"Ill-judged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intelligence touched the crowd, and Coaldust was instantly forward in proposing an informal vote of condolence, which was seconded by a bare-armed lady in a deerstalker cap. But the policeman, evidently roused by our friends' ill-judged and precipitate attempt to strike camp, suddenly produced a pocket-book from his ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... outlying farms, burn down the buildings, scalp the inmates, and drive off the horses.[12] Year by year the exasperation of the borderers grew greater and the tale of the wrongs they had to avenge longer.[13] Occasionally they took a brutal and ill-judged vengeance, which usually fell on innocent Indians,[14] and raised up new foes for the whites. The savages grew continually more hostile, and in the fall of 1773 their attacks became so frequent that it was evident a general outbreak was at hand; eleven people were murdered in the county of Fincastle ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... temper. They may be subject to accidental ill humor, or to whimsical complaints. Blemishes of this kind often shade the brightest character; but they are never destructive of mutual felicity, unless when they are made so by an improper resentment, or by an ill-judged opposition. When cooled, and in his usual temper, the man of understanding, if he has been wrong, will suggest to himself all that could be urged against him. The man of good nature will, unupbraided, own his error. Immediate contradiction is, therefore, wholly unserviceable, and ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... was still as cold as a potato towards my beast of burden. She was pretty enough to look at; but then she had given proof of dead stupidity, redeemed indeed by patience, but aggravated by flashes of sorry and ill-judged light-heartedness. And I own this new discovery seemed another point against her. What the devil was the good of a she-ass if she could not carry a sleeping-bag and a few necessaries? I saw the end of the fable rapidly approaching, when I should have to carry Modestine. AEsop was the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mean that it will reduce him to an abstraction of perfection, as ill-judged worshipers of George Washington attempted to do with him. Theodore Roosevelt was so vastly human, that no worshiper can make him abstract and retain recognizable features. We have reached the time when we will not suffer anybody to turn our great ones into ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... and night of intense excitement, of grave peril, endeavoring to preserve the life of this man whom I would more gladly see die than any one I ever knew. I stood now in the open jaws of my own destruction, where the slightest false movement, or ill-judged word, upon his part or my own, must mean betrayal; where an awakening of suspicion in the simple mind of the sentry without, or of his captain in the corridor; the return to consciousness, or chance discovery, of the bound priest ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... and disliked Mr. Adams, and made the sad mistake of publishing his mistrust and dislike. It must be confessed that the gentlemen who directed the Administration party were no match as tacticians for such file-leaders as Jefferson and Burr. Many of their pet measures were ill-judged, to say the least. The provisional army furnished a fertile theme for fierce declamation. The black cockade became the badge of the supporters of government, so that in the streets one could tell at a glance whether friend or foe was approaching. The Alien and Sedition ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... remark that you or somebody like you would in certain circumstances be after a certain lady. I thought it to be an ill-judged speech, and as your particular friend I heard it with ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... very men by whole exertions they had been obtained with scurrilous and foul invective; and while with one hand they affected to conciliate the people, with the other they scattered the seeds of disaffection widely through the land by the most inflammatory and ill-judged libels upon the country and its claims. Thus, in the hands of those men, the benignity of the Sovereign was perverted into an instrument of discontent, and those rich concessions which, if judiciously administered, ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... of personages of exalted rank and high birth, persuaded the King, still connecting his case with their own, that it was impossible my brother should ever forgive the affront he had received, and not seek to avenge himself with the first opportunity. The King, forgetting the ill-judged steps these young men had so lately induced him to take, hereupon receives this new impression, and gives orders to the officers of the guard to keep strict watch at the gates that his brother go not out, and that his people be made to leave the ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... BAUTZEN, 30th July, 1757. "MY DEAR BROTHER,—Your bad guidance has greatly deranged my affairs. It is not the Enemy, it is your ill-judged measures that have done me all this mischief. My Generals are inexcusable; either for advising you so ill, or in permitting you to follow resolutions so unwise. Your ears are accustomed to listen to the talk of flatterers only. Daun has not flattered you;—behold the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... said her mamma, stopping the accusations she saw were ready to overwhelm the offending little girl; "come here, and let me talk to you about this sad thing you have done to the little birds. Do you see what you have done by your ill-judged kindness?" ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... read first by everybody and then by nobody. Indeed, it is hard to fancy a pleasanter destiny than to join the company of lesser authors. All their readers are sworn friends. They are spared the harsh discords of ill-judged praise and feigned rapture. Once or twice in a century some enthusiastic and expansive admirer insists upon dragging them from their shy retreats, and trumpeting their fame in the market-place, asserting, possibly with loud asseverations (after ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... tormentor and my temporary refuge from intolerable misery. You remember the sad hour you first knew your husband was a drunkard. Your look on that morning of misery—shall I ever forget it? Yet, blind and confiding as you were, how soon did your ill-judged confidence in me return! Vain hopes! I was even then past recovery—even then sealed over to ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... politico-economists it will appear a Pyrrhic victory. Capital is effectually scared from this part of Ireland, and those who have invested money on mortgage and found themselves at last compelled to "take the beast for the debt" are bitterly regretting their ill-judged promptitude. A large farm between this and Achill, or near Ballina on the north, or in the country extending from the spot where Lord Mountmorres was shot, towards Ballinrobe, Hollymount, Claremorris, or Castlebar, could hardly be let now at any price, even where the ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... Bjornson, and with him most of the soberer spirits amongst Norwegian writers, had realised that the door which had so long shut out Norway from the literature of Europe must be, as he put it, opened from the inside; and he rightly considered that the ill-judged "Bonde-Maal" movement could only have the result of wedging the ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... better character than himself had already done. A more extravagant project was never formed, and indeed all his acts, during the six weeks that followed his marriage, were more or less eccentric and ill-judged. This he admitted, when relating them to me, and probably would not have been sorry to place them to the score of actual mental derangement. The only redeeming touch in his conduct, at that, the blackest period ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... the grimy deserts of Bloomsbury, to Brockett's. To his singing, beating heart the thin ribbon of the grey street with the faint dim blue of the evening sky was out of place, ill-judged as a setting to his exultations. He had swept in the tempestuous way that was natural to him, the shop and all that it had been to him, behind him. Even Brockett's must go with the rest. Of course he could not stay there now that the weekly two pounds had stopped. He ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... brother-in-law, asking where the object of our charity now was, if he were still alive. The reply was that his ingratitude did not surprise the writer—that he was a hopeless drunkard, a remittance man, whom the family had to ship off as soon as possible when our ill-judged kindness sent him to England. At that time he was in Canada, but it was not worth while to give any address. When Mr. Bowyear started the Charity Organization Society in Adelaide, he said I was no good as a visitor; I was too credulous, and had not half enough of the ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... wonderful impartiality, and great clarity. On November 12, 1860, he sent to Russell a full description of the clamour raised in the South over the election of Lincoln, enumerated the resignation of Federal officials (calling these "ill-judged measures"), and expressed the opinion that Lincoln was no Radical. He hoped the storm would blow over without damage to the Union[64]. Russell, for his part, was prompt to instruct Lyons and the British consuls not "to seem to favour one party rather than ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... whole proceeding is savage, barbarous, inhuman, and therefore utterly unworthy of rational men. I believe it is this growing horror of legalised carnage which prevented the late President of the United States' ill-judged message leading to any rupture between our two countries. It was felt that Englishmen and Americans deliberately setting about the destruction of each other's property and taking one another's lives would amount ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... might have been distinguished for the energy of virtue. On the primary treatment of such men, everything depends; and their first master determined whether they were to become active and intelligent agriculturists, or by pernicious indulgence, and not less ill-judged severity, to pass rapidly, by a reckless and resentful temper, from the triangle to ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... add a fourth, were all sentimental unbelievers, and all at the same time inculcated a reverence and regard to the established religions of their respective countries. Nay, all sentimental unbelievers, had they not been provoked by the ill-judged bigotry of their adversaries, would have adhered unanimously to the same maxims. If their unbelief proceeds from a consciousness of the weakness and limited state of the human understanding, the constant ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... raised her head with a solemn air. "A day will come," said she, "when you will repent of having so ill-judged me. On that day, it is I who will pray God to forgive you for having been unjust toward me. Besides, I shall suffer so much that you will be the first to pity my sufferings. Do not reproach me with that happiness, Monsieur d'Artagnan; it costs me dear, and I have ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... general tendency of public action, in America. If there appear to-day occasional symptoms of a change in the tone of men on this point, it is to be attributed to the agitation of the very question we are now discussing. Whenever women make ill-judged, unnatural, extravagant demands, they must prepare to lose ground. Yes, even where the particular points in dispute are conceded to their reiterated importunity, they must still eventually lower their general ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... behold in England. The landlord of an Irish estate, inhabited by Roman Catholics, is a sort of despot, who yields obedience in whatever concerns the poor to no law but that of his will ... A long series of oppressions, aided by very many ill-judged laws, have brought landlords into a habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, and their vassals into that of an almost unlimited submission. Speaking a language that is despised, professing a religion that is abhorred, and being disarmed, the poor ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... unfortunately born a beauty, to a full sense of which my father took care to flatter me; and having, when very young, put me to a school in the country, afterwards transplanted me to another in town, at the instigation of his friends, where his ill-judged fondness let me remain no longer than to learn just enough experience to convince me of the sordidness of his views, to give me an idea of perfections which my present situation will never suffer me to reach, and to teach me sufficient morals to dare to despise what ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... to which Her Majesty was thus unfortunately advised I regret from the bottom of my soul! All the successive vile plots of the Cardinal against the peace and reputation of the Queen may be attributed to this ill-judged prudence! Though it resulted from an honest desire of screening Her Majesty from the resentment or revenge to which she might have subjected herself from this villain, who had already injured her in her own estimation for having been credulous ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... that, I shall tak' her roun' the waist, juist like this—" said he, insinuating his left arm circumferentially. It was an ill-judged movement, for, instead of circling Meg Kissock's waist, he extended his arm round the off hindleg of Birsie, the minister's pony, who had become a trifle short tempered in his old age. Now it was upon that ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... the line of bluffs south of Vicksburg, to the importance of which their attention, never entirely diverted, had been forcibly drawn by the advance of the fleet in the previous months. Fruitless as that ill-judged advance had been, it reminded the enemy of the serious inconvenience they would suffer if the United States ships could freely patrol that part of the Mississippi, and impressed upon them the necessity of securing a section of it, by which ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... to ask for cattle twice a week, always taking from ten to twenty animals, until one day, after exceptionally wet weather, I protested that it was not possible to round up the stock in the then state of the camp and destroy so much grass for a small bunch of cows. Unlucky thought and ill-judged protest! For when he urged that the inhabitants of the town were starving, and that a small point of half-breed heifers would do to go on with, I received orders to let him part out from our best herd. Twenty fine half-bred Herefords did he pick while I almost shed tears ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... dragoons, on sorrel ponies barely fourteen hands high, rode up and began to clear the bridge, but gently and gradually. The crowd was retiring as fast as its numbers would permit, when some of the municipal guard rode through the ranks of the dragoons and set themselves, with ill-judged roughness, to accelerate the operation. The crowd grew angry, and stones began to be thrown at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... crier when the hour of prayer came round. On learning the cause he rebuked the cadi for neglecting, on his account, his duty and his religion, and warned him that if he should visit him in his kingdom he would find no such ill-judged deference. He showed no dissatisfaction, it is said, with the inscription which declared that Saladin had purified the city from those who worshipped many gods, or any displeasure when the Mahometans in his train ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... "The Germ," republished in this volume. I know of no particular reason why I should not do this, for certain it is that few people living know, or ever knew, so much as I do about "The Germ,"; and if some press-critics who regarded previous writings of mine as superfluous or ill-judged should entertain a like opinion now, in equal or increased measure, I willingly leave them to say so, while I pursue my own ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Rinaldo, it was a most ill-judged and mistaken indulgence, that led you to suppress the story of my disaster. Give me to know it. It may be distressful, it may be tremendous. But be it as it will, there is not a misfortune in the whole catalogue ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... Thursday night. A relative in the House had undertaken to telephone the event to me at the earliest moment, so that I should have plenty of time to chronicle a victory for common sense, or deplore the first step in an ill-judged constitutional revolution. When the telephone-bell rang and the figures of the division were given, they showed a majority against the rejection of the Bill. It was not a large majority, but it was sufficient, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... perhaps ill-judged to visit my father's land, since to him it had been a land forbidden. But a few months after his death, when I was twenty-one, the longing to see Spain had become an obsession. And it must have been my evil star which influenced an anarchist to throw a bomb at a royal personage on the very ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... myself also of this opportunity to enter my protest against the ill-judged and mischievous practice of those patients who confide upon many occasions in the opinion of their nurse, rather than that of their medical attendant, and who, in consequence, often injure themselves essentially ...
— Remarks on the Subject of Lactation • Edward Morton
... last evening that all the ladies felt an interest in him, notwithstanding the numberless wild and ill-judged things he does. Is he not a ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... On June 20 a carefully engineered insurrection exposed the king and queen to cruel insults and imminent danger. The long agony of the monarchy was drawing to a close. After protracted delays the allies began to move, and, on July 25, Brunswick published an ill-judged manifesto which excited the French to fury. The British ambassador, Lord Gower, wrote that the lives of the king and queen were threatened, and asked if he might represent the sentiments of his court. Determined not to give any cause of offence, the government refused to allow him to speak officially. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... example the aria of 'Orpheus,' 'Che faro senza Euridice' Change its expression by the smallest discrepancy of time or modulation, and you transform it into a tune for a puppet-show. In music of this description a misplaced piano or forte, an ill-judged fioriture, an error of movement, either one, will alter the effect of the whole scene. The opera must, therefore, be rehearsed under my own direction, for the composer is the soul of his opera, and his presence is as necessary to its success ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... commonplace, second-rate story, quite trivial and middle-class, and how tragic! He had gambled, played cards, lost, then fallen back on the resource of the ill-judged and independent-minded—gone to the professional lenders. Mr Clay was not the sort of man who would ever become a sponge, a nuisance to friends. He was far too proud, and though he had often helped other people, he had never yet asked for help. ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... now arising in the north, which, by involving the Porte in the stormy politics of Poland and Russia, led to consequences little foreseen at the time, and which, even at the present day are far from having reached their final accomplishment. Since the ill-judged and unfortunate invasion by Sultan Osman II., in 1620 the good understanding between Poland and the Porte had continued undisturbed, save by the occasional inroads of the Crim Tartars on the one side, and the Cossacks of the Dniepr ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... say, I will use any influence I may possess to heal the breach. I like you, my boy. And I am sure that Jill likes you. She will make allowances for any ill-judged remarks you may have uttered in a moment ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... reported to Tegethoff the appearance of the disguised fleet, and then the opening of the attack on his batteries. At first the Austrian admiral could hardly believe that the Italians had committed themselves to such an ill-judged enterprise, and thought that the attack on Lissa might be only a feint meant to draw his fleet away from the Northern Adriatic, and leave an opening for a dash at Pola, Trieste, or Venice itself. But cablegrams describing ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... voices could be better heard, the view of the octagon was greatly improved, and the nave and transepts "have acquired their due Dimensions." Compare this with Hewett's observations less than eighty years later: "Never was there a more ill-judged step than the removal of the Choir hither, towards the latter portion of the last century. To give it such stinted proportions, and for this purpose to displace some of the fine old monuments, and to hide others, to obscure the pillars, and, above all, to erect the miserable ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... the two men, at this ill-judged interruption almost burst in flame. The stonemason turned upon his offspring, his long upper lip pulled down for all the world like a monkey's. He stared a while in virulent silence; and then "Get Gregg!" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over town, and they have occasioned much conversation and much abuse of Dundas, in addition to their former abuse on the part of Hastings's friends. The folly of such language, especially to three violent Oppositionists, was very absurd, weak, and ill-judged, but the fact ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... Cabinet should contain representatives of the several loyal sections of the country and of the various phases of opinion. The extreme anti-slavery men were entitled to be heard even though their spokesman Chase was often intemperate, ill-judged, bitter, and unfair. The Border States men had a right to be represented and it was all-essential that they should feel that they had a part in the War government even though their spokesman Blair might show himself, as he often did show himself, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... towering mind; yet they usually influenced, and frequently controlled, one of the greatest and most extraordinary men of the age. A volume of anecdotes might be related as evidence of Colonel Burr's quickness of perception and tact at reply, when an ill-judged or thoughtless expression was addressed by him to a lady. One ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... travel ten doors from his own without a post-chaise—the result was, he became such an adept in riding, that in a few months, he rode triumphant into the Gazette. Being quickly scoured bright by the ill-judged laws of bankruptcy, he rode, for the last time, out of Birmingham, where he had so often rode in: but his injured creditors were obliged to walk after the slender dividend of eighteen pence in the pound. The man who can use his feet, is envied ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... This last was an ill-judged reference; Tom was vicious enough about that bruise on his forehead not to need any reminder of the injuries he had ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... reported aboriginal crime has been attended with impunity, how much more does the imitative faculty cling to it. Ill-judged mercy falls, not like dew, but like a great heap of manure, on ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Emily, wishing to interrupt this ill-judged, but well-meaning harangue; Theresa's loquacity, however, was not to be silenced so easily. 'And when you used to grieve so,' she added, 'he often told you how wrong it was—for that my mistress was happy. And, if she was happy, I am sure he is so too; ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... for one short life-time to have been the greatest pictorial humorist of his age, to have tried to climb above Allegri and Titian, and to have traced in thought Beauty's self to her hidden source; but behold our ill-judged artist plunging now, with equal assurance and courage, into that tumultuous sea of English eighteenth-century political strife. The result was this time fatal to his peace, and probably even to his life. John Wilkes was not a very safe ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... pass one of my father's workmen? Well, Miss Barry, I happen not to be hand-in-glove with them. I can relegate them to their proper place when an ill-judged vanity brings ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... He merely issued his orders, and insisted that they were obeyed. Thus, after destroying the stores to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy—of whose pursuit he did not doubt—the march was to be resumed on Saturday, July 12th, toward Will's Creek. Ill-judged as these orders were, they met with but too ready acquiescence at the hands of Dunbar, whose advice was neither asked nor tendered on the occasion. Thus the great mass of those stores which had been so painfully brought thither were destroyed. Of the artillery but two six-pounders ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... and raising her spirits. In general, his voice and manner were studiously calm. To spare Henrietta from agitation seemed the governing principle. Once only, when she had been grieving over the last ill-judged, ill-fated walk to the Cobb, bitterly lamenting that it ever had been thought of, he burst forth, as ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... is very difficult for others to rival it with advantage; and it is very unwise of any nation to employ its efforts in rivalling another in an article where nature has given to the other a decided advantage; and it is equally ill-judged of a nation to neglect cultivating the advantages which she enjoys from nature, as they are the most permanent and their possession the most certain of any she ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... religious order had the distribution of so many and such ample indulgences as the Franciscans. In place of fixed revenues, lucrative indulgences were placed in their hands." So ill-judged was the distribution of these favors that discipline was overturned. Many churchmen, feeling that their rights were being encroached upon, complained bitterly, and resolved on retaliation. It is just here that a potent cause of ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... consideration with which I am treated, in Deadham, entirely to you.—Yes, yes," she cried in rising exaltation, "I do not deny that I went to Harchester yesterday—went—Dr. Horniblow thus expressed it when inviting me—'as representing The Hard.' I was away when Damaris made this ill-judged excursion across the river to the Bar. Had she confided her intention to me, I should have used my authority and forbade her. But recently we have not been, I grieve to say, on altogether satisfactory terms, and our parting yesterday was ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... The wanton destruction during the civil war in great part explains this; but it is sad to remember that numbers of mediaeval inscriptions in the floor were hidden or destroyed during some well-meaning but ill-judged alterations in ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting |
