"Irresponsible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are these men?—this great privileged class? Let us see. In Boston, we have the testimony of the License Commissioners that liquor-selling is in the hands of "irresponsible men and women," who pay a license for the privilege of doing "as they please after payment." And for the maintenance of these "irresponsible" men and women in their right to corrupt and degrade the people, a forced tax is laid ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... 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 ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... boy, under his own roof for a short time, but who felt that that boy was nothing to him; would soon pass from his eye; form friends, pursuits, aims, with which he could be in no way commingled, for which he should be wholly irresponsible. There was also this peculiarity in Darrell's conversation; if he never spoke of his guest's past and future, neither did he ever do more than advert in the most general terms to his own. Of that ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... delicious wriggling in the bowels again! He has looked down. Once more. That's capital: something like a feeling of wanting to jump down, such an airy, irresponsible joy, like flying in a dense, blue sky, falling very gently and slowly—oh, what fun!—and then being rid of all one's troubles!... And yet there was a certain fear about it. He mustn't look any more. Or just this once ... that was grand! Once more that awful depth, with all those tiny figures, ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... prime purposes, if not the prime purpose, for which the Constitution was rounded. It does not represent centralization. It represents merely the acknowledgment of the patent fact that centralization has already come in business. If this irresponsible outside business power is to be controlled in the interest of the general public it can only be controlled in one way—by giving adequate power of control to the one sovereignty capable of exercising such power—the National Government. Forty or fifty separate state governments can not exercise ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Karslake was fairly a necessity. He thought of everything and forgot nothing, was ever fertile of fresh expedient if the pastime of a moment began to pall, and was capable of sustained fits of irresponsible gaiety which enchanted Sofia, so well did they chime with her own eagerness ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... causes—then temperance is itself the greatest sufferer. Exaggeration is a mistake; it repels right-thinking men and never served any purpose. We believe it has done the cause of teetotalism a world of harm. But it is poor logic that will identify with so holy a cause the rabid rantings of a few irresponsible fools. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... University Press or independently I am not able to say. The right at any rate remains, and in the sequel may be of greater importance in America than we may now suppose, as it may tend to discourage the spread of altered editions of the revision, which from time to time might be brought forward by irresponsible publishers {44}. ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... incapable, irresponsible person whose actions are beyond his power to understand or control, is regarded by society as a being too dangerous to be at large. Of him we do not here speak to any extent, he is too well recognized. It should always be borne in mind, however, that he commits ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... for the moment the object of enthusiasm of this irresponsible crowd, he could not doubt for an instant. That this same irresponsible enthusiasm was leading the crowd to treachery and rebellion was ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... is not convenient to pay. He calls a second time; the Prophet cannot pay, but offers a town lot in Nauvoo for $1000 (which cost perhaps as many cents), or land on the 'half-breed tract' at $10 or $15 per acre . . . . Finally some of the irresponsible Bishops or Elders execute a deed for land to which they have no valid title, and the poor fellow dares not complain. This is the history of hundreds of cases . . . . The history of every dupe reaches Nauvoo in advance. When an Elder abroad wins one over ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... growing control over Nova Scotian political affairs. The Assembly, granted in 1758, was indeed retained, but a restraining hand was kept on it by the Colonial Office in London, through the governor and the Council. An attempt was made to combine representative and irresponsible government. The House of Assembly might talk, and raise money, but it did not control the expenditure, the {34} patronage, or the administration, and it could neither make nor unmake the ministry. The ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... monopolies to the effect that they are in the habit of appropriating any new invention, whether patented or not, without paying for it, trusting to their influence to avoid the legal consequences of such conduct. There is indeed strong reason to believe that the irresponsible position in which some of these corporations are placed induces them to an unscrupulous use of their ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... of the Chersonese. The charge did not necessarily import any acts of cruelty or wrong to individuals: it was founded on so specific law; but it was based on the horror with which the Greeks of that age regarded every man who made himself compulsory master of his fellow-men, and exercised irresponsible dominion over them. The fact of Miltiades having so ruled in the Chersonese was undeniable; but the question which the Athenians, assembled in judgment, must have tried, was, whether Miltiades, by becoming tyrant of the Chersonese, deserved punishment ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... can't throw a stone in any direction without killing a marriageable damsel. They pervade the old place like an atmosphere; the kraals ring with their voices, and the Kafirs spend lives of mingled misery and delight at their irresponsible hands. ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... had suffered deeply, who had passed through more than one saddening experience. In repose one would have said the man was serious, grave to a fault; but when he smiled, it was the face of youth—ardent, eager, irresponsible—that the beholder saw ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... into September, and September had already trimmed her successor's gown with gold and russet before Henry Rogers found himself free again to think of holidays. London had kept its grip upon him all these weeks while the rest of the world was gay and irresponsible. He was so absurdly conscientious. One of his Companies had got into difficulties, and he was the only man who could save the shareholders' money. The Patent Coal Dust Fuel Company, Ltd., had bought his invention for blowing fine coal ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... denial shines out in Christ's "Not my will but thine," and in Dante's "In His will is our peace." Meager and cold and repellent as this ideal in its extreme expressions often seems, it appeals to us as the softer and irresponsible ideal of the Epicureans cannot. But obviously our way lies between the extremes. And after all that has now been said, our summary of the dangers inherent in each ideal may be ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... permitted certain dysgenic influences to continue in the psychic life of generation after generation, regarding with the utmost placidity a process of sexual selection determined by irrational and irresponsible motives. ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... for better or for worse, Mr. Winslow Merivale, promptly rechristened Stepfather Time. The Bonnie Lassie gave him the name. She said that only a stepfather could bring up his charges so badly. For his clocks were both independent and irresponsible, though through no fault of their own. When they were wound they went. When they were unwound they rested. Seldom were more than half of them simultaneously busy, and their differences of opinion as to the hour were radical and irreconcilable. The big, emphatic eight-day, opposite the front door, ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... his hands in his bulging pockets. He feared no thieves. To begin with, his appearance was not calculated to invite the attention of pickpockets, and moreover, there are none in Troy. He stared at the whirling horses, the blazing naphtha jets, the revolving mirrors, the laughing, irresponsible faces as they swept by and away again, and reappeared and once again passed laughing thither where, on the farther side of the circle, brooded (as it seemed to him) a great ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... secret. Let no thought of me 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
... little more than a place of occasional sojourn—made satisfactory amends for these persons of too long memories. In all these travellers' towns, Venice, Rome, and Florence, there is indeed a society, and a very agreeable society, which is wholly irresponsible, and asks few or no questions. The elements of it meet as strangers, and as strangers they mostly part. But between the meeting and the parting there lies a moment, all the gayer, perhaps, because of its social ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that I, who might undertake the government of a whole country, am yet perpetually under restraint in the conduct of my own private life, watched over and treated like an irresponsible boy? It grieves me, Herr von Leuchtmar, to be forced to remind you that the time for my education is past, for I am not sixteen years old, but already several weeks advanced in my ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... of assistant to his father. That these were years of introspection and remorse to one of his spirit, however, there can be little doubt; there can be still less doubt that they were also years of formative growth, and that in this interval the irresponsible youth, who had given hostages to fortune by marrying at the age of eighteen, steadied by the responsibility of a growing family, quickly developed into some promise of ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... you 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 ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... have done nothing," he exclaimed. "You look so young, so irresponsible, so like a bird on a bough, that I cannot associate dull care with you, yet you have lived more deeply than I. Life seems to have touched me on the shoulder and passed me by; these hands of mine have never done a real day's work, Mrs. ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Had an irresponsible member of Congress made these demands, they might have been dismissed as another effort to twist the British lion's tail; but Charles Sumner took himself seriously, expected others to take him seriously, and unhappily was taken seriously by a great number of his fellow countrymen. ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... dreamer of the water front, for the notion of the South Seas was ever in my head. I loafed in the sunshine, sitting on the pier-edge, with eyes fixed on the lazy shipping. These were care-free, irresponsible days, and not, I am now convinced, entirely misspent. I came to know the worthies of the wharfside, and plunged into an under-world of fascinating repellency. Crimpdom eyed and tempted me, but it was always with whales or seals, and never with pearls or copra. I rubbed shoulders with eager ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... temptations and suggestions from others. Morphine stands unequalled as a perverter 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
... revel in the pleasant propulsion of the maelstrom's rim, unaware that every instant brings us closer to dangers, escape from which would demand herculean effort. Irresponsible emotions are, like those of the novel and the stage, when intensified to excess utterly incompatible with action. And just such a paralysis seems for six long weeks to have lamed ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... contemptible in comparison with its bare pursuit! When absolutists reject humanism because they feel it to be untrue, that means that the whole habit of their mental needs is wedded already to a different view of reality, in comparison with which the humanistic world seems but the whim of a few irresponsible youths. Their own subjective apperceiving mass is what speaks here in the name of the eternal natures and bids them reject our humanism—as they apprehend it. Just so with us humanists, when we condemn all noble, clean-cut, ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... with the baby, now stumbled amid the debris, and for an instant distracted Sara's attention, as she sprang to steady her, and catch the imperilled little one from her irresponsible arms, and ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... impatient and the desultory, of con- descension and humility. I do not profess to under- stand the plan of Chambord, and I may add that I do not even desire to do so; for it is much more entertaining to think of it, as you can so easily, as an irresponsible, insoluble labyrinth. Within, it is a wilderness of empty chambers, a royal and romantic barrack. The exiled prince to whom it gives its title has not the means to keep up four hundred rooms; he contents himself with preserving the huge outside. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... are too burdensome." This is rapidly becoming everybody's attitude to-day. The tame moral reading of the face of nature, together with such democratic interpretations of life as those suggested by Herbert Spencer, are signs of a physiological condition which is the reverse of that bounding and irresponsible healthiness in which harder and ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... through "Macmillan's Magazine," the "Water-Babies" was published in book form in 1863, dedicated "To my youngest son, and to all other good little boys." Mrs. Kingsley, in the life of her husband says "that it was perhaps the last book that he wrote with any real ease." The story, with its irresponsible and whimsical humour, throws an altogether delightful light upon the character of Charles Kingsley—clergyman, lecturer, historian, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... fountain. His torments lasted from noon until half-past five o'clock, and he had about ten thousand executioners."—Consider the effect of such a focal center at a time like this. A new power has sprung up alongside the legal powers, a legislature of the highways and public squares, anonymous, irresponsible, without restraint. It is driven onward by coffeehouse theories, by strong emotions and the vehemence of mountebanks, while the bare arms which have just accomplished the work of destruction in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, form ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the weather, generally malign and irresponsible, favoured Priscilla. With the rising tide a light westerly breeze sprang up. She hoisted the sails and sat in the stern of the boat with an oar. She tucked the middle of it under her armpit, pressed her side tight against the gunwale, and with the blade trailing ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... is a principle, the conviction that there is only one right, one privilege, and that it belongs exclusively to Germany, the right, namely, to do whatever they have the physical force to do. These so-called courts, of whose arbitrary and irresponsible and brutal nature I have tried to convey some notion, were mere inquisitorial bodies, guided by no principle save that of interest in their own bloody nature; they did as they pleased, and would have scorned ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... legislation—a defect inherent to the situation in India itself—was the dualism it created by endeavouring to enforce Parliamentary restraints upon a Company which derived its title to government over the greater part of its possessions from the irresponsible despotism of the Moghul emperors. The Company was thus made to serve two masters, and at the same time it remained essentially a great trading corporation whose commercial and fiscal interests were always liable to conflict, and sometimes did conflict, with its duties towards ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... at the key in his hand. "Well I am damned," he muttered. Then added, in savage and—as it seemed to the artist—exaggerated wrath, "I'm a stupid, blundering, irresponsible old fool." Nor was he consoled when the painter innocently assured him that no harm had ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... would have made the king a cipher, and parliament a slave. The exclusive patronage of India would have enabled the minister to corrupt the legislature. The corruption of the legislature would have made the minister irresponsible: the constitution would thus have been inevitably suspended, and the national liberties incapable of being restored except by a national convulsion. But those evils were happily avoided by the manliness of the king and the loyalty of the lords. The India bill ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... signature "J. Loudon" as "J. London" (the Bishop of London), and 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 concerning ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... viceroy, and entitled to special marks of honor. Besides, Jacob desired to make the impression of being a man in good health. He wanted to avoid the possibility of having his blessing of Joseph and Joseph's sons questioned as the act of an irresponsible person.[362] ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... State, its chief was on 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 ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... the languishing cooing of doves, the braying of donkeys, the chatter of irresponsible sparrows—these were in my mind's ear as I read. "Suffering Sappho!" I exclaimed to myself. "Is this the divine fire that is supposed to ignite genius and make ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... Ben, the father, who had succeeded "General" Gains as the town drunkard; young Ben, the eldest son—a hard case with certain good traits; and Tom—that is to say, Huck—who was just as he is described in Tom Sawyer: a ruin of rags, a river-rat, an irresponsible bit of human drift, kind of heart and possessing that priceless boon, absolute unaccountability of conduct to any living soul. He could came and go as he chose; he never had to work or go to school; he could do all things, good or bad, that the other ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... writers collected, but references to others, great and small, from Marivaux, Lesage, Prevost, and Voltaire downwards, and glances, sometimes with actual comptes rendus, at pieces of the class not included. That it is conducted on the somewhat irresponsible and indolent principles of its time might be anticipated from previous things, such as the clause in the Preface to Wieland's just noticed book, that the author had "gone to Weimar, where perhaps he is still," ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... surrendering no iota of German rights, the Government of Berlin must recognise those treaty-obligations with which its own legal title to a voice in the affairs of Schleswig was intimately bound up, and that the King of Prussia, not a multitude of irresponsible and ill-informed citizens, must be the judge of the measures by which German interests were to be effectually protected. His words made no single convert either in the Prussian Parliament or in the Federal Diet. At Frankfort ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... friend, she had fallen too low, yet from no fault of her own nor Dick's, and it was that that frightened her. A terrible sense of loneliness, of desolation, was created in her heart. For her the world seemed to have ended, and she saw the streets and passers-by with the same vague, irresponsible gaze as a solitary figure would the universal ruin caused by an earthquake. She had no friends, no occupation, no interest of any kind in life; everything had slipped from her, and she shivered with a sense of ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... tired inevitably of the perpetual effort it entailed. Three weeks after her arrival, when the annual exodus of the ladies of the regiment to the Hills was drawing near, she became engaged to Ralph Dacre, the handsomest and most irresponsible man in the mess. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... 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. ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... and seeing that their champion was likely to get the worst of it, did after the manner of such irresponsible bands. They gathered around Lincoln, struck and disabled him, and then Armstrong, by "legging" him, ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... graceful. If he wore his frayed splendor with a certain picturesque distinction, it was the way he did all things, even his delightful brogue which was if anything a shade too mellifluous to be wholly unaffected. What Kenny liked he kept if he could, even his irresponsible youth ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... even this. The prayer which I mean is the one in XIV. 8, 9, which recalls not only the terms but the essence of Jeremiah's longing to escape from his people, and lodge afar with wayfaring men, aloof and irresponsible. ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... of administration which would arise out of the difficult task of ruling a numerous and wealthy population, possessed of property, but deprived of civil rights." He then shows how the whole power of the state settled into the hands of a chief priest—systematically irresponsible. When, therefore, that momentary state of responsibility had passed away, which was created (like the state of martial law) "by national feelings, military companionship, and exalted enthusiasm," the administration of the caliphs became ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... little punishment teaches him how to guard his own skin and perforate another's. A powerfully prayerful Highland Regiment, officered by rank Presbyterians, is, perhaps, one degree more terrible in action than a hard-bitten thousand of irresponsible Irish ruffians led by most improper young unbelievers. But these things prove the rule—which is that the midway men are not to be trusted alone. They have ideas about the value of life and an upbringing that has not taught them to go on and ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... practically no redress. Free as the Gascon peasant was from much or the serfdom and feudal servitude of other lands, he was in some ways worse off than the serf, when he chanced to have roused the anger of some great man of the neighbourhood. The power of the nobles and barons — the irresponsible power they too often held — was one of the crying evils of the age, one which was being gradually extinguished by the growing independence of the middle classes. But such changes were slow of growth, and long in penetrating beyond great centres; and it was a terrible thing for a brace of lads, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hostile critic, and to her great satisfaction made him confess that he had not heard the opera himself, but had only based his opinion upon hearsay and the reviews. Whereupon my wife pointed out to him most earnestly that 'he could not possibly know whose future he might not injure by such irresponsible comment.' ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... LEADERSHIP. It takes close attention to public affairs to enable a citizen to make wise decisions for himself; and the average citizen looks around for guidance. The absence of RESPONSIBLE leadership gives the irresponsible "boss" ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... greater potency. She had been prompted, not by her will, but by a force that was outside of her and more worthy. She reckoned upon nothing definite; she had calculated nothing. She saw only her purpose of capturing death—savage, sudden, irresponsible death, prowling round the man who possessed her, death embodied in the knife ready to strike into his heart. No doubt it had been a sin to throw herself into his arms. With that inspiration that descends at times from above for the good or evil of our common mediocrity, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... endure half Republic and half Empire" and has "warned the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home." It has characterized the Republican government in the Insular regions as an "indefinite, irresponsible, discretionary and vague absolutism," and Republican policy as a policy of "colonial exploitation." That the American people have believed the Republican administration to have been good and beneficent, is shown by their ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... not taken out of any fear of meeting with Confederate troops, whose nearest commands were supposed to be considerably to the westward of where we were, but because of a desire to avoid all possibility of conflict with those armed and irresponsible bands that ranged at will between the lines of the two great armies. Already they had become sufficiently strong to make ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... shows us that the patriarchal government was succeeded immediately by an extensive and complete despotism. Millions of men soon became the abject slaves of an irresponsible monarch. Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, appear at once in history as powerful states at the mercy of a despot whose ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... States would be sentimentally patriotic and irresponsible, that they would behave as though the New World was, indeed, a separate planet, and as though they had neither duties nor brotherhood in Europe. It is quite clear, on the contrary, that the people of the United States consider this war ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... The law just referred to, passed in 1712, was re-enacted in 1722. One change was made in it: i.e., if a white servant, having no property, killed a slave, three justices could bind him over to the master whose slave he killed to serve him for five years. This law had a wholesome effect upon irresponsible white men, who often presumed upon their nationality, having neither brains, money, nor social ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... 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
... 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 for ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... seemed to have grown years younger. All that was careless, inconsequential, irresponsible, seemed to have disappeared in a single night, leaving a fresh, boyish enthusiasm quite free from surface cynicism—quite innocent of the easy, amused mockery which had characterised him. The subtle element of self-consciousness ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... met. She is a dual creature. Now I never met that in a man. When she is here without getting a letter in the morning or going to town, she seems like a girl. She runs about in her grey gown and little cap and laughs, and seems to throw off all thought like an irresponsible child. She is eager to fish, or pick gooseberries and eat them daintily, or sit under the trees and talk. But when she goes to town—I notice she always goes when she gets a lawyer's letter, there is no mistaking the envelope—she comes home tired and haggard-looking, an old woman of thirty-five. ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... wren is widely spread throughout Ireland; and if I were to tell you of Manx wedding customs, Manx burial customs, Manx birth customs, May day, Lammas, Good Friday, New Year, and Christmas customs, you would recognise in the Manxman the same irresponsible tendency to appropriate whatever flotsam drifts to his shore. What I have told you has come mainly of my own observation, but for a complete picture of Manx manners and customs, beliefs and superstitions, ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... Authority by whom it shall be accepted and become thereby subject to all the canonical provisions of this Church." The effect of this law is that in the Episcopal Church there can be no strolling, irresponsible evangelists or preachers, and thus the people are protected from imposture, and may know, when the proper steps are taken, that their ministers come to them fully accredited and duly authorized to minister to them ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... than 40 pounds a year rent, you will sometimes feel tempted to say to the vaccination officer, the school attendance officer, and the sanitary inspector: "Is this child mine or yours?" The answer is that as the child is a vital part of the nation, the nation cannot afford to leave it at the irresponsible disposal of any individual or couple of individuals as a mere small parcel of private property. The only solid ground that the parent can take is that as the State, in spite of its imposing name, can, when all is said, do nothing with the child except place it ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... so long I've got to wait. If you quit thinking about it, all 'unbeknownst' to yourself you'll awake some morning with it on your lips. I can see traces of it growing stronger every day. Very soon now it's going to materialize, and then get out of my way, for I'll be a whirling, irresponsible lunatic, with the wild joy of it. Oh I've got faith in that kiss of yours, Ruth! It's on the way. The fates have booked it. There isn't a reason on earth why I should be served so scurvy a trick as to miss it, and I never will ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... that discipline is the first and principal point to be considered on such occasions; unless indeed the leader be implicitly obeyed it is impossible that matters should go on regularly. For this reason it is objectionable to associate any irresponsible person in such an undertaking. When I engaged the men who were to accompany me, I made them sign an agreement, giving me power to diminish or increase the rations, and binding themselves not only to the performance of any particular duty, but to do everything in their ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... communicate regularly with the Department. We frequently express great surprise that we have no intelligence from our ministers, special ambassadors, and agents; but do not reflect that in the majority of cases dispatches have to be sent by irresponsible and slow-sailing vessels, or by the steamers of Great Britain, which it may be safely asserted are in no particular hurry to deliver them to us. Three several letters sent by me at separate times through the British mail from Rio de Janeiro for ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... and experiences of later days lead me to endorse most heartily the well-known dictum of Lawrence Oliphant—namely, that when he saw people sitting down in a casual, irresponsible way to "get messages through a table," it reminded him of an ignorant child going into a powder magazine with a ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... earlier they would have discovered a thousand reasons and clothed them in words straight from the heart: weariness of the footway and the pavement, of the town's sullied air; revolt against the prospect of lifelong slavery; some chance stirring word of an irresponsible speaker preaching the gospel of vigour and enterprise, of a free and healthy life upon a fruitful soil. But a few months ago they could have found glowing sentences to tell it all ... Now their best was a sorry effort to evade the question, as they groped ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... fur-dealers—and it was clear that our cabin was to be the scene of an orgy. Fortunately, my brother James was at home on this occasion, and as the evening grew old and the Indians, grouped together around the fire, became more and more irresponsible, he devised a plan for our safety. Our attic was finished, and its sole entrance was by a ladder through a trap-door. At James's whispered command my sister Eleanor slipped up into the attic, and from the back window let down a rope, to which he tied all the weapons we had—his gun ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... than most aspirants to the prize,—having the best will of the actresses on whose shoulder the burthen was to lie. I hope they have been quite honest with him—knowing as I do the easy process of transferring all sorts of burthens, in that theatrical world, from responsible to irresponsible members of it, actors to manager, manager to actors, as the case requires. And it is a 'hope deferred' with Chorley; not for the second or third time. I am very glad that he cares no more than ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... busy 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 a woman at marriage and all received by gift or ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... good comrades, and exchanging never a word, they got the sleigh and its load safely into town at last, and not one of the gay, irresponsible party knew how difficult an ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... necessary, to take strong ground on all questions involving purely civil rights, and the constitutional exercise of the prerogative on the part of the Executive. This was the more necessary, as civil and religious freedom were largely identical in those days of undefined prerogative, irresponsible ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... dependence on chemistry. The troubled farmers saw themselves as innocent victims of happenstance, needing to hire the chemical plant doctor much as sick people are encouraged by medical doctors to view themselves as victims, who are totally irresponsible for creating their condition and incapable of curing it without costly and dangerous medical ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... self-government worked salvation for South Carolina, as for her sister States of the Confederacy. You here will never forget what immediately followed the close of our Civil War. As an historic fact, the Constitution was then suspended. It was suspended by act of an irresponsible Congress, exercising revolutionary but unlimited powers over a large section of the common country. You then had an illustration, not soon to be forgotten, of concentration of legislative power. An episode at once painful and discreditable, ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... to the estates was the famous Book of Discipline—the most interesting and in many respects the most important document in the history of Scotland. If any proof were needed that the revolt against the ancient Church was no ill-considered act of irresponsible men, we assuredly possess that proof in this extraordinary book. Though in its primary intention the scheme of its ecclesiastical polity, it is in fact the draft of a "republic," under which a nation should live its life on earth and prepare itself for heaven. It not only prescribes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... 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, they were accosted by a sergeant, who ordered them to leave ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... include: a weakening of democratic institutions, political polarization, a politicized military, drug-related violence along the Colombian border, increasing internal drug consumption, overdependence on the petroleum industry with its price fluctuations, and irresponsible mining operations that are endangering the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... last the point: This honest fellow had long been in the custom of setting himself to sleep with tales, and so had his father before him; but these were irresponsible inventions, told for the teller's pleasure, with no eye to the crass public or the thwart reviewer: tales where a thread might be dropped, or one adventure quitted for another, on fancy's least suggestion. ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so well established that many people refused to believe in the abominable instincts which dominated him. The matter was discussed from every conceivable point of view. Some held that he was a somnambulist and irresponsible for his acts; others that he was a murderer through love of blood, having no other possible motive for committing these crimes. Perhaps both were right, for it is an undeniable fact that moral being, will, soul, whatever name you choose to call it by, is wanting ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... not twenty long miles of road before them on the other side? Stay to dinner? Not they! Put up the horses? Never. Let us attach them to the veranda by a wisp of straw rope, such as would not have held a person's hat on that blustering day. And with all these protestations of hurry, they proved irresponsible like children. Kelmar himself, shrewd old Russian Jew, with a smirk that seemed just to have concluded a bargain to its satisfaction, intrusted himself and us devoutly to that boy. Yet the boy was patently fallacious; and for that matter a most unsympathetic urchin, raised ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are compelled then to fall back to some extent upon the personal sense of responsibility of the patient himself to fill in the gap where treatment does not entirely control the situation, it becomes increasingly important that in the irresponsible and ignorant, when the patient fails to meet his obligation, we should push treatment to the uttermost in our effort to prevent the spread of the disease. To supply this necessary treatment to every syphilitic who cannot afford it for himself, and make it obligatory, ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... 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, it ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... mind my smoking a cigar?" asked Michael. He had pulled himself together for the entrance; now again there began to settle on his mind clouds of irresponsible humour and incipient slumber; and he hoped (as so many have hoped in the like case) that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rambled on in a voice and manner that was amusingly reminiscent of "Walker London." So into the study we went, encountering on our way a big Australian black bird, which was wandering about the house in an aimless and irresponsible fashion, crooning to itself memories of its Antipodean home. Before we entered the study, Mr. Toole drew my attention to a beautiful model of the picturesque old Maypole Inn in "Barnaby Rudge," with ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... dear! They were a wild, hilarious party, careless and irresponsible. Such accidents happen ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... and joyous,—as irresponsible as a young colt freshly turned out to pasture. His sister Laure, now living at Villeparisis with her parents, continued to receive his confidences. He wrote her the most minute details of his solitary existence,—jesting and burlesquing in a vein of ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... truth Monty was quite objectionable, if he was excited with some secret discovery, and thought it amusing not to disclose it. And when, later that afternoon, a message came round saying that irresponsible units were not to fire at hostile aircraft, owing to the danger of spent bullets, he bragged ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... every whim and fancy she'll spend everything she has before she is fairly grown. She's too young to understand and she has been brought up so far in an irresponsible fashion. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... suddenly from nowhere, trailing with her thunder-clouds of impulsive and childish ideas about doing good, and holding in her hands the dangerous weapon of wealth. It is hard to stand by and see one's life-work broken up before one's eyes by an irresponsible stranger, a foreigner, a girl, a young girl, a pretty girl; especially hard if one was born with an unbending character, tough and determined, ambitious and vain. These are not reproaches being piled up on the vicar's wife; who shall dare reproach another? And how could she ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... safely? He tried to extract comfort from the confidence she had expressed in the ability and integrity of the old man who drove with far greater recklessness than one would have looked for in a wild and irresponsible youngster. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... principle to gain ground. Their administration in Ireland has shown that in no part of the British empire does there exist a greater capacity for self-government. All creeds and classes there have found the material benefit arising from them, for instead of their finances being managed by irresponsible boards, the money of the people is now wisely spent by ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... challenge to the breeze that we longed for, and which had resisted all appeals, "Come on big wind and kill little boat!" exclaimed an irresponsible boy, whose ears had long ached with the days dull silence, and who saw no prospect of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... of the philosopher as to its final cause. Legally and politically, that is, conventionally, the differences are even greater on a comparison of nations and eras. In England we have seen senators of mark and authority, nay, even a prime minister, the haughtiest, [1] the most despotic, and the most irresponsible of his times, at an age which, in many states, both ancient and modern, would have operated as a ground of absolute challenge to the candidate for offices the meanest. Intellectually speaking, again, a very large proportion ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 Avenue, destiny is chipping a ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... brain, not a temperament, it might be defined; and it would be possible to gather a complete philosophy of life from these poems, in which, though 'the joy of earth' is sung, it is sung with the wise, collected ecstasy of Melampus, not with the irresponsible ecstasy of the Maenads. It is not what Browning calls 'the wild joy of living,' but the strenuous joy of living in perfect accordance with nature, with the sanity of animals who have climbed to reason, and are content ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... has been said, it follows that the death penalty as a punishment even for the worst crimes is morally untenable; for either the culprit is really irredeemable, that is to say, he is an irresponsible moral idiot, in which case an asylum for the insane is the proper place for him; or he is not irredeemable, in which case the chance of reformation should not be taken from him by cutting off his life. The death penalty is the ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... sacrifice my 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 an ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... tossed aside the paper, shrugging his shoulders as at a madman's irresponsible rashness and folly, and turned his attention to the patient who just then came in. That patient and the many succeeding patients thought the Doctor odd this morning, brusque, absent, constrained, gruff. ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... to see the Kid off, and some of the men had gathered in the doorway. They watched the boy swing himself into the saddle, and the desperate shadows had lightened on their hungry faces. The buoyancy of their irresponsible natures was reasserting itself. That bridge, which the Padre's promise had erected between their despair and the realms of hope, however slight its structure, was sufficient to lift them once more to the lighter mood ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... be done until the municipal Corporation obtains the powers now vested in several sets of virtually irresponsible Commissioners. When these wars of the Pots and Kettles are ended, the ratepayers will be able to turn their undivided attention to local reforms without having their minds distracted by those little legal squabbles, under cover of which business is neglected, and pockets ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... for his policy was generally a silence pregnant with judgment, and his deliverances were for the most part in parables, none the less awful because hard of interpretation. Like every true Celt, he had the power of reserve, and knew the value of mystery. His voice must not be heard in irresponsible gossip at the Kirk door, and he never condescended to the level of Mrs. MacFadyen, our recognised sermon taster, who criticised everything in the technique of the pulpit, from the number of heads in a sermon to the air with which ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren |
