"Irresponsible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... realized that, over that very table, her son, her Scott, was to receive a lesson, new and quite unforgettable. One hour of jovial human comradeship had opened Scott Brenton's eyes to more things than he ever yet had dreamed of. It had taught him once for all that irresponsible, carefree youth is not, of ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... 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 in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... door of the world's treasure-house guarded by a child—an idle irresponsible child playing knuckle-bones—on whose favor depends the gift of the key, and you will imagine one-half my torment. Till that evening Charlie had spoken nothing that might not lie within the experiences ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... eccentricity has often provided the best cloak for dark designs, and the outbreak of war proved that there was a method in the madness of the man whom the authorities persisted in regarding merely as an irresponsible degenerate of a non-political kind. To quote the press report of his ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... all toil may be made a joy, and with that a levelling down of all society to an equal participation in labour. But indeed this is against all the observed behaviour of mankind. It needed the Olympian unworldliness of an irresponsible rich man of the shareholding type, a Ruskin or a Morris playing at life, to imagine as much. Road-making under Mr. Ruskin's auspices was a joy at Oxford no doubt, and a distinction, and it still remains a distinction; it proved the least contagious of practices. And Hawthorne ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... pitfalls, blocked with stones, and the opportunities for ambuscade were many and good. No one can blame Montezuma for taking these precautions, although he afterwards disowned any participation in them and said that the arrangements had been made by some irresponsible subjects, and ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... not the interest of a man to use his slaves ill. It's damned nonsense that you hear in England.'—I told him quietly that it was not a man's interest to get drunk, or to steal, or to game, or to indulge in any other vice, but he did indulge in it for all that; that cruelty, and the abuse of irresponsible power, were two of the bad passions of human nature, with the gratification of which, considerations of interest or of ruin, had nothing whatever to do; and that, while every candid man must admit that even a slave might be happy ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... in doubt, not knowing whether it would be safe to make another rejoinder. But he saw plainly that the "Vice" was in an irresponsible condition, and so silently, but with rage in his heart, he turned on his heels so that the spurs jingled, and went ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... parish engines of the metropolis, numbering, 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 ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... with Mrs. Lacy, and that, before the barque reached Samoa, he would make the lady feel that the Reverend Wilfrid was a serious mistake, and that he, Charles Otway, was the one man in the world whom she could love and be happy with for ever. So, being a hot-blooded and irresponsible young villain, though careful and decorous to all outward seeming, he set himself to work, took exceeding care over his yellow, curly hair, and moustache, and abstained from swearing ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... I suppose it was more to their mind. But I had nothing to give them to do. They could just stand around and look on now, for when Curls seriously imitates her sister, and then laughs heartily at her own absurd failure, because her feet are irresponsible, that is the time when you have nothing to do, and would not do anything if ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... alternative and impossibility in all its fulness for the other,—so the bachelor joys are utterly lost from the face of being for the married man, who must henceforward find his account in something that is not them but is good enough to make him forget them; so the careless and irresponsible living in the sunshine, the 'unbuttoning after supper and sleeping upon benches in the afternoon,' are stars that have set upon the path of him who in good earnest makes himself a moralist. The transitions are abrupt, absolute, truly shot out of a pistol; for while ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... have the divisions of a nation's life set out in well-marked fashion. We have a military clique headed by a personal and sadly irresponsible ruler; we have a vulgar and much swollen commercial class; and then, besides these two, we have a huge ant's nest of professors and students, a large population of intelligent and well-trained factory workers, and a vast residuum of peasants. Thus we have at least five distinct classes, but of ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... the change from senatorial to imperial government at Rome was a great gain, inasmuch as it substituted an orderly and responsible administration for irregular and irresponsible extortion. For a long time, too, it was no part of the imperial policy to interfere with local customs and privileges. But, in the absence of a representative system, the centralizing tendency inseparable ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... violence and tyranny of earthly potentates, and had with difficulty escaped from an attempt which the king of Babylon made upon his life. Either memory recalled this and similar dangers, or reason suggested what the unbridled licence of irresponsible power might conceive and execute under the circumstances. The Pharaohs had, it is plain, already departed from the simple manners of the earlier times, when each prince was contented with a single wife, and had substituted for the primitive law of monogamy that corrupt ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... life led by the privileged classes. There is no reproach for this democracy when it looks upward. It sees nothing but the reckless and useless display of wealth, nothing in the full sunshine of prosperity but a Bacchanalian horde of irresponsible sensualists, nothing there but a ramp of unashamed hedonism, and a ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... Scotchman who had occasion 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, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... would give them a feast to-day and a famine to-morrow. There is deep satisfaction in cooperating with such families to conquer difficulties. There is a deeper satisfaction, however, in turning a sham home into a real one; in teaching the slatternly, irresponsible mother the pleasure of a cleanly, well-ordered home; in helping a man who has lost his sense of responsibility toward wife and children to regain it. Even at the risk of drawing a too gloomy picture, I dwell in this chapter, therefore, upon the husband and father ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... deep, burning savagery that was deadly in its passion. He hated her for her money, the money she kept securely from him. He hated her for the paltry allowance she doled out to him, as if he were an irresponsible child. It was as if she were constantly reminding him in every glance and gesture, "I made a bad bargain when I married you. You wanted me, my money, everything, and had nothing to give in return except your own doltish self. You set a trap for me, baited with lies and ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... this woman dwelt, in the regal region of irresponsible splendour, and in the power of full, free will; where there were princes, and she could take a prince; nobles, and she could take a noble; where there were men handsome, charming, magnificent, and she could take an Adonis: whom did she take? ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... without humiliations or disturbances. To-night two of the mobilized men said on leaving, 'When we enter Germany we are going to make it a republic!' . . . A republic is not a perfect thing, but it is better than living under an irresponsible monarchy by the grace of God. It at least presupposes tranquillity and absence of the personal ambitions that disturb life. I was impressed by the generous thought of these laboring men who, instead of wishing to exterminate their enemies, were planning ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... affairs. The Assembly, granted in 1758, was indeed retained, but a restraining hand was kept on it by the Colonial Office in London, through the governor and the Council. An attempt was made to combine representative and irresponsible government. The House of Assembly might talk, and raise money, but it did not control the expenditure, the {34} patronage, or the administration, and it could neither make nor unmake the ministry. The more important House was the Council, which consisted of twelve gentlemen appointed by ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... 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, ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... 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 ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... a good many risks in his time, for he usually found a spice of danger stimulating, and there was in him an irresponsible daring that not infrequently served him better than a well-laid plan. There are also men of his type, who for a time, at least, appear immune from the disasters which follow the one rash venture the prudent make, and it was half ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... believe in the possibility of that destruction even yet, in spite of what the Tsar had told him and what he had learned from other sources. He still wanted to fight to a finish, and, as Deputy European Providence, he had a very real objection to the interference of apparently irresponsible celestial bodies with his carefully-thought-out plans for the ordering of mundane civilisation on German commercial lines. Whether they liked it or not, it must be the best thing in the end for them: otherwise how could He have come to ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... reader, and say a fool told it you, if you wish: that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition." These words were written by an irresponsible fellow before the days of "responsibility" were inaugurated; before politicians had become a race apart, admired or execrated according to the temperament of the beholder; before writers were solemnly ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... managed. Fierce competition and cutting of rates brought on utter demoralization among shippers, who could not calculate on the cost of transportation, and great favoritism to localities and individuals by irresponsible freight agents who controlled the rates. Under these influences railway earnings were fluctuating and uncertain. Improvements were delayed and the people on the weaker lines ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... 