"Well-meaning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his side. Taking note of her friendly presence, after awhile he put out his hand without looking up and took hers as it hung by her side. He had taken quite a liking to the sweet-tempered little lassie, and had felt particularly kindly towards her since her well-meaning, if rather inadequate effort to console him that Sunday ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... me that she was very happy; that every day she discovered new virtues in her husband. He had told her, without the slightest appearance of suspicion of displeasure, that he knew that we had spent two days together in Treviso, and that he had laughed at the well-meaning fool who had given him that piece of information in the hope of raising a cloud in the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... assembly thus composed and surrounded, it is easy to foresee on which side the balance will turn.—Through the meshes of the electoral net which the Jacobins have spread over the whole country, about one hundred well-meaning individuals of the common run, tolerably sensible and sufficiently resolute, Mathieu Dumas, Dumolard, Becquet, Gorguereau, Vaublanc, Beugnot, Girardin, Ramond, Jaucourt, were able to pass and form the party of the "Right."[2224] They ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... pale of life and within sight of eternity. They had been strong, as those are strong who know neither doubts nor hopes. They had been impatient and enduring, turbulent and devoted, unruly and faithful. Well-meaning people had tried to represent those men as whining over every mouthful of their food; as going about their work in fear of their lives. But in truth they had been men who knew toil, privation, violence, debauchery—but knew not fear, and had no desire of spite in their hearts. Men hard to manage, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... indeed, a bad reputation for rebuking well-meaning disseminators of spice. This attitude discouraged several persons who would otherwise have told her all sorts of interesting things about Charity's husband's entente cordiale ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... state of complete oblivion to everything but a dreamy fanaticism, and yet that term is too harsh, and it would be impiety to call it holiness, seeing that it was in a state of inutility,—and yet, many well-meaning persons will think, no doubt, that my infant and almost sinless hand had hold of a blessed link of that chain of ineffable love, which terminates in the breast of that awful Being, who sits at the right-hand of the throne of the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... good deal of the state of society under the old regime. Curious to know his opinions of their private characters, I asked a good many questions concerning the royal family. Louis XVI. he described as a-well-meaning man, addicted a little too much to the pleasures of the table, but who would have done well enough had he not been surrounded by bad advisers. I was greatly surprised by one of his remarks. "Louis XVI," observed Lafayette, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and feeling served her mischievous purpose better than she thought, for it convinced the honest-minded Hemstead that she was just what she seemed, and his sympathy went out to her at once as a well-meaning, true-hearted girl. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class [42] Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally alluring to the feet of democracy, though in this country they are ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... to this place,—a rough shelter, but far less so than some of the houses in which we had been. I remember one in which I used to dart up and down like a hunted hare at one time; at another to steal along from stair to stair like a well-meaning ghost afraid of frightening people; my mode of procedure depending in part on the time of day, and which of the inhabitants I had reason to dread meeting. It was a good while before the inmates of this house and I began to know each other. The landlord had turned out the former tenant ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... his ill-advised, but well-meaning hints concerning the respectability of my paternity, and the immense wealth of my relations, did this really honest-hearted but foolish friend of mine, prevent me from getting three dollars in advance, which I greatly ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... came to hear it—which of course she did: every body hears every thing in Avonsbridge—only made Christian smile, half amused, half sad, to think how strangely truth can be twisted sometimes, even by well-meaning people, who are perfectly convinced in their own minds and consciences that they never tell a lie, and wouldn't do such a thing ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... instigated now by sheer opposition and determination not to succumb. "You think Mr. Slope is a messenger direct from Satan. I think he is an industrious, well-meaning clergyman. It's a pity that we differ as we do. But, as we do differ, we had probably better not ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... other's eyes—there is nothing they like better. I feared The Guardian, The Record, The John Bull, etc., lest they should suggest that from a bear I now turned bull with a view to an eventual bishopric. Such insinuations would have impaired the value of The Fair Haven as an anchorage for well-meaning people. I therefore resolved to obey the injunction of the Gentile Apostle and avoid all appearance of evil, by dissociating myself from the author of Erewhon as completely as possible. At the moment of my resolution JOHN PICKARD OWEN came to my assistance; I felt that he was the sort of ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... pinch and save and his brothers bide at the plough-tail all their lives in consequence—a law whose chief merit lies in the splendid sacrifices which its faithful fulfilment involves, and whose vital principle well-meaning but misguided philanthropy is now endeavouring to dole out of existence—he had been sent to Edinburgh to make the most of this, his ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... matters civil or military; but liberty of conscience ought not to be granted in matters civil or military, as is acknowledged, therefore neither ought it to be granted in matters of religion. Put the case: Now there be some well-meaning men, otherwise void of offence, who, from the erroneous persuasion of their consciences, think it utterly sinful, and contrary to the word of God, to take arms in the Parliament's service, or to contribute to this present war, or to obey any ordinance of ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... will tell you this: not for all of Prince's well-meaning interference, or Moa's liking for you, or my own need of your skill, will I tolerate more trouble from you. The next time—I will kill you. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... was afforded by the Smithsonian Institution, the Naval Observatory, and other scientific associations. At this juncture the discoveries of Captain Inglefield, R. N., in Smith Sound, afforded to Kane a new route for his activities. The scheme, as far as the search for Franklin was concerned, was well-meaning, but none the less fallacious and illogical. Kane was personally cognizant of the fact that Franklin had gone into Lancaster Sound, and had wintered in 1845-46 at Beechy Island, plainly following the direct and positive orders ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... they must, and not because they love the work. To be sure, she was most just and impartial in her treatment of the fifty scholars under her supervision, but, possessed of about as much imagination as a cat, she failed to analyze or understand the dispositions of her charges; and well-meaning Peace ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... to many men. I do not mean to hypocrites, but to really well-meaning men. They like religion. They wish to be good; they have the feeling of devotion. They pray, they read their Bibles, they are attentive to services and to sermons, and are more or less pious people. But soon—too soon— they find that their piety is profitable. Their business increases. ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... the present Russian regime, or a passing phase as in Hungary, but an enduring and stationary condition. A dictatorial oligarchy, like that of the Bolshevists, does not come into consideration here, and the well-meaning Utopias of social romances crumble to nothing. They rest, one and all, on the blissfully ignorant assumption of a state of popular well-being ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... state of mind not unusual to many well-meaning, unoccupied people, when this modern necromancy was thrust upon them by those pecuniarily or socially interested in its advocacy. The upheaval to the air of that dark inward nature which is ever working ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... of us, should come to have this here dream about us. After falling in with Harry, when the lubber and I parted company, my old mate saw I was cast down, and he told me as much in his own gruff, well-meaning way; upon which I gave him the story, laughing at it. He didn't laugh in return, but grew glum—glummer than I ever seed him; and I wondered, and fell to boxing about my thoughts, more and more (deep sea ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... from those who are prejudiced against his person or his birthplace, who are jealous of his success, envious of his position, hostile to his politics, dwarfed by his reputation, or hate him by the divine right of idiosyncrasy, always liable, too, to questioning comment from well-meaning friends who happen to be suspicious or sensitive in ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ourselves began to look forward to Saturday night and Sunday afternoon with an entirely new joy. We all learned to respect and so to love one another more—indeed, lifelong friendships were developed and that irrespective of our hereditary credal affiliations. The well-meaning clergyman, however, could not see the situation in that light, and declining all invitations to come and sample an evening's fun instead of condemning it unheard, or I should say, unseen, he delivered an ultimatum which I accepted—and resigned from ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... to see you, and many good and well-meaning clergymen beside you, painting the Catholics in such detestable colours; two- thirds, at least, of Europe are Catholics—they are Christians, though mistaken Christians; how can I possibly admit that any sect ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... still in the dark concerning the inexplicable taste for the sour, clotted product of a sweet, well-meaning cow and the buttery, but I have found out how it feels to be shot. I know it now ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... achieved through her emancipation? Equal suffrage in a few states. Has that purified our political life, as many well-meaning advocates have predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally it is really time that persons with plain, sound judgment should cease to talk about corruption in politics in a boarding-school tone. Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals or the laxity of morals of various ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... creatures in our society has generally been accepted as a matter of course. Sentimentalists, after the fashion of Laurence Sterne, have dwelt upon the imaginary woes of the creatures. Associations of well-meaning people have endeavored to diminish the cruelty which people of the towns, rarely those bred on the soil, often inflict upon them. It seems, however, desirable that we should place this consideration upon a plane more fitting the knowledge of our time. It should be made plain, not only ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... his drama. And, on the other hand, if we refer to a future life the bestowal of reward and punishment, we are merely entering by another gate the region of divine justice. For, indeed, unless immanent justice be infallible, permanent, unvarying, and inevitable, it becomes no more than a curious, well-meaning caprice of fate; and from that moment it no longer is justice, or even fate: it shrinks into merest chance—in other words, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the Marshalsea condescended towards his brother as an amiable, well-meaning man; a private character, who had not arrived at distinction. 'Frederick,' said he, 'you and Fanny sup at your lodgings to-night, I know. What have you done with Fanny, Frederick?' 'She is ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... benevolent smile on his sagacious visage, all purple as it was with the cold, this very well-meaning gentleman took the snow-child by the hand, and led her towards the house. She followed him, droopingly and reluctant; for all the glow and sparkle was gone out of her figure; and whereas just before she had resembled a bright, frosty, star-gemmed evening, with a crimson gleam on the ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we've had a capital lunch, and we're quite ready. Have all the painful preparations been made? PISH. Your Majesty, all is prepared. MIK. Then produce the unfortunate gentleman and his two well-meaning but misguided accomplices. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... right," she sighed, her brows meeting thoughtfully, "such well-meaning persons as the Barnetts would not have to live as they do and bring helpless children into ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... the use of life: Around it, fallows, meads, and pastures fair, A little garden, and a limpid brook, By nature's own contrivance seem'd dispos'd; No neighbours, but a few poor simple clowns, Honest and true, with a well-meaning priest: No faction, or domestic fury's rage, Did e'er disturb the quiet of that place, When the contending nobles shook the land With York and Lancaster's disputed sway. Your virtue there may find a safe retreat From the insulting pow'rs ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... all of these, has sustained her in her public work. Looking back on many campaign experiences, I am forced to admit that it is not always the privations we endure which make us think most tenderly of home. Often we are more overcome by the attentions of well-meaning friends. As an example of this I recall an incident of one Oregon campaign. I was to speak in a small city in the southern part of the state, and on reaching the station, hot, tired, and covered with the grime of a midsummer journey, I found ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... musing in a corner of the control cabin, oblivious to the well-meaning but toneless voice with which Ban Wilson, at the electelscope was butchering a song. A gentle tap on the shoulder summoned ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... to thank you for a kind, short note of the 27th inst., which I received on Sunday. I gave your kind message to the King of Prussia, who was much touche by it. He is a most amiable man, so kind and well-meaning, and seems so much beloved. He is so amusing too. He is very anxious that Belgium should become liee with Germany, and I think, dearest Uncle, that it would be for the real good of Belgium if it could be ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... me that one of our country neighbours was probably at this time in the city. He kept a store as well as cultivated a farm. He was a plain and well-meaning man, and, should I be so fortunate as to meet him, his superior knowledge of the city might be of essential benefit to me in my present forlorn circumstances. His generosity might likewise induce him to lend me so much as would purchase one meal. I had formed the ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... are in existence. The wanton destruction during the civil war in great part explains this; but it is sad to remember that numbers of mediaeval inscriptions in the floor were hidden or destroyed during some well-meaning but ill-judged alterations in ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... attempting to remove me, restored me to consciousness. I felt as if the ground on which I was lying formed a part of myself; that I could not be lifted from it without being torn asunder; and with the most piercing cries, I entreated my well-meaning assistants to leave me alone to die. They desisted for the moment, one running for the doctor, another for a litter, others surrounding me with pitying gaze; but amidst my increasing sense of suffering, the conviction began ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... and given time to think: but if, for all warning to the contrary, the wilful man will have his way, and still propagate his error to the confusion of society, he must be treated like any other virtuous and well-meaning criminal: he must be restrained and coerced to the extent that ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... Many very well-meaning people, who pass for men of sense in every other respect, are apt, when they feel matrimonially inclined, to think it indispensably necessary to court the old folks, "hammer and tongs," as the vulgar saying is, in the first place, and, having obtained their ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... her prestige had lately suffered heavily from the sudden defeat at Fontenoy. There were very few troops in England to employ against an invasion, and the Scottish commander-in-chief, Sir John Cope, whose name lives in unenviable fame in the burden of many a Jacobite ballad, was as incapable a well-meaning general as ever was called upon to face a great unexpected emergency. It must be admitted that all these were excellent points in the prince's favor, and that they counted for much in ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... this (which is purely a business letter) is to tell you that the credit does not all belong to Mr. Robbie, or to your Mr. Romaine (who by Mr. Robbie's account must be quite a tiresome old gentleman, though well-meaning, no doubt). But on the Tuesday after you left us I had a talk with Major Chevenix, and when I really felt quite sorry for him (though it was no use and I told him so), he turned round in a way I could not but admire and said he wished ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... notwithstanding the fact that it has been specially prepared for the ears of the sublime Emperor, who is at this moment awaiting this unseemly one's arrival in Peking with every mark of ill-restrained impatience, tempered only by his expectation of being the first to hear the story of the well-meaning but somewhat premature ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... {3} Reverently some well-meaning persons have placed a marble slab on the wall of the cemetery with a medallion-profile of Keats on it and some mediocre lines of poetry. The face is ugly, and rather hatchet-shaped, with thick sensual lips, and is utterly unlike the poet himself, who was very beautiful ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... what he was sure, but of what he believed. All sorts of irrelevant matter might be adduced here—gossip, suspicion, unsupported statement. All belonged to the order of the day. He knew what Brunford was. On the whole the people were kind-hearted and well-meaning. Many of them might be coarse and somewhat brutal, but on the whole they were people he loved. But he knew their morbid interest in crime, their love of gossip; knew that they were eager to hear and to discuss every bit of scandal which ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... from a long line of plain Sussex yeomen. His father was a farmer who became bankrupt in 1813, and the lad Richard, one of twelve children, was sent by a well-meaning relative to a Yorkshire boarding-school—a sort of Dotheboys Hall. From such a rough school he passed into the rougher one of life, becoming the lad of all work in the London warehouse of the same kinsman, later a clerk, and at twenty-one a traveling salesman, or "drummer," a position for which ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... he was only playing round the outskirts of his subject. No preacher with anything to say could complain of Drumtochty, for he got a patient, honest, critical hearing from beginning to end. If a preacher were slightly equipped, the audience may have been trying. Well-meaning evangelists who came with what they called "a simple Gospel address," and were accustomed to have their warmer passages punctuated with rounds of spiritual applause in the shape of smiles and nods, lost heart in face of that ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... Andrew?" Mrs. Daney asked, with well-simulated disinterestedness. She was knitting for the French War-Relief Committee a pair of those prodigious socks with which well-meaning souls all over these United States have inspired many a poor little devil of a poilu with the thought that the French must be regarded by ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... visit to Ireland. As the king is the fountain of social prosperity it is probable that he had more to do with delaying the season than the weather had; but by what one hears said of him he would not have willingly delayed it. He is not only a well-meaning and well-doing prince, one hears from people of every opinion, but a promoter of peace and international concord (especially with France, where his good offices are believed to have been peculiarly effective), and ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... sounder than the principles it inculcates, and I am not without hopes they will make their way. You have understood that the revolutionary movements in Europe had, by industry and artifice, been wrought into objects of terror even to this country, and had really involved a great portion of our well-meaning citizens in a panic which was perfectly unaccountable, and during the prevalence of which they were led to support measures the most insane. They are now pretty thoroughly recovered from it, and sensible of the mischief which was done, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... is so absorbed in his exercise that he will not stop to speak to a friend; and when his exhilaration is so complete that he turns his eyes from well-meaning thumbs pointing significantly into doorways through which a man has often passed while seeking bracing influences, it is but natural that ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... august Limpadello himself had gone quietly to the Signor Impresario with the suggestion that possibly, after all, the parts of Marie Vassilievna and the Boyar were suited to their respective talents; and that it was a pity to allow Russian musical progress to be intrusted to such well-meaning but incompetent persons as the second ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... had been the terror of many well-meaning people, and of some evildoers, for many years. I have seen tramps and pack-peddlers enter the gate, and start on toward the door, when there would sound that ringing warning like a war-blast. "Honk, honk!" and in a few minutes these unwelcome people would be gone. Farm-house ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... eye, spoils evidently filched from the abandoned city of Paestum across the Salernian Bay and presented to the church by the Norman conquerors of Amalfi. After inspecting the classical bas-reliefs, we descend into the ancient crypt, which well-meaning artists have completely encased with a covering of precious marbles and garish frescoes of the Neapolitan school. It is a place of more than local sanctity, this modernized crypt, for the possession of the relics of the Apostle which Cardinal Capuano proudly brought hither ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... may never have to re-live the horrors of the next hour. In spite of my bluff and hearty ways, in times of trouble I am as reticent as a clam. I was determined to hide my agony and anxiety from the well-meaning people of the Moose Hotel. I hurried to the railway station to send a telegram to the Professor's address in Brooklyn, but found the place closed. A boy told me it would not be open until the afternoon. From a drugstore I called "information" in Willdon, and finally got ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... please, And laziness call loving of their ease: To live dissolved in pleasures still they feign, 170 Though their whole life's but intermitting pain: So much of surfeits, headaches, claps are seen, We scarce perceive the little time between: Well-meaning men who make this gross mistake, And pleasure lose only for pleasure's sake; Each pleasure has its price, and when we pay Too much of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... The negro knew that he was a free man, and the Southern white man found himself face to face with the problem of dealing with the negro as a free laborer. To most of the Southern whites this problem was utterly bewildering. Many of them, honest and well-meaning people, admitted to me, with a sort of helpless stupefaction, that their imagination was wholly incapable of grasping the fact that their former slaves were now free. And yet they had to deal with this perplexing fact, and practically ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... burden to her. Only Mr. Talmadge, of her real intimates, remained unchanged in his relations with her, unless it was that in his deep and understanding sympathy he brought her greater spiritual and mental comfort than ever. The other neighbors were kind always, in their rough, well-meaning way; but he was her chief guide and comforter, and in him, and the books which Donald conscientiously sent to her every few weeks, she found ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... without identifying them with the absolute at all. The treaty of offensive and defensive alliance which certain groups of the Christian clergy have recently made with our transcendentalist philosophers seems to me to be based on a well-meaning but baleful mistake. Neither the Jehovah of the old testament nor the heavenly father of the new has anything in common with the absolute except that they are all three greater than man; and if you say that the notion of the absolute is what the gods of Abraham, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... forth my arms and thunder invectives against well-meaning people with whom in my heart I secretly sympathise. Never again shall I plead passionately for principles which a horrible instinct tells me are fundamentally futile. Never again shall I attempt to make mountains out of mole-hills or bricks without straw ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... half-hour, and put on their coats and gathered around me and in courteous, but sufficiently definite, language expressed their opinion of an experience-worn and seasoned expert who would stoop to lying and deception in order to rob kind and well-meaning friends who had put their trust in him under the delusion that he was an honest and honorable person. I was not able to convince them that I had not lied, for now my character was gone, and they refused to attach any value to anything I said. The proprietor of the place stood by for a while ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... first step in the downward path by undertaking a host of small commissions; many and many a time Pons ran on errands instead of the porter or the servant; many a purchase he made for his entertainers. He became a kind of harmless, well-meaning spy, sent by one family into another; but he gained no credit with those for whom he trudged about, and so often ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the sermon, a well-meaning worshipper in the gallery delivered a leading note, a high one, with great zeal, but small precision, being about a semitone flat; at this outrage on her too-sensitive ear, Julia Dodd turned her head swiftly to discover the offender, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... few years a number of high-minded and well-meaning men and women have been trying to abolish this double standard and to introduce a single standard of morality. That is, they are demanding that the man going to the marriage bed should be just as chaste, just as ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... not in Kirk's edition. Upon the sale of a few copies the omission was remarked; the fact became known to the bishop of the church; the book was pronounced defective, and the ecclesiastical authorities prohibited its circulation. The whole edition fell a dead weight upon the hands of the well-meaning publisher. I had this anecdote from Mr. Kirk himself, years ago, and he repeated it to me not long prior to his ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... bowls, a slip of a boy, perhaps aged seven, stood balancing himself on his little legs, clad in knicker-bockers, biding his time, with all the nonchalance of an old campaigner. "How did you sleep, cap?" asked a well-meaning elderly gentleman. "Well, thank you," was the dignified response; "as I always do on a sleeping-car." Always does? Great horrors! Hardly out of his swaddling-clothes, and yet he always sleeps well in a sleeper! Was he born on the wheels? was he cradled in a Pullman? ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the feeble frame," I felt grateful to the good woman for her advice, and have often acted upon it, when the family have unwisely importuned me to do what would have been more harmful than beneficial. On some occasions, when I have found a sick room crowded by well-meaning but needless intruders, I have taken the liberty to "put them all forth," as our Master did in that chamber in which the daughter of Jairus was in the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... moth. Surely my path of duty led to the garden. But that card-party? No, let the cutworm work his will, and let the brown-tailed moth corrupt; I must take refuge in flight, however inglorious. It was then that the good angel, who never forsakes a well-meaning man, whispered to me that far back in a quiet corner of New England was the little village where I had passed my boyhood, which I had deserted for five and twenty years, but which still remembered me as "Johnny" Stanhope, thanks to the officious ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... speeds me, like a rough, well-meaning friend, To the end, Will I find again the lost ones loved so well? Who can tell! But the dead know what the life will be to come— And they ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... all right now," remarked Mrs. Eldridge; "and he strikes me as a very kind-hearted, well-meaning young man. I have flattered myself that Fanny has done quite well as ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... appalled by the outlook. Why, this meant downright slavery! He had married a woman so horribly like himself in several points that his only hope lay in overcoming her by sheer violence. A thoroughly good and well-meaning woman, an excellent housekeeper, the kind of wife to do him credit and improve his social position; but self-willed, pertinacious, and probably thinking herself his superior in every respect. He had nothing to fear but subjection—the ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... only a good-natured, well-meaning lad; he had now right principles to help him behave well; nor has he in any way disappointed the hopes of those who have taken ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... more well-meaning than diplomatic, and who, besides (a rarer thing with old teachers than is generally supposed) was esteemed by his former pupils, went and took the student without ceremony by the arm, saying: 'Come, shall we two take a ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... by those who were for and against the League: But it is very unhappy for a Man to be born in such a stormy and tempestuous Season. It is the restless Ambition of artful Men that thus breaks a People into Factions, and draws several well-meaning [Persons [5]] to their Interest by a Specious Concern for their Country. How many honest Minds are filled with uncharitable and barbarous Notions, out of their Zeal for the Publick Good? What Cruelties and Outrages would they not commit against Men of an adverse ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... he cried, "let her play and cut out dolls' clothes for those who want them! When she has grown up, she will very soon look out for other diversions." "My dear child," he would sometimes say to her, "do exactly as you like. I only beg of you one thing: whenever you are tired of these innocent, well-meaning illusions and return to rough, prosaic, brutal reality; whenever you feel yourself deceived or wounded by those whom you may have implicitly trusted, pray recollect that you have a natural protector, ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... Mr. X——has been here, and I have bedded it and fed it, and put down my work during 24 hours and tried my level best to make it do something, or say something, or appreciate something—but no, it was worse than Lazarus. A kind-hearted, well-meaning corpse was the Boston young man, but lawsy bless me, horribly dull company. Now, old man, unless you have great confidence in Mr. X's judgment, you ought to make him submit his article to you before he prints it. For only think how true I was to you: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... forth on a walk through ways unknown to him, and to trust to the guidance of anybody who will take the trouble; the different characters who would undertake it: some mischievous, some well-meaning, but incapable; perhaps one blind man undertakes to lead another. At last, possibly, he rejects all guidance, and blunders on ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... For the first, it does not come under inquiry in this print,—but certain it is, that too sedulously studying the second, has frequently involved its votaries in many most tedious and unprofitable disputes, and been the source of much evil to many well-meaning and honest men. Under this class comes the Quidnunc here pourtrayed; it is said to be intended for a Mr. Tibson, laceman, in the Strand, who paid more attention to the affairs of Europe, than to those of his own shop. He is represented ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... Some well-meaning Christians tremble for their salvation, because they have never gone through that valley of tears and of sorrow, which they have been taught to consider as an ordeal that must be passed through before they can arrive at regeneration. To satisfy such minds, ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... vestments of citizenship. By proclamation and legislation, the ex-slave was made the political equal of his white master, and if numbers are to be counted the slave class became the superior force in the reconstructed Southland. That the new Negro citizen was honest and well-meaning, no one doubts. It must be confessed, however, that the masses were ignorant of the high responsibilities charged to them, and it is but natural that many mistakes were unwittingly made. Indeed, the wonder is not ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Reader, be here a well-meaning Booke. It doth at the firth entrance forewarne thee, that in contriving the same I have proposed unto my selfe no other than a familiar and private end: I have no respect or consideration at all, either to thy service, or to my glory: my forces are not capable ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... the inquiry, an objection meets us. There are in the world a number of extremely worthy, well-meaning persons, whose judgments and opinions are entitled to the utmost respect on account of their sincerity, who are of opinion that Vital Phenomena, and especially all questions relating to the origin of vital phenomena, are questions quite apart from the ordinary run of inquiry, and are, by their ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... was a person of the first rank, and had been some years governor of Lagado; but, by a cabal of ministers, was discharged for insufficiency. However, the king treated him with tenderness, as a well-meaning man, but of a ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... he had heard during his life, and that which he thought most worthy of study, answered, without hesitation, 'Windham's speech on the Law of Evidence.' In a conversation with Lord Palmerston, Pitt observed of Windham: 'Nothing can be so well-meaning or eloquent as he is. His speeches are the finest productions possible of warm imagination and fancy.' In 1800 we read in the Malmesbury Diaries that old George III. had meant Windham to be his First Minister. As a friend of Burke and Johnson, Windham's name will not easily ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... Vain is it for him to run with humility, to tell what he has won and what overcome and done. He has not destroyed All—root and branch. For reasons of personal policy, he has given quarter. And the Priest, for God, will have none of his well-meaning excuses, of his good intentions, his policy, his burnt offerings of half-way measures;—"Behold to obey is better than sacrifice," begins his fierce anathema, "and to hearken than the ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... escape from the mysteries of the pharmacopoeia and become "a simple and refreshing beverage" that any one might obtain for a penny in the coffee houses, or, if preferred, might prepare at home. In this they were aided and abetted by many well-meaning but misguided persons (some of them men of considerable intelligence) who seemed possessed of the idea that the coffee drink was an unpleasant medicine that needed something to take away its curse, or else that it ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... demands plates to match. Hand-painted china, in sets or odd pieces, is pretty—sometimes—if artistically designed and perfectly executed, but a little goes a long way. Don't be the innocent victim of some well-meaning relative with the china-painting bee. Gently but firmly refuse to sacrifice the beauty of your table to family ties; they ought to be able to stand the strain, but your ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... insisted the well-meaning woman. "He will know that you forgot it, and all will be ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... to trust to their hands. The art of writing he disapproves,—"Better women can naught of it." Religious observances he strictly recommends; but we shudder at some of the stories which even this well-meaning father relates as illustrations of the efficacy of religious austerities. Extravagance in dress prevailed at that time among men and women to such a degree that Parliament was appealed to on the subject in 1363. From the Knight's exhortations on the subject, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... the Spiritual World. When Mr. Herbert Spencer affirms, "Regarding Science as a gradually increasing sphere we may say that every addition to its surface does but bring it into wider contact with surrounding nescience,"[43] from his standpoint he is quite correct. The endeavors of well-meaning persons to show that the Agnostic's position, when he asserts his ignorance of the Spiritual World, is only a pretence; the attempts to prove that he really knows a great deal about it if he would only admit it, are quite misplaced. He really ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... England, and that roaring lion of modern days, organized charity, passed him by. He was thus left to evolve from his own mind a mistaken sense of his duty toward his neighbor. That there were thousands of well-meaning persons in black and other coats ready to prove to him that revenues gathered from Russia should be spent in the East End or the East Indies, goes without saying. There are always well-meaning persons among us ready to direct the charity of others. We have all met those ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... abandoned their treasonable purposes; but, as the king and she herself were resolved to unite themselves in sincere good faith to the people, it was impossible but that, when their real feelings were known, the bulk of the people should return to them. The mischief was that the well-meaning knew not how to act ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... two possible answers to that question, and I am sure that very many well-meaning people would make the wrong one. They would answer POVERTY, when they ought to answer SLAVERY. Face to face every day with the shameful contrasts of riches and destitution, high dividends and low wages, and painfully conscious of the futility of trying to adjust the balance by means ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... time to time, among well-meaning Christian people, retrenchment societies on high moral grounds, which have failed for want of knowledge how to manage the complicated question of necessaries and luxuries. These words have a signification in the case of different people as varied as the varieties of human ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Police Department. The conditions under which it must be done were dishearteningly unfavorable. In the first place, the whole scheme of things was wrong. The Police Department was governed by one of those bi-partisan commissions which well-meaning theorists are wont sometimes to set up when they think that the important thing in government is to have things arranged so that nobody can do anything harmful. The result often is that nobody can do anything at all. There were four Commissioners, two supposed to belong to one party and two to the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... on the unexpired term of the Presidency. He was a weak, well-meaning man, and he was jealous of the extraordinary popularity and personal influence of Richard Lincoln, the Secretary of State. When his cabinet was announced, Richard Lincoln, released from his long service ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... You'll find us a well-meaning, free-spoken crowd, Good-natured enough, but a little too loud,— To be sure, there is always a bit of a row When we choose our Tycoon, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... two has been forced into unwilling motherhood, so far as the later arrivals are concerned. It is not the less immoral when the power which compels enslavement is the church, state or the propaganda of well-meaning patriots clamoring against "race suicide." The wrong is as great as if the enslaving force were the unbridled passions of her husband. The wrong to the unwilling mother, deprived of her liberty, and all opportunity of self-development, ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... were well-meaning, ignorant, and possessed of a sincere belief in their own divinity. The religious use of the Vedas and the right to sacrifice were strictly confined to the Brahmans. There were travelling logicians, anchorites, ascetics, and solitary hermits. Although the ranks of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... anything for you in my line." To fellows going, as we thought, right into battle, this was about the last kind of talk we wanted to hear. A doctor's offer of service in our situation, was full of ghastly suggestions. So his well-meaning proffer was met with opprobrious epithets, and indignant defiance. It was shouted to him in vigorous Anglo-Saxon, what we thought of doctors anyhow, and that if he didn't look sharp we'd fix him so he would need a doctor, himself, ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... absurdity in the other, join in contributing to render the truth of the whole suspected, and not only give a handle to the avowed enemies, of depreciating and ridiculing all the sacred mysteries of religion, but also stagger the faith of a great many well-meaning people, and afford but a too plausible pretence for that sceptism which goes by the name of free-thinking, and is of ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... were chiefly the handwriting or marks of men of the lower orders of society, and who were as far from being Protestants as they were from being Papists. And this may also be asserted of many members of the Protestant Association. Some well-meaning people may have enrolled their names as members, but it is certain that for the most part they were men regardless of the profession of religion. Moreover, it is clear that the principles of the Protestant Association were rather of a political than of a religious nature; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... know you, for I have not that pleasure?" said Mrs. Boyd, polite, though puzzled. For the old man did not look quite like a gentleman, and spoke with the strong accent of an uneducated person, yet he had a kindly expression, and seemed honest and well-meaning, though decidedly "canny." ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... "Hands off!" I cannot desist, however, from this word-game until I have set down a few. Whatever is not one's own by first possession is second-hand. That is what I am told my knowledge is. But my well-meaning friends come to my defence, and, not content with endowing me with natural first-hand knowledge which is rightfully mine, ascribe to me a preternatural sixth sense and credit to miracles and heaven-sent compensations all that I have won and discovered with my good right ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... unmended. And then, because people shut their eyes to the dark indisputableness of the facts in front of them, their Faith, such as it is, is shaken or uprooted by every darkness in what is revealed to them. In the present day it is not easy to find a well-meaning man among our more earnest thinkers, who will not take upon himself to dispute the whole system of redemption, because he cannot unravel the mystery of the punishment of sin. But can he unravel the mystery of the punishment of NO sin? Can he entirely ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... best she could. "They are quite harmless, quite, I assure you," said Lady Margaret, making a reassuring gesture with her arm, on which it happened two snakes were coiled. "Now, look, my lads, I'll put this one back; he is a well-meaning snake but rather stupid. This one ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... physical. This involves the means of keeping the child in health, and the appliances of a vigorous physical development. The Christian mother, to this end, should make herself acquainted with the physiology of the infant body. Many well-meaning mothers, from sheer ignorance, destroy the health of their children; and it is on this account perhaps that four-tenths of them die under five years of age. They should also consider the bearing of the ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... his fellow-men that most endears him to his readers. This growth of the poet's character seems the more remarkable when it is considered that his father, a Unitarian minister, was a man who, though most generous and well-meaning in his regard for others, was well enough content with conditions in his country to feel little sympathy with the reforms then being urged for securing fuller liberty and equality. In his new enthusiasm Lowell turned ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... gone; y' have watched your time: He fights this day unarmed,—without his rhyme;— And brings a tale which often has been told; As sad as Dido's; and almost as old. His hero, whom you wits his bully call, Bates of his mettle, and scarce rants at all; He's somewhat lewd; but a well-meaning mind; Weeps much; fights little; but is wond'rous kind. In short, a pattern, and companion fit, For all the keeping Tonies of the pit. I could name more: a wife, and mistress too; Both (to be plain) too ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... beggars, there are numbers of genteel, and doubtless well-meaning persons who make it their business to beg for others. They intrude upon you at the most inconvenient times, and venture into your private apartments with a freedom and assurance which positively amaze you. Refuse them, and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... a presence with the effect of something more than champagne in the face loomed in the perspective through the haze of a costly cigar. But by far, immensely far, the greater number of his fellow-frequenters of the charming promenade were simple, domestic, well-meaning Americans like Eugenio himself, of a varying simplicity indeed, but always of a simplicity. They were the stuff with which his fancy (he never presumed to call it his imagination) had hitherto delighted to play, fondly shaping out of the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... I knew that my method of playing the trill could be greatly improved and I also knew that I lacked force and endurance in certain passages. Fortunately, although a comparatively young man, I was not deceived by the flattery of well-meaning, but incapable critics, who were quite willing to convince me that my playing was as perfect as it was possible to make it. Every seeker of artistic truth is more widely awake to his own deficiencies than any of his critics ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke |
