"Unwritten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this epic of Suomi, descending unwritten from the mythical age to the present day, kept alive from generation to generation by minstrels, or song-men, is regarded as one of the most precious contributions to the literature of the world, made since the time of Milton and ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... alike) painfully pshaw-ing over some new and uncut barley sugar in rime, which a man in the street asked us if we had read, or it may be some learned lucubration about the site of Troy by some one we chanced to meet at dinner. It is an unwritten chapter in the history of the human mind, how this literary prurience after new print unmans us for the enjoyment of the old songs chanted forth in the sunrise of human imagination. To ask a man or woman who spends half a lifetime in sucking magazines and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... to this came his answer, tragic in its brevity, terrible in its attempt to say nothing—so that its stiff cerement of formality seemed to crack with every written word and its platitudes split open under the fierce straining of the living and unwritten ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... although these have all been made the subjects of wide discussion of late, both in America and Great Britain, and have, I think, a bearing under the circumstances on his character and genius. It is an unwritten tragedy that will doubtless always remain unwritten. I will but mention an eloquent appeal of the Scotch poet, Robert Buchanan, published in London in March, 1876, eulogizing and defending the American ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... closely akin to that which moves some men in our time to deny or limit the past, and reject the results of any investigation which tend to enlarge it. Rational inquiry constantly forces upon us the suggestion that there was more in the unwritten history of the human race than our inherited modes of thinking have allowed us to suppose, and that the beginning of civilization is far more ancient than our long accepted theories of antiquity ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... handful of sailors escaping in the longboat. Then there were the Spanish pieces, which told of the loss of one of the early explorers. All this, of the vessels named, is a matter of history, and is to be found in the SOUTH PACIFIC SAILING DIRECTORY. But that there was other history, unwritten, I was yet to learn. In the meantime I puzzled why six thousand primitive savages let one ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... lot of flub-dub," says the colonel, "about higher laws and unwritten laws. But we've got high enough law written if we ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... rules of its own for the guidance of the uninitiated. Every indulgence should therefore be shown to the hunting tyro who innocently commits errors; for in nine cases out of ten it is probable she does so, from ignorance of the unwritten laws which govern the conduct of the experienced hunting man and woman. On this subject Mr. Otho Paget writes: "The lady novice comes in for her share of blame, and though she may not get sworn at, black ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... chief subject for consideration to be the choice of a club at which to lunch. There, in the solitude of the deserted smoking-room, where the heat was tempered, the glare shut out, and the very footfall subdued, he thought of the little hotel in University Place. Because human society had mysterious unwritten laws, the woman he loved was forced to steal away from the freshness and peace of green fields and sweeping river, to take refuge amid the noisome ugliness from which, in spite of her courage, her exquisite nature must ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... on yer way back—I'll have a little present ready for you." It was an unwritten law that no guest should depart without a gift of some kind. Sometimes it was one of Asia's paintings, again it was a package of sunflower seed, or a bottle of vinegar, and once Lucy had taken home four gourds and a ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... hideous growls, which now rose in strength and volume, he seemed to be in quite the mood. Now Tarzan felt no fear of Taug, nor did the unwritten law of the jungle demand that he should flee from battle with any male, unless he cared to from purely personal reasons. But Tarzan liked Taug. He had no grudge against him, and his man-mind told him what the mind of an ape would never ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... written and designed to reform and prevent corruptions and abuses in the affairs of the world (as the Scriptures are in matters of religion), he finds it many times a great obstruction to the advantage and profit of his practice; whereas the Common Law, being unwritten, or written in an unknown language which very few understand but himself, is the more pliable and easy to serve all his purposes, being utterly exposed to what interpretation and construction his interest and occasions shall ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... statutory law based on Anglo-American common law for the modern sector and customary law based on unwritten ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... friend—the only one. He was good to papa," Deleah said, but to herself alone. For in that unhappy household was a law, unwritten, unspoken, but binding none the less, that the name of the husband and ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... prevailing party, or the one who is the best "mixer," secures the office regardless of qualifications. Sharing the fortunes of other political offices, the county superintendency frequently has applied to it the unwritten party rule of "two terms and out," thus crippling the efficiency of the office by frequent changes of ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... of the Quaker poet there is an unwritten chapter of personal history full to the brim of romance. It will be remembered that Whittier in his will left ten thousand dollars for an Amesbury Home for Aged Women. One room in this home Mrs. Elizabeth ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... him love his place. Lord Brentford declared that he could not understand it,—that he should find himself lost in amazement if such a man as his young friend allowed himself to be led into the outer wilderness by such an ignis-fatuus of light as this. Lord Cantrip laid down the unwritten traditional law of Government officials very plainly. A man in office,—in an office which really imposed upon him as much work as he could possibly do with credit to himself or his cause,—was dispensed from the necessity of a conscience ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... utter trash in comparison with the story of Alice Bashford, in which, much against my will, I had become a minor character. I had rather prided myself on my ability to see through a plot in the first chapter of the most complicated mystery story, but there were points in this unwritten ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... lying before me, a letter I wrote to my father from Benton Barracks, of date March 2, 1862, in which the date of our arrival at St. Louis is given as February 28th. And I well know that we were only two days on the trip. And besides the date given in my letter, I distinctly remember several unwritten facts and circumstances that satisfy me beyond any doubt, that the day we left Carrollton was February 27, 1862. Early in the morning of that day, the regiment filed out at the big gate, and marched south on the dirt road. Good-bye to old Camp Carrollton! Many ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... saint replied, his rising anger past: "What can I do?—the law is hard-and-fast, Albeit unwritten and on earth unknown— An oral order issued from the Throne. By but one sin has Woman e'er incurred God's wrath. To accuse Them Loud ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... is suggested by an irregularity, of plan. But in architecture on a grand scale, whether it be in a Greek colonnade or a Gothic arcade, we cannot tolerate irregularity of spacing except where some constructive necessity affords an obvious and higher reason for it. Then, again, we find the unwritten law running throughout all architecture that a progress of line in one direction requires to be stopped in a marked and distinct manner when it has run its course, and we find a similarly felt necessity in regard to musical form. The repetition so common ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... spoken of love to her, she had a right to share his troubles. The infrequency of his visits to her of late, and something in his manner, made her uneasy and a little bitter. For there was an understanding between them, though it had been unspoken and unwritten. They had vowed without priest or witness. The heart speaks eloquently in symbols first, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... into Mexico on their forays rather than break their treaty with the Americans. They could have easily carried off our stock by killing the few vaqueros kept with them on the range, but refrained from doing so from motives well understood on the frontiers. There is an unwritten law among ranchmen as old as the treaty between ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... learned in the history of Alexandria under the Romans may wonder that I should have made no mention of the Therapeutai on Lake Mareotis. I had originally meant to devote a chapter to them, but Luca's recent investigations led me to decide on leaving it unwritten. I have given years of study to the early youth of Christianity, particularly in Egypt, and it affords me particular satisfaction to help others to realize how, in Hadrian's time, the pure teaching of the Saviour, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of this body was an Appius Claudius, son of the haughty patrician of the same name, and equally as haughty as he ever was. The laws of Rome before this time had been in a mixed condition, partly written and partly unwritten and traditional; but now all were to be reduced to order, and incorporated with those two laws that could not be touched—that giving the Aventine to the plebeians, and the sacred law settled on the Roman Runnymede after ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... that instrument on the General Government are reserved to the States and to the people; if it has been viewed by them as the first great step in the march of latitudinous construction, which unchecked would render that sacred instrument of as little value as an unwritten constitution, dependent, as it would alone be, for its meaning on the interested interpretation of a dominant party, and affording no security to the rights of the minority—if such is undeniably the case, what rational grounds could have been conceived for anticipating aught but determined ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... is to be requited being a kindness, is called gratitude, but when it is an injury, it is called revenge. And these principles are common both to natural and statute law. But there are also other divisions of law; for there is both the written and the unwritten law,—each of which is maintained by the rights of nations and the customs of our ancestors. Again, written law is divided into public law and private law. Public law is laws, resolutions of the senate, treaties; private law is accounts, covenants, ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... their eyes. As for the girls, they munched away in silence, no one daring to make a remark, and it was significant of the solemnity of the occasion that not a single girl helped herself to marmalade or jam. By the unwritten laws of the school it would have been considered unfeeling to indulge in such luxuries while the reputation of a companion was at stake. It was a ghastly occasion, and Pixie seemed literally to shrink in stature as she cowered in her chair, glancing ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Freedom—I was entirely at one with him. All the more do I regret that in society he so effectually concealed his higher enthusiasms, and that, having lived on the vague fame of his "History of Liberty," he died leaving it unwritten. ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... leisurely meal, Terry adding an occasional word whenever the flow of affectionate badgering lagged. Fanny, who had served them since they were children, bustled in and out, redfaced, wholesome, fruitlessly trying to press upon Terry an excess of the over-ample dinner. It was a sort of unwritten law in Crampville that the Sunday dinner should be sufficiently heavy to drive the menfolk to a long ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... (Constitution Act); originally, the machinery of the government was set up in the British North America Act of 1867; charter of rights and unwritten customs ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... which, had I guessed that he would do it under heavy shelling, I should have forbidden him to undertake. His type of bravery, though it wears no decorations, is distinguished, more than all other, by the unwritten admiration ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... on at a lazy mule-trot, hearing the unwritten annals of the range from one who had seen them enacted at first hand. Pretty soon we passed a herd of burros with mealy, dusty noses and spotty hides, feeding on prickly pears and rock lichens; and just before sunset we slid down the last declivity out upon the plateau ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... hunters are hard on us, hearts without pity; They have staked their nets round the fair young city, That the sons of her strength and her virgin daughters Should find not whither alive to flee. And we know not yet of the word unwritten, [Ant. 1. The doom of the Pythian we have not heard; From the navel of earth and the veiled mid altar We wait for a token with hopes that falter, 160 With fears that hang on our hearts thought-smitten Lest her tongue be kindled with no good word. ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... plain limitations of the Constitution could not be overstepped on such a plea, even for the general good. Jefferson was so sensitive to this constitutional objection that he proposed to meet it by an amendment to the Constitution; but it was soon evident that the unwritten law of manifest destiny did not need the appeal to the ballot-box. "The grumblers," Jefferson wrote to a friend soon after the news of the treaty was received, "gave all the credit of the acquisition to the accident of war." "They would see," he added, in records on ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... looked at him she was forced to admit that she had never seen him look as he did now. His face, usually serious, had a whole unwritten tragedy in it. And she felt altogether sore and puzzled and ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... from the temptation in this country of adapting business methods and ideals to politics rather than political ideals and methods to business. Our eighteenth-century thinkers explained citizenship itself, not as a duty to our neighbours but as the fulfilment of an unwritten contract. Our nineteenth-century legal writers elevated the idea of free contract almost to an industrial ideal; while, in somewhat the same spirit, the gutter journalists of to-day, when they are at a loss for a popular watchword, call for a business government. ...
— Progress and History • Various
... taps—rat, tat, tat! Surprised, Gombauld turned his eyes towards the door. Nobody ever disturbed him while he was at work; it was one of the unwritten laws. "Come in!" he called. The door, which was ajar, swung open, revealing, from the waist upwards, the form of Mary. She had only dared to mount half-way up the ladder. If he didn't want her, retreat would be easier and more dignified than if she ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... of the Massachusetts delegates, including those we have named, were informally inducted into the organization, in the parlor of B. F. Stevenson, who at the first national encampment a few weeks later was made provisional Commander-in-chief; the ritual and unwritten work was communicated to the new members, and they were fully empowered to organize posts in Massachusetts, General Devens being appointed provisional Grand Commander of the department. On returning ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... victors; very woman, in that she yields to conquer; and after centuries of romance and tragedy, remains, in essence, unconquered still. The old saying, 'Who holds Delhi, holds India,' has its dark counterpart in the unwritten belief that no alien ruler, enthroned at Delhi, shall endure. Hence the dismay of many loyal Indians when the British Government deserted Calcutta for the Queen of the North. And here, already, were her endless, secretive byways rivalling Calcutta suburbs as ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the common type in one-fourth of the time necessary according to the usual mode of instruction. That its acquisition leads the pupil to the correct pronunciation of every word. That it will present to the missionary a superior alphabet for the representation of hitherto unwritten languages," &c. A similar committee, to whom the question was referred by the House of Representatives in 1852, state that during the past year the system had been tried in twelve public schools, and that, according to the testimony of the teachers, children evinced ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the history, not only of all its own secrets and secret hopes—for these were of but small value in the eyes of the worldling—but of all those matters which belonged to the little village to which they were trending, and the unwritten lives of every dweller ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... and on either side the deep, untrodden snow made it impossible for a sleigh to turn out without risking an upset. It was an unwritten law of the winter highway that pedestrians must give the right of way to vehicles, particularly those that bore loads. But the Duke of Wellington was subject to no law she did not wish to obey. To turn off the road meant plunging ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... ever. It was amusing to witness the air of business with which he opened each morning the three or four journals to which he subscribed. He broke the seals as if he expected to find in their columns something of absorbing personal interest; as, for example, a critique of his unwritten poem, or a resume of the book that he meant some day to write. He read these journals without missing one word, and always found something to arouse his contempt or anger. Other people were so fortunate: their pieces ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... own little unwritten history, handed down from lip to lip through the generations, of tragic, comic, and dramatic events. They are told at weddings and festivals, and rehearsed around winter firesides. And in these oral annals of Glen St. Mary the tale of the union ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... OWEN,—You have written me a beautiful letter. Not one word of it would I have unwritten, and it is a very great grief to me that I cannot write you a letter which would please you as much as your letter pleases me. No woman, since the world began, has had such a lover as I have had, and yet I am putting him aside. What a strange fatality! Yet I ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... attributed the savage way in which their master whipped off his host's team from trying to get a second helping, to the weariness of a long journey. For to beat another man's dogs, especially with the long and heavy lash of our Northern whips, is a breach of the unwritten ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... announce to hall and hovel Lord Asterisk's unwritten novel. It's full of wit, and full of fashion, And full of taste, and full of passion; It tells some very curious histories, Elucidates some charming mysteries, And mingles sketches of society With ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... through infinite mists of greyness he looks back on the sharp hatreds and wringing desires of his life. Now a leaf seems to have been turned and a new white page spread before him, clean and unwritten on. At last things have ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... towns, or of three or four valleys, to preserve the special privilege or for the special needs of each. Hence was formed a habit of self-government, the practice of legislative, judicial and administrative functions, which resulted gradually in a code of written or unwritten laws embodied in the fueros or fors of each province, and the cartas-pueblos of the towns. In form these fueros or charters are often grants from the lord or sovereign; in reality they are only a confirmation ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... Queen's character and disposition, and to give typical instances of her methods in dealing with political and social matters—to produce, in fact, a book for British citizens and British subjects, rather than a book for students of political history. That the inner working of the unwritten constitution of the country; that some of the unrealised checks and balances; that the delicate equipoise of the component parts of our executive machinery, should stand revealed, was inevitable. We have thought it ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... of her duties; however much she may suffer, she must present as calm and serene a countenance as a warrior in the hour of danger, and fall, if necessary, upon the spot, with death in her heart and a smile upon her lips. In order to obey this unwritten law, Madame de Bergenheim, after a slight interruption, seated herself at the piano to accompany three or four young girls who were each to sing in turn the songs that they had been ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... The inhabitants grew to be proud of their rosy citadel; it was an unwritten law among them that every new house should adapt itself to this tone. For the rest, there was not much building done after his death, with the exception of a few isolated villas that sprang up, despite his old commands, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... cannot." Alfred's value to literature is this: he placed by the side of Anglo-Saxon poetry,—consisting of two great poems, Caedmon's great song of the 'Creation' and Cynewulf's 'Nativity and Life of Christ,' and the unwritten ballads passed from lip to lip,—four immense translations from Latin into Anglo-Saxon prose, which raised English from a mere spoken dialect to a true language. From his reign date also the famous ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... with the speaker! But it is not the British military way, and the unwritten laws of the Service stand firm. So let me only remind you that General Horne led the artillery at Mons; that he has commanded the First Army since September, 1916; that, in conjunction with Sir Julian Byng, he carried ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Ne, which might be called the multiple form, is used whenever more than one person is addressed, even though no word may appear in the sentence indicating how many. This is an idiosyncracy which perhaps would never have been developed, certainly would not be perpetuated, in any except an unwritten language. It is of no effect except in a language always colloquial. The multiple form will be given in this grammar as the first person plural, and, whether indicated or not, the other may ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... an arena for set combat between a few distinguished parliamentarians, whose displays were watched by followers on either side, either diffident of their ability to compete, or held silent by the unwritten rule which imposed strict reserve upon a new member. For the greater number promotion had come through slow and steady service ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... men possess a code, written or unwritten, that may properly be called moral, we expect of them the judgment that guilt should be punished. But what shall be accounted guilt? What shall be the measure of retribution? Who shall be ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... Fraternity with Subordination to the Wisest and the Best: and of that Equilibrium between the Active Energy of the Will of the Present, expressed by the Vote of the People, and the Passive Stability and Permanence of the Will of the Past, expressed in constitutions of government, written or unwritten, and in the laws and customs, gray with age and sanctified by time, as precedents and authority; which is represented by the arch resting on the two columns, Jachin and Boaz, that stand at the portals of the Temple builded by Wisdom, on one of which Masonry sets the celestial ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... now upon what was afterward done throughout the length and breadth of that peaceful valley of ours, I regret most sincerely that those young men did not violate the unwritten laws and usages which the Indians themselves were ever ready to cast aside when it suited their purpose, and kill the bloodthirsty Brant whether his men showed signs ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... This unwritten law which prevails throughout the history of Catholic nations and expresses so forcibly and so persistently the doctrinal principle of which we spoke, justifies the claims of the Catholic Extension and gives ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... moving and pathetic in the death of an old language. Permit me to tell you, not as a philologist, a character to which I have no claim, but as an imaginative writer, how the death of an ancient tongue affects me. It is unlike any other form of death, for an unwritten language is even as a breath of air which when it is spent leaves no trace behind. A nation may die, yet its history remains, and that is the tangible part of its past. A city may fall to decay and lie a thousand years under the sands of the desert, yet its relics revivify its life. ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... called the following morning, declared their "detestation of these violent proceedings," and promised to suppress them in future. We shall see that one more such outbreak, and one only, was made by a Boston mob. There is here suggested an unwritten, perhaps never to be written, chapter of the history of this time. By what means did the Boston leaders, Samuel Adams chief among them, manage to control the Boston workmen? However it was done, by what conferences and through what reasoning, it is safe to say that the loose organizations of the ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... faith and practice are not to be confused, each is separate from the other; the two may unite or the one may be divorced from the other without the integrity of either being affected: this is the unwritten Hindu code which she and hers had ever held; and now, after years of belief in it, to face round suddenly to its opposite—this was more than she could do. She held, as it were, the Truth in her hand, and turned it round ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... always well received, were not always well timed; certainly it was an error of judgment to insert a solo at the cross-roads after she had told us that she hadn't a moment to spare if she was to get home from the ball before the rest of the family. But here again it was a matter of obedience to some unwritten and inscrutable law of pantomime which it is not for us, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... facts with reference to an isolated transaction. There are many, very many others of a similar character that I might mention, but I will not. The unwritten and secret history of our border would amaze the civilized world, and would stagger the faith of the most credulous. In the case just mentioned, we find an old man who had passed his threescore and ten, and a youth who had ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the jury startled him by its absurdity. Who does not recall sensational acquittals in which sympathy for the defendant or prejudice against the plaintiff carried away the feelings of the twelve good men and true? For them are the unwritten laws, for them the mingling of justice with race hatreds or with gallantry. And even in the heart of New York a judge recently said to a chauffeur who had killed a child and had been acquitted: "Now go and get ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... of England, heirs of glory, Heroes of unwritten story, Rise, shake off the chains like dew Which in sleep have fallen on you! Ye are ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... profound and far-reaching truth wrapped up in Goethe's simple yet really inexhaustible monition, that if we would improve a man, it were well to let him believe that we already think him that which we would have him to be. The law that noblesse oblige has unwritten bearings in dealing with all men; all masses of men are susceptible of an appeal from that point: for this Mr. Carlyle seems ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... is alive with the bacteria of animalism, under increasing control as it rises, still with the ferocity, rapacity and selfish passions of the gloomy mass at the bottom and forever in revolt. Is this not proved by history, written and unwritten? Is it not proved by the ghastly secrets of individual introspection that men never reveal or admit to others; secrets guarded by a system of conventions so impenetrable and vast that to attempt to personalize it in the sneaking figure of Hypocrisy would be as absurd as to try ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... love letters, since he writes to Clara that he has been considering the publication of their correspondence in his "Zeitschrift," though he was probably not serious at this, seeing that he also plans to fill a balloon with his unwritten thoughts and send it to her, "properly addressed ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... from the red man's record, even it is moved at times by his fate, and stirred by his persistent, his inevitable romance. For the Indian's record is the background, and not seldom the foreground, of American history, in which his endless contests with the invader were but a counterpart of the unwritten, or recorded, struggles of all ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... enough. And, although there were many expressions of welcome spoken and called out to Curly John when he passed into the room and took his seat at the table, nobody in all that throng offered to approach him, for it was an unwritten law of the underworld that a man who reappears for the first time among his associates after imprisonment is left alone to make his own advances when he ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... opposed the idea shuddered at the thought of making over to a Romanist Power (?) the poor converts of Protestantism; the peoples who had been peaceful and happy so long under the protecting aegis of Great Britain; the races whom we were bound, by an unwritten contract, not only to defend, but to civilise, to advance in the paths of progress. The colonists feared to part with the old effete possession, lest the French should oppose, as they have done in Senegal, all foreign industry—in fact, 'seal up' the Gambia. A highly respectable ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... ran and swam, and flew, or only grew, possessing that extensive familiarity with things which shows equal sweetness of sympathy and playful penetration. Most refreshing to me was his unstudied lore, the unwritten poetry which common life presents to a strong and gentle mind. It was a great contrast to the subtleties of analysis, the philosophic strainings of which I had seen too much. But I will not attempt to transplant it. May it profit others as it did ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... scholars showed such excellent aptitudes for deception and overreaching, and perhaps no lack of taste for common money-making, that they did not even spare their friends, but used their arts on them. [33] And so an unwritten law was framed by which we still abide, bidding us teach our children as we teach our servants, simply and solely not to lie, and not to cheat, and not to covert, and if they did otherwise to punish them, hoping to make them humane and law-abiding ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... bench made of twisted vine was a young girl. She held in her hand a book, but she was not reading it. She was scanning the unwritten pages of some reverie; her eyes, dark, large and wistful, were holding communion with the god of dreams. A wisp of hair, glossy as coal, trembled against a cheek white as ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... necessity arose. He was a warrior, whose single prowess might go far in deciding the issue of a hard-fought battle—an orator, discoursing with weighty eloquence on grave questions of state—a judge, whose decisions helped to build up the as yet unwritten code of law. Descending from these high altitudes, he could take up his bow and spear, and go forth to hunt the boar and the stag, or wield the woodman's axe, or the carpenter's saw and chisel. He could kill, ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... principal part, and designed to furnish the historical key to the great Elizabethan writings), though now for a long time completed and ready for the press, and though repeated reference is made to it in this volume, is, for the most part, omitted here. It contains a true and before unwritten history, and it will yet, perhaps, be published as it stands; but the vivid and accumulating historic detail, with which more recent research tends to enrich the earlier statement, and disclosures which no invention could anticipate, are waiting now ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... faithfully to the Rock for four days. During whole afternoons he sat there looking out over the Bad Lands. At sunset he returned to camp. Aliris: A Romance of all Time gathered dust. Letters home remained unwritten. Prospecting was left to the capable hands of Old Mizzou until, much to Bennington's surprise, that individual resigned ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... been a time when de Florac had set the fashion, and that not only in waistcoats and walking-sticks. He was a fine swordsman, and was even now in some request as second at fashionable duels. None knew more certainly than he every punctilio of those unwritten laws which govern affairs of honour, and, had he been born to even a quarter of the fortune of Tom Pargeter, his record would probably have remained unstained. Unfortunately for him this had not been the case; he had soon run through ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... circle—she could not get her imagination away from it. She began to realize that the mind of mortal man could not get away from the law which produced it. She began to understand dimly, as one begins to understand any great truth, that everything around her obeyed that unwritten fundamental law of love, expressed it, sounded it, down to the leaves of the trees casting their flickering shadows on the silver field of moonlight, and the long-drawn chorus of the insects of the summer night. She thought ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... The Board does not recognize the so-called unwritten law as a justification for the ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... becoming in this very modern world, and as only showing a silly deference if exhibited at all. Respect was, in truth, the chief of all virtues here inculcated—respect for age, for old dogs are no longer to be challenged; respect for strength and the great unwritten laws; respect for sex; respect for those who had shown themselves to be the better men; respect for such as neither fought nor swore but held their ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... began fingering the unwritten leaves of the diary, wondering if the time would ever come when they would hold the record of other engagements. Nearly a third of the pages were still blank. How many nice things she could think of that she would like to be able to write thereon. Maybe they ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... pursued and at the brink of the hill, overtaken. The stake was too large for the young artist to risk its loss by adhering to the unwritten rules of combat. He released Rachel, whirled about, and as the foremost descended on him, ducked, seized the man about the middle, and pitched him head-first down into the valley. The second, the tall Nubian that wore the striped ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... to vaticinate a reign of socialistic terror for the immediate future. We have to recognize that man cannot be other than what he makes himself; and he makes himself in obedience to immutable although unwritten laws, whereof he only of late years became dimly conscious. It is well, then, while reflecting on the lessons of some deeply studied epoch in world-history, to regard the developments with which we have been specially occupied, no less than the ephemeral activity of each particular ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... relate that caused certain effects to develope themselves, and it is our only aim to cause others to moralize—to lead inquiring minds into certain directions by revealing something of the heretofore unwritten past. ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... one piaster an hour. We frequently shared with them our frugal, and even scanty meals; and in turn they assisted us in our purchases and arrangements for lodgings, for their word, we found, was with the common people an almost unwritten law. Then, too, they were of great assistance in crossing streams where the depth would have necessitated the stripping of garments; although their fiery little steeds sometimes objected to having an extra rider astride their haunches, and a bicycle across ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... that night England had not yet given her decision. During the last twenty-four hours I had been asked this question a score of times. The people of Paris were getting impatient of England's silence. Englishmen in Paris were getting very anxious. If England did not keep her unwritten pledge to France, it would be dangerous and a shameful thing to be an Englishman in Paris. Some of my friends were already beginning to feel their throats ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... of ten and twelve. Each clique had its leader. By an unwritten law I was included among those who rallied around Phoebe, most of whom she had "learned" at some time or other, as she was now "learning" me. The luncheons were divested of their newspaper wrappings and spread over the ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... surprised at the distinction of the contributors to The Brooklyn Magazine. Each number contained a noteworthy list of them, and when an article by the President of the United States, then Rutherford B. Hayes, opened one of the numbers, the public was astonished, since up to that time the unwritten rule that a President's writings were confined to official pronouncements had scarcely been broken. William Dean Howells, General Grant, General Sherman, Phillips Brooks, General Sheridan, Canon Farrar, Cardinal Gibbons, Marion Harland, Margaret Sangster—the most prominent men and women of the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... why Nat Burns was not at the fire, as usual attempting to make himself leader of the battle without doing much of the work, and now the reason was apparent. He preferred to pursue his courting under the eyes of the village rather than to obey the unwritten law of service. And he was with ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... vows of celibacy, denunciation of pleasures innocent in themselves, intellectual monopoly of interpretation of things past or present, written or unwritten, are travesties of common sense, which is to me the Voice within. Not being a philosopher, I do not classify it, but I listen to it, because I believe it to be the Voice of God. That is the first point which I have no fear in putting ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... to hammer at that all day, and some evenings, too. But it's an unwritten law that a fellow must have some fun; so I'll take an afternoon off now and then, to come round ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... under constant control and hence never straying. The first Texas herds to arrive naturally traveled north to the dead-line, and, choosing a range, went into camp until frost relieved them. It was an unwritten law that a herd was entitled to as much grazing land as it needed, and there was a report about Miles City that the quarantine ground was congested with cattle halfway from ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... as they may seem. As man progressed in civilisation, and grew to be definitely gregarious, hospitality became more a matter of course. But even then it was not above suspicion. It was not hedged around with those unwritten laws which make it the safe and eligible thing we know to-day. In the annals of hospitality there are many pages that make painful reading; many a great dark blot is there which the Recording Angel may wish, but will not be able, to wipe ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... of whom reached to years of discretion: at every stage backwards his sires and gammers thus doubled and doubled till they became a vast body of Gothic ladies and gentlemen of the rank known as ceorls or villeins, full of importance to the country at large, and ramifying throughout the unwritten history of England. His immediate father had greatly improved the value of their residence by building a new chimney, and setting up an additional ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... faces, as first one and then another caught sight of a wife or a sister in the crowd waiting to greet and accompany the brave hearts to the warmth of their humble homes. I felt that while these crews' sufferings and the courage and resolution they had shown remained unwritten, only half of the very stirring and manful story had been recorded. The narrative, as related to me by the coxswain of the lifeboat, is a necessary pendant to the tale told by the mate of the wrecked ship; and as ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... numberless flirtations. But with all her folly she has ever had the sense to keep within the conventionalities of her own fashionable 'coterie,' which is the only world she knows anything about, and whose unwritten laws are her only creed and religion. Her disappointed suitors can justly charge her with cruelty, silliness, ignorance, and immeasurable vanity, but never with indiscretion. She has to perfection the ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Mrs. BRIGHAM YOUNG? What becomes of the Fenian money? When will Cuba be free? we would willingly answer, but our correspondent cannot expect us to solve problems which are as old as BARNUM said JOYCE HETH was. He should be able to see such things as others see them. They are the unwritten law, and PUNCHINELLO does not propose to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... prefixed is that of the visit which the Prince of Wales paid to the tomb of Washington: carrying home thence, as one of the most distinguished of his hosts said, 'an unwritten treaty ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... was no altar in this chapel,—but at its eastern end where the altar might have been, was a dark purple curtain against which blazed in brilliant luminance a Cross and Seven-pointed Star. The rays of light shed by this uplifted Symbol of an unwritten Creed were so vivid as to be almost blinding, and nearly eclipsed the summer glory of the sun itself. Awed by the strange and silent solemnity of my surroundings, I was glad to be hidden under the folds of my enshrouding white veil, though I realised ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... therefore on a basis of written law. Except in one particular, no institutions anterior to the Twelve Tables were recognised at Rome. The theoretical descent of Roman jurisprudence from a code, the theoretical ascription of English law to immemorial unwritten tradition, were the chief reasons why the development of their system differed from the development of ours. Neither theory corresponded exactly with the facts, but each produced consequences ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... his playthings, soiled, broken, and all. She gathered flowers to fling above the brown earth that hid him from her view. She wrote heart-broken verses in his memory, and many more she poured forth in unwritten ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... man!" Every one looked to that point,—"I see a man of Tarsus; and he says, Make mention of me!" It must not be supposed that the discourses of "Uncle Ebenezer," with these abrupt appeals and sudden starts, were unwritten or extempore; they were carefully composed and written out,—only these flashes of thought and passion came on him suddenly when writing, and were therefore quite natural when delivered—they came ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... portraits—paintings of ancestors who have rendered themselves famous in one way or another. Such paintings have their unwritten stories, repeated by word of mouth from one generation to another, thereby preserving the family history which is looked back upon with pride ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... the Speaker who decides when a member is entitled to the floor, and no motion or speech can be made except by a member who has been duly recognized by the chair. There are a number of unwritten rules in this regard, but in the last analysis the Speaker may recognize only persons whom he desires to have speak. Thus Congressmen who are not of the Speaker's party may be kept from making themselves heard upon important measures. When a bill is before the House, the chairman of the committee ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... hidden under a fallen tree-top and one day, while the doe was gone, he fell upon the helpless fawn, which, according to the unwritten law of the forest, was ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... afterwards that we fully comprehended all that Ala had done in that simple act; but I will tell you now what it meant. By the unwritten law of this realm of Venus, she, as queen, had the right to interpose between justice and its victim, and such interposition was always expressed in the way which we had witnessed. It was a right rarely exercised, and probably few then present ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... is an unwritten law that policemen should be Irish. I enjoy Greeks in classic literature or in restaurants, but not as policemen. There is a saying in the city that when Greek meets Greek they go together to get a job on the Market Street Railways. But when they get upon the police ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... opinions, or rather in the practice, of their ancestors. The honors of sacrifice were reserved for the supreme deity; they acknowledged, in rude hymns, their obligations to the air, the fire, the water, and the earth; and their priests derived some profit from the art of divination. Their unwritten laws were rigorous and impartial: theft was punished with a tenfold restitution; adultery, treason, and murder, with death; and no chastisement could be inflicted too severe for the rare and inexpiable guilt of cowardice. As the subject ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... perpetual, but annual or temporary, and not to receive their authority but by election, and certain persons to have voices only in that election, and the like; these are busy and curious frames, which of necessity do presuppose a law precedent, written or unwritten, to guide and direct them: but in monarchies, especially hereditary, that is, when several families or lineages of people do submit themselves to one line, imperial or royal, the submission is more natural and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... in an unbreakable web of prejudice, after the conditions favoring their acquirement have in great part ceased to operate. These preconceptions of national solidarity and international enmity have come down from the past as an integral part of the unwritten constitution underlying all these modern nations, even those which have departed most widely from the manner of life to which the peoples owe these ancient preconceptions. Hitherto, or rather until recent times, the workday experience of these peoples has ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... containing presumeably an application for her hand, in the generous offer of his own. Her reply to a pursuer of that sort was easy. Comedy, after the barbaric attack, refreshed her wits and reliance on her natural fencing weapons. To Westlake, the unwritten No was conveyed in a series of kindly ironic subterfuges, that, played it like an impish flea across the pages, just giving the bloom of the word; and rich smiles come to Emma's life in reading the dexterous composition: which, however, proved so thoroughly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
