"Irresponsible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in all conscience to see that a given book is good for this but not good for that; may be praised for its plot, but certainly has not character enough to get long life. But when the difficulty of adjusting standards is increased by the irresponsible hullabaloo of commercial appreciation, no wonder that sensible people estimate foolishly, and critics of standing are induced to write for publication remarks that some day will (or should) make them sick. For ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... impulse, and his impulses were untainted by anything more serious than hot-headed resentment and momentary intolerance. Much of his dislike of Murray was irresponsible instinct. He knew, in his calmer moments, he had neither desire nor reason to dislike Murray. Somehow the dislike had grown up with him, as sometimes a boy's dislike of some one in authority over him grows up—without ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... conditions. In that which seems to be the most voluntary decision there enters much that is altogether involuntary—more, perhaps, than we generally suppose. And, in like manner, those who are imagined to have exercised an irresponsible and spontaneous influence in determining public policy, and thereby fixing the fate of nations, will be found, when we understand their position more correctly, to have been the creatures of circumstances altogether independent and irrespective ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... self-abnegation, which are already to hand, and seriously to explain them and show their relation to his Darwinian first principle. But no; he preferred to soar into the imperative, and thus escape the task of explaining. But even in his flight he was irresponsible enough to soar beyond the very first ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... out of the nursery where her voice could be heard talking imperiously to her baby's ayah. He had already waited some minutes, and he would probably have waited much longer, for his patience was inexhaustible, had it not been for that sudden irresponsible and wholly tuneless burst of song. But the second line was scarcely ended before she came hurriedly forth, nearly running into his stately person in ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Oscar in common with Art? except that he dines at our tables and picks from our platters the plums for the pudding he peddles in the provinces. Oscar—the amiable, irresponsible, esurient Oscar—with no more sense of a picture than of the fit of a coat, has the courage of ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... had collected my material for this powerful indictment, etc., etc." (ran the article), "I met a party of irresponsible subalterns bent on the old, old army pastime of leg-pulling. For the sake of exercise and amusement I permitted them to conduct me on a wild-goose chase after an imaginary dump, which luckily led me to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... had any effect upon Edward. At the age of thirty he was as irresponsible as he was when he was thirteen years old. He promised his mother at Avignon most solemnly to reform, and at once got into mischief. "I am persuaded," Lady Mary said, "whoever protects him will be very soon convinced of the impossibility of his ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... Had an irresponsible member of Congress made these demands, they might have been dismissed as another effort to twist the British lion's tail; but Charles Sumner took himself seriously, expected others to take him seriously, and unhappily was taken seriously by a great number of his fellow ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... footing among the immortals. There are no real substitutes for her unique rhymes, neither can they be added to nor imitated; for the world nowadays is seemingly too sophisticated to frame just this sort of merry, light-hearted, irresponsible verse which has mellowed with the years. "These ancient rhymes," says Andrew Lang, "are smooth stones from the brook of time, worn round by constant friction of tongues ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... laughed. Bobby was incorrigible, and there was no use in expecting seriousness from him. He and Sally were alike; Beatrix was cast in a different mould. She could suffer and enjoy with an intensity unknown to either of the others; yet she was close kin to her cousin in her appreciation of his irresponsible fun, even though it would never have occurred to her to originate it. Moreover, even if it had occurred to her, it is doubtful whether she could ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity towards a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early re-establishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us—however ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... was changed, and was, he thought, more lovable—prettier; today's emotion had shaken her out of herself. The reaction of this evening gave a brilliancy to her eyes, happy curves to her lips, and the slight disarrangement of her hair, not quite silky-smooth tonight, gave her a more irresponsible look. She ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... the imagination, concerning itself with hopes of escape from any conditions which hamper and confine us, is the dynamic force that is transmuting the world. The child is for ever planning what it will do when it is older, and dreams of an irresponsible choice of food and an unrestrained use of money; the girl schemes to escape from the constraints of home by independence or marriage; the professional man plans to make a fortune and retire; the mother ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... commanders, though frequently before this, in much less important campaigns, they had chosen single generals, whom they called dictators, as they knew that nothing is so important at a dangerous crisis as that all should unanimously and in good order obey the commands of one irresponsible chief. And the unfair treatment which Camillus had received now bore disastrous fruits, for no man dared to use authority except to flatter and gain the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... have said respecting your father's condition of mind," he observed, "by no means convinces me that it is so unsound as to render him irresponsible for his actions. It were to put a charitable construction upon his conduct to say that no one but a madman could be capable of it; but there was too much consistency in what he has said and done to admit of such an inference. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... of the Committee is a much less inspiring document than the irresponsible and entertaining "Faults of the Fabian." It was largely concerned with a number of administrative details. New books and "short readable tracts" were to be written, and the format of our publications was to be changed. Groups were ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... moment, as he spoke, the love which in their crude hearts they bore him, that animal primitive love, was turned to sudden, equally irresponsible hate. He had deceived them, laughed at them, tried to bribe them by ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... words. Suetonius assures us, that many evidences were current even to his times of this popular disposition (civilitas) in the emperor; and that it survived every experience of servile adulation in the Roman populace, and all the effects of long familiarity with irresponsible power in himself. Such a moderation of feeling, we are almost obliged to consider as a genuine and unaffected expression of his real nature; for, as an artifice of policy, it had soon lost its uses. And it is worthy of notice, that with the army he laid aside those popular manners ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... suffered deeply, who had passed through more than one saddening experience. In repose one would have said the man was serious, grave to a fault; but when he smiled, it was the face of youth—ardent, eager, irresponsible—that the beholder saw ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... a sore point with Nora—and, if the truth were told, with John, who had an orderly mind. Although he adored his flyaway, irresponsible mother, it was in spite of her ways and ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... and their erections, the Christian duties and humanities, while it purifies the air like electricity. There may be the sternest tragedy in the relation of two more than usually innocent and true to their highest instincts. We may call it an essentially heathenish intercourse, free and irresponsible in its nature, and practising all the virtues gratuitously. It is not the highest sympathy merely, but a pure and lofty society, a fragmentary and godlike intercourse of ancient date, still kept up at intervals, which, remembering itself, does not hesitate to disregard ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... in the bowels again! He has looked down. Once more. That's capital: something like a feeling of wanting to jump down, such an airy, irresponsible joy, like flying in a dense, blue sky, falling very gently and slowly—oh, what fun!—and then being rid of all one's troubles!... And yet there was a certain fear about it. He mustn't look any more. Or just this once ... that was grand! ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... and bad alike, who are against any form of popular liberty if it is guaranteed by even the most just and liberal laws, and who are as hostile to the upright exponent of a free people's sober will as to the tyrannical and irresponsible despot. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... friend of law and order, dreaded Lord Rattley's tongue, which was irresponsible and incisive. "Well, if this ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... right. Besides, I remember now what I did say. I said that much as I enjoyed the pleasant give and take of friendly conversation, dearly as I loved even the irresponsible monologue or the biting repartee, yet still more was I attached to the silent worship of the valse's mazy rhythm. 'BUT,' I went on to say, 'but,' I added, with surprising originality, 'every rule has an exception. YOU are the exception. ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... 'unbeknownst' to yourself you'll awake some morning with it on your lips. I can see traces of it growing stronger every day. Very soon now it's going to materialize, and then get out of my way, for I'll be a whirling, irresponsible lunatic, with the wild joy of it. Oh I've got faith in that kiss of yours, Ruth! It's on the way. The fates have booked it. There isn't a reason on earth why I should be served so scurvy a trick as to miss it, and I never will ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... a girl is not flattered (though perhaps she ought to be) by being the subject of this sensible choice. "As if I were a housekeeper or a cook!" she is apt to say, and is far better pleased to be fallen in love with in the most rash and irresponsible way than to be thus selected from the crowd: though that, everybody must allow, after due comparison and inspection, is by far the greater compliment. John having arrived at the conclusion that it would be better for him in many ways to marry, and specially in the way of ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... knew they would invite trouble if they ventured to interfere with or annoy the meeting. He was ready, not only to preach the Gospel but to fight, as sometimes he felt it his duty to do. No man dared in the presence of Cartwright to interrupt the meeting, as in those times irresponsible parties hanging about such gatherings frequently attempted to ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... recognized as determining human action. Now according as we regard human action, its two great determinants will be free will or necessity. But hypnotism entirely does away with free will: and for necessity, fatal or circumstantial, it substitutes the lawless and irresponsible imperative of a casual individual man, who (in fiction) usually happens ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... than a century later by another spokesman of democracy. There was the stuff for splendid soldiers in these farmers and woodsmen, but in many lamentable instances their regiments were no more than irresponsible armed mobs. Until as recently as the War with Spain, the perilous fallacy persisted that the States should retain control of their several militia forces in time of war and deny final authority to the Federal ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... go into formal meeting the family council approved the appointment, to the infinite amazement of the judge, who had never looked upon the twins as anything but very small and irresponsible children. He listened unbelievingly to the tale ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... have adopted by a majority the opinion of the Admiralty. Thereupon, Amsterdam delivered her protest, in which she confirmed her former protest against the resolution of the 18th of November. She declared further, that she held herself irresponsible and discharged of all injurious consequences to the Republic, which the unsatisfactory answer they had given France might have. Our friend has caused me to read this protest, which is moderate ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... fact of learning—of learning, I mean, what I was supposed to learn. I could only have been busy, at the same time, with other pursuits—which must have borne some superficial likeness at least to the acquisition of knowledge of a free irresponsible sort; since I remember few either of the inward pangs or the outward pains of a merely graceless state. I recognise at the same time that it was perhaps a sorry business to be so interested in one didn't know what. Such are, whether at the worst or at the best, some of the aspects of that ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... unless the walls at the gable end were loopholed, which they were not, I know, for I examined them minutely. Fortunately for the credit of the British Army, most of our generals are coolheaded men who do not allow the irresponsible chatter of the army to influence them. Otherwise our guns would have been trained upon many a homestead on charges quite as flimsy and groundless ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... majesty's councils.—2. That it is indispensable to the well-being of this colony, and to the satisfactory conduct of its affairs, that its government should no longer be administered by the remote, ill-informed, and irresponsible Colonial-office, but by ministers chosen from, and responsible to, the colonists themselves, in accordance with the principles of the British constitution.—3. That this meeting, having unanimously agreed to the preceding two resolutions, the following humble address to her most excellent majesty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... people. To limit the Emperor's authority was to renounce their own; but to take it away was to assert their own. They gave the Empire as they chose. They took it away as they chose. The Revolution was as lawful and as irresponsible as the Empire. Democratic institutions continued to develop. The provinces were no longer subject to an assembly meeting in a distant capital. They obtained the privileges of Roman citizens. Long after Tiberius had stripped the inhabitants of Rome of their electoral function, the provincials continued ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Like many another irresponsible young man, Jacob Van de Grift married became quite a different person. Returning to Indianapolis, he built a house for himself with the aid of friends, and, launching out into the lumber business, soon ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... loves a religion of forms and ceremonies, which professes to renew and save without self-denial, breathing around us the quietism of ordinances, and lulling us to drowsy forgetfulness of duty in the luxurious enjoyment of an irresponsible religion. While, therefore, we cannot too carefully guard against the abuse of ordinances, we must not forget that God, who made man, body and soul, chooses to convey some of his gracious operations to us by the help ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... lynching and the inequitable distribution of the public school funds between the races? For the Southern white man, and he is not different from any other white man or black man either for that matter who possesses irresponsible power over others, regulates his conduct toward the Negro in his midst by the law of might, which allows him with a good conscience to do to the Negro whatever he wants to do, and to take from him whatever he wants to take whether life or liberty, while it forbids his victim to do what ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... watch for Mose. One of them, a slim, consumptive-chested man, grew drunk first. He was entirely harmless when sober, and served as the butt of all jokes, but the evil liquor paralyzed the small knot of gray matter over his eyes and set loose his irresponsible lower centers. He threw his hat on the ground and defied the world in a voice absurdly large ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... contemptuousness grew up, together with ambition, in his character. He observed no sort of moderation, such as befitted a private man, either in rewarding or in punishing; the recompense of his friends and guests was absolute power over cities, and irresponsible authority, and the only satisfaction of his wrath was the destruction of his enemy; banishment would not suffice. As for example, at a later period, fearing lest the popular leaders of the Milesians should fly, and desiring also to discover those who lay hid, he ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... stopped!" exclaimed the occultist; "it shall be stopped! He is not guilty. He was irresponsible—ask papa about it; he will tell you so. This girl is coming to see me here to-day: I'll tell her ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... determined to avoid a quarrel at any price, in deference to my brother's infirmity and his own promise to me. He was very angry before Edmund came in; but I believe that afterwards he was shocked and sobered at the obviously irresponsible condition of my poor brother when enraged. He had ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... their mind. But I had nothing to give them to do. They could just stand around and look on now, for when Curls seriously imitates her sister, and then laughs heartily at her own absurd failure, because her feet are irresponsible, that is the time when you have nothing to do, and would not do anything if ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... official titles of the Hojo chief, and cancelling the edict for his destruction, while, through an envoy sent to meet him, he was informed that the campaign against the Bakufu had been the work of irresponsible subjects; that the sovereign did not sanction it, and that any request preferred by Kamakura would ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the ballot. It comes in the end to a change of viewpoint and of heart on the part of the individual. No party, no political leader would for a moment endorse any one of the principles or methods I have suggested, for this would be a suicidal act. The newspaper, irresponsible, anonymous, directed by its advertizing interests or by those more sinister still, yet for all that the factor that controls the opinions of those who hold the balance of power in the community as it is now constituted, would reject them with derision, ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... a child. She never laughed again in exactly that way. This was the last appearance of the old irresponsible Prudence. The curtain was just ready ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... had raised a disagreeable possibility. It was never safe to ignore precautions when a gang of two or three hundred rough, active laborers, however loyal when sober, were made irresponsible and crazy by liquor; and one stage of drunkenness in such men was usually manifested in a wild desire for violence. The scheme of Weir's enemies might comprise using this very act ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... rode she debated with herself the manner in which she was to conceal her destination from chance observers. Wilful and irresponsible as Rosebud always appeared to be, there was yet something strongly reliant in her nature. She was, as so many girls are, a child in thought and deed until some great event, perchance some bereavement, some tragedy, or some great love, should come ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... like Granville Barker's. 'I am told,' he said, in grave, quick, low tones, 'that you are saying things about him rather indiscriminately. Bringing, in fact, charges against him—suspicions, rather.... I hardly think you can be aware of the seriousness of such irresponsible gossip, such—I can't call it anything but slander—when it is widely circulated. How it grows—spreads from person to person—the damage, the irreparable damage ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... Dowager of the Indies. Is it likely that $56 would have been the pension settled upon a lady of such rank? Senor Castelar, than whom there is no greater living authority, scouts the idea of a legal marriage; and, indeed, it is only a few irresponsible and peculiarly aggressive Catholic writers who have the hardihood to advance this more than improbable theory. Mr. Henry Harrisse, a most painstaking critic, thinks that Felipa Moniz died in 1488. She was buried in the Monastery do Carmo, at Lisbon, and ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... boy before us to find out what he is up to, and what end he has in mind. On the contrary, we proclaim, with curious indifference, some end of our own devising, and with what really amounts to spiritual brutality, we try to drive him towards it. We do this, we irresponsible parents and teachers, because we ourselves lack imagination, and do not see that we are blunting, instead of sharpening, our human tool. Yet we define education in terms of imagination when we say that education is the unfolding and perfecting of the human spirit; ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... of the game which even the most irresponsible of Ministers must observe. Here both Chauvelin and Lebrun went fatally astray. Chauvelin's pique at the interview which Pitt had with Maret on 2nd December led him flagrantly to misrepresent that incident, and ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... only, as they cannot be insured elsewhere against fire), and personal security. The advances are said to stand at Kr. 130,000, or £7222. When against personal security a promissory note is taken, signed by the borrower and two irresponsible witnesses, or by two responsible obligants, according to standing. Title-deeds are taken as collateral security. The Bank has its own forms for loan-documents. The probability is that the Bank will soon become the possessor of a great deal of property ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... wheedled and whined one moment in the husky tones of Sister Magdalen's late favorite; when dignity was required she became the escaped nun; and in her rage she would burst into the melodramatic frenzy dear to the McMeeter audiences; but Colette, the heedless, irresponsible, half-mad butterfly, dominated these various parts, and to this charming personality she returned. Through his own sad experience this spectacle interested him. He subdued her finally by a precise ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... are all individuals who receive hereditary food-and-shelter privileges,—such as the present Duke of Bedford, for instance, who yearly receives $75,000 from the good people of London because some former king gave some former ancestor of his the market privileges of Covent Garden. The irresponsible rich are likewise non-scabs,—and by them is meant that coupon-clipping class which hires its managers and brains to invest the money usually left ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... in this camp, young man," insisted the professor. "It's all right for those who know how, but you endanger our lives with your irresponsible actions." ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... without intelligent belief, without those outbursts of fierce and bitter sorrow that purify the soul and uplift the brow in a splendid renewal of hope and courage? Better a thousand times to suffer, to toil, to fight and weep, than to let life exhale itself in a ceaseless irresponsible gayety, causeless, objectless, and imperturbable! Better to stand bleeding on the breach than to lie dreaming ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... limited and cramped in the constitutional restrictions. If he could have been Grand Llama of the United States, that might have come the nearest to his idea of a position. And next to that he would have luxuriated in the irresponsible omniscience ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... He who made man can alone justly estimate man's temptations. For myself, I believe that Mr. Fitzgerald's sins were largely attributable to the system of slavery under which he had the misfortune to be educated. He loved pleasure, he was rich, and he had irresponsible power over many of his fellow-beings, whom law and public opinion alike deprived of protection. Without judging him harshly, let his career be a warning to you to resist the first enticements to evil; and, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... reassembled and she made vague excuses. All their meetings amounted to this, that she sat on the wall, more or less in bounds as she expressed it, and let Mr. Polly fall in love with her and try to express it below. She sat in a state of irresponsible exaltation, watching him and at intervals prodding a vivisecting point of encouragement into him—with that strange passive cruelty which is natural to her ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... the genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne, was doubly rich in the spirit of romance and in a wise and beautiful morality. But the irresponsible caprices of his narrative fancy prevented his tales from being the appropriate vehicles of his morality. He has left no work—unless the two short stories mentioned above be regarded as exceptions—in which romance and morality are welded ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... and prudent counsels of Prince Albert, with some lessons of experience, and much study of her constitutional restrictions, as well as obligations, had greatly modified Her Majesty's strong partisan prejudices, and any proclivities she may have had toward personal and irresponsible government. ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... name is perfectly immaterial. But since he escapes me and she is irresponsible—and punished—I regard as an accomplice of their infamy any man who makes allusion to it with either tongue or pen. And, my dear Varhely, I wish to act alone. Don't be angry; I know that in your hands my honor would be as faithfully guarded as ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... dark hint or two to escape him concerning possible suits for defamation of character against irresponsible newspapers. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... failed to notice to what tremendous extremes this girl's hasty temper could carry her. What burning, almost evil passion had flamed in her eyes while uttering these insults! How perfectly right his Majesty was to withdraw from all association with a woman of so irresponsible a nature! ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... out, and his gray eyebrows gathered into a frown, glanced up and down the pages. "Ah, yes, here: 'Do you not think,' she says, 'that the presence in the world of suffering which cannot produce character, irresponsible suffering, so to speak, makes it hard to believe in the personal care of God?' It's perfect nonsense for Helen to talk in that way! What does she know about 'character' and 'irresponsible suffering'? I shall tell her to mend her husband's stockings, and not bother her little head with theological ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... harmless throng of spectators; but the fact remains that the ruffians in their hire did shoot into the crowd without occasion, and did so shed innocent blood. And it is enough to condemn the system that it authorizes unofficial and irresponsible persons to usurp the most delicate and difficult functions of the State and exposes the lives of citizens to the murderous assaults of hireling assassins, stimulated to violence by panic or by the suggestion of employers ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... Western Ireland more important than those of the United States. In spite of the plain fact that a separate Ireland would weaken civilisation and menace the world's peace by introducing a hostile and undependable wedge betwixt the two major parts of Saxondom, these irresponsible elements continue to encourage rebellion in the Green Isle; and in so doing tend to place this nation in a distressingly anomalous position as an abettor of crime and sedition against the Mother Land. Disgusting beyond words are ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... whose shoulder the burthen was to lie. I hope they have been quite honest with him—knowing as I do the easy process of transferring all sorts of burthens, in that theatrical world, from responsible to irresponsible members of it, actors to manager, manager to actors, as the case requires. And it is a 'hope deferred' with Chorley; not for the second or third time. I am very glad that he cares no more ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... two important characters, and stated that the Government grew fairly jealous of them, excluding them from office, as the Whigs did Lord Brougham. As private individuals, they are made to distinguish themselves as the founders of journals, societes en commandite (companies of which the members are irresponsible beyond the amount of their shares), and all sorts of commercial speculations, requiring intelligence and honesty on the part of the directors, confidence and liberal disbursements from ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dead-rabbit. I should like, if it were consistent with the consular dignity, to go down and rub their heads. I'm fond, also, of old charity-boys, I find. Those paupers make one in love with destitute and dependent age, by their aspect of irresponsible enjoyment. See how briskly each of them topples along on the leg that he hasn't got in the grave! How attractive likewise are the civilian devotees in those imperishable dress-coats of theirs! Observe their high collars of the era of the Holy Alliance: they and their ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... he had forgiven the woman; but since Natalie's pain was mitigated he was cooler; and his sense of justice forced it home on him that Rina, too, had been through her ordeal. In his present desperate situation, his only chance of assistance lay in her—Mabyn was an egomaniac, and utterly irresponsible. Frankness had served Garth in good stead before this; and finally he told her the plain truth in such terms ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... against a minority of five. In the Commons, where Burke ardently spoke in favor of the tax, the majority was even greater. "It was decided that irresponsible taxation was not a tyranny but a vested right; that Parliament held legislative power, not as a representative body but in absolute trust: that it was not and had never been responsible to the people." This was the new Toryism, which was to create a new opposition. The debate ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... untutored motorists judged Miss Mitchin's the best place to go, and permitted their wives to drag them past the tortoise-shell spectacles and the unprostituted art and the angular young ladies in baggy smocks breaking out in sudden irresponsible ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... people who hold a place in the upper ranks are not worthy of their lofty position, and there are many who hope to see such a general levelling as took place during the French Revolution. They are fortified in their opinion by the lavish and irresponsible way in which the wealthy use their money, and they are tantalized by the display of luxury which, if times are hard, are in aggravating contrast to the hardship and suffering of the poor. The scale of living of the millionaire cannot justify itself in the eyes of the man who finds it difficult ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... meet the expense of the war gives a chance to save in sums as small as twenty-five cents and makes an investment upon which return of both principal and interest is absolutely guaranteed. Too often colored people have entrusted their savings to wholly irresponsible persons, lost them through the dishonesty of these persons, and in discouragement abandoned all attempts at saving. Today, however, there is no excuse for any man not saving a certain amount of his earnings no matter how small it may be. It is a poor ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... love of an honest woman. You let me see the truth, that my proposal to you was almost an insult. You made me understand that your very friendship for me was such a friendship as you might have with an amusing and irresponsible boy, or a spoiled child. You could not even consider my love for you seriously, as a woman like you must consider the love of a strong man. And you were right, Helen. But, dear, it was for me a bitter, bitter ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... me the tube of sunburn cream, "maybe I'd better check up on some of the others and make sure they haven't forgotten." She went off without another word, leaving me with an unpleasant feeling that she'd come off best, that she considered me an irresponsible scamp. ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... was of the negro whom they had just fed. Perhaps to an irresponsible fellow like poor old George the temptation to try and steal something had been irresistible, and he was now creeping toward the motor-boat with the intention of getting aboard and laying ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... German rule, to profit at the expense of the invader. Belgian claims against Germany such as I have seen, amounting to a sum in excess of the total estimated pre-war wealth of the whole country, are simply irresponsible.[82] ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... is excellently descriptive of the irresponsible, mischievous, anti-social creature whose eccentric action is the outcome of too much mutton. This immoral will-o'-the-wisp, seized with a desire to jostle, or thump, or smash, combines for the occasion with others like himself, and the shouldering, shoving ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... sway since 1959. Current concerns include: a polarized political environment, a divided military, drug-related conflicts along the Colombian border, increasing internal drug consumption, overdependence on the petroleum industry with its price fluctuations, and irresponsible mining operations that are endangering the ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... steadfastly resists any and every attempt to amalgamate them into one sole substance. The doctrine of creation, and not of emanation or of modification, is the doctrine by which it constructs its theory of the Universe, and the doctrine of responsible self-determination, and not of irresponsible natural development, is the doctrine by which it constructs its systems of Philosophy ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... very fond of my own father, but in many ways Tom Taylor was more of a father to me than my father in blood. Father was charming, but Irish and irresponsible. I think he loved my sister Floss and me most because we were the lawless ones of the family! It was not in his temperament to give wise advice and counsel. Having bequeathed to me light-heartedness and a sanguine disposition, and trained me splendidly for my profession in childhood, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... The irresponsible pleasure of our first sail the next afternoon was never quite repeated. The boat shot from the landing like a high-strung horse given his head, out across the unbordered road of silver water, and in a moment, as we raced toward the low white clouds, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... hands behind the tails of his frock-coat, stood smiling radiantly on the hearthrug. A wit much less alert than my irresponsible friend's would have instantly appreciated the fact that the real Simon Pure had arrived ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... finem"; the peace of its self- denial shines out in Christ's "Not my will but thine," and in Dante's "In His will is our peace." Meager and cold and repellent as this ideal in its extreme expressions often seems, it appeals to us as the softer and irresponsible ideal of the Epicureans cannot. But obviously our way lies between the extremes. And after all that has now been said, our summary of the dangers inherent in each ideal ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... theory of Dr. Ashton's that what Arthur Fenton became was so purely a question of environment as to leave the artist all but irresponsible. This fatalistic view he had laid before his wife with some detail, at once explaining ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... was that millionth. It would have made him comparative and superior—it might have made him really require kicking. Pemberton would try to be school himself—a bigger seminary than five hundred grazing donkeys, so that, winning no prizes, the boy would remain unconscious and irresponsible and amusing—amusing, because, though life was already intense in his childish nature, freshness still made there a strong draught for jokes. It turned out that even in the still air of Morgan's various disabilities jokes flourished greatly. He was a pale ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... approval of all, and a few moments later the men had saddled their ponies and were galloping away in the direction of sun-baked Cuivaca. They sang now, and were happy, for they were as little boys playing hooky from school—not bad men; but rather irresponsible children. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to the work of education they began twenty years ago, and kept up untiringly, that Colorado has won this great victory. Woman suffrage is not alone for women, or to enable us to secure certain readjustments of law. It is for our country, which cannot exist half enfranchised and half irresponsible, half democracy and half a feudalism; half of it privileged to shirk or exercise its civic rights, and half denied aught but the burden of those rights. Women need the franchise if only to make their influence, of which we hear so much, effective, ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... to be signed, all with sole responsibility and as sole partner, while Foggatt, behind the scenes absorbed the larger share of the profits. In brief, my unhappy and foolish father was a mere tool in the hands of the cunning scoundrel who pulled all the wires of the business, himself unseen and irresponsible. At last three companies, for the promotion of which my father was responsible, came to grief in a heap. Fraud was written large over all their history, and, while Foggatt retired with his plunder, my father was left to meet ruin, ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... on board now. Framsjaa [38] (news of, or outlook from, the Fram) is its name, and our doctor is its irresponsible editor. The first number was read aloud this evening, and gave occasion for much ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... say. It sounds prosaic, but I believe it is a fact that the first stirring of my pulses was caused by the report of a speech of his which I read in the Times. It was on the Eight Hours' Bill. Papa was most unflattering. He said that he was an oily spouter, an ignorant agitator, an irresponsible firebrand, and a good deal more to the same effect. I remember very well how papa fidgeted with the paper, declaring that it read even worse than it had sounded, and goodness knew that it had sounded bad enough. He was so very emphatic that when he had ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... which had fought on his side, as though he were preparing for himself a Greece in which he would take the first place. He did not choose his archons by their birth, or their wealth, but favoured his own friends and political adherents, to whom he gave irresponsible power; while by being present at several executions, and driving the opponents of his friends into exile, he gave the Greeks a very unpleasant idea of what they were to expect from the empire of Lacedaemon. The comic poet Theopompus therefore appears to talk at random when he ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... brother of the slain man, seemed to accept the tragedy with a sorrowful resignation in which no shadow of revenge appeared. He let it be known that Matt had been irresponsible at times, given to night-prowlings and outbreaks of violence of strange and fantastic forms. How much truth there was in this excuse for the dead man, Hector alone knew. But no matter for his passivity, Mackenzie did not trust ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... 1896. Krafft-Ebing (op. cit., p. 532) quotes from Boeteau the somewhat similar case of a gardener's boy of 16—an illegitimate child of neuropathic heredity and markedly degenerate—who had a passion, of irresistible and impulsive character, for rabbits. He was declared irresponsible. Moll (Untersuchungen ueber die Libido Sexualis, bd. i, pp. 431-433) presents the case of a neurotic man who from the age of 15 had been sexually excited by the sight of animals or by contact with them. He had repeatedly had connection with cows and mares; he was also sexually excited ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Delightful, irresponsible "Mary Jane's Pa" awakes one morning to find himself famous, and, genius being ill adapted to domestic joys, he wanders from home to work out his own unique destiny. One of the most humorous bits ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... were the work solely of Colonel Pelton, acting on his own responsibility, and as Mr. Tilden's nephew exceeding his authority to act; that it later developed that during this period Colonel Pelton had not been in his perfect mind, but was at least semi-irresponsible; and that on two occasions when the vote or votes sought seemed within reach Mr. Tilden interposed to forbid. Directly and personally I know this ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... embroidery frame met the same indignity. She sat now on the kitchen ledge, while Mata made the fire and washed the rice, toying idly with a white pebble chosen for its beauty from thousands on the garden path. Something in the childlike attitude, the placid, irresponsible face, brought the old servant's impatience to a climax. She deliberately hurled ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... Bavaria and Saxony would not have altered. Secondly, Austria-Hungary, obviously falling more and more to pieces, formed no point of attraction for Munich and Dresden, who, though not Prussian, yet were German to the very backbone. The vague and irresponsible plan of returning to the conditions of the period before 1866 was an anachronism. Thirdly and chiefly, all experiments were dangerous which might create the impression in the Entente that the Quadruple Alliance was about to be dissolved. In a policy of that nature ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... that this child does not want to do? Will she ever settle down to plain, comprehensible Sawyer ways, or will she to the end make these sudden and radical propositions, suggesting at every turn the irresponsible Randall ancestry? ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... droll part was that both these transactions were audaciously entered upon by a body which had absolutely no revenues at all to pledge as security, which had not a dollar of property, nor authority to compel any living man to pay it a dollar. A more utterly irresponsible debtor than Congress never asked for a loan or offered a promissory note. For the security of a creditor there was only the moral probability that in case of success the people would be honest enough to pay their debts; ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... the superficial consequence. There is a deeper and more remote one. The parents' confidence in their boy receives a shock. The boy can't always be trusted to keep his word. Also he is inclined to be reckless and irresponsible. ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... so struck, at first, by his speaking of himself as the reputed "madman" that I could not answer. To think of him as serenely contemptuous of the world's imputation—and an imputation so galling as this one of being irresponsible for his actions—and deliberately continuing his even way without taking the trouble to refute it, has given me an insight into his nature, that fills me with admiration, and yet, at the same time, with a sort of longing to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... would give them a feast to-day and a famine to-morrow. There is deep satisfaction in cooperating with such families to conquer difficulties. There is a deeper satisfaction, however, in turning a sham home into a real one; in teaching the slatternly, irresponsible mother the pleasure of a cleanly, well-ordered home; in helping a man who has lost his sense of responsibility toward wife and children to regain it. Even at the risk of drawing a too gloomy picture, I dwell in this ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... face, long snaky black locks, and flashing eyes all spoke of the wild fever in his blood and his Gallic origin. Still, the girl noted he was not what might be termed an ill-looking fellow; he did not look bad-natured, nor was he in drink. He was merely an excited irresponsible. ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the playhouse;[161] independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... inconvenienced—I don't like to mention this, but provisions for answering the calls of nature were, to say the least, inadequate—I swayed and rocked in that inconsiderable basket, chilled, blinded by the dazzle of the salt, knocked about by gusts of irresponsible wind, and generally disgusted by the uselessness of my pursuit. A telescope to the eye and constant radioreports from shuttling planes told of the approaching grass, but under the circumstances weariness rather than excitement or ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... for a moment in doubt, not knowing whether it would be safe to make another rejoinder. But he saw plainly that the "Vice" was in an irresponsible condition, and so silently, but with rage in his heart, he turned on his heels so that the spurs jingled, and went back ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... that "no nation can endure half Republic and half Empire" and has "warned the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home." It has characterized the Republican government in the Insular regions as an "indefinite, irresponsible, discretionary and vague absolutism," and Republican policy as a policy of "colonial exploitation." That the American people have believed the Republican administration to have been good and beneficent, is shown by their retaining that party in power. But it is perhaps ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... you do. I am going to show you your own responsibilities, if that's a possible thing. I'm not going to let you throw them on George because he's a man and your kin; and I shan't let him throw them on an irresponsible agent because he has neither the time nor the inclination to do justice to himself, to you, nor to these people to whom ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... of the line would come from the left, and it was arranged that the other post would signal us when he approached, and one of us would go out. In this way we always had a man out from each post when he inquired into matters. This was rather an irresponsible way of running the Army of the Potomac, but it seemed to us ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... sister again. Gertrude's imagination seemed to her to be fairly running riot. She had always known that Gertrude had a great deal of imagination—she had been very proud of it. But at the same time she had always felt that it was a dangerous and irresponsible faculty; and now, to her sense, for the moment, it seemed to threaten to make her sister a strange person who should come in suddenly, as from a journey, talking of the peculiar and possibly unpleasant things she had observed. ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... farmers saw themselves as innocent victims of happenstance, needing to hire the chemical plant doctor much as sick people are encouraged by medical doctors to view themselves as victims, who are totally irresponsible for creating their condition and incapable of curing it without costly and dangerous medical ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... the growth of the factory system the workman became more dependent, and the employer more irresponsible. Thus we note the first industrial effect of machinery in the formation of two definite industrial classes—the dependent workman, and the irresponsible employer. The term "irresponsible" is not designed to convey any moral stigma. The industrial employer can no more be blamed for being irresponsible ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... suddenly from nowhere, trailing with her thunder-clouds of impulsive and childish ideas about doing good, and holding in her hands the dangerous weapon of wealth. It is hard to stand by and see one's life-work broken up before one's eyes by an irresponsible stranger, a foreigner, a girl, a young girl, a pretty girl; especially hard if one was born with an unbending character, tough and determined, ambitious and vain. These are not reproaches being piled up ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Bradshaw's story may be nothing but idle talk. I am the last person to give credit to mere irresponsible gossip. Let us ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... not at all. The reforms which the Parliament desired were reasonable and just. It would abolish arbitrary arrests, the Star Chamber decrees, taxes without its consent, cruelty to Non-conformists, the ascendency of priests, irresponsible ministers, and offensive symbols of Romanism. If these reforms had been granted,—and such a sovereign as Elizabeth would have yielded, however reluctantly,—there would have been no English revolution. Or even if the popular leaders had been more patient, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... to its final cause. Legally and politically, that is, conventionally, the differences are even greater on a comparison of nations and eras. In England we have seen senators of mark and authority, nay, even a prime minister, the haughtiest, [1] the most despotic, and the most irresponsible of his times, at an age which, in many states, both ancient and modern, would have operated as a ground of absolute challenge to the candidate for offices the meanest. Intellectually speaking, again, a very ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... someone's whimsical, freakish tastes and personality. From the sublime to the ridiculous—and worse—subjects pious and impious, dreamily-beautiful and lewdly-vulgar, comic and tragic, also many splendid photographs were all jumbled together on the walls in a shockingly irresponsible fashion. Many of the pictures were unframed copies cut apparently from art and other journals; from theatrical ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... the accused could speak he could a tale unfold—one of the strangest that have ever been narrated between the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. Not all ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the case of a man who handled an objection of that sort by first smiling while shaking his head and making a gesture of negation, and then said, "I could not lose much for you, but if I were reckless or irresponsible I certainly would lose for myself this opportunity that you see I want very much. I have a great deal more at stake than you. You may be sure I shall not risk losing my chance to succeed, by causing you any losses." The tone used was the heart ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... contemning praise in almost the same words as Byron did, he loved it equally well. In 1840 he had crossed the Rubicon that lies between aspiration and attainment. The populace might be blind or dumb, the "rattlesnakes"—the "irresponsible indolent reviewers," who from behind a hedge pelt every wrestler till they found societies for the victor—might still obscurely hiss; but Carlyle was at length safe by the verdict ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... end safely? He tried to extract comfort from the confidence she had expressed in the ability and integrity of the old man who drove with far greater recklessness than one would have looked for in a wild and irresponsible youngster. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... always spoke with gratitude—the situation he filled at Belvoir was attended with many painful circumstances, and productive in his mind of some of the acutest sensations of wounded pride that have ever been traced by any pen." It is not necessary to hold Crabbe himself entirely irresponsible for this result. His son, with a frankness that marks the Biography throughout, does not conceal that his father's temper, even in later life, was intolerant of contradiction, and he probably expressed his opinions before the guests at Belvoir with more vehemence than ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... all right in property, even to the wages she earns." "He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband." "In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... officers and men. In anticipation of the conflict which now seemed so menacing, large numbers of the officers held a secret meeting the night before, in which they decided to stand between the regular troops and the irresponsible populace. They would, on the one hand, assist the people in demanding reform, and would protect them from the assaults of the regular troops. On the other hand, they would defend the monarchy, and aid the troops in repelling insurrection ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... seemed, her lips parted, her eyes glowing. Rudolph Musgrave, looking down into twin vivid depths, for a breathing-space, found time to rejoice that he had refused to liken them to stars. Stars, forsooth!—and, pray, what paltry sun, what irresponsible comet, what pallid, clinkered satellite, might boast a purple splendor such as this? For all asterial scintillations, at best, had but a clap-trap glitter; whereas the glow of Patricia's eyes was a matter worthy of really ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Majasari (the stainless, the spotless)—the Pontiff-king—the chief of the State and the Church; but it is said that he acknowledges the Sultan of Turkey as the Padishah. He is the irresponsible lord and master of all life and property among his subjects, although in his decrees he is advised by a Council ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... seems as though one required to be "brought up" in Pickwick, so to speak, thoroughly to understand him. No true Pickwickian would ever have called Tuckle the Bath Footman, "Blazer," or Jingle, "Jungle." It were better, too, not to adopt a carping tone in dealing with so joyous and irresponsible a work. "Dickens," we are told, "knew nothing of cricket." Yet in his prime the present writer has seen him "marking" all day long, or acting as umpire, with extraordinary knowledge and enthusiasm. In Pickwickian days the game was not what it is now; it was ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... then that discipline is the first and principal point to be considered on such occasions; unless indeed the leader be implicitly obeyed it is impossible that matters should go on regularly. For this reason it is objectionable to associate any irresponsible person in such an undertaking. When I engaged the men who were to accompany me, I made them sign an agreement, giving me power to diminish or increase the rations, and binding themselves not only to the performance ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... She knew that Molly was one of the youngest members of this club of rather irresponsible and happy-go-lucky folk, and privately considered that Selwyn had made a great mistake in ever allowing her to join it. It embodied, as she had discovered by inquiry, some of the most rapid elements of Oldhampton's society, and was, moreover, open to receive as temporary members artists who come ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... an old family, but she was the last of them. The relatives living in the south could be no help to her; they were poor, rabid Catholics and had fallen to little account, owing to unwise marriages and that irresponsible fatuous apathy in affairs which is the dry rot of Ireland and the Irish people. They were proud as Lucifer, but no ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... bound to answer that, you know," said the inspector, a little put out by Agatha's taking advantage of her irresponsible unofficial position to come so directly to the point. "You may if you like, though. If you've done any harm, you'd better hold your tongue. If not, you'd ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... no mood of captious, unfriendly criticism that attention is specially directed to these compromises. Only political charlatans, ineffective quacks, and irresponsible soap-box orators see crime against the revolutionary program of the masses in a wise and honest opportunism. History will not condemn the Bolsheviki for the give-and-take, compromise-where-necessary policy outlined in the foregoing paragraphs. ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... slim hand through his hair. He cast such a complacent look at his reflection that Giles could not forbear a smile. The man was a compound of treachery, courage, and vanity. He had some virtues and not a few vices, and was one of those irresponsible creatures who develop into Anarchists. But that the Scarlet Cross Society had attracted his talents in the direction of a kind of coast piracy, he would without doubt have been employed in blowing up kings or public buildings. Giles thought with a grim smile that if Olga took this creature ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... can be called an assured destiny, and to many the chances seem on the whole against it. Unexpected collisions of interest or passion or ambition may at any time mar the prospects, and in great democracies largely influenced by demagogues and by an irresponsible and anonymous Press there are always powerful agencies that do not make for peace. Immediate party interests both at home and in the colonies too frequently blind men to distant and ulterior consequences, and the many ill-wishers to the British ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... not married yet ... and if you were to change your mind ... the world has such a need of consecrated women with men so unscrupulous and irresponsible ... we must break their power some day ... and now that we've got the opportunity ... all I want you to understand is that if you shouldn't marry there'd be a great career in ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Ireland with the result that most of the orators were doomed to the infirmaries connected with the local gaols. True to his principle made penal by the older and wiser law of libel, that is of applying individual and irresponsible judgment to, and passing final and unappealable sentence upon, the conduct of private individuals and of public men, he raged and inveighed with all the fury of outraged (and interested) virtue against Colonel Hughes-Hallett with the consequence of seating that M.P. more firmly ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... meet false or irresponsible or ignorant assertion with plain and truthful explanation. Let them take their case directly to the people—as the railroads have been doing of late with very encouraging results—and inaugurate a campaign of education in sound economics, ...
— High Finance • Otto H. Kahn
... government would do. Again, the intolerance and lack of liberty which has been inherited from the Tsarist regime is probably to be regarded as Russian rather than Communist. If a Communist Party were to acquire power in England, it would probably be met by a less irresponsible opposition, and would be able to show itself far more tolerant than any government can hope to be in Russia if it is to escape assassination. This, however, is a matter of degree. A great part of the despotism which characterizes the Bolsheviks ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... tempted, in a moment of unworthy distrust of their own capacity for the enjoyment of liberty, to commit the too common error of purchasing present repose by bestowing on some favorite leaders the fatal gift of irresponsible power will not be realized. With all these Governments and with that of Brazil no unexpected changes in our relations have occurred during the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... person I did know with whom I had no measure of patience, I rarely mentioned his name. Harrie is Selwyn's weakness, and to his faults and failings the latter is, outwardly, at least, most inexplicably blind. He is as handsome as he is unprincipled and irresponsible, and his power to fascinate is seemingly limited only by his desire to exercise it. "What is it?" I repeated. ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... the President. It was understood also that he issued orders for military expenditure which were not recognized at Washington, and men began to understand that the army in the West was gradually assuming that irresponsible military position which, in disturbed countries and in times of civil war, has so frequently resulted in a military dictatorship. Then there arose a clamor for the removal of General Fremont. A semi-official account of his proceedings, which had reached Washington ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Audrey forgave her petulance and want of consideration for Mollie. It was difficult to find fault with Mrs. Blake; she was so gay and good-humoured, she so soon forgot anything that had ruffled her, she was so childlike and irresponsible, that one seemed to judge her ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and experiences of later days lead me to endorse most heartily the well-known dictum of Lawrence Oliphant—namely, that when he saw people sitting down in a casual, irresponsible way to "get messages through a table," it reminded him of an ignorant child going into a powder magazine with a lighted match in ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... the mass for their special wisdom or humanity, is a stupendous fact which must give pause to any one who is inclined to feel complacent about modern industrial progress. In days gone by political power was as irresponsible as the economic power wielded to-day by Lord Rhondda; and it descended from father to son by hereditary right in the same way as the control over the lives of countless American workers descends to-day as a matter of course from John D. Rockefeller ...
— Progress and History • Various
... despised Albatross was worth his weight in gold. In charge of a skipper not familiar with every foot of the water-road, "Lorelei" and "Waterspin" would have been aground more than once. Even that irresponsible head-among-the-stars Mariner guessed at the snares we avoided, and flung me a ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... thing he finds; he can for a term of years "do the best with the least change possible"; he can turn to good account what is already half-made; and so, he believes, he can, in a sense, co-operate with God. So long as he was an irresponsible dreamer, a mere voice in the air, it was permitted him to indulge in glorious dreams, to utter shining words. Now that his feet are on the earth, now that his thoughts convert themselves into deeds, he must accept the limitations ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden |
