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Incautious   Listen
Incautious

adjective
1.
Lacking in caution.  "Incautious talk"
2.
Carelessly failing to exercise proper caution.



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"Incautious" Quotes from Famous Books



... varied are the inconspicuous creatures with office to remind the barefooted trespasser that no charter of the isles and their wrecks is flawless, and that they are prepared to inflict curious pains and limping penalties for every incautious intrusion on their domicile. Few of the denizens of the unkempt coral gardens are more remarkable than the crabs. By reef and shore I have come literally into contact with so many quaint specimens, and they have so often afforded exhilarating diversion ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... in the neighbourhood, of which he was aware, except the electric line, and little Tony had never manifested the slightest inclination to approach this by himself. There were no open ponds, no traps of any kind for the incautious feet of a three-year-old. Everybody knew Tony, and everybody admired and loved him, so that, as Anthony took up his hat and started upon a more extended search, he had no doubt whatever of finding the runaway ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond

... he is also a consummate liar. He led me to believe in London—indeed he told me so directly—that he was totally unacquainted with America. It is not true. He knows this entire coast even better than I do. He forgot himself twice in conversation with me, and he was incautious enough to speak freely with Captain Harnes. ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... danger to which my incautious knight-errantry has exposed me; I begin, indeed, to take you for a very mischievous sort of person, and I fear the poor devil from whom I rescued you will be amply revenged for his disgrace, by finding that the first use you make of your ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... search was made for tories. Some of the gondola gentry broke into and pillaged Red Smith's house on the bank. About noon this day (16th) a very terrible account of thousands coming into the town, and now actually to be seen on Gallows Hill: my incautious son caught up the spyglass, and was running towards the hill to look at them. I told him it would be ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... indifferent, heedless, inattentive, regardless, lax, incautious, remiss, inconsiderate, nonchalant, neglectful, unwary, imprudent, indiscreet, improvident, reckless, desultory, perfunctory, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... Providence, go on a forlorn hope, go on a fool's errand. reckon one's chickens before they are hatched, count one's chickens before they are hatched, reckon without one's host; catch at straws; trust to a broken reed, lean on a broken reed. Adj. rash, incautious, indiscreet; imprudent, improvident, temerarious; uncalculating[obs3]; heedless; careless &c. (neglectful) 460; without ballast, heels over head, head over heels; giddy &c. (inattentive) 458; wanton, reckless, wild, madcap; desperate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparks flying! Alas, some millions of men, and among them such as a Napoleon, have already been licked into that high-eddying Flame, and like moths consumed there. Still also have we to fear that incautious beards will ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... in the strategic arts of war, though in open fight their fire was much less destructive. It must be confessed that Captain Lathrop at Bloody Brook, and Captain Wadsworth at Sudbury, were, in a degree, incautious. Hubbard closes his account of the disaster with ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... dear companions kept in the shelter of the largest trees, but the incautious ones,—there was an arm barked here and a leg scratched there, and pain stalked abroad in our midst. Then, when the battle was over, judge of the bitterness of mind of my noble comrades when they searched the canoes not overturned and found less ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... incautious expressions. He floundered on. while Nora looked at him as if she wanted to wring his neck. " No-she's too fine and too good-for him or anybody like him-she's ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... rang out from the man Reggie. Just for a moment it looked as if he were about to strike the incautious speaker. She reddened and grew confused. Sartoris listened, with an evil grin on his face. He seemed ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... John, a youth of ten, saw, by the light of an incautious lamp that illuminated a part of the south parlor, a good-night kiss bestowed upon the departing Abner by Miss Hitty Hyde and absolutely returned by said Abner, and when John told his mother, and his mother revealed it to Miss Flint, Miss Flint to Miss Skinner, and so forth, and so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... thoroughly impressed with the spirit of the occasion, passed the ensuing evening rather pleasantly, although obliged to be always on his guard against any incautious remark, and keenly interested in all that was occurring about him. He found the company rather pleasant and entertaining, although not quite able to gauge the real feelings of Mr. Percival Coolidge, ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish

... use of her feet, had been a little wild on the subject of freedom, knew very well within that Flor would make no mischief for her; but, except for the excited state into which the news brought by some mysterious plantation runner had thrown her, she would scarcely have been so incautious. As it was, she had dropped a thought into Flor's head to ferment there and do its work. It was almost the first time in her life that the girl had heard freedom discussed as anything but a doubtful privilege. First awakening ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... these disordered lands. The Pass is formed by the extremities of Banyani and Pianina, and is of much strategical importance. It was one of the first points subsequently occupied by Omer Pacha. Many a disaster has been brought about by the incautious recklessness of those in command of Turkish troops, and it was with some satisfaction that I saw the heights both in front and rear crowned by Turkish battalions, before the remainder were allowed ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... very cautiously, for he thought it possible that the passage might lead to the edge of a precipice to be descended only by a ladder, and an incautious step in advance might send him tumbling headlong down; and he had the sense to know that people even when engaged in the best of enterprises must guard against accidents and failure, and that they have no right to expect success unless they do their best to secure it. Tom wanted to lead, but ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston

... Lieutenant-Colonel Foot with Major Lombard, and six other officers, and 106 men of the North Cork Militia, immediately proceeded from this town, and came up with the Rebels at an advantageous position they had taken on a hill near Oulard. Through the rashness of the Major, in charging the Rebels in an incautious manner, the whole party were surrounded, and not a man escaped instant destruction but the Lieutenant-Colonel and two privates. By this defeat the Rebels had acquired a powerful accession of strength and confidence, having got ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones

... constantly of the incautious words that Richard had let fall, thinking of them in conjunction with the startling rumours that were now the talk of the whole countryside. He laid two and two together, and the four he found them make afforded him some hope. Then he realized—as he might have realized ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... had been incautious. He refused to talk further, despite the storekeeper's friendly questioning. Instead, the boy roamed about the store, inspecting and commenting upon saddlery, guns, canned goods, ready-made clothing, and showcase trinkets, his ears alert for every word exchanged by the storekeeper and a ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... should his residence in the neighbourhood get to his ears; and although sure of the fidelity of all her retainers, she feared that in their joy at their young master's return they might let slip some incautious word which would come to the ears of some of those at the castle. She therefore determined to meet him at a distance. She had arranged that upon the following day she would give out that she intended to make a pilgrimage ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... number of birds had assembled, was full of shoals producing the long aquatic grass which forms the principal part, if it be not their sole food. We sailed through the flock, and might have procured a good number, had not the progress of the sloop obliged us to hasten onward to Shoal Point: one incautious bird was caught by his long neck ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... lot of others unwisely!—for they were obliged to sit on the basket in order to retain their captive, dreading all the time what a moment's carelessness brought to pass, an attack from beneath. When one incautious foot ventured too near the basket, Mr. Bear promptly clawed and chewed it; hence ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... as a fairy; she had gone by herself a thousand times about the braes, and often upon errands to houses two or three miles distant. What had her parents to fear? The footpaths were all firm, and led to no places of danger, nor are infants themselves incautious when alone in then pastimes. Lucy went singing into the low woods, and singing she reappeared on the open hillside. With her small white hand on the rail, she glided along the wooden bridge, or tripped from stone to ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... In an incautious moment yesterday Mr. TENNANT advised Mr. SNOWDEN to use his imagination. I should have thought the advice was superfluous, for, to judge by some of the stories that the Member for Blackburn is in the habit of retailing to the House regarding the persecution of conscientious objectors by callous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various

... evening, and he did not wish to see him alone. There were monstrous wrongs on both sides, and it was better to pretend mutual ignorance, and keep up the ghastly farce, pretending that nothing was the matter. The very smallest incautious word would crack the swaying bubble that was blown to bursting with ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... how long I thus reeled about on the earth. A burning fever glowed in my veins; with deepest distress I felt my senses forsaking me. As mischief would have it, in my incautious career, I now trod on some one's foot; I must have hurt him; I received a heavy blow, and fell to ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... just possible," continued Fabio, "that these letters may refer to some incautious words which my late wife might have spoken. I ask you as her spiritual director, and as a near relation who enjoyed her confidence, if you ever heard her express a wish, in the event of my surviving her, that I should ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... after in this very court. Again I will not venture to conjecture why it happened so, but there were causes. The same lady, bathed in tears of long-concealed indignation, alleged that he, he of all men, had despised her for her action, which, though incautious, reckless perhaps, was still dictated by lofty and generous motives. He, he, the girl's betrothed, looked at her with that smile of mockery, which was more insufferable from him than from any one. And knowing that he had already deceived ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... worldly matters are wise before God,—although this also is true in a certain sense, and under certain peculiar circumstances, yet taken generally, it is the very reverse of truth; and the careless and incautious language which has been often used on this subject, has been extremely mischievous. On the contrary, he who is foolish in worldly matters is likely also to be, and most commonly is, no less foolish in the things of God. And the opposite belief ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... There are sharp eyes on you both, and she is so fiery and incautious, that you must be prudent for both. What is your address, in case I want to send ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... slope, but his two years of life in the open were a great help to him now. The strong heart and the powerful lungs responded nobly to the call. He ran lightly, holding his rifle in the hollow of his arm, ready for use if need be, and he watch warily lest he make an incautious footstep and fall. The moonlight was still full and clear, but when he took an occasional hurried glance backward he could not yet see his pursuers. He heard, now and then, however, the barking of a dog or the ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... thrown out these incautious words, the heir was frightened. But the ruler raised his ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... distant and reserved, she is condemned as proud and pretentious. In either case she is pretty sure to form a close intimacy with some one of the older female residents, and for a few weeks the two ladies are inseparable, till some incautious word or act disturbs the new-born friendship, and the devoted friends become bitter enemies. Voluntarily or involuntarily the husbands get mixed up in the quarrel. Highly undesirable qualities are discovered in the characters of all parties concerned, and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... do little to spread your superior culture; and if you say them too often people may even begin to doubt whether you have any superior culture after all. The earnest friend now advising you cannot but grieve at such incautious garrulity. If you confined yourself to single words, uttered at intervals of about a month or so, no one could possibly raise any rational objection, or subject them to any rational criticism. In time you might come to use whole sentences without revealing ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... had also said, that the Marechal de Rays could hardly expect any favours from him, at a time when he must know that he had been meditating a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to make atonement for his sins. The Italian had doubtless surmised this from some incautious expression of his patron, for de Rays frankly confessed that there were times when, sick of the world and all its pomps and vanities, he thought of devoting himself to the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... someone else. But the wit of woman has proved equal to the emergency. Nowhere, it may be safely stated, have more tales of purely imaginative atrocity been listened to with greater attention, or with more favourable results, than in the Divorce Court. On an incautious handshake a sprained wrist and an arm bruised into all the colours of the rainbow have been not infrequently grafted. A British imprecation, and a banged door, have often become floods of invective and a knock-down blow; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various

... silliest of the feathered kind, And formed of God without a parent's mind, Commits her eggs, incautious, to the dust, Forgetful that the foot may crush the trust; And, while on public nurseries they rely, Not knowing, and too oft not caring why, Irrational in what they thus prefer No few, that ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... whole distance. But this night was my introduction to the clipper style, where the officers banked fifty per cent on their seamanship, to avert disaster, and fifty per cent on blind chance that the top hamper would stand the strain. An incautious system? Aye, but cautious men did not ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... the damage upon a slip inserted at the proper place in the book, and also in the catalogue, if sold at auction or in a printed list of duplicates offered by the library. This notice of what imperfection exists is necessary, so that no incautious purchaser may think that he is securing a ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... founded in the State of New York, the Oneida community, in which his followers professed publicly and published their Free Love doctrine, and put it in practice in that community and elsewhere, when they had opportunity to deceive and ruin the incautious, abusing the Bible in the most horrible manner and anathematizing the true messengers of God. Such imposters must also give testimony to our mission in a manner convenient to their position, as I have given at the close of this treatise some hints, although I could ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar

... their charge, to Clytius bear, And trust the presents to his friendly care. Swift to the queen a herald flies to impart Her son's return, and ease a parent's heart: Lest a sad prey to ever-musing cares, Pale grief destroy what time awhile forbears. The incautious herald with impatience burns, And cries aloud, "Thy son, O queen, returns;" Eumaeus sage approach'd the imperial throne, And breathed his mandate to her ear alone, Then measured back the way. The suitor band, Stung to the soul, abash'd, confounded, stand; And issuing from the dome, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... likely to come out as well as usual this time, I don't think," was the brutally incautious reply; "she's pretty well run down, and I wouldn't be surprised if ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... sake," said he, fervently, and pale as death, "be still; nothing perhaps is amiss; but it is the poisonous snake of our woods—the aspic! An incautious movement, and both you and Petrea may be lost! No, you must not; your life is too precious—but I—promise me to ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... odious plague or jaundice, fanatic phrensy or lunacy, distresses; those who are wise avoid a mad poet, and are afraid to touch him; the boys jostle him, and the incautious pursue him. If, like a fowler intent upon his game, he should fall into a well or a ditch while he belches out his fustian verses and roams about, though he should cry out for a long time, "Come to my assistance, O my countrymen;" not one would give ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... bitterly her incautious whisper when she saw her sisters' tired faces, and their fruitless attempts to soften the effects of such a blow. For a little while, Mrs. Challoner seemed on the brink of despair; she would not listen; ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... nest, however, they kept their feet constantly on the watch for any disturbance on the webs; and the instant any unhappy little fly got entangled in their meshes, the ever-watchful spider was out like a flash of lightning, and down at once in full force upon that incautious intruder. I was convinced after many observations that it is by touch alone the spider recognizes the presence of prey in its web, and that it hardly derives any indications worth speaking of from ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... hardly out of my mouth before I repented that my anxiety to get rid of my unwelcome visitors had made me incautious enough to acknowledge that my father would be away from ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... go, and, with strokes swift and silent as he could contrive, he crossed the water. He clambered up the bank, almost bereft of strength. A moment he crouched there listening. Had he moved too soon? Had he been incautious? ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... looked for the ingots. Barron had also said, that the Marechal de Rays could hardly expect any favours from him, at a time when he must know that he had been meditating a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to make atonement for his sins. The Italian had doubtless surmised this, from some incautious expression of his patron, for De Rays frankly confessed that there were times when, sick of the world and all its pomps and vanities, he thought of devoting himself ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... other restaurants in the centre could have successfully fought against the rival attractions of the Bois and the dim groves of the Champs Elysees on a night in August. The complicated richness of the dresses, the yards and yards of fine stitchery, the endless ruching, the hints, more or less incautious, of nether treasures of embroidered linen; and, leaping over all this to the eye, the vivid colourings of silks and muslins, veils, plumes and flowers, piled as it were pell-mell in heaps on the universal green cushions to the furthest vista of the restaurant, and all multiplied ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... of the valley of the Somme may have been too wary and sagacious to be often surprised and drowned by floods, which swept away many an incautious elephant or rhinoceros, horse and ox. But even if those rude hunters had cherished a superstitious veneration for the Somme, and had regarded it as a sacred river (as the modern Hindoos revere the Ganges), and had been in the habit of committing the ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... inkling ... ay? If she, the lost Almeida, came before thee when her master was absent ... which I trust she never did.... But those flowers and shrubs and odours and alleys and long grass and alcoves, might strangely hold, perplex, and entangle, two incautious ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... bustled out to receive her guests, leaving Leander speechless. What if the new-comers were to make some incautious reference to that pleasure-party on Saturday week? Could he drop them a ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... experience the powerful action exerted upon the human system by the Buxton Medicinal Thermal Water, and the unsatisfactory results arising from its indiscriminate and incautious use, either in the form of baths or by taking it internally, I have in the following pages, as briefly and succinctly as possible, endeavoured to make some practical suggestions for the guidance of those of my professional brethren who have had no opportunity ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet

... wells and streams of a domestic character (such as are freely used by human beings) are generally friendly, they have their unfriendly side. The spirits that dwell in them are sometimes regarded as being hostile to man. They drag the incautious wanderer into their depths, and then nothing can save him from drowning. Fear of these malignant beings sometimes prevents attempts to rescue a drowning person; such attempts are held to bring down the vengeance of the water-demon ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... underbrush, leaving him to flounder blindly in the labyrinth. Once she laughed outright, a clear burst of girlish merriment ringing through the silence, and he leaped desperately forward, hoping to intercept her flight. His incautious foot slipped along the steep edge of the shelving bank, and he went down, half stumbling, half sliding, until he came to a sudden pause on the brink of the little stream. The chase was ended, and he sat up, confused ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... America. The toil of felling trees, over whose heavy boughs and knotty arms the winters of centuries had passed; the constant danger from noxious reptiles and beasts of prey, which, coiled in the bush or crouching in the brake, lurked day and night, in waiting for the incautious victim; and, most insidious and fatal enemy of all, the malaria of the swamp, of the rank and affluent soil, for the first time laid open to the sun; these are all only the ordinary evils which encountered in America, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... strangers and curiosity seekers are attracted, you run the risk of being affected by undeveloped, unprincipled, frivolous, mercenary, self-assertive, or even immoral spirits, who, being attracted to such assemblies, seek to influence incautious and susceptible people who ignorantly render themselves liable to their control. The people 'on the other side' are human beings of all grades; they are not morally purified by passing through the death-change; and as we are constantly sending into their other state 'all sorts ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... through the waters of Australia. They have caused not a few deaths, and everybody who understands about them is careful not to venture into the water at any place where the creatures are liable to come; but occasionally one hears of an incautious or ignorant person falling a prey to these monsters of the deep. When sailboats and other craft are overturned in storms or sudden squalls and their occupants are thrown into the water, they suffer fearful peril. Not long ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... paid with their beloved liberty for our neglect to defend them—not always deserving of blame, on account of the mutations of the times. Few Spaniards have been the prey of these vile thieves, except some who were very incautious; but amends have been made for these by many religious and some secular priests, ministers in the Indian villages, who have suffered rigorous captivities and cruel deaths. No small amount of expenditure has fallen on the royal exchequer; for those pirates have caused innumerable ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

... about St. Hugh, has seemed anxious that the knowledge of him should be spread abroad. It has snowed books, pamphlets, articles, views, maps, and guesses; and if much has remained unsaid or been said with incautious brusqueness, rather than with balanced oppressiveness, the reader who carps will always be welcome to such material as the author has by him, for elucidating the truth. If he has been misled by a blind guide, that guide must plead ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... had been caught somewhere in the Malayan Archipelago, and was going to England to be exhibited at a shilling a head. For four days he had struggled, yelled, and wrenched at the heavy iron bars of his prison without ceasing, and had nearly slain a Lascar incautious enough to come within reach ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... Abner had been incautious enough to put a little mortgage upon his humble home in order to help a relative who was in deep distress because of several sudden deaths ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster

... evident; to fill in and complete his design—notably in the fourth paper—he has had quite frankly to jerry-build here and there. Nevertheless, he ventures to publish this book. There are phases in the development of every science when an incautious outsider may think himself almost necessary, when sketchiness ceases to be a sin, when the mere facts of irresponsibility and an untrained interest may permit a freshness, a freedom of mental gesture that would be inconvenient and compromising for the specialist; ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... tongue faltered out mechanically, were upon the field of battle, beside the body of her slaughtered parent. The rest of the mourners imitated their young lady in her devotional posture, and in the absence of her thoughts. The consciousness that so many of the garrison had been cut off in Raymond's incautious sally, added to their sorrows the sense of personal insecurity, which was exaggerated by the cruelties which were too often exercised by the enemy, who, in the heat of victory, were accustomed to spare neither sex ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... imagination—nor, he knew now, had it been imagination before. There was a faint creak of the flooring in the kitchen, a single incautious step that he placed as having come from near the doorway of the passage—and now some one had halted on the threshold of the room itself. Jimmie Dale's brain was working with lightning speed. There had been no time to reach the window—time only to snatch up his ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... place, and the interesting history of every inch of the country around, render it one of the most romantic spots in the world. But, alas! it is now, as it was two hundred years ago, the home and retreat of those desperate Italian robbers known as brigands. Woe betide the incautious traveller whom curiosity leads through the vineyards of that lonely scene! The deeds of its outlawed and daring inhabitants would fill volumes. It was here, too, as far as we can learn, our heroines found their ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... of the high master, a school-fellow of Milton, went up to Trinity, Oxford, where he got into trouble by being informed against by Chillingworth, who reported incautious political speeches of Gill to his godfather, Laud. With Gill Milton corresponded; they exchanged their verses, Greek, Latin, and English, with a confession on Milton's part that he prefers English and Latin composition to Greek; that ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... against you." He might have said: "This is an unwise step, as it will cut you off from your own family, and leave you exposed to the brunt of popular hate." He might have said: "It is impolitic and incautious to risk the adverse judgment of the Emperor." But he said none of these things. He took the matter to a higher court. He arraigned the guilty pair before God; and, laying his axe at the root of the tree—calling on Herod's conscience, long gagged and silent, ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... once, because the old king loved him. Boden was his treasurer and confidential friend, from whom he had no secrets; the king has therefore been patient; but his sun is set, of that you may be convinced. The king, though he seems not to notice him, watches him closely; one incautious movement and he will be instantly dismissed. This may happen ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... over-wrought. Who would not be that must endure so much and be set upon this throne, a goddess among barbarians with life and death upon my lips? Oh! when the King asked me his riddle I knew not what to answer, who feared lest ten thousand lives might pay the price of a girl's incautious words. Then that meteor broke; there have been several this night, but none noted them till I looked upwards, and you know the rest. Let them guess its meaning, which they ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... result of an investigation, which proved that the cavity was unfit as a treasure hoard for a discreet squirrel, whatever its value as a receptacle for the love-tokens of incautious humanity, the little animal at once set about to put things in order. He began by whisking out an immense quantity of dead leaves, disturbed a family of tree-spiders, dissipated a drove of patient aphides browsing in the bark, as well as their attendant dairymen, the ants, and otherwise ruled ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte

... earth; instead of making use of that superior knowledge with which the Almighty, the common Parent of mankind, had favoured them, to strengthen the principle of peace and good will in the breasts of the incautious Negroes, the Europeans have, by their bad example, led them into excess of drunkenness, debauchery, and avarice; whereby every passion of corrupt nature being inflamed, they have been easily prevailed ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet

... the dust cloud resolved themselves into the persons of her father and Norris. Her incautious ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... craftily in taverns; and the styles and titles of great landowners by whose estates they passed; and how to avoid the nets that were perpetually spread by a predatory sex before the feet of the incautious male. On the last point Barney Bill was eloquent; but Paul, with delicious memories sanctifying his young soul, turned a deaf ear to his misogyny. Barney Bill was very old and crooked and dried up; what beautiful lady ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... game proceeded, with a brisk exchange of pieces and incivilities and a fluctuation of fortunes, till the little banker lost his queen as the result of an incautious move, and, after several woebegone contortions of his shoulders and hands, declined further contest. A sleek-headed piccolo rushed forward to remove the board, and the erstwhile combatants resumed the courteous dignity that they ...
— When William Came • Saki

... eligible wives. The primal qualification of any lady as a consort being, in their eyes, that she had been torn away violently from a friend, it became evident that the preliminary step towards a Flavian wedding was, to persuade some incautious friend into marrying, and thus putting himself into a capacity of being robbed. How many ladies that it was infamous for this family to appropriate as wives, so many ladies that in their estimate were eligible in that character. Such, at least in the stinging ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... of such or such a one! Could you have contrasted with them the homeless, shelterless, pencil-borrowing, elbow-scratching, musty, fusty tatterdemalions who stretched out on the turfless ground beside their mess fires to extort or answer those cautious or incautious missives, or who for the fortieth time drew them from hiding to reread into their guarded or unguarded lines meanings never dreamed by their writers, you could not have laughed without a feeling of tears, or felt the tears without smiling. Many a chap's epistle was scrawled, many a ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... must have asked him to fetch her,' replied Geraldine, with an air of decision that evidently amused her husband; 'for Michael told us of his own accord that he had been having tea at the Cottage. It is really very foolish and incautious of Audrey, after Edith's hint, too! I wish you would tell her so, Percival, for she only ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... traditions respecting them, though he may have quoted them scores of times and by name. If this is the only inference which our author cares to draw, I cannot object. But it is not the inference which his words would suggest to the incautious reader; and it is not the inference which will assist his argument at all. Moreover this passage ignores another distinction, which I showed to be required by the profession and practice alike of Eusebius. Eusebius relates of Hegesippus ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... on the subject of printing his work, Galileo soon found that attempts had previously been made to thwart his views. He instantly set off for Rome, and had an interview with his friend, who was in every respect anxious to oblige him. Riccardi examined the manuscript, pointed out some incautious expressions which he considered it necessary to erase, and returned it with his written approbation, on the understanding that the alterations he suggested would be made. Dreading to remain in Rome during the unhealthy season, which was fast approaching, Galileo returned to Florence, ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... at the very head-waters and source of her intrigues and her scheming, Henrietta cleverly maintained an effect of secrecy. She showed herself an adept in the fine art of outflanking incautious intruders. Never did she wholly reveal herself or her purposes; but reserved for her own use convenient run-holes, down which she could escape from even the most intimate of her co-adjutors and employees. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet



Words linked to "Incautious" :   madcap, careless, impetuous, tearaway, hotheaded, adventuresome, brainish, impulsive, cautious, adventurous



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