"Haphazard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the East and West, the main feature of the town was the street car. It was an open-air structure of spacious dimensions, as though benches and a canopy had been erected rather haphazard on a small dancing platform. The track is absurdly narrow in gauge; and as a consequence the edifice swayed and swung from side to side. A single mule was attached to it loosely by about ten feet of rope. It was driven by a gaudy ragamuffin in a ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... seems so formidable has become firmly established, to be told that it was, after all, the result of accident and inadvertence, and a "careless use of terms in drafting an Act of Parliament"; and that difficult and perilous theological questions have come, by "a haphazard chance," before a court which was never meant to decide them. It cannot be doubted that those who are most interested in the Church of England feel deeply and strongly about keeping up what they believe to be the soundness and purity of her professed doctrine; and they think that, under fair ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... force? It is uncontrolled machinery. In the several units of machine-production, the individual factories or mills, we have admirable order and accurate adjustment of parts; in the aggregate of machine-production we have no organisation, but a chaos of haphazard speculation. "Industry has not yet adapted itself to the changes in the environment produced by ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... wrong and resistance to law, and supplied there the yet more disastrous facility of sustaining and enforcing wrong under the name of giving support to public tranquillity. Yet, forcing on its way amidst all these difficulties by a natural law, in a strange haphazard and disjointed method, and by a zigzag movement, there came into existence, and by degrees into steady operation, a sentiment native to Ireland and having Ireland for its vital basis, and yet not deserving the name of Irish patriotism, because ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... But at present, the pupil too often has a choice only between beginning with a study of the results of prior specialization where the material is isolated from his daily experiences, or with miscellaneous nature study, where material is presented at haphazard and does not lead anywhere in particular. The habit of introducing college pupils into segregated scientific subject matter, such as is appropriate to the man who wishes to become an expert in a ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... try it. In Shoxford church-yard he had expressed (if Sexton Rigg was not then deceived) an unholy wish to have me there, at the feet of my brothers and sisters. Also he had tried to get hold of me—doubtless with a view to my quietude—when I was too young to defend myself, and left at haphazard in a lawless land. What was the reason, if his mind was still the same, for ceasing to follow me now? Was I to be treated with contempt as one who had tried her best and could do nothing, as a feeble creature whose movements were not even worth inquiry? ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... know what Mr. Henderson did to utilise the Edinburgh [Page: 125] police in the care of children. The future of the country depends upon them. The subject is too serious to continue to be left to the haphazard mercies of indifferent parents. Every child born is an agent for good or for evil among the community, and the community cannot afford to neglect how it is brought up, the circumstances in which it has its being, the environment from which it derives its character and ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... accounts from Edmund, and these accounts were as regularly transmitted to Fanny, in the same diffuse style, and the same medley of trusts, hopes, and fears, all following and producing each other at haphazard. It was a sort of playing at being frightened. The sufferings which Lady Bertram did not see had little power over her fancy; and she wrote very comfortably about agitation, and anxiety, and poor invalids, till Tom was actually conveyed to Mansfield, and her own eyes ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... was silent. His companions were laughing. One of them said: "Marriage is indeed a lottery; you must never choose your numbers. The haphazard ones are the best."—Another added by way of conclusion: "Yes, but do not forget that the god of ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant • David Widger
... what I could do to it. Imagine it upon a windy night of winter, when a hundred discommoded passengers are turned out, grumbling, underneath the stars,—coughing invalids, and kicking infants, and indignant citizens, scrambling haphazard among tottering trunks, and picking their way from train to train. Imagine their faces, their voices, their gesticulations: here, indeed, you will see more than a theatre-full of characters. Or, if human beings do not interest you, imagine the mysterious gleam of yellow windows veiled behind a ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... abode, to seek better fortune some little distance away. And similarly it can never be said of them that they can be induced to undertake any illogical or foolish task. Their common-sense has never been known to fail them; they have never, at a loss for definite decision, erected at haphazard structures of a wild or heterogeneous nature. Though you place the swarm in a sphere, a cube, or a pyramid, in an oval or polygonal basket, you will find, on visiting the bees a few days later, that if this strange assembly of little independent intellects has accepted the new abode, they will ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... in my bedroom. Otherwise, it is a good deal like one of Ballard's top-rooms. We have a very obliging and comfortable landlady; and it is a clean nice place in a rough wild country. We came here haphazard, but could not have ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... great a mistake as he who framed his plans in complete disregard of what soil, climate, etc., permit. One of the evils of an abstract or remote external aim in education is that its very inapplicability in practice is likely to react into a haphazard snatching at immediate conditions. A good aim surveys the present state of experience of pupils, and forming a tentative plan of treatment, keeps the plan constantly in view and yet modifies it as conditions develop. The aim, in short, is experimental, and ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... longer held together. Small groups formed haphazard squadrons, keeping each other company, but many ships were isolated and ploughed their way alone over the dreary sea. Many, despite hard work at the pumps, settled lower and lower in the water each day, and at last sank in the ocean, their fate ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... their eccentricities and peculiarities have generally not till then been noticed. Possessing but a limited amount of education, the boatswain of the Plantagenet endeavoured, on attaining his present rank, to instruct himself; and having no one to advise him, he had purchased some books at haphazard, the contents of which he respected the more that they were totally beyond his comprehension. The work mentioned was among them, and as he thought that he understood it best it was his chief favourite. He was ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... town; some of the proceedings having after-effects not desirable. At the present time, when there is more regard for our domestic servants and their characters, and cheap postage prevails, this mode of haphazard engagement has nearly died out, and the Statute will soon be a thing of the past. It was first enacted by Ed. III. in 1351; again by 13th Richard II., and, in later times, was held under “a precept” from the Chief Constable of the Division. To those who wish to read a humorous and graphic description ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... than a few pages in length, contain never an idle word, and the phrases bite like vitriol. Moreover he employs an idiom that is (I conjecture) a direct transcription from native speech, which adds enormously to the effect. Understand me, not for worlds would I commend these volumes haphazard to the fastidious; I only say they are clever, arresting and violently individual. Also that, if you have not so far met the work of Mr. EVANS, here is your opportunity, in a volume that shows it at its best, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... purposeless. Frank Merrill had to scourge them to patrol the beach, to keep their signal sheets flying, their signal fires burning. The effect upon their mental condition of this loss of animus was immediate. They became perceptibly more serious. Their first camp—it consisted only of five haphazard piles of bedding—satisfied superficially the shiftless habits of their womanless group; subconsciously, however, they all fell under the depression of its discomfort and disorder. They bathed in the ocean regularly but they did not shave. Their clothes grew ragged and torn, and ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... the same word means both these, conveys a piece of practical wisdom, which it will do us all good to note clearly and take to heart. For it teaches us that whatever is 'ordered' is firm, and whatever is disorderly, haphazard, done without the exercise of one's mind on the act, being chaotic, is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... shrapnel, nor do the shells burst always in places where they can do most damage. Many portions of the camp unprotected by works in any shape cannot be seen from the enemy's batteries, and though often searched for by shells thrown at haphazard, our Cavalry, Artillery, and Army Service lines have frequently escaped being hit by a good fortune that seems almost miraculous. One day three successive shells fell and burst between the guns of ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... Margny, the assailants found the Burgundians scattered and unarmed. They took them by surprise; and the French set to work to strike here and there haphazard. The Maid, for her part, overthrew ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... one soldier kissed his father, who came wearing a leathern apron. The school bell tang-tang-tanged from above, school children merged timidly through the grouped horses, up the narrow street, passing unwillingly with their books. The river ran swiftly, the soldiers, very haphazard and slack in uniform, real shack-bags, chewed their bread in large mouthfuls; the young lieutenant, who seemed to be an officer only by consent of the men, stood apart by the bridge-head, gravely. They were all serious and self-contented, very unglamorous. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... Crow's Nest, and the insurrectionary faction, starting with the trainmen and spreading to the track force, threatened to involve the telegraph operators—threatened to become a protest unanimous and in the mass. Worse than this, the service, haphazard enough before, now became a maddening chaos. Orders were misunderstood, whether wilfully or not no court of inquiry could determine; wrecks were of almost daily occurrence, and the shop track was speedily filled to the switches with ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... opened the bounds of the unknown in a haphazard and fortuitous fashion. Sealers and whalers in the hope of rich booty ventured far afield, and, ranging among the mysterious floes or riding out fierce gales off an ice-girt coast, brought back strange tales to a curious world. Crudely embellished, contradictory, yet alluring they ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... of manuscript broadcast over the desk, and took a sheet at haphazard. It was all covered with illegible hopeless scribblings; only here and there it was possible to ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... gloves are bought. I select a pair haphazard, and he pretends to perceive they fit perfectly by putting them over the back of my hand. I make him assure me of the fit, and then buy the pair and proceed to take my old ones off and put the new on grimly. If they split or the fingers are too long—glovemakers have the most erratic conceptions ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... moments musing, and muttering slowly to himself, "Tut! but a chance coincidence,—a haphazard allusion to a fact which he ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... coast district the Belgians had succeeded in flooding a vast area, which served for the time to separate the combatants for a considerable distance, obliging the Germans to resort to rafts, boats and other floating apparatus to carry on a somewhat haphazard offensive and resulting in nothing more than a change from gunfire slaughter to drowning. The immense inconvenience attendant to this mode of warfare decided the Germans to drain this area and they succeeded in doing this by ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... And such a crowd as they brought! In the exuberance of his joy Weaver Jimmie had bidden all and sundry between the two lakes. And besides, everyone in the Oa went to a MacDonald wedding, anyway. Invitations were always issued in a rather haphazard fashion, and if one did not get a direct call, it mattered little in this land of prodigal hospitality, for one always bestowed a compliment upon one's host ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... whereon Professor Hanky, with a well-directed blow, felled him to the ground. The two Professors, fearing that other poachers might come to his assistance, made off as nearly as they could guess in the direction of Sunch'ston. When they had gone a mile or two onward at haphazard, they sat down under a large tree, and waited till day began to break; they then resumed their journey, and before long struck a path which led them to a spot from which they could see the towers ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... if properly defined, have a correlative. I add this condition because, if that to which they are related is stated as haphazard and not accurately, the two are not found to be interdependent. Let me state what I mean more clearly. Even in the case of acknowledged correlatives, and where names exist for each, there will be no interdependence if one of the two is denoted, not by that name which expresses ...
— The Categories • Aristotle
... roused from his reverie, it was to discover that his haphazard course had taken him back toward the heart of Paris; and presently, weary with futile cruising and being in the neighbourhood of the Madeleine, he sought the cab-rank there, silenced his motor, and relapsed into morose ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... repeated observations and by knowledge current among the blacks. When the scared snake descends into its own well-defined well, very little disturbance and no discoloration of the water takes place. But when in desperation it disappears down a haphazard hole, a dense little cloud of sediment is created. By careful watching I discovered that the snake entered its home head first, but in any other hole the tail had precedence, and that the frantic wriggling as it bored its way down caused the obscuration. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the farm. But if Mr. Gwynne was no business man still less was he a farmer. Tied to his store by reason of his inability to afford a competent assistant, the farming operations were carried on in haphazard fashion by neighbours who were willing to liquidate their store debts with odd days' work at times most convenient to themselves, but not always most seasonable for the crops. Hence in good years, none too good with such haphazard farming, ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... that seem so full of life and are apparently the product of flashed thought are either the welling up of some subconscious ideas quickly reconstructed to fit the situation or they are a haphazard jumble either meaningless or conveying an unintended impression. They are generally in the humorous line and frequently make an impression that was not anticipated by ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... he will know to a foot or two how much water is beneath his keel. But as soon as he ventures up some strange creek or river, paradoxically speaking, "he is at sea." In other words, he would be journeying haphazard, if the greatest ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... had told the little they knew—noted the uncontrolled agitation, the wild eyes, the hysteric sobs, with which Narcissa Hanway was ushered into the contracted apartment where the inquest was in progress, had no correlative calmness of mind or heart. What haphazard accusation might not result from her fear, or her desire to shield another, or the mere undisciplined horror of the place and the fact! When one dreads the sheer possibilities, the extremes of terror are reached. More ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... character is built by long-continued habits of thought. If the mature edifice of character usually shows in an exaggerated form the peculiarities of the original predisposition, this merely indicates a probability that the slow erection of the edifice has proceeded at haphazard, and that reason has not presided over it. A child may be born with a tendency to bent shoulders. If nothing is done, if on the contrary he becomes a clerk and abhors gymnastics, his shoulders will develop an excessive roundness, entirely through habit. Whereas, if his will, guided by his reason, ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... that fashions are haphazard, and are dictated and guided by no fixed principles of action, and represent no great currents in politics or movements of the human mind. Women, who are exceedingly subtle in all their operations, feel that it is otherwise. They have a prescience of changes in the drift ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... friends not to sign their names to the essays they have written. The essays are in three blank envelopes, which now lie before me on the table." Here Sir John touched three envelopes with his hand. "I will proceed to read them aloud, taking them up haphazard, and having no idea myself who the writer of each essay is. I have selected as the subject of the test essay the great and wonderful subject of Heroism, for I feel that such a theme will give scope for the real mind, ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... the sea through a barrier of shingle. Two gigantic and flaming cliffs dwarf the little town to the proportions of a hamlet. In any other situation Harmouth might have preserved its elegant Regency air, but sprawling on the beach and scattered on the hillsides it has a haphazard appearance, as if it had been dropped there when those two huge arms of the upland stretched out and opened ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... tactics, no strategy, just men turned moles. I believe in time we should become sort of Cave-men; our eyes would have developed into sorts of periscopes, our feet would have become web-footed to help us to stand up on wet duck boards; there would be a new type of man. As it is, it is quite haphazard and pointless. Just somebody makes himself disagreeable when he has nothing better to do. It is so difficult to hurt anyone actually in trenches; I think a mortar is the only thing that can do so. With dozens of shells sent over in the last ten days or so (40 yesterday morning) there has not been ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... wanderer. He lived mostly on the Continent—Monte Carlo for choice. Anne's mother"—here the Princess paused, and then went on with an obvious effort—"I know nothing of Anne's mother, Mr. Ware. She died when Anne was a child. Mr. Denham brought up his daughter in a haphazard way." ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... their hair in trailing wet wisps and short uneven skirts dripping on the pavements, gaunt children in scant haphazard garb surged across the broad avenue or with shrill admonishments stood in isolated helpless patches amid the swift and shining procession ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... few instances of the treatment meted out to the unfortunate natives, taken at haphazard from the official reports. There are plenty more of the same nature if anybody ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... characteristic specimen, from those far depths, to be examined with a careful curiosity. Guided by these considerations, I have written the ensuing studies. I have attempted, through the medium of biography, to present some Victorian visions to the modern eye. They are, in one sense, haphazard visions— that is to say, my choice of subjects has been determined by no desire to construct a system or to prove a theory, but by simple motives of convenience and of art. It has been my purpose to illustrate rather than to explain. It would ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... is so intense that he has no desire to paint her seduction as greater than it was. She has got into his blood, so to speak, and each drop of it under the microscope would show her image. Take any sonnet at haphazard, and you will hear the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... ample time, they assured him, being only too glad to postpone the errand that must come later. They were eager for another tale, moreover, for they were beginning to realize that these were not mere haphazard narratives, but stories with some definite bearing upon the places and ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... was some gentleman who had arrived, as often happened in those hospitable and haphazard times, late and unexpectedly the night before, and who was now taking a little ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... haphazard recital, waving his cigarette now and then for emphasis, and conversing frequently over his shoulder while Rue Carew leaned on the piano and gravely watched his nimble fingers alternately punish and ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... was all right but when I came to practice it, I found I had not taken squirrels into consideration. These bushy-tailed rats dug up one complete bed which contained two bushels of nuts and reburied them in haphazard places around the farm. When the nuts started to sprout, they came up in the fields, in the gardens, and on the lawn—everywhere except where I had intended them to be. I later was grateful to those squirrels, though, because, ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... petticoat, and little else, was young Beryl, superintending her aunt's feverish struggles with paint and powder-jars, frocks, petties, silk stockings, socks, and wraps, snatching these articles from a voluminous wardrobe and tossing them, haphazard, into a monumental dressing-basket, already half-full with two ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... departments of the Government. With the changes in the monetary system made from time to time and with the creation of national banks, it was thought necessary to organize new bureaus and divisions which were added in a somewhat haphazard way and resulted in a duplication of duties which might well now be ended. This lack of system and economic coordination has attracted the attention of the head of that Department who has been giving his time for the last two years, with the aid of experts and by consulting ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... in his own sight and that of his readers, the profoundly important crisis in the midst of which we are living. The moral and social dissolution in progress about us, and the enormous peril of sailing blindfold and haphazard, without rudder or compass or chart, have always been fully visible to him, and it is no fault of his if they have not become equally plain to his contemporaries. The policy of drifting has had no countenance from ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... prosper, likewise according to the habit of all healthy things well taken care of. In a world where nothing happens by chance, mischance, to be serious, must have some grave fault as its hidden cause. We mortals, who love to live at haphazard and to blame God or destiny or "bad luck" for our calamities, hate to take this modern and scientific view of the world and life. But, whether we like it or not, it is the truth—and, as we can't get round it, why not accept it cheerfully and, so appear ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... clearness of vision she saw what lay before her—the hurried preparations, the long tedious voyage on a steamer chosen at haphazard, the arrival in the deadly July heat, and the relapse into all the insufferable daily fag of nursery and kitchen—she saw ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... girl, and his sympathies quickened by her appearance; for she was but about sixteen years of age, and uncommonly beautiful in form and feature. The only difficulty with the captain was, that he knew nothing of her malady, and that his medical science was of a most haphazard kind. After considering and cogitating for some time, as a man is apt to do when in a maze of vague ideas, he made a desperate dash at a remedy. By his directions, the girl was placed in a sort of rude vapor bath, much used by ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... gray-gabled affair, of colonial pattern, a large yard before it and a larger one behind, the tumble-down shed in which General Jackson had been tethered, a large barn, also rather tumble-down, with henhouses and corncribs beside it and attached to it in haphazard fashion. In the front yard were overgrown clusters of lilac and rose bushes and, behind the barn, was the stubble of a departed garden. Thankful looked at ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the steps and into the kitchen, picked up a basket, filled it haphazard with vegetables and threw a cloth over the top. Then he made his way to the front door, peered out for a moment, swung through it on to the step, and, turning round, commenced to belabour it with his fist. ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... been keeping house in a haphazard way, with no responsibility attached to any one but Julie and me. Now, each day there must be some sort of regulations and punishments, if duties are neglected. The fire yesterday showed me that that system ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... tragic series of circumstances, at the most critical moment of the contest, Lupin was turning his back on the battlefield and going away, at haphazard, to seek, he knew not where, and beat, he knew not how, the most formidable and elusive enemy that ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... he said. "One doesn't meet a new face haphazard in Kohat, and ... you are wonderfully like your brother. I am Major Wyndham. You may have ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... winds, and wears their colours. There is a heavenly game, on south-west wind days, when the clouds are bowled by a breeze from behind the evening. They are round and brilliant, and come leaping up from the horizon for hours. This is a frolic and haphazard sky. ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... There must be frequent drills in manning the boats; the fire hose must be tested to see that it works and is in proper condition; and in thick weather the foghorns must be sounded at regular intervals. There is no such thing now as going to sea in haphazard fashion and trusting to luck. Everything that can be done for the safety of those who travel the ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... man with the knife. He did not raise his hand and strike a sudden, haphazard blow. Instead he placed the point carefully, though lightly, above the victim's heart, and then, suddenly, bore his weight upon ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... haphazard selection from a description of a young girl entitled as such to every one's kindness, courtesy and respect. In it occurs this sentence: "The college girl is grammatical in speech, but she has the jolliest, chummiest jargon of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... could not understand, and after displaying it for some few minutes hauled it down and hoisted another. We thought it would never do to display a total ignorance of the signals; Ryan therefore ordered the signal-bag to be produced, and we strung some flags together haphazard, and hoisted them. This signal the schooner acknowledged, tacking at the same time and standing toward us once more; but we were far too busy to wait for her, for although she had all the looks of a slaver, we knew, from ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... empty-handed away. In these latter days the Prince is not so open-handed as formerly, neither does he make so free with his presence, but still it is no difficult thing for any of his subjects to obtain an audience. He will stop a man at haphazard on the road and examine his weapons, and woe betide him if his revolver is carried empty. Every chamber but one must ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... supposing in a Roman at the close of the first or the commencement of the second century of our aera a geographical knowledge more minute than that of the President of the Royal Geographical Society, unless at the haphazard mention of any particular village in the newly annexed Fiji Islands, Sir Henry Rawlinson could enter into a correct account of its chief characteristic. But if we are to go to the extreme length of supposing that Tacitus had heard of London, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... measure of the object at which he aims often shoots widest of the mark. The consequence of this is that all are running pell-mell, all toiling in the dark, all thinking crookedly, all acting child's-play, all judging at random, and with a haphazard blow of a foolish resolution bringing upon themselves a bitter repentance; as was the case with the King of Shady-Grove; and you shall hear how it fared with him if you summon me within the circle of modesty with the bell of courtesy, and give me a ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... American army—or rather armies—was one of dismay. The result was confusion. In fact, no study of the battle can fail to impress the examiner with the belief that outside the redoubt the whole conduct of the Americans was haphazard. Except for Stark's regiment, which itself came on in detachments, the reinforcements dribbled to the field in companies, platoons, or squads. They placed themselves where the hasty judgment of Putnam directed them, or if he was absent to beat ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... a climatic advantage diffused over the whole area of the country, is eminently a matter for public enterprise. Are we to be denied the hope that fir, and spruce, and Austrian pine may conceivably be lifted out of the plane of Party politics? Further, to take instances at haphazard, the State, whatever else its economic functions may be, will be one of the largest purchasers of commodities in the country. It is thinkable that the Irish State may give its civil servants Irish-made paper to write on in their ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... saying that a motor tour should be planned in advance as carefully as possible. If one starts out in a haphazard way, it takes him a long time to find his bearings, and much valuable time is lost. Before crossing the water, it would be well to become posted as thoroughly as possible on what one desires to see and to gain a general idea of the road from the maps. Another valuable adjunct ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... Chance — N. chance, indetermination, accident, fortune, hazard, hap, haphazard, chance medley, random, luck, raccroc^, casualty, contingence, adventure, hit; fate &c (necessity) 601; equal chance; lottery; tombola^; toss up &c 621; turn of the table, turn of the cards; hazard of the die, chapter of accidents, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the occupations named are entirely normal to all well-ordered states, descendants of persons in those occupations tend to become "subnormal"—so runs the cant of it—something handicapped by that haphazard bullet of a lifetime since, fired to advance the glorious cause ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... a tidy sum saved out of the housekeeping money. She was naturally thrifty, and Orville had never been niggardly. Her meals when Orville was on the road had been those sketchy, haphazard affairs with which women content themselves when their household is manless. At noon she went into the dining car and ordered a flaunting little repast of chicken salad and asparagus and Neapolitan ice cream. The men in the dining car eyed her speculatively and with appreciation. Then ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... last we dropped anchor half a mile outside the entrance of Little Cove our deck became active. I went off first with the supplies to choose a spot where they should be stored, although in such a black night this might have been left haphazard to the men. But one never believes, on occasions so momentous as pitching camp, that others know a jot about it but oneself—to this there are practically ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... ago the head of an industry now in the million-a-month class sat listening to his "star'' salesman. The latter, in the first enthusiasm of discovery and creation, was telling how he had developed the company's haphazard selling talk and had taken order after order with a standard approach, demonstration, and summary of closing arguments. To prove the effectiveness of "the one best way,'' he challenged his employer to act as a customer, staged the little drama he had arranged, secured admissions of savings his machine ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... experimental advance of a few yards in any given direction yielding a precisely similar impression. The final conclusion arrived at was that, having once got out of the proper track, they had not been following a path at all, but simply making their way at haphazard between ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... who had a sense of humour, and was in some sort a philosopher, the haphazard way life settled things seldom failed to seem amusing. But when he walked away from Leila's he was pensive. She was a good sort, a pretty creature, a sportswoman, an enchantress; but—she was decidedly mature. And here he was—involved in helping her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... vital. Apparently it is a transient phase of activity in matter, which, unlike other chemical and physical activities, has its beginning and its ending, and out of which have arisen all the myriad forms of terrestrial life. The merely material forces, blind and haphazard from the first, did not arise in matter; they are inseparable from it; they are as eternal as matter itself; but the activities called vital arose in time and place, and must eventually disappear as they ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... temperament of the Polish people, he says, is not rational but fantastically heroic. When I recall the personalities of the various Poles I have known (and I have known a great many), I cannot conceive of a phrase more exquisitely descriptive. It makes all your haphazard knowledge about Poland significant and valuable by supplying you with a key to its interpretation. It is this faculty Dr. Brandes has displayed in an eminent degree in his many biographical and critical essays which have appeared in German and ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... gets nearest to sense; for wars are made, or at any rate accepted by, governments; and in a democratic country the government of the day represents the nation, or the nation is to blame. But believe me, my friends, God does not punish in this haphazard way. He punishes scientifically; or rather he allows men to punish themselves, by reaping the evil from the cause they have planted or neglected to remove: and the harvest comes true to ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... prevented from penetrating into the interior. Raising the hatch he descended, and found, as he expected, that the place was well packed with the usual stores supplied to such a ship when bound upon a long voyage. He opened a few of the cases at haphazard and extracted from one a bottle of port wine, and from another a tin of preserved soup; he also found several casks of ship's bread, from one of which he filled his pockets. With this booty he returned to the deck and deposited it on the carpenter's tool-chest. ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... mason's like a broken tooth or a foot out of joint," observed the Scot when he saw some haphazard masonry he was to replace with proper stonework. "That wall's a bit ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... haphazard to the steep bank of the Tyne, and spreads away up and beyond it, reaching out towards Wallsend on the river shore and Tynemouth along by the sea, the older parts by the river looking black and grimy to the last degree; but there is a silver lining to this very black cloud—not ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... summoning all my resolution, I scrambled weakly to my feet and endeavoured to follow, but after some while, wondered to see it so dark and found I was among trees that closed about me ever denser. Yet I struggled on, pushing my way haphazard through the undergrowth, being yet much shaken by my fall, until I came out into a narrow way lit by the moon; but scarcely was I here than I paused to lean against a tree, overcome by a sick faintness. And thus leaned I some while to recover my strength, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... pleasant for Patsey, as it united the privacy of a separate abode with the cheerfulness of the family home. She had her own servant, whose excellent cooking and, above all, whose scrupulous cleanliness and tidiness, astonished her after the rough meals and haphazard arrangements ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... talk. All was done for them quite gratuitously on his part, and no laugh was merrier than his. Even the chore boy came in for a share of the Ballards' kindly help, sitting at Mary Ballard's side in the long winter evenings, and conning lessons to patch up an education snatched haphazard ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... proper names tend to be phonetic and haphazard. Eg Pensanz, Pensans, Pensants, Pensance, and Penzance are all ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... now beyond the line of haphazard shacks and adobe buildings that bordered the one street, into the jungle of mesquite and cactus growing in the dry waste of sand that almost surrounded the ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... another, during which the couples were arranged in a sort of haphazard way; the ladies and gentlemen drawing up in two long opposite lines, each then to take his vis-a- vis. But where a lady was in great demand, the gentleman not strictly opposite would sometimes ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... begun in 1903, which was intended to comprise all the best traditional ballads of England and Scotland. The scheme of classification by subject-matter, arbitrary and haphazard as it may seem to be at one point or another, has, I think, proved more satisfactory than could have been anticipated; and in the end I have omitted no ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... his ordinary prose accent, "gave me my first suggestion of a cross and well at Pilgrim Station, aided, perhaps, by the name itself, so singularly appropriate; not at all consistent, Mr. Thane tells me, with the usual haphazard nomenclature of this region. However, this is the old Oregon emigrant trail, and in the early forties men of education and Christian sentiment were pioneers on this road. But now that I see the place and the country ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... went and listened, mixing with the crowd, haphazard. His preoccupation was not there. In reality, he thought only of Adrienne. How the poor woman ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... on being questioned, such a knowledge of the principles on which their work was based as would prove their superior wisdom. But to his astonishment he found one after another of these men wanting in any apprehension of principles at all. They seemed to work by a kind of haphazard or 'rule of thumb,' and indeed felt annoyed that anything more should be expected of them. From which at the last Socrates came to the conclusion that perhaps the oracle was right in this sense at least, that, if he himself ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... and noting all suspicious stains—mud stains, blood stains, the print of a foot, the smear of a hand and, of course, describing carefully the appearance of a victim's body, the wounds, the position, the expression of the face, any tearing or disorder of the garments. Many times these quick, haphazard jottings, made in the precious moments immediately following a crime, had proved of incalculable value ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... the end when the letter was taken from him. Indeed to inclose such a note in a dispatch sure to be opened en famille was one of Griffith's haphazard proceedings, which arose from the present being always much more to him than the absent. Clarence was much shocked at hearing these last sentences, and exclaimed, 'He meant it in confidence, papa; I implore you to treat ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of my way; wherefore, to put an end to these futile ramblings, I set my face westward, hoping to strike the highroad somewhere between Tonbridge and Sevenoaks; determined rather to run the extra chance of capture than follow haphazard ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... first page of this volume, Machiavelli's observation that mankind at large judges those who give advice in affairs of state not by the wisdom of their counsels but by the results. He agrees that this method is not rational, looking to the haphazard course of human affairs, but he admits that the multitude can judge by no other standard; and he appeals to historians for an impartial revision of the popular verdict, founded on careful examination of the real ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... certainly much better to have the textbook before one than to teach the lesson after a disconnected and haphazard fashion from lack of familiarity with its points. An excellent substitute for the text, however, is an outline, or plan of the lesson embodying the main points, illustrations, and applications to be made. Such an outline will save the teacher from wandering too far afield in the discussions, ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... of a sincere, a really impassioned lover of anything, says, in his convinced Lacedaemonian way, that a genuine art of speech (tou legein etumos techne) unless one be in contact with truth, there neither is nor can be. We are reminded of that difference between genuine memory, and mere haphazard recollection, noted by Plato in the story he tells so well of the invention of writing in ancient Egypt.— It might be doubted, he thinks, whether genuine memory was encouraged by that invention. The note on the margin by the inattentive ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... "You have described exactly an industrial situation which seems to me to offer a solution of the whole vexed question of master and man, and to be a seed-sowing which is bound to be followed by an abundant and most humanizing harvest. Ever since I began to study, even in a haphazard way, the social system under which we sweat and groan, I've wanted in on a job like yours. I still want in. Will you take me as a silent partner, Raymer? I'm not making it a condition, mind you: come here any time after ten o'clock to-morrow, ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... would have added itself to the history of the world; a great event, a great step forward, would have definitely taken place. He would have been received at Ventirose as a friend. He would be no longer a mere nodding acquaintance, owing even that meagre relationship to the haphazard of propinquity. The ice-broken, if you will, but still present in abundance—would have been gently thawed away. One era had passed; but then a ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... equipment was better than he knew. In a disorderly haphazard world hatred is as effective an impulse to drive men forward to success as love and high hope. It is a world-old impulse sleeping in the heart of man since the day of Cain. In a way it rings true and strong above ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... several islands, in its own lagoons. The Austrians were developing it, in a haphazard way, as a watering-place before the war, and there are several large hotels and the beginnings of a Sea Front. The canals are filled with fishing boats with brown sails, which seldom put to sea ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... it would be idle for us to attempt the great task before us relying merely on ourselves. In such great crises it is necessary to call upon a Higher Power for strength and succor. This is no mere brawl, no haphazard scuffle: it is the battle-ground—if I were jocosely minded I might say it is the bottle-ground—of a great principle. If, gentlemen, I wished to harrow your souls, I would ask you to hark back in memory to the fine old ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... together is the person of the travelling promoter, Chichikov, whose visits to various communities give the author the opportunity he desired. After one has grasped the plan of the book, the purpose of Chichikov's mission, which one can do in two minutes, one may read the chapters in any haphazard order. Fortunately they are all interesting in their ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... written in your father's handwriting but in one that I think I know. Well, of course it can be explained; your father may have forgotten to date his signature, and someone else may have dated it haphazard before they knew of his death. There is no harm in that. It all depends on the signature of the name; and that is genuine, I suppose, Mrs. Helmer? It was your father himself who ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... him, "played bowls when the Armada sailed. Your Cabinet Ministers will be playing golf or tennis. Oh, what a careless country you are!—a careless, haphazard, blind, pig-headed nation to watch over the destinies of such an Empire! I'm so tired of politics, dear. I am so tired of all the big things that concern other people. They press upon one. Now it is finished. ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and left it to the Conservative party, to which all religionists belong precisely in proportion to the orthodoxy of their faith. Freethought goes to the root. It reaches the intellect and the conscience, and does not merely work at haphazard on the surface of our material interests and party struggles. It aims at the destruction of all tyranny and injustice by the sure methods of investigation and discussion, and the free play of mind on every subject. It loves Truth and Freedom. It ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... characters should be being modelled by us on a definite plan, and into a harmonious whole. I wonder how many of us in this chapel this morning have ever spent a quiet hour in trying to set clearly before ourselves what we want to make of ourselves, and how we mean to go about it. Most of us live by haphazard very largely, even in regard to outward things, and still more entirely in regard to our characters. Most of us have not consciously before us, as you put a pattern-line before a child learning to write, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a member of either House to stand a new election if he accepted Ministerial office. Every elected man was eligible for office. South Australia had been founded by doctrinaires, and occasionally a cheap sneer had been levelled at it on that account; but, to my mind, that was better than the haphazard way in which other colonies grew. When I visited Sir Rowland Hill he was recognised as the great post office reformer. To me he was also one of the founders of our province, and the first pioneer of quota representation. When I met ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... epigram and aphorism. Not that he despises the emotions: those who know him thoroughly will recognize the absurdity of such a charge. Only he insists that they be regulated and used aright by the master, brain. The mishaps of his women come usually from the haphazard abeyance of feeling or from an unthinking bowing down to the arbitrary dictations of society. This insistence upon the application of reason (the reasoning process dictated by an age of science) to social situations, has led this writer to advise the setting aside of the marriage bond ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... that these English were on another start out of the dust in vigorous commercial enterprise, under leadership of one of their chance masterly minds-merchant, in this instance: and be debated within, whether Genius, occasionally developed in a surprising superior manner by these haphazard English, may not sometimes wrest the prize from Method; albeit we count for the long run, that Method has assurance of success, however late in the race ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of knowledge in proportion to that preparation. We require intellectual eyes to know withal, as bodily eyes for sight. We need both objects and organs intellectual; we cannot gain them without setting about it; we cannot gain them in our sleep, or by haphazard. The best telescope does not dispense with eyes; the printing press or the lecture room will assist us greatly, but we must be true to ourselves, we must be parties in the work. A university is, according to the usual designation, an alma mater, knowing ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... would deal with affairs through a rather haphazard and shifting assortment of stereotypes, if a comparatively few men in each generation were not constantly engaged in arranging, standardizing, and improving them into logical systems, known as the Laws of ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... form an accurate idea of William's loquacity and self-conceit should read a few passages, selected haphazard from "The Voice of the Lord upon the waters," a sermon by His Majesty, the Emperor-King, for use in polar voyages. There they will find a strange hotch-potch of all sorts of ideas, religious, political and heathen, all half digested. But the dominant note in the sermons preached by William ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... and pressure from various governmental bodies to get off the dime and get going—rescue those people, or, cynically, at least make a show of action to quell the flood of telegrams. E.H.Q. resisted the pressures in favor of doing a workmanlike job in preparation for a genuine rescue instead of a haphazard show, but was mindful ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... by no means a haphazard question. He knew what the lad had been through that night. He knew, too, the boy's peculiar nervous ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... and finding shelter in trees and caves; ignorant of the simplest arts, save to chip a stone missile, and perhaps to produce fire; strong in his needs of life and vague sense of right to it and to what he could get, but slowly impelled by common perils and passions to form ties, loose and haphazard at the outset, with his kind, the power of combination with them depending on ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... Introductions—as, when meeting others, or at outdoor sports—need not be formal, but can be done haphazard. This does not imply further acquaintance ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... starts for his train to the City It is put on exactly upright, And who would not view it with pity Return, mud-bespattered, at night? When early, so polished and glowing, Jammed on at haphazard when late; It forms a barometer, showing His ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... the horrible procession filed in. The bodies were heaped together in a wagon, the heads in a sack. I chose some bodies and heads in a haphazard fashion, while the remainder were thrown into ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... prepared to seize, repair, reconstruct, work, and fight such an important element in the new social machinery as a railway system. Such a business, in the next European war, will be hastily entrusted to some haphazard incapables drafted from one or other of the two prehistoric arms.... I do not see how this condition of affairs can be anything but transitory. There may be several wars between European powers, prepared and organized to accept the old conventions, bloody, vast, distressful ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... difficult. To begin with, I worked to repeat the phenomena I had seen, getting some haphazard results from the start. My purpose throughout was to exchange intelligent comment with the individual I had beheld on that snow-stone within the Spot; and in the end ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... duties in a very haphazard way. She had no particular time for doing anything, and no particular place for keeping anything. And alas! it is to be regretted her mistress was the last woman in the world to train her in the way she ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... servitors in nominal charge of an old lady who is more or less curtained and hid away in a bullock-cart. Such men are staid and discreet, and when a European or a high-caste native is near will net their charge with most elaborate precautions; but in the ordinary haphazard chances of pilgrimage the precautions are not taken. The old lady is, after all, intensely human, and lives ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... stamp the purposed invasion with a certain haphazard character at the outset, which boded no good ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... what-not, which accomplish but little and may result in positive injury. To pile up complications and intricacies having no practical educational value is utterly useless. It indicates the lack of a true conception of the school situation. Such haphazard methods will not teach alone any more than a saw will saw alone. Behind it all must be the simple, great teacher, and for him all these things, beyond a reasonable extent, are hindrances ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... morning that the Route had come for the —-th Dragoons, two days only being the interval before departure; the hurried consultation as to what should be done, the second time of asking being past but not the third; and the decision that it would be unwise to solemnize matrimony in such haphazard circumstances, even if it were possible, which ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... phenomena, causes, laws, principles, literature, etc. There is a tendency to regard knowledge as accurate and systematic, and to a certain degree complete. Information is knowledge of fact, real or supposed, derived from persons, books, or observation, and is regarded as casual and haphazard. We say of a studious man that he has a great store of knowledge, or of an intelligent man of the world, that he has a fund of varied information. Lore is used only in poetic or elevated style, for accumulated knowledge, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... to this time the resistance of the colonists had been carried on in a haphazard sort of way. Now Committees of Correspondence began to be appointed. These committees were of two kinds. First there were town Committees of Correspondence. These were invented by Samuel Adams and were first appointed in Massachusetts. But more important were the colonial Committees ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... structure, too, "The Fortunate Foundlings" is an improvement over the haphazard plots of Mrs. Haywood's early romances, though the double-barreled story necessitated by twin hero and heroine could hardly be told without awkward interruptions in the sequence of one part of the narrative in order to forward the other. But the author doubtless felt ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... practice, but to drill roughly is a thing very easy to learn indeed. We were not always right about our intervals, our lines were somewhat irregular, and our more difficult movements were executed at times in rather a haphazard way; but the essential commands and the essential movements we learned without any difficulty, and the men performed them with great dash. When we put them on horseback, there was, of course, trouble with the horses; ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... church is by the north doorway, but the more convenient trysting-place is the west end of the nave. Our purpose in the following pages is to picture a morning spent in the Abbey with a party of tourists, who have been collected in a somewhat haphazard manner before a start is made, and are now assembled beneath the statue of the younger Pitt. Although the majority are probably of British and American nationality with a sprinkling no doubt of our colonial brothers, in the minority will very likely be found more than one stranger from the ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... Modock—had been what is known in railroad-construction circles as a gypo man, or shanty man. A gypo man is an impecunious construction contractor whose light, haphazard outfit of teams and tools makes it necessary for him to subcontract in the lightest dirt work from a slightly better equipped subcontractor, who in turn has taken a subcontract from the main contractors ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... follows this plan with their most efficient selling organization: they require their salesmen to memorize verbatim a selling talk. They maintain that there is one best way of putting their selling arguments, and they insist that each salesman use this ideal way rather than employ any haphazard phrases that may come into his ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... general advice on this matter may not be out of place here. The essential value of antiquities, apart from their purely artistic interest, lies in the circumstances in which they are found. The inexperienced traveller is apt to pick up a number of objects haphazard, without accurately noting their find-spots, and even, getting tired of them, as a child of flowers that he has picked, to discard them a mile or two away. If the first act is a blunder, the second is a crime; it is better to leave them lying in place. For ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... mediocre understanding are quite sensible enough to select the right implements to carry on any work that they have undertaken. A woman about to sew a fine piece of muslin does not dash haphazard into her work-basket and pick out any needle which comes first, and any thread, coarse or fine, which is handy. She would know very well that her work would be a sorry affair if she did so, and that, on the contrary, she must choose the exact fineness of both thread and needle to sew ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... anything that came to hand, with its houses squatted in haphazard, hasty fashion, and the country around bare and brown and bleak, San Francisco did not look attractive. But the bay was grand; and the hundreds of ships flying the flags of the United States, and England, and France and Spain and Mexico and Germany and Denmark and ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... very vivid in his mind. He saw himself again standing naked in the middle of a wide, bare room, while the recruiting sergeant measured and prodded him. And now he was a deserter. Was there any sense to it all? Had his life led in any particular direction, since he had been caught haphazard in the treadmill, or was it all chance? A toad hopping across a road in front of a ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... invariably appears where nowadays we should employ the dash; and, lastly, the dash itself becomes a point of all work, replacing indifferently commas, colons, semicolons or periods. Inadequate and sometimes haphazard as it is, however, Shelley's punctuation, so far as it goes, is of great value as an index to his metrical, or at times, it may be, to his rhetorical intention—for, in Shelley's hands, punctuation serves rather to mark the rhythmical pause and onflow of the verse, or to secure some declamatory ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Burgoyne, though sufficiently brave for anything, was quite incompetent for command. He had neither resources nor strategy. He knew neither what to do nor what he was doing. He neither knew when to advance nor when to retreat. It was all haphazard with him. Through his very stupidity an army was positively sacrificed. Lord Cornwallis, afterwards, easily defeated Gates. And in the campaign of 1780, Washington was himself in straits. His commissariat was wretchedly bad. For days the medical department of his army had neither sugar, coffee, tea, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... for a moment from the nebulae in the sky to the conclusions to which philosophers had been irresistibly led by a consideration of the features of the solar system. We had before us in the sun and planets obviously not a haphazard aggregation of bodies, but a system resting upon a multitude of relations pointing to a common physical cause. From these considerations Kant and Laplace formulated the nebular hypothesis, resting it on gravitation alone, for at that time the science of the conservation of energy ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... Entries are kept up for a few days, and then the work comes to an end. These volumes contain many scraps of interesting writing, however, which are worth preserving; some of them are herewith presented in haphazard fashion, with no attempt ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... character. She might learn in the morning, for instance, that William the Conqueror arrived 1066, but the information did not prevent her being as naughty as possible in the afternoon. One cannot help speculating on how much she lost or gained by the haphazard of her early training; but one thing is certain, had the development of her genius depended upon a careful acquisition of such knowledge as is to be had at school, it must have remained ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... moving toward their crisis for Larry and Ruth another drama was progressing more or less swiftly to its conclusion down in Vera Cruz. Alan Massey had found his cousin in a wretched, vermin haunted shack, nursed in haphazard fashion by a slovenly, ignorant half-breed woman under the ostensible professional care of a mercenary, incompetent, drunken Mexican doctor who cared little enough whether the dog of an American lived or died so long as he himself continued to get the generous ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... to boast of in the way of architecture, this nest of the Kings of the Air—a mere cart-load of sticks and bark and coarse grass, apparently tumbled at haphazard upon the narrow ledge. But in fact its foundations were so skilfully wedged into the crevices of the rock, its structure was so cunningly interwoven, that the fiercest winds which scourged that lofty seat were powerless against it. It was ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... telling it all was unpremeditated, incoherent, and discursive, and yet strangely effective. She described the contortions of her kaleidoscope as they came to mind haphazard, with an indifference, a precise objectivity that made the picture all the more real and universal, not the special story of the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... selection taken haphazard from the mass of fugitive literature which the early years of the Reformation brought forth. In spite of a certain rough but not unattractive directness of diction, a prolonged reading of them is very tedious, ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax |