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 ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... a brief word or so and point to the train, but something made me gentle, as if I were dealing with an irresponsible, a child. ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... was in reality a close oligarchy, in which the kings and the senate, as well as the people, were alike subject to the irresponsible authority of ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... involuntarily, lest any one should have heard; Mouse was the nick-name for the Prince. Like all who rule with irresponsible power, the Prince had spies everywhere. He was not a cruel man, nor a benevolent, neither clever nor foolish, neither strong nor weak; simply an ordinary, a very ordinary being, who chanced to sit upon a throne because his ancestors did, and not ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... my son," he cried gaily. "In this cap and bells, I see life under a different aspect. Never has it appeared to me sweeter and more irresponsible. Don't you feel it? But I forgot. You haven't any motley. I apologise for my want of tact. Blanquette," he added in French, "why haven't you found a costume ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... with its Superintendent continually in the field, reporting every fact to the Secretaries at the office, who in turn report to the churches, is certainly much better prepared to direct the gifts of the benevolent in ways that shall not be unwise or irresponsible. As these circulars and letters of appeal are often referred by those who receive them to the Secretaries, it is but their duty to say that all funds diverted from our treasury to schools or churches in the South, under no watch and care, would without doubt ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various
... 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
... jealous of Pyotr Stepanovitch. Realising that he had made an utter fool of himself, he became savagely furious, and shouted that he "would not allow them to deny God" and that he would "send her salon of irresponsible infidels packing," that the governor of a province was bound to believe in God "and so his wife was too," that he wouldn't put up with these young men; that "you, madam, for the sake of your own ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... like a young fox that, till he learns the fear of dogs and men, steals chickens from a coop near which an old, experienced fox would never venture, she was, perhaps, a little too indifferent to danger. In her perfect health and irresponsible freedom, she paid but slight attention to the alarm signals of other ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... gentlemen who advance this argument seem to ignore the fact that the very Northerner whom they are seeking to convert to "the Mississippi plan" may himself be a taxpayer in some Northern city, where public affairs are controlled by a class of voters in every way as ignorant and irresponsible as the blacks, but where bulldozing has never yet been suggested as a remedy. For the rest, the evidences of political oppression are abundant and convincing. The bulldozers as a class are more impecunious and irresponsible than the negroes, and, unlike the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... instrument, especially so badly organized as it now is (1842); for it fails to represent imposing minorities, whose ideas and interests would occupy the attention of a monarchical government. Elective power extended to all gives us government by the masses, the only irresponsible form of government, under which tyranny is unlimited, for it calls itself law. Besides, I regard the family and not the individual as the true social unit. In this respect, at the risk of being thought retrograde, I side with Bossuet and Bonald instead of going with modern innovators. ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... very hard to learn the true history of these unfortunates. As a rule, they have lively imaginations, and rarely confine themselves to facts. All wish to excite the sympathy of those to whom they speak, and make themselves as irresponsible for their fall as possible. It is safe to assert that the truly unfortunate are the exceptions. Women of cultivation and refinement are exceptionally rare in this grade of life. The majority were of humble position originally, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... be brief, and to the point.— The said right honourable Prime Minister Has thought it proper to declare my speech The jesting of an irresponsible;— Words from a person who has never read The Act he claims him urgent to repeal. Such quips and qizzings [as he reckons them] He implicates as gathered from long hoards Stored up with cruel care, to be discharged With sudden blaze of pyrotechnic ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... 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 to Diderot's own ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... 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
... warm-hearted, high-spirited, graceful boy, under his own roof for a short time, but who felt that that boy was nothing to him; would soon pass from his eye; form friends, pursuits, aims, with which he could be in no way commingled, for which he should be wholly irresponsible. There was also this peculiarity in Darrell's conversation; if he never spoke of his guest's past and future, neither did he ever do more than advert in the most general terms to his own. Of that grand stage on which he had been ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... food-and-shelter privileges,—such as the present Duke of Bedford, for instance, who yearly receives $75,000 from the good people of London because some former king gave some former ancestor of his the market privileges of Covent Garden. The irresponsible rich are likewise non-scabs,—and by them is meant that coupon-clipping class which hires its managers and brains to invest the money usually ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... later, she began to dress for the adventure—to find herself weaker than she had at all supposed. Although she forbore to mention it to the Second Nurse, there was an irresponsible funny feeling in her legs. They seemed to belong to her but by fits and starts. But the clothes were hers: the merino skirt a deal too short for her—she had grown almost an inch in her bed-lying— the chip hat, more badly crushed than ever, a scandal of a hat, but still hers. The ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... convention. But in its construction the convention immediately perceived that they must retrace their steps, and fall back from a league of friendship between sovereign States to the constituent sovereignty of the people; from power to right—from the irresponsible despotism of State sovereignty to the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. In that instrument, the right to institute and to alter governments among men was ascribed exclusively to the people—the ends of government were ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... from no fault of her own nor Dick's, and it was that that frightened her. A terrible sense of loneliness, of desolation, was created in her heart. For her the world seemed to have ended, and she saw the streets and passers-by with the same vague, irresponsible gaze as a solitary figure would the universal ruin caused by an earthquake. She had no friends, no occupation, no interest of any kind in life; everything had slipped from her, and she shivered with a sense of nakedness, of moral destitution. Nothing was left to her, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... of which a facsimile is given after page 92, is the draft of what appears to be an attempt to explain how an artist has not free-will in his creation. He works out his own nature instinctively as he happens to be made, and is irresponsible for the result. It is lamentable that Gerard Hopkins died when, to judge by his latest work, he was beginning to concentrate the force of all his luxuriant experiments in rhythm and diction, and castigate his art into a more reserved style. Few will ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... valuable free advertisement had not Mr. LOWTHER, reckless of his reputation for infallibility, suddenly remembered that motions for the adjournment were intended for criticising the Government and not for rebuking irresponsible outsiders. At his request the gallant Major withdrew his motion, and The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... capital punishment attempts to find is upon the theory that the criminal is past the power of reformation and his life is a constant menace to the community. If, however, he is mentally unbalanced, irresponsible for his acts, there can be no more inhuman act conceived of than the wilful sacrifice of his life. So thoroughly is that principle grounded in the law, that all civilized society surrounds human life with a safeguard, which prevents the execution of a criminal who is insane, ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... had," Aunt Frances' tone was fervent. "I can't see any future for Barry, unless he marries Leila. If he were not so irresponsible, I might do something for him. But Barry ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... limits of his authority, to consult any lengthy Nuisances' Removal Act, with its clauses, and counter- clauses, and explanations of interpretations, and interpretations of explanations. Nature, who can afford to be arbitrary, because she is perfect, and to give her servants irresponsible powers, because she has trained them to their work, had bestowed on him and on his forefathers, as general health inspectors, those very summary powers of entrance and removal in the watery realms for which ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... moored, the more puzzled he became as to what course he ought to pursue. He now had not only Winn, the raft, and himself to consider, but Glen and Binney, and the valuable instruments belonging to General Elting. Certainly it would not do to allow these to fall into the hands of an excited and irresponsible mob. Still, the thought of running ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... youthful Matthias. It must be confessed that the offer could hardly be a very tempting one, and it excites our surprise that the Archduke should have thought the adventure worth the seeking. A most anomalous position in the Netherlands was offered to him by a slender and irresponsible faction of Netherlanders. There was a triple prospect before him: that of a hopeless intrigue against the first politician in Europe, a mortal combat with the most renowned conqueror of the age, a deadly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ridiculous and that of his social interest made him perceive how absurd it would be to go into clerical society after having taken for a wife a millionaire converted the day before. To be just, it must be added that the Countess's dry champagne was not altogether irresponsible for the persistency with which he teased his betrothed. It was not the first time he had indulged in the semi-intoxication which had been one of the sins of his youth, a sin less rare in the southern climates than the ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... it's no laughing matter to be talked about behind our backs in such a reckless and irresponsible way by reckless and irresponsible people, though no doubt some of them have the best intentions in the world and think that they, and they alone, can save us. (They have probably told you that, and asked you to contribute money to their worthy cause, haven't they?) What hurts most, however, is ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... (it was called Swanwick in the early nineteenth century) it witnessed the defeat of its colonizers in a sea fight with Alfred. The irresponsible partners commemorated this by erecting a stone column surmounted by four cannon balls. A queer way of perpetuating a pre-conquest naval victory, but possibly the projectiles were less in the way here than at Millbank. Not far away, attached ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... to work for. Even the most irresponsible junior would feel humiliated if the "old girls" were to consider that the school had gone down, and all took a just pride in keeping ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... and Charles F. Murphy—what names in American history compares with them, except Washington and Lincoln? They built up the grand Tammany organization, and the organization built up New York. Suppose the city had to depend for the last twenty years on irresponsible concerns like the Citizens' Union, where would it be now? You can make a pretty good guess if you recall the Strong and Low administrations when there was no boss, and the heads of departments were at odds all the time with each other, and the Mayor was at odds with the lot of ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... ambition and love of 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 openly opposed the alliance with the French. She regarded ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... his eyes, though perhaps for an instant only, if the inevitable consequences of his deposition are expounded to him. If he closes his eyes he has probably said too much, and the proper moment must not be missed to appeal to his conscience and to prevent more exaggerated and irresponsible assertions. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... various little departures from the Eastern styles—such as doing her hair low rather than high. Where he had been used to seeing the hair of woman piled high and skewered with many pins, hers was brushed smoothly back-smoothly save for little, irresponsible waves here and there. Thurston decided that the style was becoming to her. He wondered if the fellow beside her were her brother; and then reminded himself sagely that brothers do not, as a rule, devote their time quite so assiduously ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... with a touch of regretful longing at the fleeing rooster; he pricked his ears, his eyes grew fierce, he licked his chops. There had been a time, perhaps—but that was long ago, in the dim past of his irresponsible puppyhood. ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... out their own salvation then it were well that empire should pass from such a race. The magnificent Indian army of 150,000 soldiers, many of them seasoned veterans, was for the same reason left untouched. England has claimed no credit or consideration for such abstention, but an irresponsible writer may well ask how many of those foreign critics whose respect for our public morality appears to be as limited as their knowledge of our principles and history would have advocated such self denial had their own countries been placed in ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which was to be the scene of the first act. The committee were tired and, to speak frankly, cross, with the exception of Madeline, who was provokingly cool and nonchalant, though she had worked harder than any one else. The cast were infected with that irresponsible hilarity that always attacks an amateur company at their last rehearsal. They danced about the stage, getting in the way of the committee, shrieking with laughter at their first glimpses of one another's costumes, ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... come down to Pavilionstone in a free and easy manner, an irresponsible agent, made over in trust to the South-Eastern Company, until you get out of the railway-carriage at high-water mark. If you are crossing by the boat at once, you have nothing to do but walk on board and be happy there if you can - I can't. If you are going to our ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... 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 of ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... of course, the monopoly that is the evil. It is solely the way in which we have allowed the monopolies to be owned and controlled. We have admitted a kind of irresponsible proprietorship that has so debased political methods in the United States that we are made at the present moment (in this one respect) a ...
— The Conflict between Private Monopoly and Good Citizenship • John Graham Brooks
... as in causes civil; but the Presbyterian Divines of the Assembly, with the Scots for their advisers, wanted the Church in England to be a separate Sanhedrim, supreme in ecclesiastical causes, and irresponsible to the State! Plying his learning in this fashion, and assisted by Whitlocke, St. John, and the other lawyers in the Assembly and in Parliament, Selden had, throughout 1645, kept up an Erastian obstruction to the Presbyterians. Now, as Prynne out of doors, with all his Presbyterianism, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... are absent 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 ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... established that many people refused to believe in the abominable instincts which dominated him. The matter was discussed from every conceivable point of view. Some held that he was a somnambulist and irresponsible for his acts; others that he was a murderer through love of blood, having no other possible motive for committing these crimes. Perhaps both were right, for it is an undeniable fact that moral being, will, soul, whatever name you choose to call it by, is wanting in the somnambulist. The ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... the new constitution offered to us for acceptance is unknown to any other civilised country. Parts of it are borrowed from the United States; some of its provisions are imported from the British colonies, whilst others are apparently the inventions of the unknown and irresponsible Abbe Sieyes, who is the ingenious constitution-maker of the Cabinet. But the new polity as a whole resembles in its essence neither the American Commonwealth nor the Canadian Dominion, nor the Government either of New Zealand or of any other self-governing colony. It ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... go into formal meeting the family council approved the appointment, to the infinite amazement of the judge, who had never looked upon the twins as anything but very small and irresponsible children. He listened unbelievingly to the tale of Antha and ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... belong will be found to have infected them with their own peculiar taint; and haughty, over-bearing irritability, effeminate indolence, reckless extravagance, and a union of profligacy and cruelty which is the immediate result of their irresponsible power over their dependents, are some of the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... better than I deserved,” I said, with a heartache that I had not known often in my irresponsible life; but I could not afford to show feeling before ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... set at liberty, let off, pass over, spare, excuse, dispense with, give dispensation, license; stretch a point; absolve &c. (forgive) 918; exonerate &c. (exculpate) 970; save the necessity. Adj. exempt, free, immune, at liberty, scot-free; released &c. v.; unbound, unencumbered; irresponsible, unaccountable, not answerable; excusable. Phr. bonis nocet quisquis pepercerit ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... glad of the incident, which conjured up for me the Oriental mood with its genii and subterranean wealth. Straightway this incongruous and irresponsible old buffoon was invested with a new dignity; transformed into a threatening Ifrit, the guardian of the gold, or—who knows?—Iblis incarnate. The ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... take command. He consented, but only on conditions to which an emperor has rarely agreed. Wallenstein was to have exclusive control of the army, without interference of any kind, was to be given irresponsible control over all the provinces he might conquer, was to hold as security a portion of the Austrian patrimonial estates, and after the war might choose any of the hereditary estates of the empire for his seat of retirement. The emperor acceded, and Wallenstein, clothed with almost ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... her mouth, crossing her eyes, and assuming the air of a would-be prude—"the prospective infraction of law and order would have to be decorously stated something like this: ahem! 'Those irrepressible, irresponsible and notorious sophomores are secretly preparing to engage in exceedingly demoralizing, mischievous and reprehensible behavior, calculated to produce an unpleasant state of perturbation in the atmosphere of our household, inoculate a spirit of anarchy in their fellows, and ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... own helplessness amid the obscure forces around him, which would fain compromise the indifferent, and had made him so far an accomplice in their unfriendly action that he felt certainly not quite guiltless, thinking of his own irresponsible, self-centered, passage along the ways, through the weeks that had ended in the public crime and his own private sorrow. Pity for those unknown or half-known neighbours whose faces he must often have looked on—ces pauvres morts!—took an almost remorseful ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... and, putting his hands behind the tails of his frock-coat, stood smiling radiantly on the hearthrug. A wit much less alert than my irresponsible friend's would have instantly appreciated the fact that the real Simon Pure ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... laws which are recognized as determining human action. Now according as we regard human action, its two great determinants will be free will or necessity. But hypnotism entirely does away with free will: and for necessity, fatal or circumstantial, it substitutes the lawless and irresponsible imperative of a casual individual man, who (in fiction) usually happens to be ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tossed aside the paper, shrugging his shoulders as at a madman's irresponsible rashness and folly, and turned his attention to the patient who just then came in. That patient and the many succeeding patients thought the Doctor odd this morning, brusque, absent, constrained, gruff. He was thinking ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... itself the greatest sufferer. Exaggeration is a mistake; it repels right-thinking men and never served any purpose. We believe it has done the cause of teetotalism a world of harm. But it is poor logic that will identify with so holy a cause the rabid rantings of a few irresponsible fools. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... States. In spite of the plain fact that a separate Ireland would weaken civilisation and menace the world's peace by introducing a hostile and undependable wedge betwixt the two major parts of Saxondom, these irresponsible elements continue to encourage rebellion in the Green Isle; and in so doing tend to place this nation in a distressingly anomalous position as an abettor of crime and sedition against the Mother Land. Disgusting ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... until their neutrality shall be established, and pending the further pleasure of the Council. And it is further decreed and declared that one Capitano Bunker, formerly of the Excelsior, but now a maniac and lunatic—being irresponsible and visited of God, shall be exempted from the ordinances of this decree until his reason shall be restored; and during that interval subjected to the ordinary remedial and beneficent restraint of civilization and humanity. By ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... I may seem irresponsible in not concluding the thing I had started. Then this much I'll tell you. I mean no offense, but you are fresh from school, and teaching is a new experience. And a school is a place where somewhat ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... the co-operation of his officers and men. In anticipation of the conflict which now seemed so menacing, large numbers of the officers held a secret meeting the night before, in which they decided to stand between the regular troops and the irresponsible populace. They would, on the one hand, assist the people in demanding reform, and would protect them from the assaults of the regular troops. On the other hand, they would defend the monarchy, and aid the troops in repelling ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... in his mind is another question. Granted ten years' seniority and a difference of sex, fear of him comes first; this is swallowed up by a desire to help—overwhelming sense, reason, and the time of night; anger would follow close on that—with Florinda, with destiny; and then up would bubble an irresponsible optimism. "Surely there's enough light in the street at this moment to drown all our cares in gold!" Ah, what's the use of saying it? Even while you speak and look over your shoulder towards Shaftesbury Avenue, destiny is ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... until the municipal Corporation obtains the powers now vested in several sets of virtually irresponsible Commissioners. When these wars of the Pots and Kettles are ended, the ratepayers will be able to turn their undivided attention to local reforms without having their minds distracted by those little legal squabbles, under cover of which business is neglected, and pockets are ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... 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 class. It must be admitted ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... who insisted with ever-increasing urgency on claiming a share in the direction of politics, and in every case with ultimate success. Almost invariably the leaders who headed this uprising of the masses grasped for themselves in the end the supreme power, and as irresponsible "Dictators," "Tyrants," or "Emperors" took the place ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... it. We are all insane, each in his own way, & with insanity goes irresponsibility. Theodore the man is sane; in fairness we ought to keep in mind that Theodore, as statesman & politician, is insane & irresponsible. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... provided for," I replied; "though in general, no abolitionist can be more vehemently opposed to negro slavery than I am to this apprenticeship business. What is it but a slavery of the worst description? The master is endowed with irresponsible power, without the interest in the well-being of his slave, which the planter, the actual owner of ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... madre mia! And his excellency will give you a shawl. I feel it! I know it! And if we go now we disobey no law. Have they ever said we could not visit a foreign ship when they were not here? We are light-headed, irresponsible women. And if they should not let us go! If the Governor and the Russian should disagree! Now we have the opportunity for such a day as we never have had before. We should be imbeciles. We ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... as he spoke, the love which in their crude hearts they bore him, that animal primitive love, was turned to sudden, equally irresponsible hate. He had deceived them, laughed at them, tried to bribe them by feeding ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... is far from being an ideal law—it is capable of amendment in many respects—but it is an evidence of the acceptance by the English people of the principle of State regulation, and of their wish that between the will of the vivisector and the irresponsible and unlimited torment of the victim, there hall be some power capable, if it so desires, of making ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... somnambulism in my client's family. If the accused could speak he could a tale unfold—one of the strangest that have ever been narrated between the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. Not ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... it grows smaller every day. It's a single organic body, and one spot of gangrene is enough to vitiate the whole. There's no room upon it for dishonest, defaulting, tyrannical, irresponsible Governments. As long as they exist they will always be sources of trouble and of danger. But there are many races which appear to be so incapable of improvement that we can never hope to get a good Government out ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... moment's silence Harry fairly laughed. Edge was surprised, not understanding what a difference the Comtesse's manoeuvre had made there too. He could not be expected to know all the difference it had made to Harry's life, even to the man himself. Two irresponsible ladies—say Addie and—well, Madame Valfier—may ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... as a collective interest. We need more constructive thinking in public service. We need a kind of "universal training" in economic facts. The over-reaching ambitions of speculative capital, as well as the unreasonable demands of irresponsible labour, are due to ignorance of the economic basis of life. Nobody can get more out of life than life can produce—yet nearly everybody thinks he can. Speculative capital wants more; labour wants more; the source of raw material ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... I replied, "has not yet learned to reflect. Its activity is the slave of instinct, blind and irresponsible." ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... sudden wave of something, a directness and frankness born in some way in this new world apart from civilization, like a wind-blown flame, irresponsible and irresistible, swept over Molly Wingate's soul as swiftly, as unpremeditatedly as it had over his. She was a young woman fit for love, disposed for love, at the age for love. Now, to her horror, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... indeed, to be so. The members of this body, standing about the hall and platform, were animated and perturbed; the more irresponsible juniors seemed amused, others anxious. The Secretary-General was talking gravely ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... grasp of those invisible hills, but was she living or dead? Had she reached her journey's end safely? He tried to extract comfort from the confidence she had expressed in the ability and integrity of the old man who drove with far greater recklessness than one would have looked for in a wild and irresponsible youngster. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... thundering lot to spend. But then Ranny desired, he was determined to spend a thundering lot. It was extravagant, but he wished to be extravagant. It was reckless, irresponsible, but reckless and irresponsible was what he felt. He meant to go it. He meant to have his fling just for once. And he meant that Winny, who had never had hers, nor any share in anybody else's, should taste, just for once, the rapture of a fling. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... the extended fingers and received a wiry handclasp that caused him faint surprise. But then, he reflected as he went away, he had always known Saltash to be a queer devil, oddly balanced, curiously impulsive, strangely irresponsible, possessing through all a charm which seldom failed to hold its own. He realized by instinct that Saltash was wrestling with himself that night, but, though he knew him better than did many, he would not have staked anything on the result. There were two selves ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... substance. The doctrine of creation, and not of emanation or of modification, is the doctrine by which it constructs its theory of the Universe, and the doctrine of responsible self-determination, and not of irresponsible natural development, is the doctrine by which it constructs its systems of Philosophy ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... They were familiar with the stereotyped official answers, the answers that assured them that the case should have consideration, and that if anything could be done—well, then, perhaps, something would be done. Possibly no other answer could have been given. The answer of the unofficial and irresponsible Dictator promised absolutely nothing; but it had the musical ring of sincerity and of sympathy about it, and the men grasped strongly his strong hand, and went away glad that ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... first, by his speaking of himself as the reputed "madman" that I could not answer. To think of him as serenely contemptuous of the world's imputation—and an imputation so galling as this one of being irresponsible for his actions—and deliberately continuing his even way without taking the trouble to refute it, has given me an insight into his nature, that fills me with admiration, and yet, at the same time, with a sort of longing to see him reinstated ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... see how he would take it!" she exclaimed. "I see his white hair, his eyes, his fingers trembling on the edge of the table, his utter dejection—and then impulse, headlong, irresponsible, craving the devil's company!" ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... consider what would be the principles on which he would administer the government, and what are his claims to the confidence of the public. We are beginning to discover that the personal character of the President has a great deal to do with the conduct of the almost irresponsible executive head of the Republic. What, then, have been Mr. Cushing's political antecedents, and what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various |
