"Unreliability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his chief defect as a field hand—his unreliability. He seems to have no great pride in finishing out a job, although he is a good worker while he is at it. The Captain used to send in the wagon to bring men out, but refused absolutely to let any man ride in anything going the other way. Nevertheless the hand, when the wanderlust ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... too, the well-known unreliability of the vent-pipe in other ways and the frequency with which it is found totally closed by grease, it becomes something more than folly to recommend the public to place implicit ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... those recounted in European literature, we have left strictly alone. One ever finds that the older the individual the less one can learn satisfactorily of beginnings of tendencies, just on account of the unreliability of the principal actor in the drama. The cases of older swindlers at first sight seem to offer much for the student of criminalistics, if only for purely descriptive purposes, but in the literature we have failed to find any satisfactory studies of the formative years of such careers. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... each kind is frequently sufficient to induce belief. The best possible kind of evidence, the kind that is least liable to contain error or falsehood, is a combination of both direct and indirect. Either one by itself may be untrustworthy. The unreliability of evidence given by eyewitnesses is shown by the conflicting stories they frequently tell concerning the same incident even when they are honestly attempting to relate the facts as they occurred. Also, it is always possible that ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... very well, but Chopin was faint and febrile in his music before he went to Majorca, and the plain facts adduced by Gutmann and Niecks cannot be passed over. Henry James, an old admirer of Madame Sand, admits her utter unreliability, and so we may look upon her evidence as romantic but by no means infallible. The case now stands: Chopin may have written a few of the Preludes at Majorca, filed them, finished them, but the majority of them were in his portfolio in 1837 and 1838. Op. 45, a ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... words; as: "You can tell by his actions whether he is good or not." "If he acts nice he is nice." "Actions show for themselves." Group (2) contains about 25 per cent of the correct responses. (3) Emphasis on unreliability of words; as: "You can't tell by his words, he might lie or boast." "Because you can't always believe what people say." (Group (3) contains 15 per cent of the correct responses.) (4) Responses which state that a man's deeds are sometimes better than his words; as: "He might talk ugly and ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... expected whiskey, in one of the cut banks of the river. The teamster corroborated the Indian. Wild Cat Bill and Burroughs swore that neither owned the confiscated liquor. Colonel Macleod knew nothing of Charlie or Bill; but he considered the standing of Burroughs, also the unreliability of most Indians' testimony, and finally acquitted Burroughs unconditionally, while declaring Bill and Charlie guilty of smuggling, and he sentenced them accordingly. Burroughs promptly furnished the money for the payment of Bill's fine, and Latimer, believing ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... States so favorable to it. Excitement rose still higher when the Spanish Government proposed to bestow a larger measure of autonomy. When, however, the Cortes decided upon less liberal arrangements, the Autonomists declared that they had been deceived, and the Nationalists denounced the utter unreliability of Spanish promises. Even if the concessions had been generous, the result probably would have been the same, for by this time the plot to set Cuba free had become so widespread, both in the island itself and among the refugees in the United States, that the inevitable ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... facts and most of the traditions still current about Shakespeare a century after his death. It would be easy for any undergraduate to distinguish fact from legend in Rowe's preface; and scholarship since Steevens and Malone has demonstrated the unreliability of most of the local traditions that Betterton reported from Warwickshire. Antiquarian research has added a vast amount of detail about the world in which Shakespeare lived and has raised and answered questions that never occurred to Rowe; but it has recovered little more ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... subject of Shenstone's ballad. The vaporizings of the parrot were also largely inspired by the trials of the rebels, but the sagacious bird frequently drew upon such stock subjects as the follies of the gay world, the character of women, the unreliability of venal praise and interested personal satire, and the advantages of making one's will—the latter illustrated by a story. Somewhat more unusual was a letter from an American Poll, representing how much it was to the interest of England to preserve, protect, ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... comment or criticism of mine moved so reticent a man to confide in me. He was, I think, defending himself against an imputation of slackness and unreliability I had made in relation to a great public movement in which he had disappointed me. But he plunged suddenly. "I ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells |
