"Well-intentioned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... goes wrong here is the consequence of Julius's faith in Dr. Easterby. So, when poor Cecil, uneasy in her mind, began asking about the illness at Wil'sbro', he enlivened her with a prose about misjudging, through well-intentioned efforts of clerical philanthropy to interfere with the sanitary condition of the town— so that wells grew tainted, &c., all from ignorant interference. Poor man he heard a little sob, and looked round, and there was Cecil in ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... glad that you didn't go with him. People will talk, you know, and it did look as though he were a sort of Bluebeard. Bluebeards, my dear, must be put down. There may be most well-intentioned Bluebeards, who have no chambers of horrors, no secrets,"—Mary thought of the letter from Mrs. Houghton, of which nobody knew but herself,—"who never cut off anybody's heads, but still interfere dreadfully with the comfort of a household. Lord George is very nearly all that ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... celebration of his Christmas dinner and from the midst of this cosey party and sent off across the river to his master's house with a miserable letter and by a miserable young man (and if delivering letters when every other well-intentioned man is eating his turkey isn't miserable, why what is it?). Sent off on a graceless errand for nothing, perhaps. But his kind employer, who had done so much for his comfort and joy that very day, must not suffer by his neglect, and off ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... ladies proposed that he should publish their effusions as his own, and share the profits. Poets demanded that he should find publishers for their epics, and dramatists that he should find managers for their plays. Critics pointed out to him his anachronisms, and well-intentioned readers set him right on points of morality and law. When he was old, and ill, and ruined, there was yet no respite from the curse of correspondents. A year before his death he wrote dejectedly in his journal:—"A fleece of letters which must be answered, I suppose; all from ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... before going out upon that gallery to spread your eye upon man's reticulated concerns? Do you find a little temple or cloister for meditation, or any way of marking in your mind the beauty and significance of the place? No, a man in uniform will thrust into your hand a booklet of well-intentioned description (but of unapproachable typographic ugliness) and you will find before you a stall for the sale of cheap souvenirs, ash trays, and hideous postcards. In such ways do things of Beauty pass into the custody of those unequipped ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... such artificial polities can never be of long duration. Some convulsions either from without or from within must end them, and that with a more complete ruin than could befal states less curiously framed. But the well-intentioned labours of the missionaries had produced one decided good effect,—the habits of savage life were abandoned, and the advantages of agriculture and manufactures had been felt. The rock on which the education of the Indians split, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... did not know that Cliff and Berrie had quarreled, for she treated the girl with maternal familiarity. She was a good-natured, well-intentioned old sloven, but a most renowned tattler, and the girl feared her more than she feared any other woman in the valley. She had always avoided her, but she showed nothing of this dislike ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... waiting in a little room prepared for her, with tea poured out, bread-and-butter cut into diaphanous slices, and eggs arranged—that she wanted no breakfast: then to shut herself alone in her bedroom, was her only thought. She was followed thither by the well-intentioned matron with a cup of tea and one piece of bread-and-butter on a tray, cheerfully insisting that she should ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... any circumstances in the law which consistently with its main design may be so varied as to remove any well-intentioned objections that may happen to exist, it will consist with a wise moderation to make the proper variations. It is desirable on all occasions to unite with a steady and firm adherence to constitutional and necessary acts of Government the fullest evidence of a disposition as far as ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... get himself into trouble in China. He may refuse to eat the food that is pushed into his mouth at a Chinese banquet by the perfectly well-intentioned man sitting beside him. In that case he will hardly do more than arouse the contempt of his beneficiary and his host. He simply shows that he lacks good Chinese table manners, for at a Chinese banquet it is proper ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... If Parliament could work miracles of this sort, it would make one really in love with constitutional government. But what a crotchety thing all this amateur lawmaking is! Why did it not occur to this well-intentioned gentleman to inquire how it is that drunkenness is unknown, or nearly unknown, in what are called the better classes? How is it that the orgies our grandfathers liked so well, and deemed the great essence ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... on the Christians was in a sense an accident, the blind rush of a half-crazed beast, the later persecutions were often directed by serious and well-intentioned emperors and magistrates. The Romans were far from being intolerant. They had interfered very little with the religions of their subject races, and had, indeed, adopted more than one foreign god into their own temples. They ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... exclaimed La Boulaye, to cry out a moment later in the pain to which Duhamel's well-intentioned operations were subjecting him. "I would it might be mine," he added presently, "to take a hand in legislation, and the mending of it; for as it stands at present it is inferior far to the lawless anarchy of the aborigines. Among them, at least, the conditions ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... how the man who would run after ruffians that he might make disciples of them could be pitiless toward his fellow-laborers who by an indiscreet, however well-intentioned, zeal forgot their vocation and would transform their Order into ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... so promising a pupil as Abdallah, nor when he was first my disciple do I deem that he was other than the most simple-minded and well-intentioned of youths. I always called him son, a title I have never bestowed on another. Like thee, he had compassion on the darkness around him, and craved my leave to go forth and ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... in demons, but, different from the nations around them, considered the demons to be well-intentioned. Homer (c. 1000 B. C.) speaks frequently of demons, and in one instance in the Odyssey tells of a sick man pining away, "one upon whom a hateful demon had gazed." Empedocles (c. 490-430 B. C.) taught that ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Functionary, assuring him that he will thereby not only escape tar and feathers, but acquire popularity. The Carolinians called the then President double-faced and treacherous, hardly allowing him the poor credit of being a well-intentioned imbecile. Why should they not consider him false? Up to the garrisoning of Fort Sumter he favored the project of secession full as decidedly as he afterwards crossed it. Did he think that he was laying a train to blow the Republicans off their platform, and leave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... would give an unfair impression of the relations of capital and labour in Japan if it included no reference to the well-intentioned efforts made by several large employers to improve the conditions of working-class life and labour. Sometimes they have followed the example of philanthropic firms in Great Britain and America. As often as not they have been inspired by old Japanese ideas of a master's responsibilities. ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... struck it with his clenched fist. "Are all the devils let loose, then?" yelled he, in wrath. "Does sedition blaze so wildly in my land, that we have no longer the power to subdue it? Here a fanatical heretic on the public street has warned the people not to read that holy book which I myself, like a well-intentioned and provident father and guardian, wrote for my people, and gave it them that they might be edified and exalted thereby. And this book that felon has shown to the people, and said to them: 'You call that the king's book; and you are right; for it is a wicked ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... Well-intentioned but slow of apprehension, these poor peasants cling to a carved Christ, and feel a horrible alarm, as if you were offering them a vacant creed, when you touch upon anything higher. Thus Moidel, though very intelligent, looked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... very little of household management, and never did an excellent and well-intentioned individual put, to use a well-known phrase, his foot more completely into it than Dr. Maybright when he allowed Polly to learn experience by taking the reins of household management ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... us with harsh and violent acts, and caused us much anxiety; for he was aided by nearly all the lay persons of this colony who were born in these islands, who took up this cause as their own. They caused many disturbances, and used language so offensive that they obliged the honorable and well-intentioned people of this city to come to our defense. This was done by the bishop of the city of Santisimo Nombre de Jesus in Cubu, who was then governing this archbishopric; for as judge of the ordinary he demanded from the said judge-executor the documents by virtue ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... the driver, was almost sternly silent. Miss Elting, in the light of the previous evening's interview, regarded him from time to time with inquiring eyes. She could not believe what her caller had told her of their guide. Janus was plainly an honest, well-intentioned man. Of this she had been reassured that morning in an interview with the proprietor of ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... good and too bad a quality for St. John. It's a bit of your absurd charity to believe in such a man. You have done wisely in choosing to imagine a high class of readers. You never stop to explain or defend anything, and never seem bothered with the idea. If Mrs. Fairfax or any other well-intentioned fool gets hold of this what will she think? And yet, you know, the world is made up of such, and worse. Once more, how have you written through three volumes without declaring war to the knife against ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... that since he was going to die, he might as well die in the open, away from all the bother and irritation. And behind this idea lurked a sneaking idea that perhaps he would not die after all if only he could escape from the heavy foods, the medicines, and the well-intentioned persons who made ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... pavement below, on the very spot which Becket's shrine had once occupied. "Through the holes further westward water came, sufficient to float over the surfaces of the polished Purbeck marble floor and the steps of the altar, and alarmed the well-intentioned assistants into removing the altar, tearing up the altar-rails, etc., etc. The relics of the Black Prince, attached to a beam (over his tomb) at the level of the caps of the piers on the south side of Trinity Chapel, were all taken down and placed away in safety. The eastern end of the church ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... way in which a well-intentioned doctor would take care of a lunatic in the reign of Henry VIII. We wish that all the treatment pursued had been as considerate. That it was not so we shall see; but I would first add the curious experience of Dr. Borde in Rome, which he visited, and where he witnessed the treatment of a lunatic ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... not so bad as that, I hope," she said serenely. "Stephen, now, is beginning to have quite a liking for him. So earnest; so well-intentioned...." ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... advantages that, in reality, they do not enjoy, while their enemies declaim about vices and evils from which they are comparatively free. Facts are made to suit theories, and thus it is that we see well-intentioned, and otherwise respectable writers, constantly running into extravagances, in order to adapt the circumstances to the supposed logical or moral inference. This reasoning backwards, has caused Alison, with all his knowledge and fair-mindedness, to fall into several egregious errors, as I ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... union in the members of this cabinet from the first, and where there is no union there can be no real strength. Moreover, the Earl of Rockingham, though one of the most honest, honourable, and well-intentioned men in existence at that period, lacked the ability for collecting the scattered energies of party, and forming them into a system, whence it was soon found that his cabinet was unpopular; and, at no distant period of time, it was compelled to give place to another. In ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... his sister of about twelve, who set off with their father, a south-sea whaling captain, on what is intended to be his last voyage, their mother having died during his previous three-year voyage. Unfortunately some of the crew, especially the bo'sun, are not very well-intentioned, and after a chapter or two about the voyage out to the Pacific, and some whale hunts of varying success, there is a mutiny. The ship ends up on fire and is abandoned with various rafts and ship's boats getting ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... hint to trail away in the very direction I wanted to lead you. There are a lot of things we can do to add to our soldiers' comfort. They need chocolate—sweets are good for them—and 'comfort-kits' of the real sort, not those useless, dowdy ones so many well-intentioned women are wasting time and money to send them; and they'll be grateful for lots and lots of ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... given by Professors Aagesen and Gram, were appalling; they consisted of a slow, sleepy dictation. A death-like dreariness brooded always over the lecture halls. Aagesen was especially unendurable; there was no trace of anything human or living about his dictation. Gram had a kind, well-intentioned personality, but had barely reached his desk than it seemed as though he, too, were saying: "I am a human being, everything human is ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... each of these boys, and there has been nothing to indicate any perverted instinct in any of them. About the age of 16 I heard a talk on sexual matters by a traveling evangelist, who portrayed the effects of masturbation in fearful colors. I now realize that he was an ignorant though well-intentioned man; but the general effect of his talk upon me was a bad one. One of the results of the habit, according to his statements, was insanity. Therefore I expected at any moment to lose my mind. I felt that I must stop the practice at once, but the matter became ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... where promises will be realized, and hopes will no more be disappointed. We have ventured to detain our readers thus long from Rasselas itself, because, from its similar view of life with the sceptical school, many well-intentioned men have apprehended, its effects might be the same. We have, therefore, attempted briefly to distinguish the sources whence these different writings have issued, and, we trust, we have pointed out their remoteness from each other. And we do not dwell on the subject, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Gainsborough,—forgive us for re-writing this sentence; we do so to gibbet its perpetrator forever,—and leave him swinging in the winds of the Fool's Paradise. It is with great pain that I ever speak with severity of the works of living masters, especially when, like Mr. Lee's, they are well-intentioned, simple, free from affectation or imitation, and evidently painted with constant reference to nature. But I believe that these qualities will always secure him that admiration which he deserves—that there will be many unsophisticated and honest minds always ready to follow his guidance, and answer ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... competent naturalists have left speculations on the origin of species to such dreamers as the author of the 'Vestiges', by whose well-intentioned efforts the Lamarckian theory received its final condemnation in the minds of all sound thinkers. Notwithstanding this silence, however, the transmutation theory, as it has been called, has been a "skeleton in the closet" to many an ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley
... what passes understanding. And jenseits von Gut und Boese. "For myself," says Dreiser, "I do not know what truth is, what beauty is, what love is, what hope is. I do not believe any one absolutely and I do not doubt any one absolutely. I think people are both evil and well-intentioned." The hatching of the Dreiser bugaboo is here; it is the flat rejection of the rubber-stamp formulae that outrages petty minds; not being "good," he must be "evil"—as William Blake said of Milton, a true poet is always "of the devil's party." But in that very groping toward a light ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... my first post as diplomat's wife was made unwittingly by a gentleman walking with a friend just behind me. "Who is that gentleman?" said he, indicating Johan. "That? That is the Minister of Denmark." I, struggling with an arm-load of flowers culled from well-intentioned friends at different stations on the road, my maid and Johan's valet bringing up the rear with the overflow of small baggage, passed unnoticed. Now we are quite established here, and I have already commenced my diplomatic duties. There seems to be no end of card-leaving and card-receiving, ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... in session the news of its proceedings reached the eastern cities, and a great outcry was raised, that Minnesota was contemplating a dreadful massacre of Indians. Many influential bodies of well-intentioned but ill-informed people beseeched President Lincoln to put a stop to the proposed executions. The president sent for the records of the trials, and turned them over to his legal and military advisors to decide which were ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... minister. Especially did Granvelle denounce him to "the master" as the perverter of Egmont, while he usually described that nobleman himself, as weak, vain, "a friend of smoke," easily misguided, but in the main well-intentioned and loyal. At the same time, with all these vague commendations, he never omitted to supply the suspicious King with an account of every fact or every rumor to the Count's discredit. In the case of this particular satire, he informed Philip that he could swear it came from the pen ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... another sphere? The method, the phenomena, are those that belong to life universal, if life be free and efficient in moving masses of men upward into more noble ranges. Men of the people lead, because the people are the stake. On the other hand, educated leaders, however well-intentioned, may be handicapped if they are not rooted deeply in the popular soil. Literary education, it must never be forgotten, is not specially a preparation for political good judgment. It is predominantly concerned, in ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... to mention all of these different labels. You can think of them for yourselves. What I want to say is that it is too bad for such good, useful, well-intentioned and wholesome boys and girls to put on labels which lead people to think less of them than they should think. For by these things they spoil their chances of getting into the company of ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... distribution of rations leaves much to be desired; the fatigue party, well-intentioned and sympathetic though it be, often finds itself short of provisions. This may in many cases be due to unequal distribution; an ounce of beef too much to each of sixteen men leaves the seventeenth short of meat. This may easily ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... or so a sprouting of hope had pierced the matchmaking soil in the querulous lady's really well-intentioned heart, for, like the proverbial half-loaf, a step-son-in-law is distinctly better than none ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... amount which sustained a thousand men, can, under the new scale of remuneration, sustain only nine hundred. The nine hundred are better fed, but there is one hundred without any food whatever. Our well-intentioned humanity looks round aghast at the confusion she ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... This was a well-intentioned effort to eliminate Charles and his troubles from the conversation; but Fred, not heeding, spoke ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... commenting upon the German note, he then read the reply which had been handed to the German Minister.[2] This was followed by a final note delivered by the German Minister this morning stating "that in view of the refusal of the King to accede to the well-intentioned proposals of the Emperor, the Imperial Government, greatly to its regret, was obliged to carry out by force of arms the measures indispensable to its security." After reading these documents he made a short and ringing speech, full of fire, which ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... office door, there entered the presence of the Judge a man who seemingly was but a few years younger than the Judge himself—a man who looked to be somewhere between sixty-five and seventy. There is a look that you may have seen in the eyes of ownerless but well-intentioned dogs—dogs that, expecting kicks as their daily portion, are humbly grateful for kind words and stray bones; dogs that are fairly yearning to be adopted by somebody—by anybody—being prepared to give to such a benefactor a most faithful doglike ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... is, indeed, especially the case when we are concerned with a new activity in the sphere of sex. The sexual relationships of life are so ancient and so wide, their roots ramify so complexly and run so deep, that any sudden disturbance in this soil, however well-intentioned, is certain to have many results which were not anticipated by those responsible for it. Any movement here runs the risk of defeating its own ends, or else, in gaining them, to render impossible other ends which are of not ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... all civilised countries. In uncivilised countries, to remove your hat, or to bow, may be taken as a gross outrage on good manners, or as signifying some horrible immorality, in which case the offender would not have the chance of repeating his well-intentioned mistake. But within the limits of Western enlightenment to bow is mere civility, and may be taken as a preface to conversation; to omit it is to show lack of breeding and to court hostility. Therefore, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... still and dejected; a dismal, tired rooster, who wanted to go to roost, but could not in that glare of gas, and stood motionless on the bottom of the cage; three or four common white rabbits; and a mangy cat. Such was the Sacred Museum. Such are the exhibitions to which well-intentioned parents will take their children, while shrinking in affright from the theatre! It is strange that this lucrative business of providing amusement for children and country visitors should have been so long abandoned to the most ignorant of the community. Every large town needs a place ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... told of a well-intentioned missionary who tried to induce a Persian fire-worshipper to abandon the creed of his ancestors. "Is it not," urged the Christian minister, "a sad and deplorable superstition for an intelligent person like you to worship an inanimate object like the sun?" "My friend," said ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... and beg her to accept his son's hand to save him from going off in a galloping consumption, that would have been a triumph after Phoebe's heart. To be sure this was a perfectly vain and wildly romantic hope—it was the only bit of wild and girlish romance in the bosom of a very well-educated, well-intentioned, and sensible young woman. She had seen her parents put up with the arrogance of the millionnaire for a long time without rebelling any more than they did; but Mr. Copperhead had gone further than Phoebe could bear; and thoroughly as she understood her own position, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... obliged to criticize Miss Smith's book it is not because I wish to disparage a well-intentioned effort, but because I constantly hear The Music of the Waters quoted as an authoritative work on sailor shanties; and since the shanties in it were all collected in the district where I spent boyhood and youth, I am familiar with all of them, and can state definitely that they ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... streets so deserted, that Mary almost trembled to find herself in them alone; but she was anxious to do what she considered her duty without the pain of contention. John Glegg was naturally an honest and well-intentioned man, but the weakness that had blasted his life adhered to him still. They were doubtless in terrible need of the guinea, and since it was not by any means certain that the real owner would be found, he saw no great harm in appropriating it; but Mary wasted no casuistry ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... towards efforts at self-improvement and the development of self-reliance without regard to English aid, English neglect, or English opinion, excellent though it has been in every other respect, has had this one drawback—that there has grown up a generation of Englishmen, well-intentioned towards our country, to whom the problems of Irish Government are an unknown quantity. The ignorance of Irish affairs in England is due partly to ourselves, but also to a natural heedlessness arising from distance and preoccupation with problems ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... Kai Lung's consistent denials of any treachery, he could not but be aware that the incident tended greatly to his disadvantage in the eyes of those whom he had fixed a desire to conciliate, nor did his well-intentioned offer that he would without hesitation repeat the display for a like number of hours effect his amiable purpose. How the complication would finally have been determined without interruption is a matter merely of imagination, for at that moment an outpost, who had been engaged ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... me round, separate me not from the well-intentioned zeal of so many kindly souls. And may the courage with which my glance was wont to inspire them, now return again from their hearts to mine. Yes! they assemble in thousands! they come! they stand beside me! their pious wish rises urgently to heaven, and implores ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... his plan of government, failed entirely in carrying it, and retired in disgust from the convention. His associates then took every method to prevent any form of government being agreed to. But the well-intentioned never ceased trying, first one thing, then another, till they could get something agreed to. The final passage and adoption of the constitution completely defeated the views of the combination, and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... a numerous family and to be persecuted by misfortune,—or an impudent unfeeling women, who excites pity by the tears and cries of a poor child whom she has hired perhaps for the purpose, and tortured into suffering, steps daringly forward to intercept the alms of the charitable; and the well-intentioned gift which should relieve the indigent is the prize of impudence and imposition, and the support of vice and idleness.—What then is left for the modest object of real distress, but to retire dispirited ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... said, "is as follows. Punch has a row with Judy and knocks her out. (Laughter.) Various well-intentioned and benignant fools look in on Punch to pass the time of day, and get—very properly—knocked out for their pains. (Loud and prolonged laughter.) This is followed by the side-splitting incident in which a handy clown not only eludes the thirsty bludgeon, but surreptitiously steals ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... be inferred that our "Sweet Alice" had resolved to protect herself against any romantic tete-a-tetes in the woods with a certain well-intentioned but presuming young man who might desire to ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... played that before long Eve found herself learning unconsciously to regard Adam as severe and unyielding toward Jerrem, whose misfortune it was to be too easily influenced. Seeing her strong in her own rectitude and no less convinced of the truth of Jerrem's well-intentioned resolutions, Adam felt it next to impossible to poison Eve's ears with tales and scandals of which her innocent life led her to have no suspicion: therefore, though the sight of their slightest intercourse rankled within him, he was forced to keep ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... modernisation, and a strange cylindrical campanile pierced with small arched windows and extremely suggestive of the fifth century. These churches constitute the palpable interest of Ravenna, and their own principal interest, after thirteen centuries of well-intentioned spoliation, resides in their unequalled collection of early Christian mosaics. It is an interest simple, as who should say, almost to harshness, and leads one's attention along a straight and narrow way. There are older churches ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the happy home ridiculous: a truly deplorable work, which the incriminated dramatists were discreet enough for the most part to avoid. The remark brings us to the first of the half-truths, which cause the complexity of the subject. The dramatists whose withers the well-intentioned and disastrous Collier wrung seem to have thought their best answer was to pose as people with a mission—certainly Congreve so posed—to reform the world with an exhibition of its follies. An amusing answer, no doubt, of which the absurdity is obvious! It does, however, contain ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... o' plum-duff, Mrs Mitford," suggested Massey, with well-intentioned sincerity, holding up a lump of the viand ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... beyond the reach for the time, of mobs or sceptres, unless one falls in with a black flag. At all events, off sailed my Lord Culpeper, leaving Sir Henry Chichely as Lieutenant-Governor, and verily he might as well have left a weather-cock as that well-intentioned but pliable gentleman. Give him but a head wind over him and he would wax fierce to order, and well he served the government in the Bacon uprising, but leave him to his own will and back and forth he swung with great bluster ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... fails, and the ecclesiastical law must be enforced. Those who know Ireland are well aware that this is exactly what would happen under Home Rule. Here is the crowning proof of the truth that, above all the well-intentioned persons who give assurances of the peace and goodwill that would flourish under Home Rule, there is a power which would bring all their ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... his countrymen would do liberal justice. So far as he was concerned, this should have been the end of the matter, and Adams should have been grateful to a man whose tranquil wisdom and skillful tact had saved him from the self-reproach which he would ever have felt had his well-intentioned, ill-timed act borne its full possible fruit of injury to the cause of the States. But Adams, who knew that his views were intrinsically correct, emerged from the imbroglio with an extreme resentment against his rescuer, nor was he ever able to see that Franklin ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... riding with flapping arms and jingling spurs up the pass; or again the silence was broken by the inconsequent bleating of a flock of sheep wandering in search of their scant pasturage or huddling together, an agitated mass of grimy wool, its outskirts painfully exposed to the sharp but well-intentioned admonitions of a somewhat irascible collie. Neither man nor beast took special note of the overgrown boy striding so confidently on his way, nor was one observer more likely than the other to guess what ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Vikram, would have hesitated, under such circumstances, to assure the Pandit that he was the most innocent, earnest, and well-intentioned being ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... men are in the habit of employing because the cases themselves are too lame to stand alone; I allude to the practice of soliciting the attestations of the patients, and decoying the simple, the ignorant, well-intentioned, but deceived neighbours, to add their signatures to cases of which they know nothing, and of which the details are a series of bombast, falsehood, ignorance, and humbug. There are many of the cases which I have related to which ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... sensational was provided by Theydon's fall. After that, events traveled rapidly, and the majority of the onlookers imagined that it was Winter who had knocked Theydon off his balance, while the rush made by the latter to intercept Wong Li Fu was actually stopped by a well-intentioned railway porter. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... that her neighbour's family (the head of which perhaps is a most successful financier and market-rigger) are going to the Isle of Wight for three months, though there is nothing at all the matter with them, is an added bitterness. How often it is said (no doubt with some well-intentioned idea of consolation) that after all money cannot buy life! I remember a curious instance to the contrary of this. In the old days of sailing-packets a country gentleman embarked for Ireland, and when a few miles from land broke a bloodvessel ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... Husbandman Story of the Three Princes and Enchanting Bird Story of a Sultan of Yemen and His Three Sons Story of the First Sharper in the Cave History of the Sultan of Hind Story of the Fisherman's Son Story of Abou Neeut and Abou Neeuteen; Or, the Well-intentioned and the Double-minded Adventure of a Courtier, Related by Himself to His Parton, an Ameer of Egypt Story of the Prince of Sind, and Fatima, Daughter of Amir Bin Naomaun Story of the Lovers of Syria; Or, the Heroine Story of Hyjauje, the Tyrannical Governor of Coufeh, and the Young Syed Story ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... submitted for Garrick's approval. But nothing came of Reynolds's intervention. Perhaps Goldsmith resented Garrick's airs of patronage towards a poor devil of an author; perhaps Garrick was surprised by the manner in which well-intentioned criticisms were taken; at all events, after a good deal of shilly-shallying, the play was taken out of Garrick's hands. Fortunately, a project was just at this moment on foot for starting the rival theatre in Covent Garden, under the management of George Colman; and to ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... been seen by me when a communication was received to the address of my servant, Mirza Habibulla Khan, from the Commissioner of Peshawar, and was read. I am astonished and dismayed by this letter, written threateningly to a well-intentioned friend, replete with contentions, and yet nominally regarding a friendly Mission. Coming thus by force, what result, or profit, or fruit, could come of it? Following this, three other letters from above-mentioned source, in the very same strain, addressed to my officials, have been perused ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... innocent weapons of tongue and precept. But human nature and inclination still held their own; and there were many defections from the ranks of the elect, to those of the more practical—and probably equally well-intentioned—pleasure-seekers. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... cases exceedingly monotonous and narrowing. The common belief that wealth is an open sesame to a life of universal human experience is a stupid delusion, frequently used as a gloss to their souls by well-intentioned people. Apart from the strict class limitations imposed by the possession of large property, the object of protected and luxurious people is generally merely pleasure. And pleasure is one of the narrowest ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... emphasis. We find a few directions for expression, as in the first measures of Palestrina's Stabat Mater but such directions are extremely rare. They are simply the first signs of the dawn of the far-off day of music with expression. Certain learned and well-intentioned persons endeavor to compare this music with ours, and we surprise in some of the modern editions instances of molto expressivo which seem to be good guesses. This exclusively consonant music, in which the intervals of fourths were considered dissonant, ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... useful form, is regarded by a well-meaning chronicler as of vast importance in serving as a noble example for the study and imitation of the youth of the land, and therefore to be faithfully recorded,—then it is hoped he will pardon the somewhat free but well-intentioned use that is here made ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... Despite these well-intentioned efforts, the Navy failed to increase significantly the number of black officers or sailors in the next decade (Table 8). The percentage of Negroes in the Navy increased so slowly that not until ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... of Hamilton presents a favourable specimen of the well-principled and well-intentioned Scotchman, with the acknowledged virtues and obvious defects of the national character. He was disinterested in great matters, refusing many opportunities of worldly advantage, and bearing for the first eight years of his public career, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... great talent, and in nearly every instance great good taste and sincere sympathy with the best popular ideals of goodness; then, I say, the stage is entitled to be let alone—that is, it is entitled to make its own bargain with the public without the censorious intervention of well-intentioned busybodies. These do not know what to ban or to bless. If they had their way, as of course they cannot, they would license, with many flourishes and much self-laudation, a number of pieces which would be hopelessly condemned on the first hearing, and they ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... despicable Lacroix. There was the Pere Duchesne, he, too, a conspirator and agent of the foreigner, the vile demagogue who degraded liberty, and whose filthy calumnies stirred sympathy for Antoinette herself. There was Chaumette, who yet was a mild man, popular, moderate, well-intentioned, and virtuous in the administration of the Commune; but he was an atheist! Conspirators, agents of the foreigner,—such were all those sansculottes in red cap and carmagnole and sabots who recklessly outbid the Jacobins in patriotism. Conspirator and agent of the foreigner ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... on withdrawing the soldiers from the capital, she earnestly entreated him to accompany them, taking the not unreasonable view that the violence of the Parisian mob would be to some extent quelled, and the well-intentioned portion of the Assembly would have greater boldness to support their opinions, if the king were thus placed out of the reach of danger from any fresh outbreak; and it was generally understood that ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... the point of the ludicrous. We recently heard a very able and well-intentioned preacher, near the Fifth Avenue, ask the ladies before him whether they were in the habit of speaking to their female attendants about their souls' salvation,—particularly those who dressed their hair. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... competent naturalists have left speculations on the origin of species to such dreamers as the author of the "Vestiges," by whose well-intentioned efforts the Lamarckian theory received its final condemnation in the minds of all sound thinkers. Notwithstanding this silence, however, the transmutation theory, as it has been called, has been ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Some well-intentioned, but rather obstinate persons, could not at first comprehend how, if the moon displays invariably the same face to the earth during her revolution, she can describe one turn round herself. To such ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... the world into the secret of his heart. Indeed, all his life Swift seemed to hide, almost jealously, the genuine piety of his nature. Whatever suspicion of policy has surrounded the tract must be ascribed to the well-intentioned letter of the Earl of Berkeley above quoted; and the Earl would not have written thus had he felt Swift's motive to be any other than a ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift |
