"Imprudent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fail to cause irritation, and to aggravate the difficulties of the Church, appears to have been fully recognised by the Commission; and we believe that no one was more prompt in exposing the inutility of such a measure than the Cardinal himself. The idea that anything imprudent or aggressive was to be found in his draft is contradicted by all the facts of the case, and has not a shadow of foundation in anything that is contained in the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... as is the custom of the world it cannot be but that offenses have occurred in this schism through malice and by imprudent people; for the devil causes such offenses, to disgrace the Gospel, yet all this is of no account in view of the great comfort which this teaching has brought men, that for Christ's sake, without our merit, we have forgiveness of sins and a gracious ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... glad of it, David," he said; "but your name must be kept stainless; and the more learned you are, the more people will look up to you, and the more readily the fly in the ointment will be seen and heard tell of. I am sorry to say your sister has been very imprudent. Pittenloch does nothing but talk of her queer ways, and doubtless there have been love promises between her and Mr. Campbell. Now if there is ill said about him and your sister, you must see that it puts you in a bad light to take ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... cause unknown; her known poverty; her employment by Mr. Stone; her tenancy of Mrs. Hughs' room; the latter's outburst to Cecilia; Hughs' threat; and, finally, the girl's pretty clothes—he had summed it up as just a common "plant," to which his brother's possibly innocent, but in any case imprudent, conduct had laid him open. It was a man's affair. He resolutely tried to look on the whole thing as unworthy of attention, to feel that nothing would occur. He failed dismally, for three reasons. First, his inherent love of regularity, of having everything in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... did I run the machine that I saw it would be most imprudent to let my clients have the full benefit. Cheapness would have made them uncontrollably greedy and exacting, and would have given them a wholly false idea of my value as soon as it had slipped their short memories how dearly ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... favour me," he asked, "by watching over her this one evening, and observing that she does nothing imprudent—does not, for instance, run out into the night-air immediately ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... should have been got into respecting the third reading of the Bill; but considering that the measure had passed by accident through its first stages without any debate, and that there were Lords who were still desirous of speaking upon it, it was imprudent of the Ministers not at once to give another day for that purpose, especially as they were sure to be compelled to do so ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... weaknesses of his former friend are sneered at and denounced with enough of truthfulness to enhance their malice. After allowing that Steele has humour, and is no disagreeable companion 'after the first bottle,' Swift adds, 'Being the most imprudent man alive, he never follows the advice of his friends, but is wholly at the mercy of fools and knaves, or hurried away by his own caprice, by which he has committed more absurdities in economy, friendship, love, duty, good manners, politics, religion, and writing than ever fell to one man's ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... have been an imprudent fool, I am on the brink of ruin. I owe more than two thousand pounds. We heard you had changed your mind, and Meadows came forward like a man, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the vine do not fully open and yet set fruit; and I hear from two experienced gardeners that this is the case with the vine in our hothouses; but as the flowers do not appear to be completely closed it would be imprudent to consider them as cleistogamic. The flowers of some aquatic and marsh plants, for instance of Ranunculus aquatalis, Alisma natans, Subularia, Illecebrum, Menyanthes, and Euryale, remain closely shut as long as they are submerged, and in this condition fertilise ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... settling her daughter without meddling about bridegrooms. The grandfather and grandmother were sorry for Gabriel Chartrant, and tearful over Celeste; still, when you are forming an alliance for your child, it is very imprudent to disregard great wealth and by preference give her to poverty. Their son Alexis convinced them of this; ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... as Bethune and Dick walked up the valley the former said: "It's my opinion that you were imprudent in one respect. You showed the fellows that it was you who found them out. It might have been better if you had, so to ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... I am in a quandary about the dinner, partly by reason of the inevitable speech, and partly the long sitting. I should very much like to attend, and I think I could go through with it. On the other hand, my wife declares it would be very imprudent, and I am not quite sure she is wrong. I wish you would tell me exactly what you think about ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... that poor Mr. Lawley was a little wrong in the head. A scholar and a gentleman, early misfortunes and an imprudent marriage had driven him to the mastership of the little country grammar-school; and here the perpetual annoyance caused to his refined mind by the coarseness of clumsy or spiteful boys, had gradually unhinged his intellect. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... Apollinaris, a Bishop of Gaul, who wrote in the fifth century, says, "We have not a more cruel and more dangerous enemy than the Saxons: they overcome all who have the courage to oppose them; they surprise all who are so imprudent as not to be prepared for their attack. When they pursue they infallibly overtake; when they are pursued their escape is certain. They despise danger; they are inured to shipwreck; they are eager to purchase booty with the peril ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... after hesitating and pondering in his helpless way, ended by agreeing with my mistress, and by coming back once more to the Hall with his fiddle under his arm. This renewal of their old habits might have been imprudent enough, as tending to weaken my mistress's case in the eyes of the world, but, for all that, it was the most sensible course she could take for her own sake. The harmless company of Mr. Meeke, and the relief of playing the old tunes again in the old ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... like was by the law of the Emperor Claudius, which imposed limitations upon the "jus vitae et necis" (the right of life and death) which Roman slavery put into the hand of the master. But if the Professor should be so imprudent as to cite us to the slave code for evidence of its merciful provisions, he will, in so doing, authorize us to cite him to that code for evidence of the nature of slavery. This authority, however, he would not like to give us; for he is unwilling to have slavery judged ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to imagine the excitement produced in the Sancerre district by the news of Monsieur de la Baudraye's imprudent marriage. ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... God of his fathers that Claire had nothing in common with such women as those: he thought he did not need her assurance to know that his honour, in the usual, narrow sense of the phrase, was safe in her hands, but still her strange, imprudent words of half-avowal racked him with jealous and, ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... d'Estournelles de Constant, who wrote at that very moment: "France has too many colonies already—far more in Asia, in Africa, in America, in Oceania than she can fructify. In this way she is immobilizing territories, continents, peoples, which nominally she takes over. And it is childish and imprudent to take barren possession of them, when other states allege their power to utilize them in the general interest. By acting in this manner, France, do what she may, is placing herself in opposition to the world's interests, and to those of the League of Nations. In the long run it is a serious ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... return you a thousand thanks for the assurance you give me of a welcome to a place where I believed my imprudent curiosity had made me penetrate too far. But, madam, may I, without being guilty of ill manners, dare to ask you by what adventure you know me? and how you, who live in the same neighborhood with me, should be so great a stranger ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... business at the capital, one member who is at his studies, and one who is married and resides on another estate. This is because the income did not amount to a certain sum, a very moderate sum in American eyes, without which a stay in town would have been imprudent. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... imprudent it would be to draw conclusions from an isolated case in which rational co-ordination or premeditated intention might appear to play its part. Every instinctive action no doubt has its motive; but does the animal in ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... America. Mr. Pitt, who was as wise as he was arrogant, was for taking immediate measures against Spain. He would have declared war at once, and have seized the plate fleet. Had George II. still lived, this judicious course—all boldness is judicious in war, in which there is nothing so imprudent as prudence—would have been adopted. But that monarch died on the 25th of October, 1760, and his grandson and successor, George III., had domestic objects to accomplish with which the continuance of the war was incompatible. His intention was to make peace with France, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... but, in spite of all these advantages, we cannot help thinking that, although well-versed in natural philosophy, this excellent gentleman proved himself quite ignorant of boy and girl nature. Even his daughter, Miss Agnes, feared her father had been unwise and imprudent on an occasion which she considered of ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... apparent than natural. By my advice he was directly weaned, and rapidly improved in health and appearance (the only medicine given being occasional doses of castor oil). About twelve months afterwards, in consequence of an imprudent exposure to cold, he was attacked with Bronchitis, and Meningitis supervened. Leeches were applied to the head, and other depletory measures actively employed, ...
— Remarks on the Subject of Lactation • Edward Morton
... breathed a profound sigh, and resumed the counting of her stitches. Yet perhaps, after all, it was better that her brother should cherish the memory of this unlucky attachment. It would preserve him from the hazard of any imprudent alliance in the future, and leave his fortune free, to descend by-and-by to the juvenile Listers. Isabella was not a particularly mercenary person, but she was a woman of the world, and had an eye to the future aggrandisement ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... 'For not imprudent of my loss to come, I saw from Contemplation's quiet cell His feet ascending to another home, Where public praise and envied ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... don't think so; I am sure Sally wouldn't do anything that was really wrong, but she is very imprudent." ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... benefactors these "imprudent" men are! How prudently most men creep into nameless graves; while now and then one or two forget ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... within these few days that I heard in what manner your acquaintance first commenced, and cannot suppose any thing but attachment to the daughter could carry you such imprudent lengths for the father: it certainly must be her art that drew you in to ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... you should avoid hearing what he will soon be very sorry you have heard. Were he not a mere lad himself, it would be as inexcusable as it is imprudent thus to speak of the troubles and annoyances that often beset the first year of wedded life. I am sorry for the poor youth, who means no harm nor disloyalty, and is only treating you as his old companion and playmate; but ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Salisbury after all the mischief is done." The Cornet proceeded—"I am very sorry, Gentlemen; it is very unlucky; but, about three o'clock this morning, I was suddenly seized with such a violent pain in my bowels, that Mrs. Dyke says it will be very imprudent for me to leave the house in my present state, for fear of catching cold; and in fact I think so too, and she insists upon it that I shall ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the imprudent fly, after she has been entrapped into the nets of her foe? Nothing but a skeleton. So it is with your fair wife, your precious daughter; nine times in ten nothing but a moral skeleton returns ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... alive the last time I heard from Vienna. But why imprudent? Mr. Clavering told me of your kind concern, but I assure you that I am neither a political nor a ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the nation was extremely alarmed at the danger of Constantinople becoming speedily and irremediably a Russian port. On the other hand, the national and military pride of the conquering Power was aroused, and it was felt that a single false step, a single imprudent menace, ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... time in this harbour; and, as our New Zealand guest expressed a great desire to go on shore one day, we consented to his accompanying us. We had scarcely entered our house, when we had reason to repent the imprudent step we had taken: all the natives were in commotion; messengers were sent off to George to acquaint him with the circumstance, and soon after we saw him, attended by all his relations, accoutred for war; that is, quite naked, their skins oiled and painted, and armed with ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... a letter from Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire, to Augustus Foster (London, May 4, 1812): 'Your little friend, Caro William (Lady Caroline Lamb), as usual, is doing all sorts of imprudent things for him (Lord Byron) and with him; he admires her very much, but is supposed by some to admire our Caroline (the Hon. Mrs. George Lamb) more; he says she is like Thyrsa, and her singing is enchantment to him.' From this extract it is obvious that Thyrza is alluded ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... we felt no alarm for our safety, as long at least as we remained upon the sea-shore, deeming the Somali would never be so imprudent as to attack us in such a vital place to them as Berbera, where their whole interests of life were centred, and where, by the simple process of blockading, we could so easily take retribution ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... certain number of days. As long as this operation from the right to the left had not been accomplished, as long as the left wing of the French army and even the center remained without the reenforcement of elements taken from the right, it would have been extremely imprudent, not to say rash, for the French high command to attempt a decisive battle. If General Joffre had risked a battle immediately he would have been playing the game without all his trumps in hand and would have been in danger of a defeat, and even of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... contempt that they seemed to think the appearance of these qualities would be of as little use to them as the reality. In short, Lord Scarborough was an honest, prudent man, capable of being a good friend, while Lord Chesterfield and Carteret were dishonest, imprudent creatures, whose principles practically told all their acquaintance, "If you do not behave to me like knaves, I shall either distrust you as hypocrites or laugh at you ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... defenders of the orthodox political economy found in it support for their tenets. Since in the organic world universal struggle is the condition of progress, it seemed obvious that free competition must be allowed to reign unchecked in the economic world. Attempts to curb it were in the highest degree imprudent. The spirit of Liberalism here seemed in conformity with the trend of nature: in this respect, at least, contemporary naturalism, offspring of the discoveries of the nineteenth century, brought reinforcements to the individualist doctrine, begotten of the speculations of the eighteenth: ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... sighted, which proved to be the British brig-sloop "Rifleman." The corvette gave chase, but the Englishman kept well in the offing; and, as the condition of the American crew was such that to lead them into action would have been imprudent, Morris abandoned the pursuit, and, putting into the Penobscot, dropped anchor off Hampden. Here, for the present, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... his whole manner, e held it imprudent to speak with me about the only subject on which I wished to talk—the king; and just then seeing the Duke of York advancing, I hastily ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... out among the Jews, Hadrian having established a colony called AElia Capitolina on the site of Jerusalem, and, not content with introducing pagan worship into the holy city, had even issued an edict forbidding the practice of circumcision. These imprudent measures produced a revolt among the Jews, who, under their leader Barcochab, fought with their usual courage and desperation. The war continued for several years, during which more than half a million of Jews are said to have perished. ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... imprudent, it is tragic—but, ah, it is so beautiful! Bit by bit these poor people have given up everything else; but to this they cling with all the power of their souls—they cannot give up the veselija! To do that would mean, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... most dreaded in New England and all the American colonies came to pass. Charles II. died, and his brother James, Duke of York, was crowned King of England. On ascending the throne, the very first act of James II. was one of honest but imprudent bigotry. Incapable of reading the signs of the times, or fully prepared to dare the worst that those signs could portend, James immediately sent his agent Caryl to Rome, to apologize to the pope for the long and flagrant heresy of England, and to endeavor to procure the re-admission of the ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... dangerous to prophesy. Not long ago I was speaking of Offenbach, trying to do justice to his marvellous natural gifts and deploring his squandering them. And I was imprudent enough to say that posterity would never know him. Now posterity is proving that I was wrong, for Offenbach is coming back into fashion. Our contemporaneous composers forget that Mozart, Beethoven and Sebastian Bach knew how to laugh at times. They distrust all ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... one malady for another, for he became attached to Miss Nugent, the daughter of his physician, and in a very little time formed what, in a worldly point of view, would be considered an imprudent marriage, but which secured the happiness of his future life; she was a Roman Catholic; but, however unfortunate dissenting creeds are in many instances, in this it never disturbed the harmony of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... that she must relieve her feelings, and the only possible way in which she could think of doing so was by warning our neighbour, Frau Wesendonck, with an emphasis she thought was well meant, against the consequences of any imprudent intimacy ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... had been before Acre; it had sustained considerable losses, and it would have been imprudent to expose it to more. The plague was in Acre, and the army had caught the contagion at Jaffa. The season for landing troops approached, and the arrival of a Turkish army near the mouths of the Nile was expected. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... do." His mots were often excellent, but it was the tone and joyous animation of the speaker that gave them their charm. It is said that in his later years, when his habitual loquaciousness occasionally sank into garrulity, he used to repeat his jests with imprudent frequency, shamelessly giving his companions the same pun with each course of a long dinner. There is a story that after his retirement from public life he used morning after morning to waylay visitors on their road through the garden to his house, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... "Imprudent, of course, but we haven't any banks or safes here," added Hunter, meeting the question in Ben's eyes. "Well, this rascal, Ross, wormed himself into his confidence, found out exactly where the bag was kept, and night before last, in the middle of the ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... might fall victims, and especially desirous of saving the baron de Besenval, commander of the army of Paris, under marshal de Broglie, and detained prisoner, Necker demanded a general amnesty and obtained it from the assembly of electors. This step was very imprudent, in a moment of enthusiasm and mistrust. Necker did not know the people; he was not aware how easily they suspect their chiefs and destroy their idols. They thought he wished to protect their enemies from the punishment they had incurred; the districts ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... feared that she advised me to take an imprudent step; but she was my guide, my teacher and friend in the house, and I resolved to do as she wished. There were no lights in the long gallery when we entered it again, only the white moonbeams coming through the ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... ago, a hen escaped from the poultry-yard of the Orlandi, and took refuge in that of one of the Colonne. The Orlandi claimed the hen. The Colonne maintained it was theirs. In the heat of the discussion, an Orlando was imprudent enough to threaten that he would summon the Colonne before the Juge de Paix, and put them on their oath. At this menace, an old woman of the Colonna family, who held the hen in her hand, twisted its neck, and threw it in the face of the mother of Orlando. “There,” said ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... out completely except on the books called edifices. Thought, under the form of edifice, could have beheld itself burned in the public square by the hands of the executioner, in its manuscript form, if it had been sufficiently imprudent to risk itself thus; thought, as the door of a church, would have been a spectator of the punishment of thought as a book. Having thus only this resource, masonry, in order to make its way to the light, flung itself upon it from all quarters. Hence the immense quantity of cathedrals which ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... determined manner, told her—"That if she would resign the child, and keep the father's name a secret, not only the child should be taken care of, but she herself might, perhaps, receive some favours; but if she persisted in her imprudent folly, she must expect no consideration on her own account; nor should she be allowed, for the maintenance of the boy, a sixpence beyond the stated sum for a poor man's unlawful offspring." Agnes, resolving not to be separated from ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... of course, unmannerly. The dog should have controlled his morbid thirst for knowledge. But there you are. Still, it was imprudent of Mr. Dunkelsbaum to kick him in the ribs. I felt that instinctively. Had the gentleman remained to argue, I should have said as much. ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... latter's borders consular courts which exercise what is called "extraterritorial jurisdiction." This system was, of course, pursued in Japan's case. It involved the confinement of the foreign residents to settlements grouped around the sites of their consular courts; for it would plainly have been imprudent that such residents should have free access to provincial districts remote from the only tribunals competent to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the city. As soon as the ball was opened he withdrew, in accordance with the Spanish ceremony; but M. d'Ainsi did the honours for him, and kept me company during the ball, conducting me afterwards to a collation, which, considering his command at the citadel, was, I thought, imprudent. I speak from experience, having been taught, to my cost, and contrary to my desire, the caution and vigilance necessary to be observed in keeping such places. As my regard for my brother was always predominant in me, I continually ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... occurred, as we have seen, in the summer of 1793. The king of France had been put to death on the 21st of January in that year; and in less than a month afterwards the convention had declared war against England. The murder of the king, alike imprudent as atrocious, had in fact united the princes of Europe against the revolutionary cause; and within France itself a strong reaction took place. The people of Toulon, the great port and arsenal of France on the Mediterranean, partook these sentiments, and invited the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... indignation. And Lenny, whose spirit was fairly roused at what the narrowness of his education conceived to be a signal injustice, placing the trunk of the tree between Mr. Stirn and himself, began that task of self-justification which it was equally impolitic to conceive and imprudent to execute, since, in such a case, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... disturbed by impecuniosity; but the most determined Bohemian has to live. For some years he strayed about the purlieus of literature, drudging, translating, and doing other cobbler's work. Two of his performances, however, were characteristic; he wrote an attack upon Malthus, and he made an imprudent marriage. Even Malthusians must admit that imprudent marriages may have some accidental good consequences. When a man has fairly got his back to the wall, he is forced to fight; and Hazlitt, at the age of thirty-four, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... not a solitary one. Too many find when they have toiled for years, That sweet Hope leaves them when their strength is gone; Which fills their future with alarming fears, And nothing for them but despair appears! O, why is this? Have they imprudent been? Or has great sickness sunk them in arrears? Perhaps it may be these; and yet I ween Another cause of trouble may ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... stock bands are imprudent in so carefully concealing the details of their government, and in secluding those details from the risk of discussion. The answer, no doubt will be, 'Let well alone; as you have admitted, there hardly ever before was so great a success as these ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... subsequent letter, the Lieutenant, after describing a New England sleighing frolic, says: "In England this would be esteemed extremely imprudent, and attended with dangerous consequences; but, after what I have related respecting bundling, I need not say, in how innocent a view this is looked upon. Apropos, as to that custom, along the sea coast, ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... tones. "Fire! fire!" And Ketch, whether he was really alarmed, or whether he recognized the head-master's voice, and thought it imprudent to hold out any longer, tumbled out of bed, opened the door, and appeared before them in attire more airy than elegant. Another minute, and impetuous Tom would ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... starve; one workman is obliged to renounce, for several years, his hope of becoming a master; and another, without any superior industry or skill, but in fact, from having made, with reference to his circumstances, rather an imprudent bargain, finds himself unexpectedly relieved from half his debt, and the possessor of a valuable source of profit; whilst the former owner of the machine, if he also has invested the money arising from its sale in the savings' bank, finds ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... he was of opinion there could not be less than fifteen hundred or two thousand people. I doubt not, had they been apprized of his coming, they would have attacked him. From these considerations, I thought it imprudent to send a boat up again; as we were convinced there was not the least probability of any of our ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... favorite of his kind but imprudent mother, was perfectly indifferent to the love or hatred of his elder brother. He did not himself regard him with affection, and he expected nothing from him, beyond the passive acquiescence in his welfare which ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... was the object of his visit; but why did he go there at all? Why my learned friend, Mr. Gurney, has given you the reason for his going to some person's house before he went to his own. He has told you, that it would have been highly imprudent, if he was Colonel De Bourg, for him to go to his own lodgings; the Stock Exchange would have had no difficulty in finding him out by means of the post-boys, had he driven home. He determined therefore to make a pretence for stopping at some other person's ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... me totally of my hearing in early boyhood. By the late war I lost all of my earthly possessions. I have a wife and family totally dependent on me for a support. A man employed to attend to my little manufacturing business as manager, by imprudent management, deprived me of every earthly dependence for a support. I had no refuge but God. This feeling was intense beyond expression—God was my only hope. I laid my case before him. Then this came ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... speeches which have appeared from the British Parliament, it is easy to perceive to what impolitic and imprudent excesses their passions and prejudices have, in every instance, carried them during the present war. Provoked at the upright and honorable treaty between America and France, they imagined that nothing more was necessary to be done to prevent its final ratification, than to promise, through ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... of breaking up the missions," said Alvarado, with gloomy brow. A skeleton was at this feast. The troubled Governor could not see the handwriting on the wall. He felt California was a priceless jewel to Mexico. He feared imprudent measures. Lying dormant, California slept since Cabrillo saw Cape Mendocino in 1542. After he turned his shattered prows back to Acapulco on June 27, 1543, it was only on November 10, 1602, that ambitious Viscaino raised the Spanish ensign at San ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... and hedges, unchecked by nothing. The wearied doe lost ground. Graceful redoubled his ardor, and was already stretching out his hand to seize his prey when all at once the ground gave way beneath his feet and he fell, with his imprudent companion, into a pit covered over with leaves. He had not recovered from his fall when the doe, approaching the brink, cried, "You are betrayed; I am the wife of the King of the Wolves, who is coming to eat you both." Saying ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... you, Mr. Watson, I don't know what will. This ain't pleasant business, but I can't help it," added Constable Cooke, who perhaps had begun to think it was imprudent to ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... where he ruptured a blood-vessel, and returned to England in so weak a state that he died on the 21st June, 1842, a few days after his arrival at the Euston Hotel, Euston Square, from whence it was considered, when he reached London, imprudent to remove him to Brompton. He was in the forty-fifth year of his age, and made his first appearance in London at Covent Garden on the 7th November, 1818. On the 30th November, 1823, Mr. Yates married Miss Brunton, an exemplary woman and an accomplished actress, who had ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... once uttered to a Mr. North this imprudent speech. "I disapprove abhor and detest the Results of Congress whether Continental or Provincial," but adds that he "took the first opportunity to inform Mr. North that I had respect only to two articles in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... this is only a surmise, nevertheless, as having some knowledge of brandy and mankind, White-Jacket will venture to state that, had Captain Claret been an out-and-out temperance man, he would never have given that most imprudent order to hard up the helm. He would either have held his peace, and stayed in his cabin, like his gracious majesty the Commodore, or else have anticipated Mad Jack's order, and thundered ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... character rises high in our esteem, independent of his merits as a writer. The cultivated and liberal mind of Tusser seems to have been ill-suited to his fortune, and to his vocation. A love of hospitality probably kept him from independence; yet if he was imprudent, we cannot help loving the man and admiring the justness of his sentiments on every subject connected ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... my dear, that was very imprudent! I had hoped you would keep clear of them in London. It is one thing showing kindness to an old friend in the country, and ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... shawl—are not these jewels that I wear," she continued, pointing to those well-known ornaments, "my dear Colonel's gift? Did you not relieve my brother Charles in this country and procure for him his place in India? Yes, my dear friend—and though you have been imprudent in money matters, my obligations towards you, and my gratitude, and my affection are always the same." Thus Miss Honeyman spoke, with somewhat of a quivering voice at the end of her little oration, but with exceeding state and dignity—for she ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... degree, is as necessary in business as clothes are in the common intercourse of life; and a man would be as imprudent who should exhibit his inside naked, as he would be indecent if he produced ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... that those over-anxious parents or nurses, who continually endeavour to prevent infants crying do them a material injury; for, by such imprudent management, their children seldom or never acquire a perfect form of the breast, while the foundation is laid in the pectoral vessels for obstructions ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... like a boy. "Something very imprudent, I'm sure you will say. I've mortgaged my little place down home. It did not bring much, but I had to have money for the wife and the children, and to keep me until Congress assembles; then I believe that everything ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... An imprudent man of common goodness of heart cannot but wish to turn even his imprudences to the benefit of others, as far as this is possible. If therefore any one of the readers of this semi-narrative should be preparing or intending a periodical work, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in a son so wanting in respect for the weaknesses of his mother-country; in a poet that had dared to chastise powerful enemies, and the limit of whose audacity was not even yet known, for his death had just condemned, through revelations and imprudent biographies, many persons and things to a sorry kind of immortality; to praise him, declare him guiltless, do him justice,—truly that would have been asking too much from England at that time. England has since made great strides in the path of generous ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... circumstances") faults, crimes, and acts of injustice committed by persons of defective consciousness, as also disasters befalling feeble beings unable to control their desires—innocent creatures, it may be, but thick-sighted, imprudent, and reckless. Under these conditions there would seem to be no call for the intervention of anything beyond the limit of normal human psychology. But such a conception of the theatre would be at absolute variance with ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... hardly time to eat. Our cidevant second mate, who was determined to get liberty if it was to be had, dressed himself in a long coat and black hat, and polished his shoes, and went aft and asked to go ashore. He could not have done a more imprudent thing; for he knew that no liberty would be given; and besides, sailors, however sure they may be of having liberty granted them always go aft in their working clothes, to appear as though they had no reason to expect anything, and then wash, dress, and shave, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the 13th of April, 1790, occasioned by the warmth of the discussions upon Dom Gerle's imprudent motion in the National Assembly, having afforded room for apprehension that the enemies of the country would endeavour to carry off the King from the capital, M. de La Fayette promised to keep watch, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... painted keepers of brothels; the misses sink into grinning hussies, who are branded on the cheeks and forehead with the ineradicable mark of shame; and the warm and coy pages, whom at the worst he might have supposed to be imprudent or improvident girls, stare at him with the deathly-cold implacability of the commonest street-walkers—those in fact who glory in their shame, and whose very contact is vile to anything with a spark of healthy moral or physical life in it. If, indeed, they had lain off their sickly flesh with ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... look at the resplendent fair one and discern her true outline; though I'm afraid, by the by, the smoked glass is apt to be missing just at the moment it is most wanted. I daresay, now, even a man fortified with a knowledge of the classics might be lured into an imprudent marriage, in spite of the warning given him by ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... its troubles, it must undergo a painful process before it can lay an unquestioned claim to its title—Australia Felix. Land jobbing; banking facilities at one time freely afforded, and at another suddenly withdrawn; ventures beyond the means of those engaged in them; imprudent speculations, in which useful capital was either rashly risked or hopelessly sunk—these unquestionably have been amongst the causes which have brought on the commercial disasters of New South Wales. It is seldom advantageous for an emigrant, newly arrived, to become a proprietor ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... had passed away: he plainly saw, what Russell had pointed out to him, that he should spoil the inside of his house for the sake of the outside; and, for his own part, he preferred comfort to show. It was not, therefore, to please his own taste that he ran into this imprudent expense, but merely to gratify the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... double, treble, or decuple their worth, according to the psychology of the customer. They were great bullies. And they were, further, great money-lenders—on behalf of their wealthier clients. In obedience to a convenient theory that it is imprudent to leave money too long in one place, they were continually calling in mortgages, and re-lending the sums so collected on fresh investments, thus achieving two bills of costs on each transaction, and sometimes three, besides employing an army ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... him. I am not praising her conduct or setting her up as a model for Miss Bullock to imitate. Miss B. knows how to regulate her feelings better than this poor little creature. Miss B. would never have committed herself as that imprudent Amelia had done; pledged her love irretrievably; confessed her heart away, and got back nothing—only a brittle promise which was snapt and worthless in a moment. A long engagement is a partnership which one party is free to keep or to break, but which involves all the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... general more extensively than Sir Francis, but he is far less acquainted with the feelings and associations of the English mind. There is also a wariness about him, which I do not like so well as the imprudent ingenuousness of the baronet. He seems to me to have a cause in hand—Hobhouse versus Existing Circumstances—and that he considers the multitude as the jurors, on whose decision his advancement in life depends. But in this ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... chuckled again and said nothing. He had put an imprudent question. He turned away carelessly, placed more wood on the fire, and poked the embers. Tyope looked up at the sky, and thus the vivid, scornful glance the other threw ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... the features of the case, I thought the proposed marriage a most imprudent one; and, on questioning Miss Wyndham as to her feelings, I was, I must own, gratified to learn that she agreed with me; indeed, she conceived that your conduct gave ample proof, my lord, of your readiness to be absolved from your engagement; pardon ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... hand upon the unconscious offender, and dealt him a heavy blow on the side of the face. At this sight—with nerves already overstrung—Marguerite became unable to control her usually placid steed; and Alain le Gallais—for he was the militia officer—was diverted from his instinctive but imprudent impulse of immediate retaliation, by seeing the young lady slip from her saddle into ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... given by a letter from Mrs. Bronson, proposing Asolo as the intermediate stage. She had fitted up for herself a little summer retreat there, and promised that her friends should, if they joined her, be also comfortably installed. The journey was this time propitious. It was performed without imprudent haste, and Mr. Browning reached Asolo unfatigued and to all ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... country quarters; ennui, flute-playing and idleness. Mr. Digby had no resources on a rainy day—except flute-playing; pretty girl of inferior rank; all the officers after her; Digby smitten; pretty girl very virtuous; Digby forms honorable intentions; excellent sentiments; imprudent marriage. Digby falls in life; colonel's lady will not associate with Mrs. Digby; Digby cut by his whole kith and kin; many disagreeable circumstances in regimental life; Digby sells out; love in a cottage; execution in ditto. Digby had been much applauded ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... took a high turn, as it often does on such occasions. The ruin of good men by bad wives, and, more particularly, the frustration of many a promising youth's high aims and hopes and the extinction of his energies by an early imprudent marriage, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... and renewed application to the bottle, which she was accustomed to use as an anodyne. The Captain rated the woman soundly for her intemperance, and pointed out to her the fatal consequences which must ensue if she persisted in her imprudent courses. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... parted from Norbert than she saw the risk that she was running by her imprudent conduct. She was endangering her whole future and her reputation,—all indeed that is most precious to a young girl. For an instant the thought of confiding all to her parents entered her brain; but she rejected the idea almost as soon as she had conceived ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... thus cease. And then, having diminished the number of Christians who understand and can be used in occupations, and having left, as is necessary to the service of the commonwealth the required number of heathen, who are not imprudent or gamblers (for there are many who are too dangerous and cunning to be permitted to remain), all the other heathen Sangleys of these islands should be collected, put on vessels, and sent back to their own lands, with great care, rigor, and despatch. This diligence should last ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... knitting, 'you talk as though my girls were likely to quarrel. Geraldine is far too sweet-tempered to quarrel with anyone; she will only give Audrey a little advice—dear Audrey is dreadfully careless, she takes after her father in that; John is always doing imprudent things. Geraldine has made me most uncomfortable this afternoon; I am quite sure that Mrs. Blake will be an ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... describe as frequenting the bazaars of Constantinople, who skulk about all day, yellow, emaciated, ragged, sneaking; and at evening, when the bazaars are open, slink to the opium-shop, swallow their morsel and become tranquil and glorified seers. And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent genius struggling for years with paltry pecuniary difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted and fruitless, like ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to the history of the four other boats; and first, that of the principal, which was the long-boat. As soon as it descried the land, it tacked and stood out in the open sea; because it was on the shallows, and it would have been imprudent to pass the night in one metre, or one metre 30 centimetres of water; it had already grounded two or three times. On the 6th, about four o'clock in the morning, finding itself too far from the coast, and the sea very ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... the favors she will be called upon to grant. She relies so entirely upon her virtue, that she challenges danger by courting it. She experiments with her power of resistance; she wishes to see how far the granting of a few unimportant favors can lead her. Here is where she is imprudent, for by her very rashness she accustoms her imagination to contemplate suggestions which are the final cause of her seduction. She travels a long way on the road without perceiving that she has moved a single step. If upon looking back ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... baby. My son lived to grow up; and it was my son who lost me my place. I did my best for him; I got him into a respectable office in London. They wouldn't take him without security. I'm afraid it was imprudent; but I had no rich friends to help me, and I became security. My boy turned out badly, sir. He—perhaps you will kindly understand what I mean, if I say he behaved dishonestly. His employers consented, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... husband was leaning over me. He raised me with tenderness from the ground, and conjured me, in the mildest accents, to be comforted; to pardon the severity of those words, which had arisen from a fear that, by an imprudent avowal on my part, I should risk both his happiness and my own. He informed me that he was heir to one of the first families in England; and before he set out for the continent, he had pledged his honor to his father ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... encouraging the excesses of speculation, an immense effect is usually attributed to their issues of notes, but until of late hardly any attention was paid to the management of their deposits, though nothing is more certain than that their imprudent extensions of credit take place more frequently by means of their deposits than of their issues. Says Mr. Tooke: "Supposing all the deposits received by a banker to be in coin, is he not, just as much as the issuing banker, exposed to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... Sea to a very considerable Height; and this was the reason why I did not attempt to go in with the Ship, because I saw clearly that no winds could blow there but what was right in or right out, that is, Westerly or Easterly; and it certainly would have been highly imprudent in me to have put into a place where we could not have got out but with a wind that we have lately found to blow but one day in a Month. I mention this because there was some on board that wanted me to harbour at any rate, without ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... They insure comfort and confidence, but not always safety. It is well to be able to leap a fence without being thrown. It is better to know how to stop and open a gate and shut it after you, lest some day you should have a horse which cannot leap, or a sprained wrist which may make the leap imprudent for yourself. You can acquire the seat almost insensibly while learning the management, but you must study in order to learn the management. However, you came mainly for enjoyment to-night, I think. Go and ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... prisoners to the Earl of Selkirk's tent. When Selkirk learned that the two other partners of the North-West Company were also in his power, he resolved upon an imprudent act, one which can scarcely be defended. Not only did he refuse his prisoner bail; he framed indictments against M'Kenzie and M'Loughlin and ordered the constables to take them in charge. A short examination of William M'Gillivray convinced Lord Selkirk that ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... very handsome legacy, and sometimes the abandonment of all he possessed, was considered as a safe passport to the enjoyment of treasures in heaven. The priest, called to administer the last consolations to the patient, never lost an opportunity of exacting these imprudent donations; and so long did this abuse endure, and to such an extent did it arrive and predominate in the public customs of the age, that, under the reign of Charles III., the Council of Castille promulgated a royal order, declaring that all such testamentary dispositions made ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... terribly startled when he heard the voice of Stumpy. He was the possessor of a mighty secret, and he felt that he had been very imprudent in exposing it to discovery. It would have been better to dig up the hidden treasure in the daytime, when the light would have enabled him to observe the approach of an intruder. But he was glad it was Stumpy, rather than any other person, who had detected ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... From the absence of any signs of bears about the roof of the cave I assumed that the cave was as usual uninhabited, but I thought I would gratify my curiosity by looking into it, so I got down on to the ledge, and was imprudent enough to leave my guns with the people on the roof above. As there were no signs of bears on the ledge or at the entrance, I told one of the natives to go in and take a look at the cave, but he had only penetrated a few feet from the entrance, ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... the creation of the Board of National Education, but, to quote Dr. Starkie,[24] the present Resident Commissioner of the Board, 'the more important part of the scheme, dealing with a university and secondary education, was shelved, in spite of Mr. Wyse's warnings that it was imprudent, dangerous, and pernicious to the social condition of the country, and to its future tranquillity, that so much encouragement should be given to the education of the lower classes, without at the same time due provision being ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... you are too imprudent, Marsa. I am not a man to make recoil by speaking of danger. Through the gate, or over the wall if the gate is barricaded, I shall come to you again, and you will have ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet |
