"Unwisdom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rather, a mode of intellectual action, of which universality can no more be predicated than of folly, or of honesty, or of muscular strength; and that it is not knowledge, or at all like knowledge; which, indeed, is often acquired in a very remarkable degree by persons eminent for unwisdom. Lord Campbell might as well have said that Henry V. astonished the world with his universal prowess ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the courts. The existing practice, he argued, was contrary to those provisions of the constitution which expressly separated the three departments of government. Moreover, everyone recognized the injustice and unwisdom of dissolving marriage contracts by act of legislature, upon ex parte evidence.[66] Without expressing an opinion on the constitutional questions involved, the assembly accepted the main recommendation of the committee, that henceforth the legislature ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... is matchless in unwisdom. Unwise work, if it but persist, is everywhere struggling towards correction, and restoration to health; for it is still in contact with Nature, and all Nature incessantly contradicts it, and will heal it or annihilate it: not so with unwise talk, which addresses itself, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... foregoing chapter the unwisdom of planting misleading finger-posts; here we have only to deal with the particular case in which they seem to point to a definite and crucial scene. An example given by M. Sarcey himself will, I think, make the matter ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... is a discontent without definite aims, one which merely rejects what is now possessed; and there is one which seeks what is wisely attainable. Yet after all, it is a small price to pay for aspiration that it is often attended by vagueness and unwisdom. ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... masque. Like the exaggerated diabolical figures in some of the religious plays and imageries of the Middle Age, he is an impersonation of stupid impiety, one of those whom the gods willing to [67] destroy first infatuate. Alternating between glib unwisdom and coarse mockery, between violence and a pretence of moral austerity, he understands only the sorriest motives; thinks the whole thing feigned, and fancies the stranger, so effeminate, so attractive of women with ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... lesson of James Gilmour's life twofold? If it be looked at from the point of view of results, it should give clear and vivid ideas of the unwisdom of being cast down by the absence of results in face of the difficulties of missionary work in China. It is to be feared that there are still large numbers of good Christian people who believe that for the conversion of Chinamen and Mongols all that is requisite is ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... disclose his identity, however; not only so, but he tenderly warns her that she must not seek to discover it, or even to behold him, till he gives permission, unless she would bring hopeless disaster on both. Nor must she confide in her two sisters, lest their unwisdom ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... like a reaction took place in the Imperial capital. A party of able men, led by Princes Konoe and Iwakura, had the courage to denounce the unwisdom of the extremists, at whose head stood Princes Arisugawa and Sanjo. At that time the most powerful fiefs in Japan were Satsuma and Choshu. Both were hereditarily hostile to the Tokugawa, but were mutually separated by a difference of opinion in the matter of foreign policy, so that when the above ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... astonished to hear of any amount of unwisdom on the part of Lady Enville, but she merely repeated that she thought it much better ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... in man is the deepest and most powerful in his nature. It is that also which asserts and claims the greatest independence from external constraints. It is therefore the height of unwisdom, not to say tyranny, for earthly magistracy to interfere by penalty and sword with the religious opinions and movements of the people, so long as civil authority and public order are not invaded and the rights of others are not infringed. In such cases ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... it became the home of a flock of God, poor in this world's goods, but rich in faith, to whom the environment even when changing from bad to worse, was a challenge to faith and valiant service. Those of us who in our unwisdom said a generation ago that it ought to die judged after the outward appearance. Those who protested that it must not die, took counsel with the spirit that animated them, saw the invisible and against hope ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... have greater sympathy or more respect; but I have to complain of them. I do not know why it is that they both go down to Newcastle—a town in which I feel a great interest—and there give forth words of offence and unwisdom. I know that what the noble Lord said was all very smart, but really it was not true, and I have not much respect for a thing that is merely smart and is not true. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made a statement too. ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... plain duty of all who look seriously on the arts to do their best to save the world from what at the best will be a loss, the result of ignorance and unwisdom; to prevent, in fact, that most discouraging of all changes, the supplying the place of an extinct brutality by a new one; nay, even if those who really care for the arts are so weak and few that they can do nothing else, it may be their business to keep alive ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... have now said enough to secure the author of a wise and moderate disquisition upon a topic which seems fated to stir unwisdom and fanaticism to their depths, a fuller measure of justice than has hitherto been accorded to him, I retire from my self-appointed championship, with the hope that I shall not hereafter be called upon by M. Reville to apologise for damage ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... abuse and languidly to their demands for a tonga to bear them to Kuttarpur, and observed that the mail tonga left once a day—at three in the afternoon. Doggott caught him as he was on the point of returning to his interrupted repose and called his attention to the unwisdom of his ways. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... shield to be, to take shafts, and make no noise about it. Proud he was; with that sublime pride that argues itself capable of standing all things, so that the thing it cares for—which is not its own reputation—is unhurt. You shall see. We might call it unwisdom, if his work had suffered by it; but it was only his peace, his own name—and eventually his enemies— that suffered. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... other; but the half-measure won't do." Better balanced was the judgement of the Earl of Carlisle, as stated to Auckland some time in September. After asking whether the recurrence of local risings in Ireland did not prove the unwisdom of the policy of lenience pursued by Cornwallis, he added these significant words: "In this distress it is not strange that we should turn to the expedient of Union; but this is running in a dark night for a port we are little acquainted with.... If you did not satisfy Ireland by the measure ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... little excitement among the other girls when this bit of news was communicated to them. But they had had good experience-training along the lines of self-control, and just a hint of the unwisdom of loud and extravagant remarks ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... a picture of Washington. There is nothing mysterious and his utterances are completely dependent upon his own ideas, which may be very different from the real wisdom of a Washington and the real unwisdom of a child. I may suggest to him to be the Czar, by that he will not become able to speak Russian. In the same way I may suggest changes of the surroundings; he may take my room for the river upon which he paddles his canoe, or for the orchard ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... difference of Lincoln from; refuse to support Lincoln in 1860; urge peaceful secession in 1861; denounce Lincoln for not making war an anti-slavery crusade, see vol. ii.; demand a proclamation of emancipation; unwisdom of their course; unappeased, even after emancipation proclamation; their small numbers; their ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse |
