"Absentee" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... claret-faced Irish absentee, whose good society is a good dinner, and who is too happy to be asked any where that a good dinner is to be had; a young silky clergyman, in black curled whiskers, and a white choker; one of the meaner ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... pitcher and two glasses as the former had done, then sat erect with his hands in his pockets and his back against the wall, waiting in his turn. The two empty glasses in front of them, intended for the same absentee, seemed to be hurling ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... the others, has, thus far, elicited no official action, has brought censure upon us from the press, while great dissatisfaction has been created in our own body by the failure of a portion of its members to sustain the allegations to which the entire board, with the exception of one absentee, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... previous half year. Always he had his estate to put in order, and functions connected with it to perform. According to the local records, he served this year the office of Mayor of Youghal. During a considerable portion of the term he must have been an absentee. In Ireland the news reached him that the Armada had started or was starting. Hastening back he commenced by mustering troops in the West, and strengthening Portland Castle. But his own trust was in the fleet. In his History of the World ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... now three months since Dr Proudie began his reign, and changes had already been affected in the diocese which show at least the energy of an active mind. Among other things, absentee clergymen have been favoured with hints much too strong to be overlooked. Poor dear old Bishop Grantly had on this matter been too lenient, and the archdeacon had never been inclined to be severe with those who were absent on reputable pretences, and who provided for their duties ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... duty here? Suppose it was not to guard this woman, but to watch her. Let us imagine that it was not the woman he served, but a master, and see where that leads us. For this house has a master, a mysterious, absentee landlord, who lives in St. Petersburg, the unknown Russian who came between Chetney and Zichy, and because of whom Chetney left her. He is the man who bought this house for Madame Zichy, who sent these rugs and curtains from St. Petersburg ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... American conservatism in this regard is, according to certain modern economists, undoubtedly sound. A man should be permitted to acquire at least as much property as is required for the expression of his personality; such a wise limitation, also, would abolish the evil known as absentee ownership. Again, there will arise in many minds the question whether the funds for the plan of National finance outlined in the program may be obtained without seriously deranging the economic system of the nation and of the world. The older school denounces the program ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... without further discussion. Caryl sat on Vera's left, and amazed her by his utter unconcern regarding the absentee. He seemed to be in excellent spirits, and his dry humour provoked a good deal ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... what fate will bring To Kiley's Run — For chances come and changes ring — I scarcely think 'twill always be Locked up to suit an absentee; And if he lets it out in farms His tenants soon will carry arms On ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... THE ABSENTEE is not intended as a censure upon those whose duties, and employments, and superior talents, lead them to the capital; but to warn the thoughtless and the unoccupied from seeking distinction by frivolous imitation of fashion ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... It represented production of a staple product on a large scale; between the owner and laborer were interposed the overseer and the drivers. The slaves were whipped and driven to a mechanical task system. Wide territory was needed, so that at last absentee landlordship was common. It was this latter type of slavery that marked the cotton kingdom, and the extension of the area of this system southward and westward marked the aggressive world-conquering visions of the slave barons. On the other hand it was the milder and far ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... already at work. The long-deserted grounds were filled with labourers; the carpenters were busy at the fences; the house looked alive and stirring; the grooms were exercising the horses in the park,—all betokened the return of the absentee. This seemed to denote that Maltravers had come to reside; and the rector thought of Caroline, and was ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who imperilled the Banner. The black mark on the register was a snowflake compared with the black frown on all those childish foreheads. As for the absentee, the scowls that would meet her return not improbably operated ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... for him the flattering surname of Coeur de Lion. He had a right to it, for he certainly possessed the heart of a lion, and he never failed to get the lion's share. He might, however, have been called, in equal truth, Richard the Absentee, since out of a nominal reign of ten years he spent but a few months in England, the remaining time being consumed ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... task which a hundred years before had been the duty of the feudal Lord. The feudal Lord, deprived of all work, moved to Paris to amuse himself as best he could at the court. Soon his estates began to suffer from that very dangerous economic sickness, known as "Absentee Landlordism." Within a single generation, the industrious and useful feudal administrators had become the well-mannered but quite useless loafers ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... a grunt of disappointment, turned and went away; though there were a few, either unable to read the message or so pressed by anxiety that they disregarded it, who entered the room and sat down to wait for the absentee. [There were plenty of chairs in the office now, bookcases also, and a big steel safe.] But when evening came and the final gray of twilight had vanished from the window-panes, all had gone except one, a woman who sat patiently, her eyes upon the floor, and her hands folded in her lap, until the ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... of material inducement the absentee of moral stimulus, and you will see how he who is not indolent in that country must needs be a madman or at least a fool. What future awaits him who distinguishes himself, him who studies, who rises above the crowd? At the cost of study ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... to custom, began his reign by taking an exactly opposite course to his predecessor, and ended it by falling into nearly the same errors and abuses. He suggested an Absentee-tax, which was introduced by Flood, but rejected through the preponderating influence of the landed aristocracy. In preparing the tables of expenditure, he had caused arrears amounting to 265,000 pounds, and an annual increase ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... levy-master, or warrant-officer, has been assigned to garrison duty, and in his absence his field and garden have been given to another who has carried on his duty, when the absentee has returned and regained his city, his field and garden shall be given back to him and ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... their chances on the sidewalks with leapfrog and the like, and we took ours, in turn, in the wide roadway with "pom-pom-peel-away" and similar games. Football, however, would take us to a vacant corner lot, some two streets away. Some absentee owner in the East was doubtless paying taxes on it with hopes of finally recouping himself through the unearned increment. Meanwhile it ran somewhat to rubbish and tin cans, to bare spots from which adjoining homemakers had removed irregular squares of turf, and to holes in the dry, brown earth ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... Erne, an absentee Irish landlord, sent Captain Boycott to Connemara to subdue his irate tenants. The people of the region refused to have any intercourse whatever with the agent or his family. And social and business ostracism has since been known as ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... home-maker. The great unfenced ranches, in the days of "free grass," necessarily represented a temporary stage in our history. The large migratory flocks of sheep, each guarded by the hired shepherds of absentee owners, were the first enemies of the cattlemen; and owing to the way they ate out the grass and destroyed all other vegetation, these roving sheep bands represented little of permanent good to the country. But the homesteaders, the permanent settlers, the men who took up each his own farm ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... is that the monopoly has as a motive the making of profits for its stockholders. Not only is that a less powerful motive than self-preservation, but it appeals largely to persons who are not themselves in control of the business. Absentee ownership is the chief disability of the monopoly. Managers may have other interests than those of large dividend making, and in such cases a monopoly is apt to wait too long before changing its appliances. It needs to be in no hurry to buy a new invention, and it can make delay ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... our master was an excellent man who could have kept school very well but for his lack of one thing; and that was time. He devoted to us all the little leisure which his numerous functions left him. And, first of all, he managed the property of an absentee landowner, who only occasionally set foot in the village. He had under his care an old castle with four towers, which had become so many pigeon houses; he directed the getting in of the hay, the walnuts, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... make his way toward public life by his assiduous attendance and intelligent action in the local assemblies. A new Diet was assembled in 1832, and he received a commission as the representative in the Diet of a magnate who was absent. As proxy for an absentee he was only charged, by the Hungarian Constitution, with a very subordinate part, his functions being more those of a counsel than of a delegate. This, however, was a post much sought for by young and aspiring lawyers, as giving them an opportunity ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... might happen? The engagement might stretch on indefinitely, it might even come to nothing under the weight of its accumulated years, as sometimes happened with these protracted affairs. Emmeline might lose her fancy for her absentee lover, and might never replace him with another. A golden possibility of perpetual tenancy of her present home began to float once more through Francesca's mind. As long as Emmeline had been unbespoken in the ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... was too much for his imagination. It left him without the power to set James straight in the matter, and Uncle Joe was immediately accepted as Santy by the expectant Sykeses, all of whom revealed a tremendous interest in the avuncular absentee. They even appeared to be properly apprehensive, and crowded a little closer to the knees of the grown- ups, all the while eyeing the door at the upper ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... situation produced a deadlock, and no business could be transacted. The session terminated on the fifth day of March by its own limitation. The sergeant-at-arms made daily reports concerning the whereabouts of the absentee, sometimes locating him on a dog-train, rapidly moving towards Pembina, sometimes giving a rumor of his assassination, but never producing him. Matters remained in this condition until the end of the term, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... the paper, and put it in his pocket. A mere bit of ordinary clerkly writing; no character, no allure. Well, the actual chirography of the absentee would be made manifest before long. What was it like? Should he himself ever have a specimen of it in a ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... ringing. We had just reached our tavern when a committee appeared stating that they had been waiting for us and that the congregation was assembled. It appears that a noted exhorter had been expected who had no doubt been delayed as we had been. I was taken for the absentee minister and asked how soon I would be ready to accompany them to the meeting-house. I was almost prepared with my companions to carry out the joke (we were in for fun), but I found I was too exhausted with ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... tourist was inquiring into the troubles of Ireland, and he asked him what was the greatest affliction that Ireland suffered from, and when he answered him he described just the sort of Irishman who won't be wanted in Ireland now. He said, 'It's the absentee landlords, your honour. This unfortunate country is absolutely swarming ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... appearance had the good effect of detering the multitude so that they became only peaceable spectators." Whether an honorary captain could be called upon for active service in an emergency I cannot say, but Smith's name is not mentioned in the list of absentee ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... he did do. In 1361 all absentee landowners, already amounting to no less than sixty-three, including the heads of several of the great abbeys, were summoned to Westminster and ordered to provide an army to accompany Lionel, Duke of Clarence, whom he had decided upon sending over ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... longer to be appointed by the Governor, but elected by popular vote. The law which was most severely applied and attracted most public attention was that of Iowa.... The agitation against the railroads has many points in common with the land agitation in Ireland. Absentee ownership is at the bottom of the trouble in either case. Property is owned in one place and used in another, and the users, not satisfied with the conditions of use, insist on taking the business direction into their own hands. They claim the right to fix rates in Iowa for the same general ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... love that has grown upon the graves of the past, is a check upon passion, which by a sudden turn at the close triumphs in a victory that is defeat. Fears and Scruples is a confession of the trials of theistic faith in a world from which God seems to be an absentee. What had been supposed to be letters from our friend are proved forgeries; what we called his loving actions are the accumulated results of the natural law of heredity. Yet even if theism had to be abandoned, it would have ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... favoured Protection Irish industry was handicapped out of manufactures. When England adopted Free Trade Irish agriculture, on which the hopes of Ireland had perforce been fixed, suffered in a greater degree. The doctrine of laisser faire wrought little but wrong when applied by absentee buyers of bankrupt estates to tracts hardly susceptible of development by capital, amid a peasantry wedded to continuity of tenure, and justified in that tradition by the fact that they and their forbears had executed nearly all ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... the right bank of the North Fork of the Canadian River; thence up said river, along the right bank thereof, to a point where the same is intersected by the west line of the reservation occupied by the Citizen band of Pottawatomies and the Absentee Shawnee Indians, set apart under the provisions of the treaty of February 27, 1867, between the United States and the Pottawatomie tribe of Indians, and referred to in the act of Congress approved May 23, 1872; thence south along the said ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... military demonstration from the Chateau, which could be reinforced from outside through a postern to the west of the Porte Bouvreuil.[40] The citizens then surrendered, the Sire de Gamaches was made bailli, and Jean d'Harcourt (a relation of the absentee archbishop) was made captain of the town, with command of the castle; but the Dauphin's party was not strong enough to punish as they wished, and Rouen was left in a state of ill-suppressed disloyalty. This broke out once more into rebellion at the beginning of the new year. Robert de ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... and fifteen to ten, but there was no news of the absentee. One by one the numbers dwindled down, and still there came no sign of him. Whenever a horseman clattered down the road, or a driver shouted at his team, the old farmer hurried to the gate thinking that ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tenderly watched, and another, in man's writing, enclosed some money, and said her son would soon be home. Mrs. Dennis was far from happy in this indefinite state of mind, and her heart told her, also, that the absence of James Phoebus was a different strain. She loved that absentee already too ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... absorbed in affairs in England and never saw his colony again. This was unfortunate because Pennsylvania soon became a torment to him instead of a great pleasure as it always seems to have been when he lived in it. He was a happy present proprietor, but not a very happy absentee one. ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... on the little brass knocker brought to the door no less a person than Thorndyke himself; and the warmth of his greeting made me at once proud and ashamed. For I had not only been an absentee; I had been ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... Court of Session, the judges who do not attend or give a proper excuse for their absence are (or were) liable to a fine. This, however, is never enforced: but it is customary on the first day of the session for the absentee to send an excuse to the Lord President. Lord Stonefield having sent an excuse, and the Lord President mentioning that he had done so, the Lord Justice-Clerk said: "What excuse can a stout fellow like him hae?"—"My lord," said the President, "he has ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... "The absentee landlord is a curse, of course. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a one myself. And I'm bound to say—though I'm keen on shooting—if the game laws were abolished, it might ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in heaven, away from nature. Nature was a sort of mechanism, a machine that ordinarily ran on after its own fashion. God had made it, indeed, in some sense, God supported it continually; but it went on apart from him, and he was away from it. He was, as Carlyle used to say, looked upon as an absentee God. He was up in heaven. He ruled this world as the Kaiser rules Germany, arbitrarily. He was not even always supposed to know everything that was going on, at least, if you are to judge by the tone of the ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... right-hand neighbour talk, and died away into preoccupation, with a vital undercurrent of rippled lip and thoughtful eye. Another of her shrewd observations was that when the Hon. Percival, referring to Mr. Torrens, still an absentee by choice, said:—"I tried again to persuade him to come down at feeding-time, but it was no go," Gwen came suddenly out of one dream of this sort to say from her end of the table, miles off:—"He really prefers dining by himself, I ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... surely as there must be a balance between the imports and exports of a country, so must there be a balance between the revenue raised in a nation and the public expenditure on that nation. Irish economic depression after the Act of Union was due in large measure to absentee landlordism and the expenditure of Irish revenue outside Ireland with no proportionate return. This must not be expected to continue against Irish interests. Ireland, granted the freedom it desires, would be willing to defend its freedom and the freedom of other dominions in the commonwealth ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... their own great surprise, wasted the generosity of which they were perhaps too conscious. According to Miss HARRISON the gombeenman is the curse of Ireland, the serpent whose presence, if only he can be reduced to being an absentee, warrants us in regarding Ireland as a possible Eden. Miss HARRISON will please to take the preceding sentence as proving my entire sympathy with Irish modes of thought and expression and, generally, with Ireland. Against the gombeener (who is a shop-keeper running his business on the long-credit ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... including Mr. Gayles, who had listened with the deepest interest to the proceedings, were satisfied that the whole affair was a conspiracy. Mr. Watson's theory was, that Dock Vincent had robbed the miser himself, and had employed the absentee to place the bag in Levi's room, intending himself to be on the way to Australia before Seaver returned. As the matter stood, nothing could be proved. But Mr. Gayles declared that he should watch Dock Vincent and a "certain other person," whose name he declined to mention, by ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic |
