"Unwisdom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... describing it. She might have been grand but for loveliness. When she drew herself up in indignation, however, she would look grand for the one moment ere the blood rose to her cheek, and the water to her eyes. She would have taken the whole world to her infinite heart, and in unwisdom coddled it into corruption. Praised be the grandeur of the God who can endure to make and see his children suffer. Thanks be to him for his north winds and his poverty, and his bitterness that falls upon the spirit that errs: let those who know him thus praise the Lord for his goodness. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... district; he was even suspected of taking counsel with the managers of neighbouring establishments; "in short, he endeavoured to convince himself generally that the grant of the license would satisfy a legitimate want"—or what the Chamberlain in his wisdom, or his unwisdom, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the town, and sees Cadmus and Teiresias in masque. Like the exaggerated diabolical figures in some of the religious plays and imageries of the Middle Age, he is an impersonation of stupid impiety, one of those whom the gods willing to [67] destroy first infatuate. Alternating between glib unwisdom and coarse mockery, between violence and a pretence of moral austerity, he understands only the sorriest motives; thinks the whole thing feigned, and fancies the stranger, so effeminate, so attractive of women with whom he remains day and night, but a poor ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... spun-yarn fetters with manacles of steel. Next he dragged the protesting prisoners from forward and aft until he had them bunched amidships, and then, walking back and forth before them, delivered a short, comprehensive lecture on the unwisdom of stealing torpedo-boat destroyers ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... should be closed on love and joy! There was not so much of it in the world! She, who was the very spirit of this flying, nymph-like summer, was untimely wintered-up in bleak sorrow. There was a hateful unwisdom in that thought; it seemed so grim and violent, so corpse-like, gruesome, narrow and extravagant! What possible end could it serve that she should be unhappy! Even if he had not loved her, he would have hated her fate just as much—all such stories of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... on the whole it is a good thing to do and really they belong there anyway. The church member is a man of the world, softened by Christian feeling. He is a kindly and amiable citizen and an honorable man; he has not been saved. But he knows the unwisdom of evil; if you know what is right you will do it. Intelligence needs no support from grace. It is strange that the church does not see that with this relinquishment of her insistence upon something that religion can do for a man that nothing else can attempt, she has thereby given up her real ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... ten millions to be expended on railways, roads, land purchase, immigration, and land settlement. With great wisdom he suggested that the cost of the railways should be recouped from a public estate created out of the crown lands through which they might pass. With striking unwisdom the Provincialists defeated the proposal. This selfish mistake enabled them to keep their land for five years longer, but it spoilt the public works policy and converted Vogel from the friend into the enemy of ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... his manner gave corroboration. Possibly she had misjudged the man and lost his underlying qualities in her careless view of externals. Tollman seemed to expect no answer and went on slowly, "I tried to point out to your father the unwisdom of an insistence which must stir a spirit like yours to natural opposition. I suggested that under the circumstances it ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... and son failed equally, and then Fredegond, balked of her higher prey, took the victim that was nearest, and went out from Rueil to Rouen. It was not long before the quarrel that she sought was occasioned by the bishop, who seems to have added to his usual unwisdom a courage born of the hardships of seven years of exile. Answering a taunt flung at him by the deposed queen, he bitterly drew the contrast between their present positions, and their former relation ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... was sorry for him. Admitting the unwisdom of his calls upon her, she had not the heart to forbid him, especially that he had shown no signs of sentiment, or of stepping beyond the boundary lines of simple friendship.... She saw to it that he and ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... a good deal of unparliamentary language, expressed in tones both loud and deep. It was an act of unwisdom, however, to stop there in a heap on the grassy slope of a precipice, swearing in chorus at the poor devil of a Wallack. I turned my horse up the incline, resolved to try back, hoping to regain the lost track. It was next to impossible to halt, for we had not even got our plaids with us—everything ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... spoke to us a parable about the unwisdom of the children yet unborn, who though they know so much, yet do not know as much as ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... futile. So the lady and gentleman drove away with their bright sovereigns; and when my next removal came the old woman was still at her tub, the other two helpless ones still on their beds, and living yet. One need not consider the wild unwisdom of it; but in the astounding courage and endurance of it, I hold there is lesson and ensample for the bravest man in British history. And among the working poor such incidents cannot be very rare, because I knew of quite a number in my ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... universality can no more be predicated than of folly, or of honesty, or of muscular strength; and that it is not knowledge, or at all like knowledge; which, indeed, is often acquired in a very remarkable degree by persons eminent for unwisdom. Lord Campbell might as well have said that Henry V. astonished the world with his universal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... refusing the honour.'[2] The error was soon rectified and Cartier was made a baronet. A number of persons, including Charles Tupper and Edward Watkin, a member of the Imperial parliament, interested themselves in the matter, pointing out to the London authorities the unwisdom of bestowing titles without due regard to the Imperial services of the recipients. The reputations of Galt and Cartier as serious statesmen were not enhanced. Explain it as we may, there is a flavour of absurdity about their proceedings. Galt was offered a knighthood ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... thought—that the impossible youth took it all no more seriously than she. Not till her return home last month had he revealed his complete untrustworthiness: presuming, as she termed it, making claims and advances, putting her to trouble to keep her vernal unwisdom from her mother. Still, she had thought she had disposed ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... him permission to gather recruits, but now his religious fanaticism stood in the way of his success. He would have none but baptized men in his army, and thus rejected many brave warriors while taking some known to be outlaws and thieves. On reaching Norway he showed the same unwisdom. He had but four thousand men under his command, while the army he was soon to meet numbered ten thousand. Yet Olaf rejected five hundred of his men because they were heathens and, thus weakened, marched to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... the war will produce no more delicate problem than that of Dalmatia, which, as I have already shown, can never be settled on purely racial lines. Those who have studied the subject agree that to completely shut off Austria-Hungary from the sea would be a proceeding of grave unwisdom and one which would be certain to sow the seed for future wars. This is, I believe, the view taken by most deep-thinking Italians. The Italianization of the Adriatic's eastern seaboard would result, moreover, in raising a barrier against the legitimate expansion of the Balkan Slavs and would end ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... man that Is mighty of kindred, And in his land giveth him joyance of earth, 1730 And to have and to hold the high ward-burg of men, And sets so 'neath his wielding the deals of the world, Dominion wide reaching, that he himself may not In all his unwisdom of the ending bethink him. He wonneth well-faring, nothing him wasteth Sickness nor eld, nor the foe-sorrow to him Dark in mind waxeth, nor strife any where, The edge-hate, appeareth; but all the world for him Wends as he willeth, and the worse ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... on the unwisdom of speculation he was giving Dick were not in themselves enough to affect a change in Dick. Mere words were colorless and negative; something positive would ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... could place in them, he reiterated that women were universally bad. He did not believe that women ever would be good; and the English allowing their wives to gad about with faces uncovered, only showed their weakness, ignorance, and unwisdom. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... though prepared for what I was to do, lay pen and paper, ink and sand. My hand shook as I took the quill and tried to compose a letter to my cousin. I scarcely saw the words which I put on the sheet, and I may be forgiven for the unwisdom ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... thought then, to laugh at all opposition. To assume that his design had been from the first to goad the West into open rebellion affords, indeed, a simple explanation of a policy that in its persistent unwisdom and brutality seems strangely irrational and monstrous, even for such times and men. But it is rash to take any policy as certain in those dark and crooked councils, unless it be—as probably in Lauderdale's case it was, and ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... according to his understanding. Any apparent wisdom, therefore, which does not make one with the love of wisdom, sinks back into the love which does make one with it; and this may be a love of unwisdom, yea, of insanity. Thus a man may know from wisdom that he ought to do this or that, and yet he does not do it, because he does not love it. But so far as a man does from love what wisdom teaches, he is an image ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... every woman, however lonely or friendless she may be, recognizing her potential value to the race; protecting her against his own selfish desires, against the open and covert assaults of other men, against her own unwisdom, if need be. ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... as a means of beguilement, the society of a returned exile from the Philippines, who told me the story of his life, showed me the necklace he was taking home to his daughter's wedding, and asked my advice as to the wisdom or unwisdom of marrying again, the lady of his wavering choice having been at school with him in New England and being now a widow in Nebraska with property of her own. Besides being thus garrulous and open, he was ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... unwisdom showed itself; for among the boys who were not playing were Joe and Fuz Hart and all their "crowd," and this was the first time they had seen Dick on the ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... disparaging distinctions that came into existence with the system of slavery. They were placed upon an equality with other citizens and in the forms of law all discriminations affecting unfavorably the right of suffrage must apply equally to all citizens. The injustice and unwisdom of the restrictive legislation in which the Southern States are indulging, are subject of concern for the whole country, but the negro populations have no ground for the complaint that their rights have been neglected by the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... discontent without definite aims, one which merely rejects what is now possessed; and there is one which seeks what is wisely attainable. Yet after all, it is a small price to pay for aspiration that it is often attended by vagueness and unwisdom. ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... circumstances under which divorces might be granted by the courts. The existing practice, he argued, was contrary to those provisions of the constitution which expressly separated the three departments of government. Moreover, everyone recognized the injustice and unwisdom of dissolving marriage contracts by act of legislature, upon ex parte evidence.[66] Without expressing an opinion on the constitutional questions involved, the assembly accepted the main recommendation of the committee, that henceforth the legislature ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... bringing down another and more costly kind of fan from up-stairs, but was content to act upon the impression that her mother desired the Japanese kind—content to accomplish the desire and stop with that, without troubling about the wisdom or unwisdom of it. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the overthrow of his tottering credit. And now, in his desperation, he failed to preserve that strict correspondence between bulk and sample which is the soul of commerce in grain. For this, one of his men was mainly to blame; that worthy, in his great unwisdom, having picked over the sample of an enormous quantity of second-rate corn which Henchard had in hand, and removed the pinched, blasted, and smutted grains in great numbers. The produce if honestly offered would have created ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... no passing admiration; that father is no hero of to-day no study of to-morrow, no dim recollection when the future shall have come—but an active exemplar, an honored memory, a potent spur and stay combined—a spur to urge to all a man should do; a stay to curb unwisdom's flying feet. That father has toiled in weariness that his son might follow an easier path of life. Perhaps you now tread that path. How carefully should your steps be taken; how earnestly you should climb to reach the round which meets your ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... eating; but being very tired and hungry, I did not look round. Presently somebody let it out. I rose in a rage, determined to dismiss the man at once; but Richard checked me with a word, and pointed out the unwisdom of making him an open enemy, and desired me to put a good face on the matter till the end of the journey. The explanation of the little beast's conduct was this. He had really wanted to ride a thorough-bred horse, but it was ridden instead by my dragoman's brother, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... her words. They had sounded more unkind than she meant them to be. They had also the unwisdom of unnecessary things. In fact, she had not meant them at all. It was a sort of phrase that is suggested by the demon of perverse inspiration. But she knew a way to make it as ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... probably in some measure to pay me out for this scrape, and to give me another lesson in the unwisdom of too much independence and inquisitiveness in a youngster, that my parents, soon after this sad event, allowed me to get into trouble with ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... their demands for a tonga to bear them to Kuttarpur, and observed that the mail tonga left once a day—at three in the afternoon. Doggott caught him as he was on the point of returning to his interrupted repose and called his attention to the unwisdom of his ways. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... limitations; the reform is architectural—our architects and boards of education should realize that the seating and the lighting of school houses should receive most careful consideration; the reform is economic—we should come to appreciate the unwisdom of being "penny wise and pound foolish," and recall the old saw, "a stitch in time saves nine"; the reform is medical—we should get our people to see that thoro and regular medical inspection of all our school children ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... the pay of Lopez, the great majority took the hint. Two only of their number did not acclaim Francisco Solano as the new autocrat of Paraguay, and as these two disappeared on the following night, and were never seen again, the unwisdom of opposition was strongly inculcated from the start. The Dictator's full title was "Jefe Supremo y General de los Exercitos de la Republica del Paraguay"; his familiar title, and the one he most ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel |
