"Irresponsible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unparliamentary government was prolonged by the victory of the crown for a century and three-quarters. In England, Charles's was the last experiment, because parliament defeated the claim of the crown to rule by means of irresponsible ministers. ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... "Let the orchard alone. Leave apples for others. Remember that they are protected by strict orders against all wandering and irresponsible officers, but ourselves." ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... so—how do you know it?" blustered the captain. "You have only that bulletin statement of the man Rowland—an irresponsible drunkard." ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... nonsense of the violent weather, when they were tied together by the ropes of running wind; for these were visiting days— all manner of strangers dropped in upon them from distant walks in life, and they never knew whether the next would be a fir-cone or one of those careless, irresponsible travellers, ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... woman in this country is like that of the Mikado in Japan,—a sovereign sacred and irresponsible, but on condition of sitting still, and leaving the management of affairs, the real business of life, to others. It is the same theory of government with which the constitutionalists tormented the late Louis Philippe,—Le roi regne et ne ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... secular head of the community: he solemnized marriages (much against his will, for, according to the rules of the society, he was obliged to provide a house for every newly-married couple); he was physician and preacher, judge, law-giver, secretary of state, administrator, and unlimited and irresponsible minister of finance to the colony; and held all the very valuable landed property of the settlement, with the consent of the colonists, in his own name; and while he certainly provided for his voluntarily obedient subjects an excellent maintenance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... has been working like yeast at the bottom of my sodden batter of contentment, making me feel that I'd swell up and burst, if all that crazy ferment couldn't find some relief in expression. So after three long years and more of silence I'm turning back to this, the journal of one irresponsible old Chaddie McKail, who wanted so much to be happy and who has in some way missed the pot of gold that they told her was to be found ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... homeward along the dusty trail in the heat of the day the consciousness came home to him that Allan was right. To have used his gun would, of course, have been madness; he had never seriously intended doing anything so rash, although for one impetuous moment his passion had made him irresponsible. And, as he thought it all over, he concluded that nothing was to be gained by pursuit of the runaways. There was only one west-bound train in the day; he could not give chase until the morrow, and ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... America—firmly South America—in the little tiny wee, bijou village of Santa Lyta—far away from the beaten track, this lonely place lies basking in the sun. Heavens, how it basked! its natives care-free and irresponsible, dreaming idly through the long ...
— I'll Leave It To You - A Light Comedy In Three Acts • Noel Coward
... velvet. "Copper" turned footpad, he knew the ropes, he could flout the Treasury—and he did. But it is a pity that unwarrantable claims should have been put forward on behalf of the department in not irresponsible quarters at a time when they could not be denied, claims which have tended to bring the department as a whole into undeserved disrepute amongst those who ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... as great a nuisance as obligatorily adulterous heroines—whom M. Rod has mostly discarded; and what is more, he is one of the pseudo-scientific fanatics who believe in the irresponsibility of murderers, and do not see that, the more irresponsible a criminal is, the sooner he ought to be put out of the way. Moreover, he has the ill-manners to bore the company at dinner with this craze, and the indecency (for which in some countries he might ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Oscar in common with Art? except that he dines at our tables and picks from our platters the plums for the pudding he peddles in the provinces. Oscar—the amiable, irresponsible, esurient Oscar—with no more sense of a picture than of the fit of a coat, has the courage of the opinions ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... the election there was a Liberal meeting in the Town Hall, and a certain section of the Tory party, a youthful and irresponsible section it must be confessed, had arranged to attend the meeting, and if possible bring it to nought. The ringleader in this scheme was a young man named Rabbich, whose people some years before had bought a large property in a village ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... for the first on-rush of winter, then it is that the rangeland takes on a certain intoxicating unreality, and range-wild blood leaps with desire to do something—anything, so it is different and irresponsible and not measured by ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... seemed only too probable, the machine was in the hands of a few irresponsible individuals, or, still worse, in those of such enemies of humanity as the Nihilists, or that yet more mysterious and terrible society who were popularly known as the Terrorists, then indeed the outlook was serious ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... where they stood, and, for the most part, perceived that they stood in a much more tolerable and a distinctly more assured position than before. If there must sometimes be it would be the Roman tyrant, and he, as we shall find, affected them but little. All irresponsible local tyrannies, whether of kings or parties, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... be little doubt that the arrangement which places one man or any number of men at the entire disposal and control of another, subject to his absolute and irresponsible will and power, is a system of things not the most favorable to moral excellence, whether of the master or the slave. The exercise of such authority must, from the very nature of the case, tend to foster the spirit of pride and arrogance, to make a man overbearing ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... another question. Granted ten years' seniority and a difference of sex, fear of him comes first; this is swallowed up by a desire to help—overwhelming sense, reason, and the time of night; anger would follow close on that—with Florinda, with destiny; and then up would bubble an irresponsible optimism. "Surely there's enough light in the street at this moment to drown all our cares in gold!" Ah, what's the use of saying it? Even while you speak and look over your shoulder towards Shaftesbury ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... growth of the factory system the workman became more dependent, and the employer more irresponsible. Thus we note the first industrial effect of machinery in the formation of two definite industrial classes—the dependent workman, and the irresponsible employer. The term "irresponsible" is not designed to convey any moral stigma. The industrial employer can no ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... strange demand after nearly two thousand years of training in the teaching of the gospel! And besides, whom are we to hate? The individual doing his duty in the service of his country, just as we are? Or the responsible governors of the destinies of that country, and the irresponsible leaders of its public opinion?" Hatred of the individual serving his country and governed by others Prof. Gomperz does not stop to discuss. It can obviously be the product only of what with etymological correctness we may term insanity. The governors and leaders ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... supposed it was his natural awkwardness that made him feel so. He knew that most young men made nothing at all of giving a pretty girl a kiss, and he remembered that the night before, when he had put his arm about Mattie, she had not resisted. But that had been out-of-doors, under the open irresponsible night. Now, in the warm lamplit room, with all its ancient implications of conformity and order, she seemed infinitely farther away from him ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... we support your freedom of expression but you do have a responsibility to assess the impact of your work and to understand the damage that comes from the incessant, repetitive, mindless violence and irresponsible conduct that permeates our media all ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Tuscany, with the exception of Siena, Lucca, and Volterra. Maso degli Albizzi was the ruling spirit of the commonwealth, spending the enormous sum of 11,500,000 golden florins on war, raising sumptuous edifices, protecting the arts, and acting in general like a powerful and irresponsible prince. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... was too light and childish, too uncultivated and unreasoning, too provincial, to have reflected upon her ostracism, or even to have perceived it. Then at other moments he believed that she carried about in her elegant and irresponsible little organism a defiant, passionate, perfectly observant consciousness of the impression she produced. He asked himself whether Daisy's defiance came from the consciousness of innocence, or from her being, essentially, ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... of the city's gayest set, a hotbed of gossip and practical jokes, a school of guitar playing and love songs that kept the whole neighborhood astir. Besides, Cupido was the freak of the city, the sharp-tongued but irresponsible practical joker, who was forgiven everything in advance, and could enjoy his idiosyncrasies and speak his mind about people without starting a riot against him. He was, for instance, the one person in Alcira who scoffed at the tyranny of the Brulls without thereby losing ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... consider the sentiments of Southern and Western Ireland more important than those of the United States. In spite of the plain fact that a separate Ireland would weaken civilisation and menace the world's peace by introducing a hostile and undependable wedge betwixt the two major parts of Saxondom, these irresponsible elements continue to encourage rebellion in the Green Isle; and in so doing tend to place this nation in a distressingly anomalous position as an abettor of crime and sedition against the Mother Land. Disgusting beyond words ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... you have allowed yourself to become involved in this murder case. You have let it be publicly known that you are a private detective, working for the Fleming family," Goode orated. "How long, then, will it be before it will be said, by all sorts of irresponsible persons, that you are also investigating ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... any experience of the restrictions imposed on thought and speech and the obstacles to the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and ideas, any consciousness that the corrupt, vexatious, and oppressive bureaucracy by which all affairs are administered is a direct outgrowth of unlimited and irresponsible power. Nor are they united in desiring to destroy, or even to modify, this system. Apart from those who find in it the means of satisfying their personal interests and ambitions, and the larger number in whom indolence and the love of ease stifle all thought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... domestic character is thoroughly bad. Polygamous and utterly irresponsible for its offspring, this bird forms a striking contrast to other feathered neighbors, and indeed is almost an anomaly in the animal kingdom. In the breeding season an unnatural mother may be seen skulking about in the trees and shrubbery, seeking for nests in which to place a surreptitious egg, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... last century the evolution was completed by the final consolidation of the entire capital of the nation. The industry and commerce of the country, ceasing to be conducted by a set of irresponsible corporations and syndicates of private persons at their caprice and for their profit, were entrusted to a single syndicate representing the people, to be conducted for the common profit. That is to say, the nation organised itself as one great business corporation in which ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... and a most pleasing Mademoiselle. In the earlier stages of our occupation some of the officers at G.H.Q. did a little coursing and shooting, but there was trouble about delits de chasse, and now you are allowed to shoot nothing but big game—namely, Germans—although I have heard of an irresponsible Irishman in the trenches who vaulted the parapet to bag a hare and, what is more remarkable, returned with it. Needless to say, his neighbours were Saxons. As for the men, their opportunities of relaxation are more circumscribed. ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... of the moral sense. It creates a person whom the father of lies must recognise as kindred to himself. I know of a case where a judge charged a jury that the prisoner, a morphine addict, was mentally irresponsible for that reason. The judge knew what he was talking about. It subsequently developed that he had been a secret ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... she had met since she became a widow treated her as an irresponsible being. Many of them tried to flirt with her for the mere pleasure of flirting with so pretty a woman; others, so she was resentfully aware, had only become really interested in her when they became aware that she had been left ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... prosecuted careful researches into the local conditions of each municipality, and did not conclude its labours until 1835. Its report laid bare not merely grotesque anomalies, but the grossest abuses of election and administration in boroughs ruled by small, corrupt, and irresponsible oligarchies which then abounded in England, and, still more, in Scotland.[132] The reform act had paved the way for the purification of such urban communities, by disfranchising the smallest and most venal of them, by extending the boundaries of many others, by enfranchising great ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... freshmen above—the flippant fun-loving irresponsible six-year-old freshmen—they waited ready to meet the warden with an impudent burst of revelry, and thus to dash her official dignity from its exasperating estate. When they saw Robbie Belle's face they simply stared. They listened in silence to the few rapid words that stung and burned and smarted. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... the ruins, starved into unconsciousness. When the soldiers rescued him they thought he was dead, but they took him where the doctors gradually brought him back to life. He did not mind the dying after it had once set in, everything gave way to the indolent pleasure of irresponsible drifting, but the restoration was a difficult and exhausting business. He will be thought to be dead again some day, and will be allowed to continue his sleep in ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... entertain views upon the marriage relation less rigid than his own? Our indignant protest against the injustice of the common law, which subjects the person, property, earnings and children of married women to the irresponsible control of their husbands, is not a protest against marriage. It is a vindication of marriage, against the barbarism of the law which degrades a noble and life-long partnership of equals into a mercenary and servile relation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... colleagues on any vital matter, whether relating to his department or not, and this usage is, in truth, the main safeguard for the preservation of genuine conjoint responsibility, and the main barrier against irresponsible action by a Prime Minister or a clique. When the practice of resignation in the sense of giving up office is replaced by the other kind of resignation—shrugging one's shoulders and letting things slide—the main virtue of Cabinet government has been lost. ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... mentioned in the Bible, Hagar, Ruth, the daughters of Lot, Abigail, Abishag, the virgin of Shunam, who reanimated David with her caresses when he was dying, and the others, young, stout, white, patricians or plebeians, irresponsible females belonging to a master, and submissive slaves, whether caught by the attraction of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... with its Superintendent continually in the field, reporting every fact to the Secretaries at the office, who in turn report to the churches, is certainly much better prepared to direct the gifts of the benevolent in ways that shall not be unwise or irresponsible. As these circulars and letters of appeal are often referred by those who receive them to the Secretaries, it is but their duty to say that all funds diverted from our treasury to schools or churches ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various
... put on his trial for breach of discipline. The trial takes place, and he is sentenced to confinement in the military prison for two years. He is again transferred, in company with convicts, by etape, to Caucasus, and there he is shut up in prison and falls under the irresponsible power of the jailer. There he is persecuted for a year and a half, but he does not for all that alter his decision not to bear arms, and he explains why he will not do this to everyone with whom he is brought in contact. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... so much are men governed by words. Suetonius assures us, that many evidences were current even to his times of this popular disposition (civilitas) in the emperor; and that it survived every experience of servile adulation in the Roman populace, and all the effects of long familiarity with irresponsible power in himself. Such a moderation of feeling, we are almost obliged to consider as a genuine and unaffected expression of his real nature; for, as an artifice of policy, it had soon lost its uses. And it is worthy of notice, that with the army he ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... The irresponsible pleasure of our first sail the next afternoon was never quite repeated. The boat shot from the landing like a high-strung horse given his head, out across the unbordered road of silver water, and in a moment, as we raced toward ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... man pay the price of his liberty, and endure poverty for that which he had already enjoyed to the full. With a supreme effort of will, she subdued her inclination to unrestrained despair; with complete disregard of the acute pain in her head, she became gay, light-hearted, irresponsible, joyous. There was an undercurrent of suffering in her simulated mirth, but Perigal did not notice it; he was taken by surprise at the sudden change in her mood. He responded to her supposititious merriment; he laughed and joked as irrepressibly ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... fear of losing employment; and, while their representatives had the power of debating, passing measures, and voting moneys, the Council, which was composed of nominees of the crown, selected exclusively from the merchant class, could throw out all their measures, and were irresponsible to the people. ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... an evening. The paper is next committed, it is not known to whom, reported on in private, and either published, or deposited in the archives of the Society, according to the judgment of the unknown irresponsible parties to whom it is committed. Let us now look at the proceedings of the French Academy; it is open to the public, and the public take so great an interest in it, that to secure a seat an early attendance is always ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... his own helplessness amid the obscure forces around him, which would fain compromise the indifferent, and had made him so far an accomplice in their unfriendly action that he felt certainly not quite guiltless, thinking of his own irresponsible, self-centered, passage along the ways, through the weeks that had ended in the public crime and his own private sorrow. Pity for those unknown or half-known neighbours whose faces he must often have ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... ANDREW LANG should be at once withdrawn from circulation, not only because of the reckless and unscientific colour scheme adopted, but to check the wholesale dissemination of futile fables concocted and invented by irresponsible adults ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... maniac. But eccentricity has often provided the best cloak for dark designs, and the outbreak of war proved that there was a method in the madness of the man whom the authorities persisted in regarding merely as an irresponsible degenerate of a non-political kind. To quote the press report of ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... ride back to the hotel was in lighter vein, in which Allen showed greater proficiency. Alice's interest in him was mingled with a disappointment that the years had not made him older and less irresponsible. She felt herself distinctly his senior, yet she also felt a confidence in his unexpressed ability. To Mrs. Gorham the passages-at-arms between the two children, as she would have called them, were refreshing. She knew that each was being benefited ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... Harpagus, was conquering the Greek cities of the coast. Abdera, however, was too new to afford luxurious living, and the singing Ionian soon found his way to more genial Samos, whither the fortunes of the world then seemed converging. Polycrates was "tyrant," in the old Greek sense of irresponsible ruler; but withal so large-minded and far-sighted a man that we may use a trite comparison and say that under him his island was, to the rest of Greece, as Florence in the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent was to the rest of Italy, or Athens in the time of Pericles ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the persons whose interests are directly concerned and whose liberties they are asked to curtail; and, further, that it is a grave question how far it is safe to trust the industrial interests of women, as a class, to the irresponsible control of the men who have manifested to individuals and to sections of working women the spirit indicated by the examples ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... said Gorman, "is a totally different thing. I happen to know what I'm talking about. The fellows who've got these guns are wild, irresponsible, unpractical fools. They've been giving us trouble for years, far more trouble than all the Unionist party put together. They don't understand politics in the least. They've no sense. They're like—like——" he looked round for some ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... the world seemed bright and filled with happiness. At first, like a young fox that, till he learns the fear of dogs and men, steals chickens from a coop near which an old, experienced fox would never venture, she was, perhaps, a little too indifferent to danger. In her perfect health and irresponsible freedom, she paid but slight attention to the alarm signals of other creatures of ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... beaten aspect of a southern town; he and the temperate sky have fixed the tone for ever; and the nimble air—"nimbly and sweetly" recommending itself— has given the quaintness and the freaksomeness of the North. This bursts out, young and irresponsible, in pinnacle, crocket, and gable, in towers like spears, and in the eager lancet windows which peer upwards out of Orsammichele and the Dominican Church. This mixture is Florence and has made her art. The blue of the sky gives the key to her palette, the breath ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... among minor suggestions in the direction of stable government. On the question of responsible government Lord Durham expressed opinions of the deepest political wisdom. He found it impossible "to understand how any English statesman could have ever imagined that representative and irresponsible government could be successfully combined....To suppose that such a system would work well there, implied a belief that the French Canadians have enjoyed representative institutions for half a century, ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... fairly jealous of them, excluding them from office, as the Whigs did Lord Brougham. As private individuals, they are made to distinguish themselves as the founders of journals, societes en commandite (companies of which the members are irresponsible beyond the amount of their shares), and all sorts of commercial speculations, requiring intelligence and honesty on the part of the directors, confidence and liberal ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... can on occasion state it with a fairness and fulness which proves that it is not wholly repellent to our reason. During the crisis I write of, the attitude of Cargill and Vennard was not that of roysterers out for irresponsible mischief. They were eminently reasonable and wonderfully logical, and in private conversation they gave their opponents a very bad time. Cargill, who had hitherto been the hope of the extreme Free-traders, wrote an article for the ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... conviction and execution—it would have inaugurated a reign of terror, such as had not even then been approached, and which no community could bear. Every man and woman would have felt in the extremest peril, hanging upon the will of an irresponsible arbiter of life ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... little French maid, whom Barney called "Her Irresponsible Frenchiness," and Nora, Katrine spent a busy month trying to forget her meeting with Frank entirely. In the daytime she could do this, but at night she wondered much concerning him—if he were back at Ravenel; if Dermott ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... they forget the ropes, or they forget the scales, or they forget the weights, or they forget the bell, or—more commonly still—some of the parties forget themselves. Farmers, too, are easily satisfied with the benefits of an irresponsible mob careering over their farms, even though some of them are attired in the miscellaneous garb of hunting and racing costume. Indeed, it is just this mixture of two sports that spoils both; steeple-chasing being neither hunting nor racing. It has not the wild excitement of the one, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... interest me. I read his careful prayers and pass on, with the certainty that, well as they read, they were not written for print. I learn of his nameless prodigalities, and recall some instances of conduct in another vein. I remember, rather, the unmarried and irresponsible Lewis; the friend, the comrade, the charmeur. Truly, that last word, French as it is, is the only one that is worthy of him. I shall ever remember him as that. The impression of his writings disappears; ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... and made wine all their days in the chaparral, hoping, at the end, to pull down a set of false teeth and a coffin. Others quit the game early, having drawn cards that called for violent death, or famine in the Barrens, or loathsome and lingering disease. The hands of some called for kingship and irresponsible and numerated power; other hands called for ambition, for wealth in untold sums, for disgrace and shame, or ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... umbrellas were banged and rattled, handkerchiefs were waved, the thunder deepened. The motley crowd still surging about the hall took up the cheers, and for hundreds of yards around people were going black in the face out of mere irresponsible enthusiasm. At last Tom waved his hand—the thunder dwindled, died. The prisoner was ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... thenceforward to give him no further subject of complaint; upon which Louis commanded him to rise, and granted him a free pardon, which was ratified by the Regent. Letters patent were despatched by which he was reinstated in his government, and made irresponsible for all the excesses committed by his troops; and once more the son of Gabrielle d'Estrees was restored to the favour, if not to ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... refused his money, if not that her case might seem all the harder? It were difficult to say whether he really believed this; in a nature essentially egoistic, there is often no line to be drawn between genuine convictions and the irresponsible charges of resentment. Mutimer had so persistently trained himself to regard Emma as in the wrong, that it was no wonder if he had lost the power of judging sanely in any matter connected with ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... certain that there is any well marked boundary line between genius and some forms of imbecility. Many quite irresponsible idiots have marvelous verbal memories, and can repeat parrot-like, page after page of books of which they have no comprehension. Dr. Barr tells of cases of prodigies, musical, mathematical and mechanical, who except in their specialty ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... one breathless! One moment poised on imaginary flights, weaving stories from the baldest materials, drawing allegories of the lives of her friends, the next—an irresponsible wisp, with no thought in the world but the moment's frolic; but whatever might be the fancy of the moment she drew her companions after her with the magnetism of a ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the Marquis de Sevigne; but her period of happiness was a short one. The husband, who was rich, handsome, and agreeable, proved weak and faithless. He was one of the temporary caprices of the dangerous Ninon, led a dashing, irresponsible life, spent his fortune recklessly, and left his pretty young wife to weep alone at a convenient distance, under the somber skies of Brittany. Fortunately for her and for posterity, his career was rapid and brief. For some trifling affair of so-called honor—a ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... misled by it, and believe that prisons are not, still, administered for the destruction of their inmates, physical, mental and moral, with such circumstances of cruelty and brutality as happen to suit the humor of the arbitrary and irresponsible guards and wardens; but that they are uniformly conducted with an eye to wooing away prisoners from sin and crime, and persuading them of the beauty and policy of honesty, gentleness and goodness. In fact it is probable that almost everybody believes this, except the ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... me there! I never have had enough experience in this line that I could go into the detail work. I have to be guided by the main points in the case. Then, again, I gave Brown's testimony very little thought, as I considered him unreliable and irresponsible." ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... people are agreed; but this extraordinary function must not be vested in the Executive; on the contrary, it must be, it is, vested in the Legislature. Stevens did not hesitate to push his theory to its limit. He was not afraid of making the Legislature in time of war the irresponsible judge of its own acts. Congress, said he, has all possible powers of government, even the dictator's power; it could declare itself a dictator; under certain circumstances he was willing that ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... liberties, as voiced by Jefferson and echoed more than a century later by another spokesman of democracy. There was the stuff for splendid soldiers in these farmers and woodsmen, but in many lamentable instances their regiments were no more than irresponsible armed mobs. Until as recently as the War with Spain, the perilous fallacy persisted that the States should retain control of their several militia forces in time of war and deny final authority to the Federal Government. It was this doctrine which so ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... jar the harmony that reigned before I came here. Leave me to my doom, which human hands cannot avert now; and be happy without questioning. Inexorable fate stands behind men; makes them, sometimes, irresponsible puppets." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... admitted, "that your Uncle Theodore was inveigled into supporting, to a certain extent, a party whose leaders have shown themselves utterly irresponsible. The moment these horrible things began to come out, however, your uncle finally cut himself ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Irresponsible Clive was full of thoughtless mischief, and it was a long time before the girls could get him to see the serious side of his escapade, and realise what an exceedingly grave charge had been brought against their honour. In the end, by dint of scolding, entreaty, coercion, and even bribery, ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... should be forthwith built. The Leeds Mercury, on the other hand, took what I regarded as the commonsense view, and insisted that for the future the opinions of the trained experts of the Admiralty should be preferred to those of irresponsible enthusiasts, even though they happened to be, like Captain Cowper Coles, men ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... more. And, then, in the third paragraph, I'd adjure the Government, in the name of all their party hold sacred, to stand firm, and I'd appeal to the people of this great Empire never to allow their ancient liberties to be encroached upon or overridden by a set of irresponsible—well, in short, I should be like General Sherman when at the crisis of a battle he used to say, "Now, let everything go in"—four sides of my copy, or even five if the ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... African affairs, it will be necessary to glance, for a moment, at the previous history of Algeria under the Deys, and especially at the history of that Turkish militia which they were to replace,—a body of irresponsible tyrants, which, since 1516, had exercised the greatest power in Africa, and had rendered their name hated and feared by the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the bank and accepted the fluttering charges, then watched with liveliest interest the buoyant figure in the light suit go swinging up the road. There was something tantalizingly familiar in his quick, imperious manner and his brown, irresponsible eyes. In her first confusion of mind she thought he must be the prince come to life out of Mr. Demry's old fairy tale. Then she ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... to such irresponsible persons as the Woofer, here. He told all about it early this morning so loud that the whole of Montana might have heard it if they had been awake. I heard it, and if Woofer denies saying that you did say so, then he's a liar, and I'm personally ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... Bohemian, but a misogynist. People would say, "Dear old Jimmy Cloyster. How he hates women!" It would add to my character a pleasant touch of dignity and reserve which would rather accentuate my otherwise irresponsible ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... responded to the petition of three of four women, acting without concert, in the matter of property rights, it is probable that in a fit of generosity the men of the United States would have enfranchised its women en masse; and the government now staggering under the ballots of ignorant, irresponsible men, must have gone down under the additional burden of the votes which would have been thrown upon it, by millions of ignorant, irresponsible women. Before that time, the unanswerable argument of Judge Hurlbut ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... day the turmoil subsided and Anthony began to exercise a measure of reason. He was in love—he cried it passionately to himself. The things that a week before would have seemed insuperable obstacles, his limited income, his desire to be irresponsible and independent, had in this forty hours become the merest chaff before the wind of his infatuation. If he did not marry her his life would be a feeble parody on his own adolescence. To be able to face people and to endure the constant reminder of Gloria that all existence had become, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... of something, a directness and frankness born in some way in this new world apart from civilization, like a wind-blown flame, irresponsible and irresistible, swept over Molly Wingate's soul as swiftly, as unpremeditatedly as it had over his. She was a young woman fit for love, disposed for love, at the age for love. Now, to her horror, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... that the offer could hardly be a very tempting one, and it excites our surprise that the Archduke should have thought the adventure worth the seeking. A most anomalous position in the Netherlands was offered to him by a slender and irresponsible faction of Netherlanders. There was a triple prospect before him: that of a hopeless intrigue against the first politician in Europe, a mortal combat with the most renowned conqueror of the age, a deadly feud with the most powerful and revengeful ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with which North was assailed failed to pierce the impenetrable wall of his amiable insouciance. The king's policy was triumphant. The combination between the obedient responsible minister and the imperious irresponsible king lasted for twelve years, during which George ruled as well ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... in settling strikes, had reached the conclusion that the position of the adherents of the closed as well as those of the open shop was economically and socially untenable. The inherent objection to the closed shop, he contends, is that it creates an uncontrolled and irresponsible monopoly ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... promises conveyed by a weak chin), this distinguished person tried to look the secrets which his colleagues had never permitted him to learn. In moody weariness he would sometimes condescend to the company of his subordinates on the General Committee and, while listening to their irresponsible prattle, he would seem to forget the onerous public interests the absolute neglect of which was his chief duty ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... to account, commissioned the Indians to work them into a picket garden-fence. At all times the native found a father in the Company, and it was the worst thing that ever happened the region when the irresponsible free-traders with their demoralizing methods were allowed to enter and traffic ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and Hendricks sprang from their chairs, and Dr. Harper rose to take care of Eunice as an irresponsible patient, but Crowell waved them ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... agreed to pay me $2,500, aside from the bonus always attached to successful and quick work. Still, I wasn't sure that I wanted to go. I knew there was the danger of recognition, and I knew the kind of irresponsible, hotheaded, temperamental people I was going among. It was far more difficult, far more hazardous, than any mission I had ever undertaken, in England or France; even the tremendous responsibilities of ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... to vice, the mountebanks, the sensual men, and the lawless women poured into the presence of the king, who had been too long deprived of the pleasure that his nature craved. Parliament voted seventy thousand pounds for a memorial to Charles's father, but the irresponsible king spent the whole sum on the women who surrounded him. His severest counselor, Lord Clarendon, sent ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... deliberate love to her, but there was a certain imperious possessiveness in his manner, a definite innuendo in his gay, audacious speeches which she found it very hard to combat. He seemed entirely oblivious of any lack of response on her part, and there was a light-hearted, irresponsible charm and camaraderie about him that was difficult ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... met the same indignity. She sat now on the kitchen ledge, while Mata made the fire and washed the rice, toying idly with a white pebble chosen for its beauty from thousands on the garden path. Something in the childlike attitude, the placid, irresponsible face, brought the old servant's impatience to a climax. She deliberately hurled ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... disguise even the simplest emotion in any garment when it was so beautiful in its Eden-like nakedness. The creatures whom I met in the ways and by ways of Parisian life, whose gestures and attitudes I devoured with my eyes, and whose souls I hungered to know, awoke in me a tense irresponsible curiosity, but that was all,—I despised, I hated them, thought them contemptible, and to select them as subjects of artistic treatment, could not then, might never, have occurred to me, had the suggestion to do so not come direct to me from ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... being civil to a policeman. He had risked his life by incurring the suspicions of Sid Marks. He had bought a stick. And he had waited in the cold till his face was blue and his feet blocks of ice. And now ... now ... after all this ... a crowd of irresponsible strangers, with no rights in the man whatsoever probably, if the truth were known, filled with mere ignoble desire for his small change, had dared to rush in and jump his claim ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... a sneer, that all this is idle preaching? Would any one deny that we are bound, and I would hope to good purpose, by the most solemn sanctions of duty for the vote we give? Are despots alone to be reproached for unfeeling indifference to the tears and blood of their subjects? Are republicans irresponsible? Have the principles on which you ground the reproach upon cabinets and kings no practical influence, no binding force? Are they merely themes of idle declamation, introduced to decorate the morality of a newspaper essay, or to furnish pretty topics of harangue from the windows of that State ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the top and works away in front of the parapet with the moon shining full and the machine guns busy all along; when he gets back to billets, and throws off his cares and bathes and plays games like any irresponsible schoolboy; even when he breaks bounds and is found by the M.P. skylarking in ——, you can't help loving him. Most of all, when he lies still and white with a red stream trickling from where the sniper's bullet has made a hole through his head, there comes a lump in your throat that you can't swallow; ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... very suffering was lost; and also this—this moment of elation in the clear morning, as if the universe had shed its glory upon my feelings as the sunshine glorifies the sea. I laughed in very lightness of heart, in a profound sense of success; I laughed, irresponsible and oblivious, as one laughs in the thrilling ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... British could not work out their own salvation then it were well that empire should pass from such a race. The magnificent Indian army of 150,000 soldiers, many of them seasoned veterans, was for the same reason left untouched. England has claimed no credit or consideration for such abstention, but an irresponsible writer may well ask how many of those foreign critics whose respect for our public morality appears to be as limited as their knowledge of our principles and history would have advocated such self denial had their own countries been placed ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it on for the information of the gentlemen garrisoning the Amarilla Club. For herself, her mind was made up; she would rejoin her uncle; she would entrust the last day—the last hours perhaps—of her father's life to the keeping of the bandit, whose existence was a protest against the irresponsible tyranny of all parties alike, against the moral darkness of the land. The gloom of Los Hatos woods was preferable; a life of hardships in the train of a robber band less debasing. Antonia embraced with all her soul her uncle's obstinate ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the playhouse;[161] independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences about ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... misery and physical privation and the barren outlook of this life of the seasonal worker, the I.W.W. movement, with all its irresponsible motive and unlawful action, becomes in reality a class-protest, and the dignity which this characteristic gives it perhaps alone explains the persistence of the organization ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... Doctrine or to extend its application so as to cover the constantly increasing number of disputes arising from the reckless creation of public debts and loose financial administration. It was absurd for us to stand quietly by and witness the utterly irresponsible creation of financial obligations that would inevitably lead to European intervention and then undertake to fix the bounds and limits of that intervention. It is interesting to note that President Wilson did not hesitate to carry the new policy ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... rise to his irresponsible humour. Thus far her audacity seemed to have earned her nothing but his derision. He was not in the least afraid of her—and he was a desperate criminal. Then what ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... that an American can do anything that he sets his hand to, but it is not true; it is true only that he tries everything. The reporter is born, as the poet is; it cannot be acquired—that astonishing, irresponsible command of the English language; that warm, lyrical tone; that color, and bewildering metaphorical brilliancy; that picturesqueness; that use of words as the painter uses pigments, in splashes and blotches which are so ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... numbering, as they did, about three hundred, but the engines also of the Fire Insurance Companies, were comparatively inefficient and often out of order, while they were also under the most diverse, if not irresponsible management. There were no really trained firemen, and those who controlled and worked the engines were oftener in antagonism with each other than acting in concert. The parish engines were in the care of the beadles, and in one case a beadle's widow, Mrs. ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... also to ease their aching hearts by telling him what they had undergone since that day when they so blithely parted from him at the railway station at Havana, it was a really heartrending story of cruel oppression and shameful, irresponsible tyranny to which he felt himself obliged to listen. There is no need to give the full details here; it is sufficient to simply state that upon their arrival at Bejucal, the first station beyond Santiago, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... form brought with it a new danger—that of prolixity. It was necessary that the exposition account for Wallenstein's conduct by exhibiting the sources of his power. This meant a dramatic picture of his wild and irresponsible soldatesca. The theme was boundless and Schiller was a facile verse-maker. Ere long he reported ruefully to Goethe that his first act was already longer than three acts of 'Iphigenie'. He was in doubt whether his friend had ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... perceptiveness, and he realized that in these things, and the fineness of her woman's intuition, now lay his greatest menace. He was sure that she understood the meaning of the assault upon her that night, though she had apparently believed what he and Blackton had told them—that it had been the attack of irresponsible and drunken hoodlums. Yet he was certain that she had already guessed that Quade had ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... moved in spite of himself by an abhorrence which the irresponsible condition of this man seemed only to emphasize, waited till the last faint sounds of this diabolical mirth had died away in the high recesses of the space above. Then, fixing the glittering eye of this strange creature with his own, which, as we know, so seldom dwelt ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... with her temperance work, there were stirrings among women in other parts of New York State in the spring and early summer of 1848. Through the efforts of a few women who circulated petitions and the influence of wealthy men who saw irresponsible sons-in-law taking over the property they wanted their daughters to own, a Married Women's Property Law passed the legislature; this made it possible for a married woman to hold real estate in her own name. Heretofore all property owned by ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... more to do than to rouse the irresponsible part of his audience by his patriotic eloquence. The countenances of his judges remained as cold to him as ever, and he turned to the serious business of his defence. His quick intelligence saw that the telling point in Coke's diatribe had been the emphasis ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... service. They regretted the loss to shippers of all the perishable produce which to the value of millions of dollars had been rotting away at the docks. They deplored the inconvenience and ruin which had been brought on the innocent public by these bodies of rough, irresponsible men who had openly defied the law. With such men there could be no arbitration, and in fact there was no need. The port would be open inside of ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... rather than solidity of frame. Gregory Hawtrey was tall and thick of shoulder, though the rest of him was in fine modelling, and he had a pleasant face of the English blue-eyed type. Just then it was suffused with almost boyish merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... next to Colonel Carleton at dinner, and from him and from the others learned the story of Nicholson's Nek, which it is not necessary to repeat here, but which filled me with sympathy for the gallant commander and soldiers who were betrayed by the act of an irresponsible subordinate. The officers of the Irish Fusiliers told me of the amazement with which they had seen the white flag flying. 'We had still some ammunition,' they said; 'it is true the position was indefensible—but we only wanted to ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... form of government, speaking without reference to the new constitution which will be dealt with later on, is an irresponsible autocracy; its institutions are likewise autocratic in form, but democratic in operation. The philosopher, Mencius (372-289 B.C.), placed the people first, the gods second, and the sovereign third, in the scale of national importance; and this classification has sunk deep ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... of pointing out that, except in the small area occupied by the Boer army under the personal command of Commandant General Botha, the war is degenerating into operations carried on in an irregular and irresponsible manner by small, and, in very many cases, insignificant bodies ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... the word "beeches" as "breeches." "For what on earth can the Bishop want to see the breeches I wore at Waterloo?" said the Duke; but taking a charitable view of the matter he decided that the poor old Bishop must be getting irresponsible and replied that he was giving his valet instructions to show the Bishop the garments in question, whenever it suited him to inspect them. The Bishop was equally amazed, but took exactly the same view about the Duke as the latter had decided upon ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... plague and as suddenly to pass into desuetude and disappear behind the impregnable ramparts of "prescriptive right" and "privilege"—terms which in plain parlance mean to the masses in cold actual fact, the absolute negation of all right—the domination of arbitrary, irresponsible and State protected wrong. ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... Audrey forgave her petulance and want of consideration for Mollie. It was difficult to find fault with Mrs. Blake; she was so gay and good-humoured, she so soon forgot anything that had ruffled her, she was so childlike and irresponsible, that one seemed to judge her by ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... reckless, irresponsible spirit revived in the man; he had both courage and bravado; he was not hopeless yet of finding an escape from the net. He would not ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the government of the provinces would have improved. Whatever may be said as to the evils of change brought about by popular caprice, they are less serious than those which grow up under the shadow of an uncriticised and irresponsible bureaucracy. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... sweetheart of the man that shot her husband, wuz with her. Good land! Arvilly didn't lay up nothin' aginst her or him; he wuz drunk as a fool when he fired the shot. He didn't know what he wuz doin'; he wuz made irresponsible by the law, till he did the deed, and then made responsible by the same law and shot. Waitstill wuz named from a Puritan great-great-aunt, whose beauty and goodness had fell onto her, poor girl! She stood by Arvilly. They wuz made friends on that dretful night when they had stood ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Belgians protested that it was a travesty of the intentions of the French Government to interpret them in that sense, and to let oneself be misled as to the sentiments of the French nation by the ebullitions of a few irresponsible spirits or the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... but I believe it is a fact that the first stirring of my pulses was caused by the report of a speech of his which I read in the Times. It was on the Eight Hours' Bill. Papa was most unflattering. He said that he was an oily spouter, an ignorant agitator, an irresponsible firebrand, and a good deal more to the same effect. I remember very well how papa fidgeted with the paper, declaring that it read even worse than it had sounded, and goodness knew that it had sounded bad ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... cheery heart can bridge any gulf, don't you think? You know, I was just what I call a jolly girl when I married him, and afterwards I forgot to grow up, I think. Perhaps my treatment of him has been rather irresponsible. I must try and make up—what I call 'kiss and be friends,' like ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... the door of the world's treasure-house guarded by a child—an idle irresponsible child playing knuckle-bones—on whose favor depends the gift of the key, and you will imagine one-half my torment. Till that evening Charlie had spoken nothing that might not lie within the experiences ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... had no chance to escape. Fizzles! The man had been calmly discussed and calmly dismissed. At odd times an article in the newspapers gave her an opportunity; still the frank discussion, still the calm dismissal. She had learned that the man was rich, irresponsible, vacillating, a picturesque sort of fool. But two years? What had kept him away that long? A weak man, in love, would not have made so tame a surrender. Perhaps he had not surrendered; perhaps neither of ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... all Minky kept his head level. Whatever he felt and thought, he had nothing to offer on the altar of public suggestion. He knew that of all these irresponsible debaters he had the most to lose. Nor did he feel inclined to expose anything of the risk at which he stood. It was a depressing time for him, so depressing that he could see very little hope. His risk was enormous. He felt that the probability was that this raiding gang were well enough posted ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... before whose colossal egoism imagination waxes impotent, could, on other occasions, exhibit an irresponsible bonhomie, which seemed totally at variance with the more sinister side of his character. This John ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... could she not have seen her doom in being affianced to one of these poor pageants of humanity? Ah, but "she loved; she could not help loving;" she gave herself a victim at the profane shrine, because she always thought she must love where and whom, her unbidden, irresponsible, feelings should ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... substituting individual for collective responsibility of ministers; having experienced that a board of ministers, though responsible by law and composed of our own countrymen, was naturally and necessarily in practice irresponsible. When the tyrants of Austria, whom our forefathers had elected in an ill-fated hour to be our constitutional kings, saw that their designs of centralization were obstructed, they forsook their honour, they broke their oath, they tore ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... talk with the motor. I think Apollo had swallowed a crumb, or something, for he coughed and wheezed, and wouldn't move except with gasps, until he had been patted under the bonnet, and tickled with all sorts of funny instruments, such as a giant's dentist might use. It was fun, though, for us irresponsible ones, while Sir Lionel and Nick tried different things to get the crumb out of Apollo's throat. Other motorists flew by scornfully, like the Priest and the Levite, or slowed up to ask if they could help, and looked with some interest at Mrs. Senter and me, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... where her voice could be heard talking imperiously to her baby's ayah. He had already waited some minutes, and he would probably have waited much longer, for his patience was inexhaustible, had it not been for that sudden irresponsible and wholly tuneless burst of song. But the second line was scarcely ended before she came hurriedly forth, nearly running into his stately person ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... of determination to have one's own way at all hazards, of intolerance of any contradiction or opposition; of quickness to take offence, and to avenge and right one's self. The possession and exercise of almost irresponsible power over others tend to destroy in the master all power of self-control; foster intolerance of any legal restraint, of any law but one's own will, that must either rule or ruin. It is a spirit that is cultivated assiduously from childhood to youth, and from youth to full age, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... could require, would slowly get up, yawn, and stroll off to his kennel or to some pretended business behind the barn. His big heart harboured no resentment against the child, whom he knew to be a child and irresponsible. His resentment was all against fate, or life, or whatever it was, the vague, implacable force which was causing Joe Barnes to hurt him. For Joe Barnes he had only ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... revolution for Rome. Even the great Caesar had failed, had not divined aright the only treatment to which the disease of the age would yield, for although the blows which actually killed Caesar may have been merely an accident in history, the deed of irresponsible men, his fall was no accident but was the inevitable logical outcome of his imperial policy. But Augustus succeeded in establishing a form of government which enabled himself and his connexion to occupy ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... ground. And then, I dare say, the elements retired to some region of waste, off in space somewhere, and sat down and thundered with laughter. But it wasn't through with the deaf and dumb, and blind, and roofless even then. It was decided by government, which is the next most irresponsible instrument to lightning, to transfer the late inmates of the asylum to a remantled barrack in the salubrious Ceylon hills; and they were put aboard a ram-shackle, single-screw steamer named the Nerissa. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... principles on which he would administer the government, and what are his claims to the confidence of the public. We are beginning to discover that the personal character of the President has a great deal to do with the conduct of the almost irresponsible executive head of the Republic. What, then, have been Mr. Cushing's political antecedents, and what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... a natural feeling, when we're young and like to be irresponsible; but I fancy, dear, that things look pretty different as we get along and are willing to pay the price for our happinesses—to pay for love with service and self-sacrifice. As for me, I pray that you and I may not some day be childless ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... carry out to meet the expense of the war gives a chance to save in sums as small as twenty-five cents and makes an investment upon which return of both principal and interest is absolutely guaranteed. Too often colored people have entrusted their savings to wholly irresponsible persons, lost them through the dishonesty of these persons, and in discouragement abandoned all attempts at saving. Today, however, there is no excuse for any man not saving a certain amount of his earnings no matter how small it may be. It is a poor person, indeed, who cannot invest ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... least in some cases, to yield to a literary temptation. It is so dramatic—that scene of the four young men holding in their hands, during a moment of absolute destiny, the fate of a people; four young men, in the irresponsible ardor of youth, refusing to wait three days and forcing war at the instant! It is so dramatic that one cannot judge harshly the artistic temper which is unable to reject it. But is the incident historic? Did the four young men come to Sumter ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... from their chains, and did not substitute self-discipline for that which had weighed heavy on them. With all its discipline, army life was full of lounging, hanging about, waste of time, waiting for things to happen. It was an irresponsible life for the rank and file. Food was brought to them, clothes were given to them, entertainments were provided behind the line, sports organized, their day ordered by high powers. There was no need to think for themselves, to act for themselves. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... stone floor here and there with misty colours. There was no movement near her, but the sound of voices and laughter came from the chamber beyond—the one from which she had angrily departed some time ago. Now the voices were hushed to a murmur, now they were loud, and the laughter was irresponsible. How she hated the sound of it, and that shriller note, peculiarly persistent for a moment, was Mrs. Dearmer's. No Christian feeling could prevent ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... self-respect and tax your patience in vain. But admit that they are men of common sense and common honesty, wisely modifying an environment they cannot wholly disregard—guiding and controlling as best they can the vicious and irresponsible of either race—compensating error with frankness, and retrieving in patience what they lose in passion—and conscious all the time that wrong means ruin—admit this, and we may reach ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... recognised studies, however, was not the only blot upon Lyly's Oxford life. From the hints thrown out by his contemporaries, and from some allusions, doubtless personal, in the Euphues, we learn that, as an undergraduate, he was an irresponsible madcap. "Esteemed in the University a noted wit," he would very naturally become the centre of a pleasure-seeking circle of friends, despising the persons and ideas of their elders, eager to adopt the latest fashion whether in dress or in thought, and intolerant alike of regulations and of duty. ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... don't you show up its iniquities? What is a "Post" made and set up for, if not, among other things, to bear affiches testifying to the people of their wickedness? The express is the most slovenly agent and the most irresponsible tyrant in the country. What it brings is perhaps ruined by delay,—plants, for instance. No help. "Pay," it says to the station-master, "or we don't leave it." Oh, if I had the gift and grace to send articles to the "Post," from time to time, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... government by the mentally and morally inferior. And yet—a Bill for giving at last some scant measure of self-government to persecuted Ireland has to run the gauntlet, in our nineteenth-century England, of an irresponsible House of ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... chorus of indolent reviewers, Irresponsible, indolent reviewers, Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem All composed in a metre of Catullus, All in quantity, careful of my motion, Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him, Lest I fall unawares before the people, Waking laughter in indolent reviewers. Should I flounder awhile without a ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... famine to-morrow. There is deep satisfaction in cooperating with such families to conquer difficulties. There is a deeper satisfaction, however, in turning a sham home into a real one; in teaching the slatternly, irresponsible mother the pleasure of a cleanly, well-ordered home; in helping a man who has lost his sense of responsibility toward wife and children to regain it. Even at the risk of drawing a too gloomy picture, I dwell in this chapter, ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... Natural Selection; and it would be so absurd to keep a child in delusive ignorance of so potent a factor in evolution as to keep it in ignorance of radiation or capillary attraction. Even if you make a religion of Natural Selection, and teach the child to regard itself as the irresponsible prey of its circumstances and appetites (or its heredity as you will perhaps call them), you will none the less find that its appetites are stimulated by your encouragement and daunted by your discouragement; that one of its appetites is an appetite for perfection; that if ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... shooting down the run, and even as Scott caught sight of it the foremost came to grief, and a dozen people rolled ignominiously in the snow. He smiled involuntarily. He seemed to have stepped into an atmosphere of irresponsible youth. The air was full of the magic fluid. It stirred his pulses like ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... above any other method you can employ. Don't buy infringing cans from irresponsible dealers. By decision of the U. S. Court the Cooley is the only Creamer or Milk Can which can be used water sealed or submerged without ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... a facsimile is given after page 92, is the draft of what appears to be an attempt to explain how an artist has not free-will in his creation. He works out his own nature instinctively as he happens to be made, and is irresponsible for the result. It is lamentable that Gerard Hopkins died when, to judge by his latest work, he was beginning to concentrate the force of all his luxuriant experiments in rhythm and diction, and castigate his art into a more reserved style. Few will read ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... not said that I was a gay-hearted, golden, bearded giant of an irresponsible boy that had never grown up? With scarce a pang, when the Sparwehrs' water-casks were filled, I left Raa Kook and his pleasant land, left Lei-Lei and all her flower-garlanded sisters, and with laughter on my lips and ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... decisions at home, and pronounced them in the forum. If any one appealed to a colleague, he departed from the one to whom he had appealed in such a manner that he regretted that he had not abided by the sentence of the former. An irresponsible rumour had also gone abroad that they had conspired in their tyranny not only for the present time, but that a clandestine league had been concluded among them on oath, that they would not hold the comitia, but by perpetuating the decemvirate ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius |
