"Carelessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... left the bag through a feeling of remorse, that he might clear Jane's character. Both brother and sister saw this clearly; and that the means of relief for poor Jane had been just within their grasp, but now, by the cruel carelessness of James Barnes, had slipped away from them, and perhaps for ever. Where was the bag which had in it what would set all things straight? Who ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... prose, he needs to exercise a greater nicety of construction in order to develop fully the riches which are his. Gifted with a large, facile, and ingenious vocabulary, he is not sufficiently precise and discriminating in his employment of words according to their finer shades of meaning. This carelessness makes faults of his very virtues; for his vigour of expression tends to take the form of outre and inadmissible rhetoric, whilst his talent for word-painting tends to degenerate into word-coining. It would be quite possible for an acute critic to ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... any part of their management be neglected, there is great danger to themselves of being run into during dark stormy nights or foggy days. Constant vigilance is partly secured, no doubt, by a sense of duty in the men; it is increased by the feeling of personal risk that would result from carelessness; and it is almost perfected by the order for the hoisting of a flag as ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... frequency of fires, from carelessness and accidents, with suggestions as to preventing them and, also, extinguishing them, elicited ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... mankind. People make mistakes, or are guilty of carelessness, and straightway they lay the blame—not only without but against reason—on broader shoulders than their own. That wonderful and almost perfect British Post-Office delivers quickly, safely, and in good condition above fourteen hundred millions of letters etcetera in the year, but some half-dozen ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... had passed between his countrymen and the French. La Salle gave him a turkey he had shot, invited him to the fort, fed him, and made him presents. Having thus warmed his heart, he questioned him, with apparent carelessness, as to the countries he had visited, and especially as to the Mississippi, on which the young warrior, seeing no reason to disguise the truth, gave him all the information he required. La Salle now made him the present of a hatchet, to engage him to say ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... was disturbed and disastrous. In the northern and western provinces, rebellion after rebellion broke out, due in a great measure to the carelessness, incompetency and obstinacy of the emperor, and the coasts were infested with pirates, whose number and organization enabled them for a long time to hold the imperial fleet in check. Meanwhile the condition of the foreign merchants at Canton had not improved, and to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... sinner could obtain inward conversion and faith, he wished to make this depend entirely on man's own will and choice, so that the blame might not appear to lie with God if the call to salvation remained fruitless, and a temptation thereby be offered to many to indulge in carelessness or despondency. In addition to this, he differed unmistakably from Luther in his doctrine of the Sacrament. For, though it was he who at Augsburg in 1530 had flatly rejected the Zwinglians, still his historical researches impressed him with the belief, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... still more, perhaps, on account of prejudice. In many cases horses have been killed by eating moldy silage, and the careless person who fed it at once blamed the silage itself, rather than his own carelessness and the mold which really was the cause of the trouble. Horses are peculiarly susceptible to the effects of molds, and under certain conditions certain molds grow on silage which are deadly poisons to both horses and mules. Molds ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... possession of the witness Simons, the third was on the prisoner's person when she was arrested. One of these keys, therefore, must have been used in the latch that night, and must have been used with such carelessness or ignorance—it is for you to say which'—[again the jury tried to look as if they were prepared to say which, and again they broke down]—'that the latch was raised too high, and stuck. Now, here I must draw your attention to a very important ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... think it's right of a man to go back on himself.... I don't think butchering people ever does any good ...I have acted as if I did think it did good...out of carelessness or cowardice, one or the ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... own creation, man owned himself but dust. Never before had he been so alive to the symbolism of the penitential season, so awed by the beauty and symmetry of that great structure of the Liturgical Year that leads the soul up, step by step, to the awful heights of Calvary. The very carelessness of those about him seemed to deepen the solemnity of the scenes enacted—as though the Church, after all her centuries of dominion, were still, as in those early days, but a voice crying ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... dictates of reason, religion and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends.' We enjoin the young to honor father and mother, never thinking how undeserving of respect are those whose children suffer from inherited ills, the result of the selfishness and carelessness of their parents in ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... apprehending had taught him something of the difference of taste between an English and an American audience at a dinner-table; he felt that there must be a certain looseness, and carelessness, and roughness, and yet a certain restraint; that he must not seem to aim at speaking well, although, for his own ambition, he was not content to speak ill; that, somehow or other, he must get a heartiness into his speech; that he must not polish, nor be too neat, and must come with ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... midst of this inaccessible ring, where the escaped cannon was leaping, a man was seen to appear, with an iron bar in his hand. He was the author of the catastrophe, the captain of the gun, guilty of criminal carelessness, and the cause of the accident, the master of the carronade. Having done the mischief, he was anxious to repair it. He had seized the iron bar in one hand, a tiller-rope with a slip-noose in the other, and jumped, down the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... it recurred with a strange, almost holy, solemnity,—a hushing, slender melody full of austerity and aloofness. There was something in it to set her heart beating. She yearned to it with her ears and her lips. Was it joy, menace, carelessness? She did not know, but this she did know, that however terrible it was personal to her. It was her unborn thought strangely audible and felt ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... have been attributed to the instrument, on examination it has always been found that they were due to carelessness in setting the length to the diagram, or to the tracing leg having been grasped so tightly as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... himself confined in his own cabin, a prisoner. Had he not been on deck at the time of the occurrence, he would certainly have considered it an avoidable misfortune, to be accounted for only by the most gross carelessness; but as it was, he was fully able to understand that it was entirely due to the extreme darkness of the night, and the circumstance of the lugger and the barque stumbling over each other, as it were. But that made matters no better for him; he had lost his ship—his ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... carelessness has been cast back on the lands which were the cradle of art, and we receive, to our surprise, gaudy, vulgar, and discordant combinations from the East, whence we drew our first inspirations. For the future we shall have to study ancient ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... "Through the gross carelessness, we can hardly bring ourselves to say the connivance, of the Custom House officials, they were allowed to land with impunity a considerable quantity of dynamite, with which on Saturday night they decamped. ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Be truthful in speech, humble, with passions under complete control, and always devoted to the protection of thy people. Practise virtue and renounce sin, and worship thou the manes and the god and whatever thou mayst have done from ignorance or carelessness, wash them off and expiate them by charity. Renouncing pride and vanity, be thou possessed to humility and good behaviour. And subjugating the whole earth, rejoice thou and let happiness be thine. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... will do it for you," answered the marquis, in a grave, measured way, widely different from his habitual good-natured, easy carelessness of manner and speech; "and, moreover, I offer my own services as your second. To-morrow morning I will present myself at the duke's night in your behalf; there is one thing to be said in his favour—that although he may be, in fact is, very insolent, he is no ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... long breath of relief. But he looked so troubled, that Bingley for the life of him couldn't keep up his assumed carelessness. ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... happened to be staying with the court, or in Calais during his captaincy there; and not a single hint occurs of any one irregularity.[303] The research will bring to light no single expression savouring of impiety, dissoluteness, carelessness, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... least indifferent toward it. Its dramatic appearance in the North Sea at early dawn of a misty September morning was as great a surprise to the three British cruisers which it sank in rapid succession as the story of the disaster was to the world at large. The fact that the cruisers by their carelessness invited the fate which came to them does not, of course, deprive the incident of significance. But after all, the world has never doubted that a submarine could sink a ship that practically insisted ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... the hornbill for what had happened. The cause was in their own carelessness or imprudence; for Captain Redwood knew the upas-tree, and was well aware of its dangerous properties to those venturing into too close proximity. He had seen it in other islands; for it grows not only in Java, with which its name is more familiarly identified, but in Bali, Celebes, and Borneo. ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... there was a brain-fluid, concocted by virtues from on high in a talismanic fashion. From one cup there came serious things, which wrote themselves in brown ink; and from the other trifling things, which merely gave a roseate hue to the pages of the manuscript. The poor author has often, from carelessness, mixed the inks, now here, now there; but as soon as the heavy sentences, difficult to smooth, polish, and brighten up, of some work suitable to the taste of the day are finished, the author, eager to amuse himself, in spite of the small amount of merry ink ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... estimates of those competent to judge, render it certain that the actual amount shipped out of the State did not vary materially from 400,000,000 feet. There being no penalty involved in the failure of masters of vessels to report, there is great carelessness in the matter. The Cleveland, Toledo and Sandusky shipments, are at the outside, not more than half reported. Those reported to Buffalo, Oswego, etc., are a little nearer the truth, but they fall considerably below ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... The edition of 1738 prints eu. For similar carelessness in Marivaux's use of the past participle compare le Legs, note 56, and ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... star would have been hailed with the same love and regard that was granted to Dante in Italy, to Chateaubriand and Lamartine in France, or to Goethe in Germany, who would ever have blamed him for the slight errors which fell from his pen in "Don Juan,"—a poem written hastily and with carelessness, but of which it can be said, as Montesquieu said of the prettiest women, "their part has more gravity and importance than is generally thought." If the sense of the ridiculous is ever stronger among people whose appreciation of the beautiful is keenest, who more than Byron could have possessed ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... is needed. A generation is arising who do not know what the preservation of our free government cost in blood and suffering. Even the men of the passing generation begin to be forgetful, if we may judge from the recklessness or carelessness of their political action. The soldier is not always remembered nor honored as he should be. But, what to the future of the great Republic is more important, there is great danger of our people under-estimating the bitter animus and terrible malignity ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Amram went again to his work in the Temple of the Sun, and was again led into the chamber with his eyes bandaged. There he was left alone without receiving any counsel or advice regarding what he was to do. This carelessness seemed to him like indifference, and indicated a general laxness in the temple servants. Therefore he again entered the columned hall. He looked uneasily at the Nilometer, in which the water had sunk. There was no hope of the fifteen ells of water which the earth needed ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... flute-player returned and Anna asked him, boldly, but with a studied air of carelessness, about the matter. It was the first time in her whole life that she had ever tried to hide her real emotions ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... Wapping and Charing Cross he lost the cook three times. Miss Jewell found him twice, and the third time she was so difficult that the skipper had to join in the treasure-hunt himself. The cook listened unmoved to a highly-colored picture of his carelessness from the lips of Miss Jewell, and bestowed a sympathetic glance upon the skipper as she ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... industry. In his quiet, slow way, he explained to Hal that the frequency of accidents in this district was not due to any special difficulty in operating these mines, the explosiveness of the gases or the dryness of the atmosphere. It was merely the carelessness of those in charge, their disregard of the laws for the protection of the men. There ought to be a law with "teeth" in it—for example, one providing that for every man killed in a coal-mine his heirs should receive a thousand dollars, ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... of them had a lanthorn. He came up to the door; and, finding it open, boisterously shut it; with a broad and bitter curse against the carelessness of some man, whose name he pronounced, for leaving it open; and eternally damning others, for being so long in doing ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... his hands. So profitable was Horatillavus's practice that he is said to have saved 150,000 sesterces in a few months. But for a moment his good fortune seemed to abandon him. A Roman lady, Sulpicia Pallas, died suddenly under his ministrations. This may have been due to his ignorance or carelessness; but he was accused of having poisoned his patient. This event might have been expected to bring his career to an end; but it was not long before he recovered the confidence of the people whom he deluded with his mystical ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... was the calm reply. "Most farmers do when it's their own carelessness that's to blame. But he'll never get the fire out ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... inform me whether this interesting work ever made its appearance? I am inclined to think it did not, and have an indistinct recollection that the original MS. of the "Grace" was lost through the carelessness of the lithographer who was entrusted with it for the purpose ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... happened to the Fairy Queen, a small mail steamer plying between these ports, not long ago. By some carelessness, she sprang a leak and sank; the captain and crew escaping to Pictou in the ship's boats, which were large enough to have saved all the passengers. Here they arrived, and related the story of the wreck, in the hope that no human voice would ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... carelessness of Miss Strange's tone would have been fatal to her socially; but then, she would never have used it socially. This they both knew, yet he smiled ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... know what might happen?" he asked. "The only cipher that has puzzled me for the last ten years might be lost—or stolen—or burned if there was a fire in the house. You deserve to be punished for your carelessness. Make the ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... And he had no more pity for the wife than for the daughter. He was furiously angry because his precious property had been irretrievably damaged by the momentary carelessness of a silly girl. Yes, John Baines was his property, his dearest toy! He was convinced that he alone had kept John Baines alive for fourteen years, that he alone had fully understood the case and sympathized with the sufferer, that none but he had been capable of displaying ordinary common sense ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... quietly, "I have not tried to trick you," and Shere noticed that she arranged with an absent carelessness the gloves in the form of a cross beneath the lamp; and at once he felt that her action contradicted her words. It was merely an instinct at first. Then he began to reason. Those gloves had been so arranged when first he entered the room. Christina and Esteban were bending over ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... poet's design to show that to call forth the poetry which has its indwelling in nature and the human mind, nothing is wanted but to throw off all artificial constraint, and restore both to mind and nature their original liberty. In the very progress of the piece, the dreamy carelessness of such an existence is sensibly expressed: it is even alluded to by Shakspeare in the title. Whoever affects to be displeased, if in this romantic forest the ceremonial of dramatic art is not duly observed, ought in justice to be delivered over to the wise fool, to be ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... grim problems of which numerous variants will be found in the accounts and reports of experiments signed by Drs. Mackenzie and Hartkopff, by Overbeck, Clarapede and many others. What strikes one particularly is the facility, the quickness, I was almost saying the joyous carelessness with which the strange mathematician gives the answers. The last figure is hardly chalked upon the board before the right hoof is striking off the units, followed immediately by the left hoof marking the tens. There is not a sign ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... to conceal his agitation, he said with affected carelessness, "I believe I do remember ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... learning and morality would have suffered more without this brotherhood cannot be doubted. Yet it is difficult to name men of very eminent genius whom the Cassinesi claim as their alumni; nor, with Boccaccio's testimony to their carelessness, and with the evidence of their library before our eyes, can we rate their services to civilised erudition very highly. I longed to possess the spirit, for one moment, of Montalembert. I longed for what is called historical imagination, for the indiscriminate voracity of those men to whom ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... blood-poisoning having set in. I saw him at the hospital a day or two before, and, trying to sympathize with his condition, I frequently spoke of what I deemed the dreadful uncertainty of life and the seeming carelessness of the engineer in charge of the hoisting engine. He, however, had no complaint ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... were based on a rather rough grade of bourbon, but Barney welcomed them. There was an almost sick fascination in what was a certainty now: he was going to get the Tube. That tremendous device was his for the taking. He was well inside McAllen's guard; only carelessness could arouse the old man's suspicions again, and Barney was not going to be careless. No need to hurry anything. He would play the reserved role he had selected for himself, leave developments up to the fact that McAllen had carried the burden of ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... for Farrar, for I knew the man, the depth of his nature, and the scope of the shock. He carried it off altogether too well, and both the studied lightness of his actions and the increased carelessness of his manner made me fear that what before was feigned, might ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... eternal rest. She had almost forgotten the object which brought her out that morning, so absorbed was she in the contemplation of the scene she had witnessed; until on rising to leave the church after the divine rites were over, her bundle fell to her feet. She snatched it up, ashamed of her carelessness, and, slipping through the crowd, emerged once more into the street. Picking her way through snow and ice, she came to a neat fancy store, and went in. Behind the counter stood a neat, pleasant old lady assorting worsteds, who smiled a welcome the moment she ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... from the two women, and which they could always recognize afterwards as theirs, and prove that he had taken it from them. And it is not as though he had forgotten it on the path, dropped it through carelessness or haste, no, he had flung away his weapon, for it was found fifteen paces from where Grigory lay. Why did he do so? Just because he was grieved at having killed a man, an old servant; and he flung away the pestle with ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... this was insufficient, though she remembered that his haphazard carelessness had once appealed to her. Now she realized that to undertake a thing light-heartedly was a very different matter from carrying it out successfully. Then it once more occurred to her that she was becoming absurdly hypercritical, and she strove to ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... disgusted with Yonkers, and returned to my intramural boarding-house in St. John's Park. The sidewalk near the house was in a dilapidated state, through the carelessness of the contractor, who had stipulated to pave it properly, but had not paved it at all, except with good intentions. And therefore, as I came along, I first besmeared my boots with muck then tripped my toes against a pile of brick: and finally ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... the wild life which abounds on the pinnacles of its inaccessible rocks, on the fern-covered, steep slopes, and in its numberless sea-washed caves, which are haunted by seals, or were until within the last few years; for the brutality and selfish carelessness of chance visitors allowed to land by the courtesy of the owner have driven away much of the timid wild life which had taken refuge against the advancing tide of civilization. Seals used to be observed ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... who put this before us had in their faces courage, complete innocence, carelessness, and sleep. They spoke to us in their language (I understood it very ill) of far countries, which they did not clearly know—they hardly knew the French beyond the hills. As no road led into their ageless village, so did no road lead out of it. To reach the great ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... action—she who is the spirit of courage. From France, after all that praise of Indians in the papers, I wrote again. No use. After that, I hoped by some brave action, I might be killed. Instead, through stupid carelessness, I am only maimed—as you see. I was foolishly angry when Indian troops were sent away from France: and my heart became hard like a nut."—He had emerged from his dream now and was frankly addressing Roy——"I knew, if I went home, they would insist ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the resistance, he perceived that the bolt had been pushed home again—as indeed it had, by the steward, who had noticed it while tapping the barrel, and had imputed its being drawn to some former carelessness of his own. ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Algonquins. More than sixty canoes set out from Montreal in June, the one hundred and forty Algonquins well supplied with firearms to defend themselves from marauding Iroquois. Numbers begot courage, courage carelessness; and before the fleet had reached the Chaudiere Falls, at the modern city of Ottawa, the canoes had spread far apart in utter forgetfulness of danger. Not twenty were within calling distance when an Indian prophet, or wandering medicine ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... distributed: one part is paid by the state, the other by the provinces; every proprietor pays, besides the general imposts, a special tax on the dykes in proportion to the extent of his property and to its proximity to the waters. Any accidental breach, any carelessness, may cause a flood: the danger is ever present. The sentinels are at their posts on the ramparts, and at the first attack of the sea, give the war-cry, whereupon Holland sends out arms, materials, and money. And even when great battles are not in progress, a slow, noiseless struggle is ever ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... "Perhaps it's not altogether Billy's fault," he says. And I must confess I am inclined to agree with this. Of course, a great deal of his "duffingness" (I believe that's the proper word) is due to his carelessness. If he took the trouble to think about what he was doing, he would never translate a French exercise into Latin, or learn his arithmetic by heart instead of his history; he would never mix together (under his nose) two chemicals that would assuredly explode and nearly blow his ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the attainment of peace, and the liberation of the American captives; and regardless of his inability to aid negotiation by the exhibition of force, the discontented ascribed the long and painful imprisonment of their unfortunate brethren to a carelessness in the administration respecting their sufferings, and to that inexhaustible source of accusation,—its policy with ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... might easily have been turned and a wiser man bewildered by the tender glances of the charming girl who frankly met his advances half way, being as much impressed by his appearance as he with hers, and showing carelessness equal to his in regard to the comment they excited among the other guests. One thing that Helen Rexhill had never learned at school, or from the parents who had done all that could be done to spoil her, was to conceal her feelings. Just now she felt no inclination to do it, and ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... with no furniture at all except two or three chairs "painted on the flat." Under such conditions, it was clearly useless for the playwright to trouble his head about furniture, and even "positions" might well be left for arrangement at rehearsal. This carelessness of the environment, however, is no longer possible. Whether we like it or no (and some theorists do not like it at all), scenery has ceased to be a merely suggestive background against which the figures stand out in high relief. The stage now aims at presenting a complete ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... very wary, and the residents say they are but seldom caught from the bridge itself. One day I cast a yellow-body fly, (a clumsy affair, but the best I had, having lost my fly book on the cars) and as it fell on the water I let it drift under the bridge, more in carelessness than by intent, and as it reached the rich bank of green weeds out of my sight, I felt the tug and magnetic vibration that every angler knows so well. Quick as a flash I dropped from the bridge to the ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... sluttish magnificence of a Russian noble, all vermin and diamonds, dirty linen and inestimable sables. Those faults which spring from affectation, time and thought in a great measure removed from his poems. But his carelessness he retained to the last. If towards the close of his life he less frequently went wrong from negligence, it was only because long habits of composition rendered it more easy to go right. In his best pieces we find false rhymes,—triplets, in which the third line appears to be a mere ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Towards the end I found myself falling back on the old frightened protest, "People don't do these things." I still cling to this belief, but the fact remains that Miss HOLDING has a haunting trick of persuading one that they might. Minor faults, such as an irritating idiom and some carelessness of form, she will no doubt correct; meanwhile you have certainly got to read—"to suffer" would be the apter word—this remarkable book, whose ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... by an infinite capacity for not taking pains. Others, again, among whom I would rank myself, combine both these elements of incompetence. Nature, that made me enthusiastically fond of fishing, gave me thumbs for fingers, short-sighted eyes, indolence, carelessness, and a temper which (usually sweet and angelic) is goaded to madness by the laws of matter and of gravitation. For example: when another man is caught up in a branch he disengages his fly; I jerk at it till something breaks. As for carelessness, in boyhood I fished, by ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... Baniani, which ran parallel on our right. These were known to be infested with rebels, traces of whom were found by a force of irregulars sent to attack them during the chilly hours of morning. Here I, for the first time, saw Omer Pacha throw off the air of easy carelessness habitual to him, and apply himself con amore to the work before him. He selected the positions to be occupied by the outposts and picquets, indicating to his staff such points as he considered ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... example set by the venerated leaders of thought exercised great influence throughout society, and all the more because it justified the carelessness and sloth to which ordinary humanity is prone. In the principal towns of Europe, as well as in the country at large, down to a recent period, the most ordinary sanitary precautions were neglected, and pestilences continued to be attributed to the wrath of God ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... of money which the old Greeks used to use. A gentleman gave it to me." Tims spoke with a grand carelessness. "I dare say if you're a good boy he'll tell you stories about them himself some day. But I want you to explain what it was you meant to say about dead people. Dead people ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Rowley, who carried off—the word is of little consequence—who stole, I repeat, that precious paper. So long as the treasure was mine, the consciousness of possessing it was sufficient in itself—but having afterward lost it from my pocket by unpardonable carelessness, I shall at least now glory in the daring deed which ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... I'm awfully sorry, dear." There was genuine regret for such culpable carelessness in his voice. "How ever did I forget it?" He drew her closer in his embrace for a brief caress. Then, after a little, his natural buoyancy reasserted itself, and he spoke with a mischievousness that would, he hoped, serve to stimulate ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... But I'm still jumpy, and this sort of carelessness makes me nervous, particularly as the story is going about that the King came near being assassinated in the station of his home town when he was leaving. Man fired point blank at his face, but gun didn't go off or some one knocked up the man's arm. Did you notice that he looked about rather ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... come again. Any man or woman who, whether by design or carelessness, attempts to mar this growing friendship is perpetrating a crime against humanity as grave as that of the first armed Hun who stepped across the Belgian threshold. It were better for them that mill-stones were hung about their ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... pianist Leopold Kozeluch who had triumphantly pointed out a few slips due to carelessness ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... verandah, three villages on fire at one and the same time. In some parts of Oudh, among the sal forests, village after village is burnt down annually, and I have seen the same catastrophe visit the same village several times in the course of one year. These fires arise from pure carelessness, sheer apathy, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... freshened, but nothing was in sight except a distant mark when night fell, which the Texan said was the timber where the party ahead would camp. Just as the sun was setting smoke was seen to rise in that direction, and the Texan spoke contemptuously of the carelessness which would thus expose a camping-place to those who were ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... controlled by sponging the body with cool water. If the patient is an infant the food should be reduced to one-half strength. Tonsilitis is a disease that runs a certain course and gets better, or the patient develops some other more serious conditions as a result of neglect or carelessness. We therefore try to make the patient comfortable and let the disease take care ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... write his "Citizens of the World," at a guinea each, for his daily newspaper, the Public Ledger (1760). The Newberys seem to have been worthy, prudent tradesmen, constantly vexed and irritated at Goldsmith's extravagance, carelessness, and ceaseless cry for money; and so it went on till the hare-brained, delightful fellow died, when Francis Newbery wrote a violent defence of the fever medicine, an excess of which ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. Who was your father? He was evidently a man of some wealth. Was he born in what the Radical papers call the purple of commerce, or did he rise from the ranks ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... too, to assist him in rehanging the picture. This perfection of acting had its full reward. With equal composure he excused her from the task, and, adding some expression of regret at his well-known carelessness in not looking better after his effects, bowed her from the room with only a slight increase of his usual ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... wide-eyed with astonishment. Not had a new coat for three years! Why, that was nearly as long as she herself had been away, and she had had one every winter and summer. Poor Faith! no wonder she looked so shabby. It was not entirely from her own carelessness then. ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... golden dawn, a golden sun coming out of level country. She loved it. She loved being in Italy. She loved the lounging carelessness of the train, she liked having Italian money, hearing the Italians round her—though they were neither as beautiful nor as melodious as she expected. She loved watching the glowing antique landscape. She read and read again: "E pericoloso sporgersi," and "E vietato fumare," and the other ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... science!" he said, with a carelessness which did not quite ring true. "Your mother is worth the sacrifice, Brenton. I saw that ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... this time. I wasn't smartin' under anger an' unjust treatment; I was goin' out of my own accord an' because I had left behind me the carelessness of boyhood, hood, an' was ready to plow an' plant an' wait for a crop. No more gaiety, no more frivolity, no more heedlessness. I was to scheme an' plan for the future an' not be led astray by every enticin' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... are sometimes led by carelessness of phrase into giving their patients shocks. The country doctor who, combining in his morning's round a visit to the Squire and another to the Vicar, said that he was trying to kill two birds with one stone, would probably have ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... you tell me—if Manley himself is another disillusionment—if beyond his selfishness and his carelessness he is a drunken brute whom I can't even respect, then I'm done with my ideals. I want to see him just as he is. I want to see him once without the halo I have kept shining all these months. I've got my life to live—but I want to face facts and live facts. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... it too well, doctor. I wish I could infuse some degree of nonchalant carelessness into ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the punishment seemed in comparison with the fault, it was justified by the necessities of the case. Without the strictest safeguards, not only against treachery or disobedience, but even mere carelessness, it would have been impossible to have carried on the tremendous work which the Brotherhood had silently and secretly accomplished, and which was soon to produce results as momentous as they would be unexpected. No one knew this better than ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... fugitive dignity, of some service to others in her wilder times, and to herself when she came into contact with an older civilisation. She would occasionally do a right generous thing—not seldom give with a freedom and judge with a liberality which were mainly rooted in carelessness. ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... be foolish, Grey," said the older man. "We have played and lost. There has been much carelessness—and we have suffered for it. I ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... placed before them by pages, and taking their prayer-books from the hands of female attendants, formed a brilliant circle around the chancel lattice. Standing next that lattice, wrapped in their richly colored and embroidered cloaks, letting their green and red orders be seen with studied carelessness, holding in one hand their hats, the plumes sweeping the floor, and letting the other rest upon the polished hilts of rapiers or the jewelled handles of daggers, the twenty-four knights, and a large part of the highest nobility of Seville, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... now began to fear Houadir had forgotten her, and resolved, as soon as the eunuchs had left her, to drop a second peppercorn. But poor Urad had forgotten to take her bag from her old garments, which the women who dressed her had carried away. She dissolved in fresh tears at this piece of carelessness. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... lead pencil, so that in handling them the characters soon became blurred and almost illegible; a great many were written on scraps of paper of all shapes and sizes; and others again were full of omissions and doublets, due to the carelessness of the writer, while many consisted simply of the prayer, with nothing in the nature of a heading or prescription ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... the corner of the street where I had passed, but the other was nowhere to be seen. I felt sure it was picked up by some one. I at once gave notice to my brother, and he took immediate measures to trace the finder. I cannot express the chagrin and anxiety which I suffered on account of my carelessness, but Charles uttered no reproach, but prepared to replace the loss. Fortunately within a month the lost money was traced to an "early drunkard," who found the package on the pavement while going for his morning grog. He was watched and at night was ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Alwyn was essentially, and above all things, faithful to the lofty purpose of his calling,—he dealt with his art reverently, and not in rough haste and scrambling carelessness,— if he worked out any idea in rhyme, the idea was distinct and the rhyme was perfect,—he was not content, like Browning, to jumble together such hideous and ludicrous combinations as "high;— Humph!" and "triumph,"—moreover, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... going to commence my explanation by talking to the players whose games are not yet formed. At least once every season I go back to first principles to pull myself out of some rut into which carelessness dropped me. ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... morning, before the household was astir, Sandro entered the apartments of the lady Simonetta. She was awaiting him, leaning with feigned carelessness against the balustrade, arrayed from head to toe in a rose-colored mantle. One bare foot peeped forth from under ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... fellow-beings. You set aside three hours for your toilet, and devote two hours to the little curl which droops over the tip of your dainty ear; but with a man who has no curl, who knows nothing of the practice of smiles and side glances, the studied carelessness of a pose, it is a dismal, serious business ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... in at the window, and making signs to you, Alice? Damn his impudence!" he cried, and jumping up, ran to the window, opened it, and passed out into the twilight. We all looked at each other in surprise; some of the party remarked upon the carelessness of servants in letting nasty-looking fellows hang about the kitchen, others told stories of tramps and burglars. Mrs. Oke did not speak; but I noticed the curious, distant-looking ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... used for the common carriage of persons are guilty of gross carelessness or neglect in the conduct and management of the same while in such use, they are liable to a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or to imprisonment not exceeding three years.[55] And if a ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... hospitality here in the country, and Dolly thought he had been secretly glad to be relieved of the necessity of doing it in town. Very unlike him. It was unlike him, too, to content his pride with so meagre an establishment. Mr. Copley loved to handle money, always spent it with a lavish carelessness, and was rather fond of display. What had made this change? Dolly had felt the change in still other and lesser things. Money had not been immediately forthcoming when she asked for it lately to pay her mantua maker's bill; and she had noticed on several occasions that ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... lean, excitable man with quite remarkably long wrists and neck, was gratified at a request for a private conversation from a young man whose carelessness in religious matters was a subject for general remark in the town. After a few necessary delays, he conducted him to the study of the Manse, which was contiguous to the chapel, seated him comfortably, and, standing ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... of healing. Its recipient had been conscious on the second day, but, finding himself a prisoner in the hands of the enemy, he had been naturally enough inclined to be a little sulky and suspicious. But the bright carelessness of Laurence, who dashed at any speech in idiomatic but ungrammatical outlander's French, gradually won upon him. As also the fact that Laurence was clerk-learned and could sing and play upon the viol with surprising skill ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... days Clarke was quite celebrated as a beau and dandy, and at one time was said to be the best dressed man in New York; but in his later years he became notorious for his carelessness of attire, and few of his tenants wore a cheaper costume. In this matter he was indifferent to public opinion, and went about looking like an old-fashioned farmer. In winter he covered himself with a buffalo coat that had areas ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... to see your face again. Had it not been for this lady, my child would have been killed through your carelessness. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... As it was obviously impossible to kindle a fire, the tradesmen were fain to use charcoal chafing-dishes, and formed a sort of brigade for the prevention of fires among themselves; and, indeed, a little carelessness might have set the whole quarter blazing in fifteen minutes, for the plank-built republic, dried by the heat of the sun, and haunted by too inflammable human material, was bedizened with muslin and paper and gauze, and ventilated at times ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... in keeping Christ's commandments? And do you prefer it to all earthly, carnal things? Do your hearts breathe and pant after it, and are you willing to deny self, and all self-interests to get it? Are you glad when you find it, and sad when by your own carelessness you lose it? Doth it when obtained quicken your love to and zeal for Christ? Doth it warm your hearts, and cause them for a time to run your race in gospel obedience cheerfully? Doth it lead you unto, and cause your hearts to centre in Christ? and doth it oblige and bind them faster unto him and ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... acquaintance with the most fertile grounds enabled them not only to survey the land, but to choose the portions best fit for settlement. The lack of proper government surveys, and the looseness with which the records were kept in the land office, put a premium on fraud and encouraged carelessness. People could make and record entries in secret, and have the land surveyed in secret, if they feared a dispute over a title; no one save the particular deputy surveyor employed needed to know. [Footnote: Draper MSS. in Wisconsin State Hist. Ass. Clark papers. Walter ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... mind you. Not merely set away from the poor, so as to neglect or lose sight of them, but set against, so as to afflict and destroy them. This is the main point I want to fix. your attention upon. You will often hear sermons about neglect or carelessness of the poor. But neglect and carelessness are not at all the points. The Bible hardly ever talks about neglect of the poor. It always talks of oppression of the poor—a very different matter. It does not merely speak of passing by on the other side, and binding up no wounds, but of drawing ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... replied the boy, with elaborate carelessness. "Say, Mr. Seaton, can't we stay one more day and you take the trip ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... even better than that embodied in the story of the experienced writer. But the merit of the idea is hopelessly concealed under a mass of misleading and unnecessary language; the script is poorly written—in longhand; it is badly spaced; spelling, punctuation, everything, betray ignorance or carelessness of what is expected in a properly prepared script. What chance, then, does it stand when placed beside that of the trained writer? And whose ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... across his imagination the figure of a man, the Unknown who had, perhaps, promised her the care he had never given her, the affection which she had almost never had from him. Having won her, this Unknown would likely defy him down there in that awful openness and carelessness ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... emperor and the Persian Shah-in-Shah, and that these causes were the weakness and exhaustion of the national dynasties in the presence of the vital elements of the conquerors. The people suffered from the carelessness of their kings; individual energy was powerless against the invasion of disciplined and fanatical tribes, commanded by generals like Omar and ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... of his sort are first struck with a lady, but not very deep, they speak out their admiration bold and gallant; when they find they're hit seriously, but haven't made sure of her, they speak of her with make-believe carelessness or mere respect: they don't like to show how far gone they are. But when she's come to an understanding with 'em, and put 'em under obligations and responsibilities—it's only then they touch her name so tender and considerate, as if it ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... but, after all, to speak impartially, his failings are such, as are only marks of human frailty: they are little mistakes, or rather negligences, which have escaped his pen in the fervour of his writing; the sublimity of his spirit carries it with me against his carelessness; and though Apollonius his "Argonauts," and Theocritus his "Idyllia," are more free from errors, there is not any man of so false a judgment, who would chuse rather to have been Apollonius ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... superstitious that I have always been afraid to have business dealings with certain relatives and friends of mine because they were unlucky people. All my life I have stumbled upon lucky chances of large size, and whenever they were wasted it was because of my own stupidity and carelessness. And so I have felt entirely certain that the machine would turn up trumps eventually. It disappointed me lots of times, but I couldn't shake off the confidence of a lifetime in ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... deluding hopes, and his real, as well as imaginary, fears; his natural and artificial wants; his cares and anxieties; the diseases of his body, and the diseases of his mind; the shortness of his life; his dread of a future state, with his carelessness to prepare for it: And the wise men of all ages have ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... such prominent and striking features as recall the original to every mind, and must neglect the minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked and another have neglected, for those characteristics which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness. ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... morning, old Raoul was busy in the mews where he kept his hawks, grumbling all the while to himself as he surveyed the condition of each bird, and blaming alternately the carelessness of the under-falconer, and the situation of the building, and the weather, and the wind, and all things around him, for the dilapidation which time and disease had made in the neglected hawking establishment of the Garde Doloureuse. While in these unpleasing meditations, he was surprised by the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... in the centre of the miserable room, his dark eyes, keen, alert, critical, sweeping comprehensively over every object about him—the position of a chair, of a cracked drinking glass on the broken-legged table, of an old coat thrown with apparent carelessness on the floor at the foot of the bed, of a broken bottle that had innocently strewn some sort of white powder close to the threshold, inviting unwary foot tracks across the floor. And then, taking out the Tocsin's letter, he laid it upon the table, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... look, but his remained parallel. It gave them a singular expression, as though he were scrutinising the inmost thought of the person with whom he talked. He was notorious also for the extravagance of his costume, but, unlike the aesthetes of that day, who clothed themselves with artistic carelessness, he had a taste for outrageous colours. Sometimes, by a queer freak, he dressed himself at unseasonable moments with excessive formality. He is the only undergraduate I have ever seen walk down the High in a tall hat and ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham |
