"Precipitancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inhabited by the tenant of the farm, while the whole available military and police force of the district were drawing their lines of circumvallation around this old house, which, as soon as they made the proper dispositions to prevent our escape, they burst into with the stealth and precipitancy of a robber band. ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... when it seemed as if the possibility of holding Waggon Hill hung upon a mere chance. Once surprised by finding Boers within fifty yards, the whole forward line of Rifles and Highlanders gave way, retiring over the crest with a precipitancy that threatened to sweep back supports and all in a general confusion. But it was no more than a momentary panic, such as the best troops in the world may be subject to, and our men were quick to rally when they heard themselves ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... the moment he had forgotten. Thrusting his hand into his pocket, he drew out a key and unsteadily fitted it. But before turning it he stood an instant listening. No sound! Should he wait until the morrow? Prudence dictated that course; precipitancy, however, drove him on. Now, as well as ever! Better have an understanding! She would have to accede to his plans, anyway—and the sooner, the better. He had burned his bridges; there ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... formally, faithfully and explicitly against the magistrate adjourning and dissolving of Assemblies, and recording the same, contrar to the practise of this Church in our reforming times. We are not concerned to notice the protestation of some few persons at particular times, seeing their precipitancy and rashness in this matter, (as they accounted it) was afterward apologized for; and that it was not the deed of the Assembly. Their not asserting in any explicit and formal act the divine right of Presbytry, and the instrinsick power of the Church, though often ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... time ago with one of the secretaries to Government, upon the present favourable bias of government and the public in general to favour all plans for doing good, he told me that he believed the whole was owing to the prudent and temperate manner in which we had acted; and that if we had acted with precipitancy and indiscretion, he had every reason to believe the general feeling would have been as hostile to attempts to do good as it is now ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... spinney where the rain was dripping heavily from the branches of the trees. I was just on the point of turning back to the road when one of our batteries concealed in the place opened fire, and a perfect hell of flame burst out around me. I flopped to earth with graceless precipitancy, and wallowed in mud. "It's all up 3008, you've done it now," I muttered, and wondered vaguely whether I was partly or wholly dead. The sharp smell of cordite filled the air and caused (p. 171) a tickling sensation in my throat that almost ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... had been made in transforming this gloomy hall into a tribunal, attested the precipitancy of the judges and their determination to finish ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... With the aspect of an angry rather than a disappointed man, he paced the office with rapid and irregular strides. He could devise no expedient. A lady's will is absolute, and he must bend in submission. He blamed his own tardiness one moment, and his precipitancy the next; then he cursed his ill luck, and vented his anger and disappointment in ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... sober second thought had come to Governor Shannon. To retrieve somewhat the precipitancy of his militia orders and proclamations, he wrote to Sheriff Jones, December 2, to make no arrests or movements unless by his direction. The firm defensive attitude of the people of Lawrence had produced its effect. The leaders of the conspiracy became ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the exclamation, the general, attired in full uniform for a ball, came darting in with such precipitancy that, hitching his boot in the carpet, and getting his sword between his legs, he came down headlong, and presented a curious little bald place on the crown of his head to the eyes of the astonished company. Nor was this the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... a feeling of perfect security to one of miserable doubt, at finding the field already taken, nearly drove Mr. Murray into a precipitancy that he might have regretted forever. As it was, he answered Kittie's inquiries for Pansy, in a pre-occupied way, that was surprising, and seemed too much pleased with that envelope to ever lay it down; and yet, with all his looking, he failed to discover that the name, ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... Flows pure and free the gushing stream of life.— What silent purpose broods within thy soul? Is it destruction? Let me perish first! For now, deliv'rance hopeless, I perceive The dreadful peril into which I have With rash precipitancy plung'd my friends. Alas! I soon shall see them bound before me! How to my brother shall I say farewell? I, the unhappy author of his death. Ne'er can I gaze again in ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... precipitancy, "do make Mr. Bohm look at the church!" and she turned after Mrs. Weguelin. ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... attempting to ford the river (Canard) higher up, was put to flight by a small party of eighteen or twenty Indians who lay concealed in the grass. The enemy, panic-struck at their sudden and hideous yell, fled with precipitancy, leaving their arms, accoutrements, and haversacks. The British sloop of war Queen Charlotte, carrying eighteen twenty-four pounders, lay in the Detroit river, opposite the mouth of the River Canard, so that it was impossible for the Americans to convey by water to Amherstburg any ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... murder had been my work, in complicity with the Princess of Eboli. How they came to drag her name into the affair I do not know. It may have been pure malice trading upon its knowledge of the relations between us. She may have lent colour to the charge by her own precipitancy in denying it. She announced indignantly that she was being accused, almost before this had come to pass, and as indignantly protested against the accusation, and threatened those who dared to ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... was brought, into which little pieces of cotton, fixed on slips of bamboo, were dipped, and given to each person. The heat, dust, stench of the unwashed multitude, noise, and increasing familiarity of the lower orders, warned us to retire, and we effected our retreat with precipitancy. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... perhaps, severest to himself. His poetic standards were high. In his maturer years he blamed the precipitancy with which, as a youth, he had rushed into print. There is an interesting marginal note, as his son tells us, in a copy of his first volume of verse, in which The Cataract is pronounced "the poorest piece in the volume. Boyish and bombastic! Should have been whipped for publishing it!" ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... that the administration party would take advantage of the insolent and outrageous conduct of the French minister to show the folly of precipitancy, and to gain popularity and strength for itself. Madison soon writes to Jefferson to acquaint him with the reaction taking place in Virginia, "in the surprise and disgust of those who are attached to the French ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... Deronda. "Perhaps I am able to understand what you mean. At least I understand self-reproach." In spite of preparation he was almost alarmed at Gwendolen's precipitancy of confidence toward him, in contrast with ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... twos and threes the company drifted slowly up the road in her wake, while Captain Barber, going in the other direction, accompanied Captain Nibletts and party as far as the schooner, in order that he might have the opportunity of saying a few well-chosen words to Mr. Green on the subject of precipitancy. ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... accordingly got into the inward Fort, unseen by any of our Men, the Spaniards, waving their Hats over their Heads, repeated over and over, Viva el Rey, Viva. This the Prince of Hesse unfortunately took for a Signal of their Desire to surrender. Upon which, with too much Warmth and Precipitancy, calling to the Soldiers following, They surrender, they surrender, he advanc'd with near three Hundred Men (who follow'd him without any Orders from their General) along the Curtain which led to the Ditch ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... a leading friend in Montreal, earnestly expostulating with him upon the precipitancy of such a course. I have not failed to apprise him of the bitter hostility of the Kingston Chronicle, the Toronto Patriot, the Cobourg Star, and The Church, to Methodism, and to say that, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... grossest that I ever was guilty of in all my life. I have frequently made this observation, that when men have, through fear of miscarriage, hesitated a long time about any undertaking of consequence, the remaining impressions of their fear commonly push them afterwards with too much precipitancy upon the execution of their design. And this was my case. It was with the greatest reluctance that I determined to accept the dignity of a cardinal, because I thought it too mean to form a pretension to it without certainty of success; ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... body politic, and asked the attention of my hearers while I read to them a particular clause, which it had struck me had some allusion to the very point now in consideration. Having thus cleared the way, I had not the folly to defeat the objects of so much preparation, by an indiscreet precipitancy. So far from it, previously to reading the extract from the constitution, I waited until the attention of every member present was attracted more forcibly by the dignity, deliberation, and gravity of my manner, than by the substance of what had yet been said. In the midst of this ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... occasion, it remains to ask what was the cause of the minister's precipitancy. Why should Clement Sclater thereupon spring from his chair in such a state of excitement that he set his cup of coffee down upon its side instead of its bottom, to the detriment of the tablecloth, and of something ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... in general, it was not those most remarkable for their fortitude who evinced either a precipitancy to depart, or a desire to remain very long behind—the older and cooler soldiers appearing to possess too much regard for their officers, as well as for their individual credit, to take their hasty departure at a very early period of the day, and too much wisdom and resolution ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... [32] This blunt expostulation of the honest courtier, equally creditable to the sovereign who could endure, and the subject who could make it, was received in the frank spirit in which it was given, and probably opened Isabella's eyes to her own precipitancy, as we find no further allusion to ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... plunged with headlong precipitancy into the story of his love for Cornelia, and of the inexplicably cruel way in which it had been brought to a close. "And yesterday," he continued with a sob in his voice—"yesterday I heard that her father had taken ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... there was a powerful party attempting to stem the precipitancy of the nation. The great moneyed corporations viewed the matter with alarm, and advocated peaceful settlement, or, at most, inaction. This, however, was attributed to their fears of unsettlement of values, and consequent depreciation ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... music book under his arm, comes out, with a strange, screwy motion, as though through an opening much too narrow for him, and, having poised a moment to nervously pull some imaginary object from his right boot and hurl it madly from him, goes unexpectedly off with the precipitancy and equilibriously concentric manner of a gentleman in his first private essay ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... system itself you must attack and overthrow; not a mere instrument—a miserable painted lath such as this. And precipitancy will spoil everything. Above ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... delivering up of the horses which were occasionally stolen was merely intended to lull our vigilance and to prevent us from discovering their designs until they were ripe for execution. That they frequently told their young men that they would defeat their plans by their precipitancy. That in their harangues to the Indians they frequently requested those who would not join their confederacy, to keep their secret. That they always promised them a rich harvest of plunder and scalps, declaring that the first stroke would put them in possession of an ample supply of ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... incredibly short space of time, being continually urged on by the flattering anxiety of Shan Tien (whose precipitancy at one point became so acute that he mistook fourscore taels for five), all things were prepared. With the inscribed parchment well within his sleeve and the bags of silver ranged about his body, Kai Lung approached the platform ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... "The precipitancy of my demands upon your gate and your hospitality must have something of an air of impertinence," said Count Victor briskly, unbuckling his sword and laying it before him on the table; "but the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... chairwoman exhorted someone to have the courage of her opinions. And the ice being once fractured, one Amurath succeeded another in disjointed commentaries, plucking crows in the teeth of the assertions of the Hon'ble Opener and of their precursors, and resumed their seats with abrupt precipitancy, stating that they had ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... where she drew so unkind a picture of Chopin, has described her own life and character as marked by 'a great facility for illusions, a blind benevolence of judgment, a tenderness of heart that was inexhaustible; consequently great precipitancy, many mistakes, much weakness, fits of heroic devotion to unworthy objects, enormous force applied to an end that was wretched in truth and fact, but sublime in her thought.' George Eliot had none of this ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... message to the two houses, he declares, that he "cannot, in justice to the parties interested, too soon present the subject to the deliberate consideration of the legislature, in order to avoid the evils resulting from precipitancy, in a measure involving such important principles and such deep pecuniary interests." Aware of this early invitation given to Congress to take up the subject, by the President himself, the writer of the message seems to vary the ground of objection, and, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... purgatory was a delusion; that a layman might be a bishop; that where two or three, it might be, "cobblers or weavers," "were in company in the name of God, there was the church of God."[530] Such ill-judged precipitancy was of darker omen to the Reformation than papal excommunications or imperial menaces, and would soon be dearly paid for in fresh martyr-fires. Latimer, too, notwithstanding his clear perception and gallant ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... began to accuse myself of precipitancy; but I soon remembered that every thing ought to be hazarded, where every thing is at stake. My fears were not for myself; and, while my arms were free, could I have come upon them thus suddenly, success was far from improbable. Vice is always ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft |
