherwise unaccountable things. ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... spaces of chaos was a snore. Then ages afterwards, out of the void there arose a mysterious forgotten effort to get something out of a choking throat. After several such unaccountable manifestations, the feeble flame of consciousness that called itself Jimmie Higgins flickered up, and he realized that it was he who was trying desperately not to be choked. Also he realized that he was become one horrible pain; somebody had driven a ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... of the 27th of November the work was interrupted by an event which we had better explain with some detail, for it was one of those unaccountable things ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne

... Dr. Wilson was deeply interested, and went so far as to call on Miss Greening, and to her he frankly admitted there was an unaccountable power in the mind some way, and if it did the work for suffering humanity he was quite ready to welcome it, and anxious, for his ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... flock. His father was a gunsmith. Of the children, William was one of the youngest. After his father's death, he helped his mother at sheep-keeping in the wilderness till he was eighteen years of age, then there came "an unaccountable impulse upon his mind that he was born to greater matters." The seed of genius planted in his ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... an unaccountable beating. "Ah, it'll be the wife of one of the surveyors," he said, with the instinct of guarding ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... Review," July, 1867. The article begins: "There is no more convincing proof of the truth of a comprehensive theory, than its power of absorbing and finding a place for new facts, and its capability of interpreting phenomena, which had been previously looked upon as unaccountable anomalies..." Mr. Wallace illustrates his statement that "a false theory will never stand this test," by Edward Forbes' "polarity" speculations (see page 84 of the present volume) and Macleay's "Circular" and "Quinarian System" ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin



Words linked to "Unaccountable" :   inexplicable, incomprehensible, irresponsible



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