"Unknowing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... observed that he was a clever fellow, and, notwithstanding the perilous situation in which he was, laughed loud and heartily. Luckily the unknown person did not perceive that there were people in the hut, at least did not come to it, but walked on past it, unknowing of his risk. It was afterwards found out that he was one of the Highland army, who was himself in danger. Had he come to them, they were resolved to dispatch him; for, as Malcolm said to me, 'We could not keep ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... form, in order that we may truly apprehend it. For all unity must be spiritual in nature and origin; and what is the aim of all investigation of Nature but to find science therein? For that wherein there is no Understanding cannot be the object of Understanding; the Unknowing cannot be known. The science by which Nature works is not, however, like human science, connected with reflection upon itself; in it, the conception is not separate from the act, nor the design from the execution. Therefore, rude matter strives, as it were, blindly, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... rose in him. Poor child—poor, young, unknowing creature, that, after all, was only twenty-two! She felt it, then, the strange mist that seemed to muffle his words and actions, to hold him back. And she ...
— The Courting Of Lady Jane • Josephine Daskam
... darling," she prayed in piteous entreaty, "don't do that. For I will share all your trouble, do share it even now, beforehand, foreseeing it, while you still lie smiling unknowing of your own distress. I shall live through it many times, by day and night, while you live through it only once. And so you must be forbearing towards me, my dear one, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... aside at Tim; his rifle was flung forward. Then I looked quickly back at the man, who had already dropped from his horse, and seemed scarcely able to stand. Was this true, had he ridden here unknowing whom he would meet, with no other thought but to save his life? Heaven knows he looked the part—his swarthy face dirtied, with a stain of blood on one cheek, his shirt ripped into rags, bare-headed, and with a look of terror in his eyes not to be mistaken. Villain and savage as I ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... unutterable, fell like a harp-string's dying echo, or a fair young spirit's knell, On my soul amid the shadows of my native forest trees, Rustling melancholy, lowly, in the wailing of the breeze, Till, unknowing pain or agony, I've wept such blissful tears As shall never, never flow again 'mid darker ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... capture our vessel," she exclaimed; "what a grand thing it would be for him, all unknowing, to spring upon our deck and instantly be captured by me. After that, there would be no more pirate's life ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... were once useful on their own level are outgrown but unsublimated, and check the movement towards life's spiritualization, then—whatever they may be—they belong to the body of death, not to the body of life, and are "sin." "Call sin a lump—none other thing than thyself," says "The Cloud of Unknowing."[67] Capitulation to it is often brought about by mere slackness, or, as religion would say, by the mortal sin of sloth; which Julian of Norwich declares to be one of the two most deadly sicknesses ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... you—No! If you will be undone for the sake of virtue, blindly, and like a fool, unknowing the consequences, I, Mary of Aragon and England, will make alliance with thee, knowing that the alliance is dangerous. And, since it is more valiant to go to a doom knowingly than blindfold, so I do show myself more valiant than thou. For well I know—since ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... and too unknowing to speculate on the loss of her beauty, which would have brought her competency once,—if sold in the right market. As she lay in her little attic bed, she was still sullenly thinking, wearily thinking of her life. She thought of a poor old horse which Sim had ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... name, However oft the impulse came. Such was the picture—but her mind Forgetting self—could not arise, To look in those unconscious eyes! The zeal that prompted, were she free To serve her friend on bended knee, Shrunk from the orphan's gaze, just hurl'd, Lonely and poor upon the world— Unknowing yet her loss, endeared, By its ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... his eye followed hers, and saw with hers, Which colored all his objects;—he had ceased To live within himself; she was his life, The ocean to the river of his thoughts, Which terminated all: upon a tone, A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow, And his cheek change tempestuously—his heart Unknowing of its cause of agony. But she in these fond feelings had no share: Her sighs were not for him; to her he was Even as a brother—but no more: 'twas much, For brotherless she was, save in the name Her infant friendship had bestowed on him; Herself the solitary scion left Of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... can come from his following? It seems to me that Matelgar the Thane and these friends of his might well have laughed away all these foolishnesses, rather than hoard them up to bring before this solemn council. This, too, I hold for injustice, that one should be kept in ward till his trial, unknowing of all that is against him, unhelped by the counsel of any freeman, and unable to send word to those who should stand by him at his trial. Indeed, this thing must be righted, I tell you, before England is a ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... And that unknowing what he did, He leaped amid a murderous band, And saved from outrage worse than death 55 The ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... about my rosebud. Partly, it is that he is disappointed that she is not like her mother; he had made up his mind to another Lucy, and her Williams face took him by surprise, and, partly, he is not a man to adapt himself to a child. She must be trained to help unobtrusively in his occupations; the unknowing little plaything her mother was, she never can be. I am afraid he will never adapt himself to English life again—his soul seems to be in his mines, and if as you say he is happy and valued there—though it is folly to look forward to the wrench again, instead of rejoicing ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... With a cry of rage he struck at the serpent with the bird, and struck and struck again, blindly, still giving utterance to that odd sound, and with the fury of a young demon. The woman had reached the bank and stood, unknowing what to do, shrieking in maternal terror, while across the clearing a man was running. And then a fierce chance blow, delivered with all the strength of the maddened boy, alighted fairly, just below the head of the snake carrying ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... gates of Paradise, while the too-intimate, Self-righteous' boast, strikes rudely at the gate Of heaven, unknowing why it does not open to Their summons, as they see pale ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... painlessly, and all unknowing, he himself went the common way—out of this Mystery of Change he had spent ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... to pass that little Sophy Waldron was received into her grandfather's house all unknowing that it ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... falsehood, follow scorning. Denounce who will, who will deny, And pile the hills to scale the sky; Let theist, atheist, pantheist, Define and wrangle how they list, Fierce conserver, fierce destroyer,— But thou, joy-giver and enjoyer, Unknowing war, unknowing crime, Gentle Saadi, mind thy rhyme; Heed not what the brawlers say, Heed thou ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... behold, a look came o'er his face, that was stranger than any look I had e'er seen on th' face of man or of woman, and his eyes were no more bright and eager, but deep and soft. Then she turned and went direct towards him unknowing. ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... ultimate success. At last our ignorance shall be done away; and we shall "apprehend" the real and the eternal, as we apprehend the sunshine when the sky is free from cloud. Therefore "Smite upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love"— and suddenly it shall part, and ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... lumber car, and the day's work was over, all but clearing a great blocked culvert, lest an unexpected thaw or rain might flood the right of way. To these men it was all in the day's work and unconscious passengers snored away in their berths, unknowing of the heroic toil their ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... confusion of thought cleared away, two images of distress loomed up and filled the view her aunt, broken under the news, and Hugh still unknowing to them; her own separate existence Fleda was hardly conscious of. Hugh especially how was he to be told, and how could he bear to hear, with his most sensitive conformation of both physical and moral nature? And if an arrest should take place there that night! Fleda shuddered, and, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... but fortunate— Out of the fogs, the vast Atlantic solitudes. Shall, by the hawser-pin Waiting the signal Leave—go—anchor! Scent the familiar, The unforgettable Fragrance of home; So in a long breath Bless us unknowing: Bless them, the violets, Bless me, the ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... out on the wide view, I felt the blessings of my comparative freedom. I stand in no false relations. Who else is so happy? Here are these fair, unknowing children envying the depth of my mental life. They feel withdrawn by sweet duties from reality. Spirit! I accept; teach me to prize and ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Let not this weak, unknowing hand Presume Thy bolts to throw, And deal damnation round the land, On each I judge ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... end, stood erect. All unknowing what he did, he had taken Landry's hand in his and the boy felt the grip on his fingers like the contracting of a vise of steel. The other hand, as though holding up a standard, was still in the air, and his great deep-toned voice ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... lethargy. In order to save the feelings of the family, a death from consumption is reported as bronchitis or pneumonia. The man is buried quietly. The premises are not disinfected, as they should be, and perhaps some unknowing victim moves into that germ-reeking atmosphere, as into a pitfall. Let me give an instance. A clergyman in a New York city told me of a death from consumption in his parish. The family had moved away, and the following week a young ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... one in your thoughts? Has your heart compassed any man's death? In your mind, have you ever taken a brand from the altar, and slain your brother? How many plain ordinary faces of men do we look at, unknowing of murder behind those eyes? Lucky for you and me, brother, that we have good thoughts unspoken. But the bad ones? I tell you that the sight of those blank windows in Northumberland Street—through which, as it were, my mind could picture the awful tragedy glimmering ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rail of the control panel desperately. "I?" he whispered. "I was roaming the planes, exploring, experimenting, immersed in the pursuits that went with my insatiable thirst for scientific data and the broadening of my knowledge of this complex universe of ours. Forgetting my responsibilities. Unknowing, unsuspecting." ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent
... out upon the yard track the small crowd cheered. At least, the locomotive had the power to move, and to the unknowing ones, at least, that seemed a great and ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... followers stopped me and stripped me of one of my gowns and loaded me with blows. Wherefore do thou look into my case and take me by the hand and get me back my gown and I will not abide in thy city an hour." Quoth the unjust King, "Who directed thee to enter this city, unknowing the custom of its King?"; and quoth the pilgrim, "Give me back my gown and do with me what thou wilt." Now when the King heard this, his temper changed for the worse and he said, "O fool,[FN87] we stripped ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... leans forward. His eyes are eloquent; his tongue alone refrains from finishing the declaration that he had begun. To the girl beside him, however, ignorant of subterfuge, unknowing of the wiles that run in and out of society like a thread, his words sound sweet—the sweeter for the very hesitation that ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... her stead, must beg for bread and shelter while good Christians glut themselves and while fat law-makers whitewash the unpleasant from the sight of the well-to-do. In her helplessness they saw, unknowing it, their own helplessness, saw in her Humanity wronged and suffering and in need. Those who gave gave to themselves, gave as an impulsive offering to the divine impulse which drives the weak together and ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... Murguia went, unknowing. He would see her, thanks to some freakish kindness in Don Tiburcio. He was torn between the joy of the meeting and the sharp grief of the parting that must follow. At the time he never noticed that they led him ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... contracts" to take up the game of playing as joyfully for right as they have for wrong, "rich" (I wish you could have heard the full way in which he said that word) "rich" on "thirty dollars a year for clothes," spending self without stint, joyfully, unknowing of self-pity, for the making of right into might, for the making of a patch of human weeds into a garden of goodness. Only, I would put on record the fact that each man's reward was not the hero's crown of laurel leaves, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Lesbian Maid In love-sick languor hung her head, Unknowing where her fingers strayed, She weeping turned away, and said, "Oh, my sweet Mother—'tis in vain— "I cannot weave, as once I wove— "So wildered is my heart and brain "With thinking ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... had been that hand raised to stem the traffic at a congested corner on the Monday night! Into what a vortex of crime and passion had it not pointed, all unknowing! ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... Like Kama was; in beauty an embodied lord of love: And ofttimes Nala praised they all other chiefs above In Damayanti's hearing; and oftentimes to him, With worship and with wonder, her beauty they would limn; So that, unmet, unknowing, unseen, in each for each A tender thought of longing grew up from seed of speech; And love (thou son of Kunti!) those gentle hearts did reach. Thus Nala—hardly bearing in his heart Such longing—wandered in his palace-woods, And marked some water-birds, with painted plumes, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... finding an unknown pleasure in holding their skeins, in watching them at work, in listening to their quiet prattle. The simplicity of this half-monastic life, which revealed to him the beauty of these souls, unknown and unknowing of the world, touched him keenly. He had believed such morals impossible in France, and admitted their existence nowhere but in Germany; even so, they seemed to him fabulous, only real in the novels of Auguste Lafontaine. Soon Eugenie became to ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... on the wing, she has dropped this song to earth, unknowing and unheeding where its beauty shall alight; it is the impulse of her glad sweet heart to carol out its joy—no more. She is passing the great house of the First Happy One, so soon rejected in her game of make-believe! If now she could know what part the dream-Pippa ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... white-misted image in the glass. She had a furious longing to tear off that diadem and veil and heavy robe, to scatter the ornaments and drive out all those maddening spectators, all those interested, eager, unknowing, uncaring spectators of ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... gift remains to gain, Yet I act here! and, if I acted not— Earnest and watchful—those that look to me For guidance, sinking back to sloth again Because I slumbered, would decline from good, And I should break earth's order and commit Her offspring unto ruin, Bharata! Even as the unknowing toil, wedded to sense, So let the enlightened toil, sense-freed, but set To bring the world deliverance, and its bliss; Not sowing in those simple, busy hearts Seed of despair. Yea! let each play his part In all he finds to do, with unyoked soul. All things are everywhere by Nature ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... her taper, and found the silver goblet with "Ex dono pupillorum" on it, from which she had taken her milk and possets through all her childish years, and so gone blindly out to find her place at the bedside,—a Sister of Charity without the cap and rosary; nay, unknowing whither her feet were leading her, and with wide blank eyes seeing nothing but the vision that beckoned her along.—Well, I must wake her from her slumber or trance.—I called her name, but she did ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... scribbling all); And a full tumultuous murmur of wings Grew through the hall; And I knew the white undying Fire, And, through open portals, Gyre on gyre, Archangels and angels, adoring, bowing, And a Face unshaded . . . Till the light faded; And they were but fools again, fools unknowing, Still scribbling, ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... the wound. Accurs'd was he, of daring over-bold, Reckless of evil deeds, who with his bow Assail'd the Gods, who on Olympus dwell. The blue-ey'd Pallas, well I know, has urg'd Tydides to assail thee; fool and blind! Unknowing he how short his term of life Who fights against the Gods! for him no child Upon his knees shall lisp a father's name, Safe from the war and battle-field return'd. Brave as he is, let Diomed beware He meet not some more dangerous foe than ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... Power, whose magnitude we scarcely do more than suspect even to-day, Power that could make his every conceivable dream come real. But the feet of the race were in the way of it, though he died blindly unknowing. ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... slave, despairing, chose This lonely wild, this desert plain, This silent witness of the woes Which he, though guiltless, must sustain. Unknowing why these pains he bears, He groans, he raves, and he despairs. With lingering fires Love racks my soul: In vain I grieve, in vain lament; Like tortured fiends I weep, I howl, And burn, yet never can repent. Distant, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... plenty, through copses planted by his fathers, through towns built for his use. Posterity is no more; fame, and ambition, and love, are words void of meaning; even as the cattle that grazes in the field, do thou, O deserted one, lie down at evening-tide, unknowing of the past, careless of the future, for from such fond ignorance alone canst thou ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... in his wake, the blind wave break in fire. He shall fulfil God's utmost will, unknowing his desire. And he shall see old planets change and alien stars arise, And give the gale his seaworn sail in shadow of new skies. Strong lust of gear shall drive him forth and hunger arm his hand, To win his food ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... a Power above, which, if we seek, will arm us both—you against such vain fears, me against the guilt, unknowing though it may be, of winning affections ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... as an artist but found him primitive as a technician, commented:[5] "Widely praised by a crowd of unknowing connoisseurs and undiscriminating collectors, we have yet, half a century after his death, to point out how much of what is attributed to him is really by ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... view—hallo, into a grave without epitaph, by paths as stealthy and sly as the poor hunted fox, when his last chance—and sole one—is, by winding and doubling, to run under the earth; to know that it would be an ungrateful imposture to take chair at the board—at the hearth, of the man who, unknowing your secret, says, 'Friend, be social'; accepting not a crust that one does not pay for, lest one feel a swindler to the kind fellow-creature whose equal we must not be!—all this—all this, Sophy, did ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this weak, unknowing hand Presume thy bolts to throw, Or deal damnation round the land On each I ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... obsession of worry, a jealous distraction, as if she resented the well-being of others when hers were forced to suffer. This was different. She did not draw away from him now. She did not seem to see or hear him. Her glance lit unknowing on his face, her hand lay in his, passive as a thing of stone. Sometimes he thought she did not ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... thought that nightly here His phantom may draw down to the water's brim, And hers come up to meet it, as a dim Lone shine upon the heaving hydrosphere, And mariners wonder as they traverse near, Unknowing of her and him. ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy |
