"Officialdom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Adventure (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is the title of a stirring piece of sensational fiction. But fiction it is not, though in some of its disclosures it may be considered sensational enough. In this history of the invention of the Paravane Mr. CORNFORD hurls a lot of well-directed bricks at Officialdom, and concludes his book by giving us his frank opinion of the way in which the Navy ought to be run. It is impossible, even if one does not subscribe to all his ideas, to refrain from commending the enthusiasm with which he writes of those who, in spite of great difficulties, set ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... had a leader yet," he said, "whom Officialdom didn't spoil." All this time Maraton was standing with the door in one hand and his other hand upon the shoulder of the man whom he was endeavouring to get rid of. His grasp suddenly tightened. The door was closed and the reporter ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... devoted to officialdom, and then—the time had come to use the key, for I was already in fairyland; the covers of the "Arabian Nights" had closed on me, and shut ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... privilege from it. So Washington's fashionable society has come to realize, even more clearly than does the rest of the country, that, despite spasmodic struggles and apparent spurts of reaction, power has passed to the plutocracy, and that officialdom is, as a rule, servant verging toward slave. Still, form is a delusion of tenacious hold upon the human mind. The old lady's discoveries of Craig's political prospects did not warm her toward him as would news that he was in the way of being vastly rich; but she retained enough of the fading ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... out, at our first stopping-place, that the trunk of our new companion had been substituted for one of our own, which, of course, was left behind. It was ultimately recovered, I believe, but it seemed as if the entire world of French officialdom had to be upheaved from its foundations in order to ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... flowers, BRITANNIA'S trident's wreathed with posies, And Fancy sees in Flora's showers Thistles and Shamrocks blent with Roses. The Indian Lotus let us twine With gorgeous bloom from Afric's jungles Canadian Birch with Austral Pine. Tape-bound Officialdom oft bungles; Some blow too hot, some breathe too cold, O'er-chill are some, and some o'er-gushing; But the same blood-stream, warm and bold, Through all our veins is ever rushing; And so to all true hearts to-day Comes "Welcome as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... buoyancy abandoned me. The atmosphere of officialdom would kill anything that breathes the air of human endeavour, would extinguish hope and fear alike in the supremacy of paper and ink. I passed heavily under the curtain which the Malay coxswain of the harbour launch raised ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... inaugurate the spoils system, he at least gave it a mission. It was to save the country from the curse of officialdom. His successor, Van Buren, brought the system to a perfection that only the experienced politician could achieve. Van Buren required of all appointees partizan service; and his own nomination, at Baltimore, was made a foregone conclusion by the host of federal job-holders who ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... if I enter a gentle protest About the manner in which you comport yourself When taking the air about the streets. For, looking at you, one would form the opinion That you were a man of much worth and nobility, That you were high in officialdom, A councillor of the king or a learned judge, Or one whose piety and wisdom Had marked him out to ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... relating of this, loses his temper.—"An Official of the Government, a Bey with a third-class Medjidi decoration from the Sultan! As if Officialdom could not boast of a single scoundrel—as if any rogue in the Empire, with a few gold coins in his purse, were not eligible to the Hamidian decorations! And a third-class decoration! Why, I have it on good authority that these Medjidi Orders were given to a certain Patriarch in a bushel to distribute ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... to the public weal, and his work is penetrated by distrust of power as such. There was much in the history of the time to justify his attitude. It was difficult at that time to believe in an honest officialdom putting the commonwealth above every personal or corporate interest, and reformers naturally looked to individual initiative as the source of progress. Secondly, and this was a more philosophic argument, the individual was supposed to understand his own interest ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... told me about Major Funkhouser, and how he had refused an exhibition permit for one of her films called "The Little American." Curious to see the film rejected by Chicago officialdom, I asked Miss Pickford if she would have it run off for my benefit. I could see nothing in the film that could hurt the susceptibilities of any except the Germans with whom we are ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... extensive provincial and municipal system. It has already fallen down in some respects, and it has become necessary to centralize certain functions, quite as it has become desirable in several of our own matters. Cuba has, perhaps, an undue overload of officialdom, somewhat too many public officers, and quite too many people on its pay-rolls. The feature of Cuba's Constitution that is of greatest interest and importance to the United States is what is known as the Platt Amendment. The provision for a Constitutional Convention in Cuba was made in what was ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... and flustered in manner; his niece, fresh and eager, in her pretty dinner dress, a curious contrast to the antiquated garb and parchment face of old Cazalette, who sat by her, watchful and doubting; the officialdom-suggesting figure of the police-inspector, erect and rigid in his close-fitting uniform; the detective, rubicund and confident, though of what one scarcely knew; Lorrimore and myself, keen listeners and watchers, and last, but not by any means the least ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... a parchment from the capacious pocket of his coat; he put on his most solemn air of officialdom, and pointing with extended forefinger to ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... education, public buildings, engineering, finance—everything from the smallest administrative duty to the all-engrossing functions of legislation devolves upon this commission. They can vacate any office, can create any office, and without limit fix any salary they choose. The entire officialdom, outside of the commission itself, and all the employes and the servants of the city are by law made the agents, servants, and dependents of the council. The possibilities for machine power with this ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... and the Thames, but is not otherwise remarkable. The village is not much more than a farmhouse and a noble barn; perhaps Wisley is better known for its pond and its garden. The garden, unhappily, is almost a thing of the past. Experiment and officialdom have settled heavily on its sandy soil, and the wilder charm of the old pleasance has left it. A few years ago, when its late owner, Mr. Wilson of Weybridge, was alive, it was a delight to many hundreds ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... his secret report, placing before the Secretary of State the exact nature of the war-cloud which once again threatened to arise over Europe, and of which our Embassies in Berlin and Vienna, with all the pomp of their officialdom, ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... secret societies founded to publish the Bible, and Colonel Ingersoll will lecture at the hall of religion, and the prisons will be crowded with martyred iconoclasts incredulous of the gospel of science. No, there is nothing so unwise as your optimistic organized creeds, with their suggestions of officialdom, red-tape, and back-stairs influence. We shall never be perfectly religious and moral till we are trained from childhood to ungodly works, forced to attend long sermons on the error of existence, and badgered into public impiety ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... clothed these days, and one would never know that he had worn his hair otherwise than short. There are no more neatly plaited braids hanging down the back, and the beautiful silks and satins, furs and peacock feathers are things of the past. These peacock feathers, emblems of our old officialdom, are now bought by foreign ladies as a trimming on their hats. Shades of Li Hung-chang and Chang Chih-tung! What will they say if looking over the barriers they see the insignia of their rank and office gracing the glowing head-gear of the tourists who form great parties and come racing ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... through Dumont to the south, there once passed a never ceasing procession of autos, encountering guards and sentinels for a mile south of the camp. The atmosphere of military officialdom permeated the public approaches for miles ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... expedient upon his arrival. The new governor was an honest, well-intentioned soul, neither mentally incapable nor lacking in personal courage. He might have served his King most acceptably in many posts of routine officialdom, but he was not the man to handle the destinies of half a continent in critical years. His mission, to be sure, was no sinecure, for the Iroquois had grown bolder with the assurance of support from the English. Now that they were securing arms and ammunition ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... examined my credentials every night had hitherto winked at my guilt, so that the bolt fell upon us from a clear sky. It is almost questionable whether it had a right to fall at that moment at all. It was certainly a case of officious officialdom. For we had stopped simply to change kuruma, and the unwritten rule of the road runs that so long as the traveler keeps moving he is safe. To catch him napping at night is ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... Welles, more susceptible about press attacks on her idol—and everybody in Washington officialdom's idol—the President, called attention to fresh ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... pay for the privilege of breaking the laws. It would be the story of Chris Magee, the good-natured, human boss; of Blakeley, the upright prosecutor; of the methods of hired detectives and the corruption of officialdom. Pittsburg has riches, art, organized charity, and piety; but she lacks wealth, beauty, social justice, and religion. And sending the "bad" to prison, and electing the "good" to office, and changing the paper charters of the city, are ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... "After all these weary months of hoping, and long-distance broomstick practice, and of parachute practice, and of conflict with narrow officialdom, I have come—and this is the result. I am separated from my broomstick, which has all the germ-bombs hanging from its collar—the germs are those of dissension and riot—I am marooned upon an English cloud, with no enemy at my mercy but a paltry ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... orders that the permis de sejour are to be more severely restricted than before. Once a passport is issued, it is of some value; but the permis de sejour is a weapon in the hands of the lower ranks of German officialdom, which they use with Pomeranian cruelty. Every German bureaucrat in Alsace-Lorraine aims at preventing Frenchmen from residing there, at getting them out of the country; and nothing earns them greater favour in the eyes of their chiefs. Therefore, if this ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... railways essential to the rapid success of those great military operations. Equally chastening is the reflection that from its very inception less than twenty years ago, the pioneers of this vast undertaking had constantly to reckon with the indifference and inertia of Anglo-Indian officialdom, and with the almost solitary exceptions of Sir Thomas Holland, then at the head of the Geological Survey, and Sir Benjamin Robertson, afterwards Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces where the first but unavailing explorations were made, seldom received more than a minimum of countenance ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... rapine. By May, 1918, he appears to have been transformed into a perfect type of "Red" that deceived and terrorized the Russian population and gave credence to the Bolshevik assertion that "former officialdom is now acting with the proletariat." How well the diarist deceives the Bolsheviki and sustains this claim of Trotzky is fully revealed in the dramatic incidents recorded: nowhere in literature is found ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... Ballaarat, et il nous faut des briques—revenez me voir.' And yet, on the gold-field, this man was feared by the few who could not help it, respected by the many—detested by all, because he was the Resident Commissioner—that is, all the iniquities of officialdom at the time were indiscriminately visited on his gold-lace cap, which fact so infatuated his otherwise not ordinary brains, that they protruded through his eyes, whenever he was sure he had to perform a dooty. I would willingly turn burglar to get hold of the whole of ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... should turn out to be a Spanish model by del Mazo, the great ones who guide us and teach the people to love art will see to it, I trust, that the picture is moved to a position befitting its mediocrity. It is this unholy alliance between Expertise and Officialdom[18] that squanders twenty thousand on an unimpeachable Frans Hals, and forty thousand on a Mabuse for which no minor artist will wish to take credit.[19] For the money a judicious purchaser could have made one ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... as to gain the wicket before the employee there awoke to the situation. Otherwise, such is the temper of British petty officialdom, he might have detained the fugitive. As it was, Kirkwood surrendered his ticket and ran out into the street with his luck still a dominant factor in the race. For, looking back, he saw that Mrs. Hallam had been held up at the gate, another victim of British red-tape; ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... roubles in his pocket, Russian officialdom is not so gracious. By the expenditure of a few more coins I got my dog through the Customs without trouble, and had leisure to look about me. A miserable object was being badgered by half a dozen men in uniform, and he—his ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... these matters, and remember that all imprisonment is rather terrible, and that all absolute authority (especially among underlings) is apt to become tyrannous. In the prison camps of every nation it is examples of a foolish military officialdom that make for embitterment and degradation; and in these camps, too, it is the tact which comes of true insight, that is doing much for that brotherhood of hearts which is the only way to peace. "These people," says Eugster in another place, "ought to be treated with tact. They should ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... things happen of their own accord, as you would like them to. The progressive stereotype, powerful to incite work, almost completely obliterates the attempt to decide what work and why that work. Laissez-faire, a blessed release from stupid officialdom, assumes that men will move by spontaneous combustion towards a pre-established harmony. Collectivism, an antidote to ruthless selfishness, seems, in the Marxian mind, to suppose an economic determinism towards efficiency and wisdom on the part of socialist officials. Strong government, imperialism ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... period. The delegate, Trailles, satisfied Antonin's rancor against Giguet: his official recommendations caused the latter's defeat. Both the would-be prefect and the sub-prefect vainly sought the hand of Cecile Beauvisage. Goulard cultivated the society of officialdom: Marest, Vinet, Martener, Michu. [The ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... officialdom grumbled in vain at novelties which have now become accepted necessities of ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... first been under official management. When, therefore, the Church surrendered control it was only natural that secular officialdom should extend its protection and guidance. Local corporations, recognizing the commercial advantages of an attraction which could annually draw crowds of country customers into the towns, made themselves responsible for the production of the plays. While delegating all the hard work to ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... of sheets of paper and scribbled the drafts of two letters couched in the most elegant phraseology, as is customary when addressing Italian officialdom. ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... surrounded by his secretaries and attaches, all apparently delighted; and on my asking him, through his interpreter, how he liked it, he said, "Very much; this shows the Europeans that in China we know how to amuse ourselves." Of the fact that it was a rather highly charged caricature of Chinese officialdom he seemed either really or ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... distributed numbers to those waiting, and the applicants would then have been able, by calculating the time, to go about their business and return when necessary. Another instance of this fatal red-tapism of French officialdom came in the shape of a summons from the fiscal office of Vernon, where I have a little country place on the Seine, to pay the sum of two francs, which is the annual tax for a float I had there for boating purposes. This trivial paper, coming in amidst the whirlpool of mobilization, ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... there was that in the newer figures which suggested a sudden and reluctant surrender of sleeping privileges. Had our supposititious watcher possessed an intimate and contemptuous knowledge of Caracuna officialdom, he would have surmised that lavish sums of money had been employed to stir the port and customs ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... practise its rites in secret, and the Tunguses[35] know no other faith. Only few Europeans have beheld the weird ceremonies performed by these people, generally at night in the depths of the forest or out on the lonely "Tundra," far from the eye of officialdom. The most lucid description of Shamanism which I have been able to obtain is that given by Mr. J. Stadling, the Swedish explorer, who led a few years ago an expedition through Northern Siberia in search of Monsieur Andre. Mr. Stadling writes: "The Universe, according ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... Cornwall." Or again, "I want and mean—if it is permitted—to live in a small cottage in the country; to say mass and office, and to write books. I think that is honestly my highest ideal. I hate fuss and officialdom and backbiting—I wish to be at peace with God and man." This was his dream. The house at Hare Street was ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Dissolution of the society; boredom; ennui; loss of purpose and direction; growing dissension; power struggle and avoidance of responsibility for trends that were little understood and generally beyond the control of existing officialdom. ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing |
