"Indiscretion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the girl. Coming from his lips, it shocked her. In his former speech he had not denounced her crime, but only her indiscretion and the folly of her attempt. Suddenly he referred to God as his protector, asserting his personal uprightness as warrant for Divine protection; and, singularly enough, his ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... overpowered all else, we get a book like that friend of childhood, "Sanford and Merton," which Thomas Day perpetrated in the year of grace 1783. Few properly reared boys of a generation ago escaped this literary indiscretion: its Sunday School solemnity, its distribution of life's prizes according to the strictest moral tests, had a sort of bogey fascination; it was much in vogue long after Day's time, indeed down to ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... already forgiven for that; I trust that with your good favor my earlier indiscretion ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... so definitely explained, he had felt the presence of danger before; but so long as it threatened himself alone it added a spice of excitement to the adventure; now, however, that he realised what grave consequences the least indiscretion on his part might bring upon Marie de' Medici herself, he ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... indiscretion he brought home a tackle-maker's catalogue, with the "things" which he considered generously requisite. Then the girls consulted the pamphlet, and, backed of course by the vicar, insisted that a silver spring balance in morocco case (to weigh up to or down from 4 lb.), an oil bottle for ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... that probably will not make much by the motion. I am not surprised that those of our friends who went out from us and have been feeding on the husks desire to get in ahead; but I am surprised at the indiscretion and the want of common sense exercised in making so profound a plunge at once! If these gentlemen desire to be taken into companionship and restored to good standing, I am the first man to reach out the hand and say, 'Welcome back again, so that ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... reduce them to their simplest elements, and to prove that the favors of lovers were mere pleasure, that there were no pledges—philosophically speaking—excepting those which were given to the world, when we allowed it to penetrate our secrets and joined it in the acts of indiscretion. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... published by a curious act of indiscretion, and of course at once denied in London, nevertheless threw a flood of light on England's political situation. Japan did not directly ask for military aid, which, as a matter of fact, she had no right to expect under the terms ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... attitudes gave him no uneasiness. Truth to tell, he did not realize any significance. The one thing that did concern him and trouble him was that he somehow felt convinced that he had committed the very indiscretion O'Brien ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... of ancestors, and a long acquiescence of the people, without any act of his, had put him in possession. A misfortune it has indeed turned out to him, that he was born king of France. But misfortune is not crime, nor is indiscretion always the greatest guilt. I shall never think that a prince, the acts of whose whole reign were a series of concessions to his subjects, who was willing to relax his authority, to remit his prerogatives, to call his people to a share of freedom not known, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... imply that in this case self-praise smells sweet. Here also the instinct of the populace cries, "Freedom from all masters!" and after science has, with the happiest results, resisted theology, whose "hand-maid" it had been too long, it now proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for philosophy, and in its turn to play the "master"—what am I saying! to play the PHILOSOPHER on its own account. My memory—the memory of a scientific man, if you please!—teems with the naivetes ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... say so?" cried Harry. "Why, how strange! But indeed for some time back I walk among surprises. One question I think I may surely ask without indiscretion: Is he the master of ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... length The traffic in the town was stilled. is Convinced The clock struck six. Men thronged the inns. of Indiscretion. Dear, dear, she should be ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... that some of them are suspected whose lives are perfectly pure, none who have deviated from the paths of virtue can long keep their fall concealed. Can the same be said of the other departments of life? No. Now and then indiscretion, accident, or a total abandonment of decency brings to light the misconduct of an individual; but in general the irregularities of private life either escape detection or are hushed up by pride. Sometimes ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... he succeeded in taking prisoner General Williamson, formerly of the Americans, whose life was forfeited to the country. The capture of Williamson put all the available cavalry of the British into activity, and by an unfortunate indiscretion, Hayne suffered himself to be overtaken. His execution soon followed his capture. This was a proceeding equally barbarous and unjustifiable—neither sanctioned by policy nor propriety. It took place after a brief examination, and without any trial. The proceeding ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... the window. In this there was no indiscretion; for a cold drizzle washed the panes, and the warmth of the apartment ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... certain whether she is at home now. But most likely she is. She has buried her stepmother to-day: she is not likely to go visiting on such a day. For the time I don't want to speak to anyone about it and I half regret having spoken to you. The slightest indiscretion is as bad as betrayal in a thing like this. I live there in that house, we are coming to it. That's the porter of our house—he knows me very well; you see, he's bowing; he sees I'm coming with a lady and no doubt he has noticed ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... attitude; yet here he was, he—Mr. Brimmer—with the appearance of being installed in her parlor, receiving her visitors, and dispensing her courtesies. Only a man recklessly in love would be guilty of such an indiscretion—even Markham's feebleness had never reached this absurdity. In the midst of his uneasiness there was a knock at the door; he opened it himself nervously and sharply. Markham's self-satisfied face drew back in alarm and embarrassment at the unexpected apparition. ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... was kept secret, and officers and crew entered into an unlimited engagement to go wherever they might be led. On the 25th June, 1615, eleven days after quitting the Texel, and when there was no longer anything to be feared from indiscretion, the crews were assembled to listen to the reading of an order which ran as follows: "The two vessels would seek another passage than that of Magellan, by which to enter the South Sea, and to discover there certain southern countries, in the hope of obtaining enormous profits ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... absences to poison the mind of the queen, with jealous suspicions of her favourite, and to inspire her with belief, that Miss Marchmont's propriety of demeanour in public, had only been a successful mask of private indiscretion; and that Charles had not been ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... information vouchsafed by these disembodied intelligences, in any language one pleased; and, although they at times displayed remarkable obstinacy, refusing to answer, or breaking off abruptly in the middle of a most interesting communication, as though they had been betrayed into indiscretion: yet, to speak generally, there was scarcely any topic on which they were not ready to discourse—past, present, or to come—and their remarks, whether accurate or not, were invariably logical, bearing an intelligible relation to the question. Even sporting ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... wore low-necked dresses without disguise, which in summer, beneath flower-adorned hats, are very graceful and enticing; but by the side of these audacious outfits, blond Fantine's canezou, with its transparencies, its indiscretion, and its reticence, concealing and displaying at one and the same time, seemed an alluring godsend of decency, and the famous Court of Love, presided over by the Vicomtesse de Cette, with the sea-green eyes, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... many officials, American, German, and Austrian, but at present I cannot, without indiscretion, ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... who were concerned in the Raid were much chaffed for the incredible simplicity with which he allowed a private memorandum as to preparations for the Raid to fall into the hands of the Boers. His indiscretion has been thrown entirely into the shade by the simplicity which allowed War Office documents of the most secret and compromising nature to fall into the hands of the Boers, showing that preparations for the present war ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... somewhere, and is making studies for it. I don't like her in the least, but four is certainly a more comfortable number than three. I scarcely ever have a moment alone with Mr. Copley, for, go where I will and do what I please, as Aunt Celia has the most perfect confidence in my indiscretion, she is ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... slight matter, to tell the internal conflicts in the heart of a quiet person something more than juvenile and something less than senile, as to whether he should be guilty of an impropriety, and, if he were, whether he would get caught in his indiscretion. And yet the memory of the kiss that Margaret of Scotland gave to Alain Chartier has lasted four hundred years, and put it into the head of many an ill-favored poet, whether Victoria, or Eugenie, would do as much by him, if she happened to pass him ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... one moment that he was quite equal to mount his horse, and that he would go out and see what they were about; and then again almost fainting, with the exhaustion occasioned by his intense excitement. Then he would lament the inexperience of Henri, expressing his dread that his indiscretion this day would ruin all their hopes: and, again, when he saw how painful these surmises were to Agatha and Marie, he would begin to praise his courage and indomitable good spirits, and declare that their strongest safeguard lay in the affection to ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... kitchen, in such a passion of angry grief, because they had taken her master from her, because they had killed him, that she did not even try to find a word of welcome or consolation for this child whom she had brought up. And without calculating the consequences of her indiscretion, the grief or the joy which she might cause, she relieved herself ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... "The judge'll be here in a minute, now," said the assistant district attorney, and went inside a railed enclosure in front of the judge's bench. There he greeted another assistant district attorney whose years were those of even greater indiscretion than the years of Mr. Andrews. Seated on the rail, with their hands in their pockets and their backs turned to Mr. Thorndike, they laughed and talked together. The subject of their discourse was one Mike Donlin, as ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... so distant from other dwellings, might have been called a rural retreat, although situated in the limits of the city. There the stranger, who was understood to be a prisoner of state, lived in the greatest seclusion; and although neither he nor his attendant could be guilty of indiscretion, because none understood their language, and although Governor Perier severely rebuked the slightest inquiry, yet it seemed to be the settled conviction in Louisiana, that the mysterious stranger was a brother ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... beg of you to forgive my indiscretion. I'm afraid you'll think it shows great want of delicacy on my part. It was only meant for English chaff. Don't be angry, Harry." ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... with quietly sapping the influence of the guardian: now that influence was openly assailed. All occasions were seized of depreciating the character of Mr. Dacre, and open lamentations were poured forth on the strange and unhappy indiscretion of the father who had confided the guardianship of his son, not to his natural and devoted friends, but to a harsh and repulsive stranger. Long before the young Duke had completed his sixteenth year all memory of the early kindness ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... was as much put out as if he had been guilty of another and worse indiscretion. The idea of anybody ordering his common doings, not to say his oddities, by principles drawn from a source far too sacred to be practically regarded, was too preposterous to have ever become even a notion to her. Henceforth, however, it was a mote to trouble her ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... friend," Hebblethwaite protested, "I am nothing of the sort. I am simply a man of much common sense, enjoying, I may add, a few hours' holiday. By-the-by, Norgate, if one might venture to enquire without indiscretion, who was the remarkably charming foreign lady ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he continued: "It seems that Rocdiane surprised his wife in a criminal situation, and has made her pay dearly for her indiscretion." ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... underrated his adversary. He has not given me credit for perceiving the meaning of the scented messages. He has thrown away one powerful weapon—to get such a message into my hands—and he thinks that once safe within doors, I shall sleep, unsuspecting, and die as Sir Crichton died. But without the indiscretion of your charming friend, I should have known what to expect when I receive her 'information'—which by the way, consists of a ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... venture to tell you what it contains?" Mr. Cowl suggested. "There can be no indiscretion on my part, as all wills after probate are public property and can be inspected by any Tom, Dick or Harry for a ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... hadn't thought highly of the thing up to that moment. But some way it seemed to him I was talking scandal about his pet—kind of clouding up its ancestry, if you know what I mean. He didn't seem to get any broad view of it at all. You'd almost think I'd been reporting an indiscretion in some member of his family. Can you beat it? Heating up that way over a puny kitten, six inches from tip to tip, that he'd been thinking of as a pest and only taken to please Irene Tuttle! So he starts in from that minute to doctor it up and nurture it with canned soup and delicacies; ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... and with so kind a face that every fear was allayed.' But we meet, also, with sympathy of a different kind. Novelists, depending wholly on the favour of their patrons, tell us the love stories of the prince, even before his death, in a way which, to later times, would seem the height of indiscretion, but which then passed simply as an innocent compliment. Lyrical poets even went so far as to sing the illicit flames of their lawfully married lords, e.g. Angelo Poliziano, those of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Gioviano Pontano, with a singular gusto, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... jumped eight points in audience-rating. It actually reached top-twenty rating when it assigned a regular five-minute period to the Dabney Field and its possibilities in human terms. On the sixth day after Jamison's calculated indiscretion, the public consciousness was literally saturated with the idea of faster-than-light transportation. Dabney was mentioned in every interview of every stuffed shirt, he was referred to on every comedy show (three separate jokes had been invented, which were developed ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... they have spies among our own men the least indiscretion may give the alarm. Besides, there is no time to lose; it would be madness to go there after dark. ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... it was no easy matter for Sylvia to get at the truth. The nurses, already terrified because of their indiscretion, had been first professionally thrashed, and then carefully drilled as to the answers they were to make. But as a matter of fact they did not have to make any answers at all, because Sylvia was unwilling to reveal to anyone her distrust ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... mercilessly aroused poor Chips from the profound sleep that was gradually clearing his muddled brain, and tongue-lashed the bewildered man until he must have scarcely known whether he was upon his head or his heels. Fortunately for the schoolmaster, Chips's indiscretion had been a mild one indeed compared with those of the forecastle hands, and he therefore accepted Wilde's rebukes with a tolerably good grace and in silence; but Wilde was one of those enthusiasts who carry even their virtues to excess, and his denunciations of Chips ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... public interest is in his hands. It is a wholly one-sided and tricky relationship, which sometimes reaches such heights of absurdity, that Congress, in order to secure an important document has to thank the enterprise of a Chicago newspaper, or the calculated indiscretion of a subordinate official. So bad is the contact of legislators with necessary facts that they are forced to rely either on private tips or on that legalized atrocity, the Congressional investigation, where Congressmen, starved of their legitimate ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... after receiving particular orders how to scour the country, were sent off at the same time to search for Gaetano. Fortunately the Beluches obeyed my injunctions, and at 10 A.M. returned with the man, who looked for all the world exactly like a dog who, guilty of an indiscretion, is being brought in disgrace before his master to receive a flogging; for he knew I had a spare donkey for the sick, and had constantly warned the men from stopping behind alone in these lawless countries. The other two parties adopting, like true Easterns, a better plan of their own, spent ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the Empress as soon as she should reach the middle room to take a place on the throne, and give her courtiers time to arrange themselves about her, before we were introduced. I had brought a gimlet, and with this I had bored a good many holes in the door of our room. This little indiscretion, which was not mentioned in our report, gave us an opportunity to inspect the appearance of our young sovereign at our ease. I need not say that it was the ladies of our party who were most anxious to make use of the ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... unconscious, and, I don't know whether to call it an excuse for Uncle Alwyn or not, but to this hour he is not sure whether it was a legal marriage, and my father believes it was not, looking on it as a youthful indiscretion. He put her in lodgings at Dieppe, under Mrs. Houghton's protection, while he returned home on a peremptory summons from the General. He found the old man in such a state of body and mind as he tries to persuade me was an excuse for denying the whole thing, and ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... part of honest Nathan's designs to be left behind. His feelings were too deeply involved in the fate of the unhappy individuals, whose misadventures he could, or thought he could, so clearly trace to his own indiscretion, to suffer him to rest, while it was yet wrapped in obscurity. He had accepted the charge and responsibility of extricating them from their perils; and his conscience could not be appeased until he had determined for himself whether in truth they were yet beyond the ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... marches, Mr. Patten accompanying his patron, Mr. Forster. As they went, the undaunted Highlanders called out to the country people who came to gaze at them, "Where are all your high-church Tories? If they would not fight with us, let them come and rescue us." This indiscretion redoubled the vigilance of the watch put upon the rebels. From Daventry to London, Mr. Forster and Mr. Patten were greeted by the common people with encomiums upon a warming-pan, in allusion to the supposed birth of the Pretender. When the prisoners arrived at Barnet, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... through the remarkable over-confidence and indiscretion of Edwin James, Q.C., who opposed us. James's client was the husband of the deceased. By her will the lady had left him the whole of her property, amounting to nearly L100,000. The case we set up was that the wife had been improperly influenced ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... quieter, and always coming to her for news of Steadfast. There were even tears in those bright eyes when she heard how much he suffered. The girl had evidently been greatly sobered by the results of her indiscretion, and the treachery into which it had led her. She probably cared more for Steadfast than for anyone else except herself, and was shocked and grieved at his condition; and she had moreover discovered how her credulity had been ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... embarrassment that used to overwhelm them both when they met on the stairs. She had often dreamed of this, but had always put it off to some far-distant day. It was to come gradually, little by little, instead of, as now, abruptly and with no preparation. That she should permit herself the indiscretion of actually intruding herself into his room had never so much as occurred to her. Yet here she was, IN HIS ROOM, and they were talking together, and little by little her ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... time of the French and Indian wars, the American army was encamped on the plains of Chippewa. Colonel St. Clair, the commander, was a bold and meritorious officer; but there was mixed with his bravery a large share of rashness or indiscretion. His rashness, in this case, consisted in encamping on an open plain beside a thick wood, from which an Indian scout could easily pick off his outposts, without being exposed, in the least, to the ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... that self-contained bearing which always had marked him as a man of large affairs. It was his uncle's strict rule, he recalled, never to take a second drink; it was an axiom of the Honorable Milton's that the second drink drew the cork on indiscretion and eventual inebriety. That something had happened which must have disturbed him greatly to make him break this rule was a deduction as simple as the evidence that he had ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... enemy, and the sudden aid of an accomplished friend, irretrievably. Both suffered politically by the repudiation of a wife; but Charlemagne, under adequate provocation, and with no final result of evil; Bonaparte under heavy aggravations of ingratitude and indiscretion. Both assumed the character of a patron to learning and learned men; but Napoleon, in an age when knowledge of every kind was self-patronized—when no possible exertions of power could avail to crush it—and yet, under these circumstances, with utter insincerity. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... never a nod. In her sight he surely could commit no indiscretion. A moment later the ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... a neighbor of hers, this audacious youth, though not of Washington Street; impecunious, and hence negligible; moreover somewhat notorious of late for a too vivid behavior: the distant bowing acquaintance of many years. This till the moment of indiscretion last May; when, encountering his dashing attractions in the boredom of a dull resort, far from her mother's restrictive eye, she had for an idle fortnight allowed the relation between them to become ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that Flanagan,—knowing this as he did, could almost have bit a portion of his own tongue off as a punishment for its indiscretion. It was then too late, however, to efface the impression which the words were calculated to make, and he felt besides that he would only strengthen the suspicion by an over-anxiety to remove it. He, therefore, repeated his orders respecting the appointed meeting ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... senses. Her tone was one of reproof, plus decision. It convicted me of an indiscretion. If I had asked to take the roof off and replace it with silk umbrellas, it might have been justified. But to a request ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... notable man," he answered slowly, "and one who may have a great future before him, if only he does not let it slip from him by some indiscretion at the beginning." ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... And never for a moment did he suspect that she might be an inmate of the Carmelite Convent, for, although he was aware of the terrible power wielded by that institution, yet feeling convinced that Flora herself was incapable of any indiscretion, it never struck him that the wicked machinations of another might place her in the custody of the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... party, whose principles he naturally disliked, and whose leaders he personally hated, as they did him. He became a thorough convert by a perfect trifle; taking fire at a nickname[26] delivered by Dr. Sacheverell, with great indiscretion, from the pulpit, which he applied to himself: and this is one among many instances given by his enemies, that magnanimity is ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... replied the midwife, "that we ourselves are primarily interested in all the secrets entrusted to us; that an indiscretion would destroy all confidence in us, and that there ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the sweltering heats of the tropics. On November 2nd, 1802, Leclerc succumbed to the unhealthy climate and to his ceaseless anxieties. In the Notes dictated at St. Helena, Napoleon submitted Leclerc's memory to some strictures for his indiscretion in regard to the proposed restoration of slavery. The official letters of that officer expose the injustice of the charge. The facts are these. After the seeming submission of St. Domingo, the First Consul caused a decree to be secretly ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... romantic ideals. Her letters are very clever and make me laugh exceedingly, but I am sorry she has such a detestation of Mrs. Marcet and natural philosophy. As for her letters being shown about, I am not sorry that my indiscretion has relieved A—— from a restraint which, if it had only been disagreeable to her, would not have mattered so much, but which is calculated to destroy all possibility of free and natural correspondence, and inevitably renders letters mere compositions and their young authors vain ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... socialistic nonsense. You will have to rid yourself of it. Our family has always arrayed itself squarely against such indefensible theories.... But the thing to do at once is to wipe out any silly ideas your indiscretion may have ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... not infamous to introduce the comparison, I would plume myself upon my virtue when I wrote La Nanna. I would demonstrate the superiority of my reserve to your indiscretion, seeing that I, while handling themes lascivious and immodest, use language comely and decorous, speak in terms beyond reproach and inoffensive to chaste ears. You, on the contrary, presenting so awful a subject, exhibit saints and angels, these without earthly decency, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... information respecting Susy's relations, either from the young girl's own confidences or from Jim's personal knowledge of the old frontier families. From a sense of loyalty to Susy and Mrs. Peyton, he had never alluded to the subject before him, but since the young girl's own indiscretion had made it a matter of common report, however distasteful it was to his own feelings, he felt he could not plead the sense of delicacy for her. He had great hopes in what he had always believed was only her exaggeration of fact as well as feeling. And he had an instinctive reliance on her ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... her to take upon herself a part she was unable to sustain. Violent, unreflecting, accessible to the most contradictory suggestions, ready for any turn, and the sport of every caprice, she was wanting in all the better qualities of a political woman. Her indiscretion became formidable on all occasions when secresy was necessary, and more than once the Duke de Beaufort was obliged to be excluded from the assemblages at which the chiefs of the Fronde took counsel together. It was well known ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... genuine petty trouble for a young woman, but for a woman beyond forty, this sort of indiscretion is so delightful, that the greatest prudes are flattered by ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... skirting sometimes unfathomable abysms of thought, where I had hardly the courage to set foot. In short, she was fascinating in a thousand and fifty different ways, and at every step I executed a new and profounder emotional folly, a hardier spiritual indiscretion, incurring fresh liability to arrest by the constabulary of conscience for infractions ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... a bow, "excuse my involuntary indiscretion. I could not help overhearing what you have just said. You would like to be of service to a poor old man. And the wish, Madame, has already been fulfilled—the mere sound of a French voice has given me such pleasure that I must ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... "Perhaps I have no excuse even for being here at all. My duty as a soldier is certainly elsewhere, but I could not rest content until I knew you were in a position of safety. Believe me, Mrs. Brennan, I have intended no indiscretion, but I was informed by a soldier that you were being held here under fire. It would have been useless for me to appeal to the Major for information, and I felt I must know the truth. If I have erred in this I can only plead the deep interest I have always ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... declared there can be no happiness for one who is under constant apprehensions? But it was not now in his power to return to justice, and restore his citizens their rights and privileges; for, by the indiscretion of youth, he had engaged in so many wrong steps, and committed such extravagances, that had he attempted to have returned to a right way of thinking he must have ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... or cause, we all felt self-conscious and ill at ease, as if guilty of some indiscretion. But the face of the mysterious Rajput remained as calm and as dispassionate as ever. He was looking at the river before this scene took place, and slowly moved his eyes to the Akali, who lay prostrated before him. Then he touched the head of the Sikh with his index finger, and rose with the remark ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... thought all that very sensible, and I quite agreed with you when you added: 'So, Monsieur le Marquis, no borrowing of this kind until after your marriage—not on any pretext whatever. Go without eating rather than do it. Your credit is still good; but it is being slowly undermined—and the indiscretion of a friend who chanced to say: "I think Valorsay is hard up," might fire the train, and then ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... have to suspect one of them, or to impugn the ordinary code of honourable conduct. He found it extremely difficult, autocrat as he was, to put it into words. He was sore and angry at the grave indiscretion, if not something worse, that had been committed, most of all that it should have been himself, the great officer of state, in whom it was unpardonable to choose the wrong tool, who had put that immeasurably important secret into ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... see what's going on under his very nose. He's too proud a man, too sure of his own good judgment, to believe for a moment that the woman to whom he gave his name would be guilty of the slightest indiscretion of ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... said the soft voice; so commonplace a question and so casually asked, that Eldris was nearly betrayed into indiscretion. She caught herself ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... ask her again if she were fond of reading; she could not read. Noticing a change in the expression of her face, he concluded that she was disappointed to hear that he liked Sarah and regretted his indiscretion. ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... immediately acquired he used for no sinister or selfish ends. He stooped to none of the arts of the demagogue; he was never carried away by a blind spirit of faction. He opposed the arbitrary design of the English ministry with great spirit and firmness, though with some indiscretion; but he was no advocate of turbulent dissensions or causeless revolt. He allowed himself to be ruled by the greater moderation and prudence of his associates, while he inspired them with his own ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... was the gentlest answer I received. Whilst I languished in a condition too horrible to be described, and which, in a land of humanity, and, what is much more, Christianity, seems a strange punishment for a little inadvertency and indiscretion; whilst I was in this condition, a fellow came into the prison, and, enquiring me out, delivered me the ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... not committed so great an indiscretion as the reader, of course shocked, might at first imagine. For the first time for some days he slept, and slept soundly. Next to wine, a renovating slumber perhaps puts us in the best humour with our destiny. Ferdinand awoke ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... reconstruct an extinct monster from the inspection of a single bone; but it is a harder task to revive the figure of a man, even by the aid of these family testimonies, this self-analysis, the diligence of countless interviewers of all nationalities, and indiscretion of a friend like Edmond de Goncourt (who seems to have acted on the theory that it is the whole duty of man to take notes of the talk of his fellows for prompt publication). Yet we have ample material ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... fellow," replied Aubrey. "You must pardon the indiscretion of cousinly interest. Tell me of your new book. Have ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... state; while each application of the child to the breast is followed by the same result. It will generally be found, when this accident takes place in the previously healthy child of a healthy mother, that it has been occasioned by some act of indiscretion on the part of its mother or nurse. She perhaps has been absent from her nursling longer than usual, and returning tired from a long walk or from some fatiguing occupation, has at once offered it the breast, and allowed it to suck abundantly; or the infant has been ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... immersed in dominoes on whom his eyes had begun by resting, but to their host of the previous hour, as to whom, there on the velvet bench, with a final collapse of all consistency, he treated himself to the comfort of indiscretion. "Where do you ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... arts of self-defence, as legitimately and honourably hers as the manful use of the fists with a coarser sex. If it had not been nature that taught her the practice of them in extremity, the sagacious dowagers would have seen brazenness rather than innocence—or an excuseable indiscretion—in the part she was performing. They are not lightly duped by one of their sex. Few tasks are more difficult than for a young woman under a cloud to hoodwink old women of the world. They are the prey of financiers, but Time has presented them a magic ancient glass to scan ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... has anything, or in some other way disposing himself to devotion, does not do what he can to be heard by God, wherefore he tempts God implicitly as it were. And though this implicit temptation would seem to arise from presumption or indiscretion, yet the very fact that a man behaves presumptuously and without due care in matters relating to God implies irreverence towards Him. For it is written (1 Pet. 5:6): "Be you humbled . . . under the mighty hand of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... women mostly detest, because, in their secret hearts, they would like to be up there too! Personally I have no use for pedestals. I am content to be bon camarade! As for that sublime Desmond woman, I feel morally certain that she never commits an indiscretion, or has a knot in her shoe-lace, or ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... opening day they decoyed him in at least five inquiring souls, all of whom stayed to talk a bit. There was a 'Queen Mab;' and a 'Lyrical Ballads;' an 'Endymion;' a few Landors thrown in, and a 'Bride of Abydos'—this last not of much account, for its author had the indiscretion, from the collector's point of view, to be famous from the beginning, and so to flood the world ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... yet engaged in this task when the boy opened his eyes, and learning to his surprise that the day was at least an hour old, sprang to his feet like one who has been guilty of an indiscretion. ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... misfortunes of that kind. I wish to ask you, if, since the birth of the king, any indiscretion on a friend's part has caused your majesty the slightest serious ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... before the reign of Lavita, the son of Sami—a strange Korong was cast up upon this island by the waves of the sea, much as you and I have been in the present generation. By accident, says the story, or else, as others aver, through the indiscretion of a native woman who fell in love with him, and who worried the taboo out of her husband, the stranger became acquainted with the secret of Tu-Kila-Kila. As the natives themselves put it, he learned the ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... on the thousand-and-second night, (I quote the language of the "Isitsoornot" at this point, verbatim) "my dear sister," said she, "now that all this little difficulty about the bowstring has blown over, and that this odious tax is so happily repealed, I feel that I have been guilty of great indiscretion in withholding from you and the king (who I am sorry to say, snores—a thing no gentleman would do) the full conclusion of Sinbad the sailor. This person went through numerous other and more interesting adventures ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... flushed before, was scarlet now. Never before had the lips of man except her father's touched her own, and the rapture of the sensation was quickly succeeded by a strong maidenly reserve. What should she do? she asked herself. How could she atone for her indiscretion? She turned instinctively to ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... majority-a victory which the tories failed not to announce by shouts of exultation, which out-thundered those of their opponents in their late short-lived triumph. The friends of freedom, being thus caught in their own trap, or, at least, worsted by the indiscretion of their own friends, now pretty much yielded the contest: while the victorious Yorkers and tories had everything in their own way, electing their town officers, passing denunciatory and royal resolutions, and continuing their discussions ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... that had happened, Betty, terrified almost out of her senses by the result of her indiscretion, had flown—flown out of the room and out ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... whose whole interests lie with the King, no one would dare suggest that you had had the slightest sympathy for a rebel, or that Aylingford had ever willingly opened its gates to a fugitive from Monmouth's rabble army. Martin's indiscretion puts you in danger. If by some careless word you are responsible for that indiscretion, which may very likely be the case, you are in grave danger. Rosmore is not here alone, and though he may be silent, other tongues will wag. Is ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... a laugh, "You must blame your son's indiscretion, and not applaud me!" Thus saved from a formal and unsatisfactory conversation, the knight remounted his horse and led the way to ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... the fair land of France, in the character of a smuggler of war material. However, they had never arrested or expelled him, since he was there before my eyes. But how and why did he get so far from the scene of his sea adventure was an interesting question. And I put it to him with most naive indiscretion which did not shock him visibly. He told me that the ship being only stranded, not sunk, the contraband cargo aboard was doubtless in good condition. The French custom-house men were guarding the wreck. If their vigilance could be—h'm—removed by some means, or even merely reduced, a ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... for it, or against it, he would join them to make a majority. I was for it. We agreed to give separate opinions to the President. Knox said we should have had fine work, if Congress had been sitting these two last months. The fool thus let out the secret. Hamilton endeavored to patch up the indiscretion of this blabber, by saying 'he did not know; he rather thought they would have strengthened ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... D'Auteroche writes:—'La douceur de sa physionomie et sa vivacite annoncaient plutot quelque indiscretion que l'ombre d'un crime. Tous ceux que j'ai consultes par la suite m'ont cependant assure qu'elle etait coupable.' Voyage en Siberie, i. 227. Lord Kames says:—'Of whatever indiscretion she might have been guilty, the sweetness ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... enemies."— "Berthier," replied the Emperor, smiling, "that is a good observation on your part, and I thank you for it; I really believe I have made you think I was an idiot. You think, then," continued his Majesty, pinching sharply one of the Prince de Neuchatel's ears, "that I committed the indiscretion of giving them whips with which to return and flog us? Calm yourself, I did not ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Lyra Vyall, which goes most admirably. Thence home by coach to the 'Change, after having been at the Coffee-house, where I hear Turner is found guilty of felony and burglary; and strange stories of his confidence at the barr, but yet great indiscretion in his argueing. All desirous of his being hanged. So home and found that Will had been with my wife. But, Lord! why should I think any evil of that; and yet I cannot forbear it. But upon enquiry, though I found no reason of doubtfulness, yet I could not bring my nature ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... set sail on the morning of December 24. In the evening when the admiral had retired the helmsman committed the indiscretion of confiding the helm to a ship's boy. About midnight when off Cape Haitien, near their destination, the vessel was caught in a current and swept upon a sandbank where she began to keel over. During the confusion ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... found who will do better, but it is not so in most cases where a nurse proves unsatisfactory. The whole profession suffers and every nurse sinks more or less if one of her sister nurses commits an indiscretion, or does any of the thousand things she ought not to do. I recollect very well, many years ago, a Brooklyn nurse, of about thirty-five years, married her patient, a boy nineteen years old. It made a great stir in the ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... institutions. In Great Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, they have long abounded. They have rendered accessible an enormous body of inedited or unknown material for history, archaeology, and biography; and after all deductions for indiscretion and dilettantism, they may be pronounced the medium for having shed new and precious light on well-nigh all branches of human science. To the book-collector they appeal less in a possessory sense than as works of reference. Where they enter into his plan is in the ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... an unmitigated sense of his own indiscretion, and not such a high one of Fitzjocelyn's discretion as to make him think the interview sufficiently desirable for the culprit, to justify the possible mischief to the adviser, whose wisdom and folly were equally perplexing, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one advantage over others that were now hunting Lucy. Mrs. Wilson had unwittingly given him pretty plain directions how to find her farmhouse; and as Eve, in the exercise of her discretion, or indiscretion, had shown David Lucy's letter, he had only to ride to Harrowden and inquire. But, on the other hand, his competitors were a few miles nearer the game, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... get into an abbey, foretells her violent illness. If she converses with a priest in an abbey, she will incur the censure of true friends for indiscretion. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... convulsion of Nature? He felt sure that Fakrash would hesitate at no means, however violent, of burying all traces of his blunder in oblivion, and very little hope that, whatever he did, it would prove anything but some worse indiscretion ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... reflected upon our indiscretion, that we had not, at least, brought poles or stakes in our hands, with which we might have, as it were, palisadoed ourselves in for the night, and so we might have slept secure, whatever other inconveniences we suffered. However, we found a way at last to relieve ourselves a little; ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... some newly admirable thing about her in whom he had reawakened the desire and the power to attract. True, their intercourse was purely intellectual. Yet Ivan had long ago perceived, even in the midst of wreck and disease, what this woman must have been in the heyday of her indiscretion; and he realized how helpless he should have been in her hands twenty years before. It is possible that, in time, the physical might have come to life in him. He might have forgotten the years, the emaciation, even the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... I don't know," came back. "At least this is my first indiscretion. There are twenty-four hours in each day, and I must spend them somehow. Come ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... as the sturdy retainer was gone, and the sound of his heavy boots had died away, Mr. Jellicorse shook his head very gravely, and said, as he opened and looked through his packet, which confirmed the words of Jordas, "Sad indiscretion—want of legal knowledge—headstrong women—the very way to spoil it all! My troubles are beginning, and I ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... controversy between John Quincy Adams, and the Federalists of Boston, once saved me, and helped me to escape from a position in which I found myself by an indiscretion in debate. In 1843 the office of Attorney-General was abolished, by the active efforts of the Democrats aided by the passiveness of the Whigs. The Democrats thought the office unnecessary, the Whigs were content to have it abolished, that the party might get rid of the incumbent, James T. Austin. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... extremely annoyed at all these proceedings. I said, 'Why then, did not he stop them?' 'Because the great misfortune of our party is that he won't communicate with anybody.' So that this most inexpedient discussion was forced on by the precipitation and indiscretion of two or three men, against the convictions and the wishes of the wise and the moderate of all parties; and when a few words of prudence and conciliation might have stopped the whole proceeding, pride, or obstinacy, or awkwardness prevented those words being ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville |
