"Heedlessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breathless Lestocq, her conversation with Anna Leopoldowna. Lestocq listened to her with most intense interest, taking a piece of paper from the table and mechanically writing some unmeaning lines upon it with an appearance of heedlessness. Perhaps it was this mechanical occupation that enabled him to remain so calm and circumspect. During the narration of the princess his features again assumed their expression of firmness and determination; his eyes again flashed, and around ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... over the smaller shortcomings unnoticed, than constantly to be finding fault. She maintained that scolding should be indulged in most sparingly, as much of it was detrimental both to the temper of the child and the dignity of the mother. She believed that too little allowance was made for the heedlessness growing out of pure exuberance of spirits. But when a law was once established it was unalterable, and no child ever thought of resisting it. For instance, no one, large or small, was allowed to exhibit a peevish ill-nature, either by word or manner, in the public rooms of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... is to say, I've lost it," he answered, and then stood with his eyes on the ground while the Father reproved him for heedlessness of ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... educated in London where she had most of her social triumphs. There she was presented at court and there began the pitiful romance of her life in her meeting with Charles Mordaunt. In all youth's happy heedlessness these two fell in love—the daughter of "the baron of the James" and the grandson and heir of London's social ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... the game, "Yonder, see! the Ard-Druid of the Province. Wherefore comes he forth from his druidic chambers to-day at this hour, such not being his wont?" And the other answered lightly, laughing, and with boyish heedlessness, "I know not wherefore; but well he knows himself." And therewith ran to meet the ball which passed that way. There was yet a third who watched the boys. He stood afar off on the edge of the plain. He had a little shield strapped on his back, two ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... them into your power. You know the words about wicked people are, "He doth ravish the poor when he getteth him into his net." This getting into the net is constantly the fault or folly of the sufferer—his own heedlessness or his own indolence; but after he is once in the net, the oppression of him, and making the most of his distress, are ours. The nets which we use against the poor are just those worldly embarrassments ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... river roared and rushed downwards on its course with a heedlessness that quite justified him in his hesitation. "Wait till to-morrow morning, and the Tennessee will be quieter. Then I'll ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... drawn from the lower classes. Whether the empress Tsz'e Hsi and her Manchu advisers had deliberately set themselves from the beginning to avert the danger by deflecting what might have been a revolutionary movement into anti-foreign channels, or whether with Oriental heedlessness they had allowed it to grow until they were powerless to control it, they had unquestionably resolved to take it under their protection before the foreign representatives at Peking had realized its gravity. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... ran away, and Pepperill fell into the ranks, only to get repeatedly and severely reprimanded by the drill-officer for his heedlessness that morning. He did everything awkwardly, if not altogether wrong. His mind was on the child and the errand on which he had sent her, and he kept wondering within himself whether she would do it correctly (children are so apt to do errands amiss!), ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... In war time, death, always in the air, seems to annihilate with its dark shadow all the bonds that bind society together. Life, hitherto so assured, of a sudden becomes the most transient of human gifts, to be enjoyed with a feverish heedlessness before it vanishes forever into the unknown. Thus Fetuao found and accepted a dozen lovers among her men, and while still according her husband the first place, she yet permitted them liberties and familiarities that they were not ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... is hell. The heart at rest is paradise. The trouble or peace of parents depends upon their children. If their children are virtuous, parents are as the saints: if their children are wicked, parents suffer the tortures of the damned. If once your youthful spirits, in a fit of heedlessness, have led you to bring trouble upon your parents and cause them to weep, just consider the line of argument which I have been following. From this time forth repent and examine your own hearts. If you will become dutiful, your parents from this day will live happy as the saints. But ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... McNaughton & Co. investigated the accident, to see if they could by any means be liable to an action for damages brought by an employee. But there was no loose nail in the stairway, not the least obstruction. The proprietors were not to blame; it was simply the child's heedlessness, they said. In fact, the fault was with Ellie's shoes: the sole of one, being broken, caught on the top ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... Cardinal, to a creature of Richelieu. By that triple title Mazarin was equally hateful to the great nobles, the members of parliament, and the middle class. The tyranny of Richelieu had in the end attained to something noble by the high-handed heedlessness of all his acts. If the people were to be trampled on, it was a species of consolation that their oppressor was feared by others as well as themselves. But that the oppression of the doomed French nation was to be continued by a more ignoble hand was altogether ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... adjoining wall. The turf now covers the space thus thrown into the open churchyard; nothing remains to mark the position of the graves, which in all probability, ere many years elapse, will be disturbed through ignorance or heedlessness, and the ashes of Leighton ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... others in as fearful a key, and related how they had found the door of their room ajar, and a bright light streaming into the corridor. They did not stop to ponder this fact, but, with the heedlessness of their sex, pushed the door wide open, when they saw seated before the mirror a bewildering figure, with disheveled locks wandering down the back, and in dishabille expressive of being quite at home there, which turned upon them a pair of pale blue eyes, under ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... papa. He left early each morning and returned late in the evening, telling of lands he had bought during the day. His wish was to go to Opelousas to register them.... To-day the whole town of Opelousas belongs to his heirs; but those heirs, with Creole heedlessness and afraid to spend a dollar, let strangers enjoy the possession of the beautiful lands acquired by their ancestor for so different an end. Shame on ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... that bucket," he directed. It was the voice of authority commanding the urchin on the curb; of seasoned seniority chiding the heedlessness ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... of the cathedral were unclosed after the midnight mass. Some heedlessness in the custodians, too eager to go home and feast or sleep, or too drowsy to know whether they turned the keys aright, had left one of the doors unlocked. By that accident the footfalls Patrasche sought had passed through into the building, leaving the white marks of snow ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... quality of caution is often mistaken for cowardice, while heedlessness passes for daring. A late eminent American sculptor, a man of undoubted courage, is said to have always taken the rear car in a railroad train. Such a spirit of prudence, where well-directed, is to be viewed with respect. We ought not to reverence the blind recklessness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... of the myriads of opportunities for committing mistakes of this sort, I wonder that we had so few accidents. The truth is our captain taught us to think before we acted at all times, and we had little of the heedlessness which less experienced children often show. We were in effect small soldiers and carried some of the responsibilities of soldiers into all that ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... loathsome than those filthy and disgusting remnants, something more repulsive than those noses eaten by worms and those empty eyeballs devoured by rats. I mean the cynicism of the dwellers in that place; I mean their insensibility, their indifference and calm heedlessness in the presence of such grave subjects for thought. I mean that lack of perception, that spirit of negation and revolt of which those wretched men make a boast and which they obstinately oppose to all religious sentiment, all principle of tradition or revealed ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... dost not see my Ruth, laboring at the ill-fitted shutter of the chamber? The woman will be slain, in her heedlessness—for, hark! there beginneth ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... result was a stormy conference between Seward and Welles which was adjourned to the White House and became a conference with Lincoln. And then the whole story came out. Lincoln played the scapegoat, "took the whole blame upon himself, said it was carelessness, heedlessness on his part; he ought to have been more careful and attentive." But he insisted on immediate correction of his error, on the restoration of the Powhatan to the Sumter fleet. Seward struggled hard for his plan. Lincoln was inflexible. As Seward had ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... all agree; but how few comprehend the extent of its importance! The writer who neglects punctuation, or mis-punctuates, is liable to be misunderstood—this, according to the popular idea, is the sum of the evils arising from heedlessness or ignorance. It does not seem to be known that, even where the sense is perfectly clear, a sentence may be deprived of half its force—its spirit—its point—by improper punctuation. For the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... smiled and peacefully jogged on in the same life as if nothing untoward had happened. Still, the mask of jovial heedlessness glued by pride on his face would sometimes be suddenly detached. Then, in lieu of laughter, one saw grief and indignation. Thus it was that one morning, when the little blackguards yelped "Muster Jarvey's Roifle" ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... and upon you both!" cried Herne. "But you shall pay dearly for your heedlessness,—if, indeed, it has not been something worse. How long have ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... my tears, and declared that I would bear up courageously against this success which had come to interfere with my tranquillity, my heedlessness, and my "don't care-ism." But from that time forth fear took possession of me, and stage ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... it showed the weakness, indecision, flabbiness, and heedlessness common to all governments, and from which none has ever departed without falling into arbitrariness and violence. In three words it knew nothing, wanted nothing, and would do nothing. Formose, shut in his presidential palace, remained blind, dumb, deaf, huge, invisible, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... time: Hannibal had no longer any provender; Spain was in turmoil; the affection of the allies was being alienated from him: and if they had waited for even the briefest possible period, they would have conquered without trouble. As matters went, however, the heedlessness of Terentius and the submissiveness of Paulus, who always desired the proper course but assented to his colleague in most points—so sure is gentleness to be overcome by audacity,—compassed their defeat. (Mai, p. 196. Zonaras, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... showered on all, she was amused by perceiving that good Mrs. Harewood was endowed with exactly the same grotesque order of ugliness as her son William; but she was even more engaging, from an indescribably droll mixture of heedlessness, blundering, and tender motherliness. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all likelihood, the housemaid gave private admittance to some lover who was the author of all the losses they had lately suffered, and that they might possibly detect him in his nocturnal adventures; and observing that it would be imprudent to intimate their design to Wilhelmina, lest, through the heedlessness and indiscretion of youth, she might chance to divulge the secret, so as to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... sorry," said Mrs. Spencer. "It's too bad; but it certainly wasn't my fault, you see, Miss Cuthbert. I did the best I could and I thought I was following your instructions. Nancy is a terrible flighty thing. I've often had to scold her well for her heedlessness." ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that not the faintest breath might escape. Then he sent forth the blast of the West Wind to blow for me, to bear our ships and ourselves upon our way; but this he was never to bring to pass, for we were undone through our own heedlessness. ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... of men, Agamemnon, answered him again: "Old man, another day I even bid thee blame him, for often is he slack, and willeth not to labour, yielding neither to unreadiness nor heedlessness of heart, but looking toward me, and expecting mine instance. But now he awoke far before me, and came to me, and him I sent forward to call those concerning whom thou inquirest. But let us be gone, and them shall ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... proportions are modest and its lighting defective to-day, for Louis XV blocked up all the windows on one side. It remains, however, one of the richest examples of the Franco-Italian decoration of its era, though somewhat tarnished by the heedlessness of Charles X. ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... now, clear before mine eyes, the cause of my former heedlessness and blindness concerning spiritual things! Filled with earthly aims, and lost in them with all my scheming and striving; put in motion and impelled only by the idea of a result, which is to be actualized without us, by the desire of such a result and pleasure in it—insensible and dead to the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... he sat like a lump, with everyone staring at him, when the chairman of the architects' convention asked if Mr. Medcroft had anything to say on the subject under discussion. He was forced, in some confusion, to attribute his heedlessness to a life-long defect in hearing. Thereafter it was his punishment to have his name and fragments of conversation hurled about in tones so stentorian that he blushed for very shame. In the Bristol, in the Kaerntner-Ring, in the Lichtenstein Gallery, in the Gardens—no ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... follow that a reasonable measure of success may not fairly be expected, where sagacious appreciation of well-known facts controls the direction of effort, and preparation is proportioned to the difficulties to be encountered. Heedlessness of conditions, or recklessness of dangers, defeat effort everywhere, as well as in privateering; nor is even the chapter of unforeseen accident confined to military affairs. In 1812 the courses followed by the enemy's trade were ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... time to the meetings for archery practice, which involved the five miles expedition, and even to our own domestic practice, answering carelessly, when Eustace scolded him about letting a chance go by, and his heedlessness of the honour of the family, "Oh, I take a shot or two every morning as I go out, to keep ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Presley wondered at the heedlessness of leaving the sheep so slightly guarded, but made no comment, and the two started off across the field in the direction of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the one side, the sick, feeble and unhappy on the other; and every attempt to alleviate this difference seems to lead to general enervation. Some of those who interpreted Darwinism in this manner felt an aesthetic delight in contemplating the heedlessness and energy of the great struggle for existence and anticipated the realisation of a higher human type as the outcome of it: so Nietzsche and his followers. Others recognising the same consequences in Darwinism regarded these as one of the strongest objections against it; so ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... Diderot's heedlessness about himself has often been told before, but we shall be none the worse in an egoistic world for hearing it told again. There came to him one morning a young man, bringing a manuscript in his hand. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... children upraised, that they might the better observe the enlivening sports without—some lay indolently with their legs overhanging the works—others, assuming pugilistic attitudes, dealt their harmless blows at each other,—and all were blended together, men, women, and children, with that heedlessness of thought that told how little of distrust existed within their breasts. The soldiers of the guard, too, exhibited the same air of calm and unsuspecting confidence; some walking to and fro within the square, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... is exceedingly unpromising and dangerous. Whoever allows it, will be in far more danger of falling under the influence of the vicious than the exemplary. Instead of this heedlessness, they should carefully and thoughtfully select their associates. They should not be willing to form terms of intimacy with, every one into whose society they may be casually thrown. They should inform themselves of their tastes, habits, and reputation. And from the circle of their acquaintance ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... 1603 [sic] as you suggest. I am afraid there are errors in it, also, heedlessness in antiquated spelling—e's stuck on often at end of words where they are not strickly necessary, etc..... I would go through the manuscript but I am too much driven just now, and it is not important anyway. I wish you would do me the kindness to make any and all corrections ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dear Danton, forgive the freedom, merely incredulously grope. Faith versus Reason—that prehistoric Armageddon. Some day, and a day not far distant either, Lawford will come back to us. This—this shutter will be taken down as abruptly as by some inconceivably drowsy heedlessness of common Nature it has been put up. He'll win through; and of his own sheer will and courage. But now, because I ask it, and this poor child here entreats it, you will say nothing to a living soul about the matter, say, till Friday? What step-by-step creatures we are, to be sure! I say ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... horn as a signal for the chase, and still Gelert came not. Llewellyn was much disconcerted at the heedlessness of his favorite, but at length pursued the chase without him. For want of Gelert, the sport was limited; and getting tired, Llewellyn returned home at an early hour, when the first object that presented ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... to her; above all, her own self. She was acting in a way which was no result of balanced purpose, yet, as she perfectly understood, involved her in the gravest responsibilities. She had no longer the excuse which palliated her conduct eight years ago; that heedlessness was innocent indeed compared with the blame she would now incur, if she excited a vain hope merely to prove her feelings, to read another chapter of life. Solemnly in this charmed stillness of midnight, she searched her heart. It ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... pensions a kind of sacredness which invites the adoption of such principles and regulations as will exclude perversion as well as insure a liberal and generous application of grateful and benevolent designs. Heedlessness and a disregard of the principle which underlies the granting of pensions is unfair to the wounded, crippled soldier who is honored in the just recognition of his Government. Such a man should never find himself side by side on the pension roll with those who have been tempted to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... strength and resolution, Agricola was childishly sensitive; and, thinking how painful that thought must be to the poor girl, a large tear filled his eyes, and, holding out his hands, he said, in a brotherly tone, "Forgive my heedlessness! Come, kiss me." And he gave her thin, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... be not heedless! Do not direct thy thought to what gives pleasure that thou mayest not for thy heedlessness have to swallow the iron ball (in hell), and that thou mayest not cry out when burning, 'This ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... seconds Disco gazed at the fish, and the fish gazed around, even turning its head a little, as well as its eyes, on this side and on that. Presently a small fly, with that giddy heedlessness which characterises the race, alighted about two inches in front of blenny's nose. Instantly the fish leaped that vast space, alighted with its underset mouth just over the fly, which immediately rose into it and ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... thought! Oh, mad heedlessness born of long immunity! That fine sand was on the next wolftrap and in an instant I was a prisoner. Although not wounded, for the traps have no teeth, and my thick trapping gloves deadened the snap, I was firmly caught across the hand above the knuckles. Not greatly ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... only one among them all who enjoyed the situation. Quita herself found a perverse satisfaction, unworthy of her best moments, in thus emphasising her indifference to her husband's presence; ignoring, with characteristic heedlessness, the fact that a two-edged weapon is an ill thing to handle: and Lenox, accepting her unspoken intimation au pied de la lettre, steeled ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... principality of Antioch, and insisted that Bohemond and his people should share in the last great enterprise of the crusade. More disgraceful than these feuds were the scenes witnessed during the siege and after the conquest of Marra. Heedlessness and waste soon brought the assailants to devour the flesh of dogs and of human beings. The bodies of Turks were torn from their sepulchres, ripped up for the gold which they were supposed to have swallowed, and the fragments cooked and eaten. Of the besieged ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... are a cleaner people and a more sober; in every class there is a diminution of brutality; education—stand for what it may—has notably extended; certain forms of tyranny have been abolished; certain forms of suffering, due to heedlessness or ignorance, have been abated. True, these are mere details; whether they indicate a solid advance in civilization cannot yet be determined. But assuredly the average Briton has cause to jubilate; for the progressive ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... strange that in the very first flush of her married life this conversation with Elsie should come up. She knew it was only the girl's heedlessness and pretty egotism that made her talk in this really cruel fashion, she was sure of that; still her nature was too proud and self-reliant, for the idea that Mellen had been first attracted towards her from sympathy at her lonely condition, to ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... kindness and gentleness are certainly requisite when breaking-in the puppy, whether it be a pointer or a setter. There is heedlessness in the young dog which is not readily got rid of until age has given him experience. He must not, however, be too severely corrected, or he may be spoiled for life. If considerable correction is sometimes necessary, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... if we had taken our own and our friend's bereavements at their peace value. It became necessary to give them a false value; to proclaim the young life worthily and gloriously sacrificed to redeem the liberty of mankind, instead of to expiate the heedlessness and folly of their fathers, and expiate it in vain. We had even to assume that the parents and not the children had made the sacrifice, until at last the comic papers were driven to satirize fat old men, sitting comfortably in club chairs, ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... effort; and even those whose happily constituted temperaments make it comparatively easy for them, do often carry the weakness rather than the strength of the earlier into the later epochs. It is easier to be always childish than to be always childlike. The immaturity and heedlessness of youth bear carriage better than the more precious vintages of that sunny land—its freshness of eye and heart, its openness of mind, its energy of hand. Even when these are in any measure retained—beautiful as they are in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... few years. There's been a song made about his misfortune, Fris, and every time he heard it he was like a new-born lamb in the cold. The children sing it, too." Ole looked round at them imploringly. "It was only a piece of boyish heedlessness, and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... comfort and utter heedlessness of Mr Rayne's slumber after such a miserable time as he passed arguing against himself in his drawing-room. He had vowed that he would broach the tender subject to Honor the very next day, and thus free himself from ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... of the South Sea islands, and sent a boat ashore for fruit. Billy and his dearly beloved little tyrant, Georgie White, were among the crew. Off goes Georgie to bathe, and Billy sits down on the beach with a loving eye upon him. The water was calm: but the boy with the heedlessness of youth stayed in it nearly an hour: he was seized with cramp and screamed to his comrades. They ran, but they were half a mile from the boat. Billy dashed into the water and came up with Georgie just as he was sinking for the last time; the boy gripped ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... hearing of others, I did not wear yellow robes; nor barks of trees. I did not shave my head; nor did I keep matted locks on my head. It is not in consequence of these acts that I have attained to the status of a celestial. I never, in heedlessness, addressed any disagreeable or evil speech to my husband. I was always devoted to the worship of the deities, the Pitris, and the Brahmanas. Always heedful I waited upon and served my mother-in-law and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... right, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick; 'but old men may come here through their own heedlessness and unsuspicion, and young men may be brought here by the selfishness of those they serve. It is better for those young men, in every point of view, that they should not remain here. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... we are doing, and still less of the importance of what we have done; we ought to find a common ground on which to meet distasteful people; we ought to labour hard against self-pity as well as against self-applause; we ought to feel that if we have missed chances, it is out of our own heedlessness and stupidity. Self-applause is a more subtle thing even than self-pity, because, if one rejects the sense of credit, one is apt to congratulate oneself on being the kind of person who does reject it, whereas we ought to avoid it as instinctively ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... for standing so dead still as the pivot of this circle of heath-country was just as obscure. Her extraordinary fixity, her conspicuous loneliness, her heedlessness of night, betokened among other things an utter absence of fear. A tract of country unaltered from that sinister condition which made Caesar anxious every year to get clear of its glooms before the autumnal equinox, a kind of landscape and weather which ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... instructions of your father, as you value the happiness of your mother and your own welfare. His care and attention to you render many things unnecessary for me to write, which I might otherwise do; but the inadvertency and heedlessness of youth require line upon line and precept upon precept, and, when enforced by the joint efforts of both parents, will, I hope, have a due influence upon your conduct; for, dear as you are to me, I would much rather you should have found your grave ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely. We have no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our cattle-shows and so-called Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... have laws, customs, or prejudices, to which we attach considerable importance, and the infringement of which we consider either criminal or offensive, so have the natives theirs, equally, perhaps, dear to them, but which, from our ignorance or heedlessness, we may be continually violating, and can we wonder that they should sometimes exact the penalty of infraction? do not we do the same? or is ignorance a more valid excuse for civilized ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... have imagined irresistible—our Guy, "whom to look on was to love." Some harsh folk might say this might be a good lesson for the lad—nay, for most lads; but I deny it.—I doubt if any young man, meeting at the outset of life a rejection like this, which either ignorance or heedlessness on the woman's part had made totally unexpected, ever is the better for it: perhaps, for many years, cruelly the worse. For, most women being quick-sighted about love, and most men—especially young men—blind ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... over the bank—and their haste and heedlessness carried them pell-mell to the bottom—there sounded a yell behind them that certainly was not emitted by the bull. Goodness knows, he roared loudly enough! But this was no voice of a bull that so startled the two girls and Tom ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... glances that were thrown from both officers and men at their commander and the pilot, who still continued their secret communion in a distant part of the vessel. Once, an ungovernable curiosity, or the heedlessness of his years, led one of the youthful midshipmen near them; but a stern rebuke from his captain sent the boy, abashed and cowering, to hide his mortification among his fellows. This reprimand was received by the elder officers as an intimation that the consultation which they beheld was to be ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... laughed even at that moment. He had left the box (whether from haste or heedlessness or malice, we could not tell), but the letter was on him. Taken alive, he would use that powerful weapon to save his life or satisfy his anger; if it were found on his body, its evidence would speak loud and clear to all the world. Again ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... narrative concerning the personnel of his command. In addition to the estimate of the command printed on a preceding page, he wrote, "The Battalion have never been drilled and though obedient, have little discipline; they exhibit great heedlessness and ignorance and some obstinacy." The ignorance undoubtedly was of military matters, for the men had rather better than the usual schooling of the rough period. At several points his diary gave such details as, "The men arrived completely worn ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... awoke from his heedlessness and said, 'Extolled be the perfection of God the Great! O king, this is my case and my story, nothing added and nought diminished, for I am King Bekhtzeman and all this happened to me; wherefore I will seek the gate of God['s mercy] and repent unto Him.' So he went ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... ancient monuments of this country, we believe that it is inclined to move in the right direction, and to do its utmost to preserve those that have hitherto escaped the attacks of the iconoclasts, and the heedlessness and stupidity of the Gallios "who care for ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield |
