"Irresponsible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could sell for an hundred. Our condition is, in fact, that of neither the one or the other; and, unless something can be done to counteract the progress of fanaticism on this subject, and that abuse of strength and heedless injustice which always follows irresponsible power, slavery in Maryland must cease, either by sale, while that right remains to the slave-holder, or ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... history of the United States proves, but terrorism as a system is to be found only in countries where the political power is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals; and it sometimes happens that irresponsible persons are exposed to terrorist attacks. We have an instance of this at present in St. Petersburg. The reluctance of the Emperor to adopt at once a Liberal programme is commonly attributed to the influence of two members of the Imperial ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... rode she debated with herself the manner in which she was to conceal her destination from chance observers. Wilful and irresponsible as Rosebud always appeared to be, there was yet something strongly reliant in her nature. She was, as so many girls are, a child in thought and deed until some great event, perchance some bereavement, some tragedy, or some great love, should come ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... proved how terrifying he could be in exposure and assault. He now triumphantly met the test that he had triumphantly applied to his predecessor, and presented a command of even more imposing resources in the task of responsible construction than he had displayed in irresponsible criticism. The speech was saturated with fact; the horizons were large; and the opening of each in the long series of topics, from Mr. Pitt and the great war, down to the unsuspected connection between the repeal of the soap-tax ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... was a most lamentable change from that condition of things which existed before the civil wars. Roman liberties were prostrated forever. Tyrants, armed with absolute and irresponsible power, ruled over the empire; nor could their tyranny end but with their lives. Noble sentiments and aspirations were rebuked. The times were unfavorable to the development of genius, except in those ways which ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the inadvertency, claimed all the privileges of an absolute master. He required that the republic should surrender its expiring rights into his hands, and take a solemn oath of allegiance; that his boyars should be received within its gates, with full authority to exercise their almost irresponsible control over the city; that the palace of Yaroslaff, the temple of Novgorodian liberty, should be given up to his viceroy; that the forum should be abolished; and that the popular assemblies, and all the corresponding immunities of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... undergrowth of a bastard feudalism, by the territorial power of aristocracies which, under cover of administrative titles, converted whole provinces into family estates and claimed over their tenants the divine right of unlimited and irresponsible sovereignty. To investigate all the reasons for the political backwardness of these eastern peoples would carry us far afield. But one reason lies on the surface. Outside the free towns they had produced no middle class; and their towns were neither numerous nor wealthy enough to be important ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... Company, he was obliged to resort to various expedients to raise money to pay them. This led him to the exchange of notes on a large scale, which proved to be a great loss, as many of the parties were irresponsible. There was a loss of thirty thousand dollars by one man, and I am sure that there must have been more than fifty thousand dollars lost in this way. He was also obliged to issue short drafts and notes and raise money on them at fearful rates. The Terry & Barnum stock which was taken in at par, was ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... sole heir; but we care little for his will or for the shell so solemnly placed over the seal;[70] we give the young maiden to him who has best known how to secure our favour. Name me another duty that is so important and so irresponsible. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... labourers—fully realizing the responsibility they were undertaking, signed on the 28th September, 1912. To represent that it was merely the idle bombast of ignorant rustics, or a passing ebullition of political passion coming from hot-headed youths excited by irresponsible demagogues, is folly. It expresses the calm resolution of earnest men who, having thought deeply over the matter had decided that it was better even to face the horrors of civil war rather than to submit to the rule of ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... and subsequent relations has never before been presented to the world with any approach to accuracy or fulness. No biographical notices of Bulwer-Lytton even touch on this subject, which has been hitherto abandoned to the gossip of irresponsible contemporaries. It is true that a Miss Devey composed a "Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton," in which the tale was told. This work was immediately suppressed, and is inaccessible to the public; but the only person who is known to be familiar with its contents ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... millions of men were actually in the hands of a few irresponsible autocrats, who were possessed with exaggerated or false notions of national honor. Now came a time when the world stood hushed, as it were, on the eve of a mighty conflict. Every nation had increased its army and strengthened its defenses to the utmost ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... mob is the most oppressive; nay, the very excess of freedom which gives to each individual the right of pestering all around him with his impertinences, is surely much more hard to endure than the occasional restraints which a strong police may impose. But an absolute and irresponsible monarchy is not a pleasant government to live under. Where men talk only in whispers; where they feel that their words must be weighed ere they utter them; where their single idea of the powers that be, is of an influence which oppresses, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... says Ballard, "try to overlook that old affair of mine when I tried to cut out the Rev. Preble. I was rather irresponsible then, I'll own; but I have steadied down a lot, although for the last week or so—well, you know how giddy Zenobia is. But you will help us. We can't either of ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... not until her door had closed behind her did he move. Had she spoken the truth? Had she in those few moments been temporarily irresponsible because of grieving over the baby's death? Some inner consciousness answered him in the negative. It was not that. And yet—what more could there be? He remembered. Jean's words, his insistent warnings. Resolutely ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... a strange demand after nearly two thousand years of training in the teaching of the gospel! And besides, whom are we to hate? The individual doing his duty in the service of his country, just as we are? Or the responsible governors of the destinies of that country, and the irresponsible leaders of its public opinion?" Hatred of the individual serving his country and governed by others Prof. Gomperz does not stop to discuss. It can obviously be the product only of what with etymological correctness we may term insanity. ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... which has been working like yeast at the bottom of my sodden batter of contentment, making me feel that I'd swell up and burst, if all that crazy ferment couldn't find some relief in expression. So after three long years and more of silence I'm turning back to this, the journal of one irresponsible old Chaddie McKail, who wanted so much to be happy and who has in some way missed the pot of gold that they told her was to be found ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... Health with Key to the Scriptures," in 1878, some irresponsible people insisted that my manual of the practice of Christian Science Mind-healing should not be made public; but I obeyed a diviner rule. People dependent on the rules of this practice for their healing, not having lost the Spirit which sustains the genuine ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... an authority to him to pay you that money, to lay out at your irresponsible discretion for your friend. I keep no money here; but if you would rather Mr. Jaggers knew nothing of the matter, I will send ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... agree, Lindsay, that a careful and rational diet is what a boy needs? Washy's constitution is superb. He has a remarkable stamina, and I attribute it entirely to my careful supervision of his food. I shudder when I think of the growing boys who are permitted by irresponsible people to devour meat, candy, pie—" She broke off. "What is ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... themselves from the mire. But he was intelligent enough to realize that the faults were not all on the side of Capital. Labor, too, needed the curb at times. Too ready to listen to the reckless harangues of irresponsible professional demagogues, wage earners were often as tyrannical as capitalists, insisting on impossible demands, rejecting sober compromise which, in the end, must be the basis of all amicable relations between employer ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... convince me, Jim, that you are more irresponsible and more in need of a guiding hand than ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... cast such a complacent look at his reflection that Giles could not forbear a smile. The man was a compound of treachery, courage, and vanity. He had some virtues and not a few vices, and was one of those irresponsible creatures who develop into Anarchists. But that the Scarlet Cross Society had attracted his talents in the direction of a kind of coast piracy, he would without doubt have been employed in blowing up kings or public buildings. ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... ever died from being kissed. But what a splendid lover you would make!" Away she darted a few steps, to whirl and point and waggle a finger at the dumfounded youth. "Are you coming? Because I don't consider this a wise place to be with a flighty, irresponsible man, first name Lee. Besides, it's beginning to grow dark ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... be sure, the month had been for the most part pleasant, still the loss of her precious pin was enough to make her hate the name of Midvale Springs. Now if she had gained not even the amount of the coal bill by coming! By the last night Polly was in a fever; she could not sleep, while her irresponsible bedfellow lay beside ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... "You're a set of irresponsible young things who don't know your own mind from one minute to the next," laughed Grace. "As I can't very well go walking alone, I'll make my ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... the facts of the shameful acts of insubordination at the school and the escape of Dick Haddon and Ted McKnight, and nobody—according to everybody's wise assurances—was the least bit surprised. The fathers of the township (and the mothers, too) had long since given Dick up as an irresponsible and irreclaimable imp. One large section declared the boy to be 'a bit gone,' which was generally Waddy's simple and satisfactory method of accounting for any attribute of man, woman, or child not in conformity with the dull rule of conduct ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... published a little volume describing the whole affair, in which, with the irresponsible frivolity of a true Capuchin, he poked fun at those who could ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to Jesus, brought down no divine spark from heaven; that the moral law, free-will, merit, and the consequent progress of the Ego, are illusions; that events are successively our masters,—inexorable, irresponsible, and insuperable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... sometimes prove helpful. But you will be happier and more prosperous, if you will send for a catalog and get just what you need, and at cost. You will thereby avoid the expensiveness and uncertainty of doing business through a nicely dressed, but irresponsible stranger. ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... back, and they sent their hinds instead. These knew well what was passing in the shepherd s mind, but they stood in too much awe of him to broach the subject; and he, on his side, was too proud to confide his grievance to irresponsible farm servants. But if nothing was said the dark circles round Peregrine's eyes and the occasional trembling of his hand betrayed to the men his sleepless nights and the palsied fear that infected ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... feeling that their liberties and rights were in danger, would concede nothing to them. As is ordinary in such cases, a great deal of unruly behaviour was witnessed, the public-houses reaped a rich harvest, and acts of violence became general. In this case, a number of youths, utterly foolish and irresponsible, conceived a plot to "pay out," as they call it, the employers, and, in order to carry it out, held secret meetings, the purport of which, unknown to them, gradually leaked out. Into this plot Paul found himself drawn, but instead of encouraging the youths in their design, he did his best ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... must not be vested in the Executive; on the contrary, it must be, it is, vested in the Legislature. Stevens did not hesitate to push his theory to its limit. He was not afraid of making the Legislature in time of war the irresponsible judge of its own acts. Congress, said he, has all possible powers of government, even the dictator's power; it could declare itself a dictator; under certain circumstances he was willing that ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Even the great Caesar had failed, had not divined aright the only treatment to which the disease of the age would yield, for although the blows which actually killed Caesar may have been merely an accident in history, the deed of irresponsible men, his fall was no accident but was the inevitable logical outcome of his imperial policy. But Augustus succeeded in establishing a form of government which enabled himself and his connexion to occupy the throne for almost a hundred years, ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity towards a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early re-establishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... Clairville or Miss Cordova, appeared to be considerably impressed by the events of a certain winter, and after the arrival of Maisie and Jack treated them as his own and gave up the idea of a divorce. The pranks and escapades of two irresponsible, spoilt and active children kept him on the look-out a good deal of his time, and before very long he had decided that children after all were occasionally in the way, and like other good things on this earth, best had in moderation. Still, he never ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... consequence of the clash of modern appliances and social conditions produced by the scientific century on the one hand, and the tradition of a crude, romantic patriotism on the other. At first people received the fact with an irresponsible detachment, much as they would have received the slowing down of the train in which they were travelling or the erection of a public monument by the ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... dragged half naked and half lifeless through the streets of Boston, and other outrages of like import were being perpetrated all over the North, it was carefully given out that those deeds were not the work of irresponsible rowdies, but of "gentlemen"—of merchants, manufacturers, and members of the professions. They claimed the credit for such achievements. There were reasons for such a state of things—some very ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... and in those which had fought on his side, as though he were preparing for himself a Greece in which he would take the first place. He did not choose his archons by their birth, or their wealth, but favoured his own friends and political adherents, to whom he gave irresponsible power; while by being present at several executions, and driving the opponents of his friends into exile, he gave the Greeks a very unpleasant idea of what they were to expect from the empire of Lacedaemon. The comic ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... time the weather, generally malign and irresponsible, favoured Priscilla. With the rising tide a light westerly breeze sprang up. She hoisted the sails and sat in the stern of the boat with an oar. She tucked the middle of it under her armpit, pressed her ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... the powerless leader and his devoted staff resolved to withdraw, formally and openly, from further attendance on the House of Commons. The deplorable state of the country, delivered over to an irresponsible magistracy and all the horrors of martial law; the spread among the patriotic rising generation of French principles; the scarcely concealed design of the Castle to goad the people into insurrection, in order to deprive them of their liberties; all ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... these again to individuals of perfect understanding, so that tens of thousands must have existed in the course of ages, who in their moral and intellectual condition, have exhibited a passage from the irrational to the rational, or from the irresponsible to the responsible. Moreover we may infer from the returns of the Registrar General of births and deaths in Great Britain, and from Quetelet's statistics of Belgium, that one-fourth of the human race die in early infancy, nearly one-tenth before they are a month old; so that we may safely ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... be no question. Mr. Barradine would pay a very large sum of money to avoid the threatened disgrace. And—in the midst of her acute apprehension and distress—the plain matter-of-fact idea presented itself: that if Dale were not rendered irresponsible by jealous ire, one might hope that he would eventually fall in with Mr. Barradine's views—that he ought, for everybody's sake, to take his damages, more damages than he would ever get in a court of law, and then ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... kingdom from the disastrous results of the interference of Italians in the domestic affairs of France; to preserve the treasure of the realm from exhaustion resulting from the levy of arbitrary imposts fixed by irresponsible aliens, and exacted through the terrors of ecclesiastical penalties; to prevent the right of election to lucrative livings from falling into the hands of those who would use the privilege only as a means of acquiring riches; and to rescue clergymen ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... two; if one might but escape from life without the horror of dying! for now it is only the revolt from death that keeps him in the anguish of life.[18] To Palladas of Alexandria the world is but a slaughter- house, and death is its blind and irresponsible lord.[19] ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... had a right to discuss their grievances. "They had an inalienable right to complain by petition, and to remonstrate to either House of Parliament, or to the King; and to make two magistrates, who might be strong partisans, irresponsible judges whether anything said or done at a meeting had a tendency to encourage sedition, was to say that a free constitution was no longer suitable to us." Pitt justified these measures, partly on the ground of the special and unprecedented danger of the times, as proved by the late attempt ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... sympathy, the law governing insanity has had comparatively few victims, but the fact remains that more than one irresponsible insane man has swung miserably from the scaffold. But "hard cases" do more than "make bad law," they make lawlessness. A statute systematically violated is worse than no statute at all, and exactly in so far as we secure a sort of justice by evading the ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... cattle country. He thought with a shudder of Purdy, of the flight in the night, and the subsequent trip through the bad lands. The one pleasant memory in the whole adventure had been the Texan—Tex, the devil-may-care, the irresponsible, the whimsical. And yet, withal, the capable, the masterful. He recollected vividly that there had been days of indecision—days when her love had wavered between himself and this man of the broad open spaces. Long before this adventure of the wilds ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... development made itself felt and gained in strength when Reconstruction came; but during that period the people had to devote all their energies to living day by day, hoping for strength to endure. When property was being confiscated under the forms of law, only to be squandered by irresponsible legislators, there was little incentive to remake the industrial system, and the ventures of the Reconstruction government into industrial affairs were not encouraging. Farm property in the South—and ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... the amazed and scattering forces of Billy Bouncer as if they were rows of tenpins. He knocked them flat, and then he kicked them. It was a marvel that he did not cripple some of them, for, his eyes glaring, his muscles bulging to the work, he acted like some fairly irresponsible being. ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... where it was going, for it had no fins or sweeps to guide its course, and the rudder could only induce it to submit itself lengthways to the stream after the lapse of some time. The fairway of the river was entirely taken up by this irresponsible Frankenstein of the Thames, which some one had started, but which now did as it liked. Some of the small craft got up into the willows and waited; some seemed to narrowly escape being crushed against a wall on the opposite bank. The ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... involves such an authority. It cannot exist unless by the express action of the directors, or as the result of a course of business of the bank." The facts alleged against Wyman were that he had authorized the discount of the notes of some friends of his who were irresponsible, and that he had, in some way, shared the proceeds. Mr. Choate seized upon the suggestion. The Government witnesses, who were chiefly the directors of the bank, were asked in cross-examination whether they had not consented that Mr. Wyman should have ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... concerned with personal opinions, is not geographical at all. The internal management of railways ought not to be in the hands of the geographical state, for reasons which we have already considered. Still less ought it to be in the hands of a set of irresponsible capitalists. The only truly democratic system would be one which left the internal management of railways in the hands of the men who work on them. These men should elect the general manager, and a parliament of directors if necessary. All questions of wages, conditions of labor, running ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... all with sole responsibility and as sole partner, while Foggatt, behind the scenes absorbed the larger share of the profits. In brief, my unhappy and foolish father was a mere tool in the hands of the cunning scoundrel who pulled all the wires of the business, himself unseen and irresponsible. At last three companies, for the promotion of which my father was responsible, came to grief in a heap. Fraud was written large over all their history, and, while Foggatt retired with his plunder, my father was left to meet ruin, disgrace, and imprisonment. From beginning to end he, and he only, ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... laurels and other immortal shrubs showed against sapphire sky and silver moon, even in that midwinter, warm colours as of the south. The green gaiety of the waving laurels, the rich purple indigo of the night, the moon like a monstrous crystal, make an almost irresponsible romantic picture; and among the top branches of the garden trees a strange figure is climbing, who looks not so much romantic as impossible. He sparkles from head to heel, as if clad in ten million moons; the real moon catches him at every ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... early age into uncongenial work and never given a chance to escape, and the other is the class of people with small fixed incomes or with small salaries earnt by routine work, or half independent people practising some minor artistic or literary craft, who have led uneventful, irresponsible lives from their youth up, and never came at any point into relations of service to the state. This latter class was more difficult to define than the former—because it is more various within itself. My French friends wanted to talk of the "Psychology of the Rentier." I was for ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... better-dressed man than he could afford to be; that the writing opposite was a notice for them to quit the premises they had rented (not leased), or pay up; that it gave the writer great pain to send it, although it was but the necessary legal form and he only an irresponsible drawer of an inadequate salary, with thirteen children to support; and that he implored them to tear off and burn up this postscript ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... took more interest in the children. They seemed real to us and nearer, whereas, before, they had simply passed in and out before us like little irresponsible figureheads of the future, with whom some other preacher would contend later. We never asked why it was that they were invariably the first to come to the altar when invitations were extended to sinners during revival season. But it was curious, the ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... not move his artillery, and his defenses very slight, he could have made only a weak fight had Howe attacked him. Yet the legislature of Pennsylvania told him that, instead of lying quiet in winter quarters, he ought to be carrying on an active campaign. In most wars irresponsible men sitting by comfortable firesides are sure they knew best how the thing ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... chaparral, hoping, at the end, to pull down a set of false teeth and a coffin. Others quit the game early, having drawn cards that called for violent death, or famine in the Barrens, or loathsome and lingering disease. The hands of some called for kingship and irresponsible and numerated power; other hands called for ambition, for wealth in untold sums, for disgrace and shame, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... he knew to the contrary, she might have been long ago shipped off to the northern markets, and probably was, even while he talked of her, the inmate of an Arab harem, or at all events a piece of goods—a "chattel"—in the absolute possession of an irresponsible master. Besides the improbability of Kambira ever hearing what had become of his wife, or to what part of the earth she had been transported, there was also the difficulty of devising any definite course of action for the chief himself, because the ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... South Carolina, as for her sister States of the Confederacy. You here will never forget what immediately followed the close of our Civil War. As an historic fact, the Constitution was then suspended. It was suspended by act of an irresponsible Congress, exercising revolutionary but unlimited powers over a large section of the common country. You then had an illustration, not soon to be forgotten, of concentration of legislative power. An episode at once painful and discreditable, ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... serious thoughts, she looked very young, almost irresponsible. No ordinary observer could guess the mind that lay behind the eloquent, glowing eyes. Even the tongue at first deceived, till it began to probe, to challenge, to drop sharp, incisive truths in little gold-leaped pellets, which brought conviction ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... reforms. Democratically elected governments have held sway since 1959. Current concerns include: drug-related conflicts along the Colombian border, increasing internal drug consumption, overdependence on the petroleum industry with its price fluctuations, and irresponsible mining operations that are endangering the rain ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and has "warned the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home." It has characterized the Republican government in the Insular regions as an "indefinite, irresponsible, discretionary and vague absolutism," and Republican policy as a policy of "colonial exploitation." That the American people have believed the Republican administration to have been good and beneficent, ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... display,—traits which even the merest novice could not fail to observe,—might render him capable of the most brilliant achievements, such as his exploits before the walls of Quebec and on the field of Saratoga, or of unwise and wholly irresponsible actions, of some of which, although of minor consequence, he had been guilty during the past few months. He disliked her form of religious worship, and she strongly suspected this was the reason he so ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... been so completely ignored. Poisoned balls—at least personal epithets—were used. The General himself was called "antiquated!" The friends who had nominated him, they were positively sneered at; dubbed "fossils," "old ladies," and their caucus termed "irresponsible"—thunder and lightning! gentlemen of honor to be termed "not responsible!" It was asserted that the nomination was made secretly, in a private house, by two or three unauthorized harum-scarums (that touched the very bone) who had with more caution than propriety ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... such as it was difficult to find a flaw in, were never wanting on which to ground a fresh absorption of territory. And seeing behind this advance a vast country—almost a continent—which was not merely a great Asiatic Power, but a great European State, under autocratic, irresponsible rule, with interests touching ours at many points, it is not to be wondered at that we watched with anxiety her progress as she bore steadily down toward our ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... The name is perfectly immaterial. But since he escapes me and she is irresponsible—and punished—I regard as an accomplice of their infamy any man who makes allusion to it with either tongue or pen. And, my dear Varhely, I wish to act alone. Don't be angry; I know that in your hands my honor would be as faithfully guarded as ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... compelled eighty millions of people to live in peace for more than forty years, He made the world to centre on one will, and the horrors which mark the reigns of his successors were the legitimate result of the irresponsible sovereignty he established. He formed his empire for the present, to the utter ignoring of the future. Thus it would seem that the part he played was that of a shrewd politician, rather than that of ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... dangers in propaganda. Great power in irresponsible hands is always a social menace. We have some legal safeguards against careless use of high-powered physical explosives. Against the greater danger of destructive propaganda there seems to be little protection without imperiling the sacred ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... himself that she was too light and childish, too uncultivated and unreasoning, too provincial, to have reflected upon her ostracism, or even to have perceived it. Then at other moments he believed that she carried about in her elegant and irresponsible little organism a defiant, passionate, perfectly observant consciousness of the impression she produced. He asked himself whether Daisy's defiance came from the consciousness of innocence, or from her being, essentially, a young person of the reckless ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... write the awful affirmative, Yes! The fathers of this Christian land often sell their daughters, not as Jewish parents did, to be the wives and daughters-in-law of the man who buys them, but to be the abject slaves of petty tyrants and irresponsible masters. Is it not so, my friends? I leave it to your own candor to corroborate my assertion. Southern slaves then have not become slaves in any of the six different ways in which Hebrews became servants, and I hesitate not to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... spectators; but the fact remains that the ruffians in their hire did shoot into the crowd without occasion, and did so shed innocent blood. And it is enough to condemn the system that it authorizes unofficial and irresponsible persons to usurp the most delicate and difficult functions of the State and exposes the lives of citizens to the murderous assaults of hireling assassins, stimulated to violence by panic or by the suggestion of employers to ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... Irresponsible people! Wild and irresponsible people! To think that I trusted Itzy to wild, ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... think of it, there could not have been devised a more evil scheme, either against the natives or the settlers, than these wellnigh irresponsible Agencies. From all parts of the Union, from every country of the Old World, emigrants had come to settle in the beautiful Minnesota State; they had built themselves good, substantial houses, ploughed, fenced, and planted their rich and prosperous farms, conquered the savage wilderness into ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... claimants it was to be determined by the "local courts," without any right of appeal to the local land offices, the General Land Office, or to the Federal courts. The Government was thus required to part with its lands by proceedings executed by officials wholly outside of its jurisdiction, and irresponsible to its authority. The act not only abolished our rectangular system of surveys, but still further insulted the principles of mathematics and the dictates of common sense by providing that the claimant should have the right to follow his vein or lode, "with its dips, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... FIGURE. We are part of a cosmic system. Free will is an illusion. We are the children of Cause and Effect. We are the Unalterable, the Irresistible, the Irresponsible, the Inevitable. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... of society. If it means that we do wrong to invest with the most marked, serious, and unmistakable formality an act that brings human beings into existence, with uncounted results both to such beings themselves and to others who are equally irresponsible for their appearance in the world, then the position is recklessly immoral, and it is, moreover, wholly repugnant ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... keeping his mind otherwise employed; she enjoyed the amusement of making him imagine that he was of some consequence and importance to her; and, lastly, she was very willing that all this should concur with some possible benefit to her father. Of Bill's irresponsible condition she had of course no suspicion; indeed, he might have been far worse, with impunity, as far as she was concerned. It takes considerable practice to detect the effects of liquor, except when very excessive; and Cornelia had ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... absurdity, are perfect models of what a farce should be. He has made these light, frivolous, happy things as eternal as the severest and the weightiest works of man. He has filled them with a wonderful irresponsible wisdom, condensing into single phrases the ridiculousness of generations: 'Nous avons change tout cela.'—'Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere?'—'Vous etes orfevre, Monsieur Josse.' So effectually has he contrived to embalm in the ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... monster, except—von Horn's brain came to a sudden halt at the thought. Could it be? There seemed no other explanation. Virginia Maxon had been rescued from one soulless monstrosity to fall into the hands of another equally irresponsible and terrifying. ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... stupidly at the key in his hand. "Well I am damned," he muttered. Then added, in savage and—as it seemed to the artist—exaggerated wrath, "I'm a stupid, blundering, irresponsible old fool." Nor was he consoled when the painter innocently assured him that no harm had resulted ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... height to which it had risen. Perhaps it was taking its time. It might soon receive an influx from space, rise then in a silent upheaval, and those low shadows that were London, even now half foundered, would at once go. This darkness was an irresponsible power. It was the same flood which had sunk Knossos and Memphis. It was tranquil, indifferent, knowing us not, reckoning us all one with the Sumerians. They were below it. It had risen above them. Now the time had come when it was laving the ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... correspondence, make no attempt whatever to communicate regularly with the Department. We frequently express great surprise that we have no intelligence from our ministers, special ambassadors, and agents; but do not reflect that in the majority of cases dispatches have to be sent by irresponsible and slow-sailing vessels, or by the steamers of Great Britain, which it may be safely asserted are in no particular hurry to deliver them to us. Three several letters sent by me at separate times through the British mail from Rio de Janeiro for New-York ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... for Clanton that the killing of Champa lifted him into instant popularity. Mysterious Pete had been too free with his gun. The community had been afraid of him. The irresponsible way in which he had wounded little Bud Proctor, whose life had been saved only by the courage of Lee Snaith, was the climax of a series of outrages committed by ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... his sorrows by violence, had left Sally unmoved: but now her mind leapt back to what he had said, and apprehension succeeded indifference. There was no disputing the fact that Gerald was in an irresponsible mood, under the influence of which he was capable of doing almost anything. Sally, listening in the doorway, felt ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... beyond doubt that Mr. Butler was drunk at the time. This rests upon the evidence of Sergeant Flanagan and the troopers who accompanied him, and it rests upon Mr. Butler's own word, as we shall see. And let me add here and now that however wild and irresponsible a rascal he may have been, yet by his own lights he was a man of honour, incapable of falsehood, even though it were calculated to save his skin. I do not deny that Sir Thomas Picton has described him as a ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... his zeal for war does not help to win it; and American intervention was both useless and impossible until the President could act with his people behind him. Nor, as official head of the State, could he play the irresponsible part of an advocate; if he believed war to be inevitable in his country's interests, it was for him to convince the people not by argument, but by his conduct of American affairs. Idealism entered more largely into his policy than that of most ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... obvious question is, why didn't Narayan Singh shoot? I had a pistol too; why didn't I use it? Well, I'll tell you. None but the irresponsible criminal shoots a man except in obedience to orders or ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... as they did, about three hundred, but the engines also of the Fire Insurance Companies, were comparatively inefficient and often out of order, while they were also under the most diverse, if not irresponsible management. There were no really trained firemen, and those who controlled and worked the engines were oftener in antagonism with each other than acting in concert. The parish engines were in the care of the beadles, and in one case a beadle's widow, Mrs. Smith, for some years ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... Byzantine features in its constitution and government. The substitution of national forces for mercenary praetorians: the substitution of direct imperial government of the provinces for devolution to seigneurs, tribal chiefs, and irresponsible officers: the substitution of direct collection for tax-farming: and the substitution of administration by bureaucrats for administration by household officers—these, the chief reforms carried through under Mahmud, were all anti-Byzantine. ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... suggested the possibility, but Hal had not thought of it seriously; an organiser was a mythological creature, whispered about by the miners, cursed by the company and its servants, and by Hal's friends at home. An incendiary, a fire-brand, a loudmouthed, irresponsible person, stirring up blind and dangerous passions! Having heard such things all his life, Hal's first impulse was of distrust. He felt like the one-legged old switchman who had given him a place to sleep, after his beating ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... courtesy could require, would slowly get up, yawn, and stroll off to his kennel or to some pretended business behind the barn. His big heart harboured no resentment against the child, whom he knew to be a child and irresponsible. His resentment was all against fate, or life, or whatever it was, the vague, implacable force which was causing Joe Barnes to hurt him. For Joe Barnes he had ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... year ago through a fall," she informed Hollis. "He was breaking a wild horse and a saddle girth broke and he fell, striking on his head. The wound healed, but he has never been the same. At intervals these attacks come on and then he is irresponsible—and dangerous." She shuddered. "You were watching him," she added, looking suddenly at him; "did you find him as he is or did he attack you? Frequently when he has these attacks he comes here to Devil's Hollow, explaining that ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... where is that sentence?" The rector fumbled for his glasses, and, with his lower lip thrust out, and his gray eyebrows gathered into a frown, glanced up and down the pages. "Ah, yes, here: 'Do you not think,' she says, 'that the presence in the world of suffering which cannot produce character, irresponsible suffering, so to speak, makes it hard to believe in the personal care of God?' It's perfect nonsense for Helen to talk in that way! What does she know about 'character' and 'irresponsible suffering'? I shall tell her to mend her husband's ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... the summer-house, expectant of him, it seemed, her lips parted, her eyes glowing. Rudolph Musgrave, looking down into twin vivid depths, for a breathing-space, found time to rejoice that he had refused to liken them to stars. Stars, forsooth!—and, pray, what paltry sun, what irresponsible comet, what pallid, clinkered satellite, might boast a purple splendor such as this? For all asterial scintillations, at best, had but a clap-trap glitter; whereas the glow of Patricia's eyes was a matter worthy ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... aristocracy, no king, no courts, no traditions, but the sacred one of home. Now, do you not run great risks when you abandon your homes, and bring out your girls at a hotel?" There is something in her wise remarks; and with the carelessness of chaperonage in cities which are now largely populated by irresponsible foreigners the ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... not enjoy it all quite as intensely as I, so they considerately give me the lion's share. Every morning, after an exhilarating interview with the Niobe of our kitchen (who thinks me irresponsible and prays Heaven in her heart I be no worse), I put on my galoshes, take my umbrella, and trudge up and down the little streets and lanes on real, and if need be, imaginary errands. The Duke of Wellington said, "When ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... various other news-packets which had lately come from other colonies. War with the mother country seemed inevitable and Ethan Allen and men of his stamp looked forward to it not without some eagerness. It was not that they were reckless and irresponsible, or did not understand the terrible situation in which the colonies might find themselves should the mother country send across the sea a great army. But in the coming struggle they beheld the salvation of their own people and of the ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... reaction following the aggressive movements that with possibly ill-advised haste enfranchised the foreigner, the negro and the Indian. Perilous conditions, seeming to follow from the introduction into the body politic of vast numbers of irresponsible citizens, have made the nation timid. These three influences, born of centuries of tradition, shape every opinion of the opponents of woman suffrage. Not an objection, argument or excuse can be urged against the movement which may not be traced ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... sufficient sentiment of public honesty, share property is property that can be owned at any distance and that yields its revenue without thought or care on the part of its proprietor; it is, indeed, absolutely irresponsible property, a thing that no old world property ever was. But, in spite of its widely different nature, the laws of inheritance that the social necessities of the old order of things established have been applied to this new species of possession without remark. It is indestructible, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... silence, and John Keats,—such is the nightingale. The real truth about a country will never be known till every representative type and condition in it have found their inspired literary mouthpiece. Meanwhile one country takes its opinion of another from the apercus of a few brilliant but often irresponsible or prejudiced writers,—and really it is rather in what those writers leave out than in what they put in that one must seek the more reliable data of ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... but the men I speak of are my contemporaries. Fortune will not supply to every generation one of these well-appointed knights, but every collection of men furnishes some example of the class; and the politics of this country, and the trade of every town, are controlled by these hardy and irresponsible doers, who have invention to take the lead, and a broad sympathy which puts them in fellowship with crowds, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sunlight; but there was nothing to alarm a child, and everything to charm and enlist the fancy. The sunlight fell broadly along the route. Birds were singing, and butterflies were fanning their feathery, irresponsible way from shade to shade. I saw my first dragonfly that day, and tried to catch him in my cap, but he evaded me. All on a sudden, the prospect changed. A cloud floated over the sun, and a sort of preliminary waiting horror took possession of the harmless woods on either side. Just there the road ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... Pitt, who saw that there was more in the proposed plan than a mere experiment. On the 8th of August, 1784, Palmer ran his first mail-coach from London to Bristol, and made the journey in fifteen hours. That was the turning-point. The old lumbering coaches, the abominable roads, the irresponsible drivers, the wretched delay, misery, and uncertainty rapidly gave place to lighter, stronger, and more commodious vehicles, better horses, more experienced drivers, careful guards, regular stages, marked by decent inns and comfortable ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... not however deny that a constitution of this kind appears to me to be infinitely preferable to one, which, after having concentrated all the powers of government, should vest them in the hands of an irresponsible person or body of persons. Of all the forms which democratic despotism could assume, the latter would assuredly be the worst. When the sovereign is elective, or narrowly watched by a legislature which is really elective and ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... mind my smoking a cigar?" asked Michael. He had pulled himself together for the entrance; now again there began to settle on his mind clouds of irresponsible humour and incipient slumber; and he hoped (as so many have hoped in the like case) that a cigar would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sight or hearing was formerly regarded as an almost insuperable obstacle in the way of education. Persons deprived of both these senses have heretofore been considered by high legal authorities,[23] as well as by public opinion, as occupying, of necessity, a state of irresponsible and irrecoverable idiocy. By the education of the remaining senses, however, this formidable and heretofore insuperable barrier has been overleaped, or, rather, the obstacle has been met and overcome. The experiment has been successfully tried, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... of indolent reviewers, Irresponsible, indolent reviewers, Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem All composed in a metre of Catullus, All in quantity, careful of my motion, Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him, Lest I fall unawares ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... wrong. But don't think I'm pleased with myself, or any nonsense of that sort. Only a fool is pleased with himself. I've wasted my life till now, because I had no ambition. Now I'm beginning it and trying to get things into their proper perspective. When I had no responsibilities, I was irresponsible. Now they've come, I'm stringing ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... the United States, when blockade runners made this place a port of call and a harbor for refitting, it was by English connivance practically a Confederate port. The officers and sailors expended their ill-gotten wealth with the usual lavishness of the irresponsible, the people of Nassau reaping thereby a fabulous harvest in cash. This was quite demoralizing to honest industry, and, as might be expected, a serious reaction has followed. Legitimate trade and industry will require years before they can reassert themselves. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... blessed; or they are waiting, in submissive obedience, at the feet of their reclining lords, to be petted and caressed or cursed and kicked, as passion or caprice may dictate—subjected alike to neglect, contempt, and abuse. Exceptions to this general rule doubtless occurred occasionally; for irresponsible power does not of necessity convert every man into an unfeeling tyrant, just as under other systems of slavery, some were fortunate enough to fall into the hands of kind, considerate owners, whose hearts ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... is very well for an irresponsible—but, when it got to a court, and punishment, I fear that all the last would fall on my shoulders, should his Majesty's ship happen to lay her bones along-shore here. No, no, Griffin; we must go a clear cable's length to windward ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... question of responsible government Lord Durham expressed opinions of the deepest political wisdom. He found it impossible "to understand how any English statesman could have ever imagined that representative and irresponsible government could be successfully combined....To suppose that such a system would work well there, implied a belief that the French Canadians have enjoyed representative institutions for half a century, without ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... more remarkable that he had sometimes been met in the gateway in an irresponsible condition, such as no one would have expected in a man so ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... the "spring fever" and wanted a change, principally, no doubt. Besides, a convention had framed a State Constitution; nine men out of every ten wanted an office; I believed that these gentlemen would "treat" the moneyless and the irresponsible among the population into adopting the constitution and thus well-nigh killing the country (it could not well carry such a load as a State government, since it had nothing to tax that could stand a tax, for undeveloped mines could not, and there ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is a case in point. This Nation cannot and will not tolerate that kind of irresponsible labor ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon
... burned. But a part of what Foxe wrote about Tewkesbury in one edition of the Acts and Monuments he omitted in another, patching it on to Bainham's story, thus stultifying himself as regards both stories,* and affording us another signal illustration of the irresponsible and unscrupulous way in which he ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... in receiving his fief was intrusted with sovereignty over all persons living upon it: he became their commander, their lawmaker, and their judge—in a word, their absolute and irresponsible ruler. Then, when he parcelled out his fief among his great men, he invested them, within the limits of the fiefs granted, with all his own sovereign rights. Each vassal became a virtual sovereign in his own domain. And when these great vassals divided their fiefs and granted them to others, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... to visit the United States on business connected with an establishment in Glasgow. He was disgusted with the manners and customs of the people; had no faith in their capacity for business; found nothing to approve; considered them vulgar, impertinent, irresponsible, and irreligious; and finally was about to take his departure with these unfavorable views, when he discovered, from some practical experience, that they possessed, in addition to all these traits, wonderful shrewdness in the art of swindling. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Roberts gone, Lord Kitchener gone, all the staff gone, stolen away like thieves in the night, gone "to the front." No one was left in authority, no one knew anything about us; so we went to the barracks and worried irresponsible officers who would have moved heaven and earth for us if they could, but they "had no instructions." At last, in a remote corner of the barrack buildings, someone discovered a major who was in charge of the Intelligence Department. ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... pursued in such circumstances. From the palace of the Shin-in a decree was issued restoring the official titles of the Hojo chief, and cancelling the edict for his destruction, while, through an envoy sent to meet him, he was informed that the campaign against the Bakufu had been the work of irresponsible subjects; that the sovereign did not sanction it, and that any request preferred by Kamakura ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... eternity of the work to that of the environment of the worker; it is a presentment which would be applicable to any man as able and as resolute as Gracchus, who attempted to meet the evils created by a weak and irresponsible administration, partly by the restoration of old forms, partly by the recognition of new and pressing claims. There is a point at which reform, except it go so far as to blot out a constitution and substitute another in ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... or exertion. Yet I am quite sure in that case that your value as a human being would have been immeasurably less. I think I have seen in you the elements of passions, which luxury and idleness and the too early possession of irresponsible power, might have developed with fatal results. You have simply to reflect whether you would rather be an energetic, intelligent, self-controlled man, capable of guiding the affairs of life and of acquiring its prizes,—or to be ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... got to be a responsible American citizen," she had said. That didn't mean that she attached very much importance to her recently acquired vote. She evidently classified voters into the irresponsible who just had votes and the responsible who also had a considerable amount of property as well. She had no illusions about the power of the former class. It didn't exist. They were steered to their ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... such a stormy and tempestuous season.' [Footnote: Spectator 125.] He may not have been a great poet, but he was an exquisite critic of life; he shared his contemporaries' lack of enthusiasm, but he possessed a fine discrimination, and those less practical, more irresponsible qualities would have been merely an incumbrance to the apostle of good sense and moderation. For when men are young they are much occupied with the framing of ideals and the search after absolute truth; as they grow older they generally become more practical; they accept, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... own motion, assist at a crime? The answer is no, because command is absent, the reasoning faculty is absent, volition is absent—as in the case of the tongs. We perceive now, do we not, that the stomach is totally irresponsible for crimes committed, either in whole or in part, by it?" He got a rousing cheer for response. "Then what do we arrive at as our verdict? Clearly this: that there is no such thing in this world as a guilty stomach; that in the body of the veriest rascal resides a pure and innocent ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... the constitutional restrictions. If he could have been Grand Llama of the United States, that might have come the nearest to his idea of a position. And next to that he would have luxuriated in the irresponsible omniscience of the ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... not condescend to answer a question so direct. He was still quite uncertain as to his future, and he would not discuss it with this irresponsible, who had undertaken to be his worldly mentor. When they left the Savoy it was to visit a club in Trafalgar Square and there discover the recumbent figures of aged gentlemen who had lunched not wisely but too well. Of all that he had seen in the kingdoms of money, ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... profitably read to-day as a not untrue reflection of the manners and spirit of the time and city. Its amusing audacity and complacent superiority, the mystery hanging about its writers, its affectation of indifference to praise or profit, its fearless criticism, lively wit, and irresponsible humor, piqued, puzzled, and delighted the town. From the first it was an immense success; it had a circulation in other cities, and many imitations of it sprung up. Notwithstanding many affectations and ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... government by the mentally and morally inferior. And yet—a Bill for giving at last some scant measure of self-government to persecuted Ireland has to run the gauntlet, in our nineteenth-century England, of an irresponsible House of hereditary barbarians! ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... disgustedly. "Who does he think I am, anyway? Some crazy irresponsible madman who hasn't got enough brains to stay ...
— Larson's Luck • Gerald Vance
... unemphatic. Perhaps Henriette was right, she didn't know. A sense of honour? (Hadria suppressed a smile.) Could one, after all, expect of six what one did not always get at six and twenty? Morals altogether seemed a good deal to ask of irresponsible youth. Henriette could not overrate the importance of early familiarity with the difference between right and wrong. Certainly it was important, but Hadria shrank from an extreme view. One must not rush into it ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... execution—it would have inaugurated a reign of terror, such as had not even then been approached, and which no community could bear. Every man and woman would have felt in the extremest peril, hanging upon the will of an irresponsible arbiter ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... my dear father should never have married. Though his nature was one of the sweetest I have ever known, and though he would at any call give his time to or risk his life for others, in practical matters he remained to the end of his days as irresponsible as a child. If his mind turned to practical details at all, it was solely in their bearing toward great developments of the future. To him an acorn was not an acorn, but a forest of ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... never, so far, made deliberate love to her, but there was a certain imperious possessiveness in his manner, a definite innuendo in his gay, audacious speeches which she found it very hard to combat. He seemed entirely oblivious of any lack of response on her part, and there was a light-hearted, irresponsible charm and camaraderie about him that ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... sister again. Gertrude's imagination seemed to her to be fairly running riot. She had always known that Gertrude had a great deal of imagination—she had been very proud of it. But at the same time she had always felt that it was a dangerous and irresponsible faculty; and now, to her sense, for the moment, it seemed to threaten to make her sister a strange person who should come in suddenly, as from a journey, talking of the peculiar and possibly unpleasant ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... then all of a sudden, at any small interruption, he becomes the giddiest of created beings. Up goes his head and tail, he buck jumps, cavorts, gambols, kicks up his heels, bounds stiff-legged, and generally performs like an irresponsible infant. To see a whole herd at once of these grave and reverend seigneurs suddenly blow up into such light-headed capers goes far to destroy one's faith ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... not twenty long miles of road before them on the other side? Stay to dinner? Not they! Put up the horses? Never. Let us attach them to the veranda by a wisp of straw rope, such as would not have held a person's hat on that blustering day. And with all these protestations of hurry, they proved irresponsible like children. Kelmar himself, shrewd old Russian Jew, with a smirk that seemed just to have concluded a bargain to its satisfaction, intrusted himself and us devoutly to that boy. Yet the boy was patently fallacious; and for that matter a most unsympathetic urchin, raised ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that both these transactions were audaciously entered upon by a body which had absolutely no revenues at all to pledge as security, which had not a dollar of property, nor authority to compel any living man to pay it a dollar. A more utterly irresponsible debtor than Congress never asked for a loan or offered a promissory note. For the security of a creditor there was only the moral probability that in case of success the people would be honest enough to pay their debts; ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... Tit-Bits joke. Responsibility, a heavy and cautious responsibility of speech, is the easiest thing in the world; anybody can do it. That is why so many tired, elderly, and wealthy men go in for politics. They are responsible, because they have not the strength of mind left to be irresponsible. It is more dignified to sit still than to dance the Barn Dance. It is also easier. So in these easy pages I keep myself on the whole on the level of the Times: it is only occasionally that I leap upwards almost to the ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... horses, wagons, and everything of the kind have been disposed of—not because we wanted to sell them, but because Faye was unwilling to leave the horses with irresponsible persons during a long winter in this climate, when the most thoughtful care is absolutely necessary to keep animals from suffering. Lieutenant Gallagher of the cavalry bought them, and we are passing through ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... of fruit, daily growing more delicious in the sun. You show it to your friends, reading to them the French name, which you can never remember, on the label; and you take an honest pride in the successful fruit of long care. That night your pears shall be required of you by a boy! Along comes an irresponsible urchin, who has not been growing much longer than the tree, with not twenty-five cents worth of clothing on him, and in five minutes takes off every pear, and retires into safe obscurity. In five minutes ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... exertions than could reasonably be required of the same number of able seamen. By law he had been intrusted with no discretion of judicious punishment, he therefore habitually left the whole matter of discipline to his irresponsible mates, men often of scarcely a superior quality to the crew. Hence ensued a great mass of petty outrages, unjustifiable assaults, shameful indignities, and nameless cruelty, demoralizing alike to the perpetrators and the sufferers; these enormities fell into the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... historic records the statements of the Bible. This I do in face of the efforts of many of the clergy in a number of the churches to make me see in the Old Testament chiefly a collection of myths, and in the New a series of compilations by irresponsible hands, of doubtful date and authority, leaving, in the case of our Lord, only a substratum which can be ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... the State and had presumed to set itself above the legislature. Wherever the radicals got the upper hand, confiscation was the order of the day; and even where the conservatives succeeded in restraining their radical brethren from legislative reprisals, no Tory was safe from the assaults of irresponsible mobs. Thousands took refuge in flight, to the infinite delight of the wits in the coffee-houses who jested of the "Independence Fever" which was carrying off so many ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... the Red Cloud swung along through the air. Those on board were thinking of many things, but chief among them was the unjust accusation that had been made against them, by an irresponsible boy—the red-haired Andy Foger. They read the account in the paper again, seeking to learn from it ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... morally justify it; it was impossible for a Church, whose ideals were more or less ascetic, to be benevolently indifferent in such a matter. As a rule we seem to find throughout that while the more independent and irresponsible divines take the side of denunciation, those theologians who have had thrust upon them the grave responsibilities of ecclesiastical statesmanship have rather tended towards the reluctant moral justification of prostitution. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... some of its songs, and took it as the model of his own romance; Shakespeare borrowed from it the plot of the Two Gentlemen of Verona. In the land of its birth its popularity was shown by the number of continuations and imitations to which it gave rise. Irresponsible publishers swelled the bulk of their editions with matter purloined from less popular authors. The year 1564 saw the appearance of two second parts. One in eight books, by the physician Alonzo Perez, only got so far as disposing of Delio, and appears to exaggerate ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... with members whom the rest call irrational, irresponsible or "black sheep." Again, there are many families who have one child who, from the time of its birth, has called for methods of management entirely different from those used for the other children. ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... from its councils. To-day, for reasons none can explain, it is pro-foreign to the verge of servility. To-morrow, for reasons equally obscure, the pendulum swings back, and—the students are heaving mud at the foreigners in the streets. Vexatious, irresponsible, incoherent, and, above all, cheaply mysterious, is the rule of the land—stultified by intrigue and counter-intrigue, chequered with futile reforms begun on European lines and light-heartedly thrown aside; studded, as a bower-bird's run is studded with shells and shining pebbles, with plagiarisms ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling |
