"Unreliable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Captain and the command of a Company. A year's indefatigable work convinced him that he might as well endeavour to fashion sword-blades from leaden pipes as to make a fighting unit of his gang of essentially cowardly, peaceful, unreliable, feeble nondescripts. That their bodies were contemptible he would have regarded as merely deplorable, but there was no spirit, no soul, no tradition—nothing upon which he could work. "Broken-down tapsters and serving-men" indeed, in Cromwell's bitter words, and ...
— 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
... tolerant as it seems, thoroughly a man's point of view, and not, as with Meredith, man's and woman's at once. He sees all that is irresponsible for good and evil in a woman's character, all that is unreliable in her brain and will, all that is alluring in her variability. He is her apologist, but always with a certain reserve of private judgment. No one has created more attractive women, women whom a man would have been more likely to love, or more likely to regret loving. Jude the Obscure ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... salute, which I must confess made me feel very important. I had never suspected that such an armed force was necessary to protect a man who was going to have his portrait painted, but of course, I am well aware that artists are always most unreliable people. When the real reason of this display was explained, I did indeed ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... referring to the relative times of the leaves of these trees appearing in the spring, and is supposed to be prophetic of the weather during the ensuing summer. I have, however, noticed for many years that the oak is invariably first, so that like some other prognostications, it seems to be unreliable. ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... long silence the other boar said, "You know, I think we're taking all this too seriously. Those peels probably floated over here all by themselves, and you know how unreliable mice are. Besides, if there had been an invasion, ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... and Muscovy competed for his alliance, and in his more exalted moods he meditated an Orthodox crusade against the Turk at the head of the northern Slavs. But he was no statesman, and his difficulties proved overwhelming. Instinct told him that his old ally the khan of the Crimea was unreliable, and that the tsar of Muscovy was his natural protector, yet he could not make up his mind to abandon the one or turn to the other. His attempt to carve a principality for his son out of Moldavia, which Poland regarded as her vassal, led to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... ingredients, but not the amount. There has been no restriction upon their manufacture or sale in this country, therefore the user has only the manufacturer's statement as to the nature of the medicine and its uses, and these statements, in many instances, have been proved utterly false and unreliable. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... kind appear to be going on nearly all the time, and there does not seem to be any limit to the number of suckers who fall for them. But then, one can't blame the public when you realize how thoroughly unreliable is most of the market information given ...
— Successful Stock Speculation • John James Butler
... request I have made to thee," said Arundel, "and, if refused, it shall be the last. I shall be compelled to believe you consider me unworthy of your friendship, too effeminate to bear a walk of a few days in the forest, and unreliable in the hour ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... king, was impressible, easily influenced, yet stubborn, intractable, incoherent, passionate, and unreliable; sometimes inclining to the Guises, sometimes to Coligny and the Huguenots, and always submitting at last, after vain struggle, to his imperious mother's will, in her efforts to free him from both. ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... be told that our parallel does not hold good: if the Marconi apparatus failed seven times out of ten, we should hardly {211} think it worth while to provide our ships with so unreliable an instrument; yet who would say that even three out of ten prayers for stated objects met with fulfilment? The objection, however, is not unanswerable; indeed, the very comparison employed in stating it may enable us to supply ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... is making a few dents in his loveliness of character, that the edges are worn away, that there's a weakness or two where you imagined only strength to be, and that instead of standing a saint and hero all in one, he's merely an unruly and unreliable human being with his ups and downs of patience and temper and passion. But, bless his battered old soul, you love him none the less for all that. You no longer fret about him being unco guid, and ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... for children was possible only in the summer, and as the dogs were sometimes unreliable, the little ones were exposed to a certain amount of danger. For instance, whenever a train of dogs had been travelling for a long time, almost perishing with the heat and their heavy loads, a glimpse of water would cause them to forget all their responsibilities. Some ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... rations for members of their families and for their negro slaves. McCulloch was also of the opinion that conditions in Indian Territory were pretty bad [Official Records, vol. xxii, part i, 1065], and that the red men were absolutely unreliable [Ibid., vol. xxvi, part ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... that "there are comparatively few of the slaves lately freed who are honest" and truthful, but maintained that the Negroes were capable of improvement. The chief executives of Mississippi and Florida declared that there was no danger to the whites in admitting the more or less unreliable Negro testimony, for the courts and juries would in every case arrive at a proper valuation of it. Governors Marvin of Florida and Humphreys of Mississippi advocated practical civil equality, while in North ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... doings, reliable or unreliable, that have been handed down to us, are extremely comical, looking at them from our religious standpoint in these days; for instance, Drake's method of dealing with insubordination, his idea of how ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... letter, Ma, from Carson—the one in which you doubt my veracity about the statements I made in a letter to you. That's right. I don't recollect what the statements were, but I suppose they were mining statistics. I have just finished writing up my report for the morning paper, and giving the Unreliable a column of advice about how to conduct himself in church, and now I will tell you a few more lies, while my hand is in. For instance, some of the boys made me a present of fifty feet in the East India G. and S. M. Company ten days ago. I was offered ninety-five dollars a foot for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... often become the opprobrium of the practioner by remaining, as they frequently do, an eyesore on the top of the hock; they do not interfere, it is true, with the work of the horse, but fixing upon him the stigma of what, in human estimation, is a most unreliable and objectionable reputation, to wit, that of being an habitual "kicker," and, worse than all, one ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... delights in playing at mistress. She asks in some of her neighbors to dinner, but Violet, excusing herself, goes over to the cottage. Floyd is not at home to be consulted, and she does not wish to blunder or to annoy him. She wins Marcia's favor to a certain extent, but her favor is the most unreliable gift of the gods. She has no mind of her own, but is continually picking up ready-made characteristics of her neighbors and trying them on as one would a bonnet, and with about the same success. While the rest of her small world is painfully aware of her inconsistency, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... secure white labor, unable to trust Japanese labor, unable to endure Japanese neighbors or to enter into Japanese social life weary of paying taxes to support schools for the education of Japanese children, weary of daily contact with irritable, unreliable and unassimilable aliens, sold or leased their farms in order to escape into a white neighborhood. I presume, Mr. Parker, that nobody can realize the impossibility of withstanding this yellow flood except those ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... to the forts at Verdun, were the French to rely upon them. But France is a nation of brilliant soldiers. Realizing at once that what was an impregnable fort in former days is now hardly better than an incubus—a mere house of cards, something utterly unreliable—she poured her forces out beyond those forts, dug her trenches on the eastern and northern slopes of the heights of the Meuse, and surrounded Verdun and its encircling forts with a network of trenches, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... bishop of Olympus, in Lycia. The statements that he also held other sees are unreliable. He died in 311 as a martyr. Nothing else is known with certainty as to his life. Of his numerous and well-written works, only one, The Banquet, or Symposium, has been preserved entire. His work On the Resurrection is most strongly opposed to Origen ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... unpleasant, takes his food fairly out of the frying-pan under his eyes if he is not on guard. He is the first up in the morning and the last in bed. He has to dry his dishes on anything that comes handy, and then pack all of his grub on an unreliable horse and start off for the ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... don't come true are you willing to acknowledge that all are unreliable? Or, if some prove true do you consider them all reliable? You can have either horn ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... surprised to see windmills, and wire fencing for the cattle pastures that adjoined their homes. He was even more interested in their rifles, which, the tribesmen told him, were repeaters. He was puzzled by the absence of a cylinder, such as could be found on the generally unreliable revolvers one ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... party of white men are approaching, and will be here by noon. I never knew an Indian runner to carry unreliable information. We have joyful news, both in regard to your brother, and the Village of Peace. Let us go in to ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... the manuscript of Il Pastor Fido, the first new opera which he produced, is dated, at the end, "Londres, ce 24 Octobre." The opera-house was now under the management of Owen MacSwiney, who seems to have been both incompetent and unreliable. Il Pastor Fido did not attract the public, and was withdrawn after six performances, but Handel soon had another opera ready to take its place. Teseo was finished on December 19, and brought out on January 10, 1713; it was a romantic-heroic ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... more," he said. "When you've employed these men as long as I have—the type of man who has worked all his life on the river—you'll know as well as I do just how uncertain and unreliable they are. What you need is a gang that doesn't want to think for itself. This crowd has too much imagination for a ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... of its introduction, about 1718, until about 1880, the only coffee grown in Surinam, or Dutch Guiana, was the Coffea arabica. It was not a bountiful producer, and with labor scarce and unreliable, its cultivation was expensive. Therefore experiment was made with the liberica plant. This proved to be very satisfactory, growing luxuriantly, producing abundantly, and requiring minimum labor in care. In 1918 some 16,000,000 pounds ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... also, to hear it argued that if we make the Arcadians our allies, and carry out my advice, it will seem as though Athens were changing her policy, and were utterly unreliable. I believe that the exact reverse of this is the case, men of Athens, and I will tell you why. I suppose that no one in the world can deny that when this city saved the Spartans,[n] and before them the Thebans,[n] and finally the Euboeans,[n] ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... Teheran, and is one of the chief troubles that Europeans have to contend with. There are Armenian and Persian servants, and there is little to choose between the two. Servants accustomed to European ways are usually a bad lot, and most unreliable; but in all fairness it must be admitted that, to a great extent, these servants have been utterly spoilt by Europeans themselves, who did not know how to deal with them in a suitable manner. I repeatedly noticed in Teheran and other parts of Persia that people who really understood ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... promise. He should never be allowed to forget that he can go to his mother as frankly as to his own heart, with the certainty of finding sympathy and aid. And she should not let him forget that he is not to seek information from outside sources, such information being unreliable. ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... hospital in a small apartment, enjoying as much liberty as he could manage. He had equipment so he could stump around, and an antique car specially equipped. He wasn't complimentary about them. Orthopedic products had to be: unreliable, hard to service, unsightly, intricate, and uncomfortable. If they also squeaked and cut ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... never been here before, but she had had countless photographs made, and supposed herself thoroughly acquainted with the spot. But, to some minds, photographs are confusing things, jumbling up the points of compass in an unreliable manner. Joyce found that it was almost as strange as if never pictured out before her, and a great deal uglier than she had supposed. She shivered as she gazed around upon the bleakness everywhere, perhaps largely accentuated by a gray, chilly morning of early ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... more of the mysterious voices of the Unmentionable One making wondrous magic within the temple as Mungongo chanted, at Birnier's prompting, the god's instructions to his high priest and people. The form of the chant was not correct as Mungongo's memory was very unreliable, but as Birnier remarked to the portrait of Lucille, "I don't suppose Maestro Bakahenzie is such a stylist as he would have the public suppose." Afterwards, to Mungongo's delight, who was never tired of any manifestation of Moonspirit's ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... without doing the pregnancy any harm. Many other drugs are reputed to have great efficacy in causing the expulsion of the product of conception; unfortunately, they are too well known to require enumeration. They are usually unreliable, and are absolutely inefficient in doses small enough not to endanger the mother's life, provided the pregnancy ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... in road here, marked "85 CAV.—III CORPS." Inhabitants say no enemy seen here. They appear hostile and unreliable. No telegraph operator or records remain here. Roads good macadam. Water and haystacks plentiful. Will move rapidly ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... Franklin was printed on this paper. A copy of it would be "a sight" to Mr. Walter and the staff of the "Thunderer." The esprit de corps of Brent's artillery was admirable, and its conduct and efficiency in action unsurpassed. Serving with wild horsemen, unsteady and unreliable for want of discipline, officers and men learned to fight their guns without supports. True, Brent had under his command many brilliant young officers, whose names will appear in this narrative; but his impress was upon all, and he owes ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... time no observations had been taken. The altitude of the sun had been so low as to make observations unreliable. Moreover, we were traveling at a good clip, and the mean estimate of Bartlett, Marvin, and myself, based on our previous ice experience, was sufficient for dead reckoning. Now, a clear, calm day, with the temperature not lower than minus forty, made a checking of ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... contemptuously, "a most unreliable authority. However, I'll promise you one thing, Hope, that if there are any jewels, or jewelry, you shall ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... noses unnecessarily during the day. These symptoms may, however, accompany other conditions when no worms are present in the bowel. My observation has been that in children in whom worms were present the nervous symptoms were distinctly accentuated. They are unreliable children; they seem well to-day and peevish to-morrow; they complain of headaches, dizziness, and chilly feelings. They are hysterical, noisy, uncontrollable. A child with these symptoms should be suspected of having worms and if no cause can be found to ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... the young 'squire's mother; "but the judge will appoint you, don't you think, since she is weak-minded, and Lige is so unreliable? Poor Sabriny would have very little comfort in that torn-down hut I'm afraid. Did the judge say he ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... of a perfectly fresh judgment without reference to preceding judgments. The only fear was lest certain sequences of compared intervals (e.g., a long compared interval in one test followed by a short one in the next), might produce unreliable results; but careful examination of the data, in which the order of the interval was always noted, fails to show any influence of ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... they would weather the gale together. The disbanding of the team by Miss Archer and Ellen Seymour's vindication, could not be hushed up, however, and, despite their protests that Miss Archer was unfair, and that the statements of certain other girls were wholly unreliable, they lost ground with ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... composed of mercenaries from all nations, adventurers who had nothing to lose, who had but little to gain. They were turbulent and rebellious. Revolts among the soldiers were common. They brought new vices to the camps, and learned in addition all the vices of the Romans. They were greedy, unreliable, and cherished concealed enmities. They had no common interest or bond of union. They were always ready for revolt, and gave away the highest prizes to fortunate generals. They sold the imperial dignity, and became the masters rather than the servants of the emperors. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the vicious and the unreliable. Other evils may flourish among the idle, the indolent, the treacherous, the deceitful and the dishonest, but industry and economy and integrity and faithfulness and honor and even God-fearing piety are desirable qualities in the usurer's victims. The higher ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... the official Christian State is an Ought, which is impossible of realization. Only by lies can it persuade itself of the reality of its existence, and consequently it always remains for itself an object of doubt, an unreliable and ambiguous object. The critic is therefore quite justified in forcing the State, which appeals to the Bible, into a condition of mental derangement where it no longer knows whether it is a phantasm or a reality, where the infamy of its secular ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... unless it be understood that, the discussion is to be followed by resistance. Tyrants care nothing for discussions that are to end only in discussion. Discussions, which do not interfere with the enforcement of their laws, are but idle wind to them. Suffrage is equally powerless and unreliable. It can be exercised only periodically; and the tyranny must at least be borne until the time for suffrage comes. Be sides, when the suffrage is exercised, it gives no guaranty for the repeal of existing laws that are oppressive, and no security against the enactment of new ones that ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. When he had finished the Arabic, i.e. somewhere about 1724 or 1725, he cut his own name in Roman type and placed it at the foot of the specimen. This attracted the notice of Samuel Palmer, the author of a very unreliable History of Printing, and with Palmer, Caslon worked for some time, but at length transferred his services to William Bowyer, for whom he cut the types of ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... the routes across the isthmus of Central America are at best but a very uncertain and unreliable mode of communication. But even if this were not the case, they would at once be closed against us in the event of war with a naval power so much stronger than our own as to enable it to blockade the ports at either end of these routes. After all, therefore, we can only rely upon a military road ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... apologetic proof (the proof from antiquity) he seemed to be a heathen and a Jew at the same time (see my Texte u. Unters. I. 3, p. 68; the antitheses of Marcion became very important for the heathen and Manichaean assaults on Christianity). Because he represented the twelve Apostles as unreliable witnesses, he appeared to be the most wicked and shameless of all heretics. Finally, because he gained so many adherents, and actually founded a church, he appeared to be the ravening wolf (Justin, Rhodon), and his church as the spurious ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... persons, the most famous of whom was Banting, have advanced theories to reduce corpulency and to improve slenderness; but they have been uniformly unreliable, and the whole subject of stature-development presents an almost unexplored field for investigation. Recently, Leichtenstein, observing in a case of myxedema treated with the thyroid gland that the subcutaneous fat disappeared with the continuance ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... by. My memory has become vague and unreliable. Sometimes I think of the colonel, but without feeling again the terrors of those early days. All the doctors to whom I have described his afflictions have been unanimous as regards the inevitable end in store for the invalid, and were indeed surprised that he should so long have resisted. It is ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... gratitude. Of course Donald Morley was nothing to her now. She had assured herself of that so continuously for two months that she was beginning to believe it. She knew that he was wild, reckless and unreliable, that he had failed her in her greatest need, and that she had put him out of her life forever. But it was good of the Doctor to ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... pledge myself to these figures;" i.e., "The next speaker will very likely show them to be absolutely unreliable." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... see how unreliable in pathological cases is the calculation of the amount of haemoglobin from the amount of iron. We have been particularly led to these observations by the work of Biernacki, since the procedure of inferring the amount of haemoglobin from the amount of iron has led to really remarkable ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... Lord and keep your powder dry!" For he had done all that naval foresight could have done to ensure success. And now, in one lightning flash of genius, he reviewed the situation. He knew the torpedoes of his day were often unreliable, that they exploded only on a special kind of shock, that those which did explode could not be replaced in action, that they were all fixed to their own spots, and that if one ship was blown up her next-astern ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... Wilhelm Kress, the distinguished and veteran aviator of Vienna, witnessed a number of glides by Lilienthal with his double-decked apparatus. He noticed that it was much wracked and wobbly and wrote to me after the accident: "The connection of the wings and the steering arrangement were very bad and unreliable. I warned Herr Lilienthal very seriously. He promised me that he would soon put it in order, but I fear that he did not ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... up my mind to fulfill and make good my promise, and trust to the future to compel James Wilson to perform his. I thought this the right course. I did not deem that I would be justified in breaking my promise because Wilson was unreliable and broke his. I concluded that if Leadbitter kept me longer than one month he would have to be smarter than I gave him credit for being. I asked Leadbitter how many days there ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... as he walked inland from the Cove, and rendered his answers to Stanley's ceaseless flow of questions upon all conceivable subjects somewhat vague and unreliable. Hilda was walking with them, and divided with Christian the task of supplying her small brother ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... notice that man always applies the feminine gender to anything unreliable in the way of machinery. If it's sober and steady-going, you label it masculine, like Big Ben. But if it's uncertain in action, like a motor-boat, you call it Fifi or Lolo ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... the minority found that the testimony upon the point was "limited in amount, vague and indefinite in character and utterly unreliable, because of the disreputable character of the witnesses"—oddly overlooking the fact that one of these witnesses had been called for Apostle Smoot; that no attempt had been made to impeach the character ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... required standard of utility, and are characterized by defects which are at once forced upon us by a little close examination. Felt is an admirable non-conductor of heat, but owing to its combustible nature it is quite unreliable when subject to the heat of a high pressure of steam. A large fragment of this material which had been taken off the boiler of a North River steamboat was exhibited at the meeting, scorched and charred as if it had ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... line-of-battle ships fleeing from American 44's quite match James' anecdotes of the latter's avoidance of British 38's and 36's for fear they might mount twenty-four-pounders. The two works taken together give a very good idea of the war; separately, either is utterly unreliable, especially in matters of opinion.] Every little American author crowed over Perry's "Nelsonic victory over a greatly superior force." The Constitution was declared to have been at a disadvantage when she fought the Guerriere, and so on ad infinitum. But these writers have all ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Said he drank when he got the chance. Now worked around the Army Hotel and received in return his bed and one meal ticket a day. Expected to leave the city as soon as the weather got warmer. Evidently a kind of tramp with a tendency to become worse. Looked wild and unreliable. ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... almost entirely to events that have occured[sic] within one's lifetime. There are few traditions that have any historical value, and even in these there is an element of the wonderful that makes them unreliable as guides. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... been adopted, the doors of the Committee Rooms on Sacramento Street were opened for initiation into the body. The greatest caution was exercised to prevent the admission of any disreputable or unreliable man. Every person presenting himself was carefully scrutinized at the outer door by a trusty guard and at the stair head within by another; and if unknown to them, was required to be vouched for by two respectable citizens. From Thursday the 15th until Saturday the 17th at two o'clock P. M. a ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... been written upon the subject treated in this work. Unfortunately, most of these works are utterly unreliable, being filled with gross misrepresentations and exaggerations, and being designed as advertising mediums for ignorant and unscrupulous charlatans, or worse than worthless patent nostrums. To add to their power for evil, many of them abound with pictorial ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... commonly a peculiar glow of sunshine just before a storm, a brightness so obviously unreliable that we are torn between enjoyment and anxiety. I have known no greater revelation of Nature's glories, even in a sunset hour, than in one of these moments of glow before the darkness of storm. And in a man's life there is sometimes an episode so bright, so full of promise, that we feel its perfection ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... while the California gold craze was still on, a monthly route was laid out between Sacramento and Salt Lake City[35]. This service was irregular and unreliable; and since the growing population of California demanded a direct overland route, a four year monthly contract was granted to W. F. McGraw, a resident of Maryland. His subsidy from Congress was $13,500.00 a year. In those days it often took a month to get mail from Independence ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... character, minute observation, a fine memory and all his instincts were charged with almost superhuman vitality, but no one could argue with him. Had the foundation of his character been as unreasonable and unreliable as his temperament, he would have made neither friends nor money; but he was fundamentally sound, ultimately serene and high-minded in the truest sense of the word. He was a man of intellect, but not an intellectual man; he did not really know ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... Wieland, for having provided him with such an unreliable weapon, Wittich was about to announce himself conquered, when Hildebrand, realizing that he had not acted honorably, gave him back his own blade. Dietrich, to his surprise and dismay, found himself conquered in this second encounter, ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... is the fact that every parent should ponder seriously: Normal children are almost certain to get sexual information not later than the early adolescent years, and usually from unreliable and vulgar sources. It is, therefore, not a question whether children of school ages should be taught the important facts of sex, but whether parents and trained teachers rather than playmates and other unreliable persons should be the instructors. Which ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... various British stations, making itself heard from five to ten miles. The engineer in charge of the lighthouses of Canada says: "The expense for repairs, and the frequent stoppages to make these repairs during the four years they continued in use, made them [the trumpets] expensive and unreliable. The frequent stoppages during foggy weather made them sources of danger instead of aids to navigation. The sound of these trumpets has deteriorated during the last year or so." Gen. Duane, reporting as to his experiments in 1881, says: "The Daboll trumpet, operated by a caloric engine, should ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... need not support his truth by an accumulation of evidence imitated from the actual life he has observed. But on the other hand, there is nothing to prevent his doing so; and unless he be very headstrong—so headstrong as to be almost unreliable—he will be extremely chary of his freedom. He will not subvert the actual unless there is no other equally effective means of conveying the truth he has to tell. Many times a close adherence to actuality is as advisable for the deductive ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... more prevalent in Catholic than in Protestant countries? I utterly deny the assertion, and also appeal to statistics in support of the denial. Whence do our opponents derive their information? Forsooth, from Rev. M. Hobart Seymour's "Nights Among Romanists" and similar absolutely unreliable compilations, the false statements of which have been again and ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... capital. Tradition avers, partly on the strength of several ancient beaches still distinctly marked, that the whole valley was under water when the temple was built, and that it originally stood upon the immediate shore. This generally unreliable guide even goes into details and grows statistical, mentioning the year 266 B.C.as the epoch of the sudden shrinking of the waters to what—or nearly what, for desiccation is said to be still going on—is seen of them now. This becomes less incredible ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... at the mouth of the river, near a bluff that stood where the Toledo Railroad Machine Shops have since been built, about seventy-five rods west of the present entrance to the harbor. In those days the river entrance was of a very unreliable character, being sometimes entirely blocked up with sand, so that people walked across. It was no uncommon thing for people to ride over, or jump the outlet with the help of ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... which we are to regard it. He has just been saying that upon our Lord's first visit to Jerusalem at the Passover there was a considerable amount of interest excited, and a kind of imperfect faith in Him drawn out, based solely on His miracles. He adds that this faith was regarded by Christ as unreliable; and he goes on to explain that our Lord exercised great reserve in His dealings with the persons who professed it, for the reason that 'He knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man, for He knew what was ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... conscientious as an artist, and became a favorite with the public, but not with his colleagues, because of his extraordinary meanness and avarice and a jealous disposition; Marini was the greatest living Italian basso, save Lablache, but his voice was occasionally unreliable, and he frequently ill-humored, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... commanded by Captain John Mason. Uncas, the Mohegan sachem, led the Indian warriors. When they arrived near the mouth of the river, the Indians desired to be set on shore, that they might advance by land to the fort, and attack the Pequots by surprise. The English were very apprehensive that their unreliable allies were about to prove treacherous, and to desert to the Pequots. But, as it was desirable to test them before the hour of battle arrived, they were permitted to land. The Mohegans, however, proved faithful. On ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... pronounce conscientious, and accurate in the highest degree in their respective days; but these days were long ago, and the present state of knowledge has rendered a considerable proportion of their texts obsolete and unreliable. Dibdin has certainly added to Herbert, but he has not, on the contrary, in all cases faithfully reprinted him; if his book had been as great an advance on his predecessor as Herbert's was on Ames, it would have been a treasure ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... little valley under the shelter of those mighty hills. He was small and beautiful of face and feature, just tinted with the sun, his curly hair chiefly revealing his kinship to Africa. In nature he was a dreamer,—romantic, indolent, kind, unreliable. He had in him the making of a poet, an adventurer, or a Beloved Vagabond, according to the life that closed round him; and that life gave him all too little. His father, Alexander Du Bois, cloaked under a stern, austere demeanor a passionate revolt ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... who had already disappeared through the curtains—curtains which smote one in the face, and seemed heavy with more than cloth. Beyond them stood the unreliable Signora, bowing good-evening to her guests, and supported by 'Enery, her little boy, and Victorier, her daughter. It made a curious little scene, this attempt of the Cockney to convey the grace and geniality of the South. And even more curious ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... photograph off the telelectrograph instrument and stood regarding it with intense satisfaction. Outside, the car which had been engaged to hurry us over to Brooklyn waited. "Morphine fiends," said Kennedy as he fanned the print to dry it, " are the most unreliable sort of people. They cover their tracks with almost diabolical cunning. In fact they seem to enjoy it. For instance, the crimes committed by morphinists are usually against property and character and based upon selfishness, not brutal crimes such as alcohol and ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... inhabitants were still asleep; by waiting, I might have learnt something of the management of the estate, but gross material preoccupations—the prospect of a passable luncheon at San Giovanni after the "Hotel Vittoria" fare—tempted me to press forwards. A boorish and unreliable-looking individual volunteered three pieces of information—that the house was built thirty years ago, that a large nursery for plants lies about ten kilometres distant, and that this particular domain covers "two or four thousand hectares." A ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the wind began steadily from the north. I was nearly ready. Every vessel had been thoroughly repaired, but many were so rotten that the caulking was considered by the English shipwrights as quite unreliable for a long voyage. I had dragged the iron diahbeeah out of the water, and had substituted new plates in many places where the metal was honeycombed with rust. The plate that had been pierced by the tusks of the hippopotamus was removed, as it proved to be very defective, and could be ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... tenths and hundredths of seconds must be discerned. Of course they are not seen by the naked eye; some mechanical contrivance must be called in to assist. A watch loses two minutes a week, and hence is unreliable. It is taken to a watch-maker that every single second may be quickened 1/20160 part of itself. Now 1/20000 part of a second would be a small interval of time to measure, but it must be under control. If the temperature of a summer morning ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... alley threw Stott back for two years. When he first emerged to try conclusions on the field, he found his length on the longer pitch utterly unreliable, and the effort necessary to throw the ball another six yards, at first upset ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... absolutely injurious to White's game to allow three well-supportable Pawns against two to be established on the Queen's side. The prospect of a King's side attack on which White speculates is quite unreliable in comparison to the disadvantage on the Queen's side to which he is subjected. At any rate, Pawns ought to be exchanged first, and thus Black's centre weakened.} Ne4 {It was better to make sure of his superiority on the Queen's side by c4 at once.} 12. Bf4 Nxc3 13. ...
— The Blue Book of Chess - Teaching the Rudiments of the Game, and Giving an Analysis - of All the Recognized Openings • Howard Staunton and "Modern Authorities"
... and a 10), and an 18, the best and most enjoyable match is always likely to result from a combination of the scratch man with the 18 against the two players of medium handicaps, although the scratch man, if a selfish player, may not be disposed to saddle himself with the unreliable person at the other end of the scale. It is a point to be borne in mind that the 18 man, if, despite his handicap, he is a real and conscientious golfer, is more likely to play above his handicap than the ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... of opinion existed as to the material to be chosen for the construction of the hull. Bamboo, wood, aluminium, or one of its alloys, were all considered. The first was rejected as unreliable. The second would have been much stronger than aluminium, and was urged by Messrs. Vickers. The Admiralty, however, considered that there was a certainty of better alloys being produced, and as the ship was ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... remarkably neat and clever." Beloe, in The Sexagenarian (vol. i. p. 98), speaks of Mansel as "a young man remarkable for his personal confidence, for his wit and humour, and, above all, for his gallantries." Apparently, on the same somewhat unreliable authority, he was, as Master, a severe disciplinarian, and extremely tenacious of his ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... conservation of peace. However, I cannot—as I told you in my first telegram—consider the action of Austria-Hungary as an 'ignominious war.' Austria-Hungary knows from experience that the promises of Serbia as long as they are merely on paper are entirely unreliable. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... truths are in the present organization of industry very unreliable truths. They involve judgments about standards of living, productivity, human rights that are endlessly debatable in the absence of exact record and quantitative analysis. And as long as these do not exist in industry, the run of news about it will ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... swelled into longing that made him feel sure that Claire was necessary to his life. Without her there could be no living for him. He wondered if she and Lawrence had found love. "If they have," he argued, "there can be but one explanation. Claire is unreliable, vicious, and dangerous." His aching desire to possess her did not lessen, however. It became deeper, in fact, with each succeeding thought of her as a wanton at heart, and he set his teeth over his will, assuring himself that all would ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... which this feeling is expressed in his journalistic writings that helps to raise a doubt as to his capacity for work of the best class in fiction. Still, if it be true, as some of those who were his friends say, that this occasional work was seldom much studied, it becomes unreliable as an indicator of the writer's character. The same hand that in the famous Snob Papers so savagely, and in at least one case so intemperately, satirised types of English society, afterwards produced novels in which fidelity to the essential facts ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... is not directed by the sound of the fog-horns of unreliable and unsatisfactory symptomatology. Osteopathy has a method of its own, which is correct or it has no method at all, and is guided by the surveyor's compass that will find all corners as established by the orders of the government ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... Levantine eunuch in which the mouth is like a piece of inert flesh, and where the small eyes glisten with concentrated cunning, and remind us of the watchful, angry eyes of a gorilla, at the same time, into ridicule. I knew that he was selfish, without any affection, unreliable, full of whims, turning like a weathercock with every wind that blows, and caring for nothing in the world except ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... because the brush decays in dry land, but will prove nearly imperishable in land constantly wet. In a peat or muck swamp, we should expect that such drains, if carefully constructed, might last twenty years, but that in a sandy loam they would be quite unreliable for ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... thoroughly domesticated that they would eat out of their attendants' hands, and the buffaloes bred in a state of domestication exhibited exactly the same character as the ordinary domestic cattle. The bulls, especially when old, continued to be somewhat unreliable; but the cows and oxen, on the other hand, were as gentle and docile as any ruminant could be. They were never valued among us as milch kine—for, though their milk was rich, it was not great in quantity—but they were incomparable as draught-beasts. They were higher by half a foot than ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... didn't expect to leave till sometime a Monday; so she had learned from Phillis, through Lenwilla Ellawea, who had been sent over for a little of Phillis's light'ning, to raise some biscuits for breakfast," yet he had some fear that the information might prove unreliable, and Mr. Dinsmore slip away ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley |
