"Well-meaning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been imprudent in addressing a girl of seventeen in this tender fashion; but the truth was, her short skirts and the two long braids of yellow hair were in his mind associated with that age toward which you may, without offence, assume the role of a well-meaning protector, and where even a kiss need not necessarily be resented. So far from feeling flattered by the unwished-for recollection of Elsie's feeling for him, he was rather disposed to view it as a ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... naturally expect to find these in the higher rather than in the humbler walks of life. There is a vast deal of genuine charity in humble life, and the poor of every city derive a large part of their support from those but moderately blessed with worldly goods themselves; but many a well-meaning man will unintentionally make a remark that wounds your feelings and makes you uncomfortable for hours afterwards, while a person whose perceptions and sympathies have been more nicely trained would spare you the infliction. A certain fortune is indispensable to those who wish to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... considerable part of the course of his disease. Provision of this sort makes treatment both more attractive and more available to large numbers of people whose pride keeps them away from the public provision for charity cases, and whose limited means leave them at the mercy either of quackery or of well-meaning but ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... supposed it was from associating with such a boy as you; for he was sure that I was too well-meaning a lad to do such things without ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... you, and many good and well-meaning clergymen beside you, painting the Catholics in such detestable colours; two- thirds, at least, of Europe are Catholics—they are Christians, though mistaken Christians; how can I possibly admit that any sect of Christians, and, above all, that the oldest and the most numerous ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... to thank you for a kind, short note of the 27th inst., which I received on Sunday. I gave your kind message to the King of Prussia, who was much touche by it. He is a most amiable man, so kind and well-meaning, and seems so much beloved. He is so amusing too. He is very anxious that Belgium should become liee with Germany, and I think, dearest Uncle, that it would be for the real good of Belgium if it could be so. You will have ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... talks for the most part on the pavement and in public-houses, but there is every indication that we shall see before long a rapid growth of workmen's clubs—not the tea-and-coffee make-believes set up by the well-meaning, but honest, independent clubs, in every respect such as those in Pall Mall, managed by the workmen themselves, who are not, and never will become, total abstainers, but have shown themselves, up to the present moment, ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... But no. The well-meaning Mr Heinzen only fears that the communists "are seeking to assure the princes a revolutionary Fontanelle." Thus the Belgian liberals assure us that the radicals are in secret alliance with the catholics; ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... Patrolman leaves his beat for a cup of coffee on a cold morning, or night, or reads a newspaper, or smokes, or stops to converse while on duty. The punishment for these offences is a stoppage of pay for a day or two. First offences are usually forgiven. Many well-meaning but officious citizens enter complaints against the men. They are generally frivolous, but are heard patiently, and are dismissed with a warning to the accused to avoid giving cause for complaint. Thieves and disreputable characters sometimes enter ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... people.—I have no doubt in my own mind that the account of Damaris' illness is absurdly exaggerated. You know how Charles spoils her! She has very much too much freedom; and little Miss Bilson, though well-meaning, is incapable of coping with a headstrong girl like Damaris. She ought—Damaris ought I mean—to have been sent to a finishing school for another year at least. She might then have found her level. If Charles had consulted me, or shown the least willingness to accept my ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... poor. The story runs that in the parish where he served his first curacy there was an old farmer on whom had fallen all the troubles of Job—loss of stock, loss of capital, eviction from his holding, the death of his wife, and the failure of his own health. The well-meaning young curate, though full of compassion, could find no more novel topic of consolation than to say that all these trials were the dispensations of Providence. On this the poor old victim brightened up and said with a cheerful smile, "Ah yes, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... members of his Church may be able to separate Christianity from Christians, and not judge the one by the other; but I can't. The fact that Christendom is what it is has always disposed of Christianity as a working force, to my mind. Judaism is detestable, but efficient; Christianity is well-meaning but a failure. As, of course, parsons like Juke would be and are the first to admit. They say it aims so high that it's bound to fail, which is probably true. But that makes it pretty useless as a working human religion. Anyhow, I quite agree with Juke that it is comic to see poor ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... heard of who was disappointed and unrewarded for his labour in attempting to eternize the memory of Napoleon Bonaparte, was a German of the name of Schumacher. It is, indeed, allowed that he was more industrious, able, and well-meaning than ingenious or considerate. He did not consider that it would be no compliment to give the immortal hero a hint of being a mortal man. Schumacher had employed near three years in planning and executing in marble the prettiest model ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Orange River we carried our load of wounded to the base hospital. I wish some of those well-meaning enthusiasts in Trafalgar Square who clamoured for war could have viewed the interior of these hospital tents and seen the poor twisted forms lying on the ground in every direction. What a stupid and brutal thing war is! Certainly the alleged "bringing out of our nobler qualities" is dearly purchased! ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... ignorant of the mystery which was about to be accomplished, and they wandered about, sighing, and listening to every different opinion. Each word they uttered gave raise to feelings of suspicion on the part of those who they addressed, and if they were silent, their silence was set down as wrong. Many well-meaning but weak and undecided characters yielded to temptation, were scandalised, and lost their fait; indeed, the number of those who persevered was very small indeed. Things were the same then as they oftentimes ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... Robert de Thorpe, and others, no memorials worthy of their fame and importance are in existence. The wanton destruction during the civil war in great part explains this; but it is sad to remember that numbers of mediaeval inscriptions in the floor were hidden or destroyed during some well-meaning but ill-judged alterations in the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... a dozen occasions upon which Smiler was dressed up by various well-meaning members of the community and it was the first of twelve occasions that Smiler resented the interference and went back, at the earliest opportunity, to his old, familiar ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Stokes—are not Celtic at all but Teutonic; that, in short, I have been following the multitude to speak loosely. Well, I confess it, and I will confess further that the lax use of the word 'Celt' ill beseems one who has been irritated often enough by the attempts of well-meaning but muddle-headed people who get hold of this or that poet and straightly assign this or that quality of his verse to a certain set of corpuscles in his mixed blood. Although I believe that my correspondent is too hasty in labelling men's descent from their names—for the mother has usually some ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... may never have to re-live the horrors of the next hour. In spite of my bluff and hearty ways, in times of trouble I am as reticent as a clam. I was determined to hide my agony and anxiety from the well-meaning people of the Moose Hotel. I hurried to the railway station to send a telegram to the Professor's address in Brooklyn, but found the place closed. A boy told me it would not be open until the afternoon. From a drugstore I called "information" ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... Smithsonian Institution, the Naval Observatory, and other scientific associations. At this juncture the discoveries of Captain Inglefield, R. N., in Smith Sound, afforded to Kane a new route for his activities. The scheme, as far as the search for Franklin was concerned, was well-meaning, but none the less fallacious and illogical. Kane was personally cognizant of the fact that Franklin had gone into Lancaster Sound, and had wintered in 1845-46 at Beechy Island, plainly following the direct and positive orders of the Admiralty, that he should push southward from Cape Walker to the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... came out and said: "There will be an end of Me if you see that well-meaning person again." Betty would not face the Thought, but she was ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... enemies we can guard against. The well-meaning rector of the little parish of Woodgates, England, and several of Robert Browning's local admirers have recently busied themselves in erecting a tablet to the memory of "the first known forefather of the poet." This lately turned up ancestor, who does not ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Bibles were to be distributed as the word of God, like "seed thrown upon the wayside;" and the medicines, I trust, were to be kept locked up in the chest, as their distribution might have been fatal to the poor Jews. These worthy and well-meaning missionaries were prepared to operate mentally and physically upon the Abyssinians, to open their minds as well as their bowels; but as their own (not their minds) were out of order, I was obliged to assist them by an examination of their medicine-chest, which they had regarded with such dread ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... less have any opportunity to offer any words in private, so narrowly had he been watched and observed. Nymphidius, therefore, called together the officers of the troops, and declared to them that Galba of himself was a good, well-meaning old man, but did not act by his own counsel, and was ill-guided by Vinius and Laco; and lest, before they were aware, they should engross the authority Tigellinus had with the troops, he proposed to them to send deputies from the camp, acquainting ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... thank your correspondent, and express how much you enjoyed the narrative. I did enjoy the narrative in your last very keenly; the exquisitely characteristic traits concerning the Bakers were worth gold; just like not only them but all their class—respectable, well-meaning people enough, but with all that petty assumption of dignity, that small jealousy of senseless formalities, which to such people seems to form a second religion. Your position amongst them was detestable. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... blameless. For the curse under which we are labouring to-day, each one of us must bear his share of responsibility. Some have erred by deliberate choice, others through weakness, and it is not the weak who are the least guilty. The apathy of the majority, the timorousness of the well-meaning, the selfishness and scepticism of listless rulers, the ignorance or cynicism of the press, the rapacity of profiteers, the faint-hearted servility of the thinkers who make themselves the apostles of devastating prejudices which it should be their mission to ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... looking forward, joyously; now they recall the past, its losses and trials and misfortunes. They remember the children who are dead, or far away; or the prosperity once theirs, but now fled. Few old folks would care to celebrate their golden wedding; it is usually some well-meaning grandchild who sees in it "an occasion." Often, too, the excitement, the fatigue, the unusual strain on mind and body, result in illness which sometimes ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... their own, had they belonged to the great company of human beings technically known to so many of us as the poor, there would have been friendly neighbours ready to help them, and the same would have been the case had they belonged to the class of smug, well-meaning, if unimaginative, folk whom they had spent so much ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... acts, and that if in any lawless incursion into Canada they fall into the hands of the British authorities they will not be reclaimed as American citizens nor any interference made by this Government in their behalf. And I exhort all well-meaning but deluded persons who may have joined these lodges immediately to abandon them and to have nothing more to do with their secret meetings or unlawful oaths, as they would avoid serious consequences to themselves. And I expect the intelligent and well-disposed members of the community ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... perceive that Liancourt, who was greatly moved by the beauty, the innocence, and the unprotected position of Fanny, had not confined caution to himself; that with his characteristic well-meaning bluntness, and with the license of a man somewhat advanced in years, he had spoken to Fanny herself: for Fanny now seemed to shun Philip,—her eyes were heavy, her manner was embarrassed. He saw the change, but it did not grieve him; he hailed the ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Now then, we've had a capital lunch, and we're quite ready. Have all the painful preparations been made? PISH. Your Majesty, all is prepared. MIK. Then produce the unfortunate gentleman and his two well-meaning but misguided accomplices. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... in life was by no means a bad sort of a woman. She had plenty of redeeming qualities, in that she was good-hearted at bottom and well-meaning, and withal a most devoted mother. But she had a tongue and a temper, together with an exceedingly injudicious, not to say foolish twist of mind; and this combination, other good points notwithstanding, the quality which should avail to redeem has hitherto remained undiscoverable ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... whom he had taken to himself was a well-meaning little thing. She tried for a time to meet her husband's moods and to be a real companion to him. But what could one expect from such a union? Shelley's father withdrew the income which he had previously given. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... himself, when the pianist-composer breathed his last. From the above we gather, at least, that it is very uncertain whether Chopin's desire to see George Sand was frustrated by her heartlessness or the well-meaning interference of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... I must make you all understand that this well-meaning lady with the highly-developed sense of duty has done our host and hostess a grave injustice, besides paying me a compliment I don't deserve. I'm sorry to say I can't claim to be half as useful a member of the community as any of the very obliging and attentive gentlemen in Mr. BLANKLEY'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... naturally a well-meaning man, but his want of firmness rendered him easily influenced. Hence, at the instance of his associates, he at first favored the duke of Athens, and afterward, by the advice of other citizens, conspired against him. At the reformation of ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... they were split up into a number of reviews, unions, associations, which had all the moral virtues, save one: self-denial; for not one of them would give way to the others: and, while they wrangled over the crumbs that fell from an honest and well-meaning public, small in numbers and poor in purse, they vegetated for a short time, starved and languished, and at last collapsed never to rise again, not under the assault of the enemy, but—(most pitiful!)—under ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... For indeed my anguish is very real. The collection I had amassed so carefully, during so many years, the collection I loved and revelled in, has been obliterated, swept away, destroyed utterly by a pair of ruthless, impious, well-meaning, idiotic, unseen hands. It cannot be restored to me. Nothing can compensate me for it gone. It was part and parcel of ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... trying to keep steadily in mind that I must not only be as resolute as Abraham Lincoln in seeking to achieve decent ends, but as patient, as uncomplaining, and as even-tempered in dealing, not only with knaves, but with the well-meaning foolish people, educated and uneducated, who by their unwisdom give ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... Miss Butterfly. I must give you up, must I, and Ernest Le Breton must take you for better, for worse, must he? La reyne le veult, it seems, and her word is law. I'm afraid he's hardly the man to make you happy, little lady; kind-hearted, well-meaning, but too much in earnest, too much absorbed in his ideas of right for a world where right's impossible, and every man for himself is the wretched sordid rule of existence. He will overshadow and darken your bright little life, I fear me; not intentionally—he couldn't do that—but by ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... may be remarked at once, to prevent mistakes, was a well-meaning idiot. There was no doubt about his being well-meaning. Also, there was no doubt about his being an idiot. He was continually getting insane ideas into his head, and being unable to get them out again. This matter of Payne was a good example of his customary ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... to that question, and I am sure that very many well-meaning people would make the wrong one. They would answer POVERTY, when they ought to answer SLAVERY. Face to face every day with the shameful contrasts of riches and destitution, high dividends and low wages, and painfully conscious of the futility of trying to adjust the balance by means of ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... mechanical fidelity, full of obstinacy, enemies of philosophy, buried in literalities—have always mistaken for the last word of science that which was only the inconsiderate aspiration of men who, to be sure, were well-meaning, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally alluring to the feet of democracy, though in this country they are novel and untried ways. I may call them the ways of Jacobinism.[415] Violent ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Alicia," said Robert, as tenderly as if he had been addressing some spoiled child, "do you suppose that because people don't wear vinegar tops, or part their hair on the wrong side, or conduct themselves altogether after the manner of well-meaning maniacs, by way of proving the vehemence of their passion—do you suppose because of this, Alicia Audley, that they may not be just as sensible of the merits of a dear little warm-hearted and affectionate girl as ever their neighbors can be? Life ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... but he could not understand why hard work should go unrewarded, why good intentions should breed bad results, why the effect of energy, self-denial, right ambitions, and other excellent qualities is governed by chance; why the prizes in the great lottery fall to the wise, not to the well-meaning. He knew himself for a hard worker and a man who accomplished, in all honesty, the best within his power. What his hand found to do he did with his might; and the fact that his head, as often as not, prompted his hand to the wrong ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... there drank our morning draught of whay, the first I have done this year; but I perceive the lawyers come all in as they go to the Hall, and I believe it is very good. So to my brother's, and there I found my aunt James, a poor, religious, well-meaning, good soul, talking of nothing but God Almighty, and that with so much innocence that mightily pleased me. Here was a fellow that said grace so long like a prayer; I believe the fellow is a cunning fellow, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... wife, "as the result of my experience, you may have your pretty china and your lovely fanciful articles for the table only so long as you can take all the care of them yourselves. As soon as you get tired of doing this, and put them into the hands of the trustiest servants, some good, well-meaning creature is sure to break her heart and your own and your very pet darling china pitcher all in one and the same minute, and then her frantic despair leaves you not ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... combination of Santa Clans and the Bogie Man. All good things come from him: Spielplatze to play in, furnished with swings and giant-strides, sand heaps to fight around, swimming baths, and fairs. All misbehaviour is punished by him. It is the hope of every well-meaning German boy and girl to please the police. To be smiled at by a policeman makes it conceited. A German child that has been patted on the head by a policeman is not fit to live ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... which Hampden had feared had come to pass. A reaction had taken place. A large body of moderate and well-meaning men, who had heartily concurred in the strong measures adopted before the recess, were inclined to pause. Their opinion was that, during many years the country had been grievously misgoverned, and that a great reform had been necessary; but ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... willing to marry according to parental instructions; there is the same proportion of self-willed damsels among them as among the whites, who by obdurately refusing to enter into the marriages arranged for them cause pain and trouble to their well-meaning parents. ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... well as between man and man, the equitable mediator between rulers and their subjects, the consistent champion of constitutional liberty, the alleviator of the inequalities of birth, the uninterested and industrious disseminator of letters, the refiner of habits and manners, the well-meaning guardian of the national wealth, health, and intellect, and the fearless censor of public and private morality."[501] These are, indeed, the functions which the church ought to have fulfilled, and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... "Hands off!" I cannot desist, however, from this word-game until I have set down a few. Whatever is not one's own by first possession is second-hand. That is what I am told my knowledge is. But my well-meaning friends come to my defence, and, not content with endowing me with natural first-hand knowledge which is rightfully mine, ascribe to me a preternatural sixth sense and credit to miracles and heaven-sent compensations all that I have won and discovered with my ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... genius in their Pensionnat, a genius thirsting for experience; and somehow, between them, they contrived to make it suffer. That was their tragedy. Monsieur's case is pitiful; for he was kind and well-meaning, and he was fond of Charlotte; and yet, because of Charlotte, there is no peace for him in the place where he has gone. Her genius has done with him, but her ghost, like some malign and awful destiny, pursues him. No sooner does he sink back quiet in his grave than somebody ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... belief in the possibility of anything like what this man has believed possible of me, had cast a shade of vice and depravity over my whole life: for this noble being has hitherto been the mirror of my own worth, by looking at which I became conscious of my own well-meaning and integrity. Can everything, everything in our heart be thus transformed in a single moment? Yes, my dear, my fatherly friend, I shall evermore honour and love you; I admire you while I mourn over you; but even without any further cause this conversation would have parted ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... full perfection till it is allowed to walk at liberty, and follow the course of all other productions, that of supply and demand, individual demand, and voluntary supply. It is not easy to tell how far back these well-meaning, zealous, deluded men who have managed these "encouragements," have put the progress of the nation in its power of knowing and ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... another reformer, Dr. Marusitch, a Montenegrin who had but recently returned from Manchuria after many years' service as a surgeon in the Russian Army. A wild, enthusiastic creature—good-natured, well-meaning and indiscreet. For Montenegro he was rich. He had just married an extremely beautiful young woman, and the hospitality of the two was unbounded. He at once asked me to stay six months as his guest and write, with his aid, the standard book on Montenegro. Like ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... rush upon you with sticks and stones, and therefore I would advise you to prepare an answer.' You got me into the scrape, I said. 'And I was right,' he replied; 'however, I will stand by you as a sort of do-nothing, well-meaning ally.' Having the help of such a champion, I will do my best to maintain my position. And first, I must explain of whom I speak and what sort of natures these are who are to be philosophers and rulers. As you are a man of pleasure, you will not have forgotten how indiscriminate ...
— The Republic • Plato
... from his somewhat frivolous and nonsensical tone, was a well-meaning fellow. When he was walking with Walter, he had intended to chaff him about his sudden burst of ill-temper, and jest away his spirit of revenge; but he saw that poor Walter was in no mood for jokes, and he quite lacked the moral courage to give good advice ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... to his favourite seat under his favourite apple- tree. Nebbie followed him, disconsolately snuffing the ground in the trail of the departed Plato, who doubtless, to the smaller animal's mind, represented a sort of canine monarch who ruthlessly disdained the well-meaning attentions of his inferiors. Bainton, having finished his task of training the vines across the walls of the rectory, descended his ladder, making as much noise as he could about it and adding thereto a sudden troublesome cough which would he considered, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... found himself able to understand why. Derec was the sort of friend one might make on Walden for lack of something better. He was well-meaning. He might be capable of splendid things—even heroism. But he was ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... men at college from uniting very closely. His friend described him to Dr. Wharton as having much fancy, little judgment, and a good deal of modesty. "I take him," continued Gray, "for a good and well-meaning creature; but then he is really in simplicity a child, and loves every body he meets with: he reads little or nothing, writes abundance, and that with a design to make his fortune by it." On reviewing this character of himself twenty-five ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... recall that not a few well-meaning people at the close of the Civil War proclaimed that, with upwards of two million trained men behind him, General Grant would become a military dictator, and that this would be followed by the disappearance of democracy in the nation. But the mind, the ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... such voluptuous vulgarities in their multicoloured stage setting. Yet from a psychological point of view the effect of the pathetic treatment is far more dangerous than that of the frivolous. A good many well-meaning reformers do not see that, because they know too little of the deeper layers of the sexual imagination. The intimate connection between sexuality and cruelty, perversion and viciousness, may produce much more injurious results in the mind of the average ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... his client as a simple-hearted, honest, well-meaning man, who, during a copartnership of twelve years, had gradually become impoverished, while his partner (his former clerk) having no funds but his share of the same business, into which he had been admitted without any advance of stock, had become gradually ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... we have expelled Union families by thousands. The truth is, not a single family has been expelled from the Confederate States, that I am aware of; but, on the contrary, the moderation of our Government toward traitors has been a fruitful theme of denunciation by its enemies and well-meaning friends of our cause. You say my Government, by acts of Congress, has confiscated "all debts due Northern men for goods sold and delivered." The truth is, our Congress gave due and ample time to your merchants and traders to depart from our shores with their ships, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... after all, are most to be apprehended. The worst of it is, that, in countries where abuses have so long existed, the people get to be so disqualified for entertaining free institutions, that even the disinterested and well-meaning are often induced to side with the rapacious and selfish, to prevent the ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in verse and the latter in prose. They acquired considerable distinction among their contemporaries in the first half of the eighteenth century, but on the stage few of their works survived either of them. Destouches was a moderate, tame, and well-meaning author, who applied himself with all his powers to the composition of regular comedies, which were always drawn out to the length of five acts, and in which there is nothing laughable, with the exception of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... despise him," he insisted, with an appearance of anxiety which would have amused me if I had not been fathoms deep in discontent. To a young man fairly conscientious and as well-meaning as only the young man can be, the current ill-usage of life comes with a peculiar cruelty. Youth that is fresh enough to believe in guilt, in innocence, and in itself, will always doubt whether it have not perchance deserved its fate. Sombre ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... influences, which with true instinct were deprecating and counteracting his schemes of aggrandizement and national reorganization. It is clear, on looking back to that period which has left such indelible marks on the judgment of many well-meaning liberals, that his exaggerated tone of aggressive defence in the Prussian Landtag, the furious onslaught of his harangues, were intended to silence the tongues at court which denounced him as a demagogue and a radical. Paradoxical ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... line." To fellows going, as we thought, right into battle, this was about the last kind of talk we wanted to hear. A doctor's offer of service in our situation, was full of ghastly suggestions. So his well-meaning proffer was met with opprobrious epithets, and indignant defiance. It was shouted to him in vigorous Anglo-Saxon, what we thought of doctors anyhow, and that if he didn't look sharp we'd fix him so he would need a doctor, ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... of the town like you would never pass muster with that woman, who, in her well-meaning way, will spy out your bachelor life and know every fact of the past. However, Cardot says he means to exert his paternal authority. The poor man will be obliged to do the civil to his wife for some days; ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... to them remorselessly. When his first wife was seized, he had promised to take her down into Hertfordshire, but meanwhile arranged with a nursing-home instead. Helen, too, was ill. And the plan that he sketched out for her capture, clever and well-meaning as it was, drew its ethics from ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... on reaching her late aunt's very neat dwelling in Fourteenth Street, New York. But the manly tenderness of Mulford was a great support to her, and a little time brought her to think of that weak-minded, but well-meaning and affectionate relative, with gentle regret, rather than with grief. Among the connections of her young husband, she found several females of a class in life certainly equal to her own, and somewhat superior to the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the dark concerning the inexplicable taste for the sour, clotted product of a sweet, well-meaning cow and the buttery, but I have found out how it feels to be shot. I know it ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... to estimate the influence of this lurking fallacy. Not merely were multitudes of well-meaning, but unreasoning men, who were confident of the success of their party, brought to acquiesce in a proposition utterly false in its base, but the whole conservative element in society was placed in a position from which it would be thrown by defeat into a most dangerous reaction. Thus ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... consider'd him as a respectful, well-meaning person, as far as regarded myself; and as such, gave him a prudent share of my civilities; but I never thought either his intellects or his person sufficient to entitle him ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... prevented safe progress, and that would have been perfectly easy to correct. Directly as well as indirectly, the changes he proposed were calculated to benefit the homeland quite as much as the Philippines, but his well-meaning efforts brought him hatred and an undeserved death, thus proving once more how thankless is the task of telling unpleasant truths, no matter how necessary it may be to do so. Because Rizal spoke out boldly, while realizing what would probably be his fate, history holds him ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... were well-meaning, ignorant, and possessed of a sincere belief in their own divinity. The religious use of the Vedas and the right to sacrifice were strictly confined to the Brahmans. There were travelling logicians, anchorites, ascetics, and solitary hermits. Although the ranks of the priesthood were closed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... wrong—the tragedy strikes deeper. The root of it is that there is in you and in all your glittering kind no malice, no will to do harm nor to hurt anything, but just a bland and invincible and, upon the whole, a well-meaning stupidity, informing a bright and soft and delicately scented animal. So you work ruin among those men who serve ideals, not foreplanning ruin, not desiring to ruin anything, not even having sufficient wit to perceive the ruin when ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... who was more well-meaning than diplomatic, and who, besides (a rarer thing with old teachers than is generally supposed) was esteemed by his former pupils, went and took the student without ceremony by the arm, saying: 'Come, shall we two take a turn ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the days of Commodore Trunnion, so strikingly characterised sailors, does not appear; but, at any rate, they objected to Priestley "on account of his religious principles," and appointed the two Forsters, whose "religious principles," if they had been known to these well-meaning but not far-sighted persons, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... he is dead. All Blenkiron's instructions had been faithfully carried out. I had found Ivery's post office. I had laid the lines of our own special communications with the enemy, and so far as I could see I had left no clue behind me. Ivery and Gresson took me for a well-meaning nincompoop. It was true that I had aroused profound suspicion in the breasts of the Scottish police. But that mattered nothing, for Cornelius Brand, the suspect, would presently disappear, and there was nothing against ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... soldiers beheld in their enemy and captive the vicar of Christ; and, though we may suppose the policy of the chiefs, it is probable that they were infected by the popular superstition. In the calm of retirement, the well-meaning pope deplored the effusion of Christian blood, which must be imputed to his account: he felt, that he had been the author of sin and scandal; and as his undertaking had failed, the indecency of his military character ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... your roof, those whom Jasper has induced to institute a search, that he has no means to institute very actively himself, might make statements which (as you are already aware) might persuade others, though well-meaning, to assist him in separating her from you. He might publicly face even a police-court, if he thus hoped to shame the rich man into buying off an intolerable scandal. He might, in the first instance, and ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seeing Lady Effingham on his return to Windsor this last time. "My dear Effy," he cried, "you see me, all at once, an old man." I was so much affected by this exclamation, that I wished to run out of the room. Yet I could not but recover when Lady Effingham, in her well-meaning but literal way, composedly answered, "We must all grow old, sir,- -I ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... Science as a gradually increasing sphere we may say that every addition to its surface does but bring it into wider contact with surrounding nescience,"[43] from his standpoint he is quite correct. The endeavors of well-meaning persons to show that the Agnostic's position, when he asserts his ignorance of the Spiritual World, is only a pretence; the attempts to prove that he really knows a great deal about it if he would only admit it, are quite misplaced. He really does not know. The verdict that the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... entertaining: All together bespeak the Author to be a Man of Learning, good Sense and Capacity. My Design in troubling you with this tedious Epistle in Print, which perhaps will be longer than you could have wish'd it, is to rescue the Publick from a vulgar Error, which Thousands of knowing and well-meaning People, and your self, I see, among the Rest, have been led into by a common Report, concerning The Fable of the Bees, as if it was a wicked Book, wrote for the Encouragement of Vice, and to debauch the Nation. I beg of you not to imagine, that I intend to blame you, or any other candid Man ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... statesman, too prone, as noble natures often are, to underrate the selfishness, stupidity, and prejudice that prevail in the world and resist the course of just and rational reform. He described Turgot to Samuel Rogers as an excellent person, very honest and well-meaning, but so unacquainted with the world and human nature that it was a maxim with him, as he had himself told David Hume, that whatever is ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... been here a little while. She goes to the city afterward to refit her faith, probably. Daisy Clover thinks it's heavenly. Darling little Daisy! life is an endless German cotillion to her. She thinks the world is gay but well-meaning, is sure that it goes to church on Sundays and never tells lies. Cerulea Bass looks at it for a moment with her hard, round, ebony eyes, and calmly wonders that people will make such fools of themselves. And you, Miss Minerva, pardon me,—you come because you ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... expressed the keenest interest and unbounded surprise. One very well-meaning person put down his knife and fork and said he was too surprised to eat any more breakfast; whereupon Hugh said, "You needn't be so very funny, because Sara doesn't understand ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... had shown the irrepressible vitality of the French conte, the seven hundred years had not been wasted. The product of the first half of them remained, indeed, at this time sealed up in the "gazophile" of the older age, or was popularised only by well-meaning misinterpreters like the Comte de Tressan;[435] but the treasure-house was very soon to be broken open and utilised. It is open to any one to contend—it is, indeed, pretty much the opinion of the present writer—that it was this very neglect which had made the progress of the seventeenth and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... assemble, and, according as there might be power present, enjoy itself with a tune, a song, a chorus, a recital, an elocutionary reading, a debate on some question, or a scene from a play. Presuming that the house is under the care of an honest, well-meaning person, there could be little fear of impropriety of any kind as resulting from such amusements. The amateur spirit guarantees plenty of such volunteer effort. Let it simply be understood, as in ordinary society, that each should do his best to promote the hilarity of the evening. If a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... the Chinese possessed unbounded faith and assurance in the strength of England and her ultimate triumph, but since the agitation by shortsighted though well-meaning people, while some English dailies even advocate the sending of several Chinese divisions into Mesopotamia, this confidence has been ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... Chapter House, which was built at the same time as Henry the Third's church, ranks as one of the finest in England, but it has suffered much damage at various periods from the hands of careless guardians and from the well-meaning efforts of successive restorers. It was originally designed for the use of the convent, but ever since the dissolution of the monastery it has been in the possession of the Government, and has never been under the jurisdiction of the Dean and Chapter. Here ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... to pick out the boys for the clubs that we are interested in. This is a serious mistake. It is this sort of thing that causes the failure of so many well-meaning attempts to redeem the children of the "slums" or of the street. We must let the groups form spontaneously; the boys' instincts are keener in detecting the sneak and the coward and the traitor than yours are, and if the club has the right start, the undesirable citizen will either adopt the morals ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... commissioner possessed of discrimination and wisdom, but who, as governor of the yet unconquered Dutch colony, was likely to be taken up with his duties to such an extent as to preclude his sharing prominently in the diplomatic part of his mission; Colonel George Cartwright, a soldier, well-meaning but devoid of sympathy and ignorant of the conditions that confronted him; Sir Robert Carr, the worst of the four, unprincipled and profligate and without control either of his temper or his passions; and, lastly, Maverick himself, opposed to ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... only a good-natured, well-meaning lad; he had now right principles to help him behave well; nor has he in any way disappointed the hopes of those who have taken an interest ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... stunned and bleeding, on the rubbish, until my companions, by attempting to remove me, restored me to consciousness. I felt as if the ground on which I was lying formed a part of myself; that I could not be lifted from it without being torn asunder; and with the most piercing cries, I entreated my well-meaning assistants to leave me alone to die. They desisted for the moment, one running for the doctor, another for a litter, others surrounding me with pitying gaze; but amidst my increasing sense of suffering, the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... put in Fulham. "Aren't you making him ridiculous? He'll come dashing up here the moment he gets off the train. As a matter of fact, he'll be half expecting you to meet him. You're making a mistake, Miss Barrington, if you'll let a well-meaning fellow-being say so. You're leaving ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... always near, to receive his repeated expressions of gratitude for the route she had counselled. Without personal objections to a well-meaning orderly man, whose pardonable error it was to be aiming too considerably higher than his head, she did but show him the voluble muteness of a Frenchwoman's closed lips; not a smile at all, and certainly no sign of hostility; when bowing to his reiterated ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Ambrose was sent off to govern the whole of North Italy, under the title of 'consul.' At the utmost he was only twenty-nine, and he may have been younger, for the date of his birth is uncertain. But his head was in no way turned by his position, and the emperor, a well-meaning but tactless man, beheld with satisfaction that the restless people of Milan, the capital of the north, were growing daily quieter under the rule of Ambrose. What his own severity had been powerless to accomplish Ambrose carried ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... am a well-meaning man, thank God! and simple hotelier as I am, there is in me the blood of a gentleman. My father was a servant and officer of the late Marechal d'Ancre. God ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all right. You breathe normally, and you have nice blue eyes. You are graceful and pleasant to look upon, and if you'd been born dumb we'd esteem you very highly. It is only your manners and your theories that we don't like; but even in these we are disposed to believe that you are a well-meaning child." ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... their lot with us and trusted us, that, if the British nation had only known what that policy really meant, they would have spat it out of their mouths. And I tremble every day lest, on the vital question of Defence, the pressure of well-meaning but ignorant idealists, or the meaner influence of vote-catching demagogues, should lead this Government or, indeed, any Government, to curtail the provisions, already none too ample, for the safety of the Empire, in order to pose as the friends of peace or as special adepts in economy. I know these ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... in charge of the Reverend Jonathan Boucher, an Anglican clergyman, apparently well-meaning, who agreed with Washington's general view that the boy's training "should make him fit for more useful purposes than horse-racing." In spite of Washington's carefully reasoned plans, the youth of the young man prevailed over the reason of his stepfather. ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... said De Luynes in his turn, when this officious but well-meaning counsellor had withdrawn; "your Majesty will not be obeyed so readily as many would lead you to anticipate. Concini is too rapacious willingly to leave the country while there remains one jewel to be filched from your royal crown; and he is too ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... contemporary writers, are circumstances sufficiently favourable, indeed, to romance, but altogether inimical to historical truth.' In these words Joseph Ritson, the first and most painstaking of those well-meaning scholars who have tried to associate the outlaw with 'historical truth,' begins his 'Life of Robin Hood,' an account which occupies ten pages of his book, and is annotated and illustrated through the following one hundred ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... accurately represented the feelings of the strikers. Personally honest and probably well-meaning, his attitude was overbearing and tyrannical. With him as with those who followed him, a strike was not a more or less drastic means of forcing a better labor contract, but necessarily assumed the aspect of a crusade against capital. Hence ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... exclaimed, "why was I ever an apostle? O Buddha! Buddha! how hard are the paths of saintliness! How prone to error are the well-meaning! How huge is the ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... cry of our time is "Let us return to Life and Nature; they will recreate Art for us, and send the red blood coursing through her veins; they will shoe her feet with swiftness and make her hand strong." But, alas! we are mistaken in our amiable and well-meaning efforts. Nature is always behind the age. And as for Life, she is the solvent that breaks up Art, the enemy that ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... seemed. He was one of the many harmless but well-meaning "herb doctors" to be found in every community. He had a firm faith in his ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... the 'longshoremen called for drink he laughed with a kind of happy shiver, as though rubbing his body round the inside of his clothes, cast a quick glance at us in our dim corner, and declared for rum, adding that the Mayor of Falmouth was a well-meaning old swab, but his liquor wouldn't warm the vitals of a baby ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light lest she might see the shame that burned ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... School. Enter R. and L. well-meaning Philanthropist and long-headed Artisan. They greet one another with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... aroused now and striving to appear belligerent. His wife silenced him with a look; then turned to Donna. She had a duty to perform. She was a great woman for "principle" and the performance of what she conceived to be her duty. She was a well-meaning but misguided person ordinarily, who loved a fight with her own family on the broad general ground that it denoted firmness of character. Mrs. Pennycook was so long on virtue and character herself that half her life was spent disposing of a portion of these attributes ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... not the talent of every well-meaning man to converse with his superiors with due decorum; for, either when he reflects upon the vast distance of their station above his own, he is struck dumb and almost insensible; or else their condescension and courtly behaviour encourages him to be too familiar. To steer exactly between these two ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... to this sort of friendship, and as soon as the intellectual zest is gone from absorbing companionship with one person, they turn to another. One such instance showed through twenty years a series of such friendships on the part of a well-meaning but foolish woman, in which her husband figured briefly, passing on and off the stage as violently as, and even more speedily than, ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... way. These are the people who get so little sympathy and encouragement. Their stronger companions use them and despise them, treating them as a convenient audience, as the Greek heroes in the Iliad treated the feeble, sheep-like soldiers, who ran hither and thither on the field of battle, well-meaning, ineffective, "strengthless heads." The brisk and virtuous master bullies them, calls them bolsters and puddings, loafers and ne'er-do-weels. What wonder if they do not easily discern their place in the scheme of things! Indeed, if it were ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... understood his subject very well—a good-natured, well-meaning, easily-tempted boy, not safe in a house where liquor was sold or used, certainly not safe where it was freely offered and its refusal laughed at. He even hesitated about going to Mr. Hastings', so sure was he that even with the most favorable results from the call, Tommy ...
— Three People • Pansy
... door unlocked, and blame myself so severely for the omission, that I shall, to-morrow, put it out of my own power to be guilty of the like for the future, by ordering the passage to be nailed up; meanwhile, if you would persuade me of your well-meaning, you will instantly withdraw, lest my reputation should suffer by ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... wagon to a star, that I tried to believe she deliberately intended it. I would have hitched up oftener to that same star, except for the fact that stars sometimes get hot and furious at too many liberties, and switch their tails and kick the wagons of well-meaning people to smithereens. That it may be better to have had a stellar joy-ride and be sent to hell for speeding than keep your boots forever in the clay, I will neither affirm nor deny; but the prudent man hitcheth to ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Our local clergyman receives a stipend which is too paltry to bear comparison with the wages of an ordinary mechanic. In dress, manners, and tastes he is about on a level with the upper class of agricultural laborer. When attempts have been made by well-meaning gentlefolks to recognize the claims of his profession by asking him to their houses, he has been known, on more than one occasion, to leave his plowman's pair of shoes in the hall, and enter the drawing-room respectfully in his stockings. Where he preaches, miles ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... assuage Margaret's chagrin. I think all three of them had a very good time there. At home Mr. Seddon, her step-father, played the part of a well-meaning blight by reason of the moods that arose from nervous dyspepsia. They went to Florence, equipped with various introductions and much sound advice from sympathetic Cambridge friends, and having acquired an ease in ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... abridgment of personal freedom in continental countries—the exercise of arbitrary power by irresponsible authority in other lands—they would turn their eyes homeward and examine the treatment and the sufferings of their own political prisoners. I would in all sincerity suggest that humane and well-meaning men who exert themselves for the remission of the death-penalty as a mercy would rather implore that the doom of solitary and silent captivity should be remitted to the more merciful doom of an immediate relief from suffering by immediate execution—the ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... so absorbed in his exercise that he will not stop to speak to a friend; and when his exhilaration is so complete that he turns his eyes from well-meaning thumbs pointing significantly into doorways through which a man has often passed while seeking bracing influences, it is but natural that people should express ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... "A good-looking, well-meaning fellow," the man had said, "but very indolent, and selfish, and proud, with an inordinate love of money, and respect for ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... few, being sensitive, shy, entirely unskilled in games, and but moderately interested in learning. His vacations, which he spent at home, were as dull as he had always found them under a succession of well-meaning, middle-aged tutors—until, one August day, as he played a twelve-pound salmon, he glanced up at the farther bank and into a pair of brown eyes which were watching ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... down her own plans of proceeding. It was not the first time in her life she had been exposed to what is called scolding; a thing every day, I verily believe—and am most happy to do so—going more and more out of fashion, though still retained, as a habit, by many people otherwise well-meaning enough. It was retained in its full vigor by the general, who was not well-meaning at all; he usually meant nothing on earth by what he did, but the indulgence of the present humor, good, bad, or indifferent. Lettice ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the squire, "you were never young. You are a good woman, Frances, an excellent, well-meaning woman; but you were never either child or girl. Now, this little thing—how long is it since she and her mother were ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... what is strictly necessary to keep a workman from dying of hunger. And, down in the sphere below, the evil increases, the workmen agonise with hunger and exasperation, while above them discussion still goes on, systems are bandied about, and well-meaning persons exhaust themselves in attempting to apply ridiculously inadequate remedies. There is much stir without any progress, all the wild bewilderment which precedes great catastrophes. And among the many, Catholic socialism, quite as ardent as Revolutionary socialism, enters the lists ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... likely to engage the attention of the meeting, and stated many facts and figures in a loose and careless way, which every one knew the secretary would, as a matter of course, afterwards state much better and more correctly than himself. But the mayor was a respected, well-meaning man, and, although his speech was listened to with manifest impatience, his sitting down ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne |
