"Red tape" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... difficult to find a more practical or comprehensive colonial program. It eliminates that bane of over-seas administration, red tape, and it puts the task of empire-building squarely up to the business man who is the best qualified for the work. I am quite certain that the advent of Monsieur Franck into office, and particularly his trip to the Congo, mean the beginning of an epoch of real ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... to handle and examine their books, and it is good for them to do it. They like the arrangements in the library to be simple; they object to red tape and rules. They like to have their institutions seem to assume—through, for example, the absence of signs—that they know how to conduct themselves courteously without being told. They don't like delays. They like to be ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... Union co-operated wholeheartedly, working together in a way they had not done for over twenty years—the "scientific control laws" in the United States had combined to make scientific research almost impossible for the layman, and a matter of endless red tape, forms-in-octuplicate, licenses, permits, investigations, delays, and ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... were at sixes and sevens; red tape was loose where it should have been tight and tight where it should have been loose. Little men with the rank of officer sat in swivel chairs and tried to direct big things; big men, without rank, were tied to the trivial. Many, many things were wrong, and many, many ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... certain party measures—measures to which he pledged himself before his election. Down here, a British steamship line has laid down local rules which, in my case anyway, are ridiculous. The question is, are you going to be bound by the red tape of a ha'penny British colony, or by your oath to the ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... when they returned and were admitted. They stated their business, inquired for the children, produced photographs and, after a little delay, Turiddu and Gennaro came running to them naked. It took some days of red tape, including a legal act whereby Corrado constituted himself their second father, before they were allowed to remove the boys. At last on the 11th January they took possession of them and dressed them in the street with clothes they had bought. Corrado ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... Well, Swede, I'm glad to hear that. I should have cleared her myself and sailed long ago if I had only had a skipper's ticket; but these British custom-house officials are great sticklers for red tape and they wouldn't clear me. And, of course, a man can't sail without his papers. When he does they send a gunboat after him. However," he added brightly "the ship is cleared and the skipper—so I am unofficially informed—is aboard. By the way, Swede, I left ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... one of the paragraphs of its useful and amusing diary of "London Day by Day,"—"The Tapir," at the Zoological Gardens, is a specimen of a species now "verging on the brink of extinction. He was an old Tory; the world changes, but change he would not." He should be known as the "Red Tape-ir." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... I dared. You see, until our license comes I am not expected to transmit messages from this station. We have to get from the government both an operator's license and a permit for the station; and although I put in the application promptly there is so much red tape about it that it seems as if the inspector would never show up. If I had been caught sending a message this morning without these blooming papers there would have been the deuce of a row. However, ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... a surprise to me that the wool has to go through so much red tape before it comes to spinning," ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... upon him. Opposite to the tall old chimney-piece were two portraits: one of a gentleman with grey hair (though not by any means an old man) and black eyebrows, who was looking over some papers tied together with red tape; the other, of a lady, with a very placid and sweet expression of face, who was looking ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... France is not a matter merely of money. It is a matter for Governmental sanction, long delay, red tape—amazing good luck. ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... people of shabby exterior holding converse at the entrance of Capel Court, or on the steps of the auction mart. These are the "Alley men." You will see one, perhaps, take from his pocket a good-sized parcel of dirty-backed letters, all arranged, and tied round with string or red tape, which he sorts with as much care and attention as if they were bank-notes. That parcel is his stock-in-trade. Perhaps those letters may contain the allotment of shares in various companies, to an amount, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... you can put up with that sneak, that nasty phiz. Ugh! how can you live here! The atmosphere is stifling and unclean! Do you call yourselves schoolmasters, teachers? You are paltry government clerks. You keep, not a temple of science, but a department for red tape and loyal behaviour, and it smells as sour as a police-station. No, my friends; I will stay with you for a while, and then I will go to my farm and there catch crabs and teach the Little Russians. I shall go, and you can stay here ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... yellow parchment. This envelope had the air of an official record of some period long past, when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal chirography on more substantial materials than at present. There was something about it that quickened an instinctive curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape that tied up the package, with the sense that a treasure would here be brought to light. Unbending the rigid folds of the parchment cover, I found it to be a commission, under the hand and seal of Governor Shirley, in favour of one Jonathan ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... And have an automobile follow you, with a doctor in it, to take care of John—Mr. Jewel, when he is found. We will start all our riders out from here, and ride until we meet you. Now hurry! Don't stop for a lot of red tape and orders and things—get right out on the trail. And don't forget the thousand dollars reward." Just when the sheriff was saying "Aw right—goo'by," Mary V thought ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... pallium; of them as well keep to windward! thinks his Majesty. And indeed there is no Bishop here. The present Bishop of Bamberg—one of those Von Schonborns, Counts, sometimes Cardinals, common in that fat Office,—is a Kaiser's Minister of State; lives at Vienna, enveloped in red tape, as well as red hat and stockings; and needs no exhortation in the Kaiser's favor. Let us yoke again, and go.—Fir woods all round, and dead malefactors blackening in the wind: this latter point I know of the then Bamberg; and have explanation of it. Namely, that the Prince-Bishop, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... following the ship day after day, living mostly upon the refuse thrown out from the steward's department. In the month of October, 1884, one of these birds was caught by the passengers upon a steamship just as she was leaving the coast of America for Japan. A piece of red tape was made fast to one of its legs, after which it was restored to liberty. This identical gull followed the ship between four and five thousand miles, into the harbor of Yokohama. Distance seems to be of little account to these buoyant navigators of ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... conceded to him this prestige. Under the cast-iron rule of the army he found himself subordinated to men intellectually beneath him, but trained and skilled in the art of war. He was swift to detect error, and impatient in combating blunder. The rule of mediocrity, the red tape of the service, the restraints of the corps, the tactics of the field galled his imperious spirit. He commanded his brigade as he had represented his State in the Senate—as a sovereign and independent body, and like the heroic Helvetian had blazoned on his crest, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... painful births and deaths of I don't know how many committees, after six weeks' struggling with something we imagined to be Red Tape, which proved to be the combined egoism of several persons all desperately anxious to "get to the Front," and desperately afraid of somebody else getting there too, and getting there first, we are actually off. ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... eyes." 1 "sute of Norden dussens or hampshire kersies lynd the hose with skins, dublets with lynen of gilford or gedlyman kerseys." 4 bands. 2 handkerchiefs. 1 "wastecoat of greene cotton bound about with red tape." 1 leather girdle. 1 "Monmouth cap." 1 "black hatt lyned in the brows with lether." 5 "Red knitt capps milf'd about 5d apiece." 2 "peares of gloves." 1 "Mandiliion lynd with cotton" [mantle or greatcoat]. 1 "peare of breeches ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... men at all points. The one mistake is Abercrombie,—"Mrs. Nabby Crombie" the soldiers called him. He was an indifferent, negative sort of man; and indifferent, negative sorts of people, by their dishwater goodness, can sometimes do more harm in critical positions than the branded criminal. Red tape had forced him on Pitt, but Pitt trusted to the excellence of the subordinate officers, especially ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... a time in the world's history when Christian men and women felt so led of God not to wait for committees nor the red tape of ecclesiastical authority, but to hurry forth under a personal call from God and do what they could with their individual means and talents for the saving of souls, the sanctifying of believers, and preparing the chosen few to meet Jesus. There never ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... green box, which constituted part of my luggage, and which, with the rest of my things, stood in one corner of the room, till at last, leaving my breakfast unfinished, I rose, and, going to the box, unlocked it, and took out two or three bundles of papers tied with red tape, and, placing them on the table, I resumed my seat and my breakfast, my eyes intently fixed upon the bundles of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... IS SECURED.—The method by which a copyright is obtained under the revised acts of Congress is as simple and inexpensive as can be reasonably asked. All unnecessary red tape is dispensed with, and the cost to the author who is seeking thus to protect himself in the enjoyment of the profits of his work, is so small as to be scarcely appreciable. This is an example of cheapness and directness ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... Gosh, "They shall not escape! Am I set at naught by a crazed buffoon?" But in fifty fathoms of thin red tape The Lord Swank swaddled his portly shape, Like a large, insane cocoon. Then round and round and round and round. The Swanks, the Swanks, the whirling Swanks, The twirling Swanks they wound— The swathed and swaddled, molly-coddled ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... a long envelope tied up with red tape and sealed," she answered. "Yes! he made a great fuss ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... world of red tape, far above the ken of misguided mortals, lives an omnipotent being—the Censor. In imagination, he sits in a huge armchair, wreathed in tobacco smoke, casually sorting, from piles of manuscript, the sheep from the goats. The former are destined to be smothered ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... was postponed. When people begin to handle red tape, there is always a chance that they get ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... nothing more of any value; but a piece of paper was discovered, wrapped up in oilskin, and carefully fastened with red tape, in the vest pocket of the dead man. It contained writing, and had been so securely wrapped up, that it was only a little damped. Davy Spink, who found it, tried in vain to read the writing; Davy's education had been neglected, so he was fain to confess that he ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... officers were thus elected at one fell swoop and with an entire absence of that red tape which commonly renders organization so tiresome, Candace Milliken suggesting that perhaps she'd better be vice-president, as Emma Jane Perkins was always ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as they flitted about under the rough timber framing of the old barn, carrying comfort and hope from one rude couch to another. As to supplies, hardly a man in a regiment knew how to make out a requisition for rations or for clothing, and easy as it is to rail at "red tape," the necessity of keeping a check upon embezzlement and wastefulness justified the staff bureaus at Washington in insisting upon regular vouchers to support the quartermaster's and commissary's accounts. But here, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Your reflection, though profound, had already crossed my mind. But I dare say it may have come to your notice that if you walk into a post-office and demand to see the counterfoil of another man's message there may be some disinclination on the part of the officials to oblige you. There is so much red tape in these matters! However, I have no doubt that with a little delicacy and finesse the end may be attained. Meanwhile, I should like in your presence, Mr. Overton, to go through these papers which have ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mines. Every morning early, before the pressure was off, all hands would turn out for a general "sluicing" under the hydrants. We were as clean as could be and fairly free of "cooties" at the end of a week, but official red tape demanded that we ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... Trevennack it was life, health, vigor. He hated London. He hated officialdom. He hated the bonds of red tape that enveloped him. It's hard to know ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... lump and put him to the trouble of starting his literary labors all over again. Besides, by that time the coffee would be cold. So I took it as it was—with two lumps only—and it was pretty fair coffee for European coffee. It tasted slightly of the red tape and the chicory, but it was neatly ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... of too much red tape in the police department. Let them supply us out of their superabundance; we have ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... feller that joined in France, so I know you can do it. You see, it cuts out a lot of red tape, and I'd kind of like hiking it alone—ever since I was a ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... number, and any other little things that can be put on in a hurry. And you'd better get a passport if you haven't one. Gentlemen touring in foreign lands are sometimes subjected to cross-questionings which might be inconvenient unless they've plenty of red tape up ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... usually brought up the rear. At night he was the one to carry the huge lantern, which, according to the number of candles, is the insignia of rank. "I must give the Turks what they want," said the consul, with a twinkle in his eye—"form and red tape. I would not be a consul in their eyes, if I didn't." To illustrate the formality of Turkish etiquette he told this story: "A Turk was once engaged in saving furniture from his burning home, when he noticed that a bystander was rolling a cigarette. He immediately stopped in his ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... given to him to cheer his melancholy fireside. Why has the poetic spirit of England folded its wings, and been content to abandon its brilliant region to the butterflies of albums, but that the spirit of England has suffered itself to be fettered by the red tape of a peddling parsimony? Should we have had a Shakspeare without the smiles of an Elizabeth, and the generosity of a Southampton? No. He would have split his pen after his first tragedy; have thrown his ink-stand into the Thames; have taken ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... charged with "insubordination" by men who would rather make a mess of things and do it according to the rules of the book, than succeed in something useful and do it by commonsense rules made up at the time. He had shocked the folks who like red tape, and he had helped save the lives of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... said Walker. "I've run this island for twenty years without red tape, and I don't ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... of the Rolls, said to Mr. Grattan, "You would be the greatest man of your age, Grattan, if you would buy a few yards of red tape, and tie up your ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... up. The funds were in our London bank. There was, of course, a lot of red tape, excessive charges in exchange, and all that. Anyhow, about eight ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... fishing-pots in their reckless course, so that our crabs walk backwards into the sea. We have had gentlefolks down from London about it, men who argue and palaver, and wear high hats and are said to have long bills, and there is talk of a Government cutter to protect us, towed by red tape, and the trawlers are to cast their nets farther asea. But beware of believing what you read in the Brixham papers,—we have no voice to represent us in the press, and so these Brixham organs spread falsehoods about us in every corner of the globe. A pretty pretence, forsooth, that ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... glimpses, with amazement if not indeed with amusement, and such a holy awe as Dostoeffsky felt when in moments of revelation he saw by some sudden gleam into the hearts of the criminals around him in Siberia—and what do we do with them? Tie up their souls in official red tape and render their bodies anaemic with clothes, distort them in factories or slay them on battlefields. The doctor is herein the New Mystic at whose feet all must patiently learn the Revelation of Humanity. When there is not quite so much Mankind in the world, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... were flying clothes and fur coats drawn from the quartermaster, belongings packed, and red tape in the various administrative bureaux unfurled, with such headlong haste. In a few hours we were aboard the train, panting, but happy. Our party consisted of Sergeant Prince, and Rockwell, Chapman, and myself, who were only corporals at that time. We were joined at Luxeuil ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... was talking, the old borderer was fumbling in the breast of his hunting-shirt, and now he produced a packet of papers tied about with red tape. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... away with that bit of parchment, Kavanagh had to enlist as a private, and you had to go wandering over the world for years, leaving your mother and sister in poverty and anxiety!" said Tom Strachan, meditatively. "People are always talking about red tape in the army; surely there is still more of it in ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... her father saw her and came to pull the tree out where she could see it, and, sure enough, there was a dust-pan tied on with a red tape, and a whisk-broom with another red tape, and a little sweeping-cap with a red bow, some gingham aprons and white aprons, and brown towels and red-and-white towels, and dust-cloths, all with red ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... beautiful, toy of man. The Government looks to you as its best aid, for moral sanction is its living soul; it looks to you for higher life, for, unless the heart of love is the throbbing life-pulse of Government, it sinks into a dull, lethargic mechanism. Far above the din of faction, the red tape of cabinets, the rivalry of generals, the strife of politicians, shines the resolve, and pulses the determination of woman, that mankind shall be free. For this, the dusky nation bless her as she moves; the frighted mother ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to me. So I talked it over with Sophie and one or two other men who wanted to do something, and we talked to returned soldiers. We couldn't do what it's the business of the country to do—and may perhaps do when the red tape is finally untangled. But we could do something, with a little brains and money and initiative. So we ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Alexandrovitch's characteristic quality as a politician, that special individual qualification that every rising functionary possesses, the qualification that with his unflagging ambition, his reserve, his honesty, and with his self-confidence had made his career, was his contempt for red tape, his cutting down of correspondence, his direct contact, wherever possible, with the living fact, and his economy. It happened that the famous Commission of the 2nd of June had set on foot an inquiry into the irrigation of lands ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... authorities in order that they may check their horrid takings) by a huge pair of shears. These things are snip-snapping all over Italy, all day long. Having obtained your ticket you hand it to another official at a turn-stile, and at last you are free of cupidity and red tape and may breathe easily again and examine the products of the light-hearted, generous ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... hood and jacket, with her mittens dangling from a red tape on each side, she flew out and down the long, rickety stairs which a former senator from Nevada had built up the mountain's side, when he planned for his home a magnificent view of the mountains and ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... in a very queer handwriting. She opened it with much excitement, thinking it would contain a silk dress, at least. But lo and behold, all the presents that she had intended for her children, tied together with red tape and a card between, on ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... faith in it," laughed Mr. Warren. "My wife had really forgotten her family lineage, and we should hardly have claimed the Schermerhorns. There's so much red tape in these matters and by the time the expenses are paid, there's little left for the heirs, but this turns out better than I supposed, considering the many descendants the old man had. I can't complain ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... poisoned slop of these houses of crime and tears were blessed in their DEEDS. Oh! that the W. C. T. U. would do as they did, what a reform would take place. I love the organization of mothers. I love their holy impulses but I am heart-sick at their conventionality, their red tape. This organization could put out of existence every drinking hell in the United States if they would demand it and use the power they have even without the ballot. I intend to help the women of the Kansas W. C. T. U., but not one that has any respect for either Republican or Democratic ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... When Joan of Arc led the French army to victory I dare say the carpet knights of England thought her unwomanly. When Florence Nightingale, in search of blankets for the soldiers in the Crimean War, cut her way through all orders and red tape, commanded with vehemence and determination those who guarded the supplies to "unlock the doors and not talk to her of proper authorities when brave men were shivering in their beds," no doubt she was called unwomanly. To me, "unlock the doors" sounds better than any words ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... established certain modes of lawful procedure for their own security, so may they adopt other modes when their safety demands it. Their laws and their codes of procedure are for their uses, not for their destruction. 'When a sister State is endangered, red tape must be cut,' said Governor Seymour, when it was telegraphed to him that some delaying forms must be gone through in order to arm and send off our State troops who were ordered to the defence of Harrisburg; and all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... fortunately a "popular" character, order was partially restored; and the favorite scene from Miss More's dialogue of David and Goliath was announced as the closing piece. The sight of little David in a white tunic edged with red tape, with a calico scrip and a very primitive-looking sling; and a huge Goliath decorated with a militia belt and sword, and a spear like a weaver's beam indeed, enchained everybody's attention. Even the peccant ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... King's service has to be carried on even in spite of regulations, he worked on lines of his own, and he altered those lines when the occasion called for it. He was a "mandarin," of course—everybody in a Government office is. He was to some extent enmeshed in "red tape"—every step taken in a Government office, from sending a note in acknowledgement of a written communication, to losing a State paper at a moment when the safety of the country depends upon its being available for reference, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... thinking what an excellent "oldest inhabitant" METHUSELAH would have made in a "Right of Way" case, when DICK FIBBINS rises from the wooden arm-chair on which he has been sitting at a table crowded with papers, and bundles tied up in dirty red tape, and shakes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... plentiful, but no bread, and any one who has ever felt the tortures of bread hunger may imagine the sufferings of the men. For want of bread the meats became nauseating and repulsive. The whole fault lay in having too many bosses and red tape in the Department at Richmond. By order of these officials, all commissary supplies, even gathered in sight of the camps, had to be first sent to Richmond and issued out only on requisitions to the head of the departments. The railroad facilities were bad, irregular, and blocked, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... was still the puzzle of the ages to him—he'd used it half his life, and still found it impossible to guess why such a building had been chosen. But eventually, he found the periodical room, and managed to get through the red tape enough to be given a small table with a ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... the attorney, the most difficult person to deal with whom she had ever met in her life. She had remarked that he was keen, active, intelligent, unscrupulous, confident in his own powers, bold as a lion in the wars of quill, parchment, and red tape; without fear, without hesitation, without remorse. There was nothing that he scrupled to do, nothing that he ever repented having done. She had fancied that the only difficulty which she could have to encounter was that of concealing from him, at least in a degree, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... gentleman in question, was a middle-aged officer of long standing, who had been brought up in the strictest notions of professional routine. He had regulations on the brain. He was a slave to red tape, and was prepared to die rather than diverge from the narrow grooves in which he had ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... breaking a great many eggs? Is it wonderful that the employers have sometimes felt themselves unbearably hustled, sometimes misunderstood, and at other times annoyed, or worried by what seems to them the red tape of the new Ministry, and its apparent multiplicity of ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... arrangement for $367 million. The Romanian authorities do not intend to draw on this arrangement, viewing it as a precaution. Meanwhile, recent macroeconomic gains have done little to address Romania's widespread poverty, and corruption and red tape handicap ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... dehumanized; and it was only in a departmental way that he recognized his opportunity. The power to strike which he now visualized came through no intellectual enlargement, no opening up of moral vistas, but only through the discovery that he had on his side a mass of red tape the existence of which he had not previously suspected. In similar trammels to those which had so long hampered and restricted his own movements it was now possible for him to entangle the goings of his ministers. A hundred ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... drover with feeling. "Yes, but it exacts a bond, and stipulates the daily forfeiture, and if any one walks the plank, it's not your dear old Uncle Samuel. And it matters not how much sleep I lose, red tape never worries." ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... stationed at Soissons. I wrote to the Colonel, who said he would send it with pleasure, but that he couldn't on his own authority. An application must be made to the Ministere de la Guerre. There is always so much red tape in France. One writes and receives so many letters about anything one wants to do—a Christmas Tree in the school-house—a distribution of soup for the poor and old—a turn in a road to be rounded, etc. However, the permission was graciously accorded for the band. The Mayor's idea was to station ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... wooden Town Hall, painted grey; a wooden Post Office, painted brown; a red college, where boys in white disported upon a green field; a fawn-coloured school, with a playground full of pinafored little girls; and a Red Tape Office—designed in true Elizabethan style, with cupolas, vanes, fantastic chimney-tops, embayed windows, wondrous parapets—built entirely of wood and painted the colour of Devonshire cream, with grit in the paint to make ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Cavours and energetic Farinis. If I could hear an English statesman (Conservative or Liberal) speak out of a large heart and generous comprehension as I did Azeglio this last spring, I should thank God for it. I fear I never shall. My boy may, perhaps. Red tape ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... little packet of manuscript; it is paginated, you see, and I have indulged in the civil coquetry of a ribbon of red tape. It has almost a legal air, hasn't it? Run your eye over it, Austin. It is an account of the entertainment Mrs. Beaumont provided for her choicer guests. The man who wrote this escaped with his life, but I do not think he will live many years. The doctors tell him he must have sustained ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... always showed respect, outwardly at least, for the written letter of the statute as written and cited. But when it seemed to him that justice tempered with mercy stood in danger of being choked in a lawyer's loop of red tape he sheared through the entanglements with a promptitude which appealed more strongly, perhaps, to the lay mind than to the professional. And if, from the bench, he might not succor the deserving litigant ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... the "finishers" have prospered, while the club—the old organization in which the reason of being has been lost in a maze of constitutional amendments, by-laws, and such like red tape—has declined in influence and popularity. In the world at large, pictorial photography has grown amazingly. This has led to a more pronounced line of demarkation between the dilettante and the intelligent worker of appreciation, with the balance of influence inclining ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1920 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... long night at the Ansonia and a hard night for M. Gritz. France is a land of infinite red tape where even such simple things as getting born or getting married lead to endless formalities. Judge, then, of the complicated procedure involved in so serious a matter as getting murdered—especially in a fashionable restaurant! Long ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... day went forward in the usual way with all the red tape, the cool formalities, as if some trifling matter were at stake, and those who loved Mark sat with aching hearts and waited. The Severns in their corner sat for the most part with bended heads and praying hearts. The witnesses for the prosecution were most of them companions ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... loggers on trial for their lives were being railroaded to the gallows by the legal hirelings of the Lumber Trust. The Labor Jury was composed of men with experience in the labor movement. They had eyes to see through a maze of red tape and legal mummery to the simple truth that was being hidden or obscured. The Lumber Trust did not fool these men and it could not intimidate them. They had the courage to give the truth to the world just as they saw it. They were convinced in their hearts and minds that ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... required for gentlemen each of whom may have said, respecting his connection with subject-matter of the Secretary (none more emphatically so than Messrs. Adams and Burlingame), quorum pars magna fui? Yet, it must be remembered that diplomacy, like jurisprudence (with its red tape common to both), taketh few things for granted, and constantly maketh records for itself, under the maxim de non apparentibus non existentibus eadem est ratio; and ever beareth in mind that when certioraris to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... involved in remaining hush-hush weren't as great as all that. The very magnitude of the UP which involved more than two thousand member planets, allowed of departments and bureaus hidden away in the endless stretches of red tape. ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... said his father. "Right here at the plant we've got the gang that can do it if anybody can. I'm getting a plane and coming out there, fast! Get Major Holt to clear things for me. This is no time for red tape! If he has trouble, I'll ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... to come out in the open. I won't take a mate in a house, even if it has to be done with this foolish paper," he continued to rage as he sought in the bandana bundle and produced an official document with a red tape on it. "You go and put on your clothes, and I'll break up this foolishness and get 'em in ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... my line, you will say. But it is impossible to live here and not feel very sorely the consequences of the horrid white mismanagement. I tried standing by and looking on, and it became too much for me. They are such illogical fools; a logical fool in an office, with a lot of red tape, is conceivable. Furthermore, he is as much as we have any reason to expect of officials—a thoroughly common-place, unintellectual lot. But these people are wholly on wires; laying their ears down, skimming away, pausing as though shot, and presto! full spread on the other ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mixed he put it in the water in the pot, adding to it a portion of a mandrake root, a live snake, two live toads in linen bags, and a fungus. He then bound together, with red tape, a wand consisting of three sprigs taken, respectively, from an ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... and provincial police, the system of identification has been revised, young constables are taught their trade with care and thoroughness, higher pay has been granted to all ranks, men are housed in greater comfort, red tape has been ruthlessly cut through, the relations between police and Press have been improved; there is a wider, broader spirit in all. A clean esprit de corps, very different to that which at times long gone by has threatened the interests of ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... of opinion that even in October there was a glare—and in August—she shuddered to think of it! It was so tiresome, too, to have missed the Grandes Eaux. So like French red tape, to insist on stopping them on a particular date. Why should they be stopped? As to expense, that was nonsense. How could water cost anything! It was because the French were so doctrinaire, so tyrannical—so fond ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... music. Many small fiddles, drums, and other instruments of torture; no end of cannon, shields, swords, spears, and guns. There were little tumblers in red breeches, incessantly swarming up high obstacles of red tape, and coming down, head first, on the other side; and there were innumerable old gentlemen of respectable, not to say venerable appearance, insanely flying over horizontal pegs, inserted, for the purpose, in their own street-doors. There were beasts of all ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... England, and although he was hedged about, protected and restricted by War Office Regulation Red Tape twisted round to the strength of steel cables, yet he was in command of telegraphs, of telephones, and, in a secondary degree, of the railway system of the ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... there are many annoying bits of red tape to be considered. In London you are obliged to have a legal residence in the parish where the ceremony is to be performed. In Paris a civil marriage before the mayor of the district is necessary. ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... saw, that his original diagnosis was at fault. Superimposed was the agitating thought of what would follow the death of this unwelcome guest: confusion, poking authorities, British and American red tape. It would send business elsewhere; and the hotel business in Canton was never so prosperous that one could afford to lose a single guest. Clientele was ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... I had asked to have your Confederate friends paroled, a thousand yards of red tape would have to be expended before it could be done," added the engineer ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... worse, according to one's measure. After all, the good old Roman plan of putting a man to death for inventing malleable glass had its advantages—it was at least more merciful from a Christian point of view, and would, at the present day, save a vast amount of yards of Patent Law red tape. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... red tape to leaving that hotel—people to see, cards to sign and get signed. Everyone was nice. I told Kelly—and the news spread—the truth, that I was unexpectedly going to Europe, being taken by the same lady who brought ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... all. He looked about him for somebody to manage the affair for him. Lawyer Penhallow undertook the business with alacrity; but the alacrity was all on his side, for there were thousands of yards of red tape to be unrolled at Washington before anything in that sort could be done. At that conservative stage of our national progress, it was not possible for a man to obtain a pension simply because he happened to know the brother of a man who knew another man that had intended to go to the war, ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... generation. {77} His speeches on the revision of taxes, the corn laws, and British foreign trade, proved that, in a utilitarian age, he knew the science of utilities and had freed himself from bureaucratic red tape. His parliamentary career too had taught him the secret of the management of assemblies, and Canada would under him be spared the friction which the rigid attitude of soldiers, trained in the school of Wellington, had been causing throughout the ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... same year, Jas. L. Allen acted as delegate from this association and reported our progress. The best organized woman's society in the State is probably the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In its different departments, although hampered by too much theological red tape, it is reaching thousands of ignorant, prejudiced, good sectarian women who would expect the "heavens to fall" if they accidentally got into a meeting where "woman's rights" was mentioned even in a whisper. Mrs. Clara Hoffman, of Kansas City, is State president, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... mouth, in talking, was produced by a long tape, running down to a pedal, which was controlled by the foot of the performer. And the smile consisted of long strips of red tape, which were drawn out through slits at the corners of the mouth by means of threads which passed through holes in the sides of the head. The performer—who was always your humble servant—stood on a box behind the wall, his head just reaching ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... 1861 saw him doing picket duty in Fairfax County. When Stuart was promoted to brigadier general, and Captain Jones took his place as colonel of the First Virginia, Mosby became the latter's adjutant. There should have been a commission along with this post, but this seems to have been snarled in red tape at Richmond and never came through. It was about this time that Mosby first came to Stuart's personal attention. Mosby spent a night at headquarters after escorting a couple of young ladies who had been living outside the Confederate ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... next day, I found a handsome brown paper parcel, not so very large, considering, and strangely square, considering, which the minxes had put together and left on my office table. They had a great frolic over it. They had not spared red tape nor red wax. Very official it looked, indeed, and on the left-hand corner, in Sarah's boldest and most contorted hand, was written, "Secret service." We had a great laugh over their success. And, indeed, I should have ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... for reasons of her own to work, not with the noblesse division of the Red Cross, but with the Union des Femmes de France. As she is extremely independent, impatient, and enterprising, with a haughty disdain of red tape, the reasons for this uncommon secession may ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... "Red tape all wound up!" she finally announced in a whisper, and the quartette proceeded to the corner below, to be in readiness ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... take the baby—and she mustn't suffer," he urged. "There will be any amount of red tape. You really must let ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... the strong arm of Kruger Bobs, he crawled into a hospital train bound for Cape Town. It was an order, and he obeyed. Nevertheless, he shrank from the very mention of Cape Town. It had been the core of his universe; but now the core had gone bad. But his time of service had expired. Red tape demanded that he receive the papers for his discharge from the Cape Town citadel. That done, he would take the first outgoing steamer for London. Afterwards, he would leave his life in the hands of Fate. He took no note of the fact that Fate ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... it into your head? Did anyone tell you about Beth's giving away her things?" asked Laurie soberly, as Amy laid a bit of red tape, with sealing wax, a taper, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... him alone; hands off! and I will wager my new office against your old one that he steps into your honour's shoes.' Now you know perfectly well that Campbell has no more enthusiasm than a brick wall, or a roll of red tape; but he is as proud of the young man as if he were his son. Do you know that he has taken ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Government for certain grants of land and for the retention of the old French custom of surveying the land along the river front in deep narrow strips, rather than according to the chessboard pattern taken over by Canada from the United States. Red tape, indifference, procrastination, rather than any illwill, delayed the redress of the grievances of the half-breeds. In despair they called Louis Riel back from his exile in Montana. With his arrival the agitation acquired a new and dangerous force. ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... red tape showed signs at first of declining to unwind, but further investigation proved the frauds so great, that even the red tape was thrilled into action, and the Government began a suit in the United States District Court ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... us as we deserve.) How he splashes like leviathan in the seas of modern literature and politics! Doubtless, respecting the latter, one needs first to realize, from actual observation, the squalor, vice and doggedness ingrain'd in the bulk-population of the British islands, with the red tape, the fatuity, the flunkeyism everywhere, to understand the last meaning in his pages. Accordingly, though he was no chartist or radical, I consider Carlyle's by far the most indignant comment or protest anent the fruits ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... land office. Your applications can pass through for approval, for all I care, but I'll enter a contest, alleging fraud, against you in the General Land Office at Washington, and I'll hold you up for ten years in a mass of red tape. Hennage, you and McGraw have brains, I'll admit, but you can't play my game and beat me at it. If I'm not in on this melon-cutting, I'll spend a million dollars to delay the banquet. Let me tell you something. The day will come ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... ventures and his ledger; an indefinable flavour of the pharmacopoeia lingers about the physician; the bombasine and horse-hair of the lawyer eat into his soul—his experiences are docketed in a clerkly hand, bound together with red tape, and put away in professional pigeon-holes. A man naturally becomes leavened by the profession which he has adopted. He thinks, speaks, and dreams "shop," as the colloquial phrase has it. Men of letters are affected by their profession just as merchants, physicians, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... was angry enough,—there was a crumb of comfort there. But Tom went off on another track. Tom distrusted the Navy Department. He had been long enough at Annapolis to doubt the red tape of the bureaus with which his chiefs had to do. "If the navy had the money, the navy had the vouchers," that was Tom's theory. He knew a chief clerk in the navy, and Tom was going ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... his last sentence particularly. It smacked so strongly of miles of red tape and months of ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... be the new permanent secretary at the War Office. Let's hope he has no connection with the firm of Gold Brade and Red Tape. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... expresses a hope that in another fortnight he will have despatched the remaining two volumes and have "bidden adieu to Russia"; but it was dangerous to anticipate the official course of events in Russia. Even to the last Borrow was tormented by red tape. Early in August the last two volumes were ready for shipment to England; but he could not obtain the necessary permission. He was told that he ought never to have printed the work, in spite of the license that ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... she replied, untying the red tape with trembling fingers. 'Here is the certificate of marriage which my poor Annie gave me on her dying bed. I would have shown it before to all Beorminster had I known of Mrs Pansey's false reports. Look at it, bishop.' She thrust it into his hand. 'Ann Whichello, spinster; ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... with the tariff question. They are simply zones established in which imports may be stored, re-packed, manufactured and then exported without the payment of duties in the first place, duties for the refund of which the present law makes provision, but only after vexatious delays and expensive red tape. Precautions are taken to prevent smuggling. In the preliminary investigations and recommendations made by the Department of Commerce, New York, San Francisco and New Orleans have been designated as the first free ports that should be established. With the ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... long trail to follow," he said, slowly, "trying to get back dues from the government. There's red tape and lawyers and rulings and evidence and courts to keep you waiting. I'm not certain," continued the commissioner, with a profoundly meditative frown, "whether this department that I'm the boss of has any jurisdiction or not. It's only Insurance, Statistics, and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... of the drawer lifted, showing another cavity beneath. From this the searcher withdrew a long envelope, tied with red tape. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... the usual pitcher of hot water and to light the fire in the grate, and in a moment was out of bed and at her desk. She opened the envelope very carefully, expecting to see the pictured face of her kind friend smiling at her, But there was no picture. There were only two documents tied with red tape, and with big red seals on them, and a number of printed ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... chuckling, he might have added, like the said hen in all the glory of laying an egg—now pushed forward: 'That I can, that I can, your Honour,' drawing from his pocket a budget of papers, and untying the red tape with a hand trembling with eagerness. 'Here is the disposition and assignation, by Malcolm Bradwardine of Inch-Grabbit, regularly signed and tested in terms of the statute, whereby, for a certain sum of sterling money presently contented and paid to him, he has disponed, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... "Going higher, red tape will begin to unroll and entwine the heads of departments, and every man who has any authority whatever will wait for orders from some one higher up. Therefore, while the whole nation cheers the street parades and the flags and ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... tied up in a red tape, eh?" said Davy. "Must be the one he was writing in constant, morning and evening, telling hisself and God A'mighty what he was doing and wasn't doing, and where he was going to and when he was going to go. Aw, yes, he always ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... native place from aristocratic usurpation; it was the battle of the electors, not his private cause, etc. He said little against Randal,—"Pity a clever young man should pin his future to two yards of worn-out red tape;" "He had better lay hold of the strong rope, which the People, in compassion to his youth, were willing yet to throw out to save him from sinking," etc. But as for Audley Egerton, "the gentleman who would not show, who was afraid to meet the electors, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she thought. "I wonder if she's finished checking the catalogue yet? I saw her walking down the stream five minutes ago with Mabel Hoyle. Why shouldn't I have the American Gems for half an hour? It wouldn't do any harm. It really is the merest red tape that we mayn't use the books. I shall just take ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil |
