"Well-meaning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... venerable statesman to appear with all the peculiarities of a young dandy. The flowers, feathers, and furbelows which a light-hearted young girl of seventeen embellishes by the airy grace with which she wears them, are simply ridiculous when transferred to the toilet of her serious, well-meaning mamma, who bears them about with an anxious face, merely because a loquacious milliner has assured her, with many protestations, that it is the fashion, and the only thing remaining for ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... himself necessary in the houses which he frequented. He took the first step in the downward path by undertaking a host of small commissions; many and many a time Pons ran on errands instead of the porter or the servant; many a purchase he made for his entertainers. He became a kind of harmless, well-meaning spy, sent by one family into another; but he gained no credit with those for whom he trudged about, and ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... has grown up, she will very soon look out for other diversions." "My dear child," he would sometimes say to her, "do exactly as you like. I only beg of you one thing: whenever you are tired of these innocent, well-meaning illusions and return to rough, prosaic, brutal reality; whenever you feel yourself deceived or wounded by those whom you may have implicitly trusted, pray recollect that you have a natural protector, a ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... reviews, unions, associations, which had all the moral virtues, save one: self-denial; for not one of them would give way to the others: and, while they wrangled over the crumbs that fell from an honest and well-meaning public, small in numbers and poor in purse, they vegetated for a short time, starved and languished, and at last collapsed never to rise again, not under the assault of the enemy, but—(most pitiful!)—under the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... accept your right to question it from that standpoint. As far as I can see, it is one of those operations which is considered clever among business folk, and which is admired and laughed over in reputable business circles. And I have no doubt that hundreds of well-meaning business men do that sort of thing daily—yes, thousands!" He shrugged his broad shoulders. "Because I personally have not chosen to engage in matters of this—ah—description, is no reason for condemning the deal or ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... of grievances are the loudest to complain of them, and when those authors and their capital enemies shake hands, embrace, and join in a common cause, which set can we believe most or least sincere? And when every set of men have acted every part, to whom shall the well-meaning look up? What can the latter do, but sit with folded arms and pray for miracles? Yes, Sir, they may weep over a prospect of ruin too probably approaching, and regret a glorious country nodding to its fall, when victory, wealth, and daily universal improvements, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... of enemies is perhaps less well-meaning. It includes those who for partisan purposes oppose each and every practical effort to help the situation, and also those who make money from undue fluctuations ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... wishing to interrupt this ill-judged, but well-meaning harangue; Theresa's loquacity, however, was not to be silenced so easily. 'And when you used to grieve so,' she added, 'he often told you how wrong it was—for that my mistress was happy. And, if she was happy, I am sure he is so ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Most of the members feel toward him that insipid kind of hatred which passes for friendship in public life. If he were naturally observant, he would see this; if he were given at all to self-doubt, he would feel it. But his way is to regard most men as ill-mannered and well-meaning. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... Samuel Butler, with a conviction that increased with his experience of life, preached the gospel of Laodicea, urging people to be temperate in what they called goodness as in everything else? Why is it that I, when I hear some well-meaning person exhort young people to make it a rule to do at least one kind action every day, feel very much as I should if I heard them persuade children to get drunk at least once every day? Apart from the initial absurdity of accepting as permanent a state of things ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... maire was not exactly a polished gentleman; he took no notice of me after the first searching glance. He made an unpleasant impression, but this wore off when I found that he was a well-meaning man, who had not cultivated fine manners. Why should he have cultivated what would have been of little or no use to him? These rural functionaries are just like the people with whom they live. The young seminariste told me an amusing story of a mayor of St. Pantaleon, who had had a ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... added, we have as well-meaning an array of oaths as was ever set out in literature. When Mr. Kipling repeats a soldier's oath, he seems to do so with a chuckle of appreciation. When Mr. Masefield puts down the oaths of sailors, he does so rather as a melancholy duty. He swears, not like a trooper, but ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... and prepare the means for a military expedition or enterprise against the dominions of Spain; that for this purpose they are fitting out and arming vessels in the western waters of the United States, collecting provisions, arms, military stores, and means; are deceiving and seducing honest and well-meaning citizens, under various pretenses, to engage in their criminal enterprises; are organizing, officering, and arming themselves for the same, contrary to the laws in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... defiance, that changed to one of confusion as he recognised us. It was the young Cockney whom I have already had occasion to mention once or twice; and he had gradually impressed me as being about the most harmless and well-meaning of the ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... privately entertained a considerable good-will for our author—nay, he even once went so far as to declare, and that openly too, and at his own table, just after dinner, that "Knickerbocker was a very well-meaning sort of an old gentleman, and no fool." From all which may have been led to suppose, that, had our author been of different politics, and written for the newspapers instead of wasting his talents ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... unusual warmth of the weather. For the same reason, probably, a neighbouring beehive had swarmed, and the new colony, pitching on the window-sill, was making its way into the room when the horrified nurse shut down the sash. If that well-meaning woman had only abstained from her ill-timed interference, the swarm might have settled on my lips, and I should have been endowed with that mellifluous eloquence which, in this country, leads far more surely than worth, capacity, ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... told, from head to foot. She knew not, at first, whether to be angry or pleased.—At length, 'I thought at first,' said she, 'that you might have a bolder and freer motive—but (as my Mamma says) you may be a well-meaning man, though generally a little wrong-headed—however, as the world is censorious, and may think us nearer of kin than I would have it supposed, I must take care that I am not seen ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... deal of absurdity has been written lately on this subject by well-meaning people, but who were entirely ignorant of the whole matter, and ready to believe whatever was told them, without taking the trouble to ascertain whether it ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... good-natured, well-meaning people in this world who think that fox-hunters can talk of nothing but hunting, and who put themselves to very serious inconvenience in endeavouring to get up a little conversation for them. We knew a bulky old boy ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... The men who could understand his silence were gone—those men who knew how to exist beyond the pale of life and within sight of eternity. They had been strong, as those are strong who know neither doubts nor hopes. They had been impatient and enduring, turbulent and devoted, unruly and faithful. Well-meaning people had tried to represent those men as whining over every mouthful of their food; as going about their work in fear of their lives. But in truth they had been men who knew toil, privation, violence, debauchery—but knew not fear, and had no desire of spite in their hearts. Men hard to manage, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... the prairie fires, went Jasper the Parable, with his cobbling-tools, his stories, and his gospel of universal love and good-will. The Tunkers welcomed him with delight, and the emigrants from New England looked upon him kindly as a good and well-meaning man. There were some fifteen or twenty children in the settlement, and here the peaceful disciple of Pestalozzi, and friend of Froebel, applied for a place to teach, and the school was by unanimous consent assigned ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... though well-meaning youth, whom I was beginning to recognise as the cause of some misunderstanding among us. "If you don't want any more of his poem—and I don't blame you—my pal Ho, who is one of the popular Flip-Flap Troupe, offers to do some trick cycle-riding on his ears. ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... arriving, to wit, that he would no longer persist in the fruitless effort of converting a poet into a merchant, and that content with the independence he had realised, he would abandon his dreams of founding a dynasty of financiers. From this moment all disquietude ceased beneath this always well-meaning, though often perplexed, roof, while my father, enabled amply to gratify his darling passion of book-collecting, passed his days in tranquil study, and in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Bore, however, is incapable of this treatment, for he does not know that he is a bore. It is only the Occasional Bore, a sensitive, well-meaning fellow who would not harm anybody, whose head lies sleepless on a pillow hot with his blushes while he goes over and over so apt and tripping a dialogue that it would withhold Gabriel from blowing his trumpet. So it seems ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... which to be useful, while his social position precluded work. He could not serve his country for fear of serving the republic, nor live on his estates, because Bienville was too expensive to keep up. However well-meaning his nature, there had been almost nothing open to him but the career of the idle, handsome, high-born youth, with money enough to pay for the luxuries of life, while his name secured credit for ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... have still been under Heart-breaking Sollicitudes, how they might therein best serve both God and Man? In fine, Have there been faults on any side fallen into? Surely, they have at worst been but the faults of a well-meaning Ignorance. On every side then, why should not we endeavour with amicable Correspondencies, to help one another out of the Snares wherein the Devil would involve us? To wrangle the Devil out of the Country, will be truly a New Experiment: ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... the weakest of all the Persian monarchs. He was mild in temperament, affable in demeanor, goodnatured, affectionate and well-meaning. But, possessing no strength of will, he allowed the commission of the most atrocious acts, the most horrible cruelties, by those about him, who were bolder and more resolute than himself. The wife and son, whom he fondly loved, were plotted against before his eyes; and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... something in Felix's manner that quickened her modesty, her self-consciousness; if absolute choice had been given her she would have preferred never to find herself alone with him; and in fact, though she thought him a most brilliant, distinguished, and well-meaning person, she had exercised a much larger amount of tremulous tact than he had ever suspected, to circumvent the accident of tete-a-tete. Poor Charlotte could have given no account of the matter that would not have seemed unjust both to herself and to her foreign kinsman; she could only have ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... sort makes treatment both more attractive and more available to large numbers of people whose pride keeps them away from the public provision for charity cases, and whose limited means leave them at the mercy either of quackery or of well-meaning but entirely ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... for music or time, silently but vigorously worked her jaws through the chorus, and affably ambled about, under everybody's feet, through the dance, displaying all the stiff-kneed grace of a young, well-meaning calf. ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... till he is dead. All Blenkiron's instructions had been faithfully carried out. I had found Ivery's post office. I had laid the lines of our own special communications with the enemy, and so far as I could see I had left no clue behind me. Ivery and Gresson took me for a well-meaning nincompoop. It was true that I had aroused profound suspicion in the breasts of the Scottish police. But that mattered nothing, for Cornelius Brand, the suspect, would presently disappear, and there was nothing against that rising soldier, Brigadier-General Richard Hannay, ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... all been arranged for him by well-meaning minds—minds that could never see how the blessing they had intended to bestow might by ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... his pipe savagely. Spike's words seemed to have touched a spring and let loose feelings which he had kept down for three years. Molly McEachern! So "they" used to say that he was engaged to Molly. He cursed Spike Mullins in his heart, well-meaning, blundering Spike, who was now sitting on the edge of his chair drawing sorrowfully at his cigar and wondering what he had done to give offense. The years fell away from Jimmy, and he was back in New York, standing at the ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... thoughtful and intelligent expression. The face and features were good in form, but the complexion was highly coloured, and looked as though affected by some kind of inflammation. They were a quiet, unpretending, well-meaning, and moral couple. They purified the tainted precincts of the Court, and thus rendered it fit for the abode of the youthful and gracious ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... A cuckold has the signification of an honest well-meaning citizen; one, that is not given to jealousies or suspicions; a just person to his wife, &c.; one that, to speak the worst of him, does but to her, what he would be content should be done ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... was one of those well-meaning persons who are of opinion that the only reasonable attitude of childhood should be that of perpetual ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... terrible temptation to many men. I do not mean to hypocrites, but to really well-meaning men. They like religion. They wish to be good; they have the feeling of devotion. They pray, they read their Bibles, they are attentive to services and to sermons, and are more or less pious people. But soon—too soon— they find that ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... moment when Denver should have been introduced; but Bunker had pointedly neglected the opportunity and left him still a stranger. And all as a reward for his foolish words and his refusal of well-meaning hospitality. Denver realized it now, but his pride was touched and he refrained from all further advances. If he was not good enough to know Old Bunker's family he was not good enough to associate with him; and so for three days he lived without society, for the Professor, too, was estranged. ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... Saul's person, to win the cause, yet spare its enemies. Vain is it for him to run with humility, to tell what he has won and what overcome and done. He has not destroyed All—root and branch. For reasons of personal policy, he has given quarter. And the Priest, for God, will have none of his well-meaning excuses, of his good intentions, his policy, his burnt offerings of half-way measures;—"Behold to obey is better than sacrifice," begins his fierce anathema, "and to hearken than ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... to foil these intents, and received the scant amount of encouragement which falls to well-meaning interference in real life; the Certified Poisonmonger presided over three tin pails of liquids, labelled respectively, "Lingering," "Sudden," and "A highly superior article in writhes and coils. As patronised by the Empress of China" and the demand for ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and intelligence—and the talk of the two was the lore of the viper. When the snake-catcher passed out of the life of his young disciple, he left behind him as a present a tame and fangless viper, which George often carried with him on his walks. It was this well-meaning and inoffensive viper that turned aside the wrath of Gypsy Smith, {12a} and awakened in his heart a superstitious awe and veneration for the child, the Sap-engro, who might be a goblin, but who certainly would make a most admirable "clergyman and God Almighty," who ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... monsters are possible in the Free States, at such a time as this, sufficiently demonstrates towards what an abyss of degradation we were drifting when this war began. They are the legitimate and necessary fruits of the numerous compromises by which well-meaning men have sought to avert a crisis which could only be postponed. The North has been diligently educated to connive at injustice and wink at oppression for the sake of peace, until there was good reason to fear that the public sense of right was blunted, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... means, but because he knows there is no risk—at least none to him. The proverb that "Familiarity breeds contempt" applies as truly to danger as to anything else; and well is it for the world that the majority of human beings are prone to familiarise themselves with danger in spite of those well-meaning but weak ones who have been born with a tendency to say perpetually, "Take care," "Don't run such risk", etcetera. "Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might;" and man has echoed the sentiment in the proverb, "Whatever ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... now gathered round, and many offered well-meaning but absurd suggestions. One practical youth ran off, however, to Cookson's house to report what had happened, and then returned with a chair. By the time he got back Edwards had managed to rise, and was sitting on the settle, very faint. They managed to transfer ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... that it is meant for him individually, and is not to be put down in the slightest degree to the score of any regard to his countrymen generally. So far from this, if an Englishman were to meet the whole thirty millions of Americans, and find each individual of them a pleasant, amiable, well-meaning, and well-mannered sort of fellow, he would acknowledge this honestly in each individual case, but still would speak of the whole nation ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... treated with intelligent and sympathetic understanding, no less than with justice and firmness; and until they become citizens, absorbed into the general body politic, they must be the wards of the nation, and not of any private association, lay or clerical, no matter how well-meaning. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... speak, by-the-bye, of my using the word Christ rather than the word Jesus. I do so because it means more to my mind, and because the apostles use it much more frequently. I do hope my book will be a comfort and help to many well-meaning but inexperienced mothers. And I wish I practised more perfectly what I preach. But I have my infirmities and find it hard to be always on my guard.... A. and I are taking drawing-lessons of a very superior French teacher, who offers us the privilege ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the children and improved my own education a little. And then Mitya fell ill when he was already in the fourth form, and God took him. Masha fell in love with Vanya, my son-in-law. And—well, he is well-meaning but unfortunate. He ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... with the author's usual fault of inability to "round out" character. We do not sufficiently realise the poet himself. But his brother, Marie-Joseph, requiring slighter presentment, has it; and so, on a still smaller scale, has the well-meaning but fatuous father, who, hopelessly misunderstanding the signs of the times, actually precipitates his elder son's fate by applying, in spite of remonstrance, to the tiger-pole-cat Robespierre for mercy. The scene where this happens—and where the "sea-green incorruptible" himself, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... well-seeming Baronet should ever have experienced such a hitch? Or will it be found in some obscure lodging-house, where the decayed son of chivalry has hung up his scutcheon for some 20s. a week, and where one or two old friends will look grave and whisper to each other, "Poor gentleman," "A well-meaning man," "Nobody's enemy but his own," "Thought his parts could never wear out," "Family poorly left," "Pity he took that foolish title"? Who ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... colleges can be thinking of, turning loose such stale foolishness and old canned stuff on a mellow, sunny little home town like Green Valley that's full of plain, blundering but well-meaning, God-fearing people who work joyfully at their business of living and turn up more religion when they plow a furrow or make over the wedding dress for the baby than these ministers can dig up out of all their musty books. I've prayed for all kinds of qualities ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... charged with wet, had made her feel dispirited and uneasy. She was homesick for her father and she wished that Dr. Hume had not gone away. She almost wished they had never set eyes on Phoebe and her father at all. How complicated life had suddenly become! They were just a party of well-meaning campers taking a summer holiday on the mountainside, meaning no harm to anybody on earth; and having done a little kindness to a poor girl and her half-crazed father, they had obtained the enmity of an entire village. ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... boys this might sound like well-meaning commonplace, but in the history of Mr. Emerson's life that "bold appeal to the heart," that "tribute of honest conviction," were made eloquent and real. The boy meant it when he said it. To carry out his law of sincerity and self-trust ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... will underestimate the shady influence of such voluptuous vulgarities in their multicoloured stage setting. Yet from a psychological point of view the effect of the pathetic treatment is far more dangerous than that of the frivolous. A good many well-meaning reformers do not see that, because they know too little of the deeper layers of the sexual imagination. The intimate connection between sexuality and cruelty, perversion and viciousness, may produce much more ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... Tayler would alone have served as a sufficient warrant that The Angel's Song, a Christmas Token, is work of still more serious character, even though the author had not told his readers, in his Envoy, that the tale was written to correct the mistake into which many well-meaning people have fallen on the subject of Christmas merriment; and to suggest the spirit in which this sacred season should be celebrated. That the book will be favourably received by the large class of readers to whom it is addressed, there can be little doubt; and to their ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... of American independence, and some who were to follow in another long procession equally adventurous and as likely to be fatal—the Revolution in their own country. During the Terror some of them, including their beautiful and well-meaning queen, were to lose their lives. Of any such danger as this, these young nobles, in the present state of seemingly joyous and abundant ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... streets would be full of capering lunatics whenever it rained. Stay at home, did you say? That is good advice for the woman who has nothing else to do, but in these latter days the right sort of husband don't go round. Either he died in the war or the stock has run low, so that more than half the well-meaning women have no homes to stay in. What Moses is going to lead the poor creatures to the commonsense suit that shall protect them from the inclement weather they are forced to meet as they go abroad to earn their bread and salt? It must be ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... I am not writing a novel, and have nothing of intricate plot, or marvellous adventure, to promise the reader. The Hall of which I treat, has, for aught I know, neither trap-door, nor sliding-panel, nor donjon-keep; and indeed appears to have no mystery about it. The family is a worthy, well-meaning family, that, in all probability, will eat and drink, and go to bed, and get up regularly, from one end of my work to the other; and the Squire is so kind-hearted an old gentleman, that I see no likelihood of his throwing any kind of distress ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Only on the second visit were the ghost-seers scared; but then they were scared enough for twice, and they rarely mustered up courage enough to risk a third interview. One of the most curious characteristics of this well-meaning spook was that it had no face—or at least that nobody ever saw ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... think, however, you have reversed the parable, and are but a well-meaning sheep that has donned a wolf's skin, and so we will put you to the test. We young people will give you a chance to draw up our petition, which, if you would save your character, you must do at once with sheep-like docility, asking no questions and causing no delay. There, that will ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... happy condition of affairs, the alumnae trustees undoubtedly play a mediating part, for they understand the college from within as no clergyman, financier, philanthropist,—no graduate of a man's college—can hope to, be he never so enthusiastic and well-meaning in the cause of woman's education. But so long as the faculty are excluded from direct representation on the board, the situation will continue to be anomalous. For it is not too sweeping to assert that Wellesley's ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... office, and had when he first went there run after popularity too much, and allowed the press to get ahead. It would now be very difficult to check it. I added that he went to make great reductions and had made some. That that had rendered him unpopular. He was honest and well-meaning. The King said he should go down to Bushey soon, and as I was living near he would have me over at eleven o'clock some morning, and give me some hours to make him acquainted with the state of India. I told him of the secret letter ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... rough way Mrs. Parker kept watch over the child, but she had children of her own and a sick husband, and had to drudge and slave for her family and lodgers from morning until night. Oh, I must tell you her answer to a well-meaning district visitor one day, Anna. The lady had just said very sweetly, 'It is so good for us to count our blessings, Mrs. Parker; we are so apt to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... I had to carry on by day against my troublesome passions, also put me on my guard at night, and I would not absolve myself with the excuse that sleep renders irresponsible. For I knew that it was I, myself, I, Lodovico Muralto, an honest, well-meaning fellow, who in the dream-life of night had done and felt all kinds of malicious wicked and low-minded things, and ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... the threshold of the inquiry, an objection meets us. There are in the world a number of extremely worthy, well-meaning persons, whose judgments and opinions are entitled to the utmost respect on account of their sincerity, who are of opinion that Vital Phenomena, and especially all questions relating to the origin of vital phenomena, are questions quite apart from the ordinary run of inquiry, and are, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... too strong of treason to suit my ear," exclaimed Dotey, who was, after all, an honest, well-meaning young fellow, a little carried away just now by jealousy and by the intoxicating air of liberty and freedom, but by no means to the extent of joining or desiring a revolt against the appointed powers of Church ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... emancipation became a well-understood reality. The negro knew that he was a free man, and the Southern white man found himself face to face with the problem of dealing with the negro as a free laborer. To most of the Southern whites this problem was utterly bewildering. Many of them, honest and well-meaning people, admitted to me, with a sort of helpless stupefaction, that their imagination was wholly incapable of grasping the fact that their former slaves were now free. And yet they had to deal with this perplexing ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... The priests were well-meaning, ignorant, and possessed of a sincere belief in their own divinity. The religious use of the Vedas and the right to sacrifice were strictly confined to the Brahmans. There were travelling logicians, anchorites, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... I may never have to re-live the horrors of the next hour. In spite of my bluff and hearty ways, in times of trouble I am as reticent as a clam. I was determined to hide my agony and anxiety from the well-meaning people of the Moose Hotel. I hurried to the railway station to send a telegram to the Professor's address in Brooklyn, but found the place closed. A boy told me it would not be open until the afternoon. From a drugstore I called "information" in Willdon, ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... familiar with the movements of the heavenly bodies to be able to find his way across country by night. He was truthful, and amenable to discipline. In short, he was the embodiment of a system which in times of peace had served as a text for innumerable well-meaning but muddle-headed politicians of a certain type, who made a specialty of keeping the nation upon the alert against the insidious encroachments ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... it to 'em straight". So now he caused this white angel to understand that he regarded the effete aristocracies of the old world with abysmal contempt; he meant to put them out of business right off the bat. In vain the white angel pleaded that some of them might be useful people, or at any rate well-meaning: Jimmie pronounced them a bunch of parasites and grafters; the thing to do was to make a clean ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... become practical, and, by being practical, ministering to practical ideals and enlisting practical devotion, become, as it were, sacred once more. Where the well-being of our fellow men is concerned it is not enough to be well-meaning. Government is an art, not an aspiration: and those who are concerned with it, whether as rulers or voters, should have studied its problems, reflected on its possibilities and limitations, and fitted themselves to profit ...
— Progress and History • Various
... all, so much to be gained by hitching your wagon to a star, that I tried to believe she deliberately intended it. I would have hitched up oftener to that same star, except for the fact that stars sometimes get hot and furious at too many liberties, and switch their tails and kick the wagons of well-meaning people to smithereens. That it may be better to have had a stellar joy-ride and be sent to hell for speeding than keep your boots forever in the clay, I will neither affirm nor deny; but the prudent ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... then, starts with the orthodox but untenable persuasion that Catholicism comprehends all that is good; he adds the heterodox though amiable sentiment that any well-meaning ambition of the mind, any hope, any illumination, any science, must be good, and therefore compatible with Catholicism. He bathes himself in idealistic philosophy, he dabbles in liberal politics, he accepts and emulates ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... realised fully the glory of Greek letters, I was a very busy man, and bitter indeed was the thought that the well-meaning persons who maintain our university system had actually been keeping me all those years from the divine wells of grace and beauty. But for them, how many more years of enjoyment might I have drawn from the Socratic Dialogues, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the pains in the world with a well-meaning but slow workman, but he disposed of shirkers and double-dealers without needless words. Neither did he encourage discussion and idle ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... entrance upon this discussion, I must deplore the indiscriminate terms of condemnation employed by many well-meaning persons in regard to stock operations. The business of the stock-broker is just as legitimate and necessary as that of a dealer in clothes, groceries, or hardware; and a man may be as pure-minded and ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... her school and church work Belle had been much associated with John Lowe, the schoolteacher. He was considered a well-meaning person, a dozen years older than herself, and had certain pleasing qualities, a suave manner—almost too suave—and a readiness of speech. He was fairly well educated, a good worker, a member of the church, and had no obvious bad habits. His history was not known; in fact, no one's history was ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Daniel Schubart was born at Obersontheim in Swabia, on the 26th of April 1739. His father, a well-meaning soul, officiated there in the multiple capacity of schoolmaster, precentor, and curate; dignities which, with various mutations and improvements, he subsequently held in several successive villages of the same district. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Carleton, mischief was brewing in the Colonial Office of that unhappy government which did so many stupid things and got the credit for so many more. In 1775 the well-meaning Earl of Dartmouth was superseded by Lord George Germain, who continued the mismanagement of colonial affairs for seven disastrous years. Few characters have abused civil and military positions more than the man who first, as a British general, disgraced the noble name of Sackville on the battlefield ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... make fun of Rudolph!" she cried, quickly. "Rudolph can't help it if he is conscientious and in consequence rather depressing to live with. And for all that he so often plays the jackass-fool about women, like Grandma Pendomer, he is a man, Jack—a well-meaning, clean and dunderheaded man! You aren't; you are puny and frivolous, and you sneer too much, and you are making a fool of me, and—and that's why I like you, I suppose. Oh, I wish I were good! I have always tried to be good, and there doesn't seem to be a hatpin in the world that makes a halo ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... but I will not recall too many, lest you cry, "Hands off!" I cannot desist, however, from this word-game until I have set down a few. Whatever is not one's own by first possession is second-hand. That is what I am told my knowledge is. But my well-meaning friends come to my defence, and, not content with endowing me with natural first-hand knowledge which is rightfully mine, ascribe to me a preternatural sixth sense and credit to miracles and heaven-sent compensations ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... swam towards the beef, examined it carefully with their eyes, and rubbed it with their noses, and then returned to their lord and master. It required but a slight stretch of the imagination to suppose that these well-meaning servants made a favorable report, and whispered in his ear that "all was right," and thus unwittingly betrayed him to ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... there to represent a great reality, the justice of states, which we could well enough see beetling over his head, and which his trifling talk nowise affected, and did not impede, since he was entirely well-meaning. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... And thousands of honest, well-meaning men and women, who had seen, year after year, lie after lie, one stupendous story after another, punctured, riddled, and proved a vicious and malignant slander, swallowed this latest one whole, and marvelled that the American officer ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... season—fraught with humour—and when reminiscences of the past make up for lack of realities of the present. To "notice" such a work is ten times more (we had almost said) trouble than to despatch half a dozen dull books, or a dozen harmless, well-meaning satires on human nature. But we will do our best to detach some of the good things from Mr. Croker's volumes, although the humour of the sketches which adorn them, is of too subtle a quality for our pen or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various
... There has never been much illness among them. Most of them did well in school. The family physician says the boys show a "queer streak,'' but nothing, evidently, at all well defined as compared with the career of Emma, whom he characterizes as a "moral pervert.'' The mother is a well-meaning, hard-working, moderately intelligent woman of about 45. She is said to be somewhat slack in her household, but perfectly honest. The father is desperately alcoholic and peculiar at times. It is not known that his aberrations are ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... seen him again take up his implements at the summons of the same bell, working through the sunshine or the rain, as the case might be, till its final evening dismissal. Above all, she had seen him taking his orders from Golding, a well-meaning man truly, and an exceedingly capable gardener, but—well, she pictured Antony as she had seen him in evening dress on the Fort Salisbury, as she had seen him throwing coppers to the brown-faced girl outside the Cathedral at Teneriffe, as she had ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... for political support from public offices than he could pay for it from the public treasury. He abhors all forms of political favoritism including nepotism. He not only would not appoint kinsmen to office; he would discountenance their appointment by others. He resisted the efforts of well-meaning friends to have his brother, Mr. Joseph R. Wilson, Jr., who had rendered a substantial service to the 1912 campaign by his effective work as a trained journalist, elected secretary of the United States Senate, saying that his brother in this position would inevitably be misunderstood, would ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... by accident, not error. The deliberate debtor, who orders what he knows he has no means of paying for; the pleasure loving debtor, who can not renounce one single luxury for conscience' sake; the well-meaning, lazy debtor, who might make "ends meet," but does not, simply because he will not take the trouble; upon such as these it is right to have ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... climes, have laboured to turn into modern poetic form and into their own national tongue the poems of the Breviary. The Breviary hymns have met with several good, kind, translating poets; but very often they have been rudely handled by well-meaning verse builders. Passing over in charitable silence the indifferent efforts of those people, it may interest some students of the Breviary to read the efforts of well-known authors to translate the liturgy, its anthems, responses, ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... bothered about this matter? If fools and knaves elect to gamble in such palpably fraudulent ways, let them gamble, and their losses are no affair of ours. It is none of our business." But presently these honest people had it pounded into their well-meaning heads that the principal instrument by which the swindle was conducted was their own mail service, one of the most important branches of their Government; that, in fact, in each and every city, town, village, and cross-road in all our virtuous land, Government officials ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... that it is but a tiny dot in the ocean, you may think it an insignificant spot to have been the scene of the most momentous event of the Renaissance; you may feel inclined to scold at that well-meaning Martin Pinzon for asking to have the rudders changed in order to find his Cipango. But it must be remembered that to have found anything at all was an unparalleled feat; and furthermore, that wee San Salvador was not the end of Columbus's ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... that every day she discovered new virtues in her husband. He had told her, without the slightest appearance of suspicion of displeasure, that he knew that we had spent two days together in Treviso, and that he had laughed at the well-meaning fool who had given him that piece of information in the hope of raising a cloud in the heaven ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... only son's engagement took Captain Nugent's breath away, which, all things considered, was perhaps the best thing it could have done. He sat at home in silent rage, only exploding when the well-meaning Mrs. Kingdom sought to minimize his troubles by comparing them with those of Job. Her reminder that to the best of her remembrance he had never had a boil in his life put the finishing touch to his ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... business to help us back to our first and natural condition. But there are changes that sometimes overtake us from which we do not wish to recover; and we must be on ceaseless vigil against the well-meaning forces that only live to abolish all signs of alteration. No man ever yet threw on his old self and entered into new life without being conscious that millions of invisible toilers were at work to undo the change that had been effected. They are helping him to get over it, ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... know how to apologize to you, Mr. Walmsley. This sort of thing amuses me, as a rule; but I must admit that Mr. Cullen is apt to get on one's nerves. A well-meaning ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... barbarous conception of authority. It comes from the natural inability of a community corrupted by authority to understand or appreciate Individualism. In a word, it comes from that monstrous and ignorant thing that is called Public Opinion, which, bad and well-meaning as it is when it tries to control action, is infamous and of evil meaning when it tries to control Thought ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... time Maroney's brother came to New York, from Danielsville. He was a man of good standing, well-meaning, and honest in his intentions. Maroney had looked anxiously for his coming, as he supposed his brother would be able to effect his release on bail. He knew that his brother alone could not make the bail-bond ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... who know that he is honest. The hard lawyer will pursue him as a stoat pursues a hare; and, if he asks for time or mercy, the iron answer will be, "We have nothing to do with your private affairs; business is business, and our client's interests must not suffer merely because you are a well-meaning man." Even our dear Walter Scott, the soul of honour, one of the purest and brightest of all the spirits that make our joy, the gallant struggler—even that delight of the world was hounded to death by a firm of bill-discounters at the very time when he was breaking his ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... showed that letter to Mr. Evans,' said Mr. Burke; 'I don't like to expose Lord Clonbrony; he is a well-meaning gentleman, misled by ignorant or designing people; at all events, it is not for ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... and cellar-flaps: I'm always thrown in some such state When on his face well-meaning chaps This wretched ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... educated in India, was brought up to maturity with Indian students, and have lived among them in many different places, I may claim to know something about them. As a class they are gentle, affectionate, industrious, well-meaning and highly intelligent. They are the most malleable of human metal, the finest material for the sculptor of humanity, the most impressionable of wax. In the right hands they can be moulded to anything, by the right leader led to any height. And conversely, of them a devil can make fiends. By the ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... fashion in Norway since the nation regained its independence to interest one's self in a lofty, condescending way in the life of the peasantry. A few well-meaning persons, like the poet Wergeland, had labored zealously for their enlightenment and the improvement of their economic condition; but, except in the case of such single individuals, no real and vital sympathy and fellow-feeling had ever existed between the upper and the lower ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... abandoned their treasonable purposes; but, as the king and she herself were resolved to unite themselves in sincere good faith to the people, it was impossible but that, when their real feelings were known, the bulk of the people should return to them. The mischief was that the well-meaning knew not how ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... insidious abuse from those who are prejudiced against his person or his birthplace, who are jealous of his success, envious of his position, hostile to his politics, dwarfed by his reputation, or hate him by the divine right of idiosyncrasy, always liable, too, to questioning comment from well-meaning friends who happen to be suspicious or sensitive in their political ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
