"Unreliable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ignorance of the phenomena that follow the last breath of a dying man, as well as of those preceding the first faint cry of a new-born child. Sceptics, however, might have shown a little more indulgence, for, as they are well aware, ordinary memory is even now so unreliable that a man has great difficulty in recalling the whole of the thoughts that have entered his brain during the last few minutes; he has forgotten the details of the various events of the week; the facts of the past year ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... threatened. I am not a party man. In my day, I have voted about evenly on both sides, for when I do vote, it is after consideration of the actual issues involved at the time. Both sides therefore rightly consider me unreliable, but, perhaps, both will listen when I point out that the independent vote is increasing, and that it is the only vote worth cultivating. The true Grit or Tory will vote with his party, right or wrong. No time, therefore, need be given to him. Let the wise candidate win the men who ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... acts, never to trust him any more. And we think that is 'worldly wisdom,' and 'the bitter fruit of earthly experience,' and 'sharpness,' and 'shrewdness,' and so forth. Jesus Christ, even whilst reminding Peter, by that 'more than these,' of his utterly hollow and unreliable boasting, shows Himself ready to accept once again the words of one whose unveracity He had proved. 'Charity hopeth all things, believeth all things,' and Jesus Christ is ready to trust us when we say, 'I love Thee,' even though often in the past our professed love ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... absurd. Therefore we shall have to take the arrival for granted. The only light which she herself ever shed upon the matter was a statement that she "had a feeling." And feelings, to Aunt Caroline, were the only reliable things in a strictly unreliable world. To follow a feeling across a continent was a trifle to a determined character such as hers. To insist upon Dr. Rogers following it, too, was a ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... proved that the routes across the isthmus of Central America are at best but a very uncertain and unreliable mode of communication. But even if this were not the case, they would at once be closed against us in the event of war with a naval power so much stronger than our own as to enable it to blockade the ports at either end of these routes. After all, therefore, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... 447; mystic, oracular; dazed. perplexing &c v.; enigmatic, paradoxical, apocryphal, problematical, hypothetical; experimental &c 463. unpredictable, unforeseeable (unknowable) 519. fallible, questionable, precarious, slippery, ticklish, debatable, disputable; unreliable, untrustworthy. contingent, contingent on, dependent on; subject to; dependent on circumstances; occasional; provisional. unauthentic, unauthenticated, unauthoritative; unascertained, unconfirmed; undemonstrated; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Roderick, who died in 1710, or perhaps to his eldest son Murdoch, who, in his marriage contract, dated 1708, two years before his father's death, is designated "of Kernsary." Mr Dixon has several references to these men, but being traditional they are more or less unreliable; and as yet no papers have been discovered which throw any light on the original ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... the utmost importance that a person in charge of a boiler should know what pressure the steam has reached. Every boiler is therefore fitted with one steam-gauge; many with two, lest one might be unreliable. There are two principal types of steam-gauge:—(1) The Bourdon; (2) the Schaeffer-Budenberg. The principle of the Bourdon is illustrated by Fig. 13, in which A is a piece of rubber tubing closed at one end, and at the other drawn over the nozzle of ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... any harm. Many other drugs are reputed to have great efficacy in causing the expulsion of the product of conception; unfortunately, they are too well known to require enumeration. They are usually unreliable, and are absolutely inefficient in doses small enough not to endanger the mother's life, provided the pregnancy is a ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... World Peace, watched by all Methodists with hope, faith and prayer," and the Blue Cross Society said, "Remember our dumb friends," and Guatemala (which was not there) telegraphed, "Do not believe a word uttered by the delegate from Nicaragua, who is highly unreliable." As for the Bolshevik refugees, they sent messages about the Russian delegation which were couched in language too unbalanced to be made public either in the Assembly Journal or in these pages, but they would be put in the Secretariat Library for people to read quietly by themselves. This ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... decide that perhaps this camp would prove as delightful as she expected that one to be, whither, in a few days, she must journey, and leave the dear home-folks, reluctantly, indeed. But then boys' fun always seemed like their idea of Fourth of July—just as noisy and just as unreliable. At the same time they always managed to put it off with a roar, and this roar had already set in for the ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... first, followed by Brigadier-General Wodehouse, and a panting staff. A fine view of the Ambasar Valley was displayed. It was of arid aspect. Villages in plenty could be seen, but no sign of water. This was serious, as information as to wells was unreliable, and it was desirable to see some tanks and streams, before allowing a column to plunge into the unknown dangers of the valley. After some consideration Sir Bindon Blood decided to modify the original plan and send only two battalions of the 2nd Brigade ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... and is even expected to make suggestions for revisions and improvements of the forms and methods. In view of such facts it seems doubtful that one could anywhere find more dependable school records of this sort. It was true of one of the schools that the records previous to 1909 proved to be unreliable. There is no inclination here to deny the existence of defects and limitations to these records, but the intimate acquaintance resulting from close inquiry, involving nearly every factor which the records contain, is convincing ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... "Freshmen are so unreliable," sagely commented Jane. "But I'm afraid outside influence spoiled the plot for the spook tragedy. I hope my things come today for the prom. I feel rather in need of a first class time under the beneficent influence of a real orchestra and prudently ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... am astonished, also, to hear it argued that if we make the Arcadians our allies, and carry out my advice, it will seem as though Athens were changing her policy, and were utterly unreliable. I believe that the exact reverse of this is the case, men of Athens, and I will tell you why. I suppose that no one in the world can deny that when this city saved the Spartans,[n] and before them the Thebans,[n] and finally the Euboeans,[n] and subsequently made them ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... even had these glimpses been afforded, they'd have been pretty unsatisfactory. There was only one real way of discovering what the creature was like; discovering for yourself, that is—and hearsay evidence is notoriously unreliable; that was to buy a hat ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the best accounts of the Brotherhood and of a Kempis himself, are the works of Rev. S. Kettlewell and Sir F. R. Cruise. The former, however, is quite unreliable as a translator, and draws untenable deductions from extracts whose purport he has misunderstood; but the latter is both accurate and interesting, being in fact the leading English authority on the subject which ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... alliance should be completed at once, and Cardinal Wolsey set out for Paris as the representative of England. While Wolsey was absent in France arranging the terms of the alliance, Anne Boleyn took occasion to warn Henry that his great minister was unreliable, that in his heart he was opposed to the separation, and that without his knowledge or consent negotiations should be opened directly with the Roman court. An agent was dispatched to Rome and succeeded in securing an interview with Clement VII., after the latter had made his escape from Rome to ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... "what the Press published was mostly fiction. Even the evidence given before the coroner was utterly unreliable. It was mainly given in order to mislead the jury and prevent public suspicion that there had been a sensational tragedy—I ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... devils; but the captured cows could be so thoroughly domesticated that they would eat out of their attendants' hands, and the buffaloes bred in a state of domestication exhibited exactly the same character as the ordinary domestic cattle. The bulls, especially when old, continued to be somewhat unreliable; but the cows and oxen, on the other hand, were as gentle and docile as any ruminant could be. They were never valued among us as milch kine—for, though their milk was rich, it was not great in quantity—but they were incomparable ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... the mission house is sacked, the husband escapes by a miracle and the poor young lady is torn away to be the prey of a vile slave-trader. Lastly, according to the quite unreliable evidence of some savage already in the shadow of death, she is seen in the charge of other unknown savages. On the strength of this the husband, playing the part of a mad botanist, hunts for her for ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... about which there is no doubt—that a panic seized the people and the courts, and made them as unreliable as in the days of the Salem witchcraft. But these striking exhibitions of the weakness of human nature under certain circumstances have been witnessed since the world was made, and probably will continue to the end of time, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... running between them would be very close. Hilda Browne and Charlotte Perry were last year's champions, and were steady players, though many thought that Charlotte had gone off a little in her serves. Betty Brierley was brilliant but unreliable, sometimes making more splendid scores than anybody in the school, and sometimes playing love games. Netta Goodwin had a special reputation for back work, in which she excelled, and this circumstance might very possibly cause her to be ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... care; John Sherman, Recollections of Forty Years in House, Senate and Cabinet (2 vols., 1895); Edward Stanwood, James G. Blaine (1905), is highly favorable to Blaine; W.M. Stewart, Reminiscences (1908), is interesting, partisan and unreliable. For a general estimate of the autobiographical material of the period, consult History Teachers' Magazine (later the Historical Outlook), "Recent American History Through the Actors' Eyes," ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... that Miss Temple Barholm has not allowed herself to be prejudiced by village gossip, which is invariably largely unreliable, will make her an excellent witness," Mr. Palford said to his partner, with a deliberation which held suggestive significance. Each man, in fact, had suddenly realized that her ignorance would leave her absolutely ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of mind or body, and the married life of this young couple was anything but happy. The country meanwhile continued in a state of unrest, and there were frequent revolutionary outbreaks. Isabella was no less unreliable than her mother had been, and her capricious manner of changing policy and changing advisers was productive of a state of lawlessness and disorder in all branches of the government which daily became more shameful. ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... this is the result of the purely agricultural occupation of the people. Commerce was in the hands of the Jews, and these could not teach us accuracy; the cultivator of the soil is unreliable because the soil is unreliable, he is unpunctual because nature has no punctuality. Working in the soil, they gradually take some of its characteristics, which enters into their moral being, and in the course of ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... expedition, it will be seen how difficult the work was, in that in every instance, save from Zamboanga, Mindanao, to Sulu, on the island of Sulu, we had to make a preliminary trip, sounding and taking observations, before the cable could be laid, the Spanish charts being worse than unreliable. Then, too, a government transport dragged our cable with her anchor at one place, a fierce tropical storm wrecked it at another, while careless Moro trench diggers bruised it with stones at a third, which meant many extra days ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... mysterious voices of the Unmentionable One making wondrous magic within the temple as Mungongo chanted, at Birnier's prompting, the god's instructions to his high priest and people. The form of the chant was not correct as Mungongo's memory was very unreliable, but as Birnier remarked to the portrait of Lucille, "I don't suppose Maestro Bakahenzie is such a stylist as he would have the public suppose." Afterwards, to Mungongo's delight, who was never tired of any manifestation of Moonspirit's magic, ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... Owl. 'But the sun is rather unreliable, after all. He has the Ecliptic to go round, and the whole of the Solar System to attend to, and one must make allowances for him. But, for purposes of strict chronology, watches are better, especially these watches! They wind themselves ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... as scientific facts, and they think that God's word is to be tested by the teachings of "science falsely so called."(919) The Creator and His works are beyond their comprehension; and because they cannot explain these by natural laws, Bible history is regarded as unreliable. Those who doubt the reliability of the records of the Old and New Testaments, too often go a step farther, and doubt the existence of God, and attribute infinite power to nature. Having let go their anchor, they are left to beat about ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... sex instruction in the home or in the school, there would be no hesitation about delegating it to the home; but since most homes neglect the discussion of sex matters, leaving the children to gain their knowledge of sex from unreliable sources on the streets, the choice lies between the perversion of sex as it is taught on the streets, and the science of sex as it should ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... through my teachers, that all the supernatural must be eliminated from the Bible as mythical and unreliable, and so I was robbed of my Christ, my God and my Bible. Misguided by rationalism, I thought it my conscientious duty to accept, step by step, the dictates of destructive criticism until the Bible was only inspired to me in religion as Kant in philosophy, Milton in ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... gospel power in our attempts to become children of God or to live as children of God. We get into confusion when we try to obtain some other and more direct power. We are led into a dependence upon our feelings, which are unreliable. ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... unreliable, tricky old man," exclaimed the skipper, hotly; "the idea of going and leaving a boy on our hands like that. I'm surprised at him. I'm ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... said, "is uncertain; perhaps tonight I shall find it absolutely unreliable. What I am getting at is this: if anything happens to me—death, to be accurate—the Gar is yours, the ketch and a sum of money. It is secured to you in this box, which you will deliver to my address in Boston. There is another provision that I'll ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... murmured, "the Press nowadays becomes more unreliable every day. It is apparent, my dear Von Hern, that this account of your death was, to say the ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said my friend, "by the Blue Books, that most of the reports sent to the Home Office regarding these establishments are unreliable, and calculated to deceive and mislead the public as well ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... exclaimed Alwyn, eagerly bending over the sacred book; then drawing back with a gesture of disappointment he added, "But you are reading from Esdras, the Apocrypha! an utterly unreliable source of information!" ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... authority, and to illustrate the fact that of the thousands of accounts, which we see in foreign and domestic newspapers, concerning the successful use of high explosives in shells, fully ninety per cent. are totally unreliable. In many cases they are in the nature of a prospectus from the inventors of explosives or methods of firing, who are aware of the fact that it is almost impossible to dispute any statements that they may choose to make regarding the power of their new ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... a century ago, George Steevens, the acutest, and, perhaps, the most accomplished, but certainly the most perverse and unreliable of Shakespeare's commentators and critics, wrote thus of Shakespeare's life: "All that is known, with any degree of certainty, concerning Shakespeare, is, that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon; married ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... such erroneous and unreliable work as this could not be regarded as evidence upon which truly scientific argument could be founded for the purpose of deciding such a contentious question; yet mainly upon this very slender and unreliable evidence meetings of ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... periods of antiquity, but it is easy to shew that the claim of the Hindus as the inventors, is supported by better evidence both inferential and positive than that of any other people, and unless we are to assume the Sanskrit accounts of it to be unreliable or spurious, or the translations of Dr. Hyde, Sir William Jones and Professor Duncan Forbes to be disingenuous and untrustworthy concoctions (as Linde the German writer seems to insinuate) we are justified in dismissing from our minds all reasonable ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... employed with a very important and illuminating addition, in which we read, 'His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.' That is the secret of a fixed heart—continuous faith rooted and grounded in Him. This fluttering, changeful, unreliable, emotional nature of mine will be made calm and steadfast by faith, and duties done in the faith of God will bind me to Him; and sorrows borne and joys accepted in the faith of God will be links in the chain that knits Him ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... on it in January 1681/2, and it was published on the following April 6. Lockyer, Dean of Peterborough, asserted to Joseph Spence, who includes the rumor in Anecdotes, that Settle was assisted by Clifford and Sprat and by "several best hands of those times";[9] but Spence is notoriously unreliable. In the lack of other evidence, then, it seems best to take the poem as wholly Settle's. It needs only to add a few words on its textual states. The First Edition, here reproduced, seems to exist in a single impression, and likewise ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... noncommittal outsider, who helps without argument and disapproves without comment. Evelyn had made a great success of her dressmaking, but such aid as she could give must be given her sister, for Marguerite's early and ill-considered marriage had come to the usual point when, with an unreliable husband, constantly arriving and badly managed babies, and bitter poverty and want, she found herself much in the position of her mother, twenty years before. May was still living in Oakland, widowed. Her two sons were at home and working, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... not grow, the natives got along as best they could on scanty common crops, and by raising a few sheep and hogs. As the war proceeded, it taught with more and more force the inherent wastefulness of slave labor in the South. It was inefficient, costly, and unreliable. ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... mention any moral debt you owe me for winning that money you needed. But what about the next time? If you needed that much lethal goods once, you'll probably need it again some day. Wouldn't it be better to have me on hand—old tried and true—than dreaming up some new and possibly unreliable scheme?" ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... five thousand (L300), so the rest belongs to the poor'? No, they're sitting there abusing the poor man while they drink up the surplus of his existence. The men abuse the workmen, and their wives the servant girls. Just go in among the tables and listen! The poor are bestial, unreliable, ungrateful in spite of everything that is done for them; they are themselves to blame for their misery. It gives a spice to the feast to some of them, others dull their uneasy conscience with it. And yet all they eat ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... for the conservation of peace. However: I cannot—as I told You in my first telegram—consider the action of Austria-Hungary as an "ignominious war". Austria-Hungary knows from experience that the promises of Servia as long as they are merely on paper are entirely unreliable. ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... evidence given under the influence of the passions arising out of the war can, of course, possess only a limited value. It is obvious from the proceedings concerning the constitution of the Senate Committee that much of the evidence was prejudiced and unreliable, probably because it was based solely on information given by Germans or former Germans, whose identities were kept strictly secret, and who told deliberate lies, either because, like Judas, they had received a ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... he said. "This is the second time in succession that Dalla and I have had to bolt away from here, but policemen are like doctors—always on call, and consequently unreliable guests. While you're feasting, think commiseratingly of Dalla and me; we'll probably be having a sandwich and a cup ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... destroyed by douching or contraceptives of any kind. Now if the physical conformation of the reproductive organs of the husband and the wife render this event possible or probable, then soluble suppositories and contraceptive douching are alike unreliable, by themselves or in combination. On the other hand, the mechanical method, that is, the use of a rubber protector, preferably the spiral-spring occlusive[G] "Dutch" pessary, by the woman may also fail, because the protector ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... there is in many cases a strong temptation to betray the interests of the employer. A private detective may, and usually does, become possessed of information even more valuable to the person who is being watched than to the person to whom he owes his allegiance. Unreliable rascals constantly sell out to the other side and play both ends against the middle. In this they resemble some of the famous diplomatic agents of history. And police detectives employed to run down criminals and protect society have been known ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... heard from you since the shout you gave when you set out from the station on your way home I guess you have not received some seven or eight letters from me, and hence your silence. The mails are so unreliable that they may all have been lost. If you don't get this you had better send to Washington and get them to look over the dead letter office for the others. I have nothing to tell you of any interest, except that we all nearly froze to death last night, thermometer away below ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... too unreliable," I cried. "She'd get bay rum, or something equally futile. It must ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... the following pages endeavoured to resist the temptation to weave a web of pleasant but unreliable fiction round actual occurrences. That which is here set forth has been derived from facts, and in almost every case from manuscript records. It aims at telling the story of an eventful and exciting period according to historical and not imaginative occurrence. There are extant ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... 1789. The more elaborate records of 1789 and following years show shipments of fish, whale oil, spermaceti candles, lumber, staves and heading, and other articles to the "Spanish West Indies," in which group Cuba was presumably included. The records of the time are somewhat unreliable. It was a custom for the small vessels engaged in that trade to take out clearance papers for the West Indies. The cargo might be distributed in a number of ports, and the return cargo might be similarly collected. For the year 1795, the records of the United States show total imports ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... alliance, and in his more exalted moods he meditated an Orthodox crusade against the Turk at the head of the northern Slavs. But he was no statesman, and his difficulties proved overwhelming. Instinct told him that his old ally the khan of the Crimea was unreliable, and that the tsar of Muscovy was his natural protector, yet he could not make up his mind to abandon the one or turn to the other. His attempt to carve a principality for his son out of Moldavia, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... be expected from its use. Sometimes the smoke of the battle, and the difficulty of distinguishing the columns, that look like liliputians, so as to know to which party they belong, will make the reports of the balloonists very unreliable. For example, a balloonist would have been greatly embarrassed in deciding, at the battle of Waterloo, whether it was Grouchy or Bluecher who was seen coming up by the Saint-Lambert road; but this uncertainty need not exist where the armies are not so much mixed. ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... ship, but could see no traces of her, and since it was inconceivable that the Nebraska could have sunk so quietly, her disappearance confirmed his fears. More than once he fancied he heard an answer to his cries for help— the rattle of rowlocks or the splash of oars—but his ears proved unreliable. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... The blood rushed to her head, she clenched her little fist, and was on the point of laying plans, but suddenly she had to laugh. "What a child I am!" she exclaimed. "Who can assure me that Crampas is right? Crampas is entertaining, because he is a gossip, but he is unreliable, a mere braggart, and cannot ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... Wieland, for having provided him with such an unreliable weapon, Wittich was about to announce himself conquered, when Hildebrand, realizing that he had not acted honorably, gave him back his own blade. Dietrich, to his surprise and dismay, found himself conquered in this second encounter, ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... preached, to God's great 'Yea!' as his answer. He says in effect, 'How could I, with such a word burning in my heart, move in a region of equivocation and double-dealing; or how could I, whose whole being is saturated with so firm and stable a Gospel, be unreliable and fickle? The message must make the messenger like itself. Communion with a faithful God must make faith-keeping men; the certainties of God's "Yea," and the certitudes of our "Amen," must influence our characters.' And so to suppose that a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... is done for the sake of the good, do we find true morality, that unconditioned, self-grounded worth. The man who does that which is in accordance with duty out of reflection on its advantages, and he who does it from immediate—always unreliable—inclination, acts legally; he alone acts morally who, without listening to advantage and inclination, takes up the law into his disposition, and does his duty because it is duty. The sole moral motive is the consciousness of duty, respect ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... that the homes and small farms were usually owned by the women. Expressing my admiration of this chivalrous recognition of women's right to the homestead, I was informed that there was no such sentiment. It was solely because the men were so lazy and unreliable that the perpetuity of the race was endangered. The fathers of the children were here to-day and away to-morrow. They spent their time in loafing, drinking, gambling and plotting "revolutions." The women, anchored by the love for their children, lived in the little huts on their small plantations, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... is more strongly borne upon the traveller in Andine and Cordillera-formed countries than that latitude forms but an unreliable guide to climate and temperature. Nearness to the Equator, with its accompanying torridity, is often counterbalanced by high elevations above sea-level, with consequent rarefied air and low temperature—a ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... under oath; to Judge Merlin's, because, he said, that ancient man was so well stricken with years as to be falling into his dotage; to old Katie's, because most decidedly he declared she was totally unreliable, being half monkey, half maniac, and whole knave; to Jim's, because he averred him to be wholly under the influence of others; to Sally's, for the same reason. It would be monstrous, he said, to ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... time, the sudden dispersion of that valorous army, by a single officer of the general government, who, unaided, captured their leader and bore off their banner, proved, as conclusively, that such philanthropists are not soldiers—that promiscuous crowds of undisciplined men are wholly unreliable in the hour ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... hat, same's that lady had on to your house once—I seen her." She threw the old nightcap over her hair, tied the ragged strings with an air, and soon, by dint of pulling and hauling, had the table in the very center of the apartment, the box securely under its most delicate and unreliable portion. ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... dear and holy thing he had ever known—yet it resolved to this: that he dared not stand before her with his heart beating as if he had run for miles and his chest suffocating with emotions—the very features of his face uncertain, his voice unreliable. . . . If a man entered the cage of a strange tiger, as little master of himself as this—it would be taking his life in his own silly hands. Skag couldn't get past this point, and he had a romantic adjustment in his mind ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... but when Hendry comes back with word of equestrian Indians—the Blackfeet on horseback—and treeless plains, the English set him down as a lying impostor. Indians on horseback! They had never seen Indians but in canoes and on snowshoes! Hendry was dismissed as unreliable, and no Englishman went up the Saskatchewan for another ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... into longing that made him feel sure that Claire was necessary to his life. Without her there could be no living for him. He wondered if she and Lawrence had found love. "If they have," he argued, "there can be but one explanation. Claire is unreliable, vicious, and dangerous." His aching desire to possess her did not lessen, however. It became deeper, in fact, with each succeeding thought of her as a wanton at heart, and he set his teeth over ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... younger it would have been necessary to appoint a Regent until such time as she came of age. For many years it had not been a matter of certainty that she would succeed to the throne, and the late King's unreliable temper had been the means of preventing the matter from being properly arranged as regards certain advantages which might have been given to the Princess during his life-time. In many ways, however, it was fortunate ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... might call a suspicious warmth. By that token you know the class. They belong to that large group of people who, without being abnormal, still have passed the line which divides the perfectly trustworthy from those unreliable persons who, with the best inclination to tell the truth, can render it only as it is ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... so long that he had started to write, "probably unreliable," under his notes; but, as his pencil began to move, her lips unclosed with, a low, breathless sound that became a ghost ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... engagement—if you are not I don't see how I can force you to do so. But you will do yourself no good if you leave us in the lurch—I'm afraid people who are arranging concerts will feel that you are a little unreliable." ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... But to have one's betrothed change her love to another, would be more tragic. When I think of Hubbard Squash, I believe that I should, not complain if I cannot eat dango or anything else for three days. Really there is nothing so unreliable a creature as man. As far as her face goes, she appears the least likely to commit so stony-hearted an act as this. But the beautiful person is cold-blooded and Koga-san who is swollen like a pumpkin soaked in water, is a gentleman to the core,—that's ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... sources information to the effect that the Emir of Harar, on the southern harbor of Abyssinia, contemplates at no distant date an attack on Zaila. Our garrison there is weak, and, as you probably know, the Somali country is treacherous and unreliable. These papers contain necessary ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... wire to pass around a pulley, the revolution of which actuated the pen of the recording drum. This should have been successful but for the difficulty of making good mechanical connection between the recorder and the pulley. Backlash caused an unreliable record, and this arrangement had to be abandoned. The motion of the wire was then made to actuate the recorder through a hinged lever, and this arrangement holds, but days and even weeks have been lost in grappling the difficulties of adjustment ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... life for which the first was made Learned the meaning of grief Letter on inadvertant theft on a visit to friends Life is a game of whist. Looks like a good deal of trouble for such a small result Loss of one whose memory is the only thing I worship Machine that is as unreliable as he is would have no market Man the irresponsible Machine Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired Massacre of Jews in Moscow Mental healing No general fondness for poetry; but many poems appealed to him Number of things ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... a pitcher's ability as a fielder in his position by the fielding averages of pitchers the basis was made equally as unreliable as the estimate of earned runs was, owing to the fact that the data of the fielding averages of a pitcher were made up from the figures of "assistance on strikes" as well as from legitimate fielding assistances. ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... a copy of the New York Herald is in town, which acknowledges Hooker's loss to be fully 40,000. There are rumors, also, that our army in Tennessee has gained a great victory. Rumors from the West have hitherto been so very unreliable, that I shall wait patiently for the confirmation of any reports ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... down the northern slope to a level plain. A towering white pagoda is observable in the distance ahead; thia the yameni-runner says is Kui-kiang. At a little way-side tea-house, I find Christmas numbers of the London Graphic pasted on the walls; yet with all this, so utterly unreliable has my information heretofore been, and so often have my hopes and expectations turned out disappointing, that I am almost afraid to believe the evidence of my own senses. The Graphic pictures are ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... unquestioned. But from the moment she appeared on the gangway until the double glass doors of the Gare Maritime closed behind her this apparently calm young woman did not breathe at all. She arrived, indeed, with lungs fairly collapsed and her heart entirely unreliable. ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... self-respecting Hickses, should have had the luck to meet this cultivated pair, who joined them in gentle ridicule of their own frivolous kinsfolk, and whose tastes were exactly those of the eccentric, unreliable and sometimes money-borrowing persons who had hitherto represented the higher ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... be understood that, the discussion is to be followed by resistance. Tyrants care nothing for discussions that are to end only in discussion. Discussions, which do not interfere with the enforcement of their laws, are but idle wind to them. Suffrage is equally powerless and unreliable. It can be exercised only periodically; and the tyranny must at least be borne until the time for suffrage comes. Be sides, when the suffrage is exercised, it gives no guaranty for the repeal of existing laws that are oppressive, and no security against the enactment ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... necessitated to accept this primary measure, upon the accuracy of which all subsequent astronomical measurers depend, merely upon hearsay and testimony, and subject to all those contingencies of error and prejudice, and mistakes of copyists, which, in your opinion, render the Bible so unreliable in matters of religion? ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... "Their prophecies are unreliable, notwithstanding coincidences," wrote George Garth. "Let them alone, Fred, I beg of you. You will regret ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... are not only welcomed by Socialist parties, but constitute their most dependable and indispensable elements. Indeed, the majority of the Socialists agree with Kautsky that the danger lies in the opposite direction, that an unreliable small capitalist element has been admitted that will make trouble until it leaves the movement, in other words, that Socialist friendship for these classes has gone to the point of risking the existence of their organization. Surely their presence ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... flourish among the vicious and the unreliable. Other evils may flourish among the idle, the indolent, the treacherous, the deceitful and the dishonest, but industry and economy and integrity and faithfulness and honor and even God-fearing piety ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... writings that helps to raise a doubt as to his capacity for work of the best class in fiction. Still, if it be true, as some of those who were his friends say, that this occasional work was seldom much studied, it becomes unreliable as an indicator of the writer's character. The same hand that in the famous Snob Papers so savagely, and in at least one case so intemperately, satirised types of English society, afterwards produced novels in which fidelity to the essential facts of ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... the way from Ontario to Norway House. On the beautiful Playgreen lake and other similar places, he enjoyed it amazingly; but when he started off on his missionary touring, the Indians, who are the best judges of these things urged him not to attempt in that beautiful, but unreliable boat, to run the wild rapids of the mighty Nelson or other great rivers. He, however, only laughed at their fears and protestations. A number of them set off together on a long missionary journey, one of the objects of which was, to assist in the building of a new church. For a time, the erection ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... we had failed during the past to read accurately the lessons as regards the fighting of the future, which modern science and invention should have taught us, so we had never foreseen how unstable and unreliable a country must be whose ruler and Government are absolutely despotic, and in no sense representative of the will of the people. Worse than this, the governing classes in Russia were saturated with disloyalty and intrigue in the most corrupt form. But for their ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... as we could in the failing moonlight—moons are of a painfully unreliable nature; but the growing dawn showed us the familiar shape, shrouded in some heavy cloth like canvas, and no slightest sign of any watchman near. We decided to make a quick dash as soon as the light was strong enough ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... receiving. No school ever wishes to have its ideals confused by a vulgar display of wealth or by loud or conspicuous behaviour. Yet many a school, with ideals all that they should be, is misjudged in public places because of some thoughtless or unreliable girls. This doesn't seem like fair-play or team-play, does it? The fineness of life ought to be felt and expressed in student behaviour. Yet ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... hopeless confusion as to certain important dates in Audubon's life. He was often careless and unreliable in his statements of matters of fact, which weakness during his lifetime often led to his being accused of falsehood. Thus he speaks of the "memorable battle of Valley Forge" and of two brothers ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... loomed imminent, because of a two weeks' "vacation" of Banneker's at the State Capitol. He had hunted some of the lawlessness out of the Police Department and bludgeoned some decent housing measures through the city councils. Politically he was deemed faithless and unreliable which meant that, as an independent, he had ruined some hopefully profitable combinations in both parties. Certain men, high up in politics and finance at the point where they overlap, took thoughtful heed of him. How could they make him useful? Or, at ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... most famous of whom was Banting, have advanced theories to reduce corpulency and to improve slenderness; but they have been uniformly unreliable, and the whole subject of stature-development presents an almost unexplored field for investigation. Recently, Leichtenstein, observing in a case of myxedema treated with the thyroid gland that the subcutaneous fat disappeared ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... easily are apt to talk too much, and at times imprudently, and those with vivid imagination are often unreliable in their statements. On the other hand the "man of silence" who never speaks except when he has something "worth while" to say, is apt to wear well among his intimates, but is not likely to add much to the gaiety of ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the relative times of the leaves of these trees appearing in the spring, and is supposed to be prophetic of the weather during the ensuing summer. I have, however, noticed for many years that the oak is invariably first, so that like some other prognostications, it seems to be unreliable. ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... shortness of that alley threw Stott back for two years. When he first emerged to try conclusions on the field, he found his length on the longer pitch utterly unreliable, and the effort necessary to throw the ball another six yards, at first upset his ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... did Russia decide to assail us? During the whole nineteenth century she has shown herself a very shifty and unreliable protectress of Servia. She made use of the smaller country when it suited her own aggressive purposes against others, and she dropped it whenever it served her ends. It was so at the time of the Turkish war of 1877 and of the Berlin Congress, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... assured us that, both in control and in weight carried per horse-power, the results obtained were better than those of any of our predecessors, yet we saw that the calculations upon which all flying machines had been based were unreliable, and that all were simply groping in the dark. Having set out with absolute faith in the existing scientific data, we were driven to doubt one thing after another, till finally, after two years of experiment, we cast it all aside, and decided ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... But the explanation came the next moment, when the chief, without removing his eyes from those of the white man, cautiously changed the knife to his left hand. His right arm was injured in some way, so that it was unreliable. He had shown this, first by dropping the weapon while attempting to use it, and he showed it again by shifting it to his left hand, thus placing himself at a ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... 706. (28) According to one story Orion, for his assault on Diana, was killed by the Scorpion, who received his reward by being made into a constellation. (29) A sort of venomous ant. (30) No other author gives any details of this march; and those given by Lucan are unreliable. The temple of Hammon is far from any possible line of route taken from the Lesser Syrtes to Leptis. Dean Merivale states that the inhospitable sands extended for seven days' journey, and ranks the march as one of the greatest exploits in Roman military history. Described ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... miles. The engineer in charge of the lighthouses of Canada says: "The expense for repairs, and the frequent stoppages to make these repairs during the four years they continued in use, made them [the trumpets] expensive and unreliable. The frequent stoppages during foggy weather made them sources of danger instead of aids to navigation. The sound of these trumpets has deteriorated during the last year or so." Gen. Duane, reporting as to his experiments in 1881, says: "The Daboll trumpet, operated by a caloric engine, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... to the political secret societies. Of course, with a large portion of the Secret Service fund at my disposal, I was able to buy expert assistance, and even to get information from anarchists themselves. This latter device, however, was always more or less unreliable. I have never yet met an anarchist I could believe on oath, and when one of them offered to sell exclusive information to the police, we rarely knew whether he was merely trying to get a few francs to keep himself from starving, or whether he was giving us ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... into it. She will strain much less this way than in quartering across a gale. (2) Nothing is to be gained by reversing into a following gale, and there is always risk of a turn-over. (3) The formulae for stun'sle brakes are uniformly unreliable, and will continue to be so as long as ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... 1880. It is therefore difficult to make comparisons, and one is compelled to depend largely upon the memory of the fishermen and the statements of the canners and dealers, which the lapse of time, etc., makes rather unreliable. The numerous petitions sent to the legislature asking for restrictive laws, while possibly exaggerated at times, indicate that there were fears of the exhaustion of the fishery for some years back. It is positively known, however, that certain grounds have been ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... was locked in the unreliable jail of Coldriver village, and a watch placed over him. Those who saw him marveled at his demeanor; Scattergood Baines marveled at it, for it was not the demeanor of a man—even of an innocent man—accused of a crime for which the penalty was death. Abner sat upon the hard bench ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... thirteen thousand dollars, and of which I have become a literary member." He has been reading Michelet's "History of France" which "gives him the essence of an old book which he had despaired of ever seeing, but which is the only authority extant, — save Froissart and a few others equally unreliable; it is the chronicle of the 'Continuator of Guillaume de Nangis'." With Olmsted's book of travels as a model, he planned a series of articles ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... suggestion of Henry H. Sibley, who furnished the stone. It will be remembered that I have referred to the visit of George Catlin, the artist, to Minnesota, in 1835, and that his report was unreliable. Among other things, he said that he was the first white man who had visited this quarry, and induced geologists to name the pipestone "Catlinite." Mr. Sibley, in his communication to the legislature presenting this slab, in answer to ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... told of two children whose mother had recently died. They were with their father in a town some distance from Dohnavur; but the source from which our information came was so unreliable that we hardly knew whether to believe it, and we prayed rather a tentative prayer: "If the children exist, save them." For three months we heard nothing; then a rumour drifted across to us that the elder of the two had died in a Temple house. The younger, six months old, was still with her ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... convinced that despite the old man's wonderful memory of details in the past, he was entirely irresponsible as to his accounts of the present, and he did not intend that the McVeigh family or any of their visitors should be the subject of his unreliable gossip. Pride of family was by no means restricted to the whites. Revolutionary as Pluto's sentiments were regarding slavery, his self esteem was enhanced by the fact that since he was a bondman it was, at ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... curious stories as to how Kidd's treasure was discovered, and also making statements of a very unreliable nature, setting forth that already several million dollars had been recovered, and that any man engaged in it would surely make a fortune for his heirs, no matter how numerous. The more unreasonable these statements were, the more readily did people ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... stoning Stephen, fretting Moses, crucifying Christ. Finding much that was admirable, and more that seemed ignoble, he gravely and reverently sought to possess himself of the subtle arcana of this marvellous book, rejecting as equally erroneous and unreliable the magnifying zeal of optimism and the gloomy jaundiced lenses of sneering pessimism,—thoroughly satisfied that it was a solemn duty, obligatory upon all, to study that complex paradoxical human nature, for the mastery of which Lucifer and Jesus had ceaselessly battled since the day when ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... no reliable accounts of slaves in this region—some traditions which I have investigated proved unreliable and illusory. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... account for the fact that the maps provided by the War Office at the outbreak of the South African war were pronounced by the Royal Commission on that war to have been, "with perhaps one exception, very incomplete and unreliable" (paragraph 261). ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... hand, into the ranks of his enemies, where he slew two of them, wounded several others, and was then hacked to pieces. The fleet then proceeded to Tripoli, which was taken almost without opposition, as it was defended by a mere handful of the Knights and some utterly unreliable Calabrian infantry, who had never before seen a shot fired: these men very soon mutinied and refused to fight any longer. Dragut became the autocrat of Tripoli, as his great predecessor Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa had been of Algiers: from hence, in the years that were to come before ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... earth to him beyond his mountain home—he must go to that state which recognized so generously the yearning for knowledge he must go to Massachusetts! But now that the hour had arrived he found his day-dreamings of the past were as vague and unreliable as guides as his idea of heaven, that state of mind which Marcia Lowe always insisted was here and now, or ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... coincidence. If they don't come true are you willing to acknowledge that all are unreliable? Or, if some prove true do you consider them all reliable? You can have either ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... wire has added the element of reliability to our soundings in this latter case. The note given out by the wire when the bottom is reached is perceptibly different when under strain, even if the dynamometer should give an unreliable indication. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... Franklin, in the passage from Black Rock. He was landed in a yawl, at the mouth of the river, near a bluff that stood where the Toledo Railroad Machine Shops have since been built, about seventy-five rods west of the present entrance to the harbor. In those days the river entrance was of a very unreliable character, being sometimes entirely blocked up with sand, so that people walked across. It was no uncommon thing for people to ride over, or jump the outlet with the help of ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... Blackwood, it was generally recognised as one of the best English renderings of any foreign author; and Jeffrey, in his absurd review of Goethe's great prose drama, speaks in high terms of the skill displayed by the translator. The virulent attack of De Quincey—a writer as unreliable as brilliant—in the London Magazine does not seem to have carried much weight even then, and has none now. The Wanderjahre, constituting the third volume of the English edition, first appeared as the last of four on German Romance—a series of admirably selected and executed translations from ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... tribes makes some mention of burial observances; but these notices are scattered far and wide on the sea of this special literature, and many of the accounts, unless supported by corroborative evidence, may be considered as entirely unreliable. To bring together and harmonize conflicting statements, and arrange collectively what is known of the subject, has been the writer's task, and an enormous mass of information has been acquired, the method ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... purring of my motor, my eyes busy always with the watch, the revolution indicator, the petrol lever, and the oil pump. No wonder aviators are said to be a fearless race. With so many things to think of there is no time to trouble about oneself. About this time I noted how unreliable is the compass when above a certain height from earth. At fifteen thousand feet mine was pointing east and a point south. The sun and the wind gave me my ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Knell! You're incorrigible. You're unreliable. Another break like that queers you with me. Did ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... M. Le President," said he, "that the Russians are in secret treaty with the English, and the Russo-French Alliance is all nonsense—the most unreliable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... the minority found that the testimony upon the point was "limited in amount, vague and indefinite in character and utterly unreliable, because of the disreputable character of the witnesses"—oddly overlooking the fact that one of these witnesses had been called for Apostle Smoot; that no attempt had been made to impeach the character of this witness; ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... count the stamens even when converted into pistils, it is not possible when groups of them are more or less intimately united into single bodies. This combination makes all enumeration difficult and inaccurate and often wholly unreliable. In such cases the observation is limited to a computation of the degree of the change, rather than to a strict numerical inquiry. Happily the responses to the experimental influences are so marked and distinct that even this method ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... his uncle Archias to care for him like a brother, and his own kind heart bade him stay with Myrtilus, and not leave him to the nursing of his very skilful but utterly unreliable body-servant, after the last night had proved to what severe attacks of his disease he was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... steady rubbing of nightly oil massage, so lately he had added the same treatment to her feet; if they were not less bony, if the skin were not soft and taking on a pinkish colour, Mickey felt that his eyes were unreliable. ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... fact that every parent should ponder seriously: Normal children are almost certain to get sexual information not later than the early adolescent years, and usually from unreliable and vulgar sources. It is, therefore, not a question whether children of school ages should be taught the important facts of sex, but whether parents and trained teachers rather than playmates and other unreliable persons should be the instructors. Which will ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... the manuscript of Il Pastor Fido, the first new opera which he produced, is dated, at the end, "Londres, ce 24 Octobre." The opera-house was now under the management of Owen MacSwiney, who seems to have been both incompetent and unreliable. Il Pastor Fido did not attract the public, and was withdrawn after six performances, but Handel soon had another opera ready to take its place. Teseo was finished on December 19, and brought out on January 10, 1713; it was a romantic-heroic opera, closely modelled on Rinaldo, with an ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... and Germany, it is generally thought, will be found at the head of the set and take the initiative. Preparations for a big fight continue in every direction." "Russia, if we can believe the tales from that unreliable country, is quietly making preparations on a tremendous scale to have her paw ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... precautionary. Half a dozen violins will represent quite a sum of money; and taxicabs are unreliable animals. A thousand against accidents. What time shall I call?" The proprietor's curiosity was stirred. Musical celebrities, as he had occasion to know, were always popping up in queer places. Some new star probably, whose violin had been ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... very odd, unreliable, and irregular in their actions and reactions. You can't count on them as you can on chemicals. I suppose that merely means that one doesn't know them so well. They are far harder to know; there is a queer element of muddle about them that baffles one. You never know when greediness—the main ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... day for a gang of six of them to get the place straightened up. Neither Conn nor Gomez, who was a roboticist himself, would trust any of the workers or the two supervisors; their experiences out of control had rendered them unreliable. They took out their power units and left them to be torn down and repaired later. Other robots were brought in to replace them. When they were through, the power-unit cartridge plant was ready ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... corps at Lyons when summoned by the empress-regent to take up the reins of government; but in the course of the unvaried succession of misfortunes which made up the history of the French arms during the month of August, the public statements of Palikao proved as unreliable as those of his predecessor. His favorite way of meeting inquiries was to say oracularly: "If Paris knew what I know, the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... is our feeblest musician. He has not yet succeeded in eliciting more than two notes and a half out of his instrument, and these he lets off in spasmodic puffs, governed by a curious notion of the proper places for them to fit into the general performance. The flutes are a little unsteady and unreliable; the clarionet always squeaks in pathetic parts; and the cornet imagines that loudness is the chief thing ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... died eight or nine years after marriage; mother survived him six years; girl left in care of old Mrs. Corwin—good old creature, but vague—very vague. Don't fancy the marriage was a very fortunate one; a little friction, more or less. Leithe was rather a wild, unreliable sort of man; Mrs. Leithe a woman not easily influenced—immensely charming, though, and all that, but a trifle narrow and set. Well, you know, it was this way: Leithe was an immensely wealthy man when she married him; lost his money, struggled along, good deal ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... "Why didn't you notice?" he snapped. "Good God, woman, do you only use your eyes to cry with? How can you wind a clock, time after time, and not know the maker's name? It proves my contention: the average witness is totally unreliable." ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and the expert, two new characters which he was studying attentively. The former was a tall, raw-boned individual, with a genial, good-natured manner, but a weak face; one who would willingly be a tool for any villain, but an unreliable tool. He would betray his best friend, and knowing nothing of honor himself, he did not believe in its existence, among men or women. To him, all men were rogues, all business simply gambling on a large scale, and his only care was to be on the ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... considerations we see how unreliable in pathological cases is the calculation of the amount of haemoglobin from the amount of iron. We have been particularly led to these observations by the work of Biernacki, since the procedure of inferring the amount of haemoglobin from the amount ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... partisans, farmers and business-men, who seemingly pursue their usual calling, but are in fact spies. They report all our movements and strength, while we can procure information only by circuitous and unreliable means. I inclose you the copy of an intercepted letter, which is but the type of others. Many men from every part of the State are now enrolled under Buckner—have gone to him—while ours have to be raised in neighborhoods, and cannot be called together ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... you stay here: patrol around, and use your paralyzers on anybody who even twitches a muscle." Ultrasonics were nice, effective, humane police weapons, but they were unreliable. The same dose that would keep one man out for an hour would paralyze another for no more than ten or fifteen minutes. "And be sure none of them ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... material for a biography bears some resemblance to interrogating witnesses in a Court of Law. There are good witnesses and bad: reliable and unreliable memories. I remember an old lady, a friend of my mother's, who remarked with candour after my mother had confided to her something of importance: "My dear, I must go and write that down immediately before my ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... politician, and therefore it was no wonder that so many of the well-organised military schemes in this unlucky war came to grief. But in the case at Stormberg there were other difficulties to contend with. The map of the ground was utterly unreliable. The configuration of the hills was incorrectly presented and the distances badly judged. The general knowledge of the direction was so imperfect that none was sufficiently well informed to put a check upon the movements ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... be told that our parallel does not hold good: if the Marconi apparatus failed seven times out of ten, we should hardly {211} think it worth while to provide our ships with so unreliable an instrument; yet who would say that even three out of ten prayers for stated objects met with fulfilment? The objection, however, is not unanswerable; indeed, the very comparison employed in stating it may ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... or conclusive proof that any one was a Witch because his spectre had been seen tormenting others. The logical conclusion, from the views of these later writers, was that spectral evidence, as it was called, bearing against an accused party, was wholly unreliable and must be thrown out, entirely, in ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... is unreliable. I believe as little in phrenology as in palm-reading. I have directed thousands of men in business. Personal experience has proved to me that the permanent structure of a particular human body is not an invariably true index to the characteristics ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... generally elementary but being expanded domestic: facilities generally inadequate and unreliable international: satellite earth station ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... thought of him? What did she think of him? Nothing perhaps. She had belonged to the "old guard." Many men had passed through her hands. He felt at that moment acute hostility to women. They were treacherous, unreliable, even the best of them. They had not the continuity which belonged to men. Even elderly women—he was thinking of women of the world—even they were not to be trusted. Life was warfare even when war was over. One had to fight always against the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... home pretty soon," he said when he could collect himself a little, "for Pere Rateau certainly has not cleaned house in the thorough fashion which I commanded, and of course I don't want the furniture to be covered with dust. Six o'clock. Suppose I dine, after a fashion, in some not too unreliable place." ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... and packing is also essential to establish a reputation on the market. A concern like the California Fruit Growers' Exchange cannot afford to spend half a million dollars a year in advertising unless it knows that its product will be as advertised, for advertising an unreliable product may secure temporary sales, but will hardly be a profitable investment, for the value of advertising an honest product is cumulative. To secure necessary uniformity of grading and packing it has been found necessary with almost all agricultural products to have the grading and packing ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... entirely to events that have occured[sic] within one's lifetime. There are few traditions that have any historical value, and even in these there is an element of the wonderful that makes them unreliable ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... it is to feel safe. And we see to it that they do not. Death waits for them at the street corner, on their travels, at their own doorsteps. They never know at what moment the bomb may not be thrown, or the pistol fired. It is sad that explosives are so unreliable. There are many difficulties. You would not believe the obstacles that we find placed in our path at every turning. And for those who are suspected there is Siberia, and the mines. But it is worth it. It is worth ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... must be provided with such fireproof doors as will prove reliable in time of need. Experience with iron doors of various forms of construction show that they have been utterly unreliable in resisting the heat of even a small fire. They will warp and buckle so as to open the passageway and allow the fire to pass through the doorway into ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... noted, but even tenths and hundredths of seconds must be discerned. Of course they are not seen by the naked eye; some mechanical contrivance must be called in to assist. A watch loses two minutes a week, and hence is unreliable. It is taken to a watch-maker that every single second may be quickened 1/20160 part of itself. Now 1/20000 part of a second would be a small interval of time to measure, but it must be under control. If the temperature of a summer morning rises ten or twenty degrees we scarcely notice ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... amount. There has been no restriction upon their manufacture or sale in this country, therefore the user has only the manufacturer's statement as to the nature of the medicine and its uses, and these statements, in many instances, have been proved utterly false and unreliable. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various |
