"Well-intentioned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Enchanting Bird Story of a Sultan of Yemen and His Three Sons Story of the First Sharper in the Cave History of the Sultan of Hind Story of the Fisherman's Son Story of Abou Neeut and Abou Neeuteen; Or, the Well-intentioned and the Double-minded Adventure of a Courtier, Related by Himself to His Parton, an Ameer of Egypt Story of the Prince of Sind, and Fatima, Daughter of Amir Bin Naomaun Story of the Lovers of Syria; Or, the Heroine Story of Hyjauje, the Tyrannical Gtovernor of Coufeh, and the Young Syed ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... I envy you!" exclaimed La Boulaye, to cry out a moment later in the pain to which Duhamel's well-intentioned operations were subjecting him. "I would it might be mine," he added presently, "to take a hand in legislation, and the mending of it; for as it stands at present it is inferior far to the lawless anarchy of the aborigines. Among them, at least, the conditions are more normal, they ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... performed the miracle when he was sick of the fever. He was very ambitious to meddle in affairs of state, but his bad name had weakened his influence with Edmund, and it seemed likely to do the same with well-intentioned Edred. He desired to create a public impression again that he was ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... appellate jurisdiction has been scarcely called in question in regard to matters of law; but the clamors have been loud against it as applied to matters of fact. Some well-intentioned men in this State, deriving their notions from the language and forms which obtain in our courts, have been induced to consider it as an implied supersedure of the trial by jury, in favor of the civil-law mode of trial, which ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... Theydon's fall. After that, events traveled rapidly, and the majority of the onlookers imagined that it was Winter who had knocked Theydon off his balance, while the rush made by the latter to intercept Wong Li Fu was actually stopped by a well-intentioned railway porter. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... New York, and might be anything from a milliner to a mondaine; a keen-looking youngster with tortoise-shell spectacles; finally, Ruth's elder brother, Mason J. Winslow, Jr., a tall, thin, solemn, intensely well-intentioned man of thirty-seven, with a long, clean-shaven face, and a long, narrow head whose growing baldness was always spoken of as a result of his hard work. Mason J. Winslow, Jr., spoke hesitatingly, worried over everything, and stood for morality and good ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Berkeley. Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, dying in 1675, has a fair niche in the temple of human enlightenment. His son Charles succeeded, third Lord Baltimore and Lord Proprietary of Maryland. Well-intentioned, this Calvert lacked something of the ability of either his father or his grandfather. Though he lived in Maryland while his father had lived in England, his government was not as wise as ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... understood and appreciated in all civilised countries. In uncivilised countries, to remove your hat, or to bow, may be taken as a gross outrage on good manners, or as signifying some horrible immorality, in which case the offender would not have the chance of repeating his well-intentioned mistake. But within the limits of Western enlightenment to bow is mere civility, and may be taken as a preface to conversation; to omit it is to show lack of breeding and to court hostility. Therefore, N.B. Rule in travelling—Bow to everybody. And this, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... own memory or from what his father has told him, where and when and why every line was written. He, however, shares, it is evident that dislike—rather let us say that passionate hatred—which his father, like so many other poets, had of that well-intentioned but vexing being whom Rossetti anathematized as the “literary resurrection man.” Rossetti used to say that “of all signs that a man was devoid of poetic instinct and poetic feeling the impulse of the literary resurrectionist was the surest.” Without going so far as this ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... community. The unspeakably depraved are the men who, either as procurers, blackmailers, or the miserable men who live on a share of their earnings. The excellent people who oppose any remedial legislation which might relieve the situation, seem equally responsible for the present condition, however well-intentioned they may be. ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... that no one else was in the room to hear what the captain was saying. A stranger would certainly have thought much worse of him than he deserved. I had now been so long with him that I was confident, whatever he might have done in his youth, that he was now an honest and well-intentioned man. At the same time I could no longer have any doubts that Peter's surmises about him were correct, "That old gentleman aboard the felucca is Captain Ralph, then," I thought to myself, "If I ever fall in with him, I shall know how to address him, ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... rule over himself. He frequented religious services, going about listening to popular preachers of all sorts, and critically commenting upon their sermons to his friends. He was really a very religious and well-intentioned man, all of which stood in his favour with the more sober portion of society whose favour he courted. As his talents and industry gained him grace in the eyes of the dons of his college, so his good life and good understanding made him friends among ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... dangers in the English Channel, for the beacon placed on it was not visible at night or during thick weather. Attempts were made to fix bells on the rock, which might be rung by the waves dashing against them; but the first gale quickly carried away the well-intentioned contrivance. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... scoundrelism, the Gun-Runner, has to be kept under and stamped out in Africa as everywhere. A Disarmament Commission that has no forces available to prevent the arms trade will be just another Hague Convention, just another vague, well-intentioned, futile gesture. ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... time of crisis the world has thrown aside its pretense, honest and well-intentioned pretense though it may have been, and revealed its underlying feeling toward the Jewish people. Suddenly, without any absolute change in their status, the Jews are singled out and set apart. Special inducements are held out for their support. The Czar, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... ways, on the one hand beckoning Conscience, on the other ambition in the flattering shape of Destiny. To which voice would he hearken? Would love and plighted troth overrule that insistent siren song, Vocation? Would he yield, as have done thousands of well-intentioned men and women before him, to self-interest and worldly wisdom? The problem to be solved by this brilliantly endowed artist just twenty-six—how many a historic parallel does it recall! What three words can convey so much pathos, heroism and generosity as "il gran riffiuto?"—the great renunciation. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Go anywhere into the wild, and you will find in little clearings, by lake or river, a dilapidated hut with a family of these solitaries, friendly with the pioneers or trappers around, ready to act as guide on hunt or trail. The Government, extraordinarily painstaking and well-intentioned, has established Indian schools, and trains some of them to take their places in the civilisation we have built. Not the best Indians these, say lovers of the race. I have met them, as clerks or stenographers, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... middle party,"[2130] which consists of well-intentioned people from every class, sincere partisans of a good government; but, unfortunately, they have acquired their ideas of government from books, and are admirable on paper. But as it happens that the men who live in the world are very different from imaginary men who dwell in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... their efforts to discover the hiding-place of the band, nothing could be found out about them, no one ever imagining that the party of gentlemen in the chatta could be at all mixed up with them—in fact, the well-intentioned alcalde of the province, hearing that such a party was visiting the lake, sent off a ministro to give them information about the desperate band of tulisanes who were lurking in the neighbourhood, and advised them ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... understood by the yet unmarried lovers—insanely sanguine, of human necessity—asking the impossible, and no blame to them, because they are made so; but no matter. That thing which comes afterwards, to the right-minded and well-intentioned, and which they don't think worth calling love—that sober, faithful, forbearing friendship, that mutual need which endures all the time, and is ever more deeply satisfied and satisfying instead of less—is ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... deem it an insult to myself: I am as thankful as Count Damoreau can desire me to be; but I decline his well-intentioned offer." ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... an anarchical assembly might have opposed to it? Would not the cry of treason have been the first signal of alarm? La Fayette have been torn to pieces as a traitor, and the national guard disbanded? Would not the well-intentioned and loyal citizens have again obtained the mastery over the factious and turbulent in the confusion and terror that would prevail? Who would give orders? ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... presence of the Judge a man who seemingly was but a few years younger than the Judge himself—a man who looked to be somewhere between sixty-five and seventy. There is a look that you may have seen in the eyes of ownerless but well-intentioned dogs—dogs that, expecting kicks as their daily portion, are humbly grateful for kind words and stray bones; dogs that are fairly yearning to be adopted by somebody—by anybody—being prepared ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... tribe. To all such (and most of us know at least one) I should suggest the posting of a copy of One Woman's Hero, with the page turned down (an act permissible in so good a cause) at the report of the annihilation of one of these well-intentioned but infuriating philosophers. The combined logic and equity of this suggest that the Government might do worse than commandeer the services of Miss LETHBRIDGE as a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... life had a sad painful childhood. He was born in 1812 at Landport, a district of the city of Portsmouth, Hampshire, where his father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office. John Dickens, the prototype of Mr. Micawber, was a kind, well-intentioned man, who knew far better how to harangue his large household of children than how to supply it with the necessities of life. He moved from place to place, sinking deeper into poverty and landing ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Christian Church will be ruined. The governor seems to be striving for its ruin rather than its advancement. It is a matter that demands a speedy remedy, as your Majesty will learn by letters and relations from well-intentioned persons, which will be sent secretly. For neither the Audiencia, nor the city, nor anyone else dare send openly, because of their fear of the governor's harshness; and, from the Council, certain agents usually send the governors the original letters written ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... with its tobacco-brown hangings and monastic furnishing in black oak—would be to invite mischief. To sit there, with her eloquent eyes fixed upon his, her haunting voice wrapping itself about his senses, would be a genuine cruelty toward a harmless, well-intentioned youth whose heroism in abjuring the world, the flesh, and the devil had not yet been great enough to combat his superb and dignified egotism. At best, he would be won by Rachael's revelation of her soul to a long and frankly indiscreet talk ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... consideration must yield to the security of the sovereign, and to the general safety of the state. There is a moment of difficulty and danger at which flattery and falsehood can no longer deceive, and simplicity itself can no longer be misled. Let us suppose it arrived; let us suppose a gracious, well-intentioned prince, made sensible at last of the great duty he owes to his people, and of his own disgraceful situation; that he looks round him for assistance, and asks for no advice but how to gratify the wishes and secure the happiness of his ...
— English Satires • Various
... her father still slept, she quietly left the room. The hour was yet so early, and the streets so deserted, that Mary almost trembled to find herself in them alone; but she was anxious to do what she considered her duty without the pain of contention. John Glegg was naturally an honest and well-intentioned man, but the weakness that had blasted his life adhered to him still. They were doubtless in terrible need of the guinea, and since it was not by any means certain that the real owner would be found, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... either the time or the emphasis. We find a few directions for expression, as in the first measures of Palestrina's Stabat Mater but such directions are extremely rare. They are simply the first signs of the dawn of the far-off day of music with expression. Certain learned and well-intentioned persons endeavor to compare this music with ours, and we surprise in some of the modern editions instances of molto expressivo which seem to be good guesses. This exclusively consonant music, in which the intervals of fourths were considered dissonant, while ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... its opponents. In the former case defeat would be honorable, though defeat is by no means a foregone conclusion; in the latter case a victory is probable which would be worse than a defeat for the Democrats. We may not presume to give any advice in this matter; and yet it would seem that some well-intentioned and honest advice is needed. If there is to-day a true-blue, a frank and out-spoken Democratic newspaper in the city of Boston, we do not know its name. Our esteemed contemporaries of so-called Democratic persuasion, in this cultured city, are either bridled by the administration or are ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... floor with cloth of gold. In order that those three perfectly commonplace, valueless human lives might be added to the world's wretched population, a nature as rare as a jewel was being slowly ground away. What were the treasures to whom she was being sacrificed? Paul, the greasy, well-intentioned, priggish burgher he would make; Elly, almost half-witted, a child who stared at you like an imbecile when asked a question, and who evidently scarcely knew that her mother existed, save as cook and ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... of Newcastle was a sensible, well-intentioned man, but allowed himself to be involved in the management of the details of his office, instead of originating a policy and directing the broad course of affairs with vigour and determination. He displayed a degree of industry during the crisis which ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... make them cleanly or courteous. If Parliament could work miracles of this sort, it would make one really in love with constitutional government. But what a crotchety thing all this amateur lawmaking is! Why did it not occur to this well-intentioned gentleman to inquire how it is that drunkenness is unknown, or nearly unknown, in what are called the better classes? How is it that the orgies our grandfathers liked so well, and deemed the great essence of hospitality, are no longer heard of? The three-bottle man now could no more be found ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... only meant this in the kindest manner, as we know, and to give inexperience a hint from well-intentioned experience. On the other hand, Mr. Crewe had a dignity and a position to uphold. He was a personality. People who went too far with him were apt to be rebuked by a certain glassy quality in his eye, and this now caused the Honourable Jake to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... bodies of Acadians were sold. They were hired out for their keep to a contractor who allowed them to die of cold and hunger. Hundreds of the poor exiles perished. The nemesis of a despotic system is that, however well-intentioned it may be, its officials are not controlled by an alert public opinion and yet must be trusted by their master. France meant well by her colony but the colony, unlike the English colonies, was not taught to look after itself. While nearly ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... dear Mrs. Dennison!" Kate protested. "You and your kind are the true social workers. If only women—all women—understood how to make true homes, there wouldn't be any need for people like us. We're only well-intentioned fools who go around putting plasters over the sores. We don't even reach down as far as the disease—though I suppose we think we do when we get a lot of statistics together. But the men and women who go about ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... its advocates, wishing to make a good plea for it and to justify it for superseding middle- class liberalism, than from clear tendencies which it has itself yet developed. But meanwhile it has plenty of well-intentioned friends against whom culture may with advantage continue to uphold steadily its ideal of human perfection; that this is an inward spiritual activity, having for its characters increased sweetness, increased light, increased ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... divert the king's mind from similar desires and propositions, and not to facilitate any of them; for although perhaps there were no hidden deceit in the then reigning monarch, or any interest greater than that of friendship, it might cause great harm in times of a less well-intentioned successor, who might abuse the navigation, and turn it against those who taught it to them. The governor promised to send another ship soon to trade. Fray Geronymo was to give the king hopes that some Spanish masters of Spanish boats would sail in it. Dayfusama was to be patient, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... any circumstances in the law which consistently with its main design may be so varied as to remove any well-intentioned objections that may happen to exist, it will consist with a wise moderation to make the proper variations. It is desirable on all occasions to unite with a steady and firm adherence to constitutional and necessary acts ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... honest, industrious, and faithful employees in any such wholesale manner. Making men over could not be done in the block. There never had been any difficulty in dealing with the sober, reasonable, well-intentioned men. The trouble had all come from the vicious, the incompetent, and the shiftless ones. And the more privileges this class obtained, the more they demanded. If their working day was made shorter in order to give them the opportunity of taking advantage of the free facilities for improving ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... time, almost all competent naturalists have left speculations on the origin of species to such dreamers as the author of the 'Vestiges', by whose well-intentioned efforts the Lamarckian theory received its final condemnation in the minds of all sound thinkers. Notwithstanding this silence, however, the transmutation theory, as it has been called, has been a "skeleton in ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... as the base heroine, look handsome, and act excellently. They take the audience with them as far as the audience will go. As good as they possibly can be in such conventional puppet-parts are Messrs. GLENNY and ABINGDON, the first as the well-intentioned but weak-willed Lord Dashwood, and the second as that old-fashioned scoundrel, Captain Greville. Mr. ARTHUR WILLIAMS rather suggests Mr. BLAKELEY as the oily, scoundrelly lawyer, Joshua Honybun; and Mr. LE HAY gives variety to the entertainment (which is his special line) in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... political station, it was not for want of sufficient insinuation on the part of the minister. Especially did Granvelle denounce him to "the master" as the perverter of Egmont, while he usually described that nobleman himself, as weak, vain, "a friend of smoke," easily misguided, but in the main well-intentioned and loyal. At the same time, with all these vague commendations, he never omitted to supply the suspicious King with an account of every fact or every rumor to the Count's discredit. In the case of this particular satire, he informed Philip that he could swear it came from the pen of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... felt much the older and wiser. The thing that happens to so many women had happened to her. She felt older and wiser than all the men she had ever seen. She had decided, as most women finally decide, that there are two kinds of men in the world, those who are kindly, gentle, well-intentioned children, and those who, while they remain children, are obsessed with stupid, male vanity and imagine themselves born to be masters of life. Clara's thoughts on the matter were not very clear. She was young and ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... or than anybody but himself, and that whatever goes wrong here is the consequence of Julius's faith in Dr. Easterby. So, when poor Cecil, uneasy in her mind, began asking about the illness at Wil'sbro', he enlivened her with a prose about misjudging, through well-intentioned efforts of clerical philanthropy to interfere with the sanitary condition of the town— so that wells grew tainted, &c., all from ignorant interference. Poor man he heard a little sob, and looked round, and there was Cecil in a dead faint. He set all the bells ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... neighbour's family (the head of which perhaps is a most successful financier and market-rigger) are going to the Isle of Wight for three months, though there is nothing at all the matter with them, is an added bitterness. How often it is said (no doubt with some well-intentioned idea of consolation) that after all money cannot buy life! I remember a curious instance to the contrary of this. In the old days of sailing-packets a country gentleman embarked for Ireland, and when a few miles from land broke a bloodvessel through seasickness. A doctor ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... which many well-intentioned people even to-day do not understand. They do not understand that the labor problem is a human and a moral as well as an economic problem; that a fall in wages, an increase in hours, a deterioration of labor conditions ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Despite these well-intentioned efforts, the Navy failed to increase significantly the number of black officers or sailors in the next decade (Table 8). The percentage of Negroes in the Navy increased so slowly that not until 1955, in ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... said, "is as follows. Punch has a row with Judy and knocks her out. (Laughter.) Various well-intentioned and benignant fools look in on Punch to pass the time of day, and get—very properly—knocked out for their pains. (Loud and prolonged laughter.) This is followed by the side-splitting incident in which a handy clown not only eludes the thirsty bludgeon, but surreptitiously steals the ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... Hiller acknowledged the mistake he had made in rejecting my advice on this point. He gave me plainly to understand that it was not too late to alter the opera according to my suggestions; I should thus have had the inestimable benefit of having such an obviously well-intentioned, and, in its way, so significant, a work in the repertoire, but I never ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the advice of the well-intentioned wiseacres, knowing nothing of the country, to live on his two hundred a year until the end. And the end is coming—in Gueldersdorp Hospital—with giant strides." She blinked. "They've isolated him in a small detached ward. He has a kind friend in the Matron, and the chart-nurse ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... a little in the success of her well-intentioned scheme, and in the address with which she had brought it to bear: whereof she made a full disclosure to Spitfire when she was once more safely entrenched upstairs. Miss Nipper received that proof of her confidence, as well as the prospect of their free association for the future, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... and tact all his own, Atlee narrated Brumsey's blunder in a tone so simple and almost deferential, that Lord Danesbury could show the letter to any of his colleagues. The whole spirit of the document was regret that a very well-intentioned gentleman of good connections and irreproachable morals should be an ass! Not that he employed the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Becket's shrine had once occupied. "Through the holes further westward water came, sufficient to float over the surfaces of the polished Purbeck marble floor and the steps of the altar, and alarmed the well-intentioned assistants into removing the altar, tearing up the altar-rails, etc., etc. The relics of the Black Prince, attached to a beam (over his tomb) at the level of the caps of the piers on the south side of Trinity Chapel, were all taken down and ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... proof. There was no really logical sequence to prove that the situation was dangerous. There was no evidence that his fellow voyagers were other than honorable, well-intentioned men. But he simply didn't feel right. He pulled his wooden chest from under the bunk, opened it, and looked through the small ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... court martial was in session the news of its proceedings reached the eastern cities, and a great outcry was raised, that Minnesota was contemplating a dreadful massacre of Indians. Many influential bodies of well-intentioned but ill-informed people beseeched President Lincoln to put a stop to the proposed executions. The president sent for the records of the trials, and turned them over to his legal and military advisors to decide which were the more flagrant cases. On the sixth day of December, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... may be inferred that our "Sweet Alice" had resolved to protect herself against any romantic tete-a-tetes in the woods with a certain well-intentioned but presuming young man who might desire to ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... and Decemvirs. They possessed no authority but that of jurisdiction within their special department; there seemed no reason why they should be influenced by considerations arising from issues whether legislative or administrative. But this appearance of detachment was wholly illusory, and the well-intentioned experiment was as vain as that of Solon, when he carefully separated the administrative and judicial boards in the Athenian commonwealth and composed both bodies of practically identical individuals. The new court for the trial of extortion, constituted ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Vizier concluded by saying, "Present my compliments to the Ambassador, and tell him that I appreciate his humane and well-intentioned sentiments, but that what has occurred was a misfortune for which there ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... of these presumptions which the biologist would, to say the least, consider worthy of careful investigation, the world is full of well-intentioned people who are anxious to improve the race, and who in their attempts to do so, wholly ignore the germ-plasm. They see only the body-plasm. They are devoted to the dogma that if they can change the body (and what is here said of the body applies equally to the mind) in the direction they ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... from his letters to his mother and other evidence (Scott's testimony, for instance), he was a kindly, well-intentioned man, but lacking in humour. When his father condemned the indecency of the 'Monk', he assured him "that he had not the slightest idea that what he was then writing could injure the principles of any human being." "He was," said Byron, "too great a bore to lie," and the plea is evidently offered ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... wisest men know very little of household management, and never did an excellent and well-intentioned individual put, to use a well-known phrase, his foot more completely into it than Dr. Maybright when he allowed Polly to learn experience by taking the reins of household management for ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... been some busybody who put them up to it. Whoever he was, I wish that he had had to walk daily along the Strand for months (as I had) constantly expecting to be hit in the face or to have his cap knocked off by some well-intentioned N.C.O. or private trying to salute with the hand next to him in a crowd. Their contortions were painful to see. Had the War Office been guilty of such betises when dealing with the things that really mattered during the struggle, they would have lost us the war. The reform was so inconvenient ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... appalling; they consisted of a slow, sleepy dictation. A death-like dreariness brooded always over the lecture halls. Aagesen was especially unendurable; there was no trace of anything human or living about his dictation. Gram had a kind, well-intentioned personality, but had barely reached his desk than it seemed as though he, too, were saying: "I am a human being, everything ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Carrousel, when chance made me the spectator of a laughable scene. A body of these troops, honest, well-intentioned countrymen, with very equivocal equipments, were still in the court of the palace. It would seem that one warrior had strayed outside the railing, where he was enjoying a famous gossip with some neighbours, whom he was paying, for their cheer, by a narrative of the late campaign. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of Princes is no doubt difficult in these times, but it would be much less so if they would behave honourably and straightforwardly, giving the people gradually those privileges which would satisfy all the reasonable and well-intentioned, and would weaken the power of the Red Republicans; instead of that, reaction and a return to all the tyranny and oppression is the cry and the principle—and all papers and books are being seized and prohibited, as in the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... The thought came to him that since he was going to die, he might as well die in the open, away from all the bother and irritation. And behind this idea lurked a sneaking idea that perhaps he would not die after all if only he could escape from the heavy foods, the medicines, and the well-intentioned persons who made ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... to find amusement instead of mental paralysis in the proximity of her present escort, contrasting him with some men she had known; but recent bitter experiences made his probably well-intentioned familiarities sorely trying. There was a lump in his cheek. Geraldine hoped it arose from an afflicted tooth, but she strongly suspected tobacco. Oh, if he would but sit a little ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... superior to the customs of his own day. We still sometimes have the "Prendre-Avoir-Quitter" series of Crebillon,[391] though with fewer details; and Mrs. Newcome would have been almost more horrified than she was at Joseph Andrews by the perusal of one of Marmontel's most well-intentioned things, Annette et Lubin. But he never lays himself out for attractions of a doubtful kind, and none of his best stories, even when they may sometimes involve bowing in the house of Ashtoreth as well as that of Rimmon, derive their bait from this kind. Indeed they rather "assume ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... teaching of any doctrine, is absolutely missing. We certainly cannot teach anything approaching a true Americanism until we ourselves feel and believe and practise in our own lives what we are teaching to others. No law, no lip-service, no effort, however well-intentioned, will amount to anything worth while in inculcating the true American spirit in our foreign-born citizens until we are sure that the American spirit is understood by ourselves and is warp and woof of ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... vein did the worthy doctor run on till some more discreet friend suggested that however well-intentioned the visit, I did not seem to be fully equal to it,—my flushed cheek and anxious eye betraying that the fever of my wound had commenced. They left me, therefore, once more alone, and to my solitary musings over the vicissitudes ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... last fifty years. Immediately after the Crimean War, which some of us are old enough to remember distinctly, a new era of progress began. The Czar of that time, Nicholas I., whose name is still familiar to the present generation, was a patriotic, chivalrous, well-intentioned man, but unfortunately, as a ruler, he belonged to the mailed-fist school, delighted in shining armor, and put his faith largely in drill sergeants. Even in the civil administration he fostered the spirit of military discipline, and ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Garrick, very kindly undertaken by Reynolds, submitted for Garrick's approval. But nothing came of Reynolds's intervention. Perhaps Goldsmith resented Garrick's airs of patronage towards a poor devil of an author; perhaps Garrick was surprised by the manner in which well-intentioned criticisms were taken; at all events, after a good deal of shilly-shallying, the play was taken out of Garrick's hands. Fortunately, a project was just at this moment on foot for starting the rival theatre in Covent Garden, under the management of George Colman; ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... I instructed so promising a pupil as Abdallah, nor when he was first my disciple do I deem that he was other than the most simple-minded and well-intentioned of youths. I always called him son, a title I have never bestowed on another. Like thee, he had compassion on the darkness around him, and craved my leave to go ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... epigrams, and making her presents of little dogs. The Duke of York, though not much gifted with the faculty of making jests, greatly enjoyed them in others. He was a good-humoured, easy-mannered man, wholly without affectation of any kind; well-intentioned, with some sagacity—mingled, however, with a good deal of that abruptness which belonged to all the Brunswicks; and though unfortunate in his domestic conduct, a matter on which it would do no service to the reader to enlarge, yet a brave soldier, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... agent of the foreigner, the vile demagogue who degraded liberty, and whose filthy calumnies stirred sympathy for Antoinette herself. There was Chaumette, who yet was a mild man, popular, moderate, well-intentioned, and virtuous in the administration of the Commune; but he was an atheist! Conspirators, agents of the foreigner,—such were all those sansculottes in red cap and carmagnole and sabots who recklessly outbid the Jacobins in patriotism. Conspirator and ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... mother was by no means an aged woman yet, and her son was a well-doing helpful lad, who would soon be able to take care of himself. Her mother had another daughter too, but Janet knew that her sister could never supply her place to her mother. Though kind and well-intentioned, she was easy minded, not to say thriftless, and the mother of many bairns besides, and there could neither be room nor comfort for her mother at her fireside, should its shelter come ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... incongruity reaches the point of the ludicrous. We recently heard a very able and well-intentioned preacher, near the Fifth Avenue, ask the ladies before him whether they were in the habit of speaking to their female attendants about their souls' salvation,—particularly those who dressed their hair. He especially ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... intelligences, and the stupefaction of slow and dull ones, the futility of eccentricity and the frivolity of passion when unseconded by constancy of character and labour. For futile, in the arts, is whatever the sense of beauty must condemn, however well-intentioned; and frivolous is the passion that forgets the end it would attain, and becomes merely a private rhapsody, however astonishing its developments; slowly but surely it will be seen that such fireworks do not vitally concern ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... This was a well-intentioned effort to eliminate Charles and his troubles from the conversation; but Fred, not heeding, spoke again ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... his warmest thanks for the well-intentioned proposition. There was reason in Mrs. Downe's fear—that he owned. 'But do let her call,' he said. 'There is no woman in England I would so soon trust on such an errand. I am afraid there will not be any brilliant result; still I shall take it as the kindest and nicest thing if she ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... d. 1729).—Poet, one of the Court Physicians to William III. and Anne, wrote several very long and well-intentioned, but dull and tedious, poems, which, though praised by Addison and Johnson, are now utterly forgotten. They include Prince Arthur, Creation, Redemption, Alfred. As may be imagined, they were the subject of derision by the profaner wits of ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... docking had seemed but to make the more expressive. We had already one dog in the family when he arrived, and two Maltese cats. With the cats he was never able to make friends, in spite of persistent well-intentioned efforts. It was evident to us that his advances were all made in the spirit of play, and from a desire of comradeship, the two crowning needs of his blithe sociable spirit. But the cats received them in an attitude of invincible distrust, of which his poor nose frequently bore the sorry ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... strange person," thought Jack, "but he seems good-natured and well-intentioned. I cannot make him out, but as to doing what he advises, I must take time to ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Well-intentioned but slow of apprehension, these poor peasants cling to a carved Christ, and feel a horrible alarm, as if you were offering them a vacant creed, when you touch upon anything higher. Thus Moidel, though very intelligent, looked somewhat grave ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... conduct; because, in exact proportion to the physical weakness of Governments, and to the distraction and confusion which cannot but prevail, when a people is struggling for independence and liberty, are the well-intentioned and the wise among them remitted for their support to those benign elementary feelings of society, for the preservation and cherishing of which, among other important objects, government was from ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... invisible, and my ice continued to melt, in accordance with chemical law. The orchestra in the gallery leaped suddenly into the rag-time without whose accompaniment it was impossible, anywhere in the civilized world, to dine correctly. That rag-time, committed, I suppose, originally by some well-intentioned if banal composer in the privacy of his study one night, had spread over the whole universe of restaurants like a pest, to the exasperation of the sensitive, but evidently to the joy of correct diners. ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... acted in the theatre. Since, therefore, speaking broadly, the dramatist can publish his work only through production, it is only through attending plays and studying what lies beneath the acting and behind the presentation that even the most well-intentioned critic of contemporary drama can discover what our ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... and beg her to accept his son's hand to save him from going off in a galloping consumption, that would have been a triumph after Phoebe's heart. To be sure this was a perfectly vain and wildly romantic hope—it was the only bit of wild and girlish romance in the bosom of a very well-educated, well-intentioned, and sensible young woman. She had seen her parents put up with the arrogance of the millionnaire for a long time without rebelling any more than they did; but Mr. Copperhead had gone further than Phoebe could bear; and thoroughly as she understood her own position, and all its interests, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... first in feeding; and, once for all, do not let yourselves be deceived by any of the common talk of "indiscriminate charity." The order to us is not to feed the deserving hungry, nor the industrious hungry, nor the amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but simply to feed the hungry. It is quite true, infallibly true, that if any man will not work, neither should he eat—think of that, and every time you sit down to your dinner, ladies and gentlemen, say ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... supposed to be ignorant of the hazard I run in writing of America at all. I know perfectly well that there is, in that country, a numerous class of well-intentioned persons prone to be dissatisfied with all accounts of the Republic whose citizens they are, which are not couched in terms of exalted and extravagant praise. I know perfectly well that there is in America, as in most other places laid down in maps of the great world, a numerous class ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... during his later years, with a clear discernment of inevitable necessity, he advocated in the community to which he belonged the policy of the closest adherence to Rome. It was a policy in the highest degree judicious and beyond doubt well-intentioned, but it was far from being high-spirited or proud. Nor was Polybius able wholly to disengage himself from the vanity and paltriness of the Hellenic statesmanship of the time. He was hardly released from exile, when he proposed to the senate ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... man can get himself into trouble in China. He may refuse to eat the food that is pushed into his mouth at a Chinese banquet by the perfectly well-intentioned man sitting beside him. In that case he will hardly do more than arouse the contempt of his beneficiary and his host. He simply shows that he lacks good Chinese table manners, for at a Chinese banquet it is proper to stuff food into your ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... thunder," has the horologe of time struck, and an old era passed away. Is it the healthy peace or the ominous unhealthy, that rests on France for the next ten years? Dubarrydom and its D'Aiguillons are gone for ever. There is a young, still docile, well-intentioned king; a young, beautiful and bountiful, well-intentioned queen; and with them all France, as it were, become young. For controller-general, a virtuous, philosophic Turgot. Philosophism sits joyful in her glittering salons; "the age of revolutions ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... Some well-intentioned, but rather obstinate persons, could not at first comprehend how, if the moon displays invariably the same face to the earth during her revolution, she can describe one turn round herself. To such they answered, "Go into your dining-room, and walk round the table in such ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... never so prostitute himself to obtain it. Nor did he care to let the world into the secret of his heart. Indeed, all his life Swift seemed to hide, almost jealously, the genuine piety of his nature. Whatever suspicion of policy has surrounded the tract must be ascribed to the well-intentioned letter of the Earl of Berkeley above quoted; and the Earl would not have written thus had he felt Swift's motive to be any other ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... story told of a well-intentioned missionary who tried to induce a Persian fire-worshipper to abandon the creed of his ancestors. "Is it not," urged the Christian minister, "a sad and deplorable superstition for an intelligent person like you to worship an inanimate object like the sun?" "My friend," said the old ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... why I want to seize this opportunity, and try if I cannot manage to put a little virility into these well-intentioned people for once. The idol of Authority must be shattered in this town. This gross and inexcusable blunder about the water supply must be brought home to the mind of every ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... who, in their generalizing doctrines, too frequently overlook individual comfort and interests. His remarks, in the same paper, on the edition of the Pleas of the Crown cannot be thus vindicated, and we must here lament an error in an otherwise honest and well-intentioned mind[12]. Every impartial reader of his works may thus easily trace to their origin Johnson's chief political errors, and his research must terminate in admiration of a writer, who never prostituted ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... a chosen few just one week after her daughter's arrival, and rather an absurd scene had occurred, in which that most estimable officer, Lieutenant Sloat, had figured as the hero. A more simple-minded, well-intentioned fellow than Sloat there did not live. He was so full of kindness and good nature and readiness to do anything for anybody that it never seemed to occur to him that everybody on earth was not just as ready to be equally accommodating. ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... hand, if there were among the liberals some sincere and well-intentioned men, who meant to remain faithful alike to the throne and the Charter, there were others who already masked treachery under the appearance of devotion to the King. Those who two years later were to boast of having labored during the entire restoration for the ruin of the elder ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... if this witness, well-intentioned as he was, carried conviction, for, although his followers took their cue from him and applauded loudly, their very manifestations of faith aroused suspicion among ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... be no imputation of sinister designs to these gentlefolk, who so are elected by force of circumstances to guard and guide the nation's interests. As things go, it will doubtless commonly be found that they are as well-intentioned as need be. But a well-meaning gentleman of good antecedents means well in a gentlemanly way and in the light of good antecedents. Which comes unavoidably to an effectual bias in favor of those interests which honorable gentlemen of good antecedents have at heart. And among these ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... been obliged to criticize Miss Smith's book it is not because I wish to disparage a well-intentioned effort, but because I constantly hear The Music of the Waters quoted as an authoritative work on sailor shanties; and since the shanties in it were all collected in the district where I spent ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... other birds to snare. The next day only three daily papers mentioned the concert at all. In fact, Otto expected press notices but once a week. All three papers praised the matchless Lopez in her Shadow Song. One referred to Clarice as talented; another called her well-intentioned; the third merely said that she had played. The short dream of artistic ascendancy lay in fragments around her. She was a sensible girl, and stamped ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... words, and believed in phantoms. But now, I swear to you, I could speak out before all men every desire I feel. I have absolutely nothing to hide; I am absolutely, in the fullest meaning of the word, a well-intentioned man. I am humble, I am ready to adapt myself to circumstances; I want little; I want to do the good that lies nearest, to be even a little use. But no! I never succeed. What does it mean? What hinders me from living and working like others?... ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... that it was singularly humiliating to be treated with so little respect. In point of fact, he was quite justified in refusing to accept an appellation which, however well it might fit his manners as a well-intentioned fault-finder, caustic and whimsical in speech, in no way applied to his unusually broad and penetrating intelligence, teeming with new and ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... punt at once," said Meldon, "and don't try to be sarcastic. Nothing is less becoming to you. Your proper part in life is that of the sober, well-intentioned, somewhat thick-headed, bachelor uncle. You do that excellently; but the moment you try to be clever you give ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... declaring she was drunk. But what shocked Tahiti might seem fit enough in the Paumotus, the more so as certain women there possess, by the gift of nature, singular and useful powers. They say they are honest, well-intentioned ladies, some of them embarrassed by their weird inheritance. And indeed the trouble caused by this endowment is so great, and the protection afforded so infinitesimally small, that I hesitate whether to call it a gift or a hereditary curse. You may rob this lady's coco-patch, steal her canoes, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this question is given on every page of his sermons. He has no reserves, but lets his character transpire in every sentence. He is a bold, eager, earnest, devout, passionate, well-intentioned man, with considerable experience in the sphere of the religious emotions, full of sympathy with rough natures, full of mother wit and practical sagacity, but, as a theologian, coarse, ignorant, narrow-minded, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... meaning in which the most world-wide differences of thought on such subjects may be involved; or prevent the most gentle worded and apparently justifiable expression of regret, so embodied, from grating on the {256} feelings of thousands of estimable and well-intentioned men with all the harshness ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... sensitive natures, such as are to be met with among all classes and amid all circumstances of life, in Ghetto and in secluded village, no less than among the most favored ones of the earth. Had she not cast to the winds the well-intentioned counsel given her in that unsigned letter? Why then should she complain and lament, now that the seed had borne fruit? She shrank from alluding before her husband to the passion which day by day, nay, hour by hour, tightened its hold upon him. She would have ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... to be made in favor of those well-intentioned persons and well-wishers to the fund, who, having all along paid their subscriptions regularly, are so unfortunate as to die before the six months, which would entitle them to their freedom, are quite completed. One can hardly imagine a more distressing case than that of a poor fellow ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... for thinking and doing whatever is humane. Speaking of humanity, it now occurs to me, I have heard a report that some well-intentioned men of your religion so interpret the words or wishes of its Founder, they would ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... speech, which is very well known, dismissed the rebels with great ill-humour, refusing to hear any explanation. "I have suppressed your address," he began abruptly: "it was incendiary. I called you round me to do good—you have done ill. Eleven-twelfths of you are well-intentioned, the others, and above all M. Laine, are factious intriguers, devoted to England, to all my enemies, and corresponding through the channel of the advocate Deseze with the Bourbons. Return to your Departments, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... me, Jim; this is too momentous a crisis in my life to have a well-intentioned but intellectually dwarfed friend butting into me and running about ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... Haye (ne Levinstein) would make a better landlord than the old squire, in spite of the prejudices of the countryside.... No, I am afraid it would be stretching a point to promise you any great entertainment from this well-intentioned but rather woolly book. Brother Jenkins, the fraud, of the Society of Seven, is about the most entertaining ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... persecuted by misfortune,—or an impudent unfeeling women, who excites pity by the tears and cries of a poor child whom she has hired perhaps for the purpose, and tortured into suffering, steps daringly forward to intercept the alms of the charitable; and the well-intentioned gift which should relieve the indigent is the prize of impudence and imposition, and the support of vice and idleness.—What then is left for the modest object of real distress, but to retire dispirited and hide himself in the obscurity of his cottage, there to ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... stood waiting in a little room prepared for her, with tea poured out, bread-and-butter cut into diaphanous slices, and eggs arranged—that she wanted no breakfast: then to shut herself alone in her bedroom, was her only thought. She was followed thither by the well-intentioned matron with a cup of tea and one piece of bread-and-butter on a tray, cheerfully insisting that ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... spectacle of an equal number of intellectual-looking gentlemen, all using good English and all wearing clean linen, reaching diametrically opposite conclusions on precisely the same facts, is calculated to fill the well-intentioned juror with distrust. Painful as it is to record the fact, juries are sometimes almost as sceptical in regard to doctors as they always are in ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... was aided by nearly all the lay persons of this colony who were born in these islands, who took up this cause as their own. They caused many disturbances, and used language so offensive that they obliged the honorable and well-intentioned people of this city to come to our defense. This was done by the bishop of the city of Santisimo Nombre de Jesus in Cubu, who was then governing this archbishopric; for as judge of the ordinary he ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... gibbet its perpetrator forever,—and leave him swinging in the winds of the Fool's Paradise. It is with great pain that I ever speak with severity of the works of living masters, especially when, like Mr. Lee's, they are well-intentioned, simple, free from affectation or imitation, and evidently painted with constant reference to nature. But I believe that these qualities will always secure him that admiration which he deserves—that there will be many unsophisticated and honest minds always ready to follow his guidance, and ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... walk quite straight so long as there were no stones in the way and nobody to pull her aside. If there were stones, she instantly stumbled; if somebody pulled, she instantly went. She was weak, amiable, well-intentioned. She had a widowed father who was unpleasant and who sometimes beat her on Saturday nights, and on Sunday mornings sometimes, if the fumes of the Cock and Hens still hung about him, threw things at her before she went to church. A widowed father in Emma's ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... him. Never in all his life had he been such a prey to exterior influences, been twisted and turned to and fro, weather-cock fashion, thus. It was absurd, of course, to take things too seriously, yet he could not but fear the Archdeacon's well-intentioned bit of worldliness and his own disposition to court whatever family prejudice pronounced taboo, were in process of leading him a very ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... government for theirs. Therefore our cause, too, is the juster.' But therefore it is nothing of the sort. A dirty man may be in the right, and a clean man in the wrong; an ungodly man in the right, and a godly man in the wrong; and the most specious and well-intentioned system which allows justice to be confused with something else will allow it to be stretched, even by well-meaning persons, to cover ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Unfortunately, this well-intentioned decision on the part of the Prince Regent was attended with a dire result. "The condescension of the Prince," relate the papers, "in extending the permission to view, for three days longer, the arrangements for the late fete at Carlton House, has nearly been attended ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... monkeys, still and dejected; a dismal, tired rooster, who wanted to go to roost, but could not in that glare of gas, and stood motionless on the bottom of the cage; three or four common white rabbits; and a mangy cat. Such was the Sacred Museum. Such are the exhibitions to which well-intentioned parents will take their children, while shrinking in affright from the theatre! It is strange that this lucrative business of providing amusement for children and country visitors should have been so long abandoned to the most ignorant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... "Oh, not so bad as that, I hope," she said serenely. "Stephen, now, is beginning to have quite a liking for him. So earnest; so well-intentioned...." ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... Henry III. and the chessboard of Louis XIII. are merely ridiculous. We must excuse well-intentioned monarchs when they only indulge themselves with frivolous and childish trifles. It is something to be thankful for if we have not to apply to them the adage—Quic-quid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi—'When kings go mad their people get ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... minutes' speech did more to compose our differences, to unite all Irishmen in a bond of friendship and good will, than could have been accomplished by years of agitation or by a conference, however well-intentioned it might be." ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... taking up her parable concerning the tyranny and stupidity of man and the superior virtue of woman; and sometimes she felt it her duty to put it to Thurstane that he owed everything to his wife; all of which was more or less wearing, even to her niece. At the same time she was such a disinterested, well-intentioned creature that it was impossible not to grant her a certain amount of admiration. For instance, when Clara proposed to make her comfortable for life by settling upon her fifty thousand dollars, she replied peremptorily that it was far too much for an old woman who had decided to turn her back ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... introduction to my first post as diplomat's wife was made unwittingly by a gentleman walking with a friend just behind me. "Who is that gentleman?" said he, indicating Johan. "That? That is the Minister of Denmark." I, struggling with an arm-load of flowers culled from well-intentioned friends at different stations on the road, my maid and Johan's valet bringing up the rear with the overflow of small baggage, passed unnoticed. Now we are quite established here, and I have already ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... advantages that, in reality, they do not enjoy, while their enemies declaim about vices and evils from which they are comparatively free. Facts are made to suit theories, and thus it is that we see well-intentioned, and otherwise respectable writers, constantly running into extravagances, in order to adapt the circumstances to the supposed logical or moral inference. This reasoning backwards, has caused Alison, with all his knowledge and fair-mindedness, to fall into several egregious ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... in this hospital—an intermediate stage—waiting for the draft with which he would be going into Palestine, all had been very nice to him, friendly, and as it were indulgent; so might schoolboys have treated some well-intentioned dreamy master, or business men a harmless idealistic inventor who came visiting their offices. He had even the feeling that they were glad to have him about, just as they were glad to have their mascots and their regimental colours; but of heart-to-heart simple comradeship—it seemed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... mental diversity of men and women is equally fundamental. It is rooted in organisation. The well-intentioned efforts of many pioneers in women's movements to treat men and women as identical, and, as it were, to force women into masculine moulds, were both mischievous and useless. Women will always be different from men, mentally as well as physically. It is well for ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... are not the heritage of one person, party, or even one generation. It's just the tendency of government to grow, for practices and programs to become the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this Earth. And there's always that well-intentioned chorus of voices saying, "With a little more power and a little more money, we could do so much for the people." For a time we forgot the American dream isn't one of making government bigger; it's keeping faith with the mighty spirit of free people ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... evils of our churches is, that they are churches of the clergy, not of the people. Our clergy are generally pure-minded, well-intentioned men, less selfish and worldly than most men; but they are not equal to the demands of their position. We take a young man, send him to college, then to a theological school, where he studies his Greek very faithfully, and learns to write sermons. He comes ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Hard, having called early on Monday afternoon also left early, being anxious to prove their civility of purest water, untainted by self-seeking, by ulterior greed of tea and cakes. It followed that Damaris found herself relieved of their somewhat embarrassed, though kindly and well-intentioned, presence before sunset. And of this she was glad, since the afternoon had been fruitful of interests far more intimate ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... try to help realise this, their well-intentioned efforts will be futile, and they will present a spectacle fit only to set Olympus laughing. I have gone through an exhibition of Japanese art, got up for the poor of Whitechapel with the idea of elevating them, of begetting in them yearnings for the Beautiful and True and Good. Granting (what is ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... selfish calculation.... She thought of the little bookseller in the Charing Cross Road.... 'Doing good to others is doing good to yourself....' Ay, but make very sure that you are doing good and not well-intentioned harm. ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... as he thought of the beginning. In the beginning his sincerity, had been laughed at, his ardour had met rebuff. He had gone to Richmond to meet an assembly of statesmen; he had found a body of well-intentioned, but unprofitable servants. They were men to be led, this he saw; and as soon as his vision was adjusted he had determined within himself to become their leader. The day when a legislator meant a statesman was done with; it meant merely a ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... his own, and share the profits. Poets demanded that he should find publishers for their epics, and dramatists that he should find managers for their plays. Critics pointed out to him his anachronisms, and well-intentioned readers set him right on points of morality and law. When he was old, and ill, and ruined, there was yet no respite from the curse of correspondents. A year before his death he wrote dejectedly in his journal:—"A fleece of letters which must be answered, I suppose; all ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... these men were, I found that the greater part of them were hardy mechanics (not well-educated clergymen), whom the benevolent and well-intentioned people of England had sent out in order to teach the natives the importance of different trades—a most judicious arrangement, and which ought to be the foundation of all missions. What could be a more gratifying ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... to the "True Friends" of the Dark Continent, "not to the 'Philanthropist' or to Exeter Hall." [187] One of its objects was to give a trustworthy account of the negro character and to point out the many mistakes that well-intentioned Englishmen had made in dealing with it. To put it briefly, he says that the negro [188] is an inferior race, and that neither education nor anything else can raise it to the level of the white. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... that such a charge could be maintained. Smith appeared to her to be like a child playing among awful forces—clever enough often to control them, to the amazement of himself and others, but never comprehending the force he used; often naughty; on the whole a well-intentioned child. But she could well see that childishness combined with power is a more difficult conception for the common mind than ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... I cried, by way of testing his intellectual quality, but before I could get on terms with him, the stage was taken by a dark, curly-haired, handsome boy of twenty-four or so, generally addressed as "Ronnie." I had thought him very like a well-intentioned retriever pup. I could imagine him worrying an intellectual slipper to pieces with ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... a proser's doubts, Templemore. You will do all that is well-intentioned and proper, I dare say, in the usual acceptation of the words; but I wish you to do more; that which is wise. Grace has now a sincere reverence and respect for England, feelings that in many particulars are sustained by the facts, and ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... familiarity of meaningless decoration, and the bookcase whose simple, quiet elegance is in itself decorative. Blessed be the nothingness which allows Miladi to build her own art atmosphere untainted by gifts of well-intentioned but tasteless friends. ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... of eleven, an only son, was sent to me by an intellectual father, who had been his constant companion. The lad was very amiable and well-intentioned. A year later he gave me particulars of his corruption by a cousin, who was three years older than he. Since that time—particularly of late—he had practised masturbation. He had not the least idea that it was hurtful or even unrefined, and thought that it ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... ridiculous in its flippant or pompous, becomes terrible in its malignant, expression. Thus, the headstrong young men who pushed the French Revolution of 1789 into the excesses of the Reign of Terror were well-intentioned reformers, driven into crime by the fanaticism of mental conceit. This is especially true of Robespierre and St. Just. Their hearts were hardened through their heads. The abstract notions of freedom and philanthropy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... been long and lonely until that elusive goal was reached; and, even now, in the heat of the controversy which ensues, we find ourselves sometimes in a somewhat parlous position, placed, as it were, between two fires; on the one side are those who, though not without sympathetic feeling for the well-intentioned, earnest-minded believers in the errors now being exposed, yet cast aside all scruples in the interest of humanity and truth. On the other side are those obsessed by care and compunction for these accredited ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... purposes of the organization and are loyal to them. The history of all cooperative movements shows that those which have been permanently successful have arisen through the federation of strong local associations, and numerous failures of well-intentioned efforts at large-scale cooperative marketing have been due to the fact that numerous local associations cannot be organized by the parent association with any assurance ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... he not sometimes felt misgivings as to the wisdom of what he was doing. He never had the help of a Ministry upon whom he could rely or with whom he could sympathise. The Cabinet presided over by Sir Gordon Sprigg was composed of very well-intentioned men. But, with perhaps one single exception, it did not possess any strongly individualistic personage capable of assisting Sir Alfred in framing a policy acceptable to all shades of public opinion in the Colony, ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... with his father, at Dinan in the north of France, and promptly got imbued with the war fever. He enlisted in a battalion, in the Second Army of the Loire, commanded by General Chanzy. This army, like other well-intentioned but poorly organized troops of the French, was driven steadily back by the superior German forces, until the enemy bombarded ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... data, because their principles were not derived from permanent sources. The doctrine of expediency was one he highly censured, and it had existed long enough to prove to him that it was worthless. What one set of well-intentioned men may effect, and which for a time may have produced good, another set of men by the same doctrine, 'i.e.' of expediency may effect, and then produce incalculable mischief, and, therefore, Coleridge thought there was neither guide nor safety, but in the permanent and uncontrovertible truths of ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... way in which a well-intentioned doctor would take care of a lunatic in the reign of Henry VIII. We wish that all the treatment pursued had been as considerate. That it was not so we shall see; but I would first add the curious experience of Dr. Borde in Rome, which he visited, and where he witnessed ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... did not know that Cliff and Berrie had quarreled, for she treated the girl with maternal familiarity. She was a good-natured, well-intentioned old sloven, but a most renowned tattler, and the girl feared her more than she feared any other woman in the valley. She had always avoided her, but she showed nothing of this dislike ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... seventy years of chrysalis. Is it not too long? Enthusiasm must struggle fiercely to burn clear amid these fogs. In what little, low, dark cells of care and prejudice, without one soaring thought or melodious fancy, do poor mortals—well-intentioned enough, and with religious aspiration too—forever creep. And yet the sun sets to-day as gloriously bright as ever it did on the temples of Athens, and the evening star rises as heavenly pure as it rose on ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... other spirits sent all the way from England for the purpose of enabling her worthy sons to exhibit themselves to Chinese and other nations in this disgraceful light. That spirit-drinking at home is no excuse for opium-smoking abroad, I admit; but I would recommend the well-intentioned persons who have of late been raising such an outcry on the subject of opium, to begin at home, and attempt to reform their own countrymen: they may then come to China with a clear conscience, and preach reform ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... Bonnes, and are going on to Cauterets and through other parts of the Pyrenees,—it was a bold undertaking! They do not find a reason for it at all. One of them is familiar with America, she says, for she once knew of some one who went there—to Buenos Ayres. They are well-intentioned and free and happy, and never think of envy as they ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix |
