It was simply a matter of curiosity, a natural right to examine.

Thirty years ago, while the nation was wallowing in economic depression, the prevailing philosophy of government was to stand aside and allow `` natural forces '' to operate and cure the distress.

William Gilmore Simms, sturdy realist that he was, pleaded for a natural robustness such as he found in his favorites the great Elizabethans, to vivify the pale writings being produced around him.

The obvious natural fact to ancient thinkers was the diurnal rotation of the heavens.

I fled, however, not from what might have been the natural fear of being unable to disguise from you that the things about my bridegroom -- in the sense you meant the word `` things '' -- which you had been galvanizing yourself to tell me as a painful part of your maternal duty were things which I had already insisted upon finding out for myself ( despite, I may now say, the unspeakable awkwardness of making the discovery on principle, yes, on principle, and in cold blood ) because I was resolved, as a modern woman, not to be a mollycoddle waiting for Life but to seize Life by the throat.

As was only natural he confided his searchings to Ann, conceding ruefully that it certainly looked as if their own Congregationalists were wrong and the Baptists right.

As the field on which my tent was pitched was a favorite natural playground for the kids of the neighborhood, I had made many friends among them, taking part in their after-school games and trying desperately to translate Grimm's Fairy Tales into an understandable French as we gathered around the fire in front of the tent.

The Acropolis had been scheduled for the treatment too, but apparently it was to take place at the time of the full moon when the Athenians themselves, out of respect for the natural beauty of the occasion, were wont to forgo their own usual nocturnal illumination.

His father was a professor at Hartford Theological Seminary, and from him he acquired a conviction, which he passed along to me, that there is in the universe of persons a moral law, the law of love, which is a natural law in the same sense as is the physical law.

To the pope, head of the universal Church, to the duke of Burgundy, taking full advantage of his position on the borders of France and of the Empire, or to Othon, who found it quite natural that he should do homage to Edward for Tipperary and to the count of Savoy for Grandson, Flotte's outspoken nationalism was completely incomprehensible.

The poet was by definition a realist, his imaginings and parables being natural organizations of reality.

Milton was required to absorb and display an intensive and accurate knowledge of Latin grammar, logic-rhetoric, ethics, physics or natural philosophy, metaphysics, and Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

`` I had natural sock '', he says, ' as a storyteller and was precociously good at description, dialogue, and most of the other staples of the fiction-writer's trade but I was bugged by a mammoth complex of thoughts and feelings that prevented me from doing more than just diddling the surface of sustained fiction-writing ''.

The medical examiner states that death was due to `` natural causes ''.

In the earlier sessions there was plentiful discussion on the natural law, which Dr. William V. O'Brien of Georgetown University, advanced as the basis for widely acceptable ethical judgments on foreign policy.

The impression was unmistakable that, whatever one may choose to call it, natural law is a functioning generality with a certain objective existence.

It was only natural that Fletcher would strive for a position in which he could make the decisions.

Out of this background of hunting and fishing, it was only natural that Roy first painted subjects he knew best: hunters in the field, fishermen in the stream, ducks and geese on the wing -- almost always against a vast backdrop of weather landscape.

Finally, the conception of the natural community of all possessions which originated with the Stoics was firmly fixed in a tradition by More's time, although it was not accepted by all the theologian-philosophers of the Middle Ages.

As American artists, it was natural that we would want to meet as many Soviet artists as possible.

And in the dark days after the Great Flood of 1927 -- the worst natural disaster in the state's history -- the little plane was its sole replacement in carrying the United States mails.

The best antidote for the bitterness and disappointment that poisoned him was hard work.

He didn't think it was possible for this couple to be pretending.

It must have hurt her even to walk, for the sole was completely off her left foot and Morgan saw that it was bruised and bleeding.

It was the only thing in his life for which he felt guilt.

He knew who was riding after him -- the men he had known all his life, the men who had worked for him, sworn their loyalty to him.

Still, I was disgusted with myself for agreeing with Montero's methods.

He was naked except for a clout.

Now under me I could see him for what he really was, a boy dressed up in streaks of paint.

Well, the grass was there, though in some places the ground was too steep for a cow to get to it.

But it was not easy for him and he often slipped.

Now, here was something of obvious importance to me, yet when I reached for the tickets he snatched them away from my hand.

It was, I felt, possible that they were men who, having received no tickets for that day, had remained in the hall, to sleep perhaps, in the corners farthest removed from the counter with its overhead light.

I was constantly searching for clues around the neighborhood of the hall.

No one was behind it, but in the rear wall of the office I noticed, for the first time, a door which had been left partially open.

Was I sure, he asked, that I knew what I was applying for??

At one and the same time, she was within it but still searching for the drawbridge that would give her entry.

That was the day that he had practically mopped up the main street of Big Sands with Aaron McBride, field boss for the Highlands Oil & Gas Company.

It was payday for Highlands, and he was packing a lot of money back into the oil fields.

I was just doing my job, just following orders, and for that he's going to kill me.

Somehow more terrible than the certainty that he was about to die was the knowledge that Lord would probably not suffer for it: the murder would go unpunished.

He was readying a batch of sourdough biscuits for the Dutch oven.