"Unreliable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... known—yet it resolved to this: that he dared not stand before her with his heart beating as if he had run for miles and his chest suffocating with emotions—the very features of his face uncertain, his voice unreliable. . . . If a man entered the cage of a strange tiger, as little master of himself as this—it would be taking his life in his own silly hands. Skag couldn't get past this point, and he had a romantic adjustment in his mind about Carlin ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... long silence the other boar said, "You know, I think we're taking all this too seriously. Those peels probably floated over here all by themselves, and you know how unreliable mice are. Besides, if there had been an invasion, I would have ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... of the middle and northern counties are insurrectionary,—burning bridges, destroying telegraph lines, etc.,—and can be kept down only by the presence of troops. A large portion of the foreign troops organized by General Fremont are unreliable; indeed, many of them are already mutinous. They have been tampered with by politicians, and made to believe that if they get up a mutiny and demand Fremont's return the government will be forced ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... principle that habits, to be fixed and stable, must be followed by satisfactory results and that working along the opposite line, that of having annoyance follow a lapse in the conduct, is uneconomical and unreliable. This principle applies particularly to moral habits. Truth telling, bravery, obedience, generosity, thought for others, church going, and so on must be followed by positive satisfaction, if they are to be part of ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... it is to feel safe. And we see to it that they do not. Death waits for them at the street corner, on their travels, at their own doorsteps. They never know at what moment the bomb may not be thrown, or the pistol fired. It is sad that explosives are so unreliable. There are many difficulties. You would not believe the obstacles that we find placed in our path at every turning. And for those who are suspected there is Siberia, and the mines. But it is worth it. It is worth anything to feel that one is working and ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... upon those who were suspected of being on the side of the Union, but went further and became their deadly enemy. Mr. Riley and the other members of the Committee of Safety knew all this, and yet they employed him, the most vindictive and unreliable man in the neighborhood, to keep them posted in regard to what the Union men and free negroes were doing and saying. It is not to be supposed that men of their intelligence would put much faith in his reports, but they furnished an ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... the double-hull design and fitted with an engine built by Symington. She reached a speed of 7 mph on the Forth and Clyde Canal. However, Miller lost interest when he found that the Symington engine was unreliable and that Great Britain showed very little public ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... worked around the Army Hotel and received in return his bed and one meal ticket a day. Expected to leave the city as soon as the weather got warmer. Evidently a kind of tramp with a tendency to become worse. Looked wild and unreliable. ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... them, authors have quoted from them whenever they desired an authority to prove that which they wished themselves and their readers to believe of trumped-up stories of Napoleon's despotism and evildoings. Certainly, Bourrienne is the last and most unreliable of all the chroniclers that may be quoted when writing a history of the Emperor. Neither his character nor any of his personal qualities imbues the impartial reader with confidence in either his ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... There was only the mildest breeze about; it was barely audible among the leaves above; and yet—so unreliable are the breezes of still summer nights,—with a sudden, tiny and almost imperceptible outburst, did this treacherous breeze lift Mr. Townsend's brand-new straw hat from his head, and waft it over the hedge of trim box-bushes. This ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... coming up to the required standard of utility, and are characterized by defects which are at once forced upon us by a little close examination. Felt is an admirable non-conductor of heat, but owing to its combustible nature it is quite unreliable when subject to the heat of a high pressure of steam. A large fragment of this material which had been taken off the boiler of a North River steamboat was exhibited at the meeting, scorched and charred as if it had been exposed ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... water motor when the quantity of water decreases during the summer months. Wind motors were formerly extensively used for milling purposes, but they are now gradually disappearing. They are too irregular and unreliable, although they utilize a very cheap motive power. It is not advantageous to expend a large amount of capital for a mill which often is unable to work at the very time when there are favorable opportunities ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... French than English; it is subtle, a little cruel, not as tolerant as it seems, thoroughly a man's point of view, and not, as with Meredith, man's and woman's at once. He sees all that is irresponsible for good and evil in a woman's character, all that is unreliable in her brain and will, all that is alluring in her variability. He is her apologist, but always with a certain reserve of private judgment. No one has created more attractive women, women whom a man ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... to pass around a pulley, the revolution of which actuated the pen of the recording drum. This should have been successful but for the difficulty of making good mechanical connection between the recorder and the pulley. Backlash caused an unreliable record, and this arrangement had to be abandoned. The motion of the wire was then made to actuate the recorder through a hinged lever, and this arrangement holds, but days and even weeks have been lost in grappling the difficulties ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... her boarders, insisted upon changing residence, as she disliked that section of the city. This she did, taking in new lodgers—unreliable, indigent folk who ran up large bills or never paid at all—and in a short time she found herself compelled to sell her furniture and abandon her ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... the ranch in safety, and after securing him with a collar and a strong chain, we staked him out in the pasture and removed the cords. Then for the first time I could examine him closely, and proved how unreliable is vulgar report where a living hero or tyrant is concerned. He had not a collar of gold about his neck, nor was there on his shoulders an inverted cross to denote that he had leagued himself with Satan. ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... a letter to Miss Anthony, August 18, expressing her deep regret, she said: "Money would be no object with me if I could overcome the other difficulties in the way, but as I can not, I fear I shall have to let you think I am unreliable. I regret this, as there is no woman (except Miss Willard) whose good opinion I ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... "British Mechanic" nearly two hundred ticks and nearly two hundred crossing ticks had to be made in the book, if the work was properly done. However, it was never properly done—Miss Ingamells being short of leisure and the errand boy utterly unreliable—and Darius wanted it properly done. The total gross profit on a quarter of "British Mechanics" was less than five shillings, and no customers were more exigent and cantankerous than those who bought one pennyworth of goods per week, and ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... been a little younger it would have been necessary to appoint a Regent until such time as she came of age. For many years it had not been a matter of certainty that she would succeed to the throne, and the late King's unreliable temper had been the means of preventing the matter from being properly arranged as regards certain advantages which might have been given to the Princess during his life-time. In many ways, however, it was fortunate that the Queen came to the throne at such an early age: ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... their sole weapon of attack, they have an uncertain means of striking their armed enemy. The eccentricities of the automobile torpedo are well known; but, even eliminating the fact that this missile is unreliable, the important question of accuracy in the estimate of range and speed which the submersible commander has to make before firing the torpedo must be considered. There is usually a large percentage of error in his calculations unless the submersible is extremely close to its target. Realizing ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... to incubator operators are known by scientists to be absolutely unreliable. The range between the wet and dry bulb thermometers was found in the Ontario experiments to give readings with and without fanning that varied 15 to 20 per cent. in relative humidity which, at the temperature of an egg chamber, would ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... herself. And naturally she was sensitive on the point. She nourished the fiction, and she expected others to nourish it, that her memory was quite equal to younger memories. Indeed, she would admit every symptom of old age save an unreliable memory. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... ice. Otter and mink are sometimes taken in the same way. In many localities great numbers of muskrats are also captured by spearing, either through the ice or through the walls of their houses. In the latter case, two are often taken at once. This method is quite uncertain and unreliable, as the walls of the hut are often so firmly frozen as to defy the thrust of the hardest steel, and a fruitless attempt will drive the inmates from their house at once. The spear generally used consists of a single shaft of steel about eighteen ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... with what I might call a suspicious warmth. By that token you know the class. They belong to that large group of people who, without being abnormal, still have passed the line which divides the perfectly trustworthy from those unreliable persons who, with the best inclination to tell the truth, can render it only as it is distorted ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... unreliable," sagely commented Jane. "But I'm afraid outside influence spoiled the plot for the spook tragedy. I hope my things come today for the prom. I feel rather in need of a first class time under the beneficent influence of a real orchestra and prudently ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... except flags and beacon-fires, or any faster method of travel than the gait of a horse or a camel across ungraded plains. The first sensation of rapid transit doubtless came with the sailing vessel; but it was the play-toy of the winds, and unreliable. When Columbus dared to set out on his famous voyage, he was five weeks in crossing from Spain to the West Indies, his best day's record two hundred miles. The swift steamship travel of to-day did not begin until 1838, when the Great Western raced over the Atlantic ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... substantiated throughout these pages that the press contains unreliable and doctored reports of lynchings, and one of the most necessary things for the race to do is to get these facts before the public. The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... leaving her husband for defects of such inferior magnitude. Few households would be kept together, if the right of transition were exercised on such trifling occasions. We are but suggesting that she may share the excuse which our great satirist has suggested for another unreliable lady: "My mother was an angel; but angels are not ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... professions and ice-cold acts, never to trust him any more. And we think that is 'worldly wisdom,' and 'the bitter fruit of earthly experience,' and 'sharpness,' and 'shrewdness,' and so forth. Jesus Christ, even whilst reminding Peter, by that 'more than these,' of his utterly hollow and unreliable boasting, shows Himself ready to accept once again the words of one whose unveracity He had proved. 'Charity hopeth all things, believeth all things,' and Jesus Christ is ready to trust us when we say, 'I love Thee,' even though often in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... us that it is impossible for us to be certain even when we utter the truth. Parmenides declares that the very constitution of man prevents him from ascertaining absolute truth. Empedocles affirms that all philosophical and religious systems must be unreliable, because we have no criterion by which to test them. Democritus asserts that even things that are true cannot impart certainty to us; that the final result of human inquiry is the discovery that man is incapable of absolute knowledge; that, even if the truth be in his possession, he ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... sorry," he said. "This is the second time in succession that Dalla and I have had to bolt away from here, but policemen are like doctors—always on call, and consequently unreliable guests. While you're feasting, think commiseratingly of Dalla and me; we'll probably be having a sandwich and ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... has faced some ridicule for its serious attempt to find out the truth about these matters, have announced that investigations of so-called haunted houses have produced no evidence whatever. They seem to be a wholly unreliable type of stories, which always break down under careful inquiry. I am inclined myself to believe that such stories arose in a perfectly natural way. It is perfectly natural to simple people to believe that ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... good rollicking song, preferably of a patriotic turn, but is very unreliable as to the sources ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... request I have made to thee," said Arundel, "and, if refused, it shall be the last. I shall be compelled to believe you consider me unworthy of your friendship, too effeminate to bear a walk of a few days in the forest, and unreliable in the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... across what used to be the line, and be spinning over Massachusetts. This certainly beats walking all hollow! Whew!" as the machine lurched forward and took an ugly drop. He jerked the rising-plane lever savagely. "Still the same kind of unreliable air, I see, that we used to have a ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... alpenstock," he said. "The wood is unreliable. It might break. I will cut you a better one," and he swung the axe ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... her knee with a fan. "Be thankful you haven't got him on your conscience," she rejoined. "I call Eglington unscrupulous and unreliable. He has but one god—getting on; and he has got on, with a vengeance. Whenever I look at that dear thing he's married, I feel there's no trusting Providence, who seems to make the deserving a footstool ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... my teachers, that all the supernatural must be eliminated from the Bible as mythical and unreliable, and so I was robbed of my Christ, my God and my Bible. Misguided by rationalism, I thought it my conscientious duty to accept, step by step, the dictates of destructive criticism until the Bible was only ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... may be a bit unreliable as an elevator, but you can let it out for steam-baths—fifty cents a ticket, you know, until you've made ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... the heroism of a girl the foregoing inscription would never have been written, and the city of Wheeling would never have existed. From time to time I have read short stories and magazine articles which have been published about Elizabeth Zane and her famous exploit; but they are unreliable in some particulars, which is owing, no doubt, to the singularly meagre details available in histories ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... to in protection of individual and public interests. . . . If they are relied upon as agencies for accurate mathematical results in mensuration and astronomy, there is no reason why they should be deemed unreliable in matters of evidence. Wherever what they disclose can aid or elucidate the just determination of legal controversies there can be no well- founded objection to resorting to them." Frank v. Chemical Nat. Bank, 37 Superior Court (J. & S.) 34, affirmed in Court of Appeals, 84 ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... assessment: generally elementary but being expanded domestic: facilities generally inadequate and unreliable international: country code - 593; satellite earth station - 1 ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... understood that, the discussion is to be followed by resistance. Tyrants care nothing for discussions that are to end only in discussion. Discussions, which do not interfere with the enforcement of their laws, are but idle wind to them. Suffrage is equally powerless and unreliable. It can be exercised only periodically; and the tyranny must at least be borne until the time for suffrage comes. Be sides, when the suffrage is exercised, it gives no guaranty for the repeal of existing laws that are oppressive, ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... Cromwell, he might well have said, "Trust in the Lord and keep your powder dry!" For he had done all that naval foresight could have done to ensure success. And now, in one lightning flash of genius, he reviewed the situation. He knew the torpedoes of his day were often unreliable, that they exploded only on a special kind of shock, that those which did explode could not be replaced in action, that they were all fixed to their own spots, and that if one ship was blown up her next-astern would ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... in such dire need of another pair of hands than her own slender ones, or if the supply from Endbury intelligence offices had been a whit less unreliable and uncertain, she would not have felt justified in retaining the burly, uncouth Celt, in spite of her own affection, so intensely did Paul dislike her. As it was, she felt guilty for her presence and miserably responsible for her homeliness of ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... place!" exclaimed Alwyn, eagerly bending over the sacred book; then drawing back with a gesture of disappointment he added, "But you are reading from Esdras, the Apocrypha! an utterly unreliable source of information!" ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... been said to show that the superscriptions are later than the psalms themselves, and often, if not always, unreliable; we are therefore wholly dependent upon internal evidence, and the criteria for Davidic authorship must be sought outside the Psalter. The only absolutely undisputed poems of David's are the elegy over Saul and ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... which includes the common-place compliments of society. In her mouth they have a common place, indeed. Some people call such utterances "stuff," "nonsense," "puerilities," but nobody is so prejudiced and unreliable as the above-named some people. They complacently think they know a thing or two, but that is all it amounts to. ARABELLA hasn't any doubt about her being perfection. Unfortunately there is a question about some matters in this world in politics, religion, morality and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... indifference, is always misrepresenting the training she is receiving. No school ever wishes to have its ideals confused by a vulgar display of wealth or by loud or conspicuous behaviour. Yet many a school, with ideals all that they should be, is misjudged in public places because of some thoughtless or unreliable girls. This doesn't seem like fair-play or team-play, does it? The fineness of life ought to be felt and expressed in student behaviour. Yet how ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... to begin our search quite at once, for we were only entering the estuary, whereas, according to Barber's account, the hulk lay some six or eight miles from the entrance. This assumed distance was of course a very vague and unreliable guide, and I therefore determined to take the ship up the inlet about five miles, anchor her, and commence our search at that point, gradually working our way upward. Meanwhile, the wind had come away ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... retail dealers of the region it covers. He felt that eight dollars a week were all that he could ever get where he was. Upon his arrival in the City of Chicago he was put at work for seven dollars, the representations made to him having proven unreliable. There were about fifty young men and women in the same room. Seated at his desk when eight o'clock came, he found that his chances to rise were seemingly restricted to the hours of noon and six o'clock. In this ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... covet. The more successful she is, the more of a nomad she must become. She will know but few days for years when she will not be compelled to practice for hours. She becomes a kind of chattel of the musical public. She will be harassed by ignorant critics and perhaps annoyed by unreliable managers. In return she has money and fame, but, in fact, far less of the great joy and purpose of life than if she followed the customary domestic career with some splendid man as her husband. When I was younger I used to preach ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... did Russia decide to assail us? During the whole nineteenth century she has shown herself a very shifty and unreliable protectress of Servia. She made use of the smaller country when it suited her own aggressive purposes against others, and she dropped it whenever it served her ends. It was so at the time of the Turkish war of 1877 and of the Berlin Congress, and it ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Wieland, for having provided him with such an unreliable weapon, Wittich was about to announce himself conquered, when Hildebrand, realizing that he had not acted honorably, gave him back his own blade. Dietrich, to his surprise and dismay, found himself ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... wouldn't keep stiff but would wobble, in spite of him. And of course a breakdown on his own part would be the worst possible thing that could happen to him. No potential soldier wants to feel his upper lip unreliable, no matter what happens. It's likely to make him flinch in a critical moment, when flinching ...
— The Whistling Mother • Grace S. Richmond
... promote economic development. The economic situation did not improve in 1998-99, as internal civil strife continued, hampering both domestic economic policies and international aid efforts. Numerical data are likely to be either unavailable or unreliable. Afghanistan was by far the largest producer of opium poppies in 1999, and narcotics trafficking is a major ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Peace, watched by all Methodists with hope, faith and prayer," and the Blue Cross Society said, "Remember our dumb friends," and Guatemala (which was not there) telegraphed, "Do not believe a word uttered by the delegate from Nicaragua, who is highly unreliable." As for the Bolshevik refugees, they sent messages about the Russian delegation which were couched in language too unbalanced to be made public either in the Assembly Journal or in these pages, but ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... them, Mr. Grayson—these pawn-brokers," he said in his slow, measured way. "If every man was a Turk we could take his word, but when they are Jews and Christians and such other unreliable people, of course they want something for their ducats. It's the same old pound of flesh. Very respectable firm this, Mr. Arthur Breen & Co.—VERY respectable people. I used to press off the elder gentleman's coat—he ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and is even expected to make suggestions for revisions and improvements of the forms and methods. In view of such facts it seems doubtful that one could anywhere find more dependable school records of this sort. It was true of one of the schools that the records previous to 1909 proved to be unreliable. There is no inclination here to deny the existence of defects and limitations to these records, but the intimate acquaintance resulting from close inquiry, involving nearly every factor which the records contain, is convincing ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... first acts was to get rid of the unreliable element which Anson had brought away from Umballa. The Infantry he sent to Rohtuk, where it shortly afterwards mutinied, and the Cavalry to Meerut. That these troops should have been allowed to retain their weapons is one of the mysteries of the Mutiny. For more than two months their insubordination ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... least as early as the beginning of October 1712, for the manuscript of Il Pastor Fido, the first new opera which he produced, is dated, at the end, "Londres, ce 24 Octobre." The opera-house was now under the management of Owen MacSwiney, who seems to have been both incompetent and unreliable. Il Pastor Fido did not attract the public, and was withdrawn after six performances, but Handel soon had another opera ready to take its place. Teseo was finished on December 19, and brought out on January 10, 1713; ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... fairly out of the frying-pan under his eyes if he is not on guard. He is the first up in the morning and the last in bed. He has to dry his dishes on anything that comes handy, and then pack all of his grub on an unreliable horse and start off for ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "I'll not mention any moral debt you owe me for winning that money you needed. But what about the next time? If you needed that much lethal goods once, you'll probably need it again some day. Wouldn't it be better to have me on hand—old tried and true—than dreaming up some new and possibly unreliable scheme?" ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... Father Brown, "the most unreliable machine I know of. I don't want to be rude; and I don't think you will consider Man to be an offensive or inaccurate description of yourself. You say you observed his manner; but how do you know you observed it right? You say the words have to come ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... agreed with objectors that "there are comparatively few of the slaves lately freed who are honest" and truthful, but maintained that the Negroes were capable of improvement. The chief executives of Mississippi and Florida declared that there was no danger to the whites in admitting the more or less unreliable Negro testimony, for the courts and juries would in every case arrive at a proper valuation of it. Governors Marvin of Florida and Humphreys of Mississippi advocated practical civil equality, while in North Carolina and several other States there was a disposition to admit Negro testimony ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... connection with the balloon, considerable advantages might be expected from its use. Sometimes the smoke of the battle, and the difficulty of distinguishing the columns, that look like liliputians, so as to know to which party they belong, will make the reports of the balloonists very unreliable. For example, a balloonist would have been greatly embarrassed in deciding, at the battle of Waterloo, whether it was Grouchy or Bluecher who was seen coming up by the Saint-Lambert road; but this uncertainty need not exist where the armies are not so much mixed. I had ocular proof ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... national life is threatened. I am not a party man. In my day, I have voted about evenly on both sides, for when I do vote, it is after consideration of the actual issues involved at the time. Both sides therefore rightly consider me unreliable, but, perhaps, both will listen when I point out that the independent vote is increasing, and that it is the only vote worth cultivating. The true Grit or Tory will vote with his party, right or wrong. No time, therefore, need be given to him. Let the wise candidate win ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... at the suggestion of Henry H. Sibley, who furnished the stone. It will be remembered that I have referred to the visit of George Catlin, the artist, to Minnesota, in 1835, and that his report was unreliable. Among other things, he said that he was the first white man who had visited this quarry, and induced geologists to name the pipestone "Catlinite." Mr. Sibley, in his communication to the legislature presenting this slab, in answer to ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... cold water from the snows reaching up to our chests. We had to make the best way we could through a large field of iron-bearing rock, which so affected my compass that for the time it became quite unreliable, owing to ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... the doors of the banks closed by popular force if the outrage was longer continued. Could such a public fraud be carried on under any other than a Spanish government? It is not pleasant to record the fact, but it is nevertheless true that the Spaniards in Cuba are artful, untruthful, unreliable even in small things, with no apparent sense of honor, and seeking just now mainly how they can best avoid their honest obligations. As evil communications are contagious, the Cubans have become more or less ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... and, indeed, the absurdity of the old lady's project could hardly be overstated, because at that time Salem was a long-distance line, Lowell sometimes worked, and Worcester was the limit—that is, in every sense of the word. The Lowell line was so unreliable that we had a telegraph operator there, and when the talk was not possible, he pushed the message through by Morse. It is no wonder that the absurdity of the old lady's proposal was the cause of poorly suppressed merriment. But I can remember ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... of the incident, more than sixty years afterward, was as vivid as on the succeeding day. Indeed, Stewart, as is often the case with aged persons, remarked that his memory of occurrences a half century old was unerring, while of quite recent incidents it was unreliable. ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... Press nowadays becomes more unreliable every day. It is apparent, my dear Von Hern, that this account of your death was, to say the least of ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... when one has a party, I believe it is customary to fee the company, which will drink hot coffee and keep awake a couple of hours longer. But the lights were gone for good that night. Liddy had gone to sleep, as I knew she would. She was a very unreliable person: always awake and ready to talk when she wasn't wanted and dozing off to sleep when she was. I called her once or twice, the only result being an explosive snore that threatened her very windpipe—then I got up and lighted ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... who is as peripatetic as the old-time printer. Restless, ne'er-do-well, spendthrift, he wanders from factory to factory through the chain of watchmaking towns: Springfield, Trenton, Waltham, Lancaster, Waterbury, Chippewa. Usually expert, always unreliable, certainly fond of drink, Nap Ballou was typical of his kind. The steady worker had a mingled admiration and contempt for him. He, in turn, regarded the other as a stick-in-the-mud. Nap wore his cap on one side of his curly head, ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... this time that a marked improvement was noted in the compass. Ever since the first approach to Adelie Land it had been found unreliable, for, on account of the proximity to the magnetic pole, the directive force of the needle was so slight that very large ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... composed of mercenaries from all nations, adventurers who had nothing to lose, who had but little to gain. They were turbulent and rebellious. Revolts among the soldiers were common. They brought new vices to the camps, and learned in addition all the vices of the Romans. They were greedy, unreliable, and cherished concealed enmities. They had no common interest or bond of union. They were always ready for revolt, and gave away the highest prizes to fortunate generals. They sold the imperial dignity, and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... constantly used for the cure of malaria without doing the pregnancy any harm. Many other drugs are reputed to have great efficacy in causing the expulsion of the product of conception; unfortunately, they are too well known to require enumeration. They are usually unreliable, and are absolutely inefficient in doses small enough not to endanger the mother's life, provided the pregnancy is a ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... her brilliant eyes. She had never been here before, but she had had countless photographs made, and supposed herself thoroughly acquainted with the spot. But, to some minds, photographs are confusing things, jumbling up the points of compass in an unreliable manner. Joyce found that it was almost as strange as if never pictured out before her, and a great deal uglier than she had supposed. She shivered as she gazed around upon the bleakness everywhere, perhaps largely accentuated by a gray, chilly morning of early spring, with the small ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... almost entirely to events that have occured[sic] within one's lifetime. There are few traditions that have any historical value, and even in these there is an element of the wonderful that makes them unreliable as guides. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... bring home to some of my Democratic and Anti-Imperialist friends the unreliable character of the testimony of even the very high officers of the so-called Philippine Republic, I here quote certain extracts from the Insurgent records, showing the important part played, doubtless unwittingly, by Mr. William Jennings Bryan in Philippine politics during the war. The first ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... employed in mines, united in one shaft with a roof to keep out rain, and a valve to regulate the entrance and exit of air, as illustrated in Fig. 30. This method works well in certain circumstances, but fails so often as to prove very unreliable. Another mode is that of Ruttan, which is effected by heating air. This also has certain advantages and disadvantages. But the mode adopted for the preceding cottage plan is free from the difficulties of both the above methods, while it will surely ventilate every room ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... no man pursueth.' Double-minded people are uncertain, fickle, unreliable in all their ways. 'The righteous are bold as a lion.' Remember Shadrach, ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... ancestors of St. Patrick. Nicholson, a distinguished Irish scholar, was, of opinion that the addition "a deacon" was mere guesswork on the part of the copyist, and wrote "incertus liber hic"—"the book is here unreliable" ("St. Patrick, Apostle of ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... is probable that the actual combatants did not number more than ten thousand, all told. And only half of these were of any value—two thousand men under Galeotto, and three thousand Burgundians commanded by Charles and his immediate lieutenants. The remainder were unreliable mercenaries and the still more unreliable troops of Campobasso already pledged to the foe. La Marche estimates Rene's force at twelve thousand and adds: "The Duke of Burgundy was far behind, for, on my conscience, he had ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... honey-pot of useless and unreliable information, was Barney O'Mara, and most learned in fairy lore; but for that matter, all the people walking along the road, the drivers, the boatman and guides, the men and women in the cottages where we stop in a shower or to inquire ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... hardy dalesmen to their midnight rendezvous, there to be instructed in the science of war, so as to enable them to protect their homes and families against the marauding myrmidons of a cruel, heartless, and unreliable king; or if the antiquarian seeketh a knowledge of the High Peak folk-lore, and feareth neither pixie or graymarie, he can, on a spring night, just as the moon has entered her last quarter, and the first note from the belfry of the ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... the best accounts of the Brotherhood and of a Kempis himself, are the works of Rev. S. Kettlewell and Sir F. R. Cruise. The former, however, is quite unreliable as a translator, and draws untenable deductions from extracts whose purport he has misunderstood; but the latter is both accurate and interesting, being in fact the leading English authority on the subject which he has made ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... build up a business on a foundation of cunning, scheming, and trickery, instead of building on the solid rock of character, reliability, and manhood? Is it not remarkable that so many men should work so hard to establish a business on an unreliable, flimsy foundation, instead of building upon the solid masonry of honest goods, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... amidst the dark periods of antiquity, but it is easy to shew that the claim of the Hindus as the inventors, is supported by better evidence both inferential and positive than that of any other people, and unless we are to assume the Sanskrit accounts of it to be unreliable or spurious, or the translations of Dr. Hyde, Sir William Jones and Professor Duncan Forbes to be disingenuous and untrustworthy concoctions (as Linde the German writer seems to insinuate) we are justified in dismissing from our minds all reasonable doubts as to the validity of ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... fern the novice should bear in mind the tendency of the curved sori of youth to become straightened and even confluent with age, although such changes are rather unreliable. Possibly the suggestion of the poetic Davenport may be helpful to some that there is "An indefinable charm about the various forms of the lady fern, which soon enables one to know it from its peculiarly graceful motion by merely gently swaying ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... other departments of life we at least make a pretence of learning before we presume to teach; in the field of sex we content ourselves with the smallest and vaguest minimum of information, often ostentatiously second-hand, usually unreliable. I wish to emphasize the fact that before we can safely talk either of curing or preventing these manifestations we must know a great deal more than we know at present regarding their distribution, etiology, and symptomatology; and we must exercise the same coolness and caution as—if ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... seamen and soldiers was sent against her. Her guns had been landed, and placed in battery for her defence, and militia had gathered for the support necessary to artillery so situated; but they proved unreliable, and upon their retreat nothing was left but to fire the ship.[391] This was done, the crew escaping. The British penetrated as far as Bangor, seized a number of merchant vessels, and subsequently went to Machias, where they captured the fort with twenty-five cannon. Sherbrooke ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... betray Charles into Peter's hands if Peter would restore him his office. The bargain was struck, but a letter from the old traitor, addressed to Leszcynski, chanced to fall into the Czar's hands, and made him draw back, in the conviction that Mazeppa was utterly unreliable. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind. Very few of us realize with conviction the intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the economic organization by which Western Europe has lived for the last half century. We assume some of the most peculiar and temporary of our late advantages as natural, permanent, and to be depended on, and we lay our plans accordingly. On this sandy and ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... of ore where the previous yield from known space becomes the essential basis of determination of quantity and metal contents of ore standing and of the future probabilities. Where metals occur like plums in a pudding, sampling becomes difficult and unreliable, and where experience has proved a sort of regularity of recurrence of these plums, dependence must necessarily be placed on past records, for if their reliability is to be questioned, resort must be had to extensive test-treatment runs. The Lake Superior copper mines and the Missouri ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... other side' are human beings of all grades; they are not morally purified by passing through the death-change; and as we are constantly sending into their other state 'all sorts and conditions of people,' you need not be at all surprised if you get into intercourse with the vain and foolish, the unreliable and pretentious, or the selfish and sinful, if you indiscriminately open the doors of your psychic self and give a free invitation to ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... prejudices due to common methods of thought among all races; "idols of the cave or den," that is, personal peculiarities and prejudices; "idols of the market place," due to errors of language; and "idols of the theater," which are the unreliable traditions of men. (b) After discarding the above "idols" we must interrogate nature; must collect facts by means of numerous experiments, arrange them in order, and then determine the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... with him and find that life is making a few dents in his loveliness of character, that the edges are worn away, that there's a weakness or two where you imagined only strength to be, and that instead of standing a saint and hero all in one, he's merely an unruly and unreliable human being with his ups and downs of patience and temper and passion. But, bless his battered old soul, you love him none the less for all that. You no longer fret about him being unco guid, and you comfortably give up trying to match his imaginary virtues ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... this date, when we have succeeded in half- educating everything that wears trousers, our Army will be a beautifully unreliable machine. It will know too much and it will do too little. Later still, when all men are at the mental level of the officer of to-day, it will sweep the earth. Speaking roughly, you must employ either blackguards or gentlemen, or, best of all, blackguards commanded ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... more possible to bear. On account of this I was afterwards reproached with a love of luxury. There was also a possibility of arranging a drawing-room in our house, and though I had not intended to be extravagant, I finally discovered that, in addition to the trouble of negotiations with unreliable Parisian workmen, I was drawn into expenses I had not counted upon. But I comforted myself with the reflection that, as it could not be helped now, Minna would at least be pleased when she entered the ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... case the above statement will account for the fact that the maps provided by the War Office at the outbreak of the South African war were pronounced by the Royal Commission on that war to have been, "with perhaps one exception, very incomplete and unreliable" (paragraph 261). ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... isn't French at all, Madam; it's Fraser—'Fingerless' Fraser. He's an utterly worthless rogue, and absolutely unreliable so far as I can learn. I picked him up on the ice in Norton Sound, with a marshal ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... proved unreliable and officer's patrols of Americans served better but owing to lack of maps or guides were able to gain but little information of the forest trails of the area. British intelligence officers depending on old forester's maps and on deserters and prisoners and neutral natives allowed ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... of its introduction, about 1718, until about 1880, the only coffee grown in Surinam, or Dutch Guiana, was the Coffea arabica. It was not a bountiful producer, and with labor scarce and unreliable, its cultivation was expensive. Therefore experiment was made with the liberica plant. This proved to be very satisfactory, growing luxuriantly, producing abundantly, and requiring minimum labor in care. In 1918 ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Downie—Maurits is lucky to be rid of you. Such a foolish, deceitful, hypocritical Downie, such an unreliable little wisp, such a, ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... have enjoyed it! He was always utterly unreliable at funerals. D'you remember—' And they talked of him again, each piecing out the other's gaps. 'And now,' said Miss Fowler, 'we'll pull up the blinds and we'll have a general tidy. That always does us good. Have ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... under the influence of the passions arising out of the war can, of course, possess only a limited value. It is obvious from the proceedings concerning the constitution of the Senate Committee that much of the evidence was prejudiced and unreliable, probably because it was based solely on information given by Germans or former Germans, whose identities were kept strictly secret, and who told deliberate lies, either because, like Judas, they had ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... stand up against our men," said the storekeeper who was talking to Dan. "The Texans are brave and nearly all good shots, and they are fighting for their homes. The greasers, on the other hand, are lazy and unreliable, paid to do what they are doing, and consequently think of nothing but saving ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... of travelling for children was possible only in the summer, and as the dogs were sometimes unreliable, the little ones were exposed to a certain amount of danger. For instance, whenever a train of dogs had been travelling for a long time, almost perishing with the heat and their heavy loads, a glimpse of water would cause them to forget ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... century of our national existence. It is believed, however, that a regular census every five years would be of substantial benefit to the country, inasmuch as our growth hitherto has been so rapid that the results of the decennial census are necessarily unreliable as a basis of estimates for the latter ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... sure that Claire was necessary to his life. Without her there could be no living for him. He wondered if she and Lawrence had found love. "If they have," he argued, "there can be but one explanation. Claire is unreliable, vicious, and dangerous." His aching desire to possess her did not lessen, however. It became deeper, in fact, with each succeeding thought of her as a wanton at heart, and he set his teeth over his will, assuring himself that all would be well ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... had played in the upbuilding of the South—left prostrate by the Civil War. One could see their eager, upturned faces glow with pride and self-satisfaction. But suddenly he would shift the tone of his comments and tell them how sadly those of them who were indolent and shiftless and unreliable and vicious were retarding the upward struggles of the industrious and self-respecting majority and how they were perpetuating the prejudice against the whole race. And as he pictured this seamy side of the situation one could see the glow of pride gradually wilt from ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... venture into these trackless wildernesses. Now they were to launch out into the mysterious unknown, from which absolutely no tidings had ever been brought by white men. The dim reports of Indians who had hunted through some parts of the region were unreliable, and, as they afterwards proved, were often as absurdly false as if they had been ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... defects underlie the brightness and fascination of the external part of French character—namely, selfishness and insincerity. Perfect in manner, in dress, in grace, in suavity, in sweetness it may be, the French are utterly and wholly unreliable. They resemble the phantom woman in the story told by Leigh Hunt, that was only a suit of clothes, with no face beneath the hood and no body inside of the robes; or rather those malignant spirits that look like fair ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... nearer things to think of than Moby Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable —they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness —and when retained .. for any object remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of life and passion in the end, it is above all ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the other. 'He is elderly, almost old. Perhaps sixty years of age. He is violent, unreliable, generally unfortunate, probably disgraced. That is no doubt the reason ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... curious stories as to how Kidd's treasure was discovered, and also making statements of a very unreliable nature, setting forth that already several million dollars had been recovered, and that any man engaged in it would surely make a fortune for his heirs, no matter how numerous. The more unreasonable these statements ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... our host. "I'll give you a start of three questions, and then you must be prepared to answer every reasonable question I put to you, or be branded publicly as an unreliable witness and an ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... finished the Arabic, i.e. somewhere about 1724 or 1725, he cut his own name in Roman type and placed it at the foot of the specimen. This attracted the notice of Samuel Palmer, the author of a very unreliable History of Printing, and with Palmer, Caslon worked for some time, but at length transferred his services to William Bowyer, for whom he cut the types ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... some on memory, some on reasoning. The ground for this general conviction is the notorious fact that with children every one of these acts, is performed in a faulty and superficial manner. The observations of children are very careless and unreliable. Even adults are extremely negligent and inaccurate in their observations of natural objects, persons, and phenomena. But the mental powers brought to bear in observation are simple and elementary. The exercise of higher mental powers, such as analysis, comparison, judgment, and ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... came from off-planet, except for unreliable rumors. What the rest of the galaxy was doing about the war on Xedii, ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to be going on nearly all the time, and there does not seem to be any limit to the number of suckers who fall for them. But then, one can't blame the public when you realize how thoroughly unreliable is most of the market information ...
— Successful Stock Speculation • John James Butler
... looking on their abode as a mere inn where they may find shelter till they are disposed for another journey. And families receive them as transient, and not unfrequently as dangerous, guests, whom it is always wise to treat with distrust. The key of the wine-cellar is not confided to these unreliable inmates; they are intrusted with the charge of little else than the children—a practice which is often productive of ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... genial personality or an over-burdened pocketbook gives entree, and the rules of conventionality have never even been whispered. His love affairs, confined to this class of women, have seldom lasted more than a week or ten days. His editors know him as a brilliant genius, irresponsible, unreliable, but at times inestimably valuable. He cares little for personal appearance beyond a certain degree of neatness. He is quick on the trigger, and in a time of over-heated argument can go some distance with his fists; in fact, his whole career ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... biography bears some resemblance to interrogating witnesses in a Court of Law. There are good witnesses and bad: reliable and unreliable memories. I remember an old lady, a friend of my mother's, who remarked with candour after my mother had confided to her something of importance: "My dear, I must go and write that down immediately before my imagination gets mixed with my memory." One witness must be ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... only trouble, for the load could not well be lightened, and it was an imperative necessity to cross it the same day. Once the cattle were safely over and a few men left to graze them forward, the remainder of the outfit collected all the ropes and went back after the wagon. As mules are always unreliable in the water, Flood concluded to swim them loose. We lashed the wagon box securely to the gearing with ropes, arranged our bedding in the wagon where it would be on top, and ran the wagon by hand into the water as far as ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... for the present subject is the development of psychological studies of testimony or report. Because of the natural expectation that the pathological liar might prove to be an unreliable witness our studies on this point will be offered in detail. For years we have been giving a picture memory test on the order of one used extensively abroad. This "Aussage'' Test is the one described as Test VI ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... friends of the family suddenly became unreliable people, for the first time in their lives. After encouraging the idea of the play, they declined the personal sacrifice of acting in it—or, they accepted characters, and then broke down in the effort to study them—or they volunteered to take the parts which they knew ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... in the fathers are of a similar nature precisely to those in the Clementines, and their sources of information are so vague and unreliable, and at such a distance from the time of their supposed occurrence, that we have every reason to place them in the same category with the Clementine legends. Therefore, whether we reject the evidence or accept it, ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... haste, had in his seventeenth year eloped with Martha, daughter of Major-General Richard Holmes, and married her in the Fleet on March 2, 1715. As was only to be expected from a person so volatile he from the beginning neglected his wife; but, as is put quaintly in that unreliable work, Memoirs of a Certain Island adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia, which was concocted by Mrs. Eliza Haywood, "after some years of continu'd extravagance, the Duke, either through the natural Inconsistency of his Temper, or the Reflection how much he had been drawn in ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... the boys smiled when I said 'hookey,'" ventured Uncle Ben, critically. "But let me tell you! 'Hookey' is an innocent-looking vice that leads to great trouble. It is the seed of being unreliable. A man who is unreliable is a failure in the beginning. So, ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Vanessa is said to have written to Stella or to Swift—there are discrepancies in the versions given by Sheridan and Lord Orrery, both of whom are unreliable—asking whether the report that they were married was true. Swift, we are told, rode to Celbridge, threw down Vanessa's letter in a great rage, and left without speaking a word.(9) Vanessa, whose health had been failing for some time, died shortly afterwards, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... little valley under the shelter of those mighty hills. He was small and beautiful of face and feature, just tinted with the sun, his curly hair chiefly revealing his kinship to Africa. In nature he was a dreamer,—romantic, indolent, kind, unreliable. He had in him the making of a poet, an adventurer, or a Beloved Vagabond, according to the life that closed round him; and that life gave him all too little. His father, Alexander Du Bois, cloaked under a stern, austere demeanor a passionate revolt against the world. He, ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... casualness as to render schedules a joke, and not infrequently "bogged down" between stations until some antediluvian engine could be resuscitated and sent out to the rescue. The day coaches were of the old, dangerous, wooden type. The Pullman service was utterly unreliable, and the station in which the traveling populace of Worthington spent much of its time, a draft-ridden barn. Yet Worthington suffered all this because it was accustomed to it and lacked any means of ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... vanity by fulsome panegyric: when, however, the great agitator suspected the drift of any movement of Shiel, he turned against him his keen although coarse satire, and, by his contemptuous sneers and ludicrous and striking caricatures, turned the tide of popular feeling against his subtle and unreliable colleague. After Roman Catholic emancipation was achieved Mr. Shiel became a member of the imperial parliament, where he distinguished himself by his eloquence more than he ever did as a tribune. His oratory was, however, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... drive is excellent, fast, deep, and well placed, yet in making this he steps away from the ball, again wasting energy. His backhand is a poke and very unreliable. To save it he runs around everything possible, again causing unnecessary exertion. His volleying is brilliant ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... mere theories and speculations as scientific facts, and they think that God's word is to be tested by the teachings of "science falsely so called."(919) The Creator and His works are beyond their comprehension; and because they cannot explain these by natural laws, Bible history is regarded as unreliable. Those who doubt the reliability of the records of the Old and New Testaments, too often go a step farther, and doubt the existence of God, and attribute infinite power to nature. Having let go their anchor, they are left to ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... is, however, that the witnesses on whose words arrests were made were all of uncertain and unreliable character; that the evidence was contradictory, and that most of it was extorted ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... to go to school, Madge," argued Mrs. Curtis half-heartedly. "Tania does not know any of the things she should. Philip Holt, who does so much good work among the poor in Tania's tenement district, says that the child is most unreliable and does ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... personal appearance, to make her stupid and slovenly. A sort of drowsiness came over her ideas. She was no longer keen and prompt of apprehension. What she had read and what she had learned seemed to escape her. Her memory, which formerly retained everything, became confused and unreliable. The sharp wit of the Parisian maid-servant gradually vanished from her conversation, her retorts, her laughter. Her face, once so animated, was no longer lighted up by gleams of intelligence. In her whole person you would have said that she had become once more the stupid ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... may be questioned whether the very general use of aneroids for barometric determinations has not thrown this latter means of measuring altitudes into undeserved discredit when the mercurial barometer is used instead of its convenient but unreliable substitute. ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... Unreliable came and asked Gov. Johnson to let him stand on the porch. The creature has got more impudence than any person I ever saw in my life. Well, he stood and flattened his nose against the parlor window, and looked hungry and vicious—he always looks that way—until ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... Archias to care for him like a brother, and his own kind heart bade him stay with Myrtilus, and not leave him to the nursing of his very skilful but utterly unreliable body-servant, after the last night had proved to what severe attacks of his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... caressing touch upon his arched neck, gave him an assurance of fidelity that was helpful. For the matter of this conspiracy had sorely wrought upon him and he might not ignore such a message, though it came from one so unreliable as Dama Ecciva, for she was surely in touch with the disaffected nobles. It might be a new conspiracy—yet it was more likely a mere whim, or an attempt to get her ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... as the days of the rozbior, the Partition of Poland, drew near (1794). The Poles, forgetting the many examples of loyalty and self-sacrifice shown by Jews in times of peace and war, suspected them of being treacherous and unreliable; while the Russians, though denying the patriotism of their own Jews, persisted in the accusation that Polish Jews spent money lavishly in fomenting rebellion and anarchy. The pupils of the Jesuits found ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... a Goth in race, and has travelled over a great part of the world, has been here; he is a man of a good understanding, but unreliable. He said that he had seen the X. Decades of Livy, in two big and oblong volumes written in Lombard characters, and there was on the title page of one volume a note that the codex contained the ten decades of Titus Livy, and ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... said. "When you've employed these men as long as I have—the type of man who has worked all his life on the river—you'll know as well as I do just how uncertain and unreliable they are. What you need is a gang that doesn't want to think for itself. This crowd has too much imagination ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... groups of families. The princes had not complied with the disarmament law of 280 and so had become militarily supreme. The generals newly appointed in the course of the imperial rearmament at once entered into alliance with the princes, and thus were quite unreliable as officers of the government. Both the generals and the princes entered into agreements with the frontier peoples to assure their aid in the struggle for power. The most popular of these auxiliaries were the Hsien-pi, who were fighting for one of the princes whose territory lay in ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard |
