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Dereliction   Listen
noun
Dereliction  n.  
1.
The act of leaving with an intention not to reclaim or resume; an utter forsaking abandonment. "Cession or dereliction, actual or tacit, of other powers."
2.
A neglect or omission as if by willful abandonment. "A total dereliction of military duties."
3.
The state of being left or abandoned.
4.
(Law) A retiring of the sea, occasioning a change of high-water mark, whereby land is gained.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dereliction" Quotes from Famous Books



... that what Harlan feared would happen, had happened—that Deveny had come for Barbara. And Deveny had found her, through his dereliction. He had relaxed his vigilance for only a short time, and during ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... and at times the letter of the law came in part as a result of the unlimited expanse of land that tempted the established settler as well as the newcomer. Evasion of the law cast no stigma upon the offender, and some who were aware of their neighbor's dereliction winked at the action, thinking perhaps that they too might sometime engage in the same practice. Furthermore, the necessity of the provision for "seating and planting" which was well founded for the early years of the colony decreased in significance as ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.

... by Madame Rupprecht, or reproved in a delicate, complimentary way by Monsieur de la Tourelle. One day I said to my father that I did not want to be married, that I would rather go back to the dear old mill; but he seemed to feel this speech of mine as a dereliction of duty as great as if I had committed perjury; as if, after the ceremony of betrothal, no one had any right over me but my future husband. And yet he asked me some solemn questions; but my answers were not such as to do ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... through solitary lanes till he reached his quarters, utterly broken down in heart. The whole forenoon he lay on his iron bed, oblivious of all the world and steeped in his own tremendous sense of dereliction. It was in vain that the golden spring sun streamed through his windows rocking the room in waves of splendour. The glad sounds of voices, in the Square, of men and women enjoying the beautiful weather ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... messengers to numerous persons of rank and distinction, with a categorical demand to know why they had absented themselves, and a warning that henceforth a fine of fifty rubles would be exacted for such dereliction of duty. ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... it to lisp the name of Jesus,—never seeks to unfold its infant spirit,—never supplies it with spiritual food, nor directs its soul to the eternal world! In the same way the pious wife neglects her impenitent husband; and the pious husband, his reckless wife. There is too much such dereliction of duty in the homes ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... quoted as historical facts. All at which an English woman would have smiled, appalled the tender but superstitious Neapolitan; and when the priest left her, with solemn rebukes and grave accusations of a dereliction of her duties to her child, if she hesitated to fly with it from an abode polluted by the darker powers and unhallowed arts, Viola, still clinging to the image of Zanoni, sank into a passive lethargy which held her very ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... is very lovely. I saw her at a distance, and I want to meet her. Now, Mr. Huntingdon, it's very painful for me to have to chide you for dereliction in office. But a man who will neglect those pictures for the—well, the coal fields of Alaska, should be dealt ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... a last protest against its mode of procedure. "I have strenuously endeavoured," he wrote on the 18th of December, "to avoid laying before you any complaint, more particularly concerning acts done by your excellencies; but there is a point at which such forbearance on my part would become a dereliction of my duty as an officer in the service of Greece, amounting even to treason against the State. So long as the evils extended no further than the depriving the ships-of-war of their crews, and preventing the brulottes from being equipped for service; ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... resumed Madame de Saint-Dizier. "Mademoiselle does not raise her views so high. She proves that a dereliction from duty may be ignoble as well as criminal. I am no longer astonished at the sympathy which was just now professed for the lower orders. It is the more touching and affecting, as the man concealed by her was dressed in ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... change for her hard-earned shilling, that she had spoiled her own fortunes, and that she would, ere night, be called upon to abdicate her stool behind the counter in favour of that humble customer; and yet so it was. Mr Benjamin could not forgive her dereliction from honesty; and the more he had trusted her, the greater was the shock to his confidence. Moreover, his short-sighted views of human nature, and his incapacity for comprehending its infinite shades and varieties, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various

... Parisian gossip, to retail to the less adventurous members of their circle—were all delighted with M. Jerome: it was M. Jerome here, and M. Jerome there; and if M. Jerome happened to dine out, every one seemed to feel uneasy, and look upon him as guilty of a great dereliction of duty. They could almost as well have ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... your difficulty is insuperable, for I have no idea that it is possible to induce the Imperial Government to exert themselves more for the recovery of Brabant than they did for the preservation of it. Various circumstances (some of which you have stated) co-operated to the scandalous dereliction of a country, which all former history proves to us might have been defended (even for a losing campaign) with one half of the allied force; and it is no part of my creed that the zeal or activity of the Austrian Ministry (even if they act with ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... to the strict German school of music never forgave Meyerbeer for his dereliction from the spirit and influences of his nation, and the prominence which he gave to melodramatic effects and spectacular show in his operas. Not without some show of reason, they cite this fact as proof of poverty of musical invention. Mendelssohn, who was habitually ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... however paltry, is of genuine social value, more especially in America; it represents a status that cannot be changed overnight by the rise of rivals, or by personal dereliction, or by mere accident. It is a policy of insurance against dangers that are not to be countered as effectively in any other manner. Miss G——, the daughter of an enormously wealthy scoundrel, may be accepted everywhere, but all the while ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... named the Elihu Root Foundation, but that ablest of all our Secretaries of State, and in the opinion of President Roosevelt, "the wisest man he ever knew," took care, it seems, not to mention the fact to the college authorities. When I reproached him with this dereliction, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... end. But in their scheme of theology the essentials of an orthodox Church were numerous, and they would have been inflexible against any compromise of these. To abandon any part of the inheritance of primitive times would be gross heresy, a fatal dereliction of Christian duty. No one can read the letters of Bishop Ken without noticing how the calm and gentle spirit of that good prelate kindles into indignation at the thought of any departure from the ancient 'Depositum' ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... of her natural advisers in parents, is a reasonable and honourable supposition; but to imply that the most influential adviser of a young lady so situated is a young single man, in no way related to her, appears to me a dereliction of that regard to the dignity of her sex which is the chivalrous characteristic of your countrymen—and to Mademoiselle Cicogna herself, a surmise which she would be justified ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Prince Regent, and the Legislative Council passed several resolves expressive of their astonishment. The Council humbly considered His Excellency's acquiescence with the wishes of the Assembly to be an unequivocal abandonment of the "Rights" of the Legislative Council, and a fatal dereliction of the first principles of the constitution. And with regard to the income tax, proposed by the Assembly, Mr. Ryland states that the whole saving that would have been effected by it, would only have been ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... Junot had infuriated England, and not only Dalrymple and Burrard, but Wellesley himself, had been recalled to give an account of their conduct. The last was triumphantly vindicated; but while the others were not convicted of dereliction in duty, they were virtually withdrawn from active life. Sir John Moore was now in command of the English troops in the Peninsula. He had been reinforced with ten thousand men, and feeling sure of Portugal, had advanced into Spain. To Napoleon it seemed evident that his ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... followed. The Department of the Seine, presided by La Rochefoucauld, tried to assert its constitutional authority over the great city situated within its limits. It voted the suspension of Petion, mayor of Paris, and of Manuel, his procureur, for dereliction of duty in failing to maintain order on ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... The Vaisya's girdle should be made of the Valwaji grass. Even this is what has been laid down in the scriptures. Listen now to me as I expound to thee what constitutes the merits and faults of both givers and recipients of gifts. A Brahmana becomes guilty of a dereliction of duty by uttering a falsehood. Such an act on his part is sinful. A Kshatriya incurs four times and a Vaisya eight times the sin that a Brahmana incurs by uttering a falsehood. A Brahmana should not eat elsewhere, having been previously invited by a Brahmana. By ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... this, Jonas Marshall has been as true to his second pledge, even in thought, as the needle to the pole. So dreadful seems the idea of its violation, that the bare recollection of his former dereliction, makes him tremble. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... do about it?" Cappy echoed. "Why, I'm going to send a judge and a jury aboard the Quickstep, try this Finn, Kjellin, and if he's guilty of dereliction of duty I'll bet you a plug hat to one small five-cent bag of smoking tobacco I'll know all about it inside of ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... experience, Lenny Fairfield had conceived it probable that Mr. Stirn would address to him some words in approbation of his gallantly, and in sympathy for his bruises, he soon found himself wofully mistaken. That truly great man, worthy prime-minister of Hazeldean, might, perhaps, pardon a dereliction from his orders, if such dereliction proved advantageous to the interests of the service, or redounded to the credit of the chief; but he was inexorable to that worst of diplomatic offences—an ill-timed, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... being ironical and insidious. To Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage, he would say, the principles of representation naturally and necessarily led,—any less extensive proposition was a base compromise and a dereliction of right; and the first encroachment on the people was the Act of Henry VI., which limited the power of election to forty-shilling freeholders within the county, whereas the real right was in the "outrageous and excessive" number of people by whom the preamble recites [Footnote: ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... her honor as lightly as Germany and felt that the matter of self-preservation would excuse any moral dereliction, she would have imitated the example of Luxemburg, also invaded, and permitted free passage to the German army without essential loss of her material prosperity, but with a fatal sacrifice to her ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... seemed to disconcert Madam d'Epinay; probably she did not expect it. My melancholy situation, the severity of the season, the general dereliction of me by my friends, all made her and Grimm believe, that by driving me to the last extremity, they should oblige me to implore mercy, and thus, by vile meanness, render myself contemptible, to be suffered to remain in an asylum which honor commanded me to leave. I left it so suddenly ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... the cause of this dereliction. Fidel Avila was living with a woman, by whom he had three children. The priest summoned ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... to charge terminals, and the committee found that the railways had made out their case, and recommended that the right of the companies to station terminals should be recognised by Parliament. Further, the committee, on the whole of the evidence, acquitted the railway companies of any grave dereliction of their duty to the public, and added: "It is remarkable that no witnesses have appeared to complain of 'preferences' given to individuals by railway companies as acts of private favour or partiality." As to passenger ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... common search for industrial justice. The public schools are "class preserves" of the rich, and their opportunity for good, as for harm, will be almost boundless. "To turn out the young of the capitalist class with all their capitalist prejudices intact will be sheer dereliction of duty on the part of public schoolmasters." So wrote a great teacher of the older generation. The obvious way of destroying those prejudices as prejudices is by an enthusiastic and capable exposition of various forms of socialism. ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell

... an absolute slave. She is treated with the greatest cruelty and indignity, has to do all laborious work, and to carry all the burthens. For the slightest offence or dereliction of duty, she is beaten with a waddy or a yam-stick, and not unfrequently speared. The records of the Supreme Court in Adelaide furnish numberless instances of blacks being tried for murdering their lubras. The woman's life is of no account if her husband chooses ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... superintend the business, at a salary of $1000 a year and his travelling expenses; contracts are made or to be made, mails carried, postmasters appointed and paid. This is doubtless a very proper and necessary thing, one which the government could not have omitted without a plain dereliction of duty. The honor and interest of the nation required that as soon as the title to the country was settled, our citizens who were resident there, and those who shall go to settle there, should enjoy the benefits of the mail. And as it was the ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt

... exposed to constant peril from fire. Now it seems plain that here is an occasion for the interposition of municipal authority. In spite of the jealousy (proper within certain limits) with which governmental interference with private property is regarded in this country, it is a manifest dereliction of duty on the part of our city authorities not to exercise a strict supervision over these houses. The interests which are chiefly affected by their condition are not private, but public interests. There are legal means for abating nuisances; and there is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... choice gathering of spirits at the post-office; and Douglas, feeling particularly lonely and unsettled, rode up the south trail after three of Charleton's young mules which had strayed. He felt somehow that, with the dereliction of Charleton, the last hold he had on ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... is certainly not to be understood that we are to be held down to advocate upon all occasions the cause of administration. Such a dereliction of independence would render us entirely useless for the purpose we mean to serve. On the other hand, nothing will render the work more interesting than the public learning, not from any vaunt of ours, but from their own observation, that we have access to early and accurate ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... succeed that a man has, must be used, to entitle him to the rewards of success. He owes not only to himself and to his fellows, but also to God, the obligation of developing his utmost capability. If he does not pay dividends on the divine investment in him, his dereliction is justly punished by failure in life. Sometimes he even forfeits the ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... 1848.—Good and loving hearts will be unprepared, and for a time must suffer much from the final dereliction of Pius IX. to the cause of freedom. After the revolution opened in Lombardy, the troops of the line were sent thither; the volunteers rushed to accompany them, the priests preached the war as a crusade, the Pope blessed ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... viewed, as it really was, a reasonable compensation offered by Congress, at a time when they had nothing else to give to officers of the army, for services then to be performed. It was the only means to prevent a total dereliction of the service. It was a part of their hire; I may be allowed to say, it was the price of their blood, and of your independency. It is therefore more than a common debt; it is a debt of honor: it can never be considered as a pension, or gratuity, nor cancelled ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... sir, for disobedience of orders, for dereliction of duty! By heavens!" said the general, striking his left hand with his ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... chairman of a committee of the Assembly appointed to consider the status of the Sugar Act, favored the commission of Hutchinson as a special agent of the Colony to go to England and present the claims of the colonists, he was accused of inconsistency in opinion and action, and of dereliction of duty as the acknowledged leader of the patriotic party. Combined with the extraordinary appointment of Hutchinson, which however never took effect owing to the opposition of Governor Bernard, Otis was also charged with a too absolute recognition of the supremacy ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... up some unaccountable mistakes or omissions which appear in that series of volumes, written at long intervals, and by different hands. Mr. Fuseli has alluded to them in utter astonishment; and cannot account for Vasari's "incredible dereliction of reminiscence, which prompted him to transfer what he had rightly ascribed to Giorgione in one edition to the elder Parma in the subsequent ones." Again: "Vasari's memory was either so treacherous, or his rapidity in writing ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... her to overlook this inconsistency; and as demonstrations cost her little, she not only indicted on the occasion a solemn letter of reproof to her ally, but actually professed herself so deeply wounded by his dereliction of principle, that it was necessary for her to tranquillize her mind by the perusal of many pious works, and the study of Boethius on consolation, which she even undertook the task of translating. Essex, whom she honored with a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... sunlight. It was very clear that he knew he was a policeman and could think of nothing else. He was dressed up for the part, and received many shillings a week from a radculgovunment to look like that. It would have been a dereliction of duty to forget it. He was stuffed with duty. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... relinquishment, dereliction, reprobation, surrender, evacuation, rejection, abdication. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... to those who most scrupulously observe them? Do we not daily see persons who believe themselves damned if they forget a mass, if they eat a fowl on Friday, if they neglect a confession, though they are guilty at the same time of great dereliction to society? Do they not hold the conduct of those very unjust, and very cruel, who happen to have the misfortune of not thinking and doing as they think and act? These practices, out of which a great number of men have created essential duties, but ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... rebelled at last against this tyranny, is that he seems, in the crisis of his embarrassment, to have abandoned the woman to whom he could write long afterwards, 'I chose you and I loved you in my happiest times.' After this brief dereliction, however, he returned to his duty, and for the rest of his life was eminently faithful to the wife whom he had ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... he went, he asked himself two questions: Could he fail to deliver the package according to instructions, and yet earn his money? And was there any way of so delivering it without risk to the recipient or dereliction of duty to the man who had intrusted it to him and whose money he wished to earn? To the first question his conscience at once answered no; to the second the reply came more slowly, and before fixing his mind determinedly upon it he asked himself why he felt that this was no ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... plain meals a day, taken to the stroke of the clock. Eight hours in bed every night of your life, and nine if you can get 'em. Two hours of walkin', or other equally good exercise—if you can discover its equal; I can't—in the open air every day. And anything less will be a flat dereliction of duty, and bad citizenship, remember that. This is for by and by, of course. Just now you want twelve hours in bed, and half a dozen light meals a day. Mrs. Gilchrist knows all about that. Good, sensible woman, Mrs. Gilchrist. Wish there were more like her, these days. Oh, I'll be ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... violent abuse of Leicester, accusing him of contempt for her, charging him with thinking more of his own particular greatness than of her honour and service, and then "digressing into old griefs," said the envoy, "too long and tedious to write." She vehemently denounced Davison also for dereliction of duty in not opposing the measure; but he manfully declared that he never deemed so meanly of her Majesty or of his Lordship as to suppose that she would send him, or that he would go to the Provinces, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Captain Molineux, had so pained his sensitive brother; with this difference, however, that, in this instance they were the candidly expressed opinions of men arraigning the conduct of one of their fellows apparently guilty of a gross dereliction from duty, and not, as in the former they had seemed to be, with any ungenerous allusion ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... from the Sovereign Pontiff, who, like themselves, was robbed of his proper income. Thus did the beggarly government make money out of the small resources of those who, when the exchequer failed to fulfil its duties, endeavored themselves, as best they could, to make up for this dereliction. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... Britain is second in interest to no chapter in the maritime history of the world;" and while we acknowledge a grateful pride in the triumphs of our transatlantic brethren, we must blush with shame at our dereliction in this great, and civilizing, and enriching service of modern times. The steam marine of the United States, postal, mercantile, and naval, is to-day so insignificant in extent that we do not feel entirely ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey

... camp on the night before the attack, the posting of the militia in advance of the main army, and the utter lack of scouts and runners, were all bad enough, but on the other hand, the delay and confusion in the quartermaster's department, the dereliction of the contractors, and the want of discipline among the militia and the levies, were all matters of extenuation. To win was hopeless. To unjustly denounce an old and worthy veteran of the Revolution, who acted with so much manly courage on the field of battle, ill becomes ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... the subject of monopoly, which I shall at a future period fully establish, and which has occasioned the sacrifice of the public, to individual interest, I shall proceed to advert, 8thly, to the loss which the government has sustained in the dereliction of some of its most valuable servants, who have been allured, by the rapid fortunes made by several individuals, to quit the service of the public, and to embark in traffic. The inferior officers of the settlement, and the non-commissioned officers and privates of the regiment, have been ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann

... could not last. W—— must change the air of Oxford or be suffocated. He chose the former; and let the sturdy moralist, who strains the point of the filial duties as high as they can bear, censure the dereliction; he cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with W——, the last afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading from the High-street to the back of ***** college, where ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... dereliction of churchly care for the people of the Southern colonies, on the part of those who professed the main responsibility for it, the duty was undertaken, in the face of legal hindrances, by earnest Christians of various names, whom the established clergy vainly ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... over His spirit in another foaming breaker, and again He sought solitude, and again He found tranquillity—and again returned to find the disciples asleep. 'They knew not what to answer Him' in extenuation of their renewed dereliction. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... wisdom. They cultivated the arts of life, and made improvements in them, as appears from the sketch of their history given by Moses. But they were without God in the world; having cast off his fear, and the apprehension of his presence, and their accountableness, which often follow the dereliction of the ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee

... therefore, that parents or guardians are guilty of a grave dereliction of duty if they neglect to satisfy themselves in time on this point. Doubtless, in the great majority of cases no harm will be done. But in the rest irreparable harm is often done, and the innocent, ignorant girl who has been betrayed by ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... on Parnassus the rank reprobation of character, the utter dereliction of all principle, in a profligate junto which has not only outraged virtue, but violated common decency; which, spurning even hypocrisy as paltry iniquity below their daring;—to unmask their flagitiousness to the broadest day—to deliver such over to their merited fate, is surely not merely ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... Crawford's the next, Calhoun's the least of positive obligation, but darkened by his double-faced setting himself up as a candidate for the Presidency against me in 1821, his prevarications between Jackson and me in 1824, and his icy-hearted dereliction of all the decencies of social intercourse with me, solely from the terror of Jackson, since the 4th of March, 1829. I walk between burning ploughshares; let me be mindful where ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... be just in this matter. The loss of the American Sunday is undoubtedly due in great measure to immigration; due in part to the weakness and dereliction of American professing Christians who have surrendered to the foreign elements and fallen in with their ideas instead of maintaining public worship and insisting upon respect for law at least. Let the blame fall where it belongs, and let the Church ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... attempted to cast on the acts of the Legislative Council. I have no hesitation in saying that many of the bills which it is most severely blamed for rejecting, were bills which it could not have passed without a dereliction of its duty to the constitution, the connexion with Great Britain, and the whole English population of the colony. If there is any censure to be passed on its general conduct, it is for having confined itself to the merely negative and defensive duties of a legislative body; for having ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... state of dereliction and despair did the General Election of 1895 surprise them. The Parnellites had their old organisation—the National League—and the Anti-Parnellites had established in opposition to this the National Federation, so that Ireland had a sufficiency of Leagues ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... do his duty, by himself. A narrow-minded man might have shaken solemn head, even if he had allowed such dereliction. But Dr. Upround knew that the girl was good, and he never put strain upon her honesty. So away she sped by a lonely little foot-path, where nobody could take from her contagion of bad morals; and avoiding ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... shall not write to him. If you are fairly intelligent, Miss Affleck, and anxious to do your best, you will do very well, I dare say. References are of little use to me; I prefer to use my own judgment. But you must understand clearly that for every dereliction there is a fine, which is deducted from the salary. A printed copy of the rules will be given you. And you may be discharged at a moment's notice ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... long in a mood which she probably regarded as a momentary dereliction of her imaginary high calling—"Come," she said, "youth, up and be doing—It is time ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... the true Glory of the Trenches. They were the Calvaries of a new redemption being wrought out for men by soiled unconscious Christs. And, as from that ancient Calvary, with all its agony of shame, torture and dereliction, there flowed a flood of light which made a new dawn for the world, so from these obscure crucifixions there would come to men a new revelation of the splendour of the human soul, the true divinity that dwells in man, the God made manifest in the flesh by acts of valour, ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... modern times is to be found—in the confused multitude of unnecessary figures—in the contradictory expression of separate parts—in the distracting brilliancy of gorgeous colours; in the laboured display, in short, of the power of the artist, and the utter dereliction of the object of the art. The great secret, on the other hand, of the beauty of the most exquisite specimens of modern art, lies in the simplicity of expression which they bear, in their production of one uniform emotion, from ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... management, a vivacious child acquires a dislike to literary application, he may appear at his books with all the stupid apathy of a dunce. In this state of literary dereliction, we should not force books and tasks of any sort upon him; we should rather watch him when he is eager at amusements of his own selection, observe to what his attention turns, and cultivate his attention upon that subject, whatever it may be. He may be led to think, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... Daniel vii. 13 (which already the Apocalypse of Enoch had understood of a personal Messiah) as a succinct description of His specific vocation—its heavenly origin and difference from all earthly Messianism; its combination of the depths of human weakness, dereliction, sufferings with the highest elevation in joy, power and glory; and its connexion of that pain with this triumph as strictly interrelated—only with and through the Cross, was there here the offer ...
— Progress and History • Various

... It is an undoubted right and duty of every member of Congress to propose any measure within the limits of the Constitution, which he believes is required by the interests of his constituents and the welfare of his country. Now mark the base surrender of this right—the wicked dereliction of this duty. All "resolutions and propositions" relating "in any way or to any extent whatever to the subject of slavery," shall be laid on the table, and "no further action whatever shall be had ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... being a co-partner in his innocence. It should not be forgotten that the agent of a private company is also a representative of that larger and more powerful corporation which we call the state. The private company can do no more than outline his duty and discharge him for dereliction; the public corporation not only prescribes his duty but imprisons or hangs him for neglect; the private company is itself but a creation of the state which exercises over it autocratic power while shirking responsibility. If I loosen a rail on the "Katy" ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... for Marian was to get along with old Jordan; for he was only a shadow of his former self. He never entered Daniel's room; if Marian wanted to see him she went upstairs, and there he sat, quiet, helpless, extinguished, a picture of utter dereliction. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... of Chambers's Burns, has studied very carefully this period of the poet's life, and found that in those days of petty faultfinding he has not once been reprimanded, either for drunkenness or for dereliction of duty. There were spies and informers about who would not have left the Excise Commissioners uninformed of the paltriest charge they could have trumped up against Burns. Nor is there, when we look at his ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... calculated to arrest Frederic's unprincipled career; nor, of course, did Adrian expect they would. He rather acted now under the persuasion that conciliation had reached its limits, inasmuch as further concessions would dishonour his dignity, and be a dereliction of his duty as chief pastor of the Christian Church;—the unconditional subjection of which under the brutal sway of the civil sword, Frederic plainly proved that it was his great aim to effect. Adrian therefore resolved, now that every advance and self-sacrifice on his side, consistent ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby

... better still, why had I not manufactured for myself a safeguard in the form of a letter to that gentleman, informing him of the important document which I held, and the danger in which it possibly stood from the family into whose toils I had now fallen? I could have cursed myself for my dereliction. ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... company he found himself again. Their friendship weaned him by degrees from the jaundiced view of life which Margaret's dereliction had induced. They drew him, in time, from his brooding melancholy, and through the upbuilding of the body restored him ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... [41] With this view he granted a universal amnesty, a final and absolute discharge of all arrears of tribute, of all debts, which, under any pretence, the fiscal officers might demand from the people. This wise dereliction of obsolete, vexatious, and unprofitable claims, improved and purified the sources of the public revenue; and the subject who could now look back without despair, might labor with hope and gratitude for ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... could a properer man be fixed on to manage public business of a pecuniary nature, than he who administers his own affairs with such care and frugality. Heaven forefend then, I should object to the propriety of his election to that office.—I only join with the muse in lamenting his dereliction from her service.] ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... Britain which she was so eager to take appeared to dance before her like an ignis fatuus. The invitation from Lady Pensil, for mysterious reasons, had never arrived; and poor Mr. Bantling himself, with all his friendly ingenuity, had been unable to explain so grave a dereliction on the part of a missive that had obviously been sent. He had evidently taken Henrietta's affairs much to heart, and believed that he owed her a set-off to this illusory visit to Bedfordshire. "He says he should think I would go to the Continent," Henrietta wrote; ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... darkness soon, And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven. Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries, 'Away!' Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood: Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay: Duty and dereliction guide thee back ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... the 533:12 creator of evil. The allegory shows that the snake-talker utters the first voluble lie, which beguiles the woman and demoralizes the man. Adam, 533:15 alias mortal error, charges God and woman with his own dereliction, saying, "The woman, whom Thou gavest me, is responsible." According to this belief, the rib taken 533:18 from Adam's side has grown into an evil mind, named woman, who aids man to make sinners more rapidly than he can alone. Is this an ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... men." Trevison glanced back; he had looked once before, out of the tail of his eye. The laborers were idling in the cut, enjoying the brief rest, taking advantage of Carson's momentary dereliction, for the last car had ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... thin forefinger was rougher than ever. She kept Theo at work at the smaller tasks she chose to trust to her, and watched her sharply, with no shadow of the softened mood she had given the candle-lighted bedroom a glimpse of. She was as severe upon any dereliction from duty as ever, and the hardness of her general demeanor was not a whit relaxed. Indeed, sometimes Theo found herself glancing up furtively from her tasks, to look at the thin, sharp face, and wondering if she had not dreamed that her arms had clasped a throbbing, ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett

... man or six men for trial, condemnation, and punishment, out of, say, four millions who have really participated in the same alleged wicked, malicious, seditious, evil-disposed, and unlawful proceeding, is unfair to the six men, and unfair to the other 3,999,994 men—is a dereliction of duty on the part of the officers of the law, and is calculated to bring the administration of justice into disrepute. Equal justice is what the constitution demands. Under military authority an army may be decimated, and a few men may properly be punished, while the rest are ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan

... and Asia, the Byzantine empire was indulged in a servile and precarious respite of thirty years. Manuel sank into the grave; and John Palaeologus was permitted to reign, for an annual tribute of three hundred thousand aspers, and the dereliction of almost all that he held beyond the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... cases, where the matrimonial connection has been founded upon a dereliction of principle, and formed in defiance of the suggestions of common prudence, of parental kindness, and even of the interdictions of Heaven itself, we feel compelled to express our grief, rather than offer our congratulations; but where, as in the present instance, the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... unfortunately within the pale of human nature. I have endeavoured, however, to soften the character, as it is depicted, from that of an utterly abandoned libertine into a man of extraordinary ambition; for great passions, though they cannot palliate crime, are nevertheless not inconsistent with a dereliction ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... Mr Matthews," he said, waving him away with his outstretched arm. "Another such dereliction from duty and you shall come forrud altogether, as you appear to like the fo'c's'le so well. I have made you third officer; but bear in mind that if I possess the power to make, I ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... useful property among those who were in want, burning and destroying all the rest with a cheerful alacrity which raised Alexander's spirits to the highest pitch. Yet Alexander was terrible and pitiless in all cases of dereliction of duty. He put to death Menander, one of his personal friends, because he did not remain in a fort, where he had been appointed to command the garrison; and he shot dead with his own hand Orsodates, a native chief who ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... farthing would he rack and strain. For stinted tithes, or stinted offering, He made the people piteously to sing. He left no leg for the good bishop's crook; Down went the black sheep in his own black book; For when the name gat there, such dereliction Came, you must know, sirs, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... of country. How many good men have I seen even in my own time, stand forward the zealous advocates of the people's rights, who have flitted upon the public stage but a very short period, and we have heard no more of them! what is the cause of this dereliction? The inference generally is, that all mankind are alike; none are to be trusted. But the fact is this, many really disinterested, truly patriotic men have been driven from off the field by the infamous slanders of the corrupt daily press. Many of ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... MR. RIMBAULT (No. 12.) has made rather a grave charge against my predecessors in office as churchwardens and overseers of this parish; and although, I regret to say, such accusations of unjust stewardship and dereliction of duty are frequently and with justice imputed to some parish officers, yet I am happy to be able, in this instance, to remove the stigma which would otherwise attach to those of St. Antholin. The churchwardens' accounts are in good preservation, and present (in an unbroken ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various

... Christendom from the summit of St. Sofia at Constantinople. But Britain's ironclads, Austria's legions, and German diplomacy barred the way in the very hour of triumph; and Russia drew back. To the Slav enthusiasts of Moscow even the Treaty of San Stefano had seemed a dereliction of a sacred duty; that of Berlin seemed the most cowardly of betrayals. As the Princess Radziwill confesses in her Recollections—that ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... a wise man, holds his tongue." Perhaps you only mean that he cannot decide, otherwise I should think such silence the reverse of magnanimity; for if others behaved the same way, how would opinion ever progress? It is a dereliction of actual duty. (In a subsequent letter to Sir J.D. Hooker (March 12th, 1860), my father wrote, "I now quite ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... experience of the Russians and Japanese; they had all about them the evidences of their forty years' commercial activity; they must have known, or at least their governors must have known, what kind of results might be looked for from modern armament—and yet they dared risk the dereliction of human morality, the cutting off of a generation of men, and their own national bankruptcy. Whether it was the madness of lust, or of pride, or of fear, it was a madness which has procured the greatest disaster of recorded time, and revealed a criminal ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett

... if this was true. He answered, that the question whether he was a believer in the Christian religion was one that no man of liberal principles ought to propose to another, or could propose without being guilty of a dereliction of duty. On this incident, Mr. Gladstone said that he would ask, 'Is it not a time for serious reflection among moderate and candid men of all parties, when such a question was actually thought impertinent interference? Surely they would say with him, that men who have no ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... poet's account of his own state of mind, after the physicians had warned him that if he persisted in using his remaining eye for his pamphlet, he would lose that too. 'The choice lay before me,' says Milton, 'between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight: in such a case I could not listen to the physician, not if AEsculapius himself had spoken from his sanctuary. I could not but obey that inward monitor, I knew not what, that spake to me from heaven. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley

... whom he saw quarterly and also on the first of May, because it was her birthday, touched and coloured his imagination far more than his father did. She was now Lady Marayne, and a prominent, successful, and happy little lady. Her dereliction had been forgiven quite soon, and whatever whisper of it remained was very completely forgotten during the brief period of moral kindliness which followed the accession of King Edward the Seventh. It no doubt ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... Neither the court nor the people of England are so ascetic as not to extenuate the indiscretions of royalty; but this charitable estimate of misgivings does not extend to approbation of any culpable dereliction of social and moral duties. The fact of his royal highness having a large family, by a lady now no more, is too well known to be concealed; but the odium attached to his royal highness for his participation in a certain scene of license and poverty, has doubtless ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various

... country may be, under certain conditions, Home, I am well aware. For many natures London has an attractiveness which is all its own. And yet to indulge one's taste for it may be a grave dereliction of duty. The State is built upon the Home, and as a training-place for social virtue, there can surely be no comparison between a home in the country and a home in London. All those educating influences ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... two famous warriors showed diverse kinds of motion. They wheeled about on high and made side-thrusts, and ran about, and rushed forward and rushed upwards. And those chastisers of foes began to strike each other with their swords. And each of them looked eagerly for the dereliction of the other. And both of those heroes leapt beautifully and both showed their skill in that battle, began also to make skilful passes at each other, and having struck each other, O king, those heroes took rest for a moment in the sight of all the troops. Having with their swords cut in pieces each ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... my various pen-and-ink skirmishes, I have sometimes half-resolved to avoid controversy. The resolution would have been unwise; for silence, on many occasions, would be a dereliction of those duties which we owe ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various

... conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, "I won't count this time!" Well, he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it, but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibres, the molecules are counting it, registering and storing ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... to be exploded for ever; that provision should be viewed, as it really was, a reasonable compensation offered by Congress, at a time when they had nothing else to give to officers of the army, for services then to be performed: it was the only means to prevent a total dereliction of the service; it was a part of their hire. I may be allowed to say, it was the price of their blood, and of your independency; it is, therefore, more than a common debt, it is a debt of honor; it can never be considered as a pension or gratuity, nor cancelled ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... been a piece of audacity of quite superb coolness for the French diplomatist to ask for British protection for ships on ostensible grounds of research, had their secret purpose been exactly opposite to the profession; and the British Minister would have been guilty of grave dereliction of duty had he not assured himself ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... measure of its strength from the South till disaster from material issues compel. With the Republican party (as of a Christmas morning) "everything is lovely and the goose hangs high;" but discomfiture, sometimes laggard, is ever attendant on dereliction of duty. This usurpation, which should have been throttled when a babe, has now become a giant seated in its castle, compelling deference and acquiescence to an anomaly, reaching beyond the Negro in its ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... scanty evidence goes, we find the poet isolated from his fellows, so far as isolation was possible, during his long stay at Bergen. He was not accused, and if there had been a chance he would have been accused, of dereliction. No doubt he pushed through the work of the theatre doggedly, but certainly not in a convivial spirit. The Norwegians are a hospitable and festal people, and there is no question that the manager of the theatre would have unusual opportunities of ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... President with communications asking the same leniency for Hicks. So certain was I that Lincoln had or would reprieve Hicks that I failed to have him shot on the day named. Some officious persons reported my dereliction to Meade, who thereupon (with some censure) ordered me to shoot Hicks on the next day, and to report in person the fact of the shooting. This order I was obliged to obey. The brigade was drawn up on three sides of a square, with ranks opened ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... die of hunger. Some have thought that Don Alvarez had given orders, that all things should be refused him; but I rather think, that Providence would try him in the same manner, as sometimes God is pleased to prove those whom he loves the best, and permitted that dereliction of him for the entire perfection ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... opportunities. Every wagon we own, from the lightest to the heaviest, is built to order on our particular specifications by the Studebaker people." Here Jeffries pointed his finger sharply at de Spain as if to convict him of some dereliction. "You've seen them! You know ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... whole is shown in a forcible way, particularly when the form falls to pieces in the attempt to lift it from the table. Edward Wiebe says in his "Paradise of Childhood": "It was the one slat which, owing to its dereliction in performing its duty, destroyed the figure and prevented all the other slats from performing theirs." One experience of this kind will teach more than a thousand precepts. The geometrical forms learned in the sense-training lessons can be reproduced ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd

... officer returned, followed by the black alone. A few words served to explain the condition of Fid. It was very apparent that the young man was not only disappointed, but that he was deeply mortified. The frank and ingenuous air, however, with which he turned to the Rover, to apologize for the dereliction of his follower, satisfied the latter that he was far from suspecting any improper agency in ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... dereliction of her penance would be accompanied with a curse upon her children may have impressed itself upon her mind. Mothers will understand better than other persons what this mother suffered from her penalty ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... point, has been imported into the field by a mistake in regard to the material scene. The leaving of the ninety and nine in the wilderness, while the shepherd went out to seek the strayed sheep, implied no dereliction of the shepherd's duty,—no injury to the body of the flock. In this transaction neither kindness nor unkindness was manifested towards those that remained on the pasture;—it had no bearing upon them at all. Nor is it necessary, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... the broom-tomahawk does not hit the canoe, wherein, if it had, it must infallibly have killed some one, but falls short, and goes tearing off with the current, well out of reach of the canoe. The Captain seeing this gross dereliction of duty by a Chargeur Reunis broom, hauls it in hand over hand and talks to it. Then he ties the other end of its line to the mooring rope, and by a better aimed shot sends the broom into the water, about ten yards above the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... this temporary dereliction of their antipathy to the sea, and intercourse with foreigners, the Egyptians can scarcely be regarded as a nation distinguished for their maritime and commercial enterprises; and they certainly by no means, either by sea or land, took advantages ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... with us should we tend— Presuming as Thy favoured Race, All flushed to own so great a Friend— To dereliction into grace! Deal gently with us, Lord, should we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various

... distinguished a rattling of stones and the sharp, metallic clicks of hoofs striking rocks. Then into a space below me loped a beautiful deer, so large that at first I took it for an elk. Another sharp bark, nearer this time, told the tale of Moze's dereliction. In a few moments he came in sight, running with his tongue out and ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... in because they have to, and who then do the needed work in the interest of the people. The blame in such cases lies with the body which has been derelict, and not with the body which reluctantly makes good the dereliction. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... the Council) "withdraw his protection and interference altogether," on or about the month of August, 1782, and did signify his resolution, through the Resident, Middleton, to the Nabob Vizier. But the said Hastings asserts that "the consequence of this his own second dereliction of the prince of Furruckabad was an aggravated renewal of the severities exercised against his government, and the reappointment of a sezauwil, with powers delegated or assumed, to the utter extinction of the rights of Muzuffer Jung, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke



Words linked to "Dereliction" :   wrongdoing, willful neglect, negligence, neglectfulness, delinquency, actus reus, carelessness, misconduct, nonperformance, nonfeasance, wrongful conduct, neglect



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